 Ranged against the gathering might of the Imperial Siege Army, were the defenders of Rax, the disciples of the renegade cardinal Zafan and their assorted militia wings. While intelligence provided to the Imperial Segmentum Command noted that this ragtag army was a little better than an armed mob as of the time of the failed Ophysio-Assassinorum mission to eliminate the cardinal, senior strategic adepts advised that this would not be the case by the time any such retribution army made planetfall. In this they were quite correct. Know then that this is a further record of the calamitous siege of Rax, being in part the discussion of the armies mustering prior to that dreadful battle. Cardinal Zafan and his second-in-command, Deacon Maman, had prior to their rebellion inducted into their inner circles a great many of Rax's planetary defense force officers and these individuals the task of making an army out of the faithful was rapidly delegated. While the cardinal's forces occupied defenses second to none and had at their disposal entire crusades worth of arms and armaments looted from the Departmentum Unitorum training would be necessary to make them capable of resisting in any form of coherent fashion. Cardinal was fortunate indeed the Deacon Maman's efforts with the PDF had been so successful as it would form the core around which the vast waves of new Vraxian militia were drafted into the armed forces and ultimately integrated into a wider strategic plan. While the heretical PDF officers drilled their new soldiers into something ever more resembling a coherent force of arms the disciples of Zafan moved amongst them preaching the cardinal's word. Retribution would come they declared unjust legal aggression against Zafan and his true word. The soldiers of Rax could expect no quarter and were instructed to give none. The cardinal desired the world to become a slaughterhouse of the non-believers a charnel pit where the unworthy would perish in the fires of his will. Those that fought for their cardinal would be greatly rewarded the disciples promised while those found shirking their duty would face immediate summary execution at the hands of the brutal enforcers. As the ponderous wheels of imperial logistics turned the army of Vrax mustered trained and practiced in all manners of defensive siege warfare from infantry formations to artillery ranging drills and grew more prepared with each passing month. At best imperial estimates the population of Vrax at the time of its fall had been some 8 million souls. No exact figures were available and none besides would allow for an estimate of just how many of these could be considered of fighting age but as the many traitors to the emperor and it must be acknowledged the imperial itself is want to use child soldiers as well as the elderly in the infirm with no qualms each citizen of Vrax was considered by imperial calculations as a traitor and an enemy combatant. In reality the force that would eventually coalesce under Zafan's rule could be divided into four distinct tiers. The disciples of Zafan expanded their role into a full military formation no longer merely the cardinal's inner circle they were now his finest soldiers their dedication rewarded with the best equipment and their loyalty to Zafan absolute in its integrity comprised of the core of the traitor PDF they were by strategic estimates easily the most capable and dangerous of the cardinal's forces and unfortunately for the Imperium no estimate could be made as to their present disposition following these in the line of hierarchy was a planetary defense force also known as a garrison auxilia as unlike regular PDF regiments across the Imperium these were on permanent station at the citadel of Vrax even during peacetime similar to other PDFs they did not possess the regular training or equipment that frontline astromilitarum regiments did but these issues were generally mitigated in the eyes of imperial strategic planning by two factors in the case of training the Vrax auxilia possessed a higher than average percentage of combat veterans in its officer core than regular PDF regiments owing to Vrax's importance within the department of immunatoriums supply chain in the case of equipment this was entirely mitigated by the plundering of Vrax's armory supplying the entire PDF with a dozen regiments worth of equipment artillery ammunition and vehicles all generally of routine imperial guard issue but some of rarer quality how well drilled the garrison auxilia would be was considered a question imperial operations could not account for it's generally considered however that amongst command officials even the most coordinated operations may be outside their reach their ability to defend a highly defensible and as one Colonel noted fundamentally idiot-proof position was solid rendering the PDF a far greater threat than their pre-war status would typically rely as a significant part of the Vraxian population two more groups were considered within forward planning for the siege the labor corps as technical non-combatants were placed below the PDF on the imperial estimate of threat but included regardless the department of immunatorium had maintained a significant indentured servitude division upon Vrax containing an also significant amount of abhuman mutant strains suitable for labor notably augurans their function was direct and their jobs thankless and punishing many had lived lives of nothing but brute manual labor constructing and maintaining the world's infrastructure transporting goods maintaining warehouses storage vaults and ammo dumps all under the eyes and lashes of their immunatorium overseers many had been sentenced to this life as punishment for one crime or other under the lex imperialis on worlds far far away consigned to the barren planet of Vrax as a prison to make their restitution to the god emperor through hard work they wore their masters no love and adjoined the Cardinals uprising incredibly willingly seeing if nothing else an opportunity to shuck the yoke of the immunatorium and punish their overseers for their brutal quotas with appropriate punishments reality many had simply exchanged one master for another as the disciples moved quickly to put the labor core to work on shoring up and improving Vrax's defenses and infrastructure ahead of the impending imperial invasion however many my imperial estimates as much as 25% volunteered to join the garrison auxilia and were organized into their own ersatz divisions becoming known as the vraxian militia members were guaranteed privileges above those of laborers namely more rations a day as well as a reprieve from the worst of manual work making the position relatively quite attractive with training officers seconded from the pdf and equipment doled out from the armories their sheer quantity if not quality made them a considerable asset to vrax's defenses allowing the better trained troops to occupy the most vital positions in the defense lines while the militia could be relied upon to hold the bulk of the fortifications as a third line force finally existed one more human resource zaffan's traitors could call upon the massive horde of itinerant pilgrims present upon vrax either for worship at the citadel's cathedral or because they had followed the cardinal there their numbers were utterly impossible to estimate as many were considered fallen through the uncaring cracks of imperial bureaucracy but they most certainly numbered in the hundreds of thousands if not potentially the millions lacking anything even approximating military training and not considered priority in any way to receive what the pdf and militia were being doled out they were nevertheless numerous and more importantly fanatically loyal to the cardinal these wretches almost certainly knew not who they would be fighting or why but zaffan's preachers rove through their ranks great tales of coming enemies heretic monsters coming to take away the cardinal unlawfully even the most careless person when armed with a gun is dangerous and the disciples knew that these pilgrim hordes if armed could serve as mobile cannon fodder helpful distractions should they be needed in summary while the defenses of the citadel of vrax and its environs were not manned by what could generally be considered professional heretical soldiery they had many advantages that served as potent force multipliers in their favor superlatively defensible position abundant manpower and an armory overflowing with potent and reliable arms and armaments all of this was both supplemented and indeed bound together by a shared fanatical ideology while it was not shared with equal zealotry by every single individual the cardinals agents and political officers were everywhere monitoring the loyalty of all and dragging away those suspected of deviance for punishment torture and execution the gospel of zaffan united the defenders of vrax instilling within the most obsessive a self-annihilating fervor that would be tested soon against the inverted but likewise powerful loyalty the death core of creed the position they were occupying and the finest defenses the imperium could have devised and for all their lack of training and discipline fortifications and equipment made up for any shortfall in the previous entry in this series humble servant elaborated upon the serving members of the death core of creed as well as the origins of their regiments so for a fulsome account of their history acolytes should pursue that record at their leisure as discussed the creed were selected for deployment in the vrax theater for their aforementioned loyalty essentially suicidal dedication to duty and for their experience in fighting the attritional warfare the siege would meet out upon any attackers their equipment would reflect this each Krieger was outfitted based upon the standard precepts of their regiments but the most recognizable aspect in their panoply being their distinctive great coats mark nine plastic helmets and gas masks the coat a product of the hell world of creed itself was designed to offer little in the way of ballistic safety but instead rather robust chemical biological and radiological protection during its manufacture any of these coats were treated with a variety of chemical processes to ensure that the soldier once swaddled within their heavy depths was afforded a surprisingly comprehensive ward against chemical and biological agents as a side effect the scent of the garment was incredibly pungent and unpleasant which of the creek have ever considered this an issue compared to the protection it afforded it was never mentioned completely waterproof and incredibly warm the great coat would additionally serve the creek well in vrax's bitterly chill and occasionally very wet climate the lucius pattern number 98 las gun was a weapon of note for the average Krieg linesman a workday last rifle that runs on a slightly higher charge than the standard issue military one does for what is considered a better trade-off in killing power over shots per clip by the commanders of the Krieg additionally as a preferred mass infantry tactic of those self-same commanders is the headlong bayonet charge the number 98 came with a 45 centimeter long sword bayonet and secure attachment the dreadfully iconic Krieg gas mask is managed by a chest mounted regulator unit which features a battery operated fan in combination with filtration systems to allow for a positive flow of air through the gas mask at all times the Krieg soldier is also equipped with frag grenades a backpack that could unfold into a rudimentary half shelter and an entrenching tool to allow each soldier to contribute to the construction of battlefield trenches and fortifications as a siege such as vrax would be won or lost by imperial estimation in the realm of artillery the infantry regiments of Krieg were supplemented by an extraordinary amount of field cannon and howitzers each Krieg infantry regiment would contain within it its own artillery companies comprised primarily of large numbers of self-propelled Medusa siege howitzers and often static earth shaker cannons there would additionally be dedicated artillery regiments to man the heaviest guns such as the mighty imperial bombard siege weapons armor was given far less priority in the imperial forward planning a strategic command did not expect any mass tank engagements to be likely given that any armored Sally from the Vrax citadel on the part of the defenders would be beyond suicidal armor divisions comprising of Lehman Russ battle tanks with bane blade super heavy support whenever the less attached to the siege army to supplement infantry offensives and gorgon armored transports included for the secure delivery of infantry elements to the front lines should they come under heavy fire almost all of the regiments that made up the imperial siege army were reconstituted they had long and proud histories of service to the imperium but given eye-wateringly high mortality rates typical of krig regiments they had been rotated back to their radiation soaked homeworld surviving veterans either transferred out to other frontline battalions or promoted and retained as officers the overwhelming majority were fresh recruits although one must of course put aside concepts of what fresh means in this particular case the world of krig or at least its surface was a nightmare hellscape occluded under seemingly interminable nuclear winter a blasted wasteland of planetary scar tissue left over from the civil war that made it so in this crucible where the krig trained their entire society given over to the production of more bodies more souls for the emperor's eternal wars their quarter masters were harsh and exacting beyond any measures the astral militarum set krig youth were shuttled up from their underground hives and thrown into exhausting mock battles and grueling training regiments to craft them into the dehumanized fanatical soldiery the world apparently demanded they become this self-same soldiery that were embarking upon the mustard transports to join the siege army were no callow youth they were disciplined through traumas beyond the standards of the vast majority of the astral militarum whatever their actual age may have been climate of their destination world was in fact milder than their home world with its darkened skies and radiation storms although verax itself was no pleasant shore a barren world with little in the way of distinguishing well anything the tectonic and climatic stability had been a large reason for the immunatorium selecting it for their purposes the arid surface was covered in a layer of sulfurous dust the presence of which when excited by the wind created daily if predictable electrical storms rainfall from which would turn the land into cloying quagmires not indeed unlike the sucking a poisoned mud of krig's own surface the theater of war would be made up of these self-same sulfur flats as the imperial army had selected for its approach the entire 5000 square kilometers of the van mir's land wastes surrounding the approach to the citadel as it was next to featureless and indeed largely unmapped by immunatorium cartographers strategic command delegated the responsibility of assessing it to the officers of the krig upon their upcoming landing it did not escape the notice of either but this put the attackers on a severe back foot the enemy would no doubt have spent plenty of time evaluating the best positions for artillery fortifications gun nests readouts and trenches in the time it was taking for the imperial muster to gather the krig would simply have to learn all they could as they advanced into the killing fields something their officers took with what sector command was surprised to note was something lying between resignation and relish the board was set and the pieces were moving players were maneuvering in their opening gambits assessing each other's strengths and weaknesses from afar the imperium was fully aware it was running on outdated and inconsistent intelligence something the largest calculator adepts were already factoring into the manpower requirements for the initial years of the siege the traitors upon fraks many of whom did not know why or what they would be fighting were training and preparing daily for the oncoming storm whipped into a religious frenzy by the preachers of zafan both sides undoubtedly knew the siege would be long arduous and bloody both sides arguably were in full confidence that their positions soldiery and various advantages would allow them to carry the day both sides were in their own ways utterly wrong but just how so will have to wait until their best laid plans would encounter each other and for that i must wait ave imperator gloria in excelsis terra 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 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