 In his Notes Towards Marshal Codification, section 4.1.9, the primarch of the Ultramarines, Rebut Gulliman, remarked that, "'Battle is not a state to be entered into lightly. Battle is always painful, and always comes at a price. So the astute commander never commits to battle unless no other options remain. Once that commitment is made, once the phase of execution or primary condition has begun, it must be done with the utmost efficacy. A rapid application of overwhelming force to obliterate your enemy as quickly as possible. Do not give him the time and space to react. Do not leave him with any material or opportunity that he can use in a rallying phase. Eliminate him physically and psychologically so that his threat is entirely removed. Kill him with your first shot. Utterly annihilate him with your first strike. This may be considered the application of attack in its purest form." The irony of such an understanding, given what was to unfold, is lost to none. Certainly not even he, who committed it by stylus to record. Pinned at a time when the Great Crusade was at its zenith, notes towards martial codification is a preparatory work for the Primarch, which is not to say it is not robust. Quite the opposite, it is one of the finest works of the era, entering easily into military theoretical canon, alongside surviving works by Antaxas, Makulius, and Von Kloswitz. It is in many ways a highly foundational step upon the 13th Primarch's road to his defining work, the post-heresy Codex Astartes. It is also an embodiment of Gillibans' detached clinical writing style, the treatment of the chaos, insanity, and sheer bloody horror of war. It's a problem to be solved by the application of a stern mind and keen will, bereft of any of the emotion that actual warfare sets a flame within any human the moment they fire a gun or pick up a blade. It is redolent of Gilliman writing from a place of absolute surety, both in the theoretical, practical mindset adopted by him and his legion, in the supremacy of his tactical mind, and in the security of the world he inhabited and his place within it. Codification is a relic of a time when the Primarch looked forward to days where such a document would be simple theory of a necessity long since past, of hopes of a galaxy without war, where a mind such as his could be bent to the building of a civilization rather than its imperialistic military expansion. That Gilliman died, along with the ideals he once dreamed possible, in the fires of a great betrayal, alongside the sons he sought to uplift. That Gilliman burned in the fires unleashed by he who he thought brethren, those who he thought kindred. That Gilliman, he who penned notes towards martial codification, is lost to us forever. The imperium he dreamed of, even more so. Know then, that this is a record of the vengeance of a legion, of a crusade cast in shadow, of the death of a dream, a record of the betrayal at Calth. The betrayal at Calth has nothing in the way of a single beginning. It was a myriad of ways, products of decades of emnities and bitterness, plans and machinations, and detached strategic necessities. It was a confluence, a meeting of demands emotional, military, and arcane. This macro alignment, a pleasing thing indeed to those who planned the atrocity and their dark patrons. Passing out the strands of these beginnings is necessary for as complete an understanding of the catastrophe as possible, but when doing so, one faces a myriad of barriers. The complexities of the pieces in motion, the devastation wrought on history by the passage of this war, and the vested interests of those who catalog the records in its aftermath. The sources one draws upon for this chronicle were in large part saved due to the habitual diligence of the ultramarines, 13th Legion Astartes, committed as they were and yet remain to learning all possible lessons even an atrocity of this magnitude could provide. From the battle itself, its aftermath, to the years of rebuilding and scouring that followed, the eventual cessation of hostilities in the volume, the 13th Legion extensively documented Calth and all combat actions that took place in and around the Veridia system, in the hopes that future generations of Imperial citizens may avoid such calamities as had been committed against them. One particular source, the foundational one for any discourse regarding this event, Funnilyaaf comes from a glorianatlas battleship named the Chronicle of Ash, bound to the 17th Legion word-bearers, captured by the ultramarines in 017 M31, three years standard after the Siege of Terra. The ship, defended by a mere handful of support cruisers, had seemingly spent the entirety of the heresy and the years since weaving its way through the eastern fringe. Her capture was a boon to the Imperium in many ways rather than simply ending the threat that she posed. Her massive internal halls were covered in their entirety with what appeared to be the sum total history of the word-bearers Legion and their accomplishments, penned in spidery runes of dead caulkists. For years, the earliest members of the Inquisition painstakingly catalogued the writings, parsing out secrets hitherto unknown to the Imperium and transcribing them into tomes that would later be sealed under maximal security protocols and inviolate memetic defences, lest the taint so profound amongst members of that damnable Legion be transmissible through their runic language. Few commented on the profound and twisted mirror the Chronicle of Ash represented. Just as the ultramarines had endeavored to learn all they could from Calth, so too had the word-bearers sought to document and record their own history of the event for purposes altogether of more dread intent. Four, the word-bearers, the origins of Calth are twofold. The first and most natural is the drop-side massacre at Istvan V, at which the Legion was present and, according to some apocrypha, the first to open fire upon the unsuspecting iron hands, Ravenguard and Salamander's loyalists they had been meant to reinforce. On that world's black sands had the opening salvos of the heresy truly been fired. The warmaster Horace Lupercal breaking the compact of brotherhood that had been the Legionia's astartes and plunging the galaxy into a civil war the likes of which had never stained the stars. Despite the breaking of three whole legions, despite the scattering of their shattered remnants far and wide across the Imperium, despite nine legions firmly at his beck and call, the warmaster yet held no decisive military advantage. The disaster of dealing with loyalist elements within the original four traitor legions during the betrayal at Istvan III and the defiance of the surprised yet furious loyalists at the drop site massacre had stymied the warmaster's progress, just enough to deprive him of the total surprise he would have needed to seize core imperial systems and terror itself with minimal resistance. The delays coupled with those loyalists that had managed to flee the massacres, most notably those aboard the heavy frigate Eisenstein, meant that the Imperium and the Emperor would eventually come to learn of the treason sooner than Horus could reach Terra. There would be no quick victory. Once roused, the Imperium would raise mighty armies in retribution and shore up its defenses against him. Potentially billions of loyal soldiery would stand between the warmaster and the walls of the Imperial Palace to make no mention of Horus' brother Primarchs and their own legions. Of those that had fallen on Istvan, the 10th Legion iron hands and their now dead Primarch, Ferris Manus, was a grievous loss to the Imperium indeed. But for all their loyalty, they and the sundered 19th Legion Ravenguard and 18th Legion salamanders, whenever the largest of the legionaries astartes, the latter two in particular, ranking as amongst the smallest in terms of numerical disposition. Opposing Horus would now be the largest of the legions that were not pledged to him. The blood angels rivaled his brother Pertorabbo's iron warriors in size, and Horus knew within his hearts that the warriors of Sanguinius would, in a straight fight, likely be worth more than the dour corpse grinders of the fourth. The lion's first legion dark angels, despite still recovering decades after their mauling at the hands of the Xenos Rangda, were lethal beyond the capabilities of any other legion and yet formidable in numbers besides. And then there were the ultramarines, the noble thirteenth of Rebut Gulliman, vast beyond all others, some 250,000 astartes at least, and possessing industrial and recruitment base that could be ramped up to astonishing capacities in scarcely any time at all. These were paramount threats. The loyalists had lost one primark, missing two more, and were deprived of three entire legions, yet numerically, the remaining were more than enough to tip the scales against Horus if left unchecked. The war master had, of course, foreseen this potential eventuality and had bent his machinations to tempering the threat that loyalists could pose to him. Knowing he nor any of his traitor kin would not possibly be able to sway the loyal brethren that yet remained to his camp, he sought instead to ensure their ability to reap vengeance against him was compromised in the fullest of ways. To the Dark Angels, he assigned Purgatian operations in the Thramas reaches, far to the Galactic East at the very edge of the Emperor's light, seeking to simply remove the lion and his sons from the board for as long as possible by placing them as far away as possible. The Space Wolves had already been maneuvered into the burning of Prospero, bleeding them horribly and were currently licking their wounds, wandering into the coils of the traitor Alpha Legion, who were also attempting to pin down their mercurial fifth Legion white scars. The Blood Angels were dispatched to a grand trap in the Cygnus Cluster, arranged in concert with the war master's never-born allies from beyond the veil of reality. The Ultramarines required a far more direct approach. The 13th Legion had, since their reunification with their Primarch expanded massively, creating for themselves an impressive empire within an empire, the 500 worlds of Ultramar. Despite its location in the further Eastern Galactic volumes, the realm of Gilliman was perhaps the most successful of any within the Imperium beyond the core systems surrounding Terrae itself. The Primarch's peerless logistics, acumen and vision had seen him play the statesman as much as a military leader, concerning himself with the work of building a society within his father's empire as much as winning worlds for it. Ultramar was a shining light in the dark, the proverbial city upon the hill. It brought colonists to the Eastern fringes in astonishing numbers, buoyed by healthy land allotments, promised to Imperial Army servicemen mustering out of their tours, as well as inviolate borders protected from Xenos Reavers by the unassailable might of the 13th Legion. It was in many ways the promise of the Imperium made manifest, a safe, stable and prosperous realm where all worked for the betterment of the whole, delivering to those loyal a life free from the generational terrors of old night. Albeit at the cost, as with all Imperial worlds, of bulldozing non-compliant populations with genocide and cultural obliteration. Because of all this, it provided a phenomenal base of operations for the Imperial military. The Ultramarines had a wider base for recruitment than any other Legion, not even speaking to the genetic stability of their gene seed and the subservient populations. The colonial might of the 500 worlds additionally supplied millions of troops to the Exertus Imperialis. Numerous night households were pledged to the realm and several Titan legions, foremost amongst them, the honorable Ligio Prasagius, maintained close ties with the Forge worlds of the Volu, Conor and Gantz. Horus was keenly aware that once word of his rebellion spread, Ultramar would function as a loyalist fortress, within which potential billions of army troopers and tens of thousands of Astartes would be raised and set against him. Geographic location in the Galactic East placed it on his flank for any push towards terror from the Warmasters' holes in the Northern reaches. Ultramar and its Legion must simply be broken. This was a task the 17th Primarch, Lorgar Aurelian, and his Legion, the Word Bearers, were only too ready to commit to. The enmity between legions 13 and 17 was decades old, born of the actions of the Word Bearers and the role of the Ultramarines in bringing them to task. Subsequent to their reunification with Lorgar, the 17th Legion, once the Imperial heralds, had been rechristened to the Word Bearers. Transformed from the iconoclasts burning with the fires of the Imperial truth into the proselytizers of the worship of the Emperor as divine. While this history will be elaborated on in greater detail in a subsequent record, suffice it to say that, at least initially, the annals of the Great Crusade record the Emperor as having offered no rebuke to Lorgar's behavior, even though it was in direct violation of his own writ, his own laws, and his plans for the human species. Or rather, that this was not done openly. Writings from Lorgar's brothers, recovered from this time, reveal that the Emperor had shared his disquiet with the 17th Activities with his son privately, yet to obviously no avail. The situation appeared at least tolerable until the pace of the Word Bearers across the Great Crusade began to slow, eventually grinding to a near standstill, as the Legion invested ever more time and effort into compliance operations that focused nearly entirely on converting the population of rediscovered human worlds to religious worship of the Emperor and his Imperium. By the time Word had spread amongst the Divisio Militaris of the 17th Legion's violation of both Imperial law and their commitments to the Crusade, the Emperor was already moving. In 963, M-30, he dispatched the Ultramarines, with Gilliman at their head, to raise utterly the city of Monarchia on the planet Kerr, an icon for Lorgar and his Legion of all they had accomplished in the name of the Imperium and their god Emperor. The Legion, summoned to the ashes of their work, were forced as one by the Emperor to kneel before him in censure. The shame announced by their god and before the eyes of the Ultramarines who stood above them in judgment. A mirror held up to their weeping faces of the Astartes they should aspire to become. The censure became widely known following the raising of Monarchia. It was no doubt meant to be, publicly visible shaming in full view of all. A reminder that the Emperor's grace had its limits even for those he counted as his sons. The word bearers were now cast as low as any of the Legion as Astartes had ever been, save for the total purgation that had befallen the 10th and 11th legions, only thanks to the Emperor's mercy. Forever now, they were the bearer not merely of his word, but also his reprimand. As far as history records the aftermath, Lorgar withdrew into contemplative seclusion, long enough that there were rumors that the Emperor would rebuke him yet again. But eventually emerged in possession of a fervor hitherto unseen in the 17th son's actions. Few thought anything of this. But we of the dark future know the truth. Within that seclusion, and thanks to his subsequent pilgrimage, Lorgar Aurelian had turned to new gods, old and terrible, ones he deemed worthy of his worship. The primordial annihilator, chaos, the dark gods of the dread pantheon. The shame of Monarchia, the arrogance of the Ultramarines, those burned within the hearts of the Primarch and his sons, even those who had not yet felt before the master of mankind. The raising had entered legion myth as the greatest crime committed against them, the resentment fueling their apotheosis into devotees of the greater intelligences of the warp. It is likely the plans drawn up for Calth and the 17th's advance into Ultramar in general were developed between Lorgar and Horus acting in concert. It was, of course, mutually beneficial. Horus knew well what drove his emotional tempestuous brother and sought to yoke his own plans to it, while Lorgar saw the perfect opportunity to advance the aims of his war master, his gods, and the reaping of vengeance against his hated brother in one singular swoop. Just as the 17th Primarch had been instrumental in the corruption of Horus and the eventual enactment of the dropside massacre, so too was the planning for the betrayal launched far ahead of Istvan V's black sands. Orders for the grand muster of the 13th Legion were issued to Gilliman as early as 005 M31. Warp horologues record the Primarch as having departed Saturn, only scant months before the Eisenstein brought word of the war master's betrayal to that same system. Owing to the chronological vagaries of the warp and the fell influence of Horus's new patrons, the word from the wider Imperium bled away as the Ultramarines forged a slow and winding path from the Imperial core back to Ultramar. Appearing for all the world as a markedly severe but not entirely unprecedented upsurge in immaterial storms, Gilliman paid the disturbances little heed. Assured that the Imperium and his 500 worlds had many a contingency for the continuance of operations in times of raging, aetheric storms. Passage was slow but manageable and communication yet possible with the disparate elements of the 13th Legion. Now ordered by their war master and Primarch both to gather at the planet Calth in the Viridian system in their near totality. The muster was, of course, purposeful. Intelligence had reached Horus, he claimed, of a Xenos threat, that of the gashlack Orc Warboss and his empire. Bordering that of Ultramar and the Viridian system within which lay Calth and her shipyards. Having suffered the predations of the Orc menace in decades past, this was a credible reason for concern. That Gilliman, the Ultramarines and any of the Ultramarian military strategos had scryed little Xenos activity on their realms borders, was raised by few. The intelligence came from the war master and the military leader of the Imperium would of course have access to more detailed reports. The Ultramarines would preemptively annihilate this Xenohold and they would not do so alone. By Horus' order, the Purgatian expedition would be conducted in concert with the word bearers. The reasons behind this were obvious to any who beheld the simple outline of the operation. This was a move by the newly minted war master to cement his authority. Who else would have the goal to order the Ultramarines to gather in their entirety? The largest and nearly most successful of the emperor's legions. And then there was the history of the legions concerned. Well known, well established. The Primarchs had little love lost for each other and neither did their sons. But after all, was this not a new imperial era? The Eleanor campaign had marked the end of true existential threats to the Imperium. The empire and its estartes were looking forward now to the future and to what form that future would take. Was it not time to bury past disagreements and forge new brotherhoods? The war master was taking two legions at odds and forcing them to work together despite their apparent wishes. It had all the hallmarks of the blunt, well-meaning and at the same time keenly observant Horus Lupacal. Here was the perfect opportunity, no doubt, to bury the proverbial Gladius. Feelings amongst the Ultramarines at all levels were quite mixed. The more idealistic of the legion looked forward to an opportunity to move beyond the years of the past. Some openly delighting in what they may learn from the 17th Legion, a force that had appeared to have truly changed in the decades since the censure. Others were more caloric. This was pageantry, they opined, or worse, charity, granting the word-bearer as a chance to win some glory on the coattails of the 13th Legion, who would of course be doing the real work of the campaign. Yet others of a more practical men decried the ludicrous overkill, the upcoming pregation represented. There was simply no way the Xenohold of the Orcs required the material strength being committed. Not merely two legions, but their primarchs as well. Whatever the political considerations, surely this was simply too much. The politics of it all were obvious and simply paved over. Gilliman saw this all for what it was and nevertheless resolved to its commitment without protest. Seeing the value in renewed brotherhood and ceding to the authority that his brother Horus was still clearly needing to project. Of course, the true intent behind the muster was only made obvious in dreadful hindsight. Indeed, the gashlack Xenohold, as presented by Horus to the Divisio Militaris as a massive threat to ultramar sanctity, is likely to simply have never existed at all. Investigations subsequent to the heresy revealed little in the way of evidence for any orc infestation in the volumes outlined by the Warmaster's Missives. At best, several Xenos raids on the fortress world of Galsoria can be verifiable across records at the time, but of the supposed Warboss Gashlack, nothing can be verified in documentation that did not have Horus' direct involvement in creating. Given what occurred, it is lightly that the threat was entirely fictitious. Serving to simply justify the removal of Gilliman and the bulk of the 13th Legion from the Imperial core worlds, and placing them in the path of Lorgar and his own schemes. That the Imperium would be warned of the treachery of the fallen legions was an eventuality now assured. Despite his fury at being robbed of complete shock, Horus was well aware that this had been a possible outcome and had taken such into account. The first terrible acts of the heresy that the Istvan system had been accomplished. The traitors yet possessed the element of surprise and a phenomenal capacity to affect confusion and disinformation in order to prolong the early stage of advantage. The fragile communications infrastructure of astro telepathy was vulnerable to both capture with traitor operatives ensuring the largest choirs in the surrounding volumes were silenced and aetheric disturbances, which were brewing at frightening speed and intensity in the aftermath of the Istvan atrocities. This, given Horus's new gods, has been supposed as being a part of some dark compact. The greater intelligences roiling the currents of their realm to speed the passage of their minions and deny that of their foes. The disturbances spreading from Istvan's position in the Galactic North reached further and further outwards. Smothering the furbile dreams of Astropath's galaxy-wide with a fugue state of nightmarish phantoms and malign portents. The surest word of treachery was carried essentially alone by loyalist craft fleeing the catastrophes that had befallen them. And these were ever dogged by ravenous traitor pursuers. Sometimes even in instances where they had managed to reach loyal worlds, too often did they find no means of passing their tales of betrayal to higher authorities and that traitorous ships breached the warp impossibly soon after they themselves had only limped back into real space. By 006 M31, the hand of Horus began to emerge, stretching over systems in the Galactic North in the first moves of building his dark empire. Even as the first steps of the Warmaster on his long, bloody road to terror were being trod, a combined armada of the 17th Legion word-bearers and 12th Legion world-eaters was making astonishingly good progress towards Ultramar. Under the command of Lorgar and the 12th Primarch, Angron, they made a segmentum-breaking force, even despite the wounds suffered by both at the Istvan atrocities. The world-eaters as partipitators of the ground war during Istvan III had bled significant manpower, but those that remained were truly hardened killers, not to mention now twice blooded in combating fellow Astartes. Word-bearers supplemented their cousin's material strength considerably, having utilized the years since Monarchia to vastly swell their numbers in an effort to match that of the hated Ultramarines. It also ensured to amass one of the largest void fleets of any Legion, possessing at this stage over a hundred capital ships, including nine Gloriana-class, several of which had only recently been captured as prizes from the now-shattered legions in titanic void clashes above the drop-side massacre. To supplement this, were three Abyss-class super-battleships, the Trisagian, the Blessed Lady, and the Furious Abyss herself. Considered to be amongst the most powerful void ships ever constructed by the hands of mankind. The fleet of the world-eaters was somewhat lesser in terms of sheer tonnage, but had a storied reputation for aggression and was outfitted accordingly, favoring viciously fast frigates and pursuit vessels armed with the vicious iconic Ursus Claws, designed to ensnare and deliver legionaries in bloody boarding actions. Led by the 17th Fidelitas Lex and the 12th Conqueror, the Armada carried some 300,000 Astartes and innumerable auxilia, both in the form of Imperial Army regiments and degenerate warp cults inducted by the word-bearers. Their route is distressingly easy to trace. Their path was marked by a string of totally devastated systems, gruesome waypoint markers for the passage of the traitor brothers. There's little discernible reason for the choice of worlds the Armada was unleashed upon beyond simple proximity to their route. No capture or conquest was undertaken. No forces were left behind as garrisons. Populations were simply slaughtered. What slaves were taken appeared to be few. The fate of these poor worlds were marked either by butchery at the hands of the world eaters or human sacrifice by those of the word-bearers. Death was either fast, a body broken into by a chain axe or slow, skin flayed and blood drained atop an altar to eldritch powers. A great number of profane ritual arrangements of corpses constructed by the 17th Legion served to mark precursors to the atrocities committed in Ultramar and it is highly possible that these gruesome votive offerings were undertaken to speed the fleet on its way southwards. As history records us, the first Ultramarines to die at the hands of the 17th and 12th so-called shadow crusade were a garrison force on the world of Anorum. A military outpost initially seized by the 12th expeditionary fleet on its long march to Ultramar. The world had later been fortified and manned by the Ultramarines as a way station for the movement of crusade fleets throughout the Galactic East. It was heavily manned. It's garrison consisting of a full company of Ultramarines enough to capture an entire planetary system with ease as well as several regiments of solar auxilia recruited from the advanced industrial cities that dotted the world. A robust, flexible force, the envy of many a crusade-era operation. They died in less than a day. Angron was recorded as having personally led the attack, demolishing all resistance before him and putting the world to the torch in under 24 hours. But the killing dragged on for weeks as blood-mad world eaters hunted down survivors alongside the Galvorback, the so-called Blessed Sons of the Word-bearers. Glutting themselves both in human lives and armament stock, the armada of the two Primarchs at this point disappears from recognizable imperial space. It is presumed that the route they took forward passed through the forbidden region of Galactic space known to the Cartagraphica Imperialis as the Dominion of Storms. Such a route would ordinarily only be undertaken by the mad or suicidal. The volume is riven with warp disturbances, currents and anomalies of exceptional ferocity and unpredictability. That the fleet's passage was even possible at all is entirely due to paranormal interferences and patronage. Even still, the records of the Chronicle of Ash attest that the journey was fractious. Angron and his legion growing weary of the lack of victims for their bloodthirst wasted excessive time hunting for worlds to prey upon. Lorgar and his brother almost came to blows on more than one occasion as the Urizen sought to keep Angron on target, only to be saved by an attack mounted upon the armada by Eldari ships in the depths of the Xercinia prohibited zone. In a stark and unexpected boon, the Chronicle of Ash penned it as a gift from the Dark Pantheon for Lorgar was gifted with prophecy by an Eldari seer, albeit unwillingly, concerning the fate of Angron and Aurelian's own part within it. That, however, is a dark and terrible tale for another record altogether. By 007, M31, the borders of the Xercinia prohibited zone had been reached by the ships of the Shadow Crusade. The volume, the nominal border of the Dominion of Storms and Ultramarian space presided over by Calth herself, was an ideal staging ground. A quarantine zone enacted during the Great Crusade by the Titan legio Tempestus, Xercinia was a plague region. An ancient and utterly lethal Xenos pathogen had been inflicted upon the crusade fleet that had attempted to purge Eldari maiden worlds therein, capable, seemingly, of circumventing void shields and atmospheric locks. No ship was permitted access under penalty of destruction by Ultramarian picket fleets that regularly patrolled the border. Lurking within, the traitor fleet avoided detection utterly, but simply, absolutely no one was looking for them. Dates here are uncertain. It is quite likely that the fleet emerged fairly staggered, as even by a passage sped by patrons on natural, no armada of this size could maintain coherency of formation for that long a journey, making a period of consolidation quite necessary. As a greater fleet reassembled, reaver flotillas were doubtless dispatched into Ultramar border regions. A sudden upsurge in missing ships at this point in history, logged as disappearances chalked up to warp anomalies, have been revised historically as victims of the shadow crusade. Some recovered logs even attest to navigators being lured off course by false beacons, assumed now to have been Wordbearer's warp craft meant to usurp the etheric site of these mutants and trap imperial ships to their doom. Those captured were utilized for intelligence gathering. Their bridge crews, mined broken by Wordbearer diabolists, the traitors extracting as much as they could about the status of Ultramar's shipping patrols and Calt's defenses, well aware that by now, even with Gilliman delayed, the muster would be well underway. The information was vital to shoring up the traitors' plans for the system. While the defenses of the world and of Ultramar itself were no secret to the legions, them still being counted as brothers in arms, no legion would ever fully divulge its entire strength, especially after the burning of Prospero. Calth, of course, was not the only target. With hundreds of captive captains shorn of all intelligence they could render, the Shadow Crusade began to subdivide. The two furious Abyss-class ships, Trusagian and Blessed Lady, formed up with the Fidelitas Lex and the Conqueror to make the core of one of the main thrusts, set against the war world of Armature, the most fortified planet in the entirety of the 500 worlds after McCrag itself. The hub of the region's military might, Armature was the center of the Ultramarine and Exertus Imperialis mustering and training, making its destruction as central to the entire traitor agenda. Lorgar and Angron themselves would see to this. Calth was left in the hands of Erebus and Core Phaeron, first chaplain and first captain of the word bearers respectively, leading the majority of the word bearers fleet with all of its Gloriana-class ships. 100 small flotillas were dispatched across all compass points, formed of the pack hunters of the world eaters and what remaining destroyers and barks could be spared from the word bearers. All with the intent to winnow and bleed whatever Ultramarine or Navus Imperialis ships they encountered and inflict as much infrastructural and population destruction as they could. There would be in all cases, absolutely no attempt made to capture territory, nor even any efforts to strike at strategic targets. Calth and Armature were the only ones of note and the only ones in play. The Shadow Crusade was unconcerned with worlds like Konor, Eax, Gantz or Espendor. Not when there were hundreds more agri worlds, industrial centers and fledgling colonies with nothing in the way of defenses for them to glut themselves upon. Its first and foremost aim was death, bloodshed and terror. Every cruelty, every crime, every ounce of malice must be committed upon the civilians of the 500 worlds with as much psychopathic creativity as could be mustered by those enacting it. The suffering of Ultramar's people was the aim. Fuel for Lorgar's sorcerous schemes and vengeance for a legion still holding in their hearts the shame of Menarchia. As a fleet separated to bring about their murderous rampages, Eravus aboard the destiny's hand and Corferon aboard his own capital ship still broadcasting her old ident tags of rapturous wrecks made wake for the muster at Calth. The betrayal would soon begin in earnest and it would do so with but a single ship. Historical records frequently debate on the precise beginnings of the Battle of Calth. As one has discussed in the previous record, the roots of the catastrophe stretch back into the great crusade itself with the 13th Legion's role in the humbling of Lorgar at Menarchia. More recently than that, there was the necessity of removing the Ultramarines and their Primark from the proverbial field in the early days of Horus Lupacal's grand treachery. The progress of the 12th and 17th legions towards the realm of Ultramar was marked by a string of genocides and slaughters including of the Ultramarines themselves at the planet of Anorum. Any of these points could serve as the true beginning for the Battle of Calth. But in the strictest analytical terms as defined by the Ultramarines themselves, records of the engagement begin at just under 137 hours before Primark Rebut Gulliman ordered the return of fire. The fleet tender Campanile, an auxiliary naval vessel serving as logistical support for the 13th Legion's Armada, was seized at the Tarmus Apogee, deep in the Viridian system's far space by cult followers of the word-bearers and presumably several of their esoterists. She is considered from this point in official logs, albeit only ones compiled in the aftermath as lost with all hands. This includes the 3,709 crew members, the shipmaster, the navigator, as well as laterally discovered to have been aboard during Ultramarines post-mortem investigations, two mechanical fabricators, a Calth portmaster, and a small detachment of the Naride regulator's 10th infantry. The vessel was usurped through means unknown. Her destruction at the beginning of the battle annihilated all trace of her at an atomic level, meaning no log box could ever be recovered. Approximately 45 minutes after what can reasonably be established as her moment of capture, a course irregularity was logged by Calth's system control. Campanile had strayed from her prescribed course. Another was logged 45 minutes after that and another seven hours later. Contact from the Vox is lost at Calthmark minus 99.21.59. The last transmission recovered in scorched data stacks from the orbital wreckage of Viridian Anchorage sounds suspiciously like human screaming. Two hours later, Calth system control tags the tender with a cause of concern ident, but given the sheer volume of in-system traffic at the time, the master of the port does not escalate it further, determining that if for whatever reason the Campanile's course is not corrected or contact re-established, a picket bark will be dispatched to intercept, but only if neither condition is met by the end of his watch shift. The Campanile is, at this point, one of approximately 192,000 ships in the Viridian system's local volume. 11 hours after the final Vox is heard, the fleet tender resumes coded transmissions and corrects its course. The master of the port canceled the concern tag and resumed his work monitoring the rest of the fleet conjunction. The Campanile's crew were long dead, but they were still screaming. Located in the Viridian system at the outer edges of Ultramar, Calth was a young world, settled only three generations before its death in 007 M31. It was, however, one of Giliman's 500 worlds and thus the beneficiary of the full might of the Ultramarian wing of the Imperial engine. Possessing a fairly uniform subtropical climate, Calth was an ideal candidate for human colonization, rendering fertile river valleys for crops as well as sufficient mineral resources for a stable industrial base. Rapidly becoming self-sufficient, Giliman was known to have referred to the world as an uncut gem, primed to become a planet known not only throughout his own volume, but across the Imperium. It was a world of promise, growing more rapidly than any planet in the 500 worlds. Calth represented the promise of the Imperium as defined by Giliman himself. Biographers of the Primarch have noted that during this period following his brother Horace's ascension to the rank of Warmaster, Giliman was working diligently at establishing foundations of his role once the Great Crusade had reached its conclusion, or at least what he foresaw as his role. It was a time that the Primarch clearly saw as both imminent and inevitable. Intent on proving that Primarchs and their legions could play a part in a galaxy freed from the necessity of war, Calth was for Giliman a symbol both of what he could do and what he was doing. This is likely part of the reason for the massive influx of investment Calth received. The world would be a beacon, perfect candidate for colonial drive pamphlets, iterator speeches and imperial propaganda reels. The planet's infrastructure was perennially a decade ahead of its population and was maintained that way. Calth was ever preparing for more people than she had on her soil. Subterranean tunnels, a facet of the planet's geomorphology had been vastly expanded and filled with arcologies, massive structures housing millions of workers with space for millions more. The arcologies were both an excellent means of population management and a necessity for survival upon the world. The Viridian system's star was prone to bouts of solar storms that caused intense coronal mass ejection events. Every 15 years Terran standard or so, Calth was bathed in intense radiological waves making the underground habitats a necessity but thankfully doing little harm to the world's biosphere, the native flora having long since adapted to process the radiation that habitually deluged them. Calth orbital space was likewise incredibly built up, extensive orbital shipping docks, repair facilities and logistical support stations made up what was, at the outbreak of the heresy, the largest shipyard in the entire 500 worlds making it a rival for the largest shipyards in the Imperium. It was these facilities that made Calth the objectively sound military mustering point for the current endeavor. In what was to become known as the Calth conjunction, the combined fleets and astartes at arms of the 13th Legion ultramarines and 17th Legion word-bearers would gather for a purgation campaign against the orcasino hold of the war boss, Gashlack. The conjunction was a staggering feat of military logistics. The ultramarines were the largest of the Legion as astartes by a considerable margin, numbering some 250,000 astartes under arms. The Legion gathered a total of 185,923 of that number at Calth alone. This included the first, second, third, fifth, sixth, ninth, 11th, 12th, 13th, 16th chapters in their full disposition, the 8th, 14th and 15th chapters numbering some 6,000 astartes each after heavy combat casualties in recent engagements, the 17th, 18th, 23rd and 4th chapters, the latter known as the aurorans, comprising of heavy armor specialists, and finally the 22nd chapter, the so-called Nemesis chapter, safeguarding the Legion's destroyer mark annihilation weaponry far from Calth's population centers. Alongside the ultramarines in their planet-side musters were 118 god-engines of the Legio Prasagius, the true messengers of the Caligia Titanica, supported by the entire night household of Vornhair, newly arrived from their homeworld of Lundborg Nine. Finally, over one million soldiers of the Exertus Imperialis gathered alongside the ultramarines. The overwhelming majority were new recruits, given the nature of the campaign and the absolute certainty of victory. It was deemed by the Divisio Militaris to be an ideal testbed for newly raised ultramarine army groups, including some of Calth's own newly minted divisions. In Orbit, a significant quantity of the ultramarine navy, consisting almost entirely of frigates and heavy cruisers, but was additionally accompanied by Gilliman's personal flagship, the McCraggs Honor. Additionally, the Legion's 20th and 21st chapters, the Eagles and the Hawks respectively, the latter being the finest air warfare pilots in the Legion and the former, its paramount void engagement specialists, were stationed across Calth Veridian anchor and the system's numerous defense platform stations, as well as several divisions of the solar auxilia from the famed 41st Esbandor High Guard. The disposition of the word-bearers is harder to establish. As Gilliman and the 13th Legion were expecting the near entirety of the 17th to arrive at the conjunction, preparations had been made accordingly. In actuality, it is believed the final commitment in Astartes by the word-bearers to have been at some 50,000 Astartes, a third or a quarter of post-Istvan five of operational capacity, depending on your choice of estimates. Based upon picked captures, recovered corpses and vox logs, the Legion committed elements from the following chapters to the commitment of the atrocity, the inscribed, the trifold crown, the osseous throne, the black comet, the third hand, the graven star, the asps of the sacred sands, the twisting rune, the exalted gate, and the unspeaking. There was, apparently, no tactical rationale for the selection of units from these chapters. At best guess, it can be assumed they were either the personal preferences of Core Phaeron and Erebus, the first captain and first chaplain of the word-bearers and placed in overall command of the Calth operation, or they were essentially suicide troops. No evacuation was laterally attempted by the word-bearers of their Astartes in the aftermath of the Battle of Calth. It can be assumed that those word-bearers committed to the operation were selected to be martyrs, burned away, perhaps, for lacking devotion to the new calling of Lorgar Oralian, or simply zealots committed utterly to the task. Deployed alongside the 17th Legion were some half million to one million auxilia of the basest variety. Appearing initially to be simply barbarian militias, these brotherhoods were rapidly revealed to be fanatical cultists enthralled the Legion. The 17th was as well supported by some 130 Titans from the legio in Furnace, who, until the moment of betrayal, continued to broadcast codes under their original cognomen, the legio Serta Vora. A note on supplementary text. The majority of what has been discussed thus far and will henceforth be examined was made possible through the incredibly diligent record-keeping and codification work of the Ultramarines. The 13th Legion, even in catastrophic defeat, were committed to learning everything they could from the Calth atrocity, both about their newfound enemies and their own weaknesses that had been exploited in order to precipitate the slaughter. Ultramarine records from the entirety of the Great Crusade have always been freely available. The Legion, and later the Primarch, ensured that they were disseminated to all archives, be it military or civilian, that wished to house them, firmly committed as the Legion was to the betterment of the Imperium. Naturally, in the 10,000 years hence, the availability of these records has become somewhat diminished by inquisitive individuals. That one has access to them is considered a problem by some and a historical necessity by others. Regardless, to accomplish ease of examination, the Ultramarines employed what they referred to as the Mark, a timestamp that would allow specific reports from specific times during an engagement to be easily identified along a linear timeline. Noted in Terran Standard Hour's Cedereal, the Mark allows anyone from an instructor to a historiator to refer to, for example, ORAC's Mark 12.16.10 referring to the 10th second of the 16th minute of the 12th hour of the ORAC's compliance. The Mark of Calth is one of the more infamous, as it alongside few others is granted the dubious status of having negative timing. The seizure of the Campanile, for instance, is the earliest point upon the record, at Mark minus 136.57.07, albeit at best estimate. Typically, a Mark will begin at a formalized moment, the issuance of a specific operational order by the commander, for example. For Calth, it is timed at the instant that the Olimon ordered a return of fire against the word-bearers. By the Primark's later comment, everything before cannot stand in record as a battle. It was merely treachery. It should likewise be noted that the Mark of Calth has an altogether different meaning for the veterans who managed to survive the massacre. It refers to solar radiation burns triggered by survivors, specifically amongst baseline human troops. Those that did not succumb to cancers and grand mal-radiation poisoning made a tradition of refusing skin grafts. They continued, until their deaths, to wear the Mark of Calth as a grim badge of honor. At Mark minus 124.24.03, the first of the 17th Legion's ships hove into high anchor at Port Numinus, the shipyard in geosynchronous orbit above Numinus City, one of Calth's major population centers and a hub of the conjunction muster. A boarder was the first word-bearer to make contact with the Ultramarines, one Sorot T'Chur, meeting Honorius Luciel, Captain 209th Company. The delegation was a point of honor. Luciel and T'Chur were two members of two legions that were quite estranged. Their meeting aboard the Ultramarines cruiser Samothrace was intended to be a reunion of two members of their respective legions who held one another in actual brotherhood. Relations elsewhere were strained, to say the least. By the helm video feeds recovered, Luciel and T'Chur met amiably. Luciel was perplexed by the change in the word-bearer's armor. No longer was the 17th Legion arrayed in their gray plate. Now it was taken by the hue of dark, arterial red. Elsewhere in the system, the word-bearer fleet arrived in staggered formation. Their path through the warp was assumed to have been arduous. Imperial activity had been markedly more fraught since the Ultramarines began their own muster at Calth weeks beforehand. While many within the legion derided the word-bearers for their inability to either arrive in good time or at the very least manage fleet cohesion, there was a tendency amongst higher echelons of the Ultramarines to essentially pity the 17th Legion. They did seem to be trying their best, was the sentiment. A legion once rebuked by the Emperor himself, now ordered into battle alongside the one that was fast rising to become the Imperium's finest. The Ultramarines own fleet was stationed in perfect order in various shipyards. Dozens of cruisers and heavy frigates were ensconced within the berths of Viridian anchor. Reactors powered down, working on what repairs or optimization they could, given the chance to be at a superlative dry dock for longer thanks to the word-bearer's tardiness. Others yet orbited the yards, while in the outer orbital zones the word-bearer's ships began to gather, deploying heavy troop transports to the muster camps at the planet below. That their astarties and auxilia may be accounted for, resupplied and re-armed by the industry of Calth. The process was a long one. By Mark-61.25.22, the conjunction was increasing in scale. Erebus had arrived, requesting an audience with Primark Gilliman, who declined it, preferring to wait for his brother Lorgar, who, by all accounts, had recently translated in-system and was 17 hours away at Sublightburn. Evox Interrupt was recorded at Mark-61.39.12. Initially attributed to a solar flare distortion, a common facet of the Viridian system's overactive star, the officer who logged it insisted that, for all the world, it sounded like singing. At Mark-60.35.11, upon the nightside of Calth, the bad dreams began. There were other portents. What appeared to be chanting disrupted the orbital data feed net for precisely 11 seconds until it disappeared. An hour later, this happened twice more. Calth orbital control issued a statement saying that owing to solar activity, combined with the massive degree of vox and data traffic caused by the conjunction, communication disruption should be understood as ongoing until the source of the problem was identified. On the surface below, former Liberarius Astartes, now serving in the line under the edict of Nikia, banning the use of their powers, began to experience severe headaches. There were hundreds of them, but they still ignored the symptoms. Had any been within earshot of the word bare militia camps, they would have also heard the singing. At Mark-16.44.12, server of instrumentation, Ulkehal Hest, ensconced within the watchtower in Numinous City, logged that even his augmented brain was approaching capacity. The Mechanicum server had direct control over the Kalth Defense Weapons Grid, 250,000 surface-based weapon stations, the void shields that were developed to protect Kalth's cities and arcologies, and 962 orbital weapons platforms. Such a system, the most cutting edge of Mechanicum technology, was intended to run on automated pattern recognition. Each arriving ship, moves or joins a formation or docks, or begins an engine test, every ship that moves, triggers within the neospheric field a firing solution and a firing request. Every single non-standard thruster burst was detected by the grid and painted with target identifiers. Given the 190,000 ships in Kalth near space, from the Gloriana-class battleships to the most humble of fleet tenders, the system was producing a staggering amount of data. Hest was estimating that at peak he was denying the engagement of weaponry 25 times per second. It is at this mark that the first instances of scrap code were detected in Kalth's newsphere by senior Mechanicum adepts. Diseased information, junk data, scrap code is an unfortunate byproduct of the intricacies of the machines of Mars. Internal process degradation produces it regardless of the diligence of those monitoring such systems. However, at this mark the scrap code quantity was noted at being 2% over the acceptable margin, even given the already accounted for operations by Mechanicum and Alitike. It was, by the standards of Hest and his staff, unacceptable and they immediately moved to rectify it. Out in the system at mark-14.22.39 the fleet tender Campanile makes a series of small course corrections aligning her approach with Kalth's orbital volume. At mark-13.00.01 a previously somewhat acceptable 6 minute delay in bulk orbital loader operations had exacerbated into a 29 minute delay. By ultramarine standards it was abominable. The seneshall of the local trade committee was summoned by the present Legion command overseer Remus Ventanus to answer for the issue. The seneshall reported that the higher than average concentration of scrapcode was complicating matters beyond the standards that the Legion can deem acceptable. Abored the Mkrag's honour the issue was raised to the Primark who resolved to bring it to Lorgar as a potential concern in case his Legion who had spent time under pargation campaigns in the depths of Wildspace may have accidentally brought something with them. The initial hololithic communication between the two brothers was terse. Lorgar's apparent warmth by the records of Marius Gage reportedly gave way the second Gilliman raised the scrapcode problem as having potentially been caused by the word-bearers. The assembled 17th Legion command elements Corvairon Erebus Argil Tal Hall Beloth Fodral Fel bristled alongside their gene-father. Gilliman's seemingly simple point of order was taken immediately as a barbed jab right from the outset of the conjunction. Lorgar suspended the hollow transmission of his subordinates to accuse Gilliman of causing humiliation to his Legion straight from the get-go setting impossible standards for the word-bearers who by Gilliman's own record have been fighting heathen conflicts in the depths of space for years. Only through the Ultramarine Primarch's deafness with his words was the situation, seemingly saved and the Oralian placated. Unbeknownst to those in orbit or indeed anyone beyond the conspirators Fowl Mejai across Calth, embedded within word-bearer auxilia units had completed hundreds of individual identical rituals breathing to life eldritch corruption within the infospheric systems of Calth. By minus 7.55 .09 the final words were spoken the final throats cut and the scrap code became a problem the mechanic could not solve and would not solve at mark minus 1.01.20 the fleet tender Campanile crossed the inner Mandeville point of the Viridian system the final point of translation possible within the gravimetric bounds of planetary masses broadcasting to local picket ships Viridius Maxim Starfort and to the watch vessels of ring 14 it submitted the full and correct anchorage codes the crew long dead scream with them but they lack the melds to do so in a way that can be heard by anyone mundane Viridius Maxim Starfort automatically approving the codes per standard doctrine disengages its target firing solution on the tender and signals that she may begin her approach Campanile at this point appeared on all sensorium suites to be decelerating at mark 0.55 0.37 a teleport flare is logged by weather monitoring stations 2000 kilometers north of Newmenis city in a frozen region logged by cartographica as a satric plateau later investigations into the aetherical disturbances present in the count system has led many scholars to conclude that this was a location utilized by Erebus first chaplain of the word bearers for a grand dark ritual it is believed that the chaplain was born to count surface in that self-same teleport beam at mark minus 0.20 0.20 the fleet tender Campanile crossed the inner defense ring embraced now by the masses of starships monitor craft orbitals bulk loaders mass conveyors and thousands of other pieces of orbital traffic having passed within the orbit of calz soul moon it fired its sub light drives to maximum burn abruptly it began to accelerate at mark minus 0.19 0.45 Sorot to chore murdered an aureus luciel aboard the cruiser samothrace luciel was the first legion casualty of the atrocity it was not a good death to chore fired his plasma pistol at point blank range catching the ultramarine in the torso with a bolt as hot as the innards of a star luciel thanks to his astarty's biology was alive for several more seconds enough time to scrabble about the floor an attempt to stand despite his torso having been cord and most of his internal organs having been turned to dust to chore's second shot vaporized his skull just over a second later the officer of the watch stationed on the samothrace's bridge logged the weapons fire as occurring the watch officer responded by immediately dispatching the ship's armsmen per standard protocol in such event even if the armsfire is of course surely a mistake within four seconds of this said officer has already initiated all procedures to lock down the deck his response had he survived to be credited with it would have been considered exemplary at later events not transpired the samothrace would have been 35 seconds away from a complete lockdown of the company deck nearly perfect timing at this point every single alarm system aboard the samothrace registered and blared collision warning proximity passive aspects course detect primary orbital traffic every single alarm spoke of something approaching something within the near orbital volume moving completely against all prescribed codes, routes, paths and protocols what occurred next occurred at a speed beyond the capacity of any eye human, mechanical or astartes to perceive at mark minus 0.18.34 the fleet tender campanile her void shields and accelerated her main real space drives to maximum output she began to employ what in void faring terminology is referred to main extending thrust a condition used for full acceleration as a ship reaches speeds necessary to light its warp drives and breach the scheme of reality that separates materium and immaterium it is only employed on long form approach towards a systems sandvil point across a distance that, at minimum is half the radius of an entire star system in short, it was at its maximum output but because of the distances involved the campanile reached, according to recovered logs, approximately 40% of her theoretical real space velocity she was moving so fast that she was only visible on higher end sensors not even vidlog footage exists of what was to occur it was simply moving too fast every single ospex grid in the inner system howls as they detect the sudden object acceleration the crew of the campanile long dead scream with them 2 microseconds later the campanile entered calt's orbital shipping belt the fleet tender is now a bullet void shields lit it first murders successive rows of freighters and troop conveyors stationed at high anchor the shockwave of these calamities will, of course, in turn throw ships into each other, like pathetic debris the campanile missed the frigates lutein, malatus, cabascore and, yes, the samothrace herself by less than her own length likewise the testament of andromeda and the battleship ultimus mundi were similarly spared the tender having passed just below their beams at this point the campanile was within denser traffic zones applied by tinier single personnel craft monitor fighters, lifters rigors the gravimetric bow wave of the fleet tender swatted them aside if they were lucky smashing uncountable numbers into docking superstructures or sending them hurling out into the void those unlucky enough to be close to her approach were compacted nearly molecule thin by the unholy stresses of gravitic distortion these casualties thousands in number balk, compared to the murder the fleet tender campanile is about to commit ahead of her lay kouthveridian anchor the largest of the orbital plates within the system a mighty construction of jetties, dry docks manufactories, habs and transfer facilities crowning jewel of the system's logistical and military might a construct able to sustain whole fleets of ships while birthing yet more it was over 300 kilometers across the campanile hit it directly moving at such velocities the void shield impacting upon physical matter created a mutual annihilation event the energy created was channeled into light, heat and force it vaporized instantaneously the entirety of the neary graving dock along with the cruiser antipathy that had been within the drives of the nine kilometer ship likewise vaporize the contained force within claiming approximately 6000 lives in an instant and a pico second later another 30,000 engineers in the manufactoria located alongside it arrester silos a 112 and a 114 are destroyed loosing from within the escorts bernabas and jericho wrecks the ships suffering irreparable hull damage in the process the fleet tender campanile is still moving next in its path was assembly 919 a spherical dock containing the menace of fortice the deliverance of terra the mecanicum explorator craft phobos encoder all three ships are immediately destroyed the assembly yard was shattered like a glass ball dropped upon stone a fragment of the mecanicum bark was catapulted into a nearby principal cargo facility destroying in its path 168 small ferries and 49 lifter craft cargo containers are likewise flung into all corners of the volume, many becoming ensnared by the orbit of calth and beginning a fiery descent onto the planet's surface the entirety of the veridian anchor has at this point felt the impact throughout its superstructure the continued relentless path of the campanile caused a bow wave of internal explosions that tear throughout the shipyards a storm of debris from those explosions is believed to have crippled the triumph of eax and set fire to the entire 7 kilometer mass of the ages of occluda the light from the matter annihilation appeared almost hungry so vast and expansive was it it consumed the entirety of the spirit of conor one of the mightiest battleships in the entirety of the 500 worlds 17 kilometers of ancient starship vanishing into its constituent parts the event consumed her ultramar zenith grieving dock suffered a complete failure to its internal gravimetric systems, shorn of its tethers from the main yard and it simply fell out of orbital position inside it the grand cruiser antrodamicus is tossed like a child's play thing her reactor was dead she had no power under which to perform even the most minor of course corrections even if she had it was too late she simply fell away into the orbital void becoming ensnared in the gravity well of the planet below the fleet tender campanile is still moving the ships shields however finally failed it remained of course a solid projectile moving at a fraction of the speed of light two more slipways were consumed following the void shield failure along with the ships nestled there its next murder was the data engine central hub of the whole yard causing an immediate and fatal new-spheric interruption that claimed another 35,000 augmented mechanical adepts through massive cranial shock billions of tons of physical force are still at this point contained in the annihilated mass of the campanile its final act if it can even be called such was when its last surviving piece the solid core of its rear drive section spun out of its path through the veridian yard and impacted into the battleship remonstrance of north hand doom cleaving the vessel in two and causing its rear section to detonate as its drives failed this atrocity has occurred in the space of less than a second all that any who happened to be looking in the direction of veridian yard would have seen was a blinding flash before potentially losing their eyesight as for a moment a new star appeared to be born in the orbit of kelth the light shock blew out the bridge viewer of the mccrags honor with attendant servitors registering in screeches the death of the new spirit core marius gauge first captain of the ultramarines in command of the bridge demanded a report at mark minus zero point one eight point three zero at the near exact moment the physical shockwave of the fleet tender campanile's murder hit the ultramarines flagship it was in a very real sense only the beginning kelth veridian anchor was sundered a broken demi world ablaze silently in the void this event was referred to by the word bearers and their debased allies apparently both prior and subsequent to the atrocity as the uskul too in several archaic languages with common roots across tainted worlds the phrase can be roughly translated as tribute star or offering son although this removes cultural connotations of sacrifice potentiality and imminent promise as represented by the breaking of a dawn as with the many crimes committed by the 17th legion during the horus heresy the significance of the act was paramount to some over any tactical considerations the death of kelth veridian anchor was an almost mortal blow to the ultramarines legion and a greater one to their fleet hundreds of thousands of lives had been snuffed out in less time than an eye could blink their deaths were not merely mundane the word bearers placed great importance on the ritual heft of the act itself and just as the dawn promises something greater to follow so too did the uskul too portend an even greater sunrise to come yet for now there was to all onlooking a new star in kelth's orbit veridian anchor had become a fireball of nuclear energy a spherical orb of incandescence blazing radiation outwards into the local volume electromagnetic pulses of astonishing brutality had pummeled what remained of the communications grid killing almost all intership vox and leaving what networks remained intact choked with frantic calls for aid and demands for clarification the outpouring of energy fire continued to swallow ships from nearby anchorage lines just as debris from the force of the campanile's collision spun outwards into the void indiscriminately killing as they sliced through ships at maximal velocities the best information anyone observing could establish is only that which their own eyes could behold only viewports aboard ship provided any clarity and all that eyes can see was a false dawn where once before lay a shipyard the conclusion drawn from the stunned and appalled minds of orbital survivors was reached broadly simultaneously across kelth nearspace in the seconds following the campanile's murder of veridian anchor this was not an accident this was an attack no accident could have wrought such devastation not here not with the mechanicum's peerless redundancies not with gillamon's scrupulous safety standards somewhere in the vox del yuge the word orc was uttered a word that caught fire across those that managed to parse it from the chaos of the surviving communications net of course the orcs the enemy had to have become aware of the conjunction they had launched a preemptive strike to prevent the imperial juggernaut from reaching its full muster strength at mark minus zero point eighteen point two zero surviving ships had finally begun to power up their drives shields and weapons batteries bringing vessels to an approximation of fighting strength in the face of what surely was a zenos incursion such acts of course cannot be completed in such a quick time the overwhelming majority of ultramarine's legion and navus imperialis vessels aligned to ultramar had been reactor inoperative for repairs captains bellowed for their engine seers to light drives and as weapons operators howled for firing solutions a canny few sensorium adepts noted that amongst the tumult a new call sign had appeared on wavering ospex grids in the orbital volume the word bearer's battle barge raptorus rex a veteran titan of the great crusade was gone in her position was a new ship the same ship bearing a new ident tag she was broadcasting a new name infidus imperator this was the flagship of cor feran first captain of the 17th legion she was the first to open fire the entirety of her primary lance batteries struck the battle barge sons of ultramar amid ships the vessel was at the time attempting to light its shield batteries although was of course unable to do so the battle barge was reduced to a fire ball in an instant drives on full burn infidus imperator moved forward in her wake slid the crown of cultures who also opened fire as did the flame of purity the spear of sedras the cameo and the destiny's hand by mark minus 0.18.10 20 seconds standard following the campanile's impact the entire word bearer's fleet was firing upon the ultramarines at mark minus 0.16.11 rebut gulliman reached the bridge of the macrags honor to take what command he could of the situation the flagship of the ultramarines was blinded and crippled outgoing vox was disabled and its view screens were inoperable what little gulliman's vox officers were able to inform him was that the word bearer's were simply not on the emergency channels only ultramarine vessels were issuing distress calls or attempting to establish a framework for the disaster the 17th legion ships were silent and were firing this was clearly visible through the macrags honor's open viewports all playing out in the dread quiet of the void gulliman was forced to conclude that the agreed legion had in whatever madness had unfolded assumed that the attack on veridian anchor contained elements of ultramarines culpability that the 17th still wounded from the raising of monarchy assumed that the 13th legion were at fault and their only recourse was self defense gulliman ordered all work to be diverted to the lithocast systems that he may raise his brother lorgar and put an end to the chaos unfolding in calz orbit at mark minus zero point one six point zero two captain remas ventanas attempting to establish some form over the civilian loaders he had now found himself warden of beheld the sight that others across the region were only just realizing was real a shadow falling over calcas fortalece was not an atmospheric disturbance nor even the waning of whatever light was just filling the skies not minutes before it was a ship that was falling falling backwards across the sky slowly so very slowly the sight was reported to have utterly unmanned many who beheld it to see a void ship at such an angle in such a fashion was as uncanny as it was impossible but it was true it was real the grand cruiser antrodamicus shorn from her shipyard moorings was caught in the planet's gravity and while its plummet looked to all onlookers to be gracefully slow it was minutes from an annihilating impact at mark minus zero point one five point five zero it started raining battle tanks in numinous city from above the metropolis's muster heavy lifter vehicles had been caught in the devastation of veridian anchor and had broken up in low orbit they shedded their cargo into the atmosphere and of course the gravity well the robustness of the armor within these holes meant that hundreds if not thousands of them survived the orbital plunge only to impact upon the mustered ultramarines below with meteoric force glowing from atmospheric reentry their impacts sundered full ammunition banks torching the tanks off with incredible force impacts became detonations shadow swords fell blades, falchions, spartans bane blades every mark of super heavy tank the imperium possessed pummeled numinous city with greater force than almost any artillery bombardment the wordbearers could have created they were accompanied albeit with not nearly as much physical devastation by human bodies ripped from the shipyard ripped from the ships they did not possess the metal shells of main battle tanks they did not survive entry intact the reign of corpses blackened, scorched, withered impacted with what moisture remained within their bodies bursting like bags of boiling blood at mark minus 0.15.48 the antrodamicus impacted the crust of calth at calcas fortilis as a starship her hull was designed to withstand not only the gravitational shear of warp translation but also weapons fire of the enemies of the imperium despite the tremendous velocity picked up during orbital reentry the impact barely deformed her keel her stern impacted first biting into the crust half a kilometer deep sliding backwards as physics now dictated her path the ground was split like a plow the antrodamicus carved a massive path through the city two and a half kilometers wide responsible for countless civilian deaths the overpressure from the impact wave demolished buildings ahead of her actual path a bow wave of annihilation seconds into this destruction the stress of the impact began to cause fractures in the hull teaming outwards from the sternward point of impact the antrodamicus landed fully on her keel the final impact shearing fragments from her superstructure off caused yet more devastation fires tore through the vessel burning it up from the inside even as it still continued its path a quake shock the planet crust itself rebelling against the torturous wound it had just received began to level parts of the metropolis neither the ship nor even the pressure front had touched as the earthquake reached the muster points in numinous city it was joined by the sound of bolters the word bearer as a starty's planet side opened fire on the ultramarines mustering alongside them at mark minus 0.14.20 titan warhorns sounded over numinous as the legio certivora masks off an engines blaring their new names in furnace opened fire on civilian and military targets alike the slaughter in orbit on the ground continues for another 11 minutes at mark minus 0.03.59 gilliman is at last able to raise lorgar aurelion on lithocast prior to the conversation the primark has rebuffed calls from his first captain marius gage to order return of fire gage stated in record that even acting in self defense the word bearers were only adding to the death toll from what was still believed to be a zenos attack and that this amounted to a grand crime that even should the accident have occurred more killing was not the appropriate response gilliman had refused his first captains in treaties believing even at that point that the 17th legion's worst fears must surely have been realized insisting that the folly of lorgar's sons would not be added to by his own legion even as thousands died with every passing second what followed the interaction between primarks was brief gilliman begged his brother to ceasefire that this misunderstanding can be moved past so that peace could be salvaged from the devastation that had occurred he stated that surely this had to have been a mistake the 17th primark responded that how could gilliman possibly think that this was a mistake lorgar's last words in this transmission overheard by gilliman alone but recorded by the primark for posterity were simply an orphan bereft of options impossibly penned in rebut gilliman was finally forced to issue return of fire the ultramarines were to defend themselves by any and all means possible the officer of record present upon the bridge initiated standard 13th legion archival protocol the mark of kaoth began zero zero point zero zero point zero zero my brother hear me warriors of the 17th legion hear me this violence is against the code of the legion as a start is and against the will of our father the emperor in the name of the 500 worlds of ultramar I implore you to ceasefire and stand down open communication with me let us speak let us settle this this action is an error of the most tragic kind ceasefire I rebut gilliman give you my solemn pledge that we will deal with each other frankly and fairly if these hostilities can be suspended I urge you to respond this message was placed on cyclical transmission at precisely mark zero zero point zero zero point zero one by order of the 13th primarch it was an attempt gilliman noted in later writings collected in alec scovion's tactica osedentalis an examination of storied campaigns of the 13th legion during the course of the shadow crusade to provide some degree of clemency he laterally noted that his instinct to provide such was misguided but nevertheless made under the ideals he yet held on to at the time as the transmission was being broadcast the 17th legion fleet continued its murderous crusade through disabled ultramarine ships vulpines amidst the aardfowl their kills were effortless gunnery officers aboard wordbearers ships simply annihilated whatever loyalist vessels they targeted even those that had fired reactors to some degree of efficacy were fighting blind and deaf paltry evasive maneuvers unable to slip from the firing solutions of wordbearer ships that had been sitting in orbit 20 minutes prior with reactors fully stoked the slaughter was unspeakable intricacies of each ship death barely recordable in the time it took to murder them the support carriers vosphorus and her sister ship valediction were caught in the broadsides of a wordbearer battle barge the former, slightly shielded by the latter, attempted to flee only to expose her drive section to lance fire the ensuing explosion catapulted the vessel into the nearby troop transports and trophies the death of three ships resulted in 80,000 lives lost in a mere 5 seconds this was just one of the executions carried out in orbit every passing minute added a dozen more the flame of purity mounted an attack run on the further out Astiri's orbital yard firing caronades at helpless docked ships even as her armoured prow plowed bodily through support vessels in her path a void cast battering ram heedlessly juggernautting through ships structures people the corpses of vessels slain by the 17th legion in this fashion found new homes in the decades and centuries hence those that were not caught in Kalt's own gravity well like the sundered antrodamacus were flung into the void and ensnared by the system's star or planetary bodies in wide orbital paths cold and utterly dead these hulks at least initially contained survivors typically ship ratings and menials trapped in their innermost bowels these poor wretches would never again see light they died from lack of oxygen or were frozen into shards of ice after life support systems gave out it is believed that hulks of this nature were placed in the gulfs of space in the veridian system silent dark impossible to locate tombs of a thousands year old atrocity with their false skins thrown off the wordbearer fleet escalated their maneuvers from simple murder to grander atrocities the formation of 17 planetary bombard craft led at the van by the destinies hand flagship of arabus took position over kouth in low orbit breaking into preassigned pickets the formation moved into geosynchronicity with predetermined population center targets such a course of action had the still extant defense grid being operational would have been impossible but the mecanicum new sphere and its server, hest had died with veridian anchor and the 900 weapons platforms stood mute against the unfolding atrocity the ships were so close to the atmosphere as to be visible from the surface but only momentarily as one they opened fire shells the size of tanks that had rained on numinous city plunged planetward alongside plasma bolts and lance beams the latter tore into the crust affecting tectonic destabilization while the kinetic rounds obliterated buildings rivers and mountains they had no need to target weapons silos or defense batteries they posed no threat infrastructure the civilian population the land itself these were their targets no region was immune from the attentions of the craft but some suffered far worse than others the southern island cities for example vanished utterly consumed by both tectonic instability and massive tsunamis that engulfed them energy beams targeted the ocean itself flash vaporizing millions of cubic meters of seawater into a super dense boiling fog that consumed organic matter in its inferno the southern cities had little in the way of military significance they were not muster sites of opportunity subsequent analysis followed by later word bearer ground attacks on numinous city and Ithrica has led to supposition among scholars that such cities and regions were targeted for destruction based on occult significance then the manner of their destruction was also imparted with ritualistic meaning as it stands this explanation persists through scholarship for anything involved in the battle of kelth that cannot be explained by tactical efficacy the lunacy of the word bearers and the arcane practices they engaged so greedily in are best left ill understood such debased acts were played out not only by the bombard vessels but also by kill team strikes undertaken by word bearer astartes on select orbital weapon platforms though utterly disabled each platform still bore within them a crew that numbered in the hundreds some were blown out of the skies in opportunistic broadsides by passing word bearer ships but many others were simply ignored yet others still were singled out for boarding actions again the random nature of the attacks can most reliably be chalked up to occult reasoning the 17th Legion appeared to be seeking out specific targets amongst the platforms resistance to the boarding parties was led by solar auxilia terseos stationed aboard each these troops the finest unaugmented soldiery within the system were equipped per the standard solar pattern void sealed hazard armor and highly powered las rifles and vulcite beam weaponry they had of course never been intended to fight against the forces of the legionnaires astartes despite formidable training and years of experience in shipboard zone mortals engagements resistance was doomed what casualties the last rifle sections of the auxilia were able to inflict upon the word bearers was petty recompense for the bolter fire butchery that the 17th needed out upon them only that but the enemy was unlike anything the auxilia had previously fought not only were they transhuman ferocity of the astartes incarnate but even how they conducted themselves was uncanny by space marine standards many sang mournful plain song or chanted hopeless dirges while in combat others would ritually disembowel their foes striding through torrents las fire just for the opportunity to slowly and painfully strip a service person of their bodily organs even as the soldier begged for their parents others still were captured alive slapped into chains branded with uncomfortable to gaze upon runes and forced back into the docked boarding ships never to be seen again their fates almost certainly ones filled with blood and horror there were against all odds some loyalist victories amidst the massacres on platform principia veridia 27-k the 222nd calth solar auxilia enacted a neutron radiation cascade of the main hangar bay following the arrival of word bearer saltcraft so intense was this purge that even his physiologies would not resist its effects the 222nd followed the radiation cascade with the bayonet charge their void armor keeping the radiation at bay just long enough to overrun the withering astartes before perishing themselves not a single warrior from either side survived the engagement in almost all cases however the bridge was the target of the word bearer boarding actions with as many bridge commanders as possible taken alive and forced to watch the bombardment of calth through the viewports for minutes at a time before having their throats slowly slit by the knives of word bearer dark apostles once again the cruelty was the point it has been hypothesized by scholars of the occult that the act of witnessing the observance of the destruction of what these officers had been meant to protect was done so to drench the departing soul in as much misery as could be inflicted upon one of their station had any of the eyes to do so they would have seen the cruiser samothrace now under the command of saurak to chur who had performed the first murder amongst many dock at zetsun veridiard at mark 0.58 0.08 the structure significantly spared from destruction at mark 0.1 0.57 0.42 nearly two hours after the order to return fire had been given rebut gulliman had come to a conclusion voxnets and ospex grids not to mention two hours of unremitting slaughter in abject silence from the 17th legion had pushed the primarch's clemency to its limits a moat of data amongst the torrent that gulliman had been parsing stood out censor screeds drawn from multiple sources immediately prior to the calamity of veridian anchor data that pointed to the acceleration of the fleet tender campanile data that when correlated with system traffic logs showed her path from the outer void to the inner volumes data that when taken into account established what gulliman referred to as a precondition of malice not that he noted two hours after the mark began that there was any real question any longer it was merely the shred of evidence his mind required to close the proverbial door the primarch rescinded his earlier broadcast and replaced it with the following logar of colchis you may consider the following one I entirely withdraw my previous offer of solemn ceasefire it is cancelled and it will not be made again to you or any other of your motherless bastards two you are no longer any brother of mine I will find you I will kill you and I will hurl your toxic corpse into hell's mouth the mcrags honor placed that message upon broadcast as gulliman hurried to implement a more robust system of intership communication resorting to direct laser calm systems and card copy orders dispatched by lighters repair vehicles or even single man fighter craft to bring a ship may have to bring the primarch's word to another vessel gulliman himself resolved to target the fidelitas lex logar's personal gloriana class flagship it was of course both tactically expedient and personal the primarch openly admitting to marius gauge that he wanted to be the one to bring death to his erstwhile brother that this will be the one time he will fight a battle with his hearts not his head it was at this mark that a lithocast signal from the 17th primarch was received requesting an audience with gulliman unable to deny the request gulliman raised the fidelitas lex what occurred next was in infamy recorded for posterity have you lost your temper, revolte? I am going to gut you you have lost your temper the great and calm and level headed rabute gulliman has finally succumbed to passion I will gut you I will skin you I will behead you ah rabute here at the very end I finally hear you talking away that actually makes me like you precondition of malice you took the campanile by my estimation you took it at least 140 hours ago you took the ship and you staged this you organized this atrocity lorgar and you made it seem like a terrible accident so you could capitalize on our mercy you made us stay our hand while you committed murder it's called treachery, rabute it works very well how did you find out? we backplotted the campanile's root once we'd worked out what hit the yards when you look back at the plot the notion that it was any kind of accident becomes laughable as is the notion you can hurt me we're not going to debate it you maggot you treacherous bastard I just wanted you to know that I will rip your living heart out and I want to know why why why if this is how pure I'll old feud boiled to the surface then you are the most pathetic soul in the cosmos pathetic our father should have left you out in a snow at birth he should have fed you to rust you worm you maggot this has nothing to do with our enmity, rabute except that it affords me the opportunity to avenge my under on you and your ridiculous toy soldiers that is just a delicious bonus no this is the Ushkulthu Calth is the Ushkulthu the authoring it is the sunrise or new galaxy a new order you're rambling you bastard the galaxy is changing, rabute it is turning upside down up will be down and down will be up our father will be tossed out of his throne he will fall down and no one will put him back together again listen to me, rabute you think you are so clever so wise so informed but this has started already it is already under way the galaxy is turning on its head you will die and our father will die and so will all the others because you are all too stupid to see the truth listen to me, rabute listen to me the imperium is finished it is falling it is going to burn our father is done his malicious dreams are over horus is rising horus you have no idea of his ability he is above us all we stand with him or we perish entirely you shit are you drugged are you mad what kind of insanity is this he is rising, he is coming he will kill anyone who stands in his way he will rule he will be what the emperor could never be horus would horus would never turn if any of us turned, the others would horus has risen against our cruel and abusive parent, rabute except that and you will die with greater peace in your heart horus lubricant has come to overthrow the imperial corruption and punish the abuser it is already happening and horus is not alone I am with him he is born and true so is fulgrim angron magnus your loyalty is air and paper, rabute our loyalty is blood you are lying you are dying ishtren 5 burns brothers are dead already dead, who are ferris manis corax, vulcan slaughtered like pigs these are all lies look at me, rabute you know they are not you know it you studied every one of us you know our strengths and our failings theoretical, rabute theoretical you know this is possible you know from the very facts that this is a possible outcome whatever you think of me, rabute whatever your opinion I know it is about as low as it can be you know I am not a stupid man I would betray my brother and attack the assembled might of the 13th legion for a grudge really, really practical, rabute I am here to exterminate you and the ultramarines because you are the only force left in the emperor's camp that can possibly stop horus you are too dangerous to live and I am here to make sure you do not I am here to remove you from the game, rabute either you are insane or the galaxy has gone mad whichever, I am coming for you and I will put you and your heathen killers down excommunicate you will not have any opportunity to reflect upon the monstrosity of this crime oh, rabute I can always rely on you to sound like a giant pompous asshole come and get me we'll see who burns first one last thing you need to know, rabute you really don't appreciate what you are up against you are seen enough of his charlatan tricks break the lithocast link the link sir the link is already broken rabute let the galaxy burn from the entirety of the ultramarines legion only five complete chapters were not present at calth during the betrayal several detachments from other chapters were simply unable to join the conjunction elements from the 7th and 22nd chapters for example were deemed too embedded in combat against fraal crucible worlds to have their commitment to that purgation withdrawn similarly the 10th chapter was almost as far from calth as it was possible to be in galactic terms committed to compliance operations in the galactic northeast nevertheless as it stood some 80% of the ultramarines legion had been gathered for the muster and that number was now rapidly diminishing as the atrocities of the word bearers unfolded in the years to come those that had been there or rather those that had survived formed a sort of in-group within the 13th legion just as how the members of the shattered legions who had somehow emerged from the fires of the istvan 5 drop site massacre were astartes apart from what inductii were raised to their legions hence and just how indeed great crusade veterans looked down upon inductii recruited after the outbreak of the heresy so too did those that bore the so-called mark of calth physically and psychologically come to simply embody a separate group within the ultramarines this was of course completely unofficial Gilliman ordered no such division between his warriors nor even did these warriors petition for one the rift was unspoken perhaps the inevitable result of an experience one simply to have been a part of to fully comprehend the wound of such base betrayal was a deep one marked tendencies towards distrust and paranoia were observed amongst many of calth's survivors those that were now unmarked through no fault of their own were gathered in the majorities of the 7th, 10th as well as the 24th and 25th chapters of evocatiii stationed as the latter two were around ultramar for garrison duties and initiate training none of course were untouched by the passage of the horus heresy all paid their dues and conducted themselves with honour and courage but they were not at calth in the years of the scouring separation would remain unofficial but become more pronounced gilliman was a verse to the company of the unmarked and their council unmarked assignments habitually removed them from their brothers by substantial galactic distances they were the first wave of astartes to be split from the legion during the reforms of the 2nd founding they were the first chapters of deptus astartes born of gilliman and the ultramarines line the veterans of calth those that had somehow survived the torment of the heresy were retained within the new ultramarines chapter that the legacy of that day live on and not merely pass into dusty recorded chronicle by mark 02 0.02 0.33 the surviving ultramarine elements on calth existed upon its surface the void was ablaze with the wreckage of veridian anchor and uncountable ships of the legion murdered by still hunting word bearer attack craft even the mccrags honour had any beheld her sported visible damage to her bridge the result of an arcane attack by logar oralean gilliman was uncountable he had been on the bridge of the flagship when the explosion wrought by his traitor brothers warpcraft had blown out the viewing ports there was no accurate mark for when the killing on the surface of calth began as one's own record has shown there exist at time stamps previous moments of significant damage inflicted to the ultramarine muster sites by calamities falling from orbit but as to when the first bolter was fired by the first word bearer that is far more unclear necro cortical analysis of corpses recovered from the irradiated wastes of calth point to instances of attacks occurring before ships like the destiny's hand began their orbital murder in the most isolated of conjunction sites far from major population centers it appears small units of ultramarines were set upon by usually far greater numbers of word bearers and their cultic auxilia in acts of homicide as base as they were opportunistic at the edge of the satric wastes the corpses of ultramarines and imperialis auxilia alike were transformed into grotesque mockeries of their former forms arranged in gory tableaus in devotion to the dark pantheon initially believed by scholars to have been simple outpourings of blood mad lunacy on behalf of the 17th legion laterally it has been posited that such ritualism in proximity to Eravus' own grand workings deep in the wastes tied these murders into the eventual ushering in of the ruin storm the attack of the campanile had of course marked the beginning of open slaughter on the surface of calth with the birth of what looked like a new star in the planet's skies as in orbit this period is marked by punishing losses and little in the way of retribution assassination cadres of word bearers infiltrated into ultramarines command positions under the guise of friendship committed first strikes on 13th legion leadership casting the rigid command structure into utter disarray with the mechanical news fear in utter ruin rampaging scrapcode caused lethal bio feedback to any mages who attempted to access it the 13th legion was scattered rudderless utterly at the whims of the word bearers in these first few hours at the comesh mustercise the 9th chapter was almost entirely wiped out by the 17th legion forces under the command of foedral fell out of 20,000 ultramarines present at the site prior to the attack of the campanile barely 5,000 were able to retreat from the slaughter under the command of the tetrarch of ultramar Toro Nicodemus further north the legio certivora punished the first second and third chapters at the slaughter the ultramarines bearing almost nothing in the way of weaponry that could harm god engine class machines it was only by a quirk of timing that the armoured company of the first chapter had not completed its embarkation allowing the 13th to rally several shadow sword and falchion super heavy battle tanks against the attacking titans through ambush operations the first chapter was able to inflict some measure of recompense against the invaders grievously wounding several god engines but such fighting cost them the majority of their number escaping erode with only a single badly damaged falchion and two shadow swords under the command of captains sideats on cal's nightside ultramarines in charge of munition resupply were assaulted by hordes of cultic fanatics succeeding in barricading themselves into ammunition manufactoria the 13th held the rabble of lorgar at bay until their own firearms began to run dry much like in the orbital volume tales of loyalist victories amongst the slaughter are few but there are some enthracias close to the planet's northern polar regions and arabus' ritual site the isolated archeologies and research stations of that area were preyed upon by large numbers of wordbearer galvor back the demonically possessed shock troops of the 17th legion the fate of the innocence amongst the population are unknown but given the speed at which the so-called blessed sons tore through the region the established fate of captives who fell living into the clutches of the 17th we can surmise their deaths contributed to the enactment of the ritual and in many ways that were quite likely extremely slow and painful however given the galvor back obsession with the collection of baseline human prisoners the possessed astartes somehow neglected to account for the presence of the ultramarine's 22nd chapter also mustering in the polar climes essentially pariahs within their own legion the 22nd formed the so-called nemesis chapter bearers of destroyer grade weaponry phosphax, alchem, and radiological rounds annihilation class munitions meant for purgation operations they were supposed last resort weapons publicly scorned by gilliman but nevertheless stalked by his legion should their use be necessary as a byproduct of their role the nemesis chapter had long since become a new urge to the fowl and the fallen having fought zenos abominations galaxy wide for centuries thus the assumption on their part was that the galvor back represented some form of hitherto unknown alien corruption or infection that had overtaken the word bearers whether simply a part of the 17th or its entirety had succumbed was not within the minds of the 22nd to discern merely to act upon the destroyers of the ultramarines immediately came to a war footing and the conflict in the thracian wilderness rapidly became unto hell itself the region bathed in crawling phosphax torrents and howling radiological storms at mark 04.55 0.34 the seizure of zetsun varied yard by sorat sure was given great and terrible purpose at this time stamp it was recorded that the docks systems were restored to full operation by tagmata of the so called true mecanicum allied to the word bearers the data engines unable to communicate with the mecanicum server long since perished described the new sphere for any authorities greater than themselves finding none standard protocol was engaged and server authority granted to the zetsun central engine as part of mecanicum redundancy initiatives zetsun varied yard was always to be designed to act as an emergency backup and now under the stewardship of the word bearers the planetary weapons grid was slaved to its congetators by mark 05.05 0.22 the senior major in command reported to corfaeron that full manifold capabilities had been restored and that targeting solutions were present for the first captain's approval corfaeron immediately ordered discretionary fire at mark 05.05 0.47 the kouth orbital weapons array began to kill the veridian system the grid had been designed by the mecanicum under gilliamans express orders to fortify kouth against a threat equivalent to an imperial expeditionary fleet to operate independently of any starship support the firepower it wielded was simply astonishing its first target was an asteroid once named alamaster the remnant of a planet that had eons before suffered a catastrophic exterplanetary impact now reborn as veridian forge it was a massive hub of mecanicum industry the most significant manufacturing center in the local galactic volume it had been helpless since the attack of the campanile lacking its shields and of course possessing no means of evasion in four prolonged strikes veridian forge was murdered the first two strikes incinerated the surface rock layers of the asteroid piercing the adamantine shell of the inner habitations the third strike popped the main fabricatory hub like a bubble exposing thousands of square kilometers internally to hard vacuum the fourth strike ruptured its internal reactors and created a new star in the ensuing nuclear explosion the death of veridian forge aligned as it was caused kelth to have no night side for the next 18 minutes at mark 06.59.59 chapter master marius gauge regained consciousness in the upper reaches of the macrags honor conning tower or rather what was left of it logars final transmission had ended in what was one of the first historical examples of an aggressive incarnation of a lesser demonic emanation to be successfully deployed against loyalist forces the sheer force of its impact and subsequent detonation blown out the main viewing ports of the flagship strategium venting the space to the icy grip of the void gilliman had been claimed by the howling winds of explosive decompression before the blast shuttered had been able to activate the primarch swear abouts or even whether he was alive or not were utterly unknown over a dozen senior legion officers and support staff had died in the process the ship master had been eviscerated by a hail of shattered glass chapter master had bodily thrown himself into space in an attempt to rescue his primarch he was never to be seen again gauge himself had only survived by bodily hauling himself through the emergency hatches prior to closure doing so on one arm the demon thing having claimed one of his limbs the flagship was in utter disarray the lithic avatar of Lorgar's transformation was not the only manifestation of ward entire gloriana class battleship was now a playground for the never born demon things of material shadow cavorted and slaughtered their way through her entire superstructure dancing between dimensions as a terrified mortal a crew attempted to fight or flee equally in vain a few of the more veteran legion as a start his personnel were privy to on the most basic level the existence of the violent predators of the imiterium assuming them as even some of the most learned of the imperium had to be an unknown extra-dimensional breed of alien these veterans were also aware of the effects of localized warp breaches and the mass psychosis and realistic disruptions that they could cause however the flagship was not in the warp it was firmly in real space and the ultramarines aboard had been plunged into combat with an enemy unlike anything they had ever fought any hope of a coordinated defense simply never existed the very minds of the human crew broke at the mere sight of even the most lesser of emanations if even they had managed to survive the encounters with incarnated clouds of malice and knives gibbering corpse things of swollen rotted flesh capered chaotically while burning demonia whose skins flowed like lava split crewmen in half with swords as tall as they were yet others split and split again belching multi-colored fire through too many eyes while lithe things in mockeries of human form slowly peeled the skin off howling mortals with chitinous claws the McCrags honor became a scene unto some ancient grimoire a lurid tapestry of travesties drawn from the most polluted of minds Marius Gage ordering from the envenomed wound that was forcing even his Astartes physiology to struggle attempted to place what order he could upon the situation ordering ultramarines to link up with their brothers wherever possible and for human crew members to barricade themselves in place even this proved nigh impossible the mangled Intraship Vox was subject not only to blackouts but warp corruption and time dilation Rages spoke of receiving the chapter master's orders hours after he issued them alongside other localized phenomena angles of bulkheads stretching beyond the possible corridors reaching into infinity ragtag squads of Ligiones Astartes naval armsmen and desperate crew formed by circumstance haphazardly but nevertheless admirably responding to the invasion standardized and well drilled Ligion counter boarding protocols in all cases however these measures had been designed to fight the enemies the Imperium had waged war against for 200 years they were never meant to account for the never born evacuated and sealed off sections of the ship were subject to rad purges, toxic gas deluges, hard decompression or temperature cascades and simply nothing worked the demonic were impervious to things meant to combat mortals or even Xenos bodies the dire state of the communications grid and the loss of so many Ligion officers meant that such discoveries could not be efficiently transmitted to other Ligion elements forcing mistakes to be committed again and again and again to dire results the famed abilities of ultramarine analysis their dedication to theoretical and practical was sundered through no fault of their own by attacks from beings utterly unbeholdened the rules of fundamental reality despite horrific losses these hours of combat aboard the McCraggs honor gave way to pockets of concentrated resistance stoic defense cordons centered around specific warriors and groups of warriors who by dint of circumstance or skill were able to navigate the increasingly desperate situation captain Hutonicus of the Ultramarine's 161st company had taken command of a group of Astartes initiates only recently raised to full Ligionary status with next to nothing in the way of actual combat experience it fell to Hutonicus to rally and lead them amongst a foe unlike anything the Imperium let alone he had the ability to coordinate a fight against that a mere quarter of the initiates under the captain's charge survives is less a tragedy and more a miracle those that did bloodied in extremis against otherworldly foes almost universally went on to become warriors of profound renown the lives they would lead thereafter chapter master Empian of the 9th chapter had survived the initial wave of incursions while inspecting a large contingent of his subordinates and was thus perhaps best placed to lead any resistance coalating defense around deck 35 Empian was able to gather to his command yet more Astartes as well as solar auxilia exerters imperialis and navus imperialis troops that had managed to survive the robust fighting force at his disposal Empian became one of the few legion elements aboard to mount a determined advance through the McCraggs honor in an effort to establish connections with the rest of the legion by far the most famous combatant of this particular phase of the atrocity was however an individual Sergeant Aeonid Theel of the 135th company Theel's presence aboard the flagship has entered record as one of history's greatest ironies the sergeant had been marked for formal censure to be delivered by the Primarch himself for the outrageous breach of standards of applying the concepts of theoretical and practical thought exercises towards the combating of fellow space marines when the incursions began Theel had been awaiting Gilliman's rebuke in the Primarch's private quarters and had been forced to defend himself with the first weapons he was able to lay hands upon display pieces retained by Gilliman an electromagnetic longsword and a calitai friction axe both armaments were incredibly rare relic weapons kept as historical artifacts from long exterminated species as a testament to the skill and creativeness of their long past weapon smiths fighting his way through the demon things that beset him to recover his personal firearms Theel quite immediately noticed that the axe and sword were significantly more effective in combating the Neverborn than his bolt pistol was despite the gun being ostensibly a far more potent deterrent on paper he has been credited at least in heresy era hagiography as being one of the first astarties to happen upon the revelation that the demonic require combating within the realm of the conceptual as much as the physical that to the emanations of the warp the simple savagery of flame and sword bears a narrative heft lacking in the technology developed over millennia an element of story that is profoundly lethal to them Eunid Theel, an oddity amongst his legion for his unique approaches to the practical reasons that the looting of the Primark's personal weapons archive was a perfectly sound option amongst his circumstances soon the sergeant was leading a band of fellow astarties alongside solar auxilia and even several abhuman bondsmen all armed with relic weapons of absolutely priceless rarity his advance permitted him to link up with chapter master Empion and captain Hutonicus the combined force pushing out the remains of the bridge where they encountered first chapter master Gage in an act of admirable humility for one of his station Gage recognized that out of all three leaders Theel's methods had achieved the most success and that his information and experience should be as rapidly disseminated amongst the legion as possible against these inexplicable invaders melee weaponry should be utilized the first chapter master withheld judgments on Theel's more apparently fanciful summations that the demons, as he referred to them, were susceptible to arcane and ancient human practices specifically nevertheless Gage appointed the sergeant as overall tactical authority in the field superseding even Empion and Hutonicus by dint of merit and ability Theel's task initially was to recover the ship master Homed of the craft Sanctity of Saramath whose salvation pods had been recovered by the flagship immediately prior to the loss of her bridge while this was ongoing chapter master Empion led a strike upon the sharship's auxiliary bridge with the knowledge and skill of the ship master as well as control over a command center the wounded Marius Gage hoped to rest some measure control over the situation at Mark 11 .40 .02 Marius Gage's forces had claimed control over the auxiliary bridge of the McCraggs honor the efforts expended to do so had cost many ultramarine lives but had saved the fate of ship master Homed from certain death and rescued senior members of the Mechanicum from the besieged Forge Fane at the vessel's heart a full systems purge was completed within minutes and for the first time in nearly 12 hours senior Legion leadership was able to raise vox links with ultramarines on Calth's surface the situation unfolding through rebooted sensorium suites catastrophic while upon the surface remnants of the Legion could be established as continuing to mount resistance within the orbital volume barely a fifth of the 13th ships could be considered battle worthy worse yet the Osbeck sweeps picked up several word bearer cruisers in close formation with the flagship telltale signs of external boarding operations being launched while the 17th Legion had not launched torpedoes the ultramarines surmise that even now their astartes would be attempting to gain ingress through airlocks clearly in an attempt to capture the flagship as a prize with as little damage as possible chapter master Empion was assigned the task of leading a counter boarding assault to draw upon every ultramarines legionary the command staff could muster at this point in the battle for the flagship 40 distinct groups each numbering up to 30 astartes exited the airlocks of the McCraggs honor entering the cold embrace of the void as they made their way towards carefully designated targets of priority the foes docking towers extended from line cruisers were primary amongst these astartes were additionally assigned to detaching void grapples sabotaging the enemy's fusion drill heads and to simply killing as many word bearers infesting the ship's hull as possible wearing void harnesses to speed their passage through the paper thin atmospheric shell around the honors superstructure legionaries advanced rapidly across the hull navigating through a cyclopean city-scaled landscape of brutal ceramite constructions unfit for the passage of any yet now the battlefield upon which the fate of all aboard would be decided it was not long before the word bearers were encountered an astartes moves with inhuman speed under normal circumstances and in the almost gravity less environments their speed was truly astonishing all pretense of stealth was disposed of out of hand the possibility that such an environment even providing for it was discounted by the gauge and empion far in advance of the actual engagements the slate grey hull did nothing to hide the brilliant blue of ultramarine power armor their approach was quickly smotted by word bearer borders and soon bolter rounds sped through the void rupturing armor and trans human bodies in perfect horrid silence the power of space marine physiology was on full display in a unique environment bolter rounds which cracked astartes battle plate caused partial armor decompression before the automated inner system seals worked to contain pressure loss even astartes whose limbs had been exposed to the cutting nothingness of hard space could retain their use maimed as they were dependent only on rapidly diminishing oxygen reserves melees sent victims tumbling away into the vacuum and beaded frozen blood like tiny asteroids it was as brutal as any fight had ever been that dreadful day yet all the more horrific for the total silence in which it unfolded at mark 12.42 0.16 the tide of one such engagement had turned upon the strike force led by aeonid thiel a counterattack down the docking tower by the 17th legion had been committed in far greater numbers than the ultramarines had anticipated and had come from an entirely different axis in the three-dimensional nature of space battles to merely add to the punishment as the ultramarines clung to whatever cover they could upon the hull bolter fire rained at them both along the superstructure and from above it such was the nature of the desperate attack in the first place that thiel and his astartes reckoned with their destinies that they must sell their lives as dearly as possible in the face of overwhelming odds yet an entirely new miracle made itself manifest at this mark one free of the dark blasphemies of word-bearer warped craft rubut gulliman plunged out of the void like a comet in cobalt an inaudible howl of rage painted across his astonishingly helmless face bereft of full atmospheric armor the primark's physiology had somehow allowed him to survive in the trace atmosphere that persisted around the mcrags honors massive form for ten hours the primark had fought and survived without any air supply exposed to near absolute zero of hard vacuum a feat of survival that to be perfectly frank is without all precedent all precedent in records of and research into the mysteries of primark genetic biology it is of course accepted that the body of a primark was able to withstand the effects of hypocapnea ebuleism extremes of temperature even pressure-driven body mass expansion for potentially extended periods that a primark's body could continue to function without oxygen for such a span of time utterly beyond the comprehension of even the most learned of gene rights it can only stand as a testament to the dreadful genius of the emperor and the constitution and sheer overwhelming will of guillemin himself the lord of mcrag hit the word-bearers with the force of a juggernaut demolishing them in an outburst of pure fury the likes of which none of the surviving ultramarines had likely even believed their primark to be capable of their mission accomplished it felt a thiel and his men to convince guillemin to return with them to the captured strategium his prowess in combat had saved them but his mind and genius were now desperately needed in the greater battle yet to be waged there is next to no disputing of the overwhelming tactical advantage possessed by the word-bearers during the first 24 hours of the battle of calth they had complete control of the orbital volume thanks to the campanile strike subsequent surprise attacks by their fleet and their possession of the orbital weapons grid on the planet's surface word-bearer ground forces immediately gained possession of every single significant tactical objective and had inflicted such devastating casualties and infrastructural damage as to deny the ultramarines any opportunity to organize cohesively let alone mount a counter-attack 13th legion's resistance was at best in the early hours able to form in isolated harried pockets around survivors bereft of any other options it is notable then that as the hours of slaughter and massacre ground on the word-bearers appeared for everything to squander the position of superiority they held abandoning fundamental military strategy in favor of genocidal actions seemingly without recourse for strategy or objectives the 17th legion and their cultic auxiliaries in almost all grand warfare theaters descended into a sort of butcher lunacy seeking for all the world to merely kill and destroy and kill and destroy it is a testament to the sheer advantage the traitors held and the utter surprise of their betrayal that even with these bizarre and flawed tactics they were still able to inflict staggering numbers of casualties upon the ultramarines their attached auxilia the mechanicum and calz civilian population it is likewise a testament to the training and character of the 13th legion that in almost all documented cases isolated detachments of ultramarines under attack put aside the pain of their foes perfidy in favor of devising methods of defense and survival with whatever tools they had at their immediate disposal resolving to inflict as much pain upon the hated foe as transhumanly possible two tetrarchs of ultramar iconic senior officers of the legion formed loci of resistance during the early hours of the betrayal at the holofusicon a museum dedicated to imperial culture and civilization icoslamiat the iron warden of conor had drawn to his banner regiments of the imperial army and scattered bands of ultramarines heavy armor supplementing his retinue of solar auxilia from the 41st espandore as well as a sole contemptor pattern dreadnought and a single Thanatar siege automata from the legion cybernetica Lamiad's band forged a path through the scrub deserts surrounding the holofusicon organizing survivors into columns heading towards land shear the second tetrarch, Toro Nicodemus led the remains of the ultramarines 9th chapter against the 17th legion forces commanded by Fodral Fel the word-bearers had fragmented under orders from Fel to annihilate erode province allowing tetrarch Nicodemus to surgically strike the most isolated and apparently blood-mad units while avoiding larger forces while the while following an isolated but powerful vox transmission emanating from a fortified manner belonging to the planetary governor at Leptius Numenius far to the south in the burning forests of Charod province the remains of the 11th and 12th chapters of the ultramarines mounted an extraordinarily coordinated defense against traitor mechanical automata and word-bearer support units fire teams defended roughly established dugouts of earthen defenses and felled trees the secondary teams to the rear hurriedly preparing new improvised fortifications in a display of ad hoc coordination likely unmanageable by all but a few legions as fighting ground on as more and more word-bearer momentum bled away as the legion indulged in seemingly pointless slaughter or bizarre grotesque rituals ultramarine survivors were granted some measure of respite however brief it has been noted by certain scholars that had these been a starties of legions shattered at Istvan this relative lull would have been caused to regroup and strike at the nearest available enemy formation in an attempt to sell their lives as dearly as possible in a forlorn last-ditch with the loyalist muster ongoing at land share including a miraculously unscathed titan-maniple from the legio Oberon they were seemingly assembling a force that would have been capable of such a blood-thirsty advance whatever your scholastic or personal opinion of Gilliman's sons it is notable that no such strike was attempted not even necessarily contemplated records show that what senior officials were present in the outskirts of land share all agreed that linking up with fellow loyalists, co-alating combat forces, logistical support and experiences was paramount above all else to their survival even over the reaping of vengeance this example is admittedly one amongst what was generally speaking wholesale slaughter the loyalists were losing any measurable means as minutes turned into hours innumerable murders both vast in scale and intimate in their atrocity played out across the entire globe never-born incursions were summoned by word-bearer esoterists and dark apostles across Sinachi province and the southern continent lesser emanations beset fleeing civilian columns in orgies of senseless bloodshed beyond human description on the fields of Komesh 20,000 ultramarines lay dead or mortally wounded the latter being recovered by word-bearer startys to be nailed bodily to the hulls of their tanks oozing blood daubed in putrid sigils on their shattered blue armor plate Corfeiron in orbit ordered the destruction of the Corvell islands by nuclear fire seemingly without any reason beyond the fact that the path of his starship brought them within range of a firing solution a legio-cybernetica division at Cylantor ammunition long since expended fought back hordes of ragged cultists with piston-driven arms Zameji in charge desperately devoted percentages of their enhanced brain power to restoring some measure of a communications grid in the manufacture at Danehold less than a thousand ultramarines of the 15th and 8th chapters were besieged by word-bearers of the flayed hand resisting their advances for nearly 12 hours of constant combat before succumbing to an assault by 200 cataphractii armored terminator startys from all of this in the grand historiography of the calth atrocity the battle of Ithrica tends to emerge as a point of focus for many scholars notable not only for its sheer apocalyptic scale even by the standards of the atrocity but for how much it presaged the conflicts that were yet to come in the age of darkness it stands as an example of the sheer ferocity of war between betrayer and betrayed for the malevolent forces besieged by its unfolding and for the sheer implausible carnage ultimately as well it noted that the war would not be one merely fought by a startys legions nor would they be the only ones to suffer other august and ancient bodies of the imperium and humanity would surely fall alongside both the city of Ithrica was the most important orbital transfer hub on calth with only the docks of land sheer rivaling it in terms of sheer tonnage moved every single day several thousand square kilometers of landing zones warehouses and transfer infrastructure formed an uneven triangle across the region with the city growing around and below it linking to significant subterranean archeology developments at first thousands then millions of residents called Ithrica home and with them came webs of arterial roadways networks of maglev train lines in typical ultramarian fashion the city appeared organic but its development was highly planned easily housing its population all the while preparing for millions more to come at its center the heliocon served as primary orbital traffic control as southern reaches and the Ithrica docks in particular while also standing prepared to serve as a backup hub for the orbital defense grid to the north of the metropolis lay the sea the coastline was dominated by a gigantic industrial aqueduct linking to three massive water reservoirs and desalinization plants intended to provide the city with both drinking water and coolant for its many territorial when the couth conjunction had been called Ithrica transformed into its war footing the formidable logistical capacities of the city given over to ammunition storage and transfer the scale of its macro facilities allowing it to permit the landing of the largest of orbital dropships naturally thanks to the latter in particular this made its hinterlands the ideal location for the muster of the titan legions attached to the Astartes forces assembling two legions gathered in their near entirety the legio prosaegius the true messengers and the legio certer vora the fire masters combining some 200 god engines in total the force sufficient to raise an entire sub-sector to ash locals likened it to the city suddenly developing a second skyline but the titans lined up in ordered ranks in the scrublands beyond the metropolis's boundaries their war horns carrying even over the thunder of orbital launches it was not just the titans of the collegia that the city's capacity had room for it had also been marked as the host for the exertus imperialis's heaviest tank divisions for both repair and rearmament the largest amongst these was the calak warhost formed of regiments drawn from the industrialized tidally locked night worlds of the calak sequence the host alone numbered some 90,000 strong all entirely mechanized infantry and armored divisions as well as five artillery companies and two cohorts of super heavy tanks the fourth chapter of the ultramarines the aurorans the force fair specialists themselves were hosted alongside their machines in the city's subterranean core as well as the 24th chapter the exetium this latter formation formed the legion's strategic reserve less a front line chapter and more a dedicated above strength contingent bearing an abundance of support weaponry, mobile artillery and ammunition reserves all designed to be seconded to any chapter should said chapter suffer egregious losses in any area that would diminish their combat efficacy supplementing this was a further 250,000 exetus troops everything from feral tribal levies brought by the word bearers to the solar auxiliary regiments of ultramar as well as automata and magi from the tagmat Xerxes of the forge world Akatran the Ithgrimuster was being conducted to the highest of ultramarines logistical and efficiency standards which is to say some of the highest standards in the entire imperial despite this it was noted in the recovered if of course damaged records of the city that there had been a notable spike in unexplained and uncanny phenomena in the weeks prior to the atrocity itself those collected from an arbitrator notary's personal logos core found in the records of arcology epsilon-14 aligned perfectly with the arrival of the calak war host in the region five weeks local standard prior to the camp anneal's murder of kelthverdean anchor power outages localized freak weather patterns and a 300% increase in equipment failures amongst these reports aligning them with files recovered from municipal arbitez precincts scholars have traced a significant upsurge in civil unrest domestic violence and mental health breakdowns leading to in the immediate days prior to the calth atrocity to a spike in murders of a most extremely brutal nature alongside this missing person reports skyrocketed both in the civilian population and exertus imperialis regiments stationed across the city the wave of incidents culminated in the day before the eventual attack when a fully loaded passenger maglev train arriving at its terminal station did so entirely empty save for blood and viscera coating every interior surface in staggering quantities this latter event was so extreme as to require escalation far above municipal authorities calling as they did for the eyes of the ultramarian regime's secret police the vigil operati a report filed alongside the request curiously and specifically states that these incidents should not be attributed to the calak war host the host's insularity and apparent barbarism as well as lack of cooperation with local authorities had marked them for many as deeply suspicious citing however ultramar's creed of tolerance for the lesser cultures of the imperium the author commented that it was not uncommon for armed forces drawn from worlds grown savage during the age of strife to be treated poorly abroad across the imperium in that the calak's technology was clear proof that for all their moral and social regression they were a proud people and that the word bearers had readily and easily brought them to compliance not two decades before only in the wisdom of hindsight are the author's defences laid bare for what they are when the fleet tender campanile struck calt verdean anchor the disaster was not immediately made apparent to the residents of itrica located as it was in the southern hemisphere calt's own mass concealed the light of the orbital detonation local dinoral it was mid-morning meaning the port was in full logistical productivity legio's surter vorra and presages in conjunction with the rigorous timelines of the muster had finally moved to embarkation massive orbital bulk haulers were being deployed to ferry the god machines to mass conveyor barks in the void above given their prestige within the realm of ultramar the true messengers had been granted the honor of first embarking the bulk of it's battlegroup some 70 titans in number were arrayed in close marching order at the primary macro alpha landing zone with sub deployments seconded as they were to other orbital ships spread across relatively smaller but still vast landing pads of macro beta at the alphas edges the most venerable and thus heaviest and most valuable of presages's engines had already been ensconced within the cyclopean holes of the arutan a purpose-built mechanical titan conveyor two kilometers in length and a kilometer across such was the sheer mass that the very passage of this craft caused atmospheric disturbances to local weather conditions for days following its passage so powerful were its plasma lift engines the dedicated air traffic lanes had been rigorously enforced around it effectively grounding all ships within a large radius of the landing zones for the time being the vessel had only just cycled its titanic engines to full power its impossible bulk only beginning to rise from Calte's service when the constant new-spheric data deluge the coordinating logistical life-blood of the world died in an instant the victim of the Campanile's attack on Viridian anchor on the planet's far side the arutan continued to rise above Ithrica as those magi not killed by neurosystemic feedback that was caused by the initial failure cascade tried desperately and ineffectively to reignite the manifold establish connection with the planetary new sphere or even affect improvement of local Vox networks in place of the moments of dreadful total silence that followed the initial break a rising tide of incomprehensible audio and neural signals was now present the bow wave of a scrap code infestation now claiming ruinous ownership of Calte's data grid every networked cogitator every networked magus was now assailed by the pernicious code as it rampaged across the realm of information killing and destroying with utter abandon to those traitors present the silence and the subsequent howling from the grid neither affected nor surprised them it was not a death shriek of technological systems it was a holy call to arms the signal they had been waiting for to strike Sertovora as one rose to almost full engine bloom reactors powering to maximum as hard and as fast as even the feckless engine seers of the so-called true mechanical could risk unencrypted still operational Vox networks legio-princepts barked orders in the harsh Martian dialect born of their home within the Mons Sertura as the engines of the firemasters began to move the first firing solutions were tracked destruction began to fall from orbit the first strikes by the orbiting wordbearers fleet had been pre-targeted carefully planned to arrive at the attack on Viridian anchor it is testament to the 17th knowledge of the sheer martial power gathered at Ithrica that this took priority even over engaging crippled void ships in their proximity lance beams supplemented by plasma burst cutter barrages struck landing zone macro-alpha as the princeps of presages deaf and blind within their data-deprived engines they were certainly attempting to establish simply what had happened they were of course utterly helpless and the destruction was only beginning the Arutan and its embarkation schedule have been widely known ahead of the attack the logistics of the matter were common knowledge on channels for both legionnesus startes involved in the conjunction the fact that her departure was seemingly timed with the Campanile's attack run was likely to have been at best coincidence but one that served the traitors' purposes extraordinarily well lance beams attacking Ithrica from orbit bit deep into her hull designed to deliver the god engines of the titanica to active war zones the armor of the bulk conveyor was no paltry thing she was more akin to a battleship in robustness than a mere freighter what she lacked of course was active void shields there was no need for them in peacetime the power requirements could be much more readily used in simple engine management her upper hull took the full brunt of several battleships worth of broadsides even armor of this quality could only survive for so long the plating heating red and beginning to become molten the Arutan wavered in its ascent slipping slowly sideways in the air until one of the four plasma engines took the full brunt of a multi lance strike breaking from the hull and plunging in fiery death planet side the Arutan slowly terribly began to fall three remaining engines still burning this was not a simple direct downward plunge the Mechanicum conveyor slid across the skyline of the city the Navarcos aboard desperately attempting to maintain lift to no avail her passage began to tear the tops off the tallest buildings obliterating towers, hab blocks and thermal exhausts by her passage before it came to a meteoric landing in the civic park lands in the city core the Ligio Prasagius though horrifically mauled were far from the only victims of the punitive orbital strike whole squadrons of fighter craft had been obliterated alongside orbital lifters, gunships and shuttles idle in Ithrica's many landing zones as lance beams tore through munition dumps runways and fuel reserves further horror was unfolding outside the city's boundaries in the massive barracks zones of the Exyrtus imperialis billeted together in attempts to improve inter-regimental coordination loyalist forces were now set upon by traitors in the most mundane of spaces commissaries recreational halls training fields supply depots their own beds across the barrack blocks soldiers were gunned down at point blank range in utter surprise parade formations were set upon by armored vehicles grinding stunned loyalists to pulp underneath thundering threads blades plunged into sleeping off shift troopers it was murder, venal and base played out now here as it was across the entire planet 15 minutes into the massacre and a deep thunderous sound was reported to have echoed across the city of Ithrica powerful enough even to drown out the howling of disaster sirens and the on-going tumult of weapons fire and explosions given cross-comparators with the mark of Calth per ultramarine records and taking into account distance this can be surmised to have been the impact of the grand cruiser Antrodamicus in the city of Calca's fortilece to that metropolis's utter devastation the death of the cruiser was immediately answered across the burning swath of Ithrica by another howl all together more malevolent the hundred or so titans of the Ligio Sertervora sounding their warhorns in bloody exultation a legion bellowing for the kill as one to the titans of Prasagius isolated from the unfolding battle on the fields of macro-alpha it was one more mystery atop the torrent they had been subjected to their engines had been rendered almost helpless by the loss of the newspheric links those that had managed to fire their reactors light their voids and restore some measure of all specs had done so only to see the lords of their legion plummeting to apparent destruction as the Arutan fell from the skies the true messengers were aware that they were likely under attack but were bereft of information as to how or where from the actual fighting at this point in the atrocity was primarily restricted to the imperial army zones the forces of Prasagius and the mechanicum Tagmata Xerxes were far too isolated to know how to react and still under the presumption that this was either a dreadful accident at best or a xenos incursion at worse it was to their credit an exemplary reaction by imperial standards fire was withheld the destructive power of the titans known all too well to their the knowledge that were they to open such fire they would be doing so at the center of millions of civilians and this only strengthened their resolve to navigate some means out of the catastrophe the true danger, of course would come far too late for the true messengers to properly react to the southwestern flank of the city seismic alarms were sounding detecting an entirely different set of activity distinct from the aftershocks rippling through calce crust from the impact of the antrodamacus from out of the great span of the spur wastes a barren scrub land that separated landing zones macro alpha and beta drawn out in a curved battle line 7 kilometers in length over 100 titans charging, running at full stride like a line of ancient clansmen they were surter vora all the near full might of that fallen legio baying for war anything in their path and there was plenty in their path was simply pulverized barracks, bivouacs, armor pools supply depots, friend and foe both all were dashed to rubble or bloody gore by the passage of surter vora flattened by the pounding of the god engine's strides the sheer speed of their advance was nigh unmatched in the annals of the caligio titanica only the imperial hunters of the legio solaria had ever been recorded for having been able to move titans over such distances at such speed in such coordination but historians have been quick to point out that only the overwhelming element of surprise and utter disregard for collateral damage allowed the fire masters to accomplish this similarly, they note that weapons fire was held until what was for titan class engines point blank range this is certainly verifiable and ensured the targets of surter vora were kept in a state of unawareness until the last possible moment prosaegius, attempting to regroup across the spans of macro alpha and macro beta were unable to detect their foes until it was far too late rounding a line of bombardment shattered and blazing refineries at the boundaries of the landing zones the power that had been diverted to the titans motivators were shunted to weapons systems even before the legio had brought up its voids turning from full charge to maximal fire mode where systems could manage surter vora prepared to open fire as this was unfolding above the city, blooms of light pulsing instances of half sun's birthing and dying indicated a fight in orbit to anyone who had cast their gaze skywards slowly, at first but increasing in quantity and lethality debris began to fall on ithrica the fragment corpses of ships caught in the gravity well of kelth the indiscriminate impacts added exponentially to the chaos unfolding in the city as civilian infrastructure was overwhelmed both by disaster relief efforts and simple crowd control terrified workers fleeing for their lives in every direction one such fiery orb plummeted skywards somehow managed and any observed to arrest its fall instead to a just visible stationary position within the atmosphere far above the metropolis the inferno was thanks to recovered sensorium logs the sign of the orbital reentry of the mecanicum tritonos class galleus dirac's lament the vessel was both principle conveyor and sovereign domain of a covenant of the ordo reductor known as mormoth null beholden to no one forge in particular but serving as mendicant destroyers for whatever tag meta elected to contract their services obtaining position in precise geosynchronous orbit above ithrica the galleus fired every single one of its missile batteries simultaneously rather than the one supposes comparatively merciful atomic bombardments of some cities across kelth this was altogether more slower a death the warheads contained within the missiles fired were directed melted charges precision instruments of destruction a great many of them targeted the ithrica heliocon the command and control hub of the city's mecanicum wherein even now frantic clades of lex mechanics were attempting to reignite the manifold and regain some level of control over the rampaging scrap code other missiles streak towards less primary but nevertheless valuable targets surviving generator hubs medical facilities arbiters precincts all targets designed to inflict the most amount of damage to infrastructure that was possible precisely 50 meters above these targets the missiles detonated their systems channeling their power in exact downward facing cones of annihilation heat and radiation equal in brightness and lethality to a late stage star obliterated all before them adamantium was liquidized ferrocrete was turned to black dust the heliocon bearing the brunt of the bombardment simply ceased to be the fusion energy unleashed by the order reductor marking its presence in a vast unspeakable mushroom cloud rising skywards the pressure wave of superheated air incinerated tens of thousands of civilians in an expanding circle flash burnt to their ashes the howling winds demolishing train lines and scattering ground autos like children's toys on the landing zones the titans of prosagius angled their voids and shifted their frontage to face this bushing danger to best protect those engines only for at this moment the engines of certivora to strike at this instant at their most vulnerable flanks the attack of certivora was savage beyond anything prosagius had ever experienced despite their bravery upon the fields of the crusade against a gargantuan zenos horrors the consciousness of the hated fraal could match the gluttonous murder lust the firemasters displayed in their shock assault a score of true messenger god engines fell to the first devastating volley their exposed superstructures bared to the onrushing certivora legio sundered by searing melted barrages torrents of mega-bolter fire and pinpoint volcano cannon strikes reactor casings were torn open the caged sons of the titan hearts going critical in a pico-second birthing fusion reactions of unholy lethality right in the middle of their mustard lines smaller engines caught in these blast waves reeled or were fully toppled even as they hurried to adjust their facings against the storm assault the slaughter was literally unprecedented never in the history of the imperium had so many titan-class machines been destroyed in so quickly a time and yet still certivora advanced murder burning in hearts as fiercely as the fire emblems of their panoply war horns blaring their triumph to the falling skies on the far side of the city further slaughter unfolded on a smaller scale but no less savage and hideous for it the calak war host reached the cordons of macro-landing zone gamma having already killed every exertus imperialis trooper not allied to their secret cause present in their barracks the host now fell upon the civilian population with unrestrained ferocity murdering with complete abandon into fleeing crowds did they send their tanks the bladed dozer plates at their fore crushing panicking civilians into wretched pulp they tore open disaster shelters laying into the huddled terrified masses within with bayonet and combat knife dobbing the walls and their armoured transports even themselves but the blood of their victims in acts of profane lunacy any resistance met be it hastily assembled auxilia defensive positions or even a canny tech priest coven having locked down their manufactoria the calak war host directed overwhelming armor or air support to crush their enemies a wave of super heavy tanks or a mass flight of lightning and avenger strike flyers obliterating whatever in their path with saturated fire despite these clearly coherent responses to mounted enemy defenses it was clear from reports recovered that the calak objective seemed to be simply genocidal slaughter their pursuit of the helpless citizenry of ithrica was simultaneously clinical and lunatic they seized no ground nor held any their divisions that rampaged through the metropolis followed ospex screeds detecting mass human life sign readings their malignant hunger for bloodshed appeared insatiable as the calak spread ever outwards new fiery contrails appeared in the skies above the metropolis heralding the planetfall of more than just orbital debris for now unto ithrica came the arterial red gunships of the word bearers and the sinister configurations of ordo reductor war crucibles on the fields of macro alpha a sterling testament to the character of the legio prosaegius was entered into history despite the apocalyptic fury of ser ter vorra despite their unprecedented casualties the true messengers did not break or even falter those engines that survived the initial barrage of their lines rallied with admirable speed and coherency falling as quickly as they were able into a well-drilled trinity shield formation a favored defensive tactic of the legio the alignment consisted of three maniples of five titans each the heaviest surviving engines forming a wedge formation void shields were brought to maximum all spare reactor charge directed to their integrity and arranged to overlap with their fellow titans behind this shield wall engines of lighter tonnage were gathered in order to protect them the warhounds and reavers of the true messengers fell in behind the formation led by a wall of as yet undamaged warlord class titans an indomitable fortress under most any circumstances save for the one they now found themselves in even the void shields of the warlords powered to maximum integrity were taking fire from a hundred engines annihilation grade barrage weaponry affecting them in unrelenting torrents the ground itself was becoming vitrious due to the sheer heat of the incoming fire and its impacts upon the void shields the landing zones tarmac steadily turning into cracked glass with the entire legio senior kadra believed dead in the crash landing of the arutan command passed to princeps senioris rico triest of the warlord class titan oric pegasus committed to the heart of the shield wall her assessment of the situation could not have been clearer her legio was hopelessly and fatally outgunned their enemies erstwhile brethren of now hated serter vora continue to close their motivators still recovering from the sheer speed of their initial advance but no less implacable triest knew that when the distance was closed the slaughter would be final the fire masters were simply too many in number and their broad kilometers wide battle line was primed to fully encircle the engines of presagius her first and indeed final command as warmistress of the legio was issued with all possible haste those engines sheltering behind the shield wall war mongers reavers dire wolves and warhounds as well as a few heavily damaged warlords were to immediately retreat at full stride into Ithrica proper and disperse cover was to be sought where at all possible and all efforts bent towards a restoration of void shields and laterally weapon systems the man made ravines of the city were tall enough to conceal even Titan class engines which coupled with the division of legio-manipals would hopefully serve to deprive serter vora of its sheer numerical advantage nine warlords would buy their kin the time needed to accomplish this including oric pegasus itself mounting a full charge at the line of the fire masters two never even made contact with their enemies one torn to fragments by sustained fire the other literally knee capped by a volcano canon strike and crashing to the ground this latter warlords carapace weaponry continued firing blindly for several seconds stabbing into the tumultuous dust cloud its fall had thrown up until it was overrun the remaining seven engines collided with their traitor foes with enough righteous fury to sunder their line forcing serter vora to prematurely stagger and close their encircling maneuver to compensate the scorned ferocity of the true messenger served them well as did the sheer power of their engines a warlord Titan motivated by pure hatred is no mean thing and for the first time since the attack began prestigious reaped vengeance from the traitors it was of course an inevitably suicidal attack one by one the counter attacking titans succumbed to the sheer numbers of the fire masters accounts considered by some to be apocryphal owing to the narrative satisfaction they carry state that it was oric pegasus who survived the longest beating back the enemy with the severed head of a serter vora reaver titan clasped in its fist the carapace weaponry were severed ashen stumps its armor was beginning to flow like liquid under so many sustained melt a weapon strikes it and its fellow six warlords died with honor and success their counter attack had bought the rest of the legio time enough to reach the cover of the city's core their names are forever etched into legio memory enshrined as the nine paragons of ithrica oric pegasus putarkos the lion of mars the triumph of acotran reasons thunder the silverthorn this reginum and the will of adamant this majority muster of the legio was not alone in their miraculous retreat smaller subdivisions of the true messengers had mustered elsewhere in the macro landing zones some had suffered terribly battlegroup peregrine was utterly annihilated by a fusion missile barrage from the ordo reductor in the upper atmosphere but others were luckier battlegroup argentus the lever titan invigilator at its four was saved from the bombardment by their proximity to the legio certer vora's own muster site at the time of the attack under fire from the firemaster's trailing elements they had immediately retreated desperately trying to raise comblinks with their kin on the fields of macro alpha to no avail elsewhere the armoured squadrons and battle automata maniples of the mecanicum's tagmata xerxes had also suffered minimal losses from the orbital strikes electing in the face of what they had correctly discerned to be a massive engine scale conflict to fall back to an industrial zone in ithrica southern quarter which embedded magi and mermadons calculated as being the most defensible location within immediate reach traitor auxilia drawn from the mordecai occlusion attempted to intervene in the tagmata's retreat but were in a rare stroke of loyalist luck completely outmatched the occlusion was a string of feudal worlds and while outfitted with decently modern imperial weaponry its regiments were ultimately lightly armed and armoured driven primarily by word bearer aligned faith more than actual skill or leadership the mecanicum simply annihilated them suffering nothing in the way of losses automata and mermadons carved a pitiless clinical path through the traitor auxilia as knight suits secured their flanks the heavier weaponry of the scions deemed a waste of ammunition against such meager opposition with these elements and the remains of prosaegius now disengaged and fortifying themselves within the depths of ithrica the initial phase of slaughter and destruction was concluded but the battle of ithrica was far from over as the conflict entered into its second hour it took on a wholly different character prosaegius now scattered and embedded in the artificial canyons of ithrica sought to use the towering ferrocrete hab and administration towers as cover to lay ambushes for the engines of serter vora while the pharomasters now brought the same murderous fury they had displayed on the landing fields to their destruction of the city attempting where possible to lay waste to whole quarters in their efforts to flush their prey out counterattacks by the true messengers could only mitigate so much collateral damage as they sought to bring the foe to bear and it was not long before the flashing plasma arcs thundering apocalypse missile barrages and howling shellfire began to lay utter waste to ithrica towers were reduced to bullet shredded corpses of their former selves before collapsing entirely victims of the titan battle dust clouds rapidly rendered all visibility entirely moot this was an engine war after all fought in the realms of all spexes decided upon by skill and tenacity of the sensori and their princeps midst all of this crowds of civilians unable to previously escape fled in utter panic from the clashing giants thousands were caught in the torrents of frometium fire unleashed by certivora's favored inferno cannons flash incinerated to ashen ghosts reactor death of titans irradiated whole city blocks in instants their destruction only adding to that already reaped by weapons fire a false knight fell on ithrica a choking toxic miasma of masonry dust and human ash through all this the presagious battlegroup argentum miraculous survivors from earlier pressed through it all under the superlative leadership of the reaver invigilator out fighting and outmatching every foe they encountered they were dogged in their pursuit of a singular goal to reach the downed wreck of the mass conveyor arutan for within the precepts of the manniple bore hope that their salvation may yet live in ithrica's eastern sectors the calak warhost reigned supreme the murderous advance still wholly unchecked their death toll impossible to ever establish accurately they were finally now opposed by the ultramarines of the scattered 4th and 24th chapters squads and companies from these chapters had been sub deployed across the city diverted and separated in what one must presume was a deliberately premeditated attempt to deny them coherency at the outset of the betrayal many of these subdivisions had been caught in the blast wave caused by the helicons destruction and these survivors now rallied under knowledge far more grim their command elements had all been ensconced within the depths of the now annihilated command center this did however provide all points with the mustering site desperately all were seeking to access the massive subterranean network of bunkers that had formed the helicons foundations the main site was simply a disaster any entrance ways were now literally molten rock flowing like liquid in the aftermath of the ordo reductor's dread attentions auxiliary access tunnels were slowly being opened often by mechanicum adepts or ultramarines taking direct enemy fire and trapped astartes below were being painstakingly rescued the 13th legion however could not simply ignore the rampages of the calak this was both tactical exigency and moral duty while defending the rescue operations was a consideration the wanton murder of civilians self-same civilians the ultramarines were essentially sworn to protect and defend led many squads to break away from the helicons zones and seek retribution in the eastern sector counter-attack of unbridled fury slammed into the advancing calak just as the savagery of the zogdilia had met little to no resistance in their slaughter of helpless innocents so too were they now powerless against the legion small arms fire pinged uselessly off power armor just as their bayonets and ritual knives could find precious little purchase in cobalt battle plate the violence was astonishing as anyone who has ever beheld astartes facing baseline humans will ever attest to the calaks overrun forward elements almost entirely light infantry were reduced to piles of viscera severed limbs and detonated bodies it is a testament to the discipline of the ultramarines that their desire for vengeance did not see them make the same mistake their foes had when calak walkers and armor were encountered tactical withdrawals were immediately ordered until heavier weaponry could be drawn up to further punish the traitors the sheer malicious fury present amongst the nigh rabid calak war host since their first atrocities in their barracks zones were now being documented amongst other traitor forces in the war zone the tagmatas xerxes recorded a marked uptick in baseline human auxilia hurling themselves at the mechanical defences seemingly without consideration for survival carefully delineated kill zones methodically mapped out by the tagmatas savants of destruction became clogged with bodies yet still the waves and waves of soldiers came heedless of losses insensate in raptuous kill lost so constant were these human deluges that the esoteric weaponry of the mechanicum began to overheat forcing the application of close quarter combat protocols in carefully timed sequences so that the magi and automata may preserve their ammunition supplies and weapons barrels the potential source of the zealous lunacy was soon to reveal itself amongst the human masses now strode figures altogether more massive the word bearers the estartes present at these engagements thanks to rigorous mechanicum data extraction were documented as having quite non-standard upgrades to their power armor many bore what appeared to be votive sensors swinging on chains and vomiting forth clouds of hallucinogenic narcotic gases augmented helm speakers blared plain song or hymnals in languages unknown to the tagmata but the effect that these estartes had amongst the unaugmented thralls was clear mathematically verifiable even wherever they strode the suicidal intensity of the auxilia was driven to even greater heights not only that but the estartes themselves were of course no slouches in combat and had brought up field weaponry to match that of the tagmata xerxes significant damage was now being reaped upon the mechanicum previously merely outnumbered the magi were now becoming outgunned forcing retreat algorithmica to plot withdrawal courses to hastily but exactingly constructed defensible positions not even the once noble engines of the legio sertovora were spared from the murderous wrath but the masters of the titans did not seem to pay it any heed even their holy name appeared to be a thing of the past though the legio was born of mars herself ancient even by the standards of the kilesia titanica ithrica was the moment they shocked that identity holy a new name was being blared across open vox lines howled into the wind with a rage unbridled infernus it was appropriate on that damnable day more than any others the fire masters they now truly were inferno cannons incinerated city blocks with abandon or deluged presagious engines with crawling melting fury as the hours of engine war ground on legio infernus titans seem to abandon any tactical rigors of god machine scale conflict they transformed slowly but surely into less of a coherent fighting force and more of a horde of gigantic beasts unleashed engines of the true messengers were hounded like wounded prey but increasingly infernus titans would abandon these pursuits in favor of glutting themselves upon the helpless humanity that fled from them in all directions the methods employed in these slaughters had previously only been done so against non-compliant human regimes or zenus populations using the sheer overwhelming sonic power of the engine warhorns the titans drove people like livestock deafened their ears bleeding herded into groups contained by the very architecture of the city before engaging their inferno cannons and turning the screaming begging humanity into cinders not one scrap of mercy was offered the sheer horror of the murder was apparently the exact point for the beleaguered engines of presagius the massacre of ithrica's civilians granted them a degree of respite distracted infernus engines were peeling away from pursuing them battlegroup argentus spared from obliteration rounded upon the downed hulk of the arutan only to find their path barred by a hulking nemesis warbringer class titan accompanied by two warhounds while not the demi legio they had feared to discover gloating over the wreckage of the mass conveyor the nemesis outmatched any single engine in argentus who now steeled themselves for the fight of their lives the battle of ithrica is almost unique upon calth for being a warzone where a no-combatant held the upper hand for any significant stretch of time during the betrayal a status quo typically ended up establishing itself within the first hour of hostilities in favour of one side or another this was of course overwhelmingly in favour of the traitors possessing as they did total surprise and superiority but loyalist victories did still exist in ithrica no such decisive position was occupied for many many hours by the sixth hour of fighting ultramarine reinforcements drawn from the 17th and 18th chapters had poured into the city via gunship and rhino transports having mustered far outside the metropolis's boundaries these survivors nevertheless reckoned that ithrica would provide a more defensible position than the empty scrubland surrounding it it was no safe harbour that much was certain but it would at the very least provide cover from aerial strikes of word-bearers black comet chapter fliers that had so punished them since the first wave of attacks additionally, corfeiron's control of the planetary defence grid had seen renewed orbital strikes targeting locations in the planet's southern hemisphere commanders of the 17th and 18th reasoned that in no way certain the word-bearers were less likely to commit orbital fire on a war zone containing their own elements in the depths of the ruined city the remnants of the ultramarine's fourth chapter had coalesced under the leadership of captain mantargo who had led a heroic breakout from the subterranean bunkers with the sizeable amount of his chapter's armour and artillery divisions in a superlative tactical decision the captain deployed his war machines on the high ground offered by the massive trident aqueduct its systems, savaged by the war it nevertheless had been built to withstand thousands of tons of water every second making it the perfect platform for the armour of the 13th legion from here, captain mantargo was able to direct counter-battery fire at targets of opportunity across the entire metropolis although these efforts were limited by vox lines constantly jammed with overlapping hymns and chants so intense and garbled now that they resembled nothing less than constant primeval howling at the site of the downed arrutan the nemesis titan revoka had finally fallen but only at great cost to battle group argentus the warlord class evocatus and the warhound deathrunner had been lost with all hands while the commanding reaver class later had suffered heavy damage along with its two surviving kin drawn by the fighting almost the entirety of prosaegius beliedgird legio had gathered in the city areas around the arrutan rallying around the conveyor as on all sides they were pressed by the mad dogs of the reborn legio in furnace this was however no forlorn last stand at such close proximity the hopes of battle group argentus were realized voxlings had been raised engines yet lived within the holds of the arrutan survivors of the crash contained within their god machines but trapped within the massive bark void shields could not be activated and though many may have sorely wished it none had dared to activate weapons to cut their way out for fear of detonating fuel lines or worse munition resupply bays legion techmarines skittarii overseers and mechanica magi were frantically working to free the command echelon of the true messengers even as titan grade weapon fire barrage to the gathering prosaegius voids wavering under such punishing barrages elsewhere the tactical situation of the tagmata xerxes was growing ever more dire temporary relief had emerged in the form of attachment of knights from the stranded house vornhair but the traitor horde had only grown with the arrival of more and more word bearers and the emergence on their flanks of the black and crimson siege automata from the ordo reductor covenant mormoth null the herrotech obliterators who had laid waste to the helicon from the stratosphere as the scions of vornhair against thanatar battle robots and word bearer heavy armor the magi of xerxes worked furiously on a hastily ratified plan to reconfigure a large plasma reactor the housing of which had become the site of their now seemingly final stand at calthmark 06.36.04 the tagmata xerxes mounted a counterattack against their besiegers a wedge formation of the mecanicum's last castellax class automata drove into the traitor host using servo claws, blunt fists and powered blades in favor of now spent firearms to tear through the poorly equipped cultic auxiliaries sent reeling by the scale of the counter assault a moment was bought for three damaged but operational thanatar siege robots to drag the modified reactor forth as fast as their hammering piston legs could carry their massive frames and the barely contained nuclear firebomb their magi had rigged the zealot mob was seemingly oblivious to this driving forth upon the automata with abandon but what was about to transpire was no doubt obvious to some of the canier word bearers in attendance and was certainly obvious to the captain of the dirac's lament being in stationary position above the city arch majos barbatos hexad dominus of the mormoth null covenant registered the phenomenal and barely contained reaction immediately and ordered his ordo reductor to withdraw from the field with all possible haste it was for the traitors far too late logisticians amongst the tagnata xerxes had calculated the inevitability of their forces destruction the total loss of the tagnata was a mathematical inevitability dependent only upon timing and unpredictable factors beyond the reckoning of their statistics accordingly the governing magi had enacted procedures of mutually assured destruction the communion remotely detonated their device an area half a kilometer in diameter was immediately atomized in plasma fire along with anything or anyone that was enough to be contained within the sphere of atomic annihilation the blast wave went on to consume 23 city blocks worth of territory with a similar yield to that which had wiped out the helicon reducing anything living to dust and anything of metal to molten slag it is illustrative of the sheer magnitude of the bombardment the legio-presagius was weathering that the destruction of the tagnata xerxes was utterly unnoticed by the titans guarding the arotan the half-dead invigilator was now the sole engine of argentus that remained standing maimed, yes, but defiant the sacrifice of its battle group was thankfully not in vain at mark 07.03.21 the massive assault door of the arotan hit the earth with a near seismic force unlocked at last by the valiant efforts of loyalist technicians from within the cavernous hold of the conveyor strode forth the mightiest engines the true messengers possessed at the fore was immortalis domitor a warmonger-class emperor titan fully twice the size of the two maniples of warlords that now walked alongside it their first volley simply annihilated the park lands in a three kilometer radius of their targets initial volley destroying in an instant the infernus titans tyrant's fist orias deus visago and consecratus inferna a single coordinated group under the command of the legio's princeps maxima the march of the true messengers was now unstoppable even with vox rendered inoperable by the eldritch howling of the traitor communications the princeps of prosaegius utilized tried and true methods of warhorn signaling short blasts forming robust signals of advance defense and targeting the blood-mad frenzy of their foes both the legio infernus and their human auxiliaries simply fell before the precision and discipline of the true messengers the titanic advance spared the harried ultramarine companies allowing them an opportunity to consolidate their forces and for the first time in hours aid in the coordination of evacuation efforts hurrying what civilians had managed to survive the apocalypse unleashed upon their city into the largely secured subterranean routes to the archeologies far below ground these efforts, though paltry in comparison to the death toll should not go unnoticed the first dread notice of what was to occur came with the sudden and total silence of the vox lines the howling that had blanketed ithrica for hours suddenly simply was not for an instant quiet reigned until it was followed by another surge of calm traffic this time from loyalist units attempting to establish whatever they could of the broader tactical picture every possible request came to the lines please for medical aid demands for command authority confirmation requests for situation reports simple please to know why the imperium's own had turned upon them above all this shunted into the highest priority bands came a call from the legio-presigius warhound engine lecadrio the scout titan had been dispatched to the last known location at azirxes who had proven impossible to raise on vox for reasons obvious to us in this historical record shielded as it was against the intense radiological fallout of the devastated industrial zones lecadrio had discovered not simply a smoking blast crater but a horrific forest of twisted metalwork raised to host thousands of charred but clearly human corpses pinned in place as if by some predatory avian the arrangement of these spars in concentric circles was so clearly not the artifice of any weapon system known and the scout titan's aspect's grids were so overloaded with contradictory life sign readings that it raised its legio's leader immediately to deliver the report but was cut off shortly thereafter attempts to contact it both by the princeps of immortalis domitar and several ultramarines damatlys rhinos nearby were met with failure for the next several minutes until a garbled heavily distorted vox burst was received and routed for all to hear the snippets spoke of a figure not a titan but taller than one winged skin, blood red armor of beaten brass surrounded by a blood fog it spoke that their void shields had failed that their armor had been compromised that, that, that their souls must be commended to the omnisia that, save us then silence there is little in the way of a concrete narrative that can actually summarize the final hours of the battle of ythrika the 8th hour had been ushered in with the death of lycadrio what was recovered in the aftermath is a scrambled mess of legio-prasagius lithocorders legionazostatis helm logs ordo reductor cogitator banks and legio-cybernetica necroportical implants it is all of it, fundamentally corrupt and unreliable even by the standards of records saved from kaoth following the atrocity as for eyewitness testimony the battle had pitifully few survivors and one's acolytes should be well aware at this point of the memetic hazards posed by testimony of those who witnessed what they did this is one of the reasons mentioned at the outset of this particular chapter of the betrayal of kaoth that ythrika presaged in so many ways the battles of the age of darkness a rising intensity of horror and destruction that would end with the sundering of all that was known what can be verified is that at the outset of the 8th hour of battle, several localized rifts in corporeal reality occurred within the city's limits the tears ruptures in the sky that separates materia from immateria our world from the warp provided vectors from which the predatory entities of that realm the neverborn those without the ken to realize the words power will call demons flooded into the mortal plane the largest of these schisma occurred at the site of the tagmatas xerxes's destruction while others emerged at seemingly random sites around the metropolis its industrial zones, its mustery arts others of the damned have noted of course that these sites were likely far from actually random rather they had been locations where the slaughter had been the greatest, the most vile were the most possessive of narrative significance the sheer scale and malignancy of the murder performed by the legio in furnace and the calak warhost was now given dreadful, tangible purpose it was ritual its significance on a scale hitherto unseen by the imperium of man against the torrent of immaterial entities that emerged from these portals there was no preparedness their nature was utterly unknown to the loyalists even the most senior of ultramarine's commanders are legio prosaegius princeps at best they would have been aware that predatory xenos, unstudied by humanity existed within the warp had they been, whatever vomited forth from the rents in reality bore absolutely not one shred of resemblance to whatever prosaic, heavily redacted account they had read their forms were a cacophony of malevolence tidal waves of verminous things, capering half forms in mockery of humanity hybrid anemilia with too many mouths libering uncreations of eyes and fire bestial monstrosities in the aspects of legion soldiery their sizes were as diverse and insane as their forms but amongst them strode incarnations the size and equal of the god engines that had ruled the battle zone for hours some plunged from the sky the color of bruises made of loss enveloping enemy titans loyalist titans sundering them in fell swoops at the avarice plaza the revertitan nosos was recorded on legionary helm vids being crushed by a gaseous emanation that resembled nothing less than a cloud of serpents who coiled around the proud engine to its end the 312th solar auxilia were torn to shreds by half incarnated things hooting as they rode bladed chariots through their ranks the attacks of the neverborn were not restricted to merely loyalist ranks or to the slaughter of remaining civilians the ordo reductor coven of mormoth null were beset by the bale fire and toothed maws of lesser emanations fleeing for their dropships to evacuate to the derexlement far above traitor auxilia likewise perished some in religious rapture but many, many more weeping in terror and insanity only the word-bearers were spared the attentions of the emanations passing through their immaterial ranks untouched on the aqueduct of the trident the previously entrenched to ultramarine's fourth company were plagued by a threat from within as from the body of a captive word-bearer incarnated a massive neverborn creature canine in aspect but with monstrous wings a body the size of an imperial knight and its coming brought great slaughter its size only grew as it killed and killed and killed until its destruction was brought by a strafing run of fire raptor gunships the incident bears further parallels with a similar incarnation elsewhere on calth several similar incarnations in fact where in identical scenarios near identical creatures emerged all of which were reported to have been chanting the same word this word has of course been removed from this record for cognitohazard reasons as all archival menials committed to confirming its validity died in the process one must assume that this neverborn is part of one of their wicked gestalt emanations vestigial fingers of some wicked hole contained beyond the veil yet grasping through it although ultimately overcoming this emanation the encounter and what he had been able to glean of the beyond dire tactical picture convinced captain mantargo of the ultramarines that not only could victory at ithrica simply not be claimed but that even their deaths would inflict negligible damage upon their foes by the 13th hour of the battle of ithrica the captain had sounded a general evacuation order having discerned he was probably the last surviving higher authority within the devastated city the order was quickly taken up in the northern sectors which had been spared much of the rampages of the calak war host and thus the neverborn incursions elsewhere macro gamma landing fields became a helpful escape vector they had been spared the initial orbital strikes owing to their status as a traitor mustering point and now served as an embarkation point for surviving loyalist flyers and overland transports in the southern and eastern reaches of the city however the order went essentially unheeded not out of disobedience far from it but simply because any human or astartes alive within those parts of ithrica were far too occupied fighting for their very survival to even contemplate withdrawal the enemy was numberless their forms limitless they obeyed no law of the world physical weapons ceased to function against them just as how the situation aboard the mcrags honor had overwhelmed the ultramarine capacity for practical application of theoretical rules of warfare the greater and lesser emanations of the dark powers made full use of their stunned foes inability to combat them and the orgy of violence that descended upon ithrica was of a kind unheard of in the annals of imperial history redolent instead of ancient terran wood carvings and madman folk tales of the darkest depths of the age of strife no record exists of survivors from these theaters of the battle of ithrica they have been assumed as far as history can establish to have all simply died torn to shreds by capering never born only the testimony of those few true messengers who survived give any hint as to the fate of the legio presages even though scant handful only lived through the calamity in hopelessly crippled engines that staggered to some degree of relative safety being rescued by other imperial armed forces in the aftermath abandoning their god machines to silent death it is likely that once the situation became clear once the very gates of hell itself had been thrown open and madness reigned the legio knew that there dozen or so surviving titans could simply not escape the arrow town was going nowhere little more than a smoking husk at this point the only titan capable landers were those of inferness at landing field macro beta to which even now the fire masters were retreating to less they suffer the attentions of their never born allies the lords of the true messengers knew that even if they were somehow capable of staging a breakout action and making it to the scrub land surrounding Ithrica it would be exposed wholly left to the whims of aerial or orbital strikes the fate presages resigned themselves to was clear the last futile fighting stand against the hordes of war emanations that they in their actions may buy time for humans or astartes elements to flee it is unlikely that they knew or could have known the degree to which they succeeded it is unlikely that they cared theirs was not of a character that required such flattery duty to presages was the only reward that was needed not a single titan of the legio survived the battle of Ithrica it is however estimated that through their sacrifice some 4000 ultramarines were able to escape the doomed metropolis living to fight on against the tides of darkness that were yet to come by mark 21.00 it could be considered a safe statement that many of the survivors of Talth had resigned themselves to death under the light of the veridian star it should not be taken as a surrender to meldon collie indeed far from it the astartes of the 13th legion ultramarines continued to comport themselves with the utmost discipline and dedication relentlessly applying themselves to the immediate practicalities of their situations but for many their fates now seemed clear whatever recompense they were to earn would be bought from the enemy in blood and destruction and they would count it good all however was not lost the battle was not yet won by the traitorous 17th legion and their allies as one has elucidated upon previously the word-bearers despite being in a position of near-total tactical and strategic superiority from the very moment of their betrayal had at least in base military terms squandered this position in favor of their pursuit of matters altogether more esoteric on the full extent of these eldritch machinations were yet to birth it had allowed the 13th legion an iota of room to regroup reinforce and begin to plan the ultramarines of course were led by one of the greatest planners in imperial history and robot gulliman recovered now from his imprisonment in the thin atmospheric shell surrounding his flagship was striving to develop the situation into something that would deliver his legion from annihilation the key to victory or perhaps more accurately the key to survival past the next several hours lay in the usurped planetary defense grid the thousands of weapons and placements both on the planet's surface and in orbit had been captured by the word bearers earlier in the battle and turned by the traitor mecanicum to the command of core pheron since then the first captain of the 17th legion had wielded the grid not only to punish ultramarine orbital and ground forces but to murder the entire verdidian system while slaved to traitor control no significant muster of force could be managed by the ultramarines as core pheron would immediately retest the grid to punish and annihilate thanks to marius gaige's recapture of the macrags honors secondary bridge gulliman was able to coordinate planning with the largest loyalist force that had established contact from the surface that of fourth company captain remus ventanus ventanus had during the course of the battle linked up with mere edved tauren who was believed to be the most senior surviving mecanicum adept on calth from tauren the captain and laterally his primark had learned that a data engine potentially the only one on calth not infected by pernicious scrapcode lay within the land shear guild hall this engine would allow loyalist mecanicum to reestablish the newsphere and thus control over calt's networked weapons and placements but this would only be possible if control was also taken from the data overseer engine currently being used by the wordbearers to command the grid this engine locus was currently in zetsun varied yard the last surviving orbital shipyard and the base of operations for core phaeron the attack on zetsun varied would be led by gulliman himself while the primark acknowledged that his role was as a general not a warrior he nevertheless stated to marius gaige that he would not allow any of his sons to deny him the satisfaction of killing the first captain of the wordbearers with his own hands ventanas' attack began with a rapid advance in force into the ruins of land shear city the formations he possessed were heterogeneous a diverse mix of imperial military elements the majority was of the captain's own fourth company survivors supported by solar auxilia, exertus regiments and mecanicum tagmata elements under mageos tauren and skitariai marshal aroc serotid it was a motley assortment of survivors to assure swept up into ventanas' mission by shear luck and fate the remnants of the nereid tenth marched alongside mecanicum tech priests under the massive bulk of shadow sword super heavy tanks while at the vanguard ventanas led a wing of 13th legion land raiders a first detected opposition was also their first kill a sole warhound scout titan of the legion mortis the engine was alone and unsupported its princeps had clearly been granted leave to indulge their darkest destructive fantasies on land shear city this they would pay despite pushing its voyage shields to maximum the warhounds force bubble popped under a hurricane of fire from predator whirlwind and sycaron tanks before a pinpoint strike from a shadow sword ended its wretched existence the portentious engine kill marked the start of the engagement ventanas' forces fell upon the word bearer defenders of the guild hall with the fury of the betrayed ultramarine discipline and cohesion kept barely in check in the face of a fury most righteous word bearer gal vorbach reaped a fearsome tally from the attackers but the rage of ultramar would not be denied ventanas' forces captured the guild hall and delivered the mecanicum to their work their success was buoyed by the arrival of new allies the 111th and 112th companies bereft of their command cadres had been led to the guild hall by a single sergeant named ann shees while captain aethon of the 19th company so called the honored also arrived a whole mortal host soon too made their presence known led by ultramarine tetrarch icos lamiad as well as the honored dreadmark tally macros the reprieve welcome as it was would be short-lived all specs feeds registered a massive inbound enemy force led by hall belloth despite the mecanicum's possession of the data engine the corresponding overseer engine in zetsun vered had yet to be freed from word bearer control unless it was the efforts of ventanas' companies would be for nothing and hall belloth's word bearers would annihilate them within the hour yet in orbit around half of the 13th legion's desperate gambit was now underway gilliman himself led a teleport assault from the macrags honor to the zetsun vered orbital the flagship could in no way risk movement for fear of alerting the weapons grid so dangerous a maneuver was now the only one left at the primark's disposal the sheer range of the teleport would draw so much power from the ship and shunt so much of it through the ancient systems that they would surely overload rendering extraction by this method impossible it was a final gambit and was understood as such failure would see the primark dead, kath lost and the legion nigh exterminated the risk was the only course possible for gilliman without control of the weapons grid his legion would simply die regardless it was only a matter of time the battle between the primark and the master of the faith was unlike anything hitherto seen in the age of darkness corfeiron had ascended to becoming a debased magister of the powers of the warp he had drunk deep from the cups of sorcerous might and the full scale of his present abilities were unleashed upon gilliman as soon as the ultramarines attacked the command center invested with the responsibility of the loregar himself for the kath operation corfeiron withheld nothing blasting astartes to ash with warp spawned maledictions before turning upon gilliman himself even the primark was rendered near helpless before the sorcery of the master of the faith driven to his knees by a beam of blackest unlight gilliman was sprung upon by corfeiron who pressed the blacked flint of anathemae to his throat this cursed dagger was one of the eight shards of the anathemae blade forged by the zenos kinabrak and stolen by wordbearer's first chaplain arabus at the outset of the inter-ex crisis the self-same blade had been used to mortally wound horitz lupercal upon the moons of davin delivering the primark to that world's sinister lodge priests for care its new blasphemous children had been wielded by several individuals throughout the battle of kath and one was now poised to reap the life of a primark however at the exact moment when the killing blow could have been struck corfeiron stayed his hand instead choosing to whisper into gilliman's ear an offer he had no authority to make the primordial annihilation a place of great honour amongst the ranks of the dark pantheon's followers all the 13th primark had to do was pledge himself to the worship and devotion of chaos but for his word the master of the faith offered him a place within a new universal order and all the power of the primordial annihilation and all the power that came with it gilliman said nothing his armoured fist canoned into corfeiron's torso the 13th primark's response to the cilebant offer was to tear corfeiron still beating heart from his body and cast its ruin upon the cold metal deck at the landshear guild hall salvation began to reign from the heavens in blinding columns lance beams seared planet word but they did not impact the beleaguered defenders the might of the kouth defense grid was turned instead upon the traitor host and in an instant extinction had been turned to retribution an immediate planet-wide counter-attack was mounted on every major word bearer force currently operational orbital strikes rained hell upon the traitor hosts punishing each and every one in extremis still reeling from the wrath of the defense grid these forces were now set upon by vengeful loyalists astartes, mechanicum, exertus units rising up against their attackers in near unison this was not just merely upon the surface in orbit word bearer ships that had ruled kouth near space unchallenged now had the weapons grid turned against them the platforms had been designed to fend off a threat approximate to a full battle fleet in proper standing order the scattered word bearer ships which for a near full day had been gleefully hunting helpless targets of opportunity were now annihilated in kind vessels of the 17th legion that had centuries of service perished in instance torn into by the unbridled fury of the weapons grid still choked with the carcasses of the ultramarines grand fleet those perished loyalists in orbit were joined by the wreckage of their attackers the sheer volume of debris the 13th legion counterattack now added to would create an artificial set of rings for kouth the planet becoming encircled with the corpses of those ships fallen in the great portrayal forever more on the bridge of the infidus imperator it is known that corphyron manifested shortly into the counterattack still somehow alive in the aftermath of having his heart torn from his chest it is believed the master of the fate survived through sheer mastery of warp craft he was however apparently in no fit state to issue commands it was the ship master of the 17th legion craft antonius antwark that ordered the vessel's disengagement from the battle reasoning that their contributions to the portrayal and its arcane significance had been accomplished within reasonable parameters the infidus imperator came about and made full burn for the nearest mandeville point bored the mccrags honor its flight was immediately spotted by the sensorium adepts and reported to marius gage who in turn raised his victorious primark on zetsun varied absolutely unwilling to allow the ship and presumably corphyron to escape gilliman ordered gage to mount an immediate pursuit aboard the honor both vessels vanished into an unknown warp disturbance at the edge of the system their fates would remain unknown for years to come gilliman himself would not learn of the fate of his flagship his first chapter master or his loathsome enemy for quite some time and indeed the full tale of this insane clash must be reserved for another record although the ultramarines had mounted a stunning last minute reversal of fortune this was not victory by any means the delegation of counsellors led by a group of mechanicum adepts surviving fleet navigators and clearly traumatized astropaths petitioned gilliman for time for dire portents had emerged that acquired the primark's immediate attention the viridian star had during the hours of the weapons grid being in word bearer hands been explicitly targeted by the 17th legion along with the remaining stellar bodies in the system that they had murdered likely through the use of specialized ammunition the traitors had inflicted horrific damage to the star's fusion reaction whatever they had seeded into its mass it had caused viridia to begin outputting increasingly lethal levels of radiation the poisoned solar winds were now beginning to pommel calt's atmosphere which had already been grievously wounded by almost a full tyrant day of continual weapons bombardment and atomic attacks not only were its tectonics irreversibly impacted the sheer amount of smoke unleashed by firestorms that still raged across its continents were choking the skies the combined effects the mechanic would within days render the planet's surface utterly inviolable for human life with full evacuation from the planet impossible due to the sheer lack of legion vessels still operational not to mention the time involved the only recourse was the withdrawal of all the whalists still alive upon calt to the subterranean arcologies the planet was rich with a network of tunnels through its porous crust during its development many of these had been turned into arcologies underground cities connected and linked with future expansions already planned while far from ideal they were well suited to immediately absorb all surviving civilians astardes and other humans and could provide at least some shelter from the fury of the now poisoned veridian star captain ventanus volunteered to lead this operation without hesitation his fate now seemingly irrevocably bound to the planet the master of the fourth company announced over every open vox channel that this was a primarch's directive the fleet or what remained of it would embark to what craft they could the remaining surface armor units as well as what god engines of the calesia titanica were still operational even as this was being conducted the navigators and astropaths of the legion brought the primarch yet more dire news pleas for aid from across the entirety of ultramar calth it appeared was the beginning of a much larger conflict the 500 worlds were being assailed by, according to reports not merely the word bearers but the 12th legion world eaters and their primarch angron dozens of systems and ultramarine's forces were reporting the same dire situation this was no less than a full scale invasion calth gilliman grimly surmised had merely been an opportunity to exterminate the bulk of the ultramarine's legion allowing the traitors to then conquer and reave nigh unopposed through the jewels of the eastern fringe in this they had essentially failed the legion and its legion were very much alive and could be rallied but the price they would pay and had paid was undoubtedly dire almost 120,000 ultramarines lay dead with a further 20,000 crippled and in dire need of medicaid care in many ways the word bearers succeeded it could hardly be argued that they had not the final piece of information for gilliman was altogether more difficult to comprehend in scope but no less pressing for it the navigators were reporting that the currents of the warp were becoming extremely restive the tides of the imiterium insignificant flux for whatever reason these disturbances were centered around calth and the viridian system at best estimate the fleets navigators surmised that the system would become cut off from the wider galaxy by an oncoming storm of unprecedented power and that the storm may in fact be spreading outwards already capricious this past year the rising warp instability sealed gilliman's course for him once the final units could be embarked from the surface and the warp capable ships would flee the system at calth mark 23.43.00 remus ventanus limps to the surface of the world that he suspected would be his very last time loyalist mecanicum elements mostly the remnants of arch major karn barbarels tagmata took the brunt of the final phases of the retreat far more resilient as they were marks of increasingly debilitating radiation unfortunately for the loyalists the traitor forces still alive upon calth had read the signs and had heard ventanus' proclamation where possible significant elements of word bearers likewise retreated to the archeologies this marks the beginning of the underground war a near decade of conflict that would only conclude the traitors on terra at the end of the horrors heresy the betrayal at calth did not conclude in the manner of other battles in the age of darkness that only was the underground war its dreadful successor continuing the battles on the planet years after the initial shock of perfidy the unfolding shadow crusade saw gilliman immediately engaged as soon as the evacuation force made wake calth's tale of the heresy itself the last of the 17th legion was not purged from its tunnels until the fall of the war master the mark of calth itself was kept running by the 13th legion until approximately mark 219,479 0.25 0.03 during the scouring when captain ventanus hero of the underground war led the ultramarines to caltris the home world of the word bearers and lorgar with them they brought death the planet for a planet was scant recompense like the continued running of the mark it was a thing of symbolism and little else of course the purging of a war-painted population was a matter of significance in the years of the scouring but the real heft of the matter lay in the base revenge of the act symbols as the imperium had learned during the horus heresy carried significant weight crimes of lorgar and his legion could not be repaid in the simple death of one world but caltris's destruction yet mattered the word bearers themselves some scholars have speculated that the mark of calth may yet still run in the depths of the great eye or the maelstrom the countless pockets of blackest treachery to which their craven kind ran the mark too was not merely that of ultramarines battle records or the obsession of the word bearers while the legion still lives colloquially mark of calth was the name ascribed to severe radiation burns suffered by the survivors of the betrayal it was caused by the poisoned light of the viridian star the scouring was distinct and in many cases quite serious but veterans of the battle would often forego skin grafts and medicaid procedures wearing them as a grim badge of honour the mark too also refers to psychological damage endured by those who had survived the treachery of the word bearers the trauma of the attack was significant enough to brand itself on to even the psychoconditioned minds of the legion as a starties survivors of the massacres formed groups apart from fellow legionaries who had by virtue of chance simply not been present at the conjunction in the broader context calth presaged the wars of the age of darkness in ways that would only become evident in dread retrospect while it was perhaps the last grand full scale display of the sheer surprise of concealed treachery the utter devastation of civil war between imperial military forces was now writ large upon the scarred rent surface of an entire fully populated imperial world a star system had been murdered in the space of a day billions lay dead in less than 24 hours this was one system one world the battlefield to come was galactic in scale until such a time as one may relate further tales of this benighted epoch ave imperator and gloria in excelsis terra this video and this channel were made possible thanks to the very kind donations and support from my patreon subscribers if you'd like to help support the channel head on over to patreon.com slash oculus imperia if you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos you can contact me or follow me on twitter at oculus imperia otherwise please like subscribe comment let me know your feedback and as ever thank you very much for watching