With the Blogs feature unlocked, I have decided to move my previous efforts from the World Eaters subforum to my own little corner of the B&C. Here I plan to catalogue my force's trials and tribulations as we carve our way through our group's own sub-sector of space.

War Zone Lalor is entirely a homebrew setting, with the background having been produced over three separate Crusade campaigns that our group has played over the past couple of years.

Background
The Great Rift
It has been at least twelve, gruelling years since the Cicatrix Maledictum, the Great Rift, ripped the galaxy in half. With it, the Imperium was split in twain, designated the Imperium Sanctus and Imperium Nihilus. The Imperium Nihilus, severed from the light of the Astronomican of Terra, has endured a fate unknown. Even the Imperium Sanctus, under the studious protection of Lord Guilliman, is still beset on all fronts by every enemy imaginable.

Previous Engagements in War Zone Lalor
The Lalor Sub-sector lies within the Imperium Sanctus, in the Galactic North of the Ultima Sector. With the Realm of Ultramar secured by the Indomitus Crusade, elements of the Imperial liberators have been dispatched to the outlying sub-sectors.

War for the Twins
Breaking through the unstable warp routes to reach the Lalor sub-sector, the Imperial crusaders established a base of operations in the administrative heart of the region, the Geminid binary system. It was not long before the system became the target of a terrible invasion of heretics and xenos. Initially caught in defensive actions all over the system, the Imperial forces enacted a desperate last-minute gambit: a simultaneous trap for an enemy ambush and a counter-ambush crushed the invaders against all odds. With the enemy falling back in disarray, the forces of the Imperium consolidated their hold on their new garrison.

Darkness of Rutil
Before the dust could settle on the Geminid War, internal conflict arose within the forces of the Emperor. A wave of malaise and suspicion spread through the populace and soldiery, all the way from the bottom to the top. What should have been a great, celebrated victory was instead met with depression and anxiety through all facets of society.

Several Imperial commanders separately noticed a psychic anomaly centred in the neighbouring Rutil system. With suspicion rife between the sub-factions of the Imperium, no one communicated this discovery to each other, as they each believed they alone could be trusted to investigate it. Sending small forces to the Rutil system, the Imperial forces each discovered that the warp surrounding the system was eerily quiet. Navigators, unable to detect warp currents, were driven mad.

On the primary world of the system, small forces of Necrons, World Eater heretics, and renegade mining colonists were discovered. In the conflict that followed, it was discovered that some kind of warp-dampening technology employed by the enigmatic Necrons was causing the warp to fall dangerously quiet, while the Heretic Astartes were building massive monuments to reignite the empyrean once more. The conflicting effects were causing the unrest in surrounding systems.

Setting aside all suspicion and paranoia, the Imperial forces joined for a joint push against the heretics and xenos, however they were successful only in demolishing the fell monuments of Chaos. The battle with the Necrons merely awoke more of the dangerous xenos, who completed the employment of their strange technology. The Imperials were forced to withdraw. The warp-borne malady was cured, though travel through the system was no longer reliable, and so it was quarantined.

A Strange Servant
With the strange warp-madness subsiding, Imperial forces recommenced the campaign to liberate the whole sub-sector. Responding to several calls for military aid, an Ultramarines strike force discovered a Rogue Trader lost in the void. Their vessel had been crippled and separated from the hulk it was using to transport vast amounts of material wealth. The hulk was known as The Most Dignified Servant and carried trade goods, relics and materiel. The Imperials decided that this materiel would be a great help to the war effort, and so agreed to assist the Rogue Trader in exchange for their materiel contribution.

Locating this vast hulk, the Imperials boarded but immediately noticed that not all was as it was laid out by the strange trader. Relics and trade goods were loaded throughout the hulk, however the vessel was certainly not in full control by the trader. Clearly, very little effort had been taken to ensure that the vessel was sanctified, and it had become overrun by Daemons of Chaos, Death Guard heretics and Necrons.

The Imperials found themselves surrounded and cut off in numerous sectors of the vessel, and only through the heroic efforts of the Deathwing were the rest of the Space Marines able to escape to safety.

This was not before time, for as the last of the Deathwing withdrew, the Servant lurched into the warp, aiming directly for a nearby warp rift. It speared through the rift, opening a corridor to a previously isolated system.

The Asturus System
The *Servant's* departure left an opening to the Asturas system, which had been thought lost to the warp after the opening of the Great Rift. Dispatching a force from their base of operations in the Geminid system, the Imperials moved in to the Asturias system to assess the tactical situation.

They found that the system's most populous world, the hive moon Janus, to be besieged by heretics and xenos over the whole planetoid. The majority of the world's populace resided in two hive cities, with smaller settlements scattered across the surface. Hive Primus was already in heretic control, flying banners featuring the tri-lobe of Nurgle and the skull rune of Khorne, however the fate of Hive Secundus was unknown. No military movements were detected in Secundus, and no vox traffic was coming from the city.

Other settlements and fortified positions were barely holding out, some with only a PDF company or two fighting protracted campaigns against heretics, mutants and greenskins.