 Historical records frequently debate on the precise beginnings of the Battle of Calf. 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 Primarch 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 Calf, but in the strictest analytical terms, as defined by the Ultramarines themselves, records of the engagement begin at just under 137 hours, before Primarch, 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 3709 crew members, the shipmaster, the navigator, as well as, laterally discovered to have been aboard during Ultramarine's post-mortem investigations, two Mechanicum fabricators, a Calf 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 Calf's system control. Campanile had strayed from her prescribed course. Another was logged 45 minutes after that, and another 7 hours later. That from the box is lost at Calfmark 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, Calf's 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 cancelled 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, Calf 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, Calf 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. Calf represented the promise of the Imperium as defined by Giliman himself. Biographers of the Primarch have noted that, during this period following his brother Horus'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, Calf 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 Calf 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. Calf 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 archaeologies, massive structures housing millions of workers with space for millions more. The archaeologies 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, Calf 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. Calf 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 Calf the objectively sound military mustering point for the current endeavor. In what was to become known as the Calf 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 Calf alone. This included the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 9th, 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 Calt's population centres. Alongside the ultramarines in their planet-side musters were 118 god-engines of the legio prosaegius, the true messengers of the Caligia Titanica, supported by the entire night household of Vorneher, 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 Calt'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 legions 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 Calt 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 5 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. Employed 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 Sertorvorah. 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 sidereal, the Mark allows anyone from an instructor to refer to, for example, ORAX Mark 12.16.10, referring to the 10th second of the 16th minute of the 12th hour of the ORAX 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 Robert Gulliman 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 suffered 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. Aboard her 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 grey 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. Those 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 Primarch 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 Sublight Burn. 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 night side 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, and they all 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 watch tower in Numinous City, logged that even his augmented brain was approaching capacity. The Mechanicum server had direct control over the Calth defense weapons grid, 250,000 surface based weapon stations, the void shields that were developed to protect Calth 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, each vessel that 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 Calth nearspace, everything from the glorianatlas 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 Calth'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 predictions by Mechanicum and Alitike. It was, by the standards of Hest and his staff, unacceptable, and they immediately moved to rectify it. But in the system, at mark minus 14.22.39, the fleet tender Campanile makes a series of small course corrections, aligning her approach with Calth's orbital volume. At mark minus 13.00.01, a previously somewhat acceptable 6 minute delay in bulk orbital loader operations had exacerbated into a 29 minute delay. By ultramanine 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 scrap code was complicating matters beyond the standards that the Legion can deem acceptable. With the McCraggs honor, the issue was raised to the Primarch, 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 scrap code problem, as having potentially been caused by the word bearers. Assembled 17th Legion command elements, Corfeiron, Erebus, Argel Tau, Hall Beloth, Fodor Al 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. Probably 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 Mechanicum 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 mouths 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. The Campanile, at this point, appeared on all sensorium suites to be decelerating. At mark 0.55.37, a teleport flare is logged by weather monitoring stations 2,000 kilometers north of Numenus City, in a frozen region logged by cartographica as a Satric Plateau. Later investigations into the aetherical disturbances present in the Calt 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 Calt's surface in that self-same teleport beam. At mark minus 0.20.20, 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 Calt's sole moon, it fired its sublight drives to maximum burn. Abruptly, it began to accelerate. At mark minus 0.19.45, Sorot T'Chur murdered Anorius Luciel aboard the cruiser Samothrace. Luciel was the first legion casualty of the atrocity. It was not a good death. T'Chur 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 astartes biology, was alive for several more seconds, enough time to scrabble about the floor, an attempt to stand, despite his torso having been cored and most of his internal organs having been turned to dust. T'Chur's second shot vaporized his skull. Just over a second later, the officer of the watch stationed on the Samothrace's bridge logged the weapon's fire as occurring. The watch officer responded by immediately dispatching the ship's armsmen per standard protocol in such event, even if the arm's fire 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, active 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 raised 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 system's Mandeville 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 aspect's grid in the inner system howls as they detect the sudden object acceleration. The crew of the Campanile, long dead, scream with them. Two microseconds later, the Campanile entered Calte'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. Shockwave of these calamities will, of course, in turn, throw ships into each other, like pathetic debris. The Campanile missed the frigates Lutine, Melatus, Cavascore, and yes, the Samothrace herself, by less than her own length. Likewise, the testament of Andromeda and the battleship Ultimus Mundi were similarly spared, 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, and 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 Couthverdean 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 6,000 lives in an instant, and a picosecond later, another 30,000 engineers in the manufactory located alongside it. After silos A-112 and A-114 are destroyed, loosing from within the escorts Burnibus and Jericho Rex, 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 Fortis, the deliverance of Terra, and the Mechanicum Exploritor 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 Mechanicum Bark was catapulted into a nearby principal cargo facility, destroying in its path 168 small ferries and 49 lifter craft. The cargo containers are likewise flung into all corners of the volume, many becoming ensnared by the orbit of Kalth and beginning a fiery descent onto the planet's surface. The entirety of the Viridian 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 seven kilometer mass of the Aegis of Ekluda. The light from the matter annihilation appeared almost hungry. So vast and expansive was it. It consumed the entirety of the spirit of Konor, one of the mightiest battleships in the entirety of the 500 worlds. 17 kilometers of ancient starship vanishing into its constituent parts as the event consumed her. Ultramar Zenith Graving 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 plaything. 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 ship's 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. Millions of tons of physical force are still at this point contained within 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 Viridian yard and impacted into the battleship Remonstrance of Northan 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 Viridian 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 McCraggs honor, with the tendon servitors registering in screeches the death of the new-spheric core. Marius Gage, first captain of the Ultramarines, in command of the bridge, demanded a report at Mark-0.18.30. At the near exact moment, the physical shockwave of the fleet tender Campanile's hit the Ultramarines flagship. It was, in a very real sense, only the beginning of a Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. This video and this channel were made possible thanks to the very kind donations and support from my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to 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.