 Betrayal is a word of unique power in our Imperium, for the Empire, as it stands to this day, was forged by it. Words have force resonating throughout time, echoes in eternity. This is one that birthed us as we are today, in acts of such utter debasement that the mere knowledge of them is considered a capital crime for the vast majority of the human species. The Imperium was molded by treachery, the future that it had been promised consumed in the fires of treason mere centuries after its birth. Indeed, many scholars would say that the years of the Horus Heresy were a greater influence on the Imperium than those of the Great Crusade, although they say thus in texts oft prescribed, oft deemed heretical by those that monitor the populace for, well, the trail. We are so terrified of it that it has become a watchword for the purest degeneracy, those who would commit it marked for death or worse. It is a concept steeped in cruelty, for it requires, first, bonds of trust, kinship, and cause to be fully leveraged. For a betrayal to truly live up to the dreadful malignance of the word itself, it must be an act committed upon the unsuspecting by those who, in full knowledge, are exploiting the faith and love their victims bare for them. It requires malice, callousness, and meditated foresight. It is worse than a burst of rage. It is calculated in its inhumanity. One commits this record to the archive with the heaviest of hearts, because for all the death and carnage that would follow it, it continues to stand as one of the most truly heinous events in the history of our benighted species. Know then that this is a record of the great betrayal of the war master's unbridled cruelty manifested, a history of the East Van V drop site massacre. It is a time immediately subsequent to the East Van V atrocity, records of which may be found on this archival stack. Resuming the chronicle of the great heresy, one must first comment that it is difficult to underscore the heroism and vitality of the flight of the 14th legion heavy frigate Eisenstein. So often in his stardor's work is one reminded that the past is rarely the soul artifice of a single actor, or even a troop. It is in many ways a vast tapestry of forces and systems colliding in constant conflict, but every so often something pivotal rests upon the shoulders of the very few. Captain Nathaniel Garrow, formerly 14th legion death guard, had defied the will of his Primarch to permit the flight of Captain Saul Tarvitz of the Emperor's children to the surface of East Van III, to warn the Astartes embattled planet side of the war master's perfidy and their oncoming doom. In doing so, Tarvitz assured the survival of the majority of those Horus and his traitorous brothers had sought to render dead, and committed the traitors to a bloody, months long campaign that bled those legions of yet more vital manpower. However, this act, of course, marked Garrow and all aboard his command, the Starship Eisenstein, for death themselves. Fleeing the East Van system, the frigate was severely damaged by the guns of the death guard battleship Terminus Est, executing a blind warp jump that killed its astropaths and navigators. The jump also severely damaged the ship's geller field, allowing for tendrils of warp energy to penetrate its hull and permit the incarnation of the lesser emanations of one aspect of the primordial annihilator. These so-called demons of chaos caused great strife aboard the ship, exacerbated by the presence of a stowaway party of death guard traitors, led by second company captain Ignatius Grilgore. This company attempted to detonate the life-eater virus warheads the Eisenstein had been carrying as part of her exterminatus, Armorium. The plan did not succeed, although captain Garrow's after action reports stated that Grilgore and his ilk, despite being killed by the very virus they had sought to unleash upon the frigate's loyal crew, were possessed of an eldritch force, their bodies finding hideous vitality despite their rotting flesh, besetting Garrow and his astartes with horrific violence. Only an emergency translation into real space saved the crew and the ship. Grilgore and his traitors, once deprived of the powers of the warp, perished swiftly. The virus that had somehow been kept in a limbo by the blasphemies of the materium, now consuming them in their totality. Adrift in the interstellar void, with no communications apparatus capable of contacting the Imperium, Garrow ordered the ejection and detonation of the ship's warp core, gambling that the aetheric shock would hopefully prompt some form of imperial investigation. When salvation arrived, he did so armored in gold and possessed of steely fury. Rogaldorn, Primarch of the Seventh Legion Imperial Fists, aboard Phalanx, the Legion's massive dark age of technology-wrought star fortress, accompanied by dozens of escort craft. The fists had been becambed in the warp, caught between tidal forces of aetheric energy that, unbeknownst to them, had been the work of sorcerous pacts, struck between Horace Lupercal and his new eldritch patrons. Garrow presented himself and his world-shattering word to Dorne, in the hopes that the Primarch would hear him true. Dorne came within an inch of killing him. History should not look unkindly upon the Seventh Primarch here. If there is one fault Dorne possessed, it would be his inviolate confidence in the solidity of his reality. He had never wanted for surety. Each and every one of his biographers will state so categorically. Horace's treachery sundered the Imperium in so many ways, but one that is oft less commented upon is the rent it broke in the structure of the world itself. For centuries, the Emperor and his sons had been the impossibly mythic paragons of this new order. Yet they were, magnificently, terribly real. Just as many astarties upon Istvan III were driven to complete psychological meltdowns by the betrayal of their gene fathers, so too was Dorne almost broken by the word of his brother's duplicity. To come from so lowly a figure as Garo, captain though he may be, it is not entirely unreasonable to grant Rogel Dorne his rage or his doubt. Surely the word of his brother would count more than some astarties line officer. Yet it was not only the word of Garo. Every soul aboard the Eisenstein rendered the same tale to the Primarch. Remembrancers, Euphrates Keeler and Mercedes Olaton, the iterator primus Kirill Sinderman, a member of Horace's own legion, Eacton Cruz, all had been aboard the vengeful spirit at the moment of Horace's betrayal. The evidence was overwhelming and Dorne, though possessed of ironclad convictions, was nothing if not an empiricist at heart. Further interrogations, of course, took place upon the sobnes Citadel on Luna, at the hands of the silent sisterhood. Survivors of the Eisenstein were separated from each other and subjected to the harshest questioning at the hands of all the secret agents the Emperor hid from the eyes of his Imperium. History of course renders clear what was determined. None aboard the Eisenstein were lying. Treachery had come to the Imperium by the hand of Horace Lupercal, the warmaster himself, and it was more terrible than any could have thought remotely possible. Any upon terror, at this point, Dorne included, would doubtlessly have expected some manner of statement from the Lord above all, the Emperor of Mankind. Surely in this most tumultuous of hours, the master of a million worlds would provide guidance, council and leadership to an Imperium thrown into chaos by the revelations of the Eisenstein. In this, however, Terra and her Praetorian were to be disappointed. The master of mankind was ensconced within his laboratory in the Imperial Dungeon, sealed within by his own writ, with the entire Imperial household led by the Sigillite, Malkador, and the 10,000 Guardians of the Ligio Custodis committed to maintaining this enforced silence. The absence of the Emperor since the Eleanor Triumph had always been a thorn in the egos of his gene-sons, but at the very least they had counted upon the occasional missive, since a proclamation of the writ of censure following the massive aetheric disturbance that beset Terra ultimately blamed on Magnus the Red, the Emperor had been utterly absent from all Imperial affairs, leaving those above to question the reason for so severe and total removal. After all, said some, albeit in hushed tones, what could possibly be so important down there? In the depths of the palace that superseded the betrayal of the Warmaster himself. News now additionally reached Dorn from his brother, Tenth Legion Primarch Ferris Mannus. Through a rage towering even for the pugnacious Lord of the Iron Hands, Mannus related that their brother Fulgrim of the Third Legion Emperor's children had attempted to sway him to the side of the Warmaster, exploiting and manipulating the deep and true friendship he and Mannus had shared for over a century. The rebuke Ferris had delivered ended with violence between the two, with the Emperor's children's ships firing on the stunned Iron Hands in their hasty retreat, crippling many of their vessels. Wounded in pride, yes, but also far more deeply in emotions his Primarch Brain simply could not process, Mannus called for death and devastation unparalleled to be brought upon the heads of the traitors, with all possible haste. As Praetorian of Terra, it fell now to Dorn to decide upon the course of action. The treason of Lupercal was a matter of internal Imperial security, and as the Warder of the Throne World, Dorn possessed full legal authority to command the armed forces of the Empire, now that Horus had divested himself of his oaths. Immediately, Dorn sought to centralize the defense of Terra and the Imperium under his leadership, given that the ultimate goal of the traitors would surely soon emerge. This course of action was beset at once by difficulties. To begin with, the revelations of Fulgrim's mission to lure Ferris Mannus to the traitor side was a cause of grave concern. How many other legions had had similar entreaties? How many were loyal to the Warmaster or loyal to the Emperor? Was it merely the scions of Horus, Mortarion, Fulgrim, and Angron that dared raise banners of rebellion against the Lord of Lightning? Dorn knew that he could count on Mannus. He believed he had the characters of many of his brothers, Gilliman, Sanguinius, Vulcan, well assessed and understood, but he had once believed the same about Horus. There were many he could simply not bear the company of, whose minds he ill understood. Curs, Korax, Lacan, Alfarius, Pertorabo. Could they now be trusted? Could their blade be counted upon, if called? Not one given to rumination, Dorn discarded what he could not answer in order to assess what he could. In short, the situation was dire. The Imperial Hurricanes blanketing much of the galaxy rendered warp travel and astro telepathic communication unreliable and dangerous. Obtaining concrete information on the disposition of Imperial armed forces was greatly hampered. Outside of Terra's immediate locality, communication with the rest of the galaxy was effectively impossible. The Ninth Legion blood angels had only recently disappeared in the Cygnus Cluster. The Fifth Legion white scars campaigning in the Chondak sector had been difficult to reach even for years prior to this event. The First Legion dark angels were almost at the edge of the Emperor's light in the Galactic Far East. The Thirteenth Legion ultramarines had last when ordered to muster at Calth, but nothing could be raised from their realm of Ultramar. The Sixth Legion space wolves were abroad in the Void, licking their wounds from the burning of Prospero, which supposedly accounted for the fate of the Fifteenth Legion, Thousand Sons. Worse yet for Dorn, the Council of Malkador in private informed him of suspicions previously beyond his ken. The Sigilite believed the hand of the Primordial Annihilator to be at play here, both in the warped storms that blinded the Imperium, and possibly even within the actions of Horus himself. The right hand of the Emperor mused darkly upon the Primarch's fate. Was he possessed by one of the emanations of the greater intelligences? Did they count him in their thrall, or had he perhaps struck some bargain with them in exchange for power, granting their honeyed lies access to his mind? Such words would have not years prior been dismissed as an impossibility. Were it not for the acts of Magnus the Red? In the highly restricted reports of precisely what had occurred on Prospero during the burning, was contained information that had radically changed the outlook of the Imperium towards its Primarchs. The possibility of the warp exerting power over one of the Emperor's sons was no longer merely a fiction, and that another could have been swayed to their damnation, was both a terribly real possibility and a massive source of potential disruption to any planning. The motivations of the traitors were utterly unknown beyond their desire to rebel. Would this mean that the intelligences of the warp desired the same? Did the traitors seek to carve out their own Empire within the galaxy to rival that of the Emperor, or did they seek to supplant him? Dorn's first immediate decision was one that would become sadly typical of those made by the Imperium during the coming years. Massive expenditure of human life, because the situation apparently demanded it. The 7th Primarch gambled on increasing the supply of astropaths made available to him, and of psychers fed to the Astronomican in order to establish as much of the communications apparatus as he could. At the cost of hundreds of lives, the broader picture from across the Imperium unfolded. Revolts and uprisings on world's thought compliant, expeditionary fleets disappearing, an incidence of far more mysterious and inexplicable natures. No doubt in large part due to the tumult caused by the warp storms, the situation could however not be trusted to abate with the passing of its tides. It would only be exacerbated as word of the Warmaster's uprising spread further, fanning the flames of discontent and allowing those ill at ease with the Emperor's rule, an alternative banner to pledge themselves to. Speed of retribution was of the essence. Dorn was, thanks to spending the lives of psychers as coin, able to contact six Primarchs and their legions in short orders. Establishing the locations and strengths of the 4th Legion Iron Warriors, 8th Legion Night Lords, 17th Legion Word Bearers, 18th Legion Salamanders, 19th Legion Ravenguard and 20th Legion Alpha Legion, all in addition to Ferris's 10th Legion Iron Hands. The Order of Battle presented itself simply by the layout of situations. Manus would take operational command, being the most senior of all the Primarchs currently accounted for. He would lead his Legion, the Ravenguard and the Salamanders, with their respective Primarchs, Korax and Vulcan. These three legions all lay within the closest proximity to Istvan. The remaining four were slightly further afield, but would be ordered to make all possible haste to aid their cousins. Dorn's own Imperial Fists, concentrated upon Terra in their near entirety, would remain there to protect the Throne World, the Praetorian reasoning quite rightly that seven entire legions would be more than sufficient to deal with four. An Imperial Fists fleet would however be dispatched to aid the Retribution Force. However, contact had been lost with the ships assigned. Not requiring anything in the way of subtlety. The orders of Rogaldorn to his brothers and to the Astartes he bade make for Istvan were simple. The traitors must die. Their legions must die. Their corpses, should they remain, were to be hauled to Terra to stand as testament to the fate that lay for all who dared court treachery in their hearts. No mercy or quarter was to be given, no entreaties made and no dialogue attempted. Extermination was all that remained. The work of the Praetorian had been quite admirable given the time frame. He had rallied the Imperium against a fundamentally existential threat, drawing up an order of battle for seven entire Astartes legions, and one for his own, that dealt as quickly as possible with the most dire of circumstances. Despite the challenges, it appeared that the odds were overwhelming, and indeed they were. Just not in the direction those loyal to Terra expected. Through the vagaries of current strategic deployment and the tempestuous imiterium, the fleets of the Iron Hands, Salamanders and Ravenguard were the first to muster, forming the vanguard of the retribution force, assured by the remaining legions of their intent to follow their cousins in system with all haste. Initial intelligence was brought to the vanguard by the reconnaissance of the war runner vessel at Temporesta, a 19th legion scout ship specifically designed to range ahead of military fleets. Exiting the warp at the furthest possible Mandeville point from the central planets, approximately 339 Terran standard hours sidereal before the eventual planet fall, the aspect shrouds of this tiny craft were deployed in full, with all possible systems rendered powerless and inert. Impelling itself in system through gravitic drives alone, the Temporesta's skeleton Astartes crew survived the cold confines of Hull on their power armor's life support alone. No risk was being chanced here. The Ravenguard, possibly more than any save the Alpha Legion, prized forward intelligence above everything else. They would never risk any sort of blind assault that the Gorgon was openly advocating for. The Temporesta took a wide orbit of East Van Starr, sliding into synchronicity with the stragglers of the system's Oort cloud, trusting its impeccable aspect suite to scry details other ships simply would not have been able to from such a range. What they found was little more than a carcass of a star system. East Van 3, the planet that the Ravenguard themselves had once rendered compliant, was a shrouded dead thing, hurricanes of ash choking its atmosphere. From the radiological decay in orbit, the Temporesta could tell void weapons had been fired, enough of them to absolutely be in anger. But of the planet itself, the state of it was obvious enough to confirm what intel the loyalists possessed. East Van 3 had been world killed, a sight of betrayal most foul and acts most heinous. The biggest curiosity, the one the ships Astartes whispered to each other over closed vox loops, was plain. Where were the traitors? Even at maximal range, the aspect screeds were clear. The system was entirely devoid of an enemy fleet. The conqueror, the endurance, the vengeful spirit, the pride of the emperor, none of the mighty Dlorianatlas flagships, nor their massive legion fleets, could be found anywhere within the volume. Not to be deterred, the crew of the Temporesta altered her course, patiently nudging her into an orbital plunge that gracefully skimmed the ship in a spiral towards the star, appearing for all the world to be merely another piece of stellar debris. As she roved inward, the ghosts of vox signals played across the edge of her comms. The trail was immediately followed, drawing the sensorium suites to the star's fifth planetary body. There, penetrating through the thick atmosphere, was the prize. A torrent of vox traffic, all in close proximity to one another, speaking of only one thing. Astartes, and an incredible quantity of them. On East Van 5 did the traitors dwell. Relayed outwards to the main retribution fleet, the Ravenguard's intelligence was greeted as could be expected, with rage fueled zeal from the iron hands, and with disquiet and apprehension from the salamanders in the Ravenguard. Considering the sheer amount of vox traffic, and the time sidereal since the betrayal, it was clear the traitors were fortifying their position, potentially to serve as the war master's throne and base of operations for his rebellion. Indeed, the personal standards of Horus and Fulgrim flew above the fortifications that had been hastily erected, all thanks to picked captures from the ad temporesta. The region, classified in imperial cartography as the Orgal Depression, was the site of an ancient structural complex designated by mechanical adepts as Xenos in origin, although of a species lost to the annals of time. It was now apparently serving the traitors well, with Mechanicum adepts being seen on the Picts building imperial patterned readouts upon the bones of those ancient Xenos structures. The lack of all traitor fleets was disquieting in the extreme, and a source of much rankerous debate amongst loyalist senior command. The Morbellicos of the Iron Hands dismissed it with an easy explanation that they had simply been dispatched to nearby systems, raiding them of resources and supplies the war master's war would surely need. A gamble, yes, but not one exactly uncommon for Horus's known ways of war-making. Despite the cautioning of Korax and Vulcan, Ferris Manus would not be deterred. What his brother saw as a matter of grave concern, the Gorgon saw as an opportunity, and one that could not be wasted given the difficulty of extracting a truly dug-in enemy. Manus's reasoning stated that thanks to Fulgrim's botched attempt to bring him to the traitor's cause and to the crew of the Eisenstein, the Imperium had been made aware of the perfidy of Horus far earlier than the war master had intended, depriving him of the opportunity to strike with full surprise, and placing his forces at a disadvantage as they hurriedly sought to erect bulwarks against the emperor's judgment. Every minute those loyal to the throne delayed gave Horus back the time he had lost. All fury must be brought to Istvan V, with every iota of haste the fleet could muster, exploiting whatever disarray the traitors labored under. If their fleets were abroad seeking to scrounge up ammunition and construction materials, all the better, flesh casualties before the planet fall, declared Manus. Those who would judge the unwavering bellicosity of Ferris Manus must know that they only do so in dreadful retrospect. Of deeply important note is the base fact that the purest horror of what exactly Horus was committing, and was intending to commit, was at this point in history completely unknown to his erstwhile brothers. The cosmic depths of his depravity and ambitions were not yet revealed. The Imperium was assured that it was fully in possession of the proverbial high ground, in terms of arms, armaments, and sheer, overwhelming manpower. Ferris Manus' judgments were born of such confidence, as much as they were the spurned fury of a kinsman betrayed. He was convinced that, while he had three legions to face down four, the four had been maimed by their self-inflicted civil war on Istvan III, and his vanguard had merely to hold the drop site before the reinforcements making full wake were to arrive. To many within the loyalist fleets, recovered journals and conversation logs show pure bewilderment at the situation, a profound disbelief that the events that were unfolding were indeed unfolding. Forbidden whispers evoked the last legions, second and eleventh, whose sheer mystery spoke to times past when the Emperor's hand had removed his own sons, and their sons too, from history itself. Had Horus fallen as they had? Was it some grand malgenetic crisis, a psychotic break of a superhuman mind, megalomaniacal ambition run amok? Could a primarch simply betray his own programming for the sake of personal gain? Perhaps the fault lay not within Horus himself. Perhaps he was under the psychic thrall of some Xenos entity. The crave, or the enslavers, perhaps, these were but two hideous species known to be capable of such things. They had never ensnared a primarch, it was true, but then there were two primarchs none were capable of speaking of. Even beyond his murky motivations, the choice of Istvan as an apparent seat of power convinced many that Horus merely sought to establish himself as a rival galactic power to that of his father, rather than seeking to directly supplant him. The system was strategically significant, commanding the volume of numerous large and stable warp space corridors, but was far enough from major imperial hubs and terrae itself to serve as a perfect capital for a new empire amongst the stars. We may scoff at such wishful thinking, but we must remember that the ability to do so was bought in the blood of trillions. It is merely a cloak of humor drenched with cynicism to ward off the pain that history has lain upon us. Would that we could share the optimism of Ferris Manus and those blind tragics he led onwards to their doom? Gainsaying any concerns his brothers raised, Ferris Manus pulled rank, stating quite correctly that as commander of the retribution fleet he had every right to order an attack. And order it he did, immediate and all out. The Gorgon prepared an offensive against the traitors with the full force of every Astartes under his command. The application of Vulcan was a waste of time. The brooding of Korax was clearly to Manus agreement. He had, thanks to his brother's reconnaissance efforts, plenty of intelligence to establish an attack plan. The locus of traitor activity was plain to behold, and when combined with imperial cartographic data and Mechanicum Xenobiologis archival stacks, displayed the concentration of force as co-lating around the ancient ruins in the Orgal depression, a wide valley ringed by volcanic plateaus thrown up by the planet's geologically unstable crust. The plateau itself made the depression deeply defensible. A maze of treacherous ravines and gullies, it would deny all possible overland access, and was a perfect location for hidden air defense batteries. The valley would funnel attackers into one possible ground assault towards the fortifications, across the black sand of the depression devoid of cover, and even now being threaded through by traitor defense trench networks. It was a superb area for natural defense, augmented now by Astartes and Mechanicum wrought ramparts and battlements. Horus knew this, Ferris Manus knew this. There was no surprise in its selection, and if the Gorgon had wished for a more opportune location to assault, he knew the war master would never have granted him one. It was almost a challenge. Static defenses laden no doubt with thousands of Astartes troops, begged the Loyalists to assault them. Worse yet, the Ospex had detected deep within the caverns lining the depression, shielded and slumbering fusion reactions, indicating the presence of potentially dozens of Titan-class god-engines. There was only one course of action that could be taken. Answer the challenge. Immediate planet fall at the entrance of the Orgal Depression, and an advance in force across its sands, onto the teeth of the traitor guns to tear their throats from their bodies and mount their heads upon their heastily thrown up castellum. Minus seven hours' Terran, before said drop, the retribution fleet of the Loyalist legions tore into real space as a combined force, a feat no small thing, given the sheer amount of ships present. The salamanders and the Ravenguard had brought the near entirety of their legion ships under flag, led by Ferris Manus aboard the Ferrum. Many of the iron hands vessels had been crippled by the treachery of the Emperor's children prior to the revelations of Horus' betrayal. Manus had mustered what he could, packing the Ferrum and her escorts with the near totality of the 10th Legion's most experienced troops. Naturally, the incursion, as close to a planet as the fleet's navigators were able to grant the Gorgon's demands, was impossible to cloak. Not really that it was ever intended to be. Istvan 5 came alive immediately, the traitors seeing no more point in disguising their presence or disposition. Surface-to-orbit missiles were immediately loosed skyward, which, against any other force, may have inflicted severe damage. Against the Astartes' retribution fleet, the paltry fuselod was annihilated by a blizzard of protective flak and interception torpedoes. No such fire was, however, returned. For reasons known only to Ferris Manus, no orbital bombardment of the Orgal Depression was ordered, at least not in force. Chronicles have puzzled over this decision for millennia, as surely even a... tacit, by Raj, from the position of total orbital control the loyalists now claimed would have been beneficial to the overall operation. It almost certainly lies within Manus' haste to bring his traitor brothers to justice, but also to do so in a means by which they would be under no doubts as to who was bearing said justice. Orbital bombardment is often described in poetic histories as impersonal. This may certainly be the case in the strictest sense of the word, and precisely one presumes why many commanders will prefer it over the furious peril of the melee. Blame has been apportioned to Manus and to Rogald Dorne for demanding otherwise, that the significant tactical advantage posed by orbital control be given up for the sake of speed and the more personal or honorable duel between legions. Certainly the visceral face-to-face internecine Astartes conflict would deliver purist proofs of the demise of the traitors. One must ultimately demure on whether this was a matter of simple directness or something altogether more personal or intrinsic to the primarchs in command. I am not of their ilk. I cannot comprehend their minds, though we may wish it, they are not perfect beings, quite the opposite. I simply chronicle what has occurred, and what occurred was planetfall, Ave Imperator. Gloria in Excelsis Terra. Let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.