 The mysteries of Zanna have been revealed to thee, and if they have not, one would highly recommend parsing the previous record entry in this duality, as therein you shall find the elucidation needed to proceed further along the path of the curious tale of this most sinister of forge worlds. The pieces had been set, and the board was in play. Zanna had offered itself to Horace Lupercal, traitorous warmaster in exchange for his boons and a place of primacy at his side, perhaps indeed one prestigious enough to challenge the paramountcy of Mars as the lead arbiter of all things within the new Mechanicum. To achieve this, Zanna would not only grant to Lupercal the surplus of arms and armaments it had been greedily stockpiling since the outbreak of the heresy, but a trio of Ordinatus eulator war machines, arcane and devastating mobile weapons platforms of unspeakable power. Yet for all their aims and machinations, politicking and backstabbing, for all their assurances in the power of their forge, their technology, their place within the galaxy, things did not go quite as the Lords of Zanna had intended. No then, that this be in the second part the story of that benighted forge world, the retribution of Terra that was about to befall them, the fateful conflict known as the Zanna Incursion. The handover of the Ordinatae to the agents of the warmaster was to be the pact that would seal Zanna's future. It was an event the Vodian Consistory intended to deliver with all due reverence. Horus, too, knew the power of a deal, and the sheer boon the war machines represented, and accordingly had sent a captain of his first company Reavers, Raxhal Coridon, at the head of a flotilla of 16th Legion ships in the captured Grand Cruiser Kikatrice Tyrannus. Coridon was escorting the warmaster's own gift, a treasure trove of captured technology and biology from every single loyalist Astartes Legion. The stage was set for a summit that looked to shift the balance of the heresy in the western galactic reaches, but fate had other plans. As the warmaster's ships hove into the orbit of the titanic gas giant Zanna-1 on final approach to the forge world itself, Ospex Grids aboard ship and planet side blared emergency signals, indicating a sudden in-system warp translation. Pinpointed to a volume almost insanely close to the inner system's gravity well, a forced translation of scores of warships was confirmed by the traitor fleet. The incoming vessels made absolutely no attempt to hide who and what they were. Immediately identifiable as imperial and loyalist, with their choice of real space entry, a statement in and of itself. Here, now, was Terra's retribution, for to attempt translation so close to the gravitic alignment of the local star and its planets was a manoeuvre rarely attempted for how lunatic dangerous it was. At the van was a ship of simply peerless pedigree, the Ampheon, a Gloriana-class grand battleship whose mark was typically reserved for serving as flagships of the legion Primarchs or the emperor himself. The Ampheon was one of the strategic lynchpins of battle fleet solar, and her presence here, at the edge of the intergalactic gulf, represented one thing, the judgment of the Praetorian of Terra, Rogal Dorn. Machine minds of Zana process the deluge of Saint Saurium data within human rapidity, conferring with Magi who likewise conferred amongst their fellows through noospheric tally-links. They confirmed, beyond doubt, that there were now five enemy capital ships inbound with a host of escort cruisers and frigates, as well as a dozen transport craft whose emission patterns were utterly inconsistent with ships of their class. To the automata processes of Zana, this indicated in stark terms the process of the raid, for raid it was. This was no invasion, the transports were not loaded with troops, but munitions, their reactors already running hot beyond their thresholds. Suicide craft, fire, ships, kill vessels for the forge's own macro conveyers, and those of the traitors. For all the fleet destroying power of a DeLoreanna-class battleship, the Ampheon was there to primarily cover these vessels on their final desperate attack runs. Dorn's decision was clear, brutally clear, as is his character. Terra had lost Zana, and now it was imperative for the Loyalist cause that the wealth of the forge be denied to the warmaster, and his ilk. The entire Zana system reacted as akin to a biological system detecting a bacterium. Across the volume, everything from patrol automata to monitorships to battle arcs awoke with blinding speed, altering their trajectories and running attack vector calculations upon the intruders. The full processing power of the system's worth of cogitators bent to tabulating and re-tabulating millions of tactical projections. Within the asteroid belt of the gas giant, void servitors broke from their steel containment holds. Giant automata cephalopods the size of frigates blistering with mechanical tentacles, igniting dead reactors and now powering towards the Loyalist fleet. Despite the skill of the invaders and their navigators, their point of translation left them hours from their targets, and the forge world had plenty of time to react to this intrusion into their territory. Naturally, the Sons of Horus vessels blitzed the Zanian new sphere with hails and confirmation requests, demanding updates on just what the consistory intended to do about the invaders. Despite, of course, the very clear sensor readings on their own ships confirming the apocalyptic response of both void weaponry and fleet disposition that the forge was now throwing at the Loyalists. The Magi of Zana apologized profusely to their guests, stating that under no circumstances would the formalities be delayed or interrupted, nor would the demonstration of the Ordenatae Corridon was scheduled to attend upon Zana to Siphony. The ongoing situation was now another demonstration that Zana was being forced to display, one of their own strength in the face of the enemy themselves. A test unasked for, but nevertheless risen to, lest the Warmasters agents developed second thoughts about their forges' capabilities or their commitment. There would, there could, be no loss of face here, so even as the system aroused itself like a nest of serpents, the accords continued to proceed as the Vodian consistory had laid them out. As per arrangement, the gifts of Horus Lupacal made planetfall at the main forges of Zana too, Setna, Escorial, and Tefra. The move assumed to be one to diffuse possible tensions amongst the ranking Magi of the regime by ensuring the carrion spoils were divvied up equanimously. The treasure would of course remain sealed within the various transport barges until Zana had fulfilled its end of the bargain, locked under coded key numericals known only to the Warmasters' agents. Meanwhile, the 16th Legion cleaved into geosynchronous orbit over the testing ranges of Zana to Siphony. The flotilla, with the barbarous Kikatris Taranus sheltered from the waves of munitions rocketing out system by the bulk of the planetoid. The sons of Horus' detachment made planetfall in force, far more force indeed than the lords of Zana had expected. While not atypical for the sons of Horus and their bellicose nature, it was nevertheless judged within Newspheric Communion as a mark of displeasure at the ongoing situation in the system, as well as a statement of expectation. This was the power of Horus. Zana must respond in kind to prove itself worthy of the Warmasters' beneficence. Standing ready to meet the delegation, it is understood that the Zanian magi were represented by Arch-Majos procurator Gillum Raijan, the prime arbiter of the United Voidian Consistory. This is largely all that can be corroborated about the meeting itself. It is easy to verify the participants of such a tree in a summit far less so to establish the nature of their parley, let alone its content. That being said, what does remain suggests the encounter was far from cordial. The sons of Horus were at this point in their existence given to brutish candor that cleaved to belligerence and arrogance, which was ill at ease with the cold precision to formality favoured by Zanian magi. The presence of Uncavar Nun, the Davenite priest that had first brokered communication between the Forge and the Warmaster, was a curious oddity that nevertheless managed to soothe the rancour of his legion masters and placate the magi, mentioning nothing of the ongoing loyalist force powering towards them, nor the munitions, automata, and starships being flung back. Both sides were eager to proceed with the demonstration, and passed the strange pleasantries, and thus did the Lords of Xhanna reveal to the Warmaster's plenipotentiaries a tableau macabre indeed. The magi had built a false war for their guests, an enemy comprised of thousands of slave soldiers, ranging from abhuman thralls to chattel stock of the Forges, captured loyalist prisoners, even ad secularist divisions, all the products of Xhanna's greedy resource raids and incredible industry. All bore one thing in common, the suicide collar around their necks, devious device capable of remote detonation with a new spheric whim of the magi they were slaved to. Equipped with everything from small arms to common patterns of imperial battle-line tanks, all of these slaves had been injected with a series of chemical and narcotic stimulants to spike their aggression centres, and all had been ordered to simply do one thing. Survive. The gates to the prison forge rent open, bequeathing unto the battlefield the triad of monstrosities that were the loci of the entire event, Nephothax, Ushorax, and Mithrax, the Ordynati. With a neurothropic pulse, the magi ordered their prisoners forward. Any who resisted knew it was death, any with the ken to see what was coming knew obedience was also death. Observing the entire thing from within armoured caverns of their mastodon transports, with the sons of Horus, void shielded against the pattering small arms fire of the slave army, helm lenses panning and zooming to where the weaponry of Zanna had perched itself. Surging forward, the desperate charges of the magi swept towards the Ordynati, firing their guns and loosing random, unguided explosive projectiles against the shielded weapons platforms in vain. It was a forlorn hope that they may somehow win their freedom, but no time was wasted by the Zannians. They saw little needs to build tension, engaging in theatrics, merely to run the demonstration to the letter. The weapons spoke, and did so with a voice that broke the world. Sonic Destructor cannons function, according to what one has found amongst prescribed writings within the Indeptus Mechanicus' data stacks, by collating through its generators and focusing disc sonic energy of such a potent waveform that it can rupture the bonds of matter within said waves path. The ground before them was recorded to have undulated with the blast wave, solid rock moving as akin to a roiling sea. The firing of such weapons produced a sound that annihilated all other sound into silence. So loud it breached the boundaries of what can even be considered noise. Bodies at the center of the wave form were simply turned into a red mist, and that mist evaporated into steam by sheer crushing force. Those closer to the edges had their bodies pulverized beyond all possible recognition. Any who were at the periphery and managed to survive, did so with either their bodies, or minds, or indeed both, shattered, their very selves physically and mentally broken by the force of destruction that had just been unleashed upon them. One barrage had broken the slave army's resolve utterly, but the ordinate eye had only begun. The collared chattel of Zanna had been encased in defense of an artificial cityscape, one that had been built and destroyed and built again at the whims of the mage eye of the forge and their weapons testing requirements. Streaming forth from it now, goaded again by kill signals from the collars, was a second slave tide, this one comprising of assorted armored columns and heavy infantry divisions. No doubt having witnessed the annihilation of the previous engagement, if such slaughter can even be referred to as such. The tempo of this attack on the ordinate eye was far more fevered and desperate, but alas for naught. The ulitors spoke and all was unto dust. The killing would proceed for several hours hence. Again and again the slaves of the mage eye were brought before the ordinate eye in various combinations. Combined arms, mobile infantry, jump troops, automata divisions, even super heavy armored and self-propelled artillery tanks of rarer legion marks, all were simply snuffed out of existence by the voices of the ordinate eye. It was a charade by this account, a masquerade of a real battle. In realistic terms, devices such as ordinate's weapons could not have succeeded on their own against a decently led and coordinated force of arms, but that of course was not the point. The demonstration was just that, a demonstration, a chance to revel in the destruction across the torn and sundered battlefield, a bloodbath of staggering proportions, painted by the destructive potential of the weaponry. One expects that the traitorous war master would have been most pleased. As the bloody ruin of the ordinate eye was unfolding, a similar catatlysm was also proceeding in the silence of the void. The system defence fleet of Zanna had engaged the attacking loyalist ships spearheaded by the Anfion. The mechanical vessels were charged with extreme urgency from the forge, with destroying the loyalist fire ships destined for the system's surplus supplies, and all ships in the attacking fleet knew their protection was the highest priority. Imperial ships formed a wedge formation with the Anfion at the vanguard. The weaponry and sheer brute force of the Gloryanna class trusted to carve a path through any that stood before her, as the loyalists continued in full burn towards Zanna. Her escorts frantically kept pace and tallies, attempting wherever possible to maneuver into gaps left within their lines or torn open by rabid servitor ships and monitor vessels. Often this would necessitate these ships using their own voids and even superstructures to protect the fire ships from incoming munitions, and although the punishing batteries from the Anfion and they themselves wrought terrible retribution upon the mechanical defenders, the hosts of Zanna were many, and those of the Imperium quite a bit more finite. The first loyalist casualty was a battleship to Ken's fury, first falling out of formation, its hull burning from scores of lance attacks. Shortly thereafter joined in fiery death by the Spectre of Io, whose crew and armsmen had been utterly overrun by boarding parties of Thalax and Castalax Automata, launched from a half-dozen Xenian transport box. The only reprieve for the Imperium was the falling silent of the defense platforms and ground batteries of the forge world itself, who, after hurling hours of munitions towards the attacking fleet, had bled their ammunition silos dry and were testing the operational limits of their barrels and firing chambers. As resupply orders were hurriedly prioritized, it was nevertheless clear that the battle would now be won and lost with the ships in play, but as cold consensus across the new sphere held, the attrition rate was swinging in Zanna's favor. That was, of course, until a completely unprecedented occurrence. For the second time that solar cycle, warp incursion detection engines screamed in acknowledgement of a new and unaccountable signal. Had this been in the system's outer reaches, it would have been perhaps indicative of loyalist reinforcements to the oncoming fleet. It was not, however, far from it. The signal was instead emerging from an impossibly close volume of the gas giant Zanna-1. Queries were flashed between Ospex Magi at the speed of thought, for surely this was a malfunction, only for harsh binaric blurts confirming that all machinery was operating within wholly demanded parameters being their answer. No, a ship had translated into the atmosphere of the planet itself, totally within the now depleted defense cordon of the forge's batteries. All possible ships had burned out of the planet's local volume to intercept the loyalist fleet. There was none anywhere within even a proximate interception range. The ship rose from the merc cleanly and efficiently, with early visual logs parsing a sable dark superstructure of a unique disposition. This made identification for the Magi of Zanna easy, although, and one may editorialize here, hopefully terrifying even for their cold machine minds. Unique was this vessel in so many ways, for she was not merely the creation of the Imperium, nor even Mechanicum. She was a ship older still, older than all record. This craft had been raised from the ice of Ganymede, the moon of Jupiter, in distant sol. It was a treasure of the dark age of technology, bequeathed by the emperor himself to his most lethal destroyers at the very beginning of the great crusade. She was the dark sovereign, archaeocruiser of the first legion, Dark Angels. To experience acolytes, it should come as little surprise that the first legion were in possession of such a vessel. The Angels, as the first combined Astartes mainline combat force, had a storied history since the unification wars as being the emperor's angels of death, and had proven themselves time and time again to be capable of meeting out his most righteous annihilation upon whatsoever promised mankind death, destruction, or worse. The Lord of Lightning had provided the first since its earliest days, with an arsenal of technology that vastly outstripped impotency and lethality, those of many other legions. And this extended to their fleet. Amongst the Starships the Dark Angels were able to call upon were marks truly unique in the galaxy, relicships of the dark age of technology whose methods of creation had been lost in the downfall of that last epoch, but whose weapon systems granted them a deadliness that belied their size. What is of course surprising is the presence of the dark sovereign here, Adzanna, at this vital moment. Certainly the appearance of the cruiser, as well as in the volume of her translation, added a completely unseen series of factors into the defense of the Forge world, whose Magi, even as she rose from the atmosphere of Zanna I, furiously re-ran their calculation torrents over what this could potentially mean. On the surface of Zanna to Siphony, the artificial war was immediately halted, as the conducting Magi, with Arch-Majos procurator Raijan at their center, inloaded this new data with alarm. Seeing as how the only fighting vessels within range were those belonging to the guests of the Consistory, Raijan turned to position the Sons of Horus to engage their erstwhile cousins. He intended to do so through the voice of Uncover Noon, the Davonite priest, only to find that the priest was no longer there. A different figure occupied his place, one who now plunged an electroshock barb into the Arch-Majos' body, as a massive figure of Raxhel Corridon stepped forward, crushing the tech priest's skull with his fist. Amidst the thunder and fury of the incoming loyalist fleet, and the rising tide of devastation, the dark sovereign was only just beginning to reap upon the now-spent orbital defense platforms of the Forge world. The deception upon Zanna to Siphony went initially unnoticed, and this was all the opportunity the deceivers upon its surface needed to begin their operation in earnest. Raxhel Corridon was obviously not who he claimed to be, nor indeed were any within his entourage, from the Astartes to the Davonite. Acolytes will forgive me my misdirection to this point. It was simply a bit too delicious to deprive you of the surprise Zanian Mejai must no doubt have also experienced. The Astartes, Corridon, was in reality Endrid Haar, the former captain of the 12th Legion world-eaters, called Rivenhound by many who had grown to either admire or dread his reputation. Haar was one of the oldest members of the 12th Legion, a Terran ascended to Astartes status during the Unification Wars themselves, before the Legion was known as the world-eaters, before even they were known as the Warhounds. An unusually large marine, with a far higher than average degree of physical prowess, he had risen to prominence during those early days with a marked lethality, even amongst a legion of superlative butchers. During the revolt of the Date Tar, for instance, he had dispatched a renegade thunder warrior in single combat by breaking the gene warrior's neck, even while each of the brute's fellows had required the strength and skills of four to five Astartes to bring down. Following the Legion's reunification with its Primarch, Angron, Haar had been one of the few members of the newly renamed Eaters of Worlds to not accept the implantation of the so-called Butcher's Nails. The cybernetic implants fused the root of the Primarch's brain, and by whose actions the aggression centers of the mind were continually stimulated. Haar had declared such a gesture empty, a position that had won him little favor within the reorganizing Legion, and one that would find him placed effectively into exile, seconded to a group of Astartes drawn from all legions for clandestine activities at the behest of none other than Malkador the Sigilite. Haar would spend the remainder of the Great Crusade upon such missions. At the time of the heresy's outbreak, the world-eater renounced both his Legion and his Primarch, consigning himself to the fate of a black shield, a legionary without a legion, swearing as he did so, an oath of death that would see him pledge to atone in action and body for the crimes of his gene sire and Earth's twiled brothers until the time of his perishing. It is believed that Endred Haar was accompanied by fellow black shields upon Zanatysiphany, and though it cannot be directly confirmed if the agents of the Sigilite were present, such a conclusion would not be considered, at least by yours truly, to be out of reach. While the formation of Malkador's Knights errant had not yet occurred in any true sense, the presence of a shape-shifting agent leads one to suspect the hand of the assassinorum-clad Calidus, whose deployment was typically sanctioned by the Imperial Master of Assassins, an office held by none other than the Sigilite himself. The Astartes, however, were cast-offs in a similar vein to Haar. They had renounced their ties to their former legions and primarchs in disgust over their traitorous actions. The disguise as the Sons of Horus had been total. Clearly, at some point prior to the Zanat incursion, Endred Haar and his black shields had both killed Raxal Corridon and seized the Kiketris Tyranus from the now dead captain, and had managed to do so without alerting the command echelons of the 16th legion. The loyalist Astartes immediately seized the prizes within their grasp, all three of the Ordinatai once destined for the armies of Horus Lupacal, and added to their reveal by corrupting the slave collars of the remaining Zanian prisoners, with Data Jinn torn from the banks of the still twitching body of the Arch-Majos Procurator. The slaves, freed from the baleful neurotropic influence of their rapidly dwindling Magi handlers, ran amok, adding to the chaos of the scene as the wet wear of the guardian automata struggled to compensate for the sudden abundance of enemies in their midst. In orbit, the Kiketris Tyranus manoeuvred to block herself from the attentions and potential retribution of the surface batteries of Zanah proper, placing herself on the dark side of Tysiphany and refusing all hails that requested and laterally demanded she engage the Dark Angels. Her launch bays crashed open as she began a full-scale drop assault on the test bed moon, dropping a company-sized Astartes force in the bellies of screaming Stormbird and Thunderhawk gunships. Endrid Har's plan was proceeding apace. The first legion, meanwhile, was laying into the defenseless and scattering bulk haulers within the rings of Zanah I as a predator wood amongst livestock. The macro carriers, preferred by the Mechanicum and of course Zanah, were colossal barks that knew no war. Merely the long, plodding cargo runs they had intended to spend their entire service history undertaking. They had little in the way of shields. They had nothing in the way of weaponry. Even if they had not been caught at anchor, drives depowered reactors running cool, they would not have been able, even at full burden, to outrun a warship, especially not the one that was travelling towards them. The blade of the void black cruiser carved through them as a knife through paper. Hundreds of vessels were sliced by contemptuous lance strikes or set burning and wrecked by a light barrage of macro cannon fire. The dark sovereign reaved through the flotilla, annihilating her way to the central targets. The oldest Mechanicum barks Zanah possessed. Unlike the carriers burning in their surrounding volume, these ships had, in their numbers, some teeth to resist the predations of the first legions cruiser, and once a firing solution was locked, they wasted no time in doing so. The barrage had little effect on the oncoming ship, whose technology and systems were of an age older and stranger than even the one that had wrought the Mechanicum ships, but her target was almost as esoteric as she was. A bizarre Mechanicum Droman of a crystalline form that loyalist echelons had only been able to establish the name of, Mu-571. Undeniably of Xenos origin, this Droman was just one of the many mysteries Zanian priests had half kept hidden from the rest of the galaxy. The weapons fire of the dark sovereign ceased as all of the vessel's arcane reactor output was channeled to shields and engines. The latter to catch her quarry, the former to ensure its protectors, could not arrest the hunt. Mu-571 burned engines at full to try and escape the oncoming blade, but it was for naught. The sovereign clipped her topside, demolishing the Droman's shields with the sheer force of kinetic energy, and sending the vessel spinning hopelessly out of inertial control. Its proximity allowed her to deliver a lethal payload too, for within the bowels of Mu-571 suddenly materialized teleport spores, and the strange ships deckplating soon reverberated with the pounding adamantine steps of dark angel terminators. What was now to forever be known as Zazanna Incursion was fully unfolding. Upon the benighted forgeworld itself, the newsphere was in what was as close to chaos as the consistory could reasonably permit. Data of bursts flashed across the planet near instantaneously, the crania of hundreds of mejai running hot and burning through coolant fluids as they processed the scale of what was happening. No doubt, amidst the constant inloading and unloading of binaric information, was coded many an accusation of dereliction of duty, or process, or obligations, and equally, there was little doubt that heads, or cranial extrusions, were and would roll for this. The Mechanicum of Zanna may have been cold, secluded in alien, even by the standards of their kind, but they were still human, and they had been forced into a corner unlike any they had either expected or could have possibly predicted. The Vodian Consistory managed to maintain order, however, and despite the fury contained in the loji streams of each senior mageos, resolved to focus now on defending what could yet be defended. The loyalist fleet, headed by the Amphion, had been unexpected, but by the calculations run globally, defeatable regardless of the cost that may have been incurred. The arrival of an archaeocruiser, bearing legion troops no less, and fully within the nominal defense volume of the forge, that was another matter entirely. Factoring that into the sudden betrayal of the Sons of Horus, now fully understood by the Consistory, the Lords of Zanna had lost not only the spatial volume of Zanna 1, and their precious surplus stockpiles, but also the planetoid of Zanna Tysiphany, and the three Ordynatae destined for the Warmasters' armies. Newspheric consensus was reached rapidly, although not nearly at the speed that the Gestalt had reached when reacting to the initial invasion. Override signals were fired into the defense picket ships that were currently savaging the Amphion and her escorts. Calculations predicted the withdrawal, for withdrawal it was, would be a costly one, but necessary in the face of now not one, but two completely unchallenged capital ships closer to planet side, the Dark Sovereign and the Kikotris Tyranus. Both were currently occupied, clearly, but both were unknown factors pursuing unaccountable aims, and in the face of the sheer power they represented, the Magi had no other sound choice. The paranoid decision may be, but pragmatic in many respects. The idea that there could yet be more loyalists in hiding, in disguise, or on their way in system, ruled the minds of the Consistory. They had suffered not one, but three separate and wholly unique catastrophes this day. They would not suffer more, catching them unprepared. And yet, they would. What occurred next is even more difficult to account for, in parsing the records of what remains about the Zana incursion. These even have largely been pieced together by predecessors to yours truly, from scattered vox logs and corrupted awe-spec screeds and fragmented video recordings. What best work has been done was penned in the years prior to the Siege of Terra, by Morphidia Tural, an exiled Zani in Majos, who survived the heresy by petitioning the Praetorian for clemency in exchange for information. It is thanks to her seminal work, the paradoxes of binauric loyalty being in part the penance of the lost, with diverse discussions pertaining to the Mechanicum that was, that one is even able to formulate one's own Chronicle, and we have a hint of what unfolded upon the surface of Zana II as a conflict raged throughout its system. According to Tural's work, and as Acolytes will of course remember, the war master's carrion cargo of Legionnaires Astartes' corpses and technology had been delivered to the major forged starports of the Consistory, lying under lock and key until the demonstration of the Ordenatae was concluded. With the sons of Horus that had delivered them, now revealed to in fact be the Black Shields of Endrid Har, it was only a canny few magi that questioned just what these cargo haulers may contain, and despite the paranoia that was now ruling the Vodian Consistory, despite the resolve of the Newsphere to never be caught unaware again, from within these containers came now the pounding of armoured fists, and the tearing of metal. From within, they were rent, and out, well, the dead walked. In silent advance came Astartes, clad in the livery of the Ravenguard, the iron hands, the salamanders, the betrayed and shattered legions who fell victim to the war master on Istvan V, but also others, the yellow of the imperial fists, the pale plate of the white scars. This revenant army was accompanied by a ram shackle series of armoured vehicles and tracked weapons batteries, even dreadnought chassis. The defense automatae and the adsecularis thralls of the port were immediately overwhelmed, while the Consistory, its multifarious oculi fixed firmly on orbital defense, once again found a foe in their midst, and once again, whose nature was wholly unexpected. Even once the tagma of the Forges, the individual Mejai and Automata and Makena Manipals that made up the Mechanicum's tagmata, rushed to respond to this fresh invasion. They found themselves facing a wholly unstemmable tide. This was no ordinary Astartes foe, but one of disturbing and unnatural resilience. The legionaries would lose limbs to mauler bolt cannon fire, but continued to fight. They displayed little issue in the wake of rad charges or chem rounds. Armour that should have been rendered cord and dead by dozens of las cannon rounds continued to power forward, grinding automata under their tracks. Worse, at least from a strategic point of view, was that there was no means of communication to interrupt, no network for the Xenian Mejai to interrupt with data gin, no vox of any kind. The army was silent, but appeared to have only one goal, to kill until they could not. Fanning out through the forge veins of Zanna, these Gola Astartes did just that. They killed and killed and killed. Zanna too was now burning. Fifteen hours since the Amphion and her fleet had broken from the Materium, the previously unblemished volume under the rule of Zanna was in ruins. The fleet of the forge, disengaging and burning hard for the orbit of their homeworld, was operating at only 33% of its starting disposition, having sustained dire casualties and damage in its costly disengagement with the oncoming loyalist Armada. Although, of course, the Armada was oncoming no more. The Amphion and what remained of her escorts too disengaged, hulls scored and pitted from hours of punishing battle, but her fire ships no longer acquired, for in the rings of Zanna one, the once mighty surplus stock that had been their target was burning. Over 70% of the arms and armaments that had been destined for the Warmasters armies had been destroyed by the passage of the Dark Angels, who even now were running hard for the system's closest Mandeville point, the strange bulk of Mu-571 accompanying them as a prize. On the surface of Zanna two itself, the Revenant army had finally been halted, but at the cost of mobilizing the entirety of the world's tag meta and its bonded nighthouse, Malonax. The sinister pilots of this nighthouse were combat veterans all, many having recently returned from service in Horus-aligned expeditionary fleets, but their prosecution of the Astartes invaders ultimately would cost them over half of the suits they possessed. There was no surrender called for, but the invaders had not even made a hint of communication anyway. Their progress was only arrested when the final Astartes had been broken in body so utterly as to be unable of movement. Tefra, Forge, had lost several of its reactors to breaches, rendering much of its territory uninhabitably radiation-soaked even by mechanical standards. While in escorial Forge, the invaders had breached the warren of subterranean tunnels the facilities extended into, forcing the Xenian tag meta into a costly and painfully protracted underground purgation operation. On the rent and ruptured testing grounds of Xanatysiphony, matters were even bloodier. The slave population of the world had been liberated by the Astartes under Endred Har, and in the resulting chaos the Black Shields had ransacked the research and development facilities planetside, confiscating all technology they could destroying all they could not. Curiously though, their progress had been stymied by the sudden appearance from the world's prison veins of brazen automata of hitherto unknown configurations. Quite unlike the cybernetica the Black Shields had battled during their takeover of Tysiphony, these machines were motivated by what was to all the world a predatory instinct, quite unlike the lumbering nature of the other automata, and Har's forces found themselves wholly unprepared for the viciousness of their assault. Quite who or what was directing them was at the time impossible to ascertain, and in a fighting retreat to consolidate what gains they had made, the Black Shields lost the Ordinatus Nepothax to the Revenous Cyber Fiends, destroyed as a machine was rendered in its attempted recapture. This was the final straw for the former world eater, who ordered a full-scale planetary withdrawal of his forces and the remaining two war engines. Despite sustaining damage as a powered out system, the Kikotris Tyrannus managed to make her warp translation, and with the subsequent departure of the Amphion and Herfleet, as well as the Dark Sovereign, the Xana Incursion, as an operation, came to a close. The whole affair is a series of cascading curiosities to say the least. Almost all of the major involved parties possessed motives that seemingly and paradoxically operated both in concert and opposed to one another. It is by what records remain impossible to ascertain if the Retribution Fleet of Terra, the Cruiser of the Dark Angels, and the False Sons of Horus under Endred Har were even acting in concert. But given the consistency with which each was able to cover and supplement the efficacy of the others, surely some degree of coordination must have been agreed upon before time. It strikes one as impossible that such admittedly disparate loyalist elements could have compromised the defences of a world such as Xana to such a degree as they did while working alone or uncoordinated. But yet one can find no record of any such communion between them existing. Assuming, for the sheer sake of maintenance of sanity, if nothing else, that this combined operation linked the forces of the Praetorian with those of the Sigillite and those of the Dark Angels, for all of what it's worth at this point quite disparate elements in the military annals of the loyalists, it would appear that those under Endred Har and those of the First Legion were enlisted with the promise of prizes. For the Dark Angels, the strange Droman Mu-571 disappeared into the void with the Dark Sovereign. One will endeavor, of course, to uncover its fate, and whether its capture played any role in the Angel's prosecution of the Thramas Crusade. But I suspect not, if nothing else given the sheer galactic distance between the volumes of Xana and the then domain of the Night Haunter. Endred Har's forces made off with two of the three Ordynati. Not quite the victory they had clearly hoped to achieve, but a handsome prize, nevertheless. Certainly, depriving the Warmaster of these weapons and doing so while wearing Horus' own colours was no doubt a pleasing thing to the bitter Black Shield, and equally certainly, the presence of the Ordynati was a boon to the loyalists' defences of segmentum solar until their reported destruction upon beated Garmin during the event known only as the Titan Death. Just as with the loss of the Ordynati, the great wealth of Xana was too deprived from Horus' clutches, and while the mundane contribution or lack thereof to the war effort that it would have represented can only be estimated versus the cost of the operation itself, such a blow was deemed satisfactory, as the mission's nominal success was communicated to those in the know, and the records were closed upon the matter. These mysteries, such as they are, are the least esoteric. Even the involvement of the First Legion pales in comparison to the curious case of the revenant Astartes that assaulted the Xanian forges, although one suspects some degree of parity with other accounts from the Horus' heresy of equally disturbing nature. Dedicated Acolytes may remember, short while ago, your humble servant committed to record the case of the Tenth Legion Iron Hands, and their proscribed employment of a series of technologies known collectively as the Keys of Hell. Such rights, such machina, combined in dread symphony were known, albeit apocryphally, to permit the employment of cybernetic resurrection. In short, the returning to life of those long dead by means technological. Such devices, such arts existed so far beyond the bounds of what can be considered safe or sane as to be considered lunacy by even those who were aware of them. But, as one discussed in said record, it is effectively confirmable that the Iron Hands, in their grief following the death of their Primarch, employed such technology to enact vengeance upon the forces of the Warmaster. Given the reports scattered that they may be, of what we know occurred on Xana, it appears safe to assume that, in this case, the Black Shields of Endretar possessed this technology and utilized it upon the dead and lost they had seized along with Corridon's diplomatic party. Weaponizing, the gift of Horus to the Magi of Xana, carries with it a certain barbed satisfaction, although one will not comment on the nigh heretical means through which it was accomplished. Best that be left for minds greater and wiser than mine. While the use of such Techno Necromancy is the most lightly explanation for the Gola unleashed upon the Magi of the Consistory, there is of course no way to be sure of such things. And even the records of that attack, admiral, as Morphidia Toril's work upon the matter is, remain disjointed and inconclusive. We must, unfortunately, place this particular case, this particular aspect of the incursion, amongst the sundry ominous mysteries of the Age of Darkness, that yet remain unsolved and unaccountable for 10,000 years later. It would perhaps be remiss of me to call the final and most loathsome question of the conflict as one. I do so simply to remain true to the spirit of academic inquiry, as there can be no verifying the connection that I am nevertheless about to posit for the sake of clarity. The automata that suddenly arose from the underground prison complexes of Xana to Siphony to strike at Endrid Haar's Black Shields were of an entirely different caliber to those the Astartes had dispatched with relative ease during the assassination of the Arch-Major's Purcurator. They were, by accounts, collected from the data banks of the Kikatris Taranis following her destruction later in the heresy of an animalistic Mian, more akin to beast than battle robot. They were of patterns, undesurnable to the tech priests that examined any picked captures from the Astartes' helm logs. Nominal chassis remained, of course, of the typical Castellax, Vorax, and Domitar automata marks, but, for instance, all seem to have been subjected to modifications of such an extreme degree as to render them unclassifiable. No motivating force was discerned by the rapidly retreating Black Shields that fell under the voracious assault of these machines, and the tech marines attached to the company were only able to report the data links between them and whatever figure was holding their proverbial leashes was in a base can't unlike any they had encountered. Indeed, this was where any new-spheric links existed at all, for the tech marines were also given to report that, monstrously, most of the attacking automata were doing so of their own free will. This latter point, coupled with the violent behavior they displayed, of course draws one conclusion, abominable intelligence. But I would caution you against jumping to that extreme just yet. To differentiate conjecture from plausibility in this regard, we must examine the latter history of Zana following the incursion. The raid damaged and depleted the Forge World's power severely, but not totally. The Provinder of Zana, the arms and armaments to the Ordenatae, all had been denied to Horus and, perhaps, could have been considered enough for Terra to rest comfortably in having wrought just retribution. But the incursion had, of course, cemented the pact between Zana and Horus, and joined now, they were, in shared enemy and shared enmity. Most worryingly of all was that, according to loyalist intelligence, the Vodian Consistory was deposed almost immediately in the aftermath of the incursion in a violent uprising by enraged magi across the Forge, who were being led by a darker force than even the ruling regime had been. One is noted, since the beginning of this record, that the Zanian Sinod had ever been typified as a coolly detached and isolated one, that verged on sinister, since the world was first reunited with the Imperium, and eventually, torturously, brought into its nominal umbrella rule. There had ever been rumours of just how such a Forge World breached the doctrines of the machine god with their research and development. But without any form of oversight from Mars, a part of the compliance agreement signed by the Consistory with the Imperium, nothing could ever be confirmed. And it not was like the lords of Zana were going to tell, anyway. The veil was, of course, utterly torn back in the aftermath of the incursion, with the rise of Zana's new regime, supported by the arts and artifices of the warmaster's dark hand. It would appear that, ironically, the rapidity of Zana's plunge into the foulest reaches of science and industry was the direct result of the assault of Haar's Black Shields. They had mounted upon the prison complexes of Zana to Siphony, and just quite what they unleashed within. Anacharis Scoria was, by scant references, a Majos Dominus in the service of the Vodian Consistory, several decades standard prior to the outbreak of the heresy. But for some unknown time, and for reasons redacted, he was stripped of his title of Magister, and of his responsibilities, namely of being the chief enforcer of machine cult doctrine to the regime. Imprisoned for these undisclosed crimes on, yes, Zana to Siphony, it was he who would in the aftermath of the incursion rise to power and prominence as he first amongst the world's new lords, earning the title the Zanophane Tyrant for his cold, inhuman viciousness. Scoria's presence upon the battlefield of the Horus heresy as the years ground on towards the Siege of Terra are a matter of not inconsiderable debate, but where the new tag matter of Zana did march, they often did so accompanied by automata of unique brutality and violence. It is no small stretch of the imagination to presume that it was Scoria who was responsible for forcing the retreat of the Astartes who unwittingly freed him from his imprisonment. With dark irony, the driving force behind Zana's rebirth in later years was he. He, Scoria, led Zana to becoming one of the first hellforges of the Dark Mechanicum. This, of course, was the ultimate fate of the world, consigned now forevermore to corruption, lunacy, and science unspeakable, a coalition of the insane and the abominable crafting the warp as they would their metals. The Zana incursion, as a loyalist operation, is a tale as fascinating as it is mysterious, and is likely we do not know the full ramifications of what was wrought that dreadful day, and we probably never will, Ave Imperator. Gloria, in Excelsis, Terra. Thank you very much for watching.