 Betrayal is a word of unique power in our Imperium, for the Empire, as it stands to this day, was forged by it. Words have force resonating throughout time, echoes in eternity. This is one that birthed us as we are today, in acts of such utter debasement that the mere knowledge of them is considered a capital crime for the vast majority of the human species. The Imperium was molded by treachery, the future that it had been promised consumed in the fires of treason mere centuries after its birth. Indeed, many scholars would say that the years of the Horus Heresy were a greater influence on the Imperium than those of the Great Crusade, although they say thus in texts oft prescribed, oft deemed heretical by those that monitor the populace for, well, the trail. We are so terrified of it that it has become a watchword for the purest degeneracy, those who would commit it marked for death or worse. It is a concept steeped in cruelty, for it requires, first, bonds of trust, kinship, and cause to be fully leveraged. For a betrayal to truly live up to the dreadful malignance of the word itself, it must be an act committed upon the unsuspecting by those who, in full knowledge, are exploiting the faith and love their victims bare for them. It requires malice, callousness, and meditated foresight. It is worse than a burst of rage. It is calculated in its inhumanity. One commits this record to the archive with the heaviest of hearts, because for all the death and carnage that would follow it, it continues to stand as one of the most truly heinous events in the history of our benighted species. Know then that this is a record of the great betrayal of the war master's unbridled cruelty manifested, a history of the East Van V drop site massacre. It is a time immediately subsequent to the East Van V atrocity, records of which may be found on this archival stack. Resuming the chronicle of the great heresy, one must first comment that it is difficult to underscore the heroism and vitality of the flight of the 14th legion heavy frigate Eisenstein. So often in his stardor's work is one reminded that the past is rarely the soul artifice of a single actor, or even a troop. It is in many ways a vast tapestry of forces and systems colliding in constant conflict, but every so often something pivotal rests upon the shoulders of the very few. Captain Nathaniel Garrow, formerly 14th legion death guard, had defied the will of his Primarch to permit the flight of Captain Saul Tarvitz of the Emperor's children to the surface of East Van III, to warn the Astartes embattled planet side of the war master's perfidy and their oncoming doom. In doing so, Tarvitz assured the survival of the majority of those Horus and his traitorous brothers had sought to render dead, and committed the traitors to a bloody, months long campaign that bled those legions of yet more vital manpower. However, this act, of course, marked Garrow and all aboard his command, the Starship Eisenstein, for death themselves. Fleeing the East Van system, the frigate was severely damaged by the guns of the death guard battleship Terminus Est, executing a blind warp jump that killed its astropaths and navigators. The jump also severely damaged the ship's geller field, allowing for tendrils of warp energy to penetrate its hull and permit the incarnation of the lesser emanations of one aspect of the primordial annihilator. These so-called demons of chaos caused great strife aboard the ship, exacerbated by the presence of a stowaway party of death guard traitors, led by second company captain Ignatius Grilgore. This company attempted to detonate the life-eater virus warheads the Eisenstein had been carrying as part of her exterminatus, Armorium. The plan did not succeed, although captain Garrow's after action reports stated that Grilgore and his ilk, despite being killed by the very virus they had sought to unleash upon the frigate's loyal crew, were possessed of an eldritch force, their bodies finding hideous vitality despite their rotting flesh, besetting Garrow and his astartes with horrific violence. Only an emergency translation into real space saved the crew and the ship. Grilgore and his traitors, once deprived of the powers of the warp, perished swiftly. The virus that had somehow been kept in a limbo by the blasphemies of the materium, now consuming them in their totality. Adrift in the interstellar void, with no communications apparatus capable of contacting the Imperium, Garrow ordered the ejection and detonation of the ship's warp core, gambling that the aetheric shock would hopefully prompt some form of imperial investigation. When salvation arrived, he did so armored in gold and possessed of steely fury. Rogaldorn, Primarch of the Seventh Legion Imperial Fists, aboard Phalanx, the Legion's massive dark age of technology-wrought star fortress, accompanied by dozens of escort craft. The fists had been becambed in the warp, caught between tidal forces of aetheric energy that, unbeknownst to them, had been the work of sorcerous pacts, struck between Horace Lupercal and his new eldritch patrons. Garrow presented himself and his world-shattering word to Dorne, in the hopes that the Primarch would hear him true. Dorne came within an inch of killing him. History should not look unkindly upon the Seventh Primarch here. If there is one fault Dorne possessed, it would be his inviolate confidence in the solidity of his reality. He had never wanted for surety. Each and every one of his biographers will state so categorically. Horace's treachery sundered the Imperium in so many ways, but one that is oft less commented upon is the rent it broke in the structure of the world itself. For centuries, the Emperor and his sons had been the impossibly mythic paragons of this new order. Yet they were, magnificently, terribly real. Just as many astarties upon Istvan III were driven to complete psychological meltdowns by the betrayal of their gene fathers, so too was Dorne almost broken by the word of his brother's duplicity. To come from so lowly a figure as Garo, captain though he may be, it is not entirely unreasonable to grant Rogel Dorne his rage or his doubt. Surely the word of his brother would count more than some astarties line officer. Yet it was not only the word of Garo. Every soul aboard the Eisenstein rendered the same tale to the Primarch. Remembrancers, Euphrates Keeler and Mercedes Olaton, the iterator primus Kirill Sinderman, a member of Horace's own legion, Eacton Cruz, all had been aboard the vengeful spirit at the moment of Horace's betrayal. The evidence was overwhelming and Dorne, though possessed of ironclad convictions, was nothing if not an empiricist at heart. Further interrogations, of course, took place upon the sobnes Citadel on Luna, at the hands of the silent sisterhood. Survivors of the Eisenstein were separated from each other and subjected to the harshest questioning at the hands of all the secret agents the Emperor hid from the eyes of his Imperium. History of course renders clear what was determined. None aboard the Eisenstein were lying. Treachery had come to the Imperium by the hand of Horace Lupercal, the warmaster himself, and it was more terrible than any could have thought remotely possible. Any upon terror, at this point, Dorne included, would doubtlessly have expected some manner of statement from the Lord above all, the Emperor of Mankind. Surely in this most tumultuous of hours, the master of a million worlds would provide guidance, council and leadership to an Imperium thrown into chaos by the revelations of the Eisenstein. In this, however, Terra and her Praetorian were to be disappointed. The master of mankind was ensconced within his laboratory in the Imperial Dungeon, sealed within by his own writ, with the entire Imperial household led by the Sigillite, Malkador, and the 10,000 Guardians of the Ligio Custodis committed to maintaining this enforced silence. The absence of the Emperor since the Eleanor Triumph had always been a thorn in the egos of his gene-sons, but at the very least they had counted upon the occasional missive, since a proclamation of the writ of censure following the massive aetheric disturbance that beset Terra ultimately blamed on Magnus the Red, the Emperor had been utterly absent from all Imperial affairs, leaving those above to question the reason for so severe and total removal. After all, said some, albeit in hushed tones, what could possibly be so important down there? In the depths of the palace that superseded the betrayal of the Warmaster himself. News now additionally reached Dorn from his brother, Tenth Legion Primarch Ferris Mannus. Through a rage towering even for the pugnacious Lord of the Iron Hands, Mannus related that their brother Fulgrim of the Third Legion Emperor's children had attempted to sway him to the side of the Warmaster, exploiting and manipulating the deep and true friendship he and Mannus had shared for over a century. The rebuke Ferris had delivered ended with violence between the two, with the Emperor's children's ships firing on the stunned Iron Hands in their hasty retreat, crippling many of their vessels. Wounded in pride, yes, but also far more deeply in emotions his Primarch Brain simply could not process, Mannus called for death and devastation unparalleled to be brought upon the heads of the traitors, with all possible haste. As Praetorian of Terra, it fell now to Dorn to decide upon the course of action. The treason of Lupercal was a matter of internal Imperial security, and as the Warder of the Throne World, Dorn possessed full legal authority to command the armed forces of the Empire, now that Horus had divested himself of his oaths. Immediately, Dorn sought to centralize the defense of Terra and the Imperium under his leadership, given that the ultimate goal of the traitors would surely soon emerge. This course of action was beset at once by difficulties. To begin with, the revelations of Fulgrim's mission to lure Ferris Mannus to the traitor side was a cause of grave concern. How many other legions had had similar entreaties? How many were loyal to the Warmaster or loyal to the Emperor? Was it merely the scions of Horus, Mortarion, Fulgrim, and Angron that dared raise banners of rebellion against the Lord of Lightning? Dorn knew that he could count on Mannus. He believed he had the characters of many of his brothers, Gilliman, Sanguinius, Vulcan, well assessed and understood, but he had once believed the same about Horus. There were many he could simply not bear the company of, whose minds he ill understood. Curs, Korax, Lacan, Alfarius, Pertorabo. Could they now be trusted? Could their blade be counted upon, if called? Not one given to rumination, Dorn discarded what he could not answer in order to assess what he could. In short, the situation was dire. The Imperial Hurricanes blanketing much of the galaxy rendered warp travel and astro telepathic communication unreliable and dangerous. Obtaining concrete information on the disposition of Imperial armed forces was greatly hampered. Outside of Terra's immediate locality, communication with the rest of the galaxy was effectively impossible. The Ninth Legion blood angels had only recently disappeared in the Cygnus Cluster. The Fifth Legion white scars campaigning in the Chondak sector had been difficult to reach even for years prior to this event. The First Legion dark angels were almost at the edge of the Emperor's light in the Galactic Far East. The Thirteenth Legion ultramarines had last when ordered to muster at Calth, but nothing could be raised from their realm of Ultramar. The Sixth Legion space wolves were abroad in the Void, licking their wounds from the burning of Prospero, which supposedly accounted for the fate of the Fifteenth Legion, Thousand Sons. Worse yet for Dorn, the Council of Malkador in private informed him of suspicions previously beyond his ken. The Sigilite believed the hand of the Primordial Annihilator to be at play here, both in the warped storms that blinded the Imperium, and possibly even within the actions of Horus himself. The right hand of the Emperor mused darkly upon the Primarch's fate. Was he possessed by one of the emanations of the greater intelligences? Did they count him in their thrall, or had he perhaps struck some bargain with them in exchange for power, granting their honeyed lies access to his mind? Such words would have not years prior been dismissed as an impossibility. Were it not for the acts of Magnus the Red? In the highly restricted reports of precisely what had occurred on Prospero during the burning, was contained information that had radically changed the outlook of the Imperium towards its Primarchs. The possibility of the warp exerting power over one of the Emperor's sons was no longer merely a fiction, and that another could have been swayed to their damnation, was both a terribly real possibility and a massive source of potential disruption to any planning. The motivations of the traitors were utterly unknown beyond their desire to rebel. Would this mean that the intelligences of the warp desired the same? Did the traitors seek to carve out their own Empire within the galaxy to rival that of the Emperor, or did they seek to supplant him? Dorn's first immediate decision was one that would become sadly typical of those made by the Imperium during the coming years. Massive expenditure of human life, because the situation apparently demanded it. The 7th Primarch gambled on increasing the supply of astropaths made available to him, and of psychers fed to the Astronomican in order to establish as much of the communications apparatus as he could. At the cost of hundreds of lives, the broader picture from across the Imperium unfolded. Revolts and uprisings on world's thought compliant, expeditionary fleets disappearing, an incidence of far more mysterious and inexplicable natures. No doubt in large part due to the tumult caused by the warp storms, the situation could however not be trusted to abate with the passing of its tides. It would only be exacerbated as word of the Warmaster's uprising spread further, fanning the flames of discontent and allowing those ill at ease with the Emperor's rule, an alternative banner to pledge themselves to. Speed of retribution was of the essence. Dorn was, thanks to spending the lives of psychers as coin, able to contact six Primarchs and their legions in short orders. Establishing the locations and strengths of the 4th Legion Iron Warriors, 8th Legion Night Lords, 17th Legion Word Bearers, 18th Legion Salamanders, 19th Legion Ravenguard and 20th Legion Alpha Legion, all in addition to Ferris's 10th Legion Iron Hands. The Order of Battle presented itself simply by the layout of situations. Manus would take operational command, being the most senior of all the Primarchs currently accounted for. He would lead his Legion, the Ravenguard and the Salamanders, with their respective Primarchs, Korax and Vulcan. These three legions all lay within the closest proximity to Istvan. The remaining four were slightly further afield, but would be ordered to make all possible haste to aid their cousins. Dorn's own Imperial Fists, concentrated upon Terra in their near entirety, would remain there to protect the Throne World, the Praetorian reasoning quite rightly that seven entire legions would be more than sufficient to deal with four. An Imperial Fists fleet would however be dispatched to aid the Retribution Force. However, contact had been lost with the ships assigned. Not requiring anything in the way of subtlety. The orders of Rogaldorn to his brothers and to the Astartes he bade make for Istvan were simple. The traitors must die. Their legions must die. Their corpses, should they remain, were to be hauled to Terra to stand as testament to the fate that lay for all who dared court treachery in their hearts. No mercy or quarter was to be given, no entreaties made and no dialogue attempted. Extermination was all that remained. The work of the Praetorian had been quite admirable given the time frame. He had rallied the Imperium against a fundamentally existential threat, drawing up an order of battle for seven entire Astartes legions, and one for his own, that dealt as quickly as possible with the most dire of circumstances. Despite the challenges, it appeared that the odds were overwhelming, and indeed they were. Just not in the direction those loyal to Terra expected. Through the vagaries of current strategic deployment and the tempestuous imiterium, the fleets of the Iron Hands, Salamanders and Ravenguard were the first to muster, forming the vanguard of the retribution force, assured by the remaining legions of their intent to follow their cousins in system with all haste. Initial intelligence was brought to the vanguard by the reconnaissance of the war runner vessel at Temporesta, a 19th legion scout ship specifically designed to range ahead of military fleets. Exiting the warp at the furthest possible Mandeville point from the central planets, approximately 339 Terran standard hours sidereal before the eventual planet fall, the aspect shrouds of this tiny craft were deployed in full, with all possible systems rendered powerless and inert. Impelling itself in system through gravitic drives alone, the Temporesta's skeleton Astartes crew survived the cold confines of Hull on their power armor's life support alone. No risk was being chanced here. The Ravenguard, possibly more than any save the Alpha Legion, prized forward intelligence above everything else. They would never risk any sort of blind assault that the Gorgon was openly advocating for. The Temporesta took a wide orbit of East Van Starr, sliding into synchronicity with the stragglers of the system's Oort cloud, trusting its impeccable aspect suite to scry details other ships simply would not have been able to from such a range. What they found was little more than a carcass of a star system. East Van 3, the planet that the Ravenguard themselves had once rendered compliant, was a shrouded dead thing, hurricanes of ash choking its atmosphere. From the radiological decay in orbit, the Temporesta could tell void weapons had been fired, enough of them to absolutely be in anger. But of the planet itself, the state of it was obvious enough to confirm what intel the loyalists possessed. East Van 3 had been world killed, a sight of betrayal most foul and acts most heinous. The biggest curiosity, the one the ships Astartes whispered to each other over closed vox loops, was plain. Where were the traitors? Even at maximal range, the aspect screeds were clear. The system was entirely devoid of an enemy fleet. The conqueror, the endurance, the vengeful spirit, the pride of the emperor, none of the mighty Dlorianatlas flagships, nor their massive legion fleets, could be found anywhere within the volume. Not to be deterred, the crew of the Temporesta altered her course, patiently nudging her into an orbital plunge that gracefully skimmed the ship in a spiral towards the star, appearing for all the world to be merely another piece of stellar debris. As she roved inward, the ghosts of vox signals played across the edge of her comms. The trail was immediately followed, drawing the sensorium suites to the star's fifth planetary body. There, penetrating through the thick atmosphere, was the prize. A torrent of vox traffic, all in close proximity to one another, speaking of only one thing. Astartes, and an incredible quantity of them. On East Van 5 did the traitors dwell. Relayed outwards to the main retribution fleet, the Ravenguard's intelligence was greeted as could be expected, with rage fueled zeal from the iron hands, and with disquiet and apprehension from the salamanders in the Ravenguard. Considering the sheer amount of vox traffic, and the time sidereal since the betrayal, it was clear the traitors were fortifying their position, potentially to serve as the war master's throne and base of operations for his rebellion. Indeed, the personal standards of Horus and Fulgrim flew above the fortifications that had been hastily erected, all thanks to picked captures from the ad temporesta. The region, classified in imperial cartography as the Orgal Depression, was the site of an ancient structural complex designated by mechanical adepts as Xenos in origin, although of a species lost to the annals of time. It was now apparently serving the traitors well, with Mechanicum adepts being seen on the Picts building imperial patterned readouts upon the bones of those ancient Xenos structures. The lack of all traitor fleets was disquieting in the extreme, and a source of much rankerous debate amongst loyalist senior command. The Morbellicos of the Iron Hands dismissed it with an easy explanation that they had simply been dispatched to nearby systems, raiding them of resources and supplies the war master's war would surely need. A gamble, yes, but not one exactly uncommon for Horus's known ways of war-making. Despite the cautioning of Korax and Vulcan, Ferris Manus would not be deterred. What his brother saw as a matter of grave concern, the Gorgon saw as an opportunity, and one that could not be wasted given the difficulty of extracting a truly dug-in enemy. Manus's reasoning stated that thanks to Fulgrim's botched attempt to bring him to the traitor's cause and to the crew of the Eisenstein, the Imperium had been made aware of the perfidy of Horus far earlier than the war master had intended, depriving him of the opportunity to strike with full surprise, and placing his forces at a disadvantage as they hurriedly sought to erect bulwarks against the emperor's judgment. Every minute those loyal to the throne delayed gave Horus back the time he had lost. All fury must be brought to Istvan V, with every iota of haste the fleet could muster, exploiting whatever disarray the traitors labored under. If their fleets were abroad seeking to scrounge up ammunition and construction materials, all the better, flesh casualties before the planet fall, declared Manus. Those who would judge the unwavering bellicosity of Ferris Manus must know that they only do so in dreadful retrospect. Of deeply important note is the base fact that the purest horror of what exactly Horus was committing, and was intending to commit, was at this point in history completely unknown to his erstwhile brothers. The cosmic depths of his depravity and ambitions were not yet revealed. The Imperium was assured that it was fully in possession of the proverbial high ground, in terms of arms, armaments, and sheer, overwhelming manpower. Ferris Manus' judgments were born of such confidence, as much as they were the spurned fury of a kinsman betrayed. He was convinced that, while he had three legions to face down four, the four had been maimed by their self-inflicted civil war on Istvan III, and his vanguard had merely to hold the drop site before the reinforcements making full wake were to arrive. To many within the loyalist fleets, recovered journals and conversation logs show pure bewilderment at the situation, a profound disbelief that the events that were unfolding were indeed unfolding. Forbidden whispers evoked the last legions, second and eleventh, whose sheer mystery spoke to times past when the Emperor's hand had removed his own sons, and their sons too, from history itself. Had Horus fallen as they had? Was it some grand malgenetic crisis, a psychotic break of a superhuman mind, megalomaniacal ambition run amok? Could a primarch simply betray his own programming for the sake of personal gain? Perhaps the fault lay not within Horus himself. Perhaps he was under the psychic thrall of some Xenos entity. The crave, or the enslavers, perhaps, these were but two hideous species known to be capable of such things. They had never ensnared a primarch, it was true, but then there were two primarchs none were capable of speaking of. Even beyond his murky motivations, the choice of Istvan as an apparent seat of power convinced many that Horus merely sought to establish himself as a rival galactic power to that of his father, rather than seeking to directly supplant him. The system was strategically significant, commanding the volume of numerous large and stable warp space corridors, but was far enough from major imperial hubs and terrae itself to serve as a perfect capital for a new empire amongst the stars. We may scoff at such wishful thinking, but we must remember that the ability to do so was bought in the blood of trillions. It is merely a cloak of humor drenched with cynicism to ward off the pain that history has lain upon us. Would that we could share the optimism of Ferris Manus and those blind tragics he led onwards to their doom? Gainsaying any concerns his brothers raised, Ferris Manus pulled rank, stating quite correctly that as commander of the retribution fleet he had every right to order an attack. And order it he did, immediate and all out. The Gorgon prepared an offensive against the traitors with the full force of every Astartes under his command. The application of Vulcan was a waste of time. The brooding of Korax was clearly to Manus agreement. He had, thanks to his brother's reconnaissance efforts, plenty of intelligence to establish an attack plan. The locus of traitor activity was plain to behold, and when combined with imperial cartographic data and Mechanicum Xenobiologis archival stacks, displayed the concentration of force as co-lating around the ancient ruins in the Orgal depression, a wide valley ringed by volcanic plateaus thrown up by the planet's geologically unstable crust. The plateau itself made the depression deeply defensible. A maze of treacherous ravines and gullies, it would deny all possible overland access, and was a perfect location for hidden air defense batteries. The valley would funnel attackers into one possible ground assault towards the fortifications, across the black sand of the depression devoid of cover, and even now being threaded through by traitor defense trench networks. It was a superb area for natural defense, augmented now by Astartes and Mechanicum wrought ramparts and battlements. Horus knew this, Ferris Manus knew this. There was no surprise in its selection, and if the Gorgon had wished for a more opportune location to assault, he knew the war master would never have granted him one. It was almost a challenge. Static defenses laden no doubt with thousands of Astartes troops, begged the Loyalists to assault them. Worse yet, the Ospex had detected deep within the caverns lining the depression, shielded and slumbering fusion reactions, indicating the presence of potentially dozens of Titan-class god-engines. There was only one course of action that could be taken. Answer the challenge. Immediate planet fall at the entrance of the Orgal Depression, and an advance in force across its sands, onto the teeth of the traitor guns to tear their throats from their bodies and mount their heads upon their heastily thrown up castellum. Minus seven hours' Terran, before said drop, the retribution fleet of the Loyalist legions tore into real space as a combined force, a feat no small thing, given the sheer amount of ships present. The salamanders and the Ravenguard had brought the near entirety of their legion ships under flag, led by Ferris Manus aboard the Ferrum. Many of the iron hands vessels had been crippled by the treachery of the Emperor's children prior to the revelations of Horus' betrayal. Manus had mustered what he could, packing the Ferrum and her escorts with the near totality of the 10th Legion's most experienced troops. Naturally, the incursion, as close to a planet as the fleet's navigators were able to grant the Gorgon's demands, was impossible to cloak. Not really that it was ever intended to be. Istvan 5 came alive immediately, the traitors seeing no more point in disguising their presence or disposition. Surface-to-orbit missiles were immediately loosed skyward, which, against any other force, may have inflicted severe damage. Against the Astartes' retribution fleet, the paltry fuselod was annihilated by a blizzard of protective flak and interception torpedoes. No such fire was, however, returned. For reasons known only to Ferris Manus, no orbital bombardment of the Orgal Depression was ordered, at least not in force. Chronicles have puzzled over this decision for millennia, as surely even a... tacit, by Raj, from the position of total orbital control the loyalists now claimed would have been beneficial to the overall operation. It almost certainly lies within Manus' haste to bring his traitor brothers to justice, but also to do so in a means by which they would be under no doubts as to who was bearing said justice. Orbital bombardment is often described in poetic histories as impersonal. This may certainly be the case in the strictest sense of the word, and precisely one presumes why many commanders will prefer it over the furious peril of the melee. Blame has been apportioned to Manus and to Rogald Dorne for demanding otherwise, that the significant tactical advantage posed by orbital control be given up for the sake of speed and the more personal or honorable duel between legions. Certainly the visceral face-to-face internecine Astartes conflict would deliver purist proofs of the demise of the traitors. One must ultimately demure on whether this was a matter of simple directness or something altogether more personal or intrinsic to the primarchs in command. I am not of their ilk. I cannot comprehend their minds, though we may wish it, they are not perfect beings, quite the opposite. I simply chronicle what has occurred and what occurred was planetfall. Not until the darkest days of the Siege of Terra did a planetary invasion of a sole geographic region rival the force that plummeted towards East Van V. Its passage tore the atmosphere of the planet like a skin. Over a dozen battleships and heavy cruisers spoke with the fury of drop pods and gunships, and as landing craft powered downwards the batteries of the fleet spoke. No sustained orbital bombardment this, the concept having already been dismissed by Ferris Manus as unnecessary and wasteful of time. This punishing fuselage was designed to tear through as much of the traitors as it could in the time it took for a drop pod to fall from orbit to ground. The Urgal Depression became a sea of light and fire as the screaming air spoke of a lance beam scouring the ash wastes. The fortresses of the traitors were partially void shielded, barely enduring the sky-spoken cannonade. But beyond them, mobile orbital defense batteries, those that had previously thrown an impotent bombardment of their own at the arriving fleet were annihilated, their macro munitions torching off and sending mushroom clouds pluming into the tortured air. The orbital strike's true purpose succeeded impeccably. It covered the planetfall of the Loyalists. Occupied in seeking cover from the punishment of the Retribution Fleet, the traitors were capable of mounting nothing in the way of air defenses as thousands of drop pods smashed into the black sands of Istvan V. In the center of this steel rain, cold fury marking his every movement was Ferris Manus himself. Apocryphally, his were the first Loyalist boots on the black volcanic soil, thundering out of an iron hands drop pod with the rage of an Imperium spurned. Petty fire now took up the tempo from traitor positions, the sheer power of the orbital strikes having blinded and shaken even Astartes' physiology, but was now wearing off. Such was the deluge of Loyalist steel plunging planetside that their batteries could not possibly miss, but for each drop pod plucked in fire from the skies a dozen more threw up impact craters in the Urgal Depression. The killing began immediately. There was no need for anything even approaching Parley. Loyalist Astartes came out of their drop pods firing. Traitor Astartes rose from their trenches, firing. The precision of the Gorgon's attack vectors had placed the bulk of the forward assault right at the edge of the fortress' shield overlays. It was little in the way of No Man's Land for Loyalists to cover before they were blade to blade with their former kin. The battle began as it would continue, as savage and pitiless as anything the Great Crusade had ever accomplished. An Astartes is a weapon built for a lentless conquest and extermination. Whereas for 200 years they had been committing unspeakable atrocities on Zenos empires and deviant human polities, the raw, gen-hanced power was now, as it had been on East Van Three, pitted against each other. Bolters fired at point-blank range shattered Ceramite armor. Lady Eye plunged into bodies with a force that would have turned an unaugmented human into pulp. Chain swords tore at limbs and armor joints, teeth splintering and flying like shrapnel. Esoteric weaponry reduced transhuman behemoths to ash and slag. Hundreds died in minutes, the hammer of the Loyalists upon the anvil of the traitors, but the shock assault had achieved what it had intended to. Behind the lines drawn up, more and more drop pods arrived, heralding the arrival of the bulk of the Salamanders and Ravenguard legions, with the bulkier fliers bearing heavier armor and artillery pieces right behind them. Full engagement took less than an hour. The Loyalists were advancing on the fortification walls, weapons fire pouring down from battlements, dugouts, pill boxes and gun nests. Super heavy tanks dueled or devastated infantry formations, and on the traitor side, the legions herded forward Imperial Army regiments loyal to the Warmaster to serve as human shields, to almost negligible effect. On the left flank of the battle, the Salamanders were forced into trench by trench combat with the 14th Legion Deathguard. The combat zone was turned into a sea of flames, the fire of the Salamanders weaponry being answered in kind by the alchemic conflagrations of the sons of Mortarion. Upon the right flank, Corvus Corax and his Ravenguard dueled with companies of the sons of Horus. The area was a maze of rock scree, ravines and mesas, where the crumbling faces of the valley blended with the sands of the Depression itself. The 16th Legion had turned it into a killing field, packed with razor wire and hastily assembled ambush dugouts, turning the battle with their cousins into a blizzard of hit and run attacks and counter maneuvers, almost anarchic in its fury and rapidity. Finally, the center was held by the rage of Therys Manus and his Overnii clan, the Terminator armored elite of his 10th Legion. Over 1000 of the clan were present from the outset, as well as six whole manifolds of the Iron Hand's battle automata. The Primarch was a hurricane of violence. Traitors not crushed by his hammer were torn apart bodily by his liquid metal hands. The Emperor's children and sons of Horus had faced him, could only mount momentary resistance before perishing. The Gorgon simply swept them aside. The embodiment of the storm his 10th Legion had once been named for. It was, by what records could be obtained from Iron Hand survivors, upon this front line that Therys Manus became the first loyalist in the invasion to witness the beginnings of the horrors wrought upon the legions that allied themselves to Horus. Amongst the Emperor's children ranks, it was suddenly palpable that significant changes had been wrought upon the sons of the Phoenician. Many of the Legion's elite now bedecked their armor with what appeared to be flayed human skin. Their once perfect ceramite defaced with strange symbols or riotous colors not part of their typical panoply. Stranger and more horrid still were Astartes whose unhelmed visages appeared swollen, augmented beyond anything remotely human. These twisted individuals howled in registers impossible even for an Astartes and did so in apparent ecstasy even as they were shredded by bolt of fire or hacked apart by the weapons of the Iron Hands. Many of them bore esoteric sonic weaponry capable of penetrating even the tactical dreadnought armor worn by the Avernii. Manus crushed them as he did all others that stood before him. Even these debased once loyal unable to stay his wrath. The toll being reaped amongst the Iron Hands was becoming more apparent now as the sons of the Gorgon attempted to keep up with their nearly rage blind Primarch. That being said the lives that the clan had sold were being well spent. The massive line the Iron Hands had pushed forward was being followed through by the Legion's formidable armor corps and its mobile artillery was picking up their affrain previously handled by orbital weaponry. Legion whirlwinds and basilisks poured rocket and shell fire onto traitor lines denying the Astartes manning the battlements easy return fire as they were relentlessly pounded from afar. Super heavy tanks and support vehicles poured fire on the massive looming figures lurking behind the lines. The Imperator class Titan, D.S. Ire, one of the most powerful god engines of the Legio Mortis. The Titan had reaped a heavy toll upon the loyalists during the opening hour of the battle. Its void shield impregnable its weapons capable of reaching even the armor drop zones behind loyalist lines. Now finally the volume of fire it was taking was increasing rapidly wavering its precious void bubble and claiming the life of one of its warhound Titan escorts. Such was the degree of punishment loyalist armor placed upon it but D.S. Ire was simply forced to retreat into the alien fortifications cycling its void generators to permit them a soul recharge. The momentum the loyalist forces had accrued demanded a response coming in the form of a traitor counter assault led finally by the treacherous Primarchs of Horus's legions. At the fore a cyclone of slaughter, Angron, 12th Primarch, world eaters. Whereas before the iron hands line had been resolutely implacable the red angel hit it like a meteor sundering a planet. The wedge driven forcing open a gulf between the 10th Legion and the Ravenguard before the Primarch and his world eaters turned in upon the latter's flank in a slaughter that somehow managed to eclipse all that had yet taken place in the battle. Elsewhere his brother Mortarion's arrival was heralded by the blanketing of salamander forward elements with a poisonous fog of stunning lethality a noxious miasma that exploited even the tiniest crack in a legionary's power armor to scald the body within into a dissolving slurry. Only by the efforts of the 18th Legion's fire drake terminators was the Death Lord's fury stalled but had a terrible cost to their numbers. First Captain Abaddon of the Sons of Horus likewise now appeared at the vanguard of the justeran first company elites plunging into the loyalists with the savagery of the Chthonian mine gangs. The only response currently possible for the loyalists was an increase in attack runs made by their legion flyers freed now from the role of orbital transporters. These sallies were often nearly suicidal plunging in under traitor air defense flak to target their super heavy armor or heavy weaponry squads even be it at the cost of their machines and the lives of the pilots. By 2.2 terran hours sidereal time the battle had devolved into a horrendously bloody stalemate. With the entirety of Astartes forces committed the loyalists had now managed to land the bulk of their imperial army auxiliaries although these troops were encountering severe difficulties in bringing what they could to bear upon the foe. The black sands before the drop site rechoked mass of power armored corpses and the wreckage of legion vehicles constraining the movement of imperial armor across the already tight Orgal depression. Worth still for the unaugmented auxilia terror squads from the traitor legions had infiltrated their landing zones sowing discord and horror with near impunity. Whatever the experience and veterancy of the troops manas had seconded to the execution fleet they were mere baseline humans pitted against traitor Astartes genetic ferocity. Wherever these terror troops encountered imperial army regiments little existed but wanton butchery. Just over two hours beyond planet fall an east van five had already seen the deaths of tens of thousands of Astartes on both sides of the conflict and yet tens of thousands more still fought on at a pace that had not slowed one iota. Where ammunition had run dry and supplies rendered impossible both sides fought with the weapons of the dead scavenging what they could until they were resorting to ceramite clad fists and basic enhanced physiology. The last of the loyalist reinforcements from manas's fleet were finally permitted to land a massive red bark bearing the cog symbols of the mechanism of mars and the flaming sword of the firebrands. A battle manable of the legio Artaurus. In response imperial ospexes detected massive heat blooms that had previously slumbered knowing their former kin would almost certainly be part of the emperor's retribution the titans of the legio mortus had waited until this moment to rise. It was immediately apparent to the firebrands and their attached mechanism tagmata that they were woefully outclassed by the deaths heads. The loyalists possessed only two reavers and three warhounds ranged against a warlord twin reavers and a night gaunt mainline titans with two warhound scouts. Diaz Irae was still cycling her reactors and shield generators but even without the imperator Ataurus was on the back foot as soon as its titans disembarked. Odds of survival were calculated at a mere 13 percent by mechanical adepts these were transmitted to ferris manas who ordered the attack regardless mortus was to be brought to imperial justice just as the traitor legions were and Ataurus would merely have to inflict what they could upon the deaths heads. This they needed little in the way of encouragement to do. The firebrands had long borne a furious hatred for the legio mortus and plunged towards the traitor titans heedless of the cost to their own engines. The suicidal charge was catatlysmic to behold and achieved in its heedlessness all that Ataurus could have hoped for. The lead reaver red naga closed the distance between herself and mortus' warlord breath of thunder. The Ataurus engines power fist shattering the warlord's head cockpit and killing its entire crew. Punitive fire from its warder engines breached the naga's reactor core however with the ensuing explosion claiming dozens of traitor tanks in recompense for its demise. Approximately 2.8 Terran hours. The sheer weight of death and destruction was finally having a toll upon the pace of the battle. As much as 40 percent of the dispositions of all combatants three hours ago had now perished or been destroyed. Loyalist heavy artillery and armor had kept up their punishing salvos on the traitor lines unremittingly forcing the withdrawal of mortarian and angron. But the sheer tempo of the assault had drained the ammunition and weapon reserves of the raven guard and the salamanders enforcing a series of regrouping actions as Vulcan and Korak sought to take advantage of the relative lul in fighting. Ferris Manus however continued his wrathful advance unwilling to surrender an inch of ground or a scintilla of pace to his enemies. Tactics were at this point meaningless. Orders of battle dissolved into Ersatz reactions to impossible situational exigencies. How though could anything resembling strategy survive contact with the reality of what had been unleashed? Powers that had a mere centuries earlier been enough to conquer half a galaxy had been unleashed over a couple of hundred square kilometers in the space of three Terran hours. They had achieved nothing except slaughter undreamed and destruction untrammeled. Ground had been taken but the traitor's walls still held. Loyalists had been bloodied but were still on bowed. Titans had clashed but neither side had achieved anything of note. The demigod primarchs had torn bloody chunks out of their brothers legions but had not clashed themselves. Horus and Fulgrim indeed had seemingly not even deigned to enter the fray personally. Their absences as inexplicable as they were notable. The future of the battle was perched upon a precipice not had been truly won and neither side could claim to have the upper hand just yet. But as Ferris Manus and his iron hands continued inflicting the chill ferocity of Medusa upon their enemies a cry went up amongst the Avernii clan. Dropships. Reinforcements. Salvation. Justice. Retribution. All in the form of the four promised legions. They had come at 3.4 hours post initial planet fall. Thousands more orbital landers streamed from the heavens towards the Orgal Depression touching down at the initial drop site of the retributory vanguard and in several key locations surrounding the valley. The Alpha Legion streamed towards the left flank while the word bearers took up the right. Divisions from the Night Lords reinforced both their cousins as well as seeding squads in drop pods amongst forward iron hands positions. The iron warriors landed massive orbital craft amongst the rearmost echelons per their standard tactics. The custom craft of the 4th Legion entrenching themselves and acting as loci for prefabricated fortifications and artillery emplacements. It was as if a mirror to the traitors own castellum was suddenly appearing. A citadel in opposition to Horace's own but built with frightening speed. At the mouth of the valley its armored sheets and walls were expanding ever outwards. More and more reinforcements poured from orbit tertiary drop sites being created with every minute as four whole legions now joined the battle. Korax and Vulcan immediately hailed Ferris Manus on the Vox networks, suggesting immediate retreat from their respective front lines. Never the largest of the legions, the 18th and the 19th had suffered vicious casualties in the fighting. The Raven Guard at the hands of the world eaters and sons of Horace, the salamanders to the weaponry of the Death Guard. The Gorgon would hear naught of the concept. Unthinkable to him was retreat, not now, not with renewed strength that was to be had from recently arrived allies, but the accounts of survivors. It is at this juncture that Fulgrim emerged before the lines of the iron hands. The Phoenician taunting the Lord of the 10th Legion, baiting him attack and reap in vengeance what his honor demanded. The response was immediate. Ferris Manus broke from his own ranks, oblivious to all but the sight of his erstwhile brother, fury blind, blood mad, berserk from the pain of betrayal. The laughter of Fulgrim was said to have rung around the Urgal Depression with a clarity impossible. The primark of the third, artfully trading blows with the meteoric attacks of the Gorgon in a duel unlike anything the galaxy had ever beheld. As the first elements of the retreating Raven Guard and salamanders approached the new drop sites of the reinforcing legions, hails were sounded over interlegion Vox channels. Thanks were given for sorely needed reprieve. They were calls of welcome, of gratitude. A fraternal relief in a world turned upside down. They were ignorant. They did not know. They could not possibly have known. A flare brighter than the sun in the ash choked skies. Shot skyward from the war master's lines. As red as blood spilled. And then treachery. It was the word bearers that opened fire first. The first traitors, although such a thing would only be revealed in the years of pain and death that were to follow. The legion of Lorgar had waited for this moment with a religious fervour. Their act of purest malignant betrayal, one of, they believed, cosmic significance. Worship upon the altar of duplicity and deceit. The Raven Guard who had approached their lines had barely a chance to register what was occurring before being scythe down by hundreds of legionary bolters. The remaining traitors did not waste any time. The guns of the iron warriors opened up, launching an artillery barrage that blanketed the entire Ergal depression in death. The Alpha Legion and the Night Lords unsheathed daggers and plunged them into loyalist necks. The bloodshed was immediate. It was total. It was abominable. The loyalists took fire at point blank range. There was no cover. There was no defense. None was believed needed. A startys that had survived three hours of the most hellish combat in the history of the Imperium simply dropped dead. Broken in body and in mind. Flesh detonated by the bolts of the traitor legions. The gunships of the Night Lords sowed phosphax munitions amongst those that had survived the initial salvos, blanketing retreating loyalists in the fire that would not die, the crawling death. In the rearward lines, the Alpha Legion struck apothecarian stations in overwhelming force, slaughtering the wounded and those that sought to tend them. Before turning its coils towards the Imperial Army. Never being one to strike unless from a position of overwhelming superiority, the harrowing of the 20th Legion was slaughter at its most base. Nothing able to halt the Hydra's rampage. The world collapsed. All was betrayal. All was massacre. Apocalyptic. Vicious. Sadistic. Impossible. But so terribly real. Amidst this, Ferris Manus and Fulgrim yet fought. The Phoenician's laughter had risen to a hysterical torrent at the moment of treason. His taunts to his brother now carrying the poison of what was happening all across the battlefield. It is impossible to know if this could have deepened Manus's rage yet further. The propensity for fury had been with him all his life. A chilling collar present in his soul, only tempered by his equally frosty reason. He was at this point seemingly drowning in anger. The mental conditioning of his creation broken utterly by the pain of losing his most treasured brother to apparent madness. The blows traded by the Primarchs were thunderclaps, producing sonic waves that broke earth and shattered even Astartes eardrums. Each scored the body of the other with a dozen wounds that would have killed any being lesser than they. Fulgrim with his sword Fireblade, Manus with the hammer Forgebreaker. The brothers were as unalike as any two within the Emperor's progeny. Yet they had forged a kinship closer than almost any other pairing. Neither would yield, neither could yield. The world around them burned and broke. The iron hands desperately fighting to reach their Primarch were overwhelmed. Broken into tiny pockets of resistance by the Emperor's children, the Sons of Horus and the World Eaters freed as these legions now were by the arrival of the newly revealed traitor armies. Yet on the Primarchs fought. And from this point history is a blur of myth and legend. None of Manus's Avernii escorts survived to tell of what had occurred. Blasphemously, the only sources that we have upon the incident were torn from the minds of captured traitors, or whispered throughout the years in the way that all such tales of pivotal events inevitably evolve. The most common telling states that the Gorgon finally landed a near-perfect blow upon his brother, casting the Phoenician to the Black Sands and tossing Fireblade from his grip. Laid low, Fulgrim was no longer possessed of laughter, but now with a toxic viciousness. He unsheathed a blade he had claimed once, long ago, from the Xenos Lair. Loyalist psychic sensitives reported towards the end of a battle a spike in etheric energy somewhere in the Orgolic Depression. Scholars have posited this weapon. This event was its source, although they are only capable of making this assertion, given all that had transpired. With the cursed sword, Fulgrim, third son of the Emperor, beheaded Therys Manus, claiming the life of his brother. The first amongst Kinslayers, and far from the last, darker powers awakened now as the symphony of violence reached greater and greater heights. Amongst the word-bearers, the so-called Galvorback, the Blessed Sons, began to reveal themselves as blood sprayed and bodies were torn. These were the twins sold, the possessed, first of the traitor legions to sell their selves to the never-born creatures of the Dark Gods in exchange for worldly power. Revealed to their loyalist foes at last, the Galvorback were even more monstrous than the debased Emperor's children. Their bodies mutating visibly into bestial, warped war forms. Hidious jaws and protruding claws formed from the melding of ceramite and flesh through pure demonic power. Observing his sons, observing the slaughter, was Lorgar himself. The Thrice-cursed arch-traitor was recorded at having wept at the bloodshed, whispering to himself that these were once his kin. If this was grief, if this was guilt, if this was religious rapture, it is impossible to know for the mind of so debased a being as the Yorizen is unknowable to any. His reverie was however broken, but the darkening of the skies with pinions of sable, arriving like a lightning bolt, a blur of grey-black armor slammed into the 17th Primarch faster than even Astartes physiology could track. Korax, half mad with sorrow and fury, tore through the Galvorback, slaughtering the demon things and forcing Lorgar to act. Despite the supposed tumult in the Primarch's soul, despite his distinct lack of physical or combat prowess, Lorgar Aurelian hurled himself at Korax, swinging his crosious mace. Korax dodged every single attack with ease, screaming profanities at his brother, demanding to know the cause of this madness, swearing, death eternal upon the betrayers. His overpowering of Lorgar was a relatively simple affair for the Ravenlord. The Yorizen was no warrior, and Korax was one of the Imperium's finest. One of the Primarch's great talons speared into the 17th Sun's belly, just as its twin was about to reach for the beheading, Lorgar's salvation arrived from a wholly unexpected turn. Conrad Curse, the Nighthaunter, the grim Primarch of the Aeth Legion Nightlords, had intervened, had deigned to intervene. The Ravenlord, unwilling to fight a second of his brothers, having just overcome a first, retreated, his true objective having ever been to buy time for the evacuation of his sons. Curse is reported to have expressed his extreme disgust for Lorgar, before returning to reveling in slaughter. Ferris Manus lay dead, his head torn from his demigod body. Korax's fate would slip from the pages of history for some time, following his confrontation with Lorgar. The remaining loyalist Primarch, Vulcan, was at this point last seen by his salamanders, holding a desperate rearguard alone against an impossible number of traitors, until a volley of atomic fire consumed him. It is difficult to tell when the battle ended there, in the Urgal Depression. For once the revealed traitors had opened fire, it no longer deserved the name. It was now, as it would ever be known, the Dropsite Massacre. An act of breathtaking brutality unrivalled in its duplicity and inhumanity in the annals of history. Pockets of resistance were surrounded and eviscerated, winnowed, bled. Survivors fleeing a fighting retreat for what drop ships remained operational, reaped what tolls they could from their betrayers, before gunning engines for orbit. But this was no recompense. Nothing could come close. By all accounts, the Alpha Legion were the first to withdraw from active combat operations, removing themselves from the valley so as not to spend any more lives in an already won battle, and to avoid frothing bands of world eaters that were as much a danger to friend as they were to foe. When the guns of the Iron Warrior stopped firing, the only truly active Astartes left belonged to the most sadistic and twisted of the Emperor's children, sons of Horus, and Night Lords, gleefully taking bloody trophies from the shattered remains of the fallen loyal. In orbit, the war lasted for several more hours than it did on the ground. The ships of the loyalists had been fully shielded at the moment of the trail, and were thus far less easy prey for the traitors than the Astartes' planet side. Many remained stubbornly in geosynchronicity with the drop site, receiving in their holds any and all gunships and landers that made it to safety, forced to retreat only when they had sustained damage that threatened their warp engines, or when the outer system all speck sweeps detected the immaterial wakes of the approaching fleets of the original traitor legions. Of these ships and their sundry fates, history had yet to dictate. Many made it out system, but with conveyance bays painfully, dreadfully empty. The drop site massacre thus concluded. Not with a howl of victory, but with the type of silence that can only fall when those that had filled it have simply perished, punctuated only by the screaming of baseline humans being flayed alive by the Night Lords, the odd explosion of burning ammunition reserves, or the rage-filled impotency of mortally wounded with still alive loyalists. The Urgal Depression was a choked mass of wreckage and bodies. Initial death toll estimates, laterally revised by historians, placed the tally at nearly 200,000 Astartes alone, but numbers of unaugmented troops genuinely unaccountable. One Primarch lay dead, two more were missing and presumed so. While the losses of the loyalist legions were not total, their efficacy as combat operative legions was essentially ended. None had gathered in their totality. Such a thing was impossible at this point in the Great Crusade given the deployment of the Legion as Astartes to all corners of the galaxy, but the iron hands, the salamanders, and the Ravenguard had been mortally wounded by the massacre. Bands of survivors, having fled out system or into the ravines and canyons surrounding the Urgal Depression, would of course go on to lead storied histories throughout the coming years. Many would reap fearsome tallies from the traitors in revenge, but it is not for nothing that these warbands are collectively known as the shattered legions. The iron hands in particular fared especially poorly. The first Astartes Legion in recorded history to witness and suffer the death of their Primarch, they were, bluntly, mentally incapable of processing the trauma this loss inflicted. This would express itself in many forms. Suicidal rage and some complete detachment in others rampant endless nihilism in yet more. Shattered is the only word applicable to their Astartes memed psychology. They were weapons in the forms of men, retaining some of their programming, but unable to reconcile the reality they now occupied. The roles these loyalist legions would later play in the heresy, all of their tales will be discussed in later records. But it is without a doubt that their part in the greater conflict ended before it had even begun. The Dropsite Massacre is one of the darkest acts of the traitor Horace Lupacal, an enduring cancer upon the history of the galaxy. Yet it was in so many ways a mere prelude of what was to come. The great crusade was finished. Now had begun the Age of Darkness, Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. or follow me on Twitter at OculusImperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.