 I saw it. The life-eater looked into its dark soul and knew it for what it was. When the sword had come, I hadn't believed. Not truly. The treachery too much to comprehend. But we death-guard were made to endure. To survive. No matter what. And so we acted. Acted even though most of us didn't believe. Not until the bombs fell. We were too far from the bunkers. And so I got my squad inside a cargo cell. We fused it shut from the inside for whatever extra protection that gave. The armor wasn't always enough, I knew that. Not even Maximus Battleplate. Not always. Even locked shut in on internal air. Insufficient concentration. Life-eater can eat through suit seals, visor ports. Even, if you've taken so much as a micro-fracture in the wrong spot, you understand. The bombs fell, and in the cargo cell shook. We waited in the dark, silent, conserving our oxygen. For a few moments after there was hammering outside, but that soon stopped. Then Jubal screamed over the squad vox. Not a scream as you might hear man die in battle, but choked. Cut off like a man drowning. I turned and saw him through my auto-sensors. He'd already clawed his helmet halfway off, and nothing but black grease and bone tumbled out, as if his armor had been filled with rot. Not a man. He was dead, fleshless. But somehow his armor was still moving. Perhaps it was the armor responding to his last nerve commands. Perhaps not. I triggered my flamer and burned him. Better the risk of using it even as packed in as we were than the alternative. Yes, I saw it. The life-eater. A monster of the old time. Human evil given form. Then, I believed. To indulge in a quote attributed to a lost ancient dramaturge, the best-laid plans of rodents and regents oft go awry. The warmaster, for all his skills, all his plans, for all the power of his allies mundane and paramatural, could not control every single piece upon his game board, and, because of the actions of the few, saw the potential of the virus-bombing of Istvan III shrivel before his very eyes. The actions of two individuals have entered into legend because of it. Captain Saul Tarvitz of the Emperor's Children, and Captain Nathaniel Garrow of the Death Guard. As previously discussed, Tarvitz's discovery and subsequent flight to the planet below had been possible only thanks to the intervention of Garrow, and now, as the fires guttered out in the ruins of Istvan's atmosphere, the full scale of what these astartes had made possible was revealed. On the surface, all specks weep scryed by initially confused and then horrified bridge officers showed that out of the 100,000 or so astartes from the four assembled legions that had been committed to the first and only wave of the invasion, some 65-70% remained alive, all thanks to the warning delivered by Captain Tarvitz and relayed to all forces from his initial point of contact, believed to either be Garvia Loken of the Sons of Horus or Lucius of the Emperor's Children. These loyalists had scrambled for what shelter they could find, hastily ensconcing themselves within imperial constructed bunkers that yet remained standing after the furious battle that had only just petered out. Through this, through their armor's environmental protection, through their astartes physiology, through sheer, bloody luck, they had endured the viral cascade and firestorm both. They were not unscathed, as the account of Chrysos Morturg, appended to this record, clearly illustrates. The life-eater virus was no respecter of even astartes genetic manipulation. Should their superlative power armor be even slightly breached, death came for them as sure as it found the unaugmented baseline humans it devoured. Yet, as stated, some two-thirds of the invasion had survived, and even now the communication channels exploded into activity. Rage filled the vox lines, curses spat skywards at the Warmaster's fleet with an invective unprecedented for the act they had been subjected to had no like. This was betrayal, in the truest, most heinous sense, an act of such utter calculated malice that it is believed the minds of some astartes on Istvan simply broke at that moment. Madness, consuming them as their psychology found itself unable to comprehend what their brothers, what their fathers had done to them. It would, of course, be remiss for one to not acknowledge the loyalists that yet remained in orbit, and one does not refer to Garrow alone. Despite the work of the Warmaster, not every loyal astartes had been part of the initial drop, either through difficulty in assigning them to combat action without raising suspicion or errors in judgment on the part of the traitors or sundry other reasons. These astartes had watched the virus bombing unfold with absolute stunned horror, only to discover their erstwhile comrades behind them knives in hands. Though all no doubt fought as valiantly as such horrid perfidy would allow, they were cut off isolated and alone. This succumbed to their murders with rage beating in their hearts. The same went for exertus imperialis troops, armada imperialis officers, and civilian humans. The massacre of the iterators and the remembrancers that had previously been discussed was one such extermination that played out across every ship in the fleet as traitor astartes exploded into sudden violence, targeting unaugmented humans marked for the slaughter. Such mere humans, however, did not also come to this betrayal. Many managed to flee their aggressors, using knowledge of the ships they served aboard to avoid death and indeed inflict retribution upon their betrayers. Abort the torpedo monitor du Croix, for instance, loyalists retained full control of their vessel and turned its wrath upon the traitors as soon as it became clear precisely what was unfolding. In its spite, the du Croix managed to scupper several escort barks and inflict significant damage on the battleship killing star before the latter shot her to pieces. The Mechanicum Galleus Xerxes 977, belonging to the fiercely independent tagma of the Ordo Reductor, refused all hails. She had joined the war master's fleet as a latecomer and was thus completely unaccounted for in the traitors' planning. Her wrath brought considerable pain to the warships that ran her down as she fled, unfortunately for her doom. Abort the heavy cruiser Sunstone, the lifeguards of the Terran plenipotentiary Duke Mortager had managed to overcome a squad of Emperor's children sent to dispatch their charge, rushing the almost catatonic ambassador through the ship in a running battle that would eventually see them detonate the magazine of the vessel in defiance, tearing her apart amid ships and sending hull segments burning planetside. History, naturally, concerns itself primarily with the tale of one ship, the heavy frigate Eisenstein with Captain Garo in command. Abort her were approximately 70 loyalist deathguards, survivors of a struggle that had apparently claimed the life of second great company captain Ignatius Grulgor in the latter's accidental unleashing of a life-eater virus payload aboard ship. Another party had sought refuge in her bays, too. Third company captain Iacton Cruz of the Sons of Horus, escorting the Remembrancers Euphrates Keeler and Mercedes Olaton and iterator Primus Kiril Sinderman off the vengeful spirit, the war master's flagship. It was hardly much in the way of a force to resist the traitors in any term. Given the accounts of the Remembrancers, of precisely what had taken place aboard the vengeful spirit, and the apocalypse they had just seen wrought on the planet below, Garo was under no uncertain terms aware of the sheer danger he and his ship were in, and the sole option available to her. Run. The import of the message she and her crew carried could not be understated. Greta Calabrastis, in her post-heresy work, the now prescribed Liberate Exinferis essays upon the damnation of the last nine, called the Flight of the Eisenstein, one of the most singularly heroic acts in the history of humanity. While true scholarship must in its very nature stray away from considering actions of sole individuals as pivotal simply by their own virtues, it is undeniable that the courage of Nathaniel Garo was indeed a fulcrum around which the survival of the Imperium potentially turned. It was of course not without peril or struggle. Having received no word from the typically brilish Grilgore, first captain of the deathguard Callus Typhon repeatedly hailed the Eisenstein from the battlecruiser Terminus Est, and when receiving no communication and noting her drive stacks were powering to full, moved to intercept the frigate. The relative proximity of the two made Garo's escape possible, but the Eisenstein was severely damaged by the batteries of Typhon's ship, the barrages killing the ship's astropath and mortally wounding its navigator. Bereft of options, Garo ordered the Eisenstein to commit a blind warp jump as soon as the Mandeville points of volume was reached. The frigate plunging into the Imitarium and beyond the reach of the pursuing Typhon. In Eisenstein's orbit, matters for the traitors were only deteriorating. As a warmaster attempted to assess the current situation amidst a wave of retributive sabotage and defiance from loyalists still aboard his ships, the outlook spiraled wildly out of control due to the actions of one of his brothers. Angron, Primarch of the World Eaters, ordered a landing in full, deploying near his entire legion to the surface in waves of gunship transports and drop pods, with himself roaring from the four of it. A full fifty companies of the 12th legion slammed into the ashen surface of Istvan, as Horus, Mortarion, and their assembled legion commanders could only look on in horror and rage. Angron's actions, of course, denied them the immediate and most potentially valuable course of action. With the bulk of the Horus-aligned World Eaters now upon the planet's surface, not to mention their Primarch, the warmaster could simply not order a renewed orbital bombardment, lest he kill those he now counted as allies. His plans had been sullied by the survival of the loyalists, yes, but now they were actively and utterly thrown awry. On the surface, the Red Angel exploded forth from his drop pod, a hurricane of violence given vaguely human form. His destination had been the city plazas his legion had been assigned to capture, and where the majority of them had, against the odds, managed to survive the virus bombing. Leading the survivors was one Captain Erlen, who, along with his men, had been told by the Sons of Horus contingent, under Captain Loken, that the virus cascade had actually been an Istvanian suicide weapon, a decision made by Loken for the sake of believability when time was at the essence. Having only just been told the truth before his Primarch's retribution force had made planetfall, Erlen was now the first to be presented with the faces of those he had called brother and father, the architects of his ruin and the ruin of his comrades. From what survivor testimony survives, it is believed that many of the loyalist world eaters simply descended into a rage of purest homicide, their minds sundered by the sheer scope of the betrayal. 2000 loyalists faced 4000 traitors, and won Primarch. Both sides simply charged. It was heedless, senseless, an expression of rage untrammeled. It was no regard for tactics or formations, only the desire for both sides to end the other. The loyalists did not, one is sure, believe victory was a possibility, but one also does not believe that they even cared. Their fight was one driven by spite, that they may curse the names and bodies of those who had wronged them. Captain Erlen died this way, pinned to the ash by a dozen world eaters starties, and torn limb from limb even as his ruined bloody face spat profanities upon those who butchered him. Had his Primarch even noticed the death of a loyalist leader, Angron gave no sign. The gladiator lord of the 12th tore through his sons like a scythe through grain, an engine of slaughter shrugging off blade and bolt as if they were drops of rain. The nature of the clash meant it would only end when one side had put bloody death upon the other, and the presence of the Primarch as well as their numbers delivered this to the traitors. It is well done, the red angel is said to have declared, before bellowing to his men to spread out through the city and bring death to any they found. This in so many ways presaged the years that would become the age of darkness better than any of the violence that had preceded it. However minor in comparison to the battles that followed, this first explosion of intralegionary violence demonstrated to those that survived it, to those that witnessed it, precisely what lay in store for the galaxy in the years ahead. Bereft of the typical tempo of imperial led engagements, the superiority of force, the potential for the sundering of morale, and all of these factors, all that remained was the unrestrained fury of the genetic monstrosities that are the astarties. Matched in temperament, armor, armaments, and augmentations, what remained now was simply two appallingly powerful forces smashing into each other with literally apocalyptic results. The breaking of the body superhuman was the only way to win an engagement. Soldiers that needed to be torn to shreds or blasted to atoms lest their genetically enhanced physiology permit them to fight on. Even if one were to emerge victorious from such a battle, there is simply no way one could do so unscathed. The cynics amongst one's acolytes may argue that such a conflict had surely already taken place upon Prospero during its infamous burning, with the death of the Thousand Sun's legion that saw them clash with the astarties of the wolves that stalk the stars. I object in sterling terms to such reasoning. The burning of Prospero was a singular engagement between an astarties legion unlike any other, and all the mundane and arcane tools the emperor could muster to bring about their censure. It was a conflict between magister Syker and feral barbarian executioner, unique in so many ways. Upon the wastes of Istvan, for the first time in the history of the Imperium, the dread equanimity of the horse heresy was unveiled. Astarties versus astarties. With bolter in hand and ladyous primed, transhuman juggernauts designed for nothing save conquest and slaughter, turning talents murderous to each other's mutual annihilation. It was the birth of an age of unremitting destruction. Above it all, in the strategic of the vengeful spirit, Horus watched and fumed. His brother had denied him the possibility of a cleaner, less costly ending to the atrocity he had committed, but even the powers of the Red Angel could not on their own overcome the loyalists that now remained alive. Firing any orbital weaponry with him in the crossfire was unthinkably risky, never mind the potential it had for opening up yet another conflict, this time with the traitor world eaters. With betrayal now a concept in the minds of the legion as astarties, decisions had to be made carefully. The Warmaster could ill afford the loss of one of his traitorous brothers so soon in his rebellion, nor even the loss of many of the 12th legion, nor even allow the loyalists still live any chance to fortify, co-olate and entrench themselves any more than they already had. Thus was his hand entirely forced. Victory would be forged from this chaos, of that the Warmaster was sure, even as he bridled at the cost it would no doubt extract. The general order was thusly sounded, ground attack, full scale, all elements. The first to heed the call were the Emperor's children, with Lord Commander Eidolon at the van. Records of that legion show the commander as being incensed at the actions of Captain Tarvits, smarting at such an open failure of his tenure in the eyes of the Warmaster, and it was no doubt a motivating factor in the speed with which the third legion deployed. The Percenters Palace was unsurprisingly their target. Eidolon ordered tightly organized columns to form as soon as the legion dismounted from their dropships, intending to move on the complex with as much speed as the third could muster, assuming all therein would be a broken group of Emperor's children survivors, bereft of leadership. Overhead, Deathguard and Sons of Horus gunships ran reconnaissance flights, ensuring that legion seeker squads were deployed whenever these scout ships identified isolated or wounded bands of loyalists. There was clearly hope that these mop up actions, punitively bloody in one sided, would be all that was required beyond the central melee that the world eaters were currently caught in. These notions were thoroughly disproved by Lord Commander Eidolon's advance. The shambolic defense the traitor had expected was anything but. It was in fact as coordinated and superlative as any the Emperor's children could mount. The glorious assault Eidolon has envisaged never occurred. His column came under punitively heavy fire and was forced to retreat from what little advances they had made. The traitors had not even reached the outer walls of the palace, and in the wake of their departure their only mark were dozens of burning, abandoned vehicles that had moments before been spearheading the advance. Further probing attempts made by third legion traitor infantry squads aimed through the ruined breaches in outer defenses met with a similar fate, forced into an ignomonious withdrawal as loyalist legionaries ambushed them or punished them from hastily but well constructed readouts. Even the previously effective gunship runs conducted by the 14th and 16th legions diminished in efficacy rapidly. Loyalist survivors quickly identified the tactics being employed, hiding themselves in the morass of still burning ruins at the sound of any inbound flights, the aspects of which were rendered nearly useless by the planet's tortured atmospherics. Indeed, the ruins were now the perfect place from where these loyalists could strike back at the storm birds and thunder hawks that ranged above them. Loosing las cannon bolts and crack missiles at the weak points they, having been well experienced with these machines, knew all too well. A storm eagle gunship belonging to the Sons of Horus arriving in the hangar deck of the cruiser Minotaur under all proper ident tags immediately burst into suicidal fury. Its crew of now revealed loyalists bellowing that they would avenge the blood of Terra as they lashed out at the interior of the hangar with the fliers, las cannons, and multi-melters, before ramming the craft into a line of rearming gunships next to ammunition hoppers. The resulting explosion killed a full company of traitor 16th legionaries both on the deck and in nearby corridors. All too rapidly for the traitors, the sheer familiarity that the loyalists had with their own ways of war was becoming bloodily apparent. Far from the broken husks the war master and his brethren had hoped to find, they were instead encountering a force armed with a tenacity and a fury born of utter and immediate hatred. Comnets and Vox authentication were rapidly scrambled following the incident aboard the Minotaur, but this only led to further confusion and disorganization on the side of the traitors as they attempted to overcome the logistical challenges. All the while, the death toll was rising exponentially in favor of the spurned loyalists. The advantage of loyalist artis was only growing, planet side, as night fell upon the coral city. With the cooling of the planet's night side, the dust and debris that was choking the atmosphere began to settle, causing catastrophic hurricanes to emerge across the blasted wasteland East Van now was. The winds churned massive quantities of still hot ash, pummeling anything that moved with torrents of burned once matter, even as volleys of lightning speared from the sky into the choked ruins. Flight was rendered an impossibility. The atmospheric interference was also proving devastating to the reliability of the Vox. The traitors were unable to bring their orbital and aerial superiority to bear in any capacity. And under the cover of the storms, all the war master's subordinates knew that the loyalists would be moving throughout the ruins and underneath them, through the city's catacombs, linking up, establishing networks, consolidating what they had and organizing further. It appeared for all the world that the master's stroke of Horace Lupercow was instead proving to be a colossal blunder. All the virus bombing of East Van had actually achieved at this point was the genocide of billions of innocents and the provision for the Astartes survivors of a landscape that robbed any attackers of many to all of their advantages and granted massive boons to any that sought to defend us. The only issue the loyalists faced at this stage was resupplying themselves with ammunition. But such was the nature of the war that this event was not much of an issue. Their foes utilized the literal same weaponry they themselves bore. The Emperor's children under Eidolon had failed utterly with their maneuvers on that first day. The world eaters were scattered across swathes of the northern once city, an uncontrollable horde led by an uncontrollable commander. This, coupled with the storms, rendered another of Horace's advantages effectively moot. The Titans of the Ligio Mortis could not operate under conditions that they simply were not able to utilize their aspects suites in, nor were their world killer weaponry able to annihilate the volumes that contained friendly assets. This was a situation that the traitors hoped would last days at most. It would in fact be weeks. One cannot recall at this point another example of warfare being undertaken in a planet previously subjected to exterminatus. The entire point of virus bombing is to annihilate all life and render the world unusable. Never before had any been called to actually fight over one. War was now one of bitter attrition, typified by clashes of near indescribable fury fought face to face in ash swamped ruins at a squad by squad level. Reinforcements could only trickle in from orbit when the storms momentarily subsided, and on numerous occasions the legions in the void were forced to supply their ground forces with ammunition via drop pods, losing many in the process as the Hurricanes tore even these massively reinforced devices to pieces as they plunged to the planet below. Loci of resistance emerged during these days. In the siren halt, its twisted structure largely preserved from the hurricane force winds that beat upon its exterior. Loyal members of the Sons of Horus legion had defaced their sea green armor, dobbing it with ash to emulate their once gray panoply and reclaiming in their loyalty the original cognomen of the legion, the Lunawolves. Their leader, by circumstance and ability both, was Garvia Loken, formerly 10th company captain of the Sons of Horus and member of the Warmasters Mornaval, a coterie of advisors. Consigned to his face on the surface for his staunch adherence to the ultimate ideals of the Great Crusade, Loken had risen from the fires of the Warmaster's Wrath as the de facto general and warlord of the Loyalist 16th on Istvan, coordinating their defense in the siren halt and utilizing every ounce of the Ganger tenacity the brutal Lunawolves had been famed for. Attackers were forced to contend with foes that in the short span of time had mentally mapped the entirety of the siren home's labyrinthine corridors as if they were the mine tunnels of Chthonia. Under Loken's leadership, bands of traitors were cut off, isolated from their fellows, and brutally encircled. Once knives had been wet with blood, the defenders mobilized to elsewhere within the hold, a brutally effective method of mobile defense. Elsewhere, the presenters' palace yet held despite the fury of Lord Commander Eidolon, the resistance led by Sol Tarvits and the Dreadnought-angent Rylanor, each stoking within the 3rd Legion Astartes present the exemplary elements of the Emperor's children's culture and ethics. The tactical excellence of the Legion was on full display in every engagement. The walls of the palace had been reinforced with heavy weaponry and vehicles recovered from Eidolon's initial abortive attacks, and the hasty retreat subsequent to them. The palace's defense was further aided by the traitors being funneled into a narrow route of attack by roving bands of Loyalist world-eaters that preyed upon their flanks. Darkly, it appears that not all of these warbands were, however, Loyalist. Traitor, world-eaters, occasionally blooded themselves on traitor Emperor's children in their mindless fury. While the Loyalist artis of the Sons of Horus and Emperor's children could be said to be enjoying some degree of success, the Loyalist deathguard legionaries in the Istvanian bunker networks were facing a situation far more challenging. Despite being well supplied with not only arms and armaments brought with them from orbit in the initial wave, the 14th Legion being renowned for oversupplying their arms' forces, they were caught between two exceptionally dangerous foes. From the inner city, Angron threw himself again and again at their lines, surrounded by bellowing blood-mad world-eaters, purging tunnel after tunnel, heedless of any injury or casualty. From the wastes beyond the walls came the Red Angel's brother, the deathguard's progenitor, Mortarion. The Primarch had come to the planet in the Assault Ship Omen, the 14th Legion relic of the Dark Age of Technology, and possibly unique across the entire Imperium, one which the Death Lord put to wicked use. Less a slave to Ego, that was Lord Commander Eidolon, Mortarion had the Omen's guns pummel the Loyalist deathguard positions, shattering outer trench networks as the ship disgorged a cargo of trudging traitor infantry, supported by super-heavy Spartan, Typhon, and fell-blade tanks. How well and how long the Loyalists could resist this was entirely down to their personal metal, but this is something that, to their credit, the 14th Legion has never lacked. If Mortarion wished for this hammer to be a quick victory, he was sorely disappointed. The battle for the trenches, as with the battle for the remainder of the city, was hampered significantly by inclement weather and the sheer tenacity of Loyalist resistance. The storms would last for a full two solar months, months that saw traitor blood copiously shed for every square kilometer of rubble and ash they sought to expunge of the Loyalist presence. It is by best estimate and testimony possible to establish that as many as 20,000 Loyalist Estartes perished during these weeks, but the death toll exacted upon the traitor attackers numbered easily twice that. The presenters' palace remained well defended by the Emperor's children and, tangentially, world leaders' warbands, while Garvia Loken's Lunawolms stayed off any major offensive on the sirenhold. The deathguard were much harder pressed, but had at least been given the boon of rebellion from within the traitorous 14th's armor corps. The crews of much of the heaviest siege armor, largely born of old Terran stock from the Legion, disobeyed direct orders from their Primarch, defecting to the Loyalist side and turning their guns upon the traitor infantry. Mortarion's deathguard and Angron's world eaters both. The incident sundered the discipline for which the 14th were a watchword of, plunging the battle for the Outer Defenses into a confused morass of clashing, Ceramite bodies, as traitor fired upon traitor and Loyalist attempted to exact whatever retribution the tumult provided them. Mortarion himself was said to have been burned by a plasma blast from a traitor predator battle tank in his own livery before he hacked it to pieces, ultimately forcing the Primarch to admit to a withdrawal and a regroup operation that brought the senseless debacle to an end and the Loyalists a brief respite from the death lords relentless assault. The breaking of the storms, however, tightened the noose around the Loyalists' necks. The traitors were now fully able to land reinforcements in quantity, and especially the heavy armor in siege artillery sorely needed to provide them with the crucial strategic advantage they had previously lacked. Looted or liberated battle tanks from the Istvanian armories, typically Malkador line tanks, were pressed into service by the Loyalists, able to command them, but proved no match, as whole squadrons of fell-blade superheavies and Sikaran Venator tank hunters were now arrayed against them. The hammer of this armored support was fully wielded by the resurgent and furious Mortarian, pouring his legion strength against his erstwhile sons and finally shattering the majority of their positions. Forced to retreat into the deepest catacombs and bunkers, the Loyalist Death Guard grimly waited for what they knew would soon find them, as the sound of Hades' drill transports drew closer. This was mirrored elsewhere by what could only have been the word of Horus. Thirty companies of the 16th Legion, led by none other than First Captain Abaddon and the Jesteran Terminator Elite, made planetfall in the cities southwest, supported by Titan Manipals from the legios Mortis and Ordax, and finally making their presence known, battle automata and tech magi from the so-called New Mechanicum. As one author has put it, the mathematics of slaughter had now tilted, and it appeared that the hour of the traitors would soon be at hand. The first targets for the Titans of Mortis was to shatter the siege of the Precentres Palace. Lord Commander Eidolon had to be in trying and failing to break the drudge of the stalemate there for two months, confounded every time by the fluid defense tactics of Sol Tarvits' Loyalists. The walls had been designed to withstand significant damage, and, thus far, done so admirably. None of the weaponry brought by the traitor Emperor's children had done much but scorch and pock the Rockcrete surface. However, the artifice of the Mechanicum that had raised them decades ago, had not, nor had ever been required to, consider its capabilities against Titan-grade weaponry. The war horns of Mortis let forth a single blast, the only warning Eidolon's Third Legion would receive, before bringing the fury of the Calesia Titanica to bear. Arm-mounted volcano cannons pulled the power of suns directly from the god-engines' reactors, while carapace-mounted turbo-laser batteries took up the secondary refrain. Not since the firestorm of exterminatis had the city seen such destruction unleashed, and as with that world-killing incident, the Astartes that bore its wrath could do not but weather the Catatlism. The dust clouds kicked up by the weapon strikes were gigantic, plunging the palace into a darkness broken only by the screaming rage of volcano cannon fuselods. When it had cleared, the Princeps of Mortis had already known their work was complete by ospec screeds. The curtain wall of the presenter's palace had been utterly demolished. Nothing save for jagged metal rebars and crushed masonry debris now stood before the traitors. Worse still, the dome of the Inner Precinct had sustained significant damage, its roof caving in under the rage of Mortis and the administrative building surrounding it falling in tandem. Into this breach, now, poured the traitors, led not by Eidolon, but by Angron, surrounded by rabid squads of world eaters. The warmaster's fury was likewise meted out upon the siren-hold. The aforementioned companies of the Sons of Horus, led by Avedon, assaulted the Templum Fane from all vectors. Cestus assault rams pounded their way through its outer walls, while legion assault squads howled downwards on jump packs from the holds of circling gunships, aiming for the sniper positions and gun emplacements of the loyal luna wolves. There was no art history in the approach, just pure, bloody-minded 16th legion force. Overwhelmed with a fury unleashed from all angles. Avedon himself led the Justeran personally, secure within the holds of their black and red Spartan assault transports, the formation of which powered through the ruined city districts towards the siren-hold in a breezenly full frontal assault. The sheer size of the Sons of Horus armored spearhead denied the loyalists much opportunity to resist, and though low-cans wolves threw all possible heavy munitions against the oncoming juggernauts, the vast majority survived in time to discord their contents. Justeran terminators and Catulan reaver squads, the cream of the Sons of Horus' first company. The loyalists lacked for everything but courage, but against this ceramite storm courage mattered little. The defenders sought to sell their lives dearly. Many did just that, sundering the existences of their traitor brothers bitterly before being obliterated. Elsewhere, the Emperor's children were facing a similarly brutal assault, the ferocity of the world-eaters being pitched against their artistry, but unbeknownst to them, they were betrayed from within. Lucius, disaffected by what he saw as a lack of recognition for his actions during the planet kill, fuming at the heroism of Sol Tarvitz and seeing the position of the loyalists killed second company captain Solomon Demeter, defecting to the traitor side and opening up a vital route for the Emperor's children and world-eater attackers to press their advantage. In a personal duel with Tarvitz, Lucius was beaten by his former friend, only to escape back to the traitor's line. His position as thirteenth company captain restored, and his life to take on an altogether worse infamy. Of Tarvitz's fate, history is unclear. Given the situation within the presenter's palace, it is presumed that he sold his life alongside the best of the Third Legion, doing so long enough for the dreadnought ancient Rylanor to escape into the catacombs below, in possession of a device of significant value. Although that is a tale wholly for another record. In the ruin of the siren hold, at the end of all things, came a showdown of brothers. The Mourneval, Horace's famed four-captain advisory coterie. It had been split by betrayal. Planetside was Garville-Lochin and second company captain Tariq Torgaden, while assaulting them from without were Abaddon and third company captain Little Horace Axemand. The four now met again, as the siren hold collapsed around them, kin facing kin, with naught but murder, being a possible outcome. Torgaden, facing down Axemand, called doubt upon his once brother's motives, stating no matter the power of the warp, one must simply stand against it. The corruption of betrayal is said to have warred across Axemand's face, so similar in aspect to that of the Warmaster, but ultimately he chose the path of damnation, beheading Torgaden as the building collapsed around them. For Abaddon and Lochin, their duel was no less intense, no less acrimonious, possessed of a ferocity of conviction by both parties rarely seen in the annals of history, although there could only be one outcome. Perhaps underestimating his foe, Abaddon's early struggles in the duel were immediately learned from and counteracted. The brutal first captain, so peerless a fighter in the histories of the Legion as a startes, overcame his opponent with a brute force that was implacable as it was animalistic. Breaking the body and soul of Garvia Lochin, Abaddon spat on the oes of kinship he once held, retreating from the collapsing siren hold, to leave Lochin buried under a tomb of what had been the 10th captain's most heroic hour. Across the city, the scene played out in a thousand different ways, traitor brother putting loyalist brother to death, often with far less honor than even Abaddon had offered Lochin. The Mechanicum of the Warmaster and the Legion's destroyer cores bathed the last of the loyalist holdouts and phosphics, are called in the fury of the Titans. What remained was less a battle, than now truly an extermination, detached from the now spent fury of the months that had preceded it, defined only by cold ruthlessness of genocidal slaughter. With bile most bitter, the traitors mopped up what few loyalists remained, before the Warmaster ordered a general withdrawal. Those loyal of the Legion were ash, what survivors remained where there were any, did so with no hope of survival upon the ash and rock they were now confined to, nor to serve as any threat to the Warmaster's intentions. Thus were the final weapons of the Istvan atrocity fired, not an Astartes bolter, nor the horrific virus bombs, but the mundane conventionality of shipboard batteries. The ruins of the Coral City were fully pulverized once more, from orbit, an almost patulant end to the grueling hell of the battle that had been. A last wipe out action to ring the last drops of spite from a war now done, yet also only just beginning. Thus draws to a conclusion the tale of the Warmaster's opening gambit. A stunning failure by any military standards, yes, but one that ultimately blooded the legions involved wholly and utterly in the warfare that would come to define the Age of Darkness. There was much experience to be dleaned in this first open conflict between Istartes. Many points of data for the new Mechanicum to scry, many stories of battle for the traitors to swap, many combat techniques to be drilled into neophytes on just how best to kill another Space Marine. Each and every division of every legion present was utilized as soon as it was possible to. Porus spared none from the actions on Istvan, nor any weapon in his arsenal. Given to the predilections of his benefactors and the presence of Davenite cultists during the final stages of the battle, one wonders if some sort of arcane significance was made in those last hours, a pact or a devotional, born of and sealed in the gen-hanced blood of the fallen loyal. This one can only wonder to, and one shall not at this point lest my sanity suffer even more so under the weight of this senseless tragedy. For tragedy it was, and one not unique nor isolated. The contagion of this perfidious war was already spreading, prosperous and fallen not months beforehand. Abroad across the stars, the Blood Angels Legion disappeared in the Sickness Cluster, and the word bearers made full wake to Calth for their muster but the Ultramarines. In the depths of the warp, the heavy frigate Agenstein forged ahead with its message so utterly important, and the galaxy slept unknowing, unaware of the scale of the horror that would soon engulf it. The war master and his ships meanwhile slipped anchor, but not for Terra, not even for another system, but for a planet nearby. István V, for the telling of that tale, dearest Acolyte, I must rest, and face myself into chronicling. This age of darkness our tale now charts, of course, into Ave Imperator. Gloria in Excelsis, Terra. Subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.