 Calfveridian Anchor was sundered, a broken demi-world ablaze silently in the void. This event was referred to by the word-bearers and their debased allies, apparently both prior and subsequent to the atrocity, as the Ushkul Tu. In several archaic languages, with common roots across tainted worlds, the phrase can be roughly translated as tribute star or offering sun, although this removes cultural connotations of sacrifice, potentiality, and imminent promise as represented by the breaking of a dawn. As with the many crimes committed by the 17th Legion during the Horus Heresy, the significance of the act was paramount to some over any tactical considerations. The death of Calfveridian Anchor was an almost mortal blow to the Ultramarine's Legion, and a greater one to their fleet. Hundreds of thousands of lives had been snuffed out in less time than an eye could blink. Their deaths were not merely mundane. The word-bearers placed great importance on the ritual heft of the act itself, and just as the dawn promises something greater to follow, so too did the Ushkul Tu portend an even greater sunrise to come. Yet for now, there was, to all onlooking, a new star in Calt's orbit. Veridian Anchor had become a fireball of nuclear energy. A real orb of incandescence blazing radiation outwards into the local volume. Electromagnetic pulses of astonishing brutality had pummeled what remained of the communications grid, killing almost all intership vox and leaving what networks remained intact, choked with frantic calls for aid and demands for clarification. The outpouring of energy fire continued to swallow ships from nearby anchorage lines, just as debris from the force of the Campanile's collision spun outwards into the void, indiscriminately killing as they sliced through ships at maximal velocities. The best information anyone observing could establish is only that which their own eyes could behold. Only viewports aboard ship provided any clarity, and all that eyes can see was a false dawn where once before lay a shipyard. The conclusion, drawn from the stunned and appalled minds of orbital survivors, was reached broadly simultaneously across Calt nearspace in the seconds following the Campanile's murder of Veridian Anchor. This was not an accident. This was an attack. No accident could have wrought such devastation. Not here. Not with the Mechanicum's peerless redundancies, not with Gilliman's scrupulous safety standards. Somewhere in the vox deluge the word orc was uttered, a word that caught fire across those that managed to parse it from the chaos of the surviving communications net. Of course, the orcs. The enemy had to have become aware of the conjunction, and obviously had launched a preemptive strike to prevent the Imperial juggernaut from reaching its full muster strength. At mark minus zero point eighteen point two zero, surviving ships had finally begun to power up their drives shields and weapons batteries, bringing vessels to an approximation of fighting strength in the face of what surely was a Xenos incursion. Such acts, of course, cannot be completed in such a quick time. The overwhelming majority of Ultramarine's legion and Navas Imperialis vessels, aligned to Ultramar, had been reactor inoperative for repairs. Captains bellowed for their engine seers to light drives, and as weapons operators howled for firing solutions, a canny few sensorium adepts noted that, amongst the tumult, a new call sign had appeared on wavering ospex grids in the orbital volume. The word bearer's battle barge, raptorus rex, a veteran titan of the great crusade, was gone. In her position was a new ship, the same ship, bearing a new ident tag. She was broadcasting a new name, Infidus Imperator. This was the flagship of Cor Phaeron, first captain of the 17th Legion. She was the first to open fire. The entirety of her primary lance batteries struck the battle barge's sons of Ultramar amid ships. The vessel was, at the time, attempting to light its shield batteries, although was, of course, unable to do so. The battle barge was reduced to a fireball in an instant. Drives on full burn, Infidus Imperator moved forward. In her wake slid the Crown of Cultus, who also opened fire, as did the Flame of Purity, the Spear of Cedros, the Camiel, and the Destiny's Hand. By Mark-0.18.10, 20 seconds standard following the Campanile's impact, the entire word bearer's fleet was firing upon the Ultramarines. At Mark-0.16.11, Rebut Gulliman reached the bridge of the McCraggs honor to take what command he could of the situation. The flagship of the Ultramarines was blinded and crippled. Outgoing Vox was disabled, and its view screens were inoperable. What little Gulliman's Vox officers were able to inform him was that the word bearers were simply not on the emergency channels. The Ultramarine vessels were issuing distress calls, or attempting to establish a framework for the disaster. The 17th Legion ships were silent and were firing. This was clearly visible through the McCraggs honor's open viewports, all playing out in the dread quiet of the void. Gulliman was forced to conclude that the agreed Legion had, in whatever madness had unfolded, assumed that the attack on Viridian Anchor contained elements of Ultramarine's culpability, that the 17th still wounded from the raising of Monarchia assumed that the 13th Legion were at fault, and their only recourse was self-defense. Gulliman ordered all work to be diverted to the lithocast systems, that he may raise his brother Lorgar, and put an end to the chaos unfolding in Calt's orbit. At mark minus 0.16.02, Captain Remus Ventanus, attempting to establish some form of order over the civilian loaders he had now found himself warden of, beheld a sight that others across the region were only just realizing was real. A shadow falling over Calcas Fortilis was not an atmospheric disturbance, nor even the waning of whatever light was just filling the skies not minutes before. It was a ship, it was falling, falling backwards across the sky, slowly, so very slowly. The sight was reported to have utterly unmanned many who beheld it. See, a void ship at such an angle, in such a fashion, was as uncanny as it was impossible, but it was true, it was real. The Grand Cruiser Antrodamicus, shorn from her shipyard moorings, was caught in the planet's gravity, and while its plummet looked to all onlookers to be gracefully slow, it was minutes from an annihilating impact. At mark minus 0.15.50, it started raining battle tanks in Numenous City. From above the metropolis's muster, heavy lifter vehicles had been caught in the devastation of Viridian anchor, and had broken up in low orbit. They shedded their cargo into the atmosphere, and, of course, the gravity well. The robustness of the armour within these holes meant that hundreds, if not thousands, of them survived the orbital plunge, only to impact upon the mustered ultramarines below with meteoric force. Glowing from atmospheric re-entry, their impacts sundered full ammunition banks, torching the tanks off with incredible force. This became detonations, shadow swords, fell blades, falchions, spartans, bane blades. Every mark of super heavy tank, the Imperium possessed, pummeled Numenous City with greater force than almost any artillery bombardment the word-bearers could have created. They were accompanied, albeit with not nearly as much physical devastation, by human bodies. Ripped from the shipyard, ripped from the ships. They did not possess the metal shells of main battle tanks. They did not survive entry, intact. The reign of corpses, blackened, scorched, withered, impacted with what moisture remained within their bodies. Bursting, like bags of boiling blood. At mark minus 0.15.48, the Antrodamecus impacted the crust of Calth at Calcas Fortalece. As a starship, her hull was designed to withstand not only the gravitational shear of warp translation, but also weapons fire of the enemies of the Imperium. Despite the tremendous velocity picked up during orbital re-entry, the impact barely deformed her keel. Her stern impacted first, biting into the crust half a kilometer deep, sliding backwards as physics now dictated her path. The ground was split like a plow. The Antrodamecus carved a massive path through the city two and a half kilometers wide, responsible for countless civilian deaths. The overpressure from the impact wave demolished buildings ahead of her actual path, a bow wave of annihilation. Seconds into this destruction, the stress of the impact began to cause fractures in the hull, teeming outwards from the sternward point of impact. The Antrodamecus landed fully on her keel, the final impact shearing fragments from her superstructure off to cause yet more devastation. Fires tore through the vessel, burning it up from the inside even as it still continued its path. A quake shock, the planet crust itself rebelling against the torturous wound it had just received, began to level parts of the metropolis neither the ship nor even the pressure front had touched. As the earthquake reached the muster points in Numinous City, it was joined by the sound of bolters. The word bearer as a starties planet side opened fire on the Ultramarine's mustering alongside them. At mark minus zero point one four point two zero, Titan warhorns sounded over Numinous, as the legio certivora masks off and engines blaring their new names in furnace. Opened fire on civilian and military targets alike. The slaughter in orbit on the ground continues for another eleven minutes. At mark minus zero point zero three point five nine, Gilliman is at last able to raise Lorgar Aurelion on lithocast. Prior to the conversation, the Primarch has rebuffed calls from his first captain, Marius Gage, to order return of fire. Gage stated in record that even acting in self defense, the word bearers were only adding to the death toll from what was still believed to be a Xenos attack, and that this amounted to a grand crime. But even should the accident have occurred, more killing was not the appropriate response. Gilliman had refused his first captain's entreaties, believing even at that point that the 17th Legion's worst fears must surely have been realized, and insisting that the folly of Lorgar's sons would not be added to by his own Legion, even as thousands died with every passing second. What followed? The interaction between Primarchs was brief. Gilliman begged his brother to cease fire, that this misunderstanding can be moved past, that some measure of peace could be salvaged from the devastation that had occurred. He stated that surely, this had to have been a mistake. The 17th Primarch responded that, how could Gilliman possibly think that this was a mistake? Lorgar's last words in this transmission, overheard by Gilliman alone, but recorded by the Primarch for posterity, were simply, I am an orphan, bereft of options, impossibly penned in. Rebut Gilliman was finally forced to issue return of fire. The Ultramarines were to defend themselves by any and all means possible. The officer of record present upon the bridge initiated standard 13th Legion archival protocol. The mark of Couth began. 00.00.00. My brother hear me, warriors of the 17th Legion hear me. This violence is against the code of the Legion as a starty, and against the will of our father, the Emperor. In the name of the 500 worlds of Ultramar, I implore you to cease fire and stand down. Open communication with me, let us speak, let us settle this. This action is an error of the most tragic kind. cease fire, I, Rebut Gilliman, give you my solemn pledge that we will deal with each other frankly and fairly if these hostilities can be suspended. I urge you to respond. This message was placed on cyclical transmission at precisely mark 00.00.01 by order of the 13th Primarch. There was an attempt, Gilliman noted in later writings collected in Alec Scovion's Tactica Ocidentalis, an examination of storied campaigns of the 13th Legion during the course of the Shadow Crusade, to provide some degree of clemency. He laterally noted that his instinct to provide such was misguided, but nevertheless made under the ideals he yet held on to at the time. As the transmission was being broadcast, the 17th Legion fleet continued its murderous crusade through disabled Ultramarine ships. Vulpines amidst the Yardfoul, their kills were effortless. Gunnery officers aboard Wordbearer's ships simply annihilated whatever loyalist vessels they targeted. Even those that had fired reactors to some degree of efficacy were fighting blind and deaf. Poultry evasive maneuvers unable to slip from the firing solutions of Wordbearer ships that had been sitting in orbit 20 minutes prior with reactors fully stoked. The slaughter was unspeakable. The intricacies of each ship death barely recordable in the time it took to murder them. The support carriers Vosphorus and her sister ship Validiction were caught in the broad sides of a Wordbearer battle barge. The former, slightly shielded by the latter, attempted to flee, only to expose her drive section to Lance Fire. The ensuing explosion catapulted the vessel into the nearby troop transports and trophelies. The death of three ships resulted in 80,000 lives lost in a mere five seconds. This was just one of the executions carried out in orbit. Every passing minute added a dozen more. The flame of purity mounted an attack run on the further out Astiri's orbital yard. Firing caronades at helpless docked ships, even as her armoured prow plowed bodily through support vessels in her path. Avoid cast battering ram, heedlessly juggernautting through ships, structures, people. The corpses of vessels slain by the 17th Legion in this fashion found new homes in the decades and centuries hence. Those that were not caught in Calt's own gravity well, like the sundered Antrodamacus, were flung into the void, and ensnared by the system's star or planetary bodies in wide orbital paths. Cold and utterly dead, these hulks at least initially contained survivors. Only ship ratings and menials trapped in their innermost bowels. These poor wretches would never again see light. They died from lack of oxygen, or were frozen into shards of ice after life support systems gave out. It is believed hulks of this nature still exist in the gulfs of space in the Viridian system. Silent, dark, impossible to locate tombs of a thousand year old atrocity. With their false skins thrown off, the word-bearer fleet escalated their maneuvers from simple murder to grander atrocities. The formation of 17 planetary bombard craft, led at the van by the destiny's hand, flagship of Erebus, took position over Calt in low orbit. Breaking into pre-assigned pickets, the formation moved into geosynchronicity with predetermined population center targets. Such a course of action, had the still extant defense grid been operational, would have been impossible. The Mechanicum Newsphere and its server, Hest, had died with Viridian anchor, and the 900 weapons platforms stood mute against the unfolding atrocity. The ships were so close to the atmosphere as to be visible from the surface, but only momentarily. As one they opened fire. Shells the size of tanks that had rained on Numenous City plunged planetward, alongside plasma bolts and lance beams. The latter tore into the crust, affecting tectonic destabilization, while the kinetic rounds obliterated buildings, rivers, and mountains. They had no need to target weapons silos or defense batteries. They posed no threat. Infrastructure, the civilian population, the land itself, these were their targets. No region was immune from the attentions of the craft, but some suffered far worse than others. The southern island cities, for example, vanished utterly, consumed by both tectonic instability and massive tsunamis that engulfed them. Energy beams targeted the ocean itself, flash vaporizing millions of cubic meters of seawater into a super dense boiling fog that consumed organic matter in its inferno. The southern cities had little in the way of military significance. They were not muster sites of opportunity. Subsequent analysis, followed by later word-bearer ground attacks on Numenous City and Ithrica, has led to supposition among scholars that such cities and regions were targeted for destruction based on occult significance. Then the manner of their destruction was also imparted with ritualistic meaning. As it stands, this explanation persists through scholarship for anything involved in the battle of Kelth that cannot be explained by tactical efficacy. The lunacy of the word-bearers and the arcane practices they engaged so greedily in are best left ill understood. Such debased acts were played out not only by the bombard vessels, but also by kill team strikes undertaken by word-bearer astartes on select orbital weapon platforms. Though utterly disabled, each platform still bore within them a crew that numbered in the hundreds. Some were blown out of the skies in opportunistic broadsides by passing word-bearer ships, while many others were simply ignored. Yet others still were singled out for boarding actions. Again, the random nature of the attacks can most reliably be chalked up to occult reasoning. The 17th Legion appeared to be seeking out specific targets amongst the platforms. Resistance to the boarding parties was led by solar auxilia terseos stationed aboard each. These troops, the finest unaugmented soldiery within the system, were equipped per the standard solar pattern, void-sealed hazard armor, and highly powered las rifles and volkite beam weaponry. They had, of course, never been intended to fight against the forces of the Lijunez astartes. Despite formidable training, and years of experience in shipboard zone-mortalis engagements, resistance was doomed. What casualties, the las rifle sections of the auxilia were able to inflict upon the word-bearers was petty recompense for the bolter-fire butchery that the 17th meted out upon them. Not only that, but the enemy was unlike anything the auxilia had previously fought. Not only were they the transhuman ferocity of the astartes incarnate, but even how they conducted themselves was uncanny by space marine standards. Many sang mournful plain song, or chanted hopeless dirges while in combat. Others would ritually disembowel their foes, striding through torrents of las fire just for the opportunity to slowly and painfully strip a service person of their bodily organs even as the soldier begged for their parents. Others still were captured alive, slapped into chains branded with uncomfortable to gaze upon runes, and forced back into the docked boarding ships, never to be seen again. Their fates almost certainly ones filled with blood and horror. There were, against all odds, some loyalist victories amidst the massacres. On platform Principia Viridia 27-K, the 222nd Kalth Solar auxilia enacted a neutron radiation cascade of the main hangar bay following the arrival of word-bearer assault craft. So intense was this purge that even Astartes physiologies would not resist its effects. The 222nd followed the radiation cascade with a bayonet charge, their void armor keeping the radiation at bay just long enough to overrun the withering Astartes before perishing themselves. Not a single warrior from either side survived the engagement. In almost all cases, however, the bridge was the target of the word-bearer boarding actions, with as many bridge commanders as possible taken alive and forced to watch the bombardment of Kalth through the viewports for minutes at a time before having their throats slowly slit by the knives of word-bearer dark apostles. Once again, the cruelty was the point. It has been hypothesized by scholars of the occult that the act of witnessing, the observance of the destruction of what these officers had been meant to protect, was done so to drench the departing soul in as much misery as could be inflicted upon one of their station. Had any of the eyes to do so, they would have seen the cruiser Samothrace, now under the command of Saurak T'Chur, who had performed the first murder, amongst many, dock at Zetsun Varid Yard, at Mark 0.58.08, the structure significantly spared from destruction. At Mark 0.1.57.42, nearly two hours after the order to return fire had been given, Rebut Gulliman had come to a conclusion. Voxnets and Ospex Grids, not to mention two hours of unremitting slaughter in abject silence from the 17th Legion, had pushed the Primarch's clemency to its limits. A moat of data, amongst the torrent that Gulliman had been parsing, stood out. Censor screeds drawn from multiple sources immediately prior to the calamity of Veridian Anchor, data that pointed to the acceleration of the fleet-tender Campanile, data that, when correlated with system traffic logs, showed her path from the outer void to the inner volumes. Data that, when taken into account, established what Gulliman referred to as a pre-condition of malice. Not that, he noted, two hours after the mark began, that there was any real question any longer. It was merely the shred of evidence his mind required to close the proverbial door. The Primarch rescinded his earlier broadcast and replaced it with the following. Lorgar of Colchis, you may consider the following, one, I entirely withdraw my previous offer of solemn ceasefire. It is cancelled and it will not be made again. To you or any other of your motherless bastards. Two, you are no longer any brother of mine. I will find you, I will kill you, and I will hurl your toxic corpse into Hell's mouth. The McCraggs honor placed that message upon broadcast, as Gulliman hurried to implement a more robust system of intership communication, resorting to direct laser comm systems and card copy orders dispatched by lighters, repair vehicles, or even single man fightercraft. Having a ship may have to bring the Primarch's word to another vessel. Gulliman himself resolved to target the Fidelitas Lex, Lorgar's personal Gloriana-class flagship. It was, of course, both tactically expedient and personal, but the Primarch openly admitting to Marius Gage that he wanted to be the one to bring death to his erstwhile brother. That this will be the one time he will fight a battle with his hearts, not his head. It was at this mark that a lithocast signal from the 17th Primarch was received, requesting an audience with Gulliman. Unable to deny the request, Gulliman raised the Fidelitas Lex. What occurred next was, in infamy, recorded for posterity. Have you lost your temper, Rabute? I am going to gut you. You have lost your temper. The great and calm and level-headed Rabute Gulliman has finally succumbed to passion. I will gut you. I will skin you. I will behead you. Ah, Rabute, here at the very end, I finally hear you talking away that actually makes me like you. In the precondition of Malice, you took the Campanile. By my estimation, you took it at least 140 hours ago. You took the ship, and you staged this. You organized this atrocity, Lorca, and you made it seem like a terrible accident, so you could capitalize on our mercy. You made a stay-or-hand while you committed murder. It's called treachery, Rabute. It works very well. How did you find out? We backplotted the Campanile's route once we'd worked out what hit the yards. When you look back at the plot, the notion that it was any kind of accident becomes laughable. As is the notion, you can hurt me. We're not going to debate it, you maggot. You treacherous bastard. I just wanted you to know that I will rip your living heart out, and I want to know why. Why? Why? If this is how pure I'll old feud boiled to the surface, then you are the most pathetic soul in the cosmos. Pathetic. Our father should have left you out in the snow at birth. He should have fed you to rust. You worm. You maggot. There's nothing to do with our enmity, Rabute, except that it affords me the opportunity to avenge my honor on you and your ridiculous toy soldiers. That is just a delicious bonus. No, this is the Ushkulthu. Kalth is the Ushkulthu. The authoring. It is the sunrise of a new galaxy, a new order. You're rambling, you bastard. The galaxy is changing, Rabute. It is turning upside down. Up will be down, and down will be up. Our father will be tossed out of his throne. He will fall down, and no one will put him back together again. Ologa, you... Listen to me, Rabute. You think you are so clever, so wise, so informed, but this had started already. It is already underway. The galaxy is turning on its head. You will die, and our father will die, and so will all the others, because you are all too stupid to see the truth. Listen to me, Rabute. Listen to me. The Imperium is finished. It is falling. It is going to burn. Our father is done. His malicious dreams are over. Horus is rising. Horus? Horus Loverkull is rising, Rabute. You have no idea of his ability. He is above us all. We stand with him, or we perish entirely. You shit, Ologa. Are you drugged? Are you mad? What kind of insanity is this? Horus! Horus what? He is rising. He is coming. He will kill anyone who stands in his way. He will rule. He will be what the Emperor could never be. Horus would... Horus would never turn. If any of us turned, the others would... Horus has risen against our cruel and abusive parent, Rabute. Accept that, and you will die with greater peace in your heart. Horus Loverkull has come to overthrow the imperial corruption and punish the abuser. It is already happening, and Horus is not alone. I am with him, sworn and true. So is Fulgrim, Angron, Pertorobo, Magnus, Mortarion, Curse, and Farius. Your loyalty is heir and paper, Rabute. Our loyalty is blood. You're lying. You're dying. Ystran 5 burns. Brothers are dead already. Dead? Who are Ferris Manus? Korax? Vulcan? All dead and gone. Slaughtered like pigs. These are all lies. Look at me, Rabute. You know they are not. You know it. You studied every one of us. You know our strengths and our failings. Theoretical, Rabute. Theoretical. You know this is possible. You know from the very facts that this is a possible outcome. Whatever you think of me, Rabute, whatever your opinion, I know it is about as low as it can be. You know I'm not a stupid man. I would betray my brother and attack the assembled might of the 13th Legion for a grudge. Really? Really? Practical, Rabute. I am here to exterminate you and the Ultra Marines because you are the only force left in the Emperor's camp that can possibly stop Horus. You are too dangerous to live and I am here to make sure you do not. I'm here to remove you from the game, Rabute. Either you're insane or the galaxy has gone mad. Whichever. I am coming for you and I will put you and your heathen killers down. Just communicate, Traitoris. You will not have any opportunity to reflect upon the monstrosity of this crime. Oh, Rabute, I can always rely on you to sound like a giant, pompous arsehole. Come and get me, we'll see who burns first. One last thing you need to know, Rabute. You really don't appreciate what you're up against. I've seen enough of his charlatan tricks. Break the lithocast link. The link? Sir, the link is already broken. Rabute, let the galaxy burn. This video and this channel were made possible thanks to the very kind donations and support from my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com slash Oculus Imperia. If you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos, you can contact me or follow me on Twitter, at Oculus Imperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.