EVENT - The Battle of the Forge

[bluntblade]

Cheers gents. That was always my one gripe with the Sons of Horus trilogy, that we never really got to see Ezekyle the hero.

 

Though I imagine someone on here's written some fine tales of the Murder war

[simison]

*blinks* Actually, I don't think anyone has done our version of Murder.

[bluntblade]

Would that be the catalyst for the Interex contact?

 

"Here" was just referring to the forum in general, I'd given no thought to Murder in our 'verse.

 

Edit: Alex and Hectarion get diplomatic with the Interex, right? Then Murder could be a showcase for the Lions. But obviously playing out differently to Frome and Eidolon's :cussock drop.

[Sigismund229]

Would that be the catalyst for the Interex contact?

 

"Here" was just referring to the forum in general, I'd given no thought to Murder in our 'verse.

 

Edit: Alex and Hectarion get diplomatic with the Interex, right? Then Murder could be a showcase for the Lions. But obviously playing out differently to Frome and Eidolon's :cussock drop.

Yup, s'right. Hectarion and Alexandros end up negototiating the interex joining the Imperium and I'm never going to object to the Lions getting more screen time ;)

[bluntblade]

In that case I suggest Murder get its own thread, as we'll want to work out how the campaign unfolds and the exact circumstances of the Interex's arrival.

 

Then we can get this thread back on topic.

[Doctor Perils]

Do we really need to do murder? There are already enough similarities with canonverse.

Also, I might be confused, but sometimes I get the impression the lions are in every other war of the crusade and the insurrection :/

 

Here, the legions might understand the interexes' warnings, and so keep away from murder, another bargaining chip for diplomacy

[bluntblade]

Do we really need to do murder? There are already enough similarities with canonverse.

Also, I might be confused, but sometimes I get the impression the lions are in every other war of the crusade and the insurrection :/

Here, the legions might understand the interexes' warnings, and so keep away from murder, another bargaining chip for diplomacy

I was wondering about that and honestly wouldn't object.

[simison]

I don't mind either way.

[Sigismund229]

A story about the Imperial Army troopers caught up in the battle of the Forge.

Trooper Ignace of the 3rd Iyacrax defence battalion glanced around the corner of the shattered street. All around him were the shattered remnants of the was grand forge cities of Iyacrax, reduced to rubble by the fighting that had been raging there for over a year. Even through his rebreather, which he now wore constantly, even carrying several spare filters(one could never be too careful), the air he breathed tasted of gunsmoke and ash. He'd gone months without tasting anything else. It seemed natural now, just as this environement seemed natural. He and his comrades, those who had survived, had become expert at fighting their way through the confusing mess of shattered buildings, rusting gantries, empty bunkers and half collapsed trenches Iyacrax had become and they had adapted their equipment accordingly. Hardly any of their gear could be described as standard. They had reinforced their body armour with scraps of metal they'd found or, if they were lucky, they possessed a looted suit of carapace armour, as both these things were better able to deflect bolt rounds, although you were still up the creek if you received a direct hit. They'd also quickly discovered their lasguns to be useless in close quarters unless on the highest power setting possible, which burnt through power packs at a frightening rate, so they carried around dozens of power packs they'd acquired over the course of the year of near constant fighting. Even then, the lasgun wasn't their primary weapon. Their primary weapon was the frag or krak grenade, which they also carried dozens of, although these were often acquired through more nefarious means than their power packs. Some of them even made ad hoc grenades out of spare or unused fuel cannisters for flamers or burnt out tanks. This was their prinary weapon, although it was still woefully inadequate for fighting power armoured foes. This was a point that had been hammered home to Ignace and his comrades time and again. They had simply never been intended to fight space marines and were fundamentally ill suited to the task, meaning the best form of combat was to drop a few grenades and then run before the space marines had time to retaliate, although even this was a risky business and it got worse the closer the astartes got. If they got into actual melee with you well then that was the end of you most likely. Despite this, Ignace and his comrades still carried a close combat weapon. By and large, they had done away with bayonets in the early days of the battle of Iyacrax as they had proved useless against power armour, required too much space for the cramped conditions on Iyacrax and got stuck in enemy Imperial Army troopers bodies too often or sometimes even broke. Instead, Imperial Army troopers on both sides had taken to using sharpened entrenching tools which doubled as both an axe and a club, a far better weapon for their present conditions. Some, mostly those who had been conscripted from amongst Iyacrax's populace, used more rough and ready weapons, pieces of gantry sharpened to form a crude long knife or lumps of steel made into a punch dagger. That was just the nature of warfare amidst Iyacrax's shattered streets.

 

Ever cautious, Igance stuck out a lump of wood with a piece of a dead mans uniforms tied to it and waved it about a bit before withdrawing it. Sure enough, a hail of las beams followed as well as heavy bolter fire. Ignace used his hand to sign this to the other members of his squad, many of whom were deaf due to the constant shelling that engulfed Iyacrax. With Iyacrax's sun beginning to set and the dim light obscured by the thick clouds of dust, Ignace and his squad could wait until dark and then assault the building in the relative cover of darkness. All they had to do was wait.

 

- - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Ignace looked up at the sky, just about making out the moon through the clouds of dust. Very little light now illuminated the dead city. Perfect. Signing to two of his squad, he told them to cross the street and advance upon the enemy held building and then throw in grenades. While others might think such an order easy to fulfill, Ignace and his comrades knew better. Any number of things might go wrong when crossing a street. The enemy might spot you and open fire, in which case you were dead no matter what you did. A stray artillery shell might explode nearby, in which case you'd almost certainly be wounded at best or, at worst, shredded by the shrapnel. You might step on a mine laid by one side or the other and, if you survived, chances were your own side would fall back and leave you the tender mercies of the enemy. So, each time an assault team was needed, Ignace and his comrades would draw lots. Whoever ended up in the assault team would simply have to trust in their luck and hope that next time it was someone elses turn. This time, it happened to be Ignace's turn alongside Martyns, Krisjyans and Davyds.

 

Hunching to make himself as small as possible, Ignace ran across the street, five seconds behind Krisjyans, and trying to make as little noise as possible in his ramshackle armour. Directly after he crossed the street, the enemy opened fire, evidently having seen them, hitting Davyds in the leg, the least heavily armoured part on all of them and forcing Martyns to hit the ground and open fire along with the rest of the squad to try and supress the enemy. Crawling along the rubble of the streets, Ignace and Krisjyans advanced until they finally reached the enemy house. Removing the pin from two of his many frag grenades, Ignace threw them over the lip of the ledge and then dropped down to the ground waiting for the explosion. Sure enough, when it came, the enemy guns fell silent. Drawing his shovel, Ignace went into the house to make sure the job was finished. There he was confronted by the after effects of the explosion. Blood and body parts everywhere and even someone's body blocking the door. Whenever Ignace came across an unlucky soul who'd survived the grenades, he drove the point of his sharpened shovel through the tops of their skull and into their brain or severed their neck with the edge. Where he would once have used his lasgun, ammunition was too precious to waste on mercy killing and so was time. He only killed those still capable of fighting. The rest he left to bleed out. When he returned from the building, his grenade bags and ammo bag filled to the brim with grenades and power packs taken from enemy dead, he and his squad moved on without Davyds. His injury had impaired his mobility and they couldn't afford to carry him or be slowed down so they'd cut his throat and been done with it, distributing his gear across the rest of the squad, leaving him as just another dead body amongst the hundreds of thousands that already populated Iyacrax's streets.

[bluntblade]

I've just been to the Gallipoli exhibition in Wellington (which I thoroughly recommend if anyone from here finds themselves in NZ). It's given me some ideas for tone and individual scenes on Iyacrax and elsewhere.

[Chief Captain Redd]

Rereading this thread, there are some killer bits in here that would make for an excellent story. Maybe three or four of us could spread it out set up a story ark and put together a killer something, like I could handle all forces under the Bears, Simison the Wardens, BB humans loyalist and traitor, etcetera. Plus while my first and third person is solid my bolter porn SUCKS.

[bluntblade]

To be honest, several people have done excellent pieces for the mortals already. Plus we have Jackals and Harbingers to use.

 

Come to think of it, I also need to establish why Nux Pyrruk was "ankle-deep in the blood that drowned Iyacrax." Maybe the Rangers were retrieving some valuable relic.

[Chief Captain Redd]

True just tossing out a suggestion.

[bluntblade]

I'm keen to get a bunch of us working on this one. We could always pull an Istvaan and have scenes from this battle in a bunch of stories.

 

It's a strange duality, the feelings I had coming out of the exhibition. On the one hand, humbled and with a better understanding of the scope and personal cost of the First World War. On the other hand "damn, that's given me some ideas."

[Sigismund229]

I'd be happy to write a bit about Ignace and friends going through the battle of the Forge

[bluntblade]

With the Jackals gone, it wouldn't hurt to go back over the base fluff for Iyacrax. Who are our overall commanders on either side? Damon Redd will play a major role, possibly butting heads with Nibaasiniiwi towards the end of the campaign.

[Sigismund229]

Kozja for the Insurrectionists

[bluntblade]

Cool

[Chief Captain Redd]

Well the initial plan for the Bears is Lord Chief Orr'eon Lakestrider to take command of the Imperial forces including a semi rebuilt 3rd, but hr was chosen in part because he is the master of the armoury with virtually as many Tanks as men; and this is our sort of Tallarn massive armour battle. But that was under our 7 year thought for the Insurrection not 40+ years. That being said I'd still like to see Orr'eon as Nibaasiniiwi and Redd get pleanty of time. Plus a shattered part of the Legion could be fascinating to see, plus depending on when it happens the Bears end up having A LOT of Dreads which could be fun to see as well.

[bluntblade]

If we limit most of Nibaasiniiwi and Damon's role to after the tank phase where it's more urban warfare (I'm picturing something like the fighting in Terminator 1 and 2 where you glimpse the future, but in far greater numbers, with 30K characters and weapons).

[bluntblade]

Cooped up in my tent with the wind going bonkers, I realised that maybe there was room for a sly Rogue One tribute in the Insurrection after all - the exterminatis of Iyacrax. Now, the Void Eagles are in on this battle, right? Did Skal specify who'd be leading them? I have the Dragon of Autumn unleashing two full nova cannon broadsides on a fault line, but I'm happy to accommodate the IV if they would like to join in.

 

And seeing as I'm lacking viewpoints from the surface, has anyone got a mortal character they wouldn't mind having abandoned to the destruction?

[bluntblade]

Right now, it reads like this:

 

+++++

 

The Dragon rolled slowly, but not ponderously. The movement was invested with a terrible purpose, one that Lotara recalled from Mordrian, decades ago. The day she had take command of the ship, they had had virus bombs ready to be loosed upon the world in the event that their mission failed.

 

That day she had defied the odds. Today she could do nothing to avert the outcome, only deny the enemy their prize. Everyone present, save for the servitors, looked to her, unable to ignore the awful significance of this moment. Most were rigid with tension, but here and there she saw tears.

 

"Starboard novae," she said, just suppressing the tremor in her voice, "fire."

 

___ ordered the lance strike that killed the final Harbingers frigate. The rest were already out of range, fleeing to the Mandeville point and abandoning their comrades on the planet, now that they had been denied any chance to conquer the world. Normally, like any Void Eagles captain, he would have kept the ___ burning after them, seeking any chance to land one more blow. But this victory was nothing to savour, and he ordered his ship brought about, turning his eyes to the viewport.

 

The shudder resonated through every tier of the Dragon. Far below, on the port side, menial workers looked up with expressions of dread, and waited for their own orders. Overseers turned from their consoles, signalling that their guns remained ready. On other decks, munitions were loaded, ready to lace the stratosphere with debris and kill anything trying to escape the planet's death.

 

Aboard the ___ Damon Redd stared out, Ar'assa's scorched helm cradled in one massive gauntlet.

 

On the Shield of Delos, Akylles tore his gaze from the viewports, and found Legate Sauhan with his head in his hands.

 

On the Dragon of Autumn, Ellan Temeter watched one of the Iyacrax tech-priest give a strange, drooping motion where a normal man's shoulders would have sagged. She remembered what she had been told about Forge Worlds being sacred to the Mechanicus, and wondered if that grieved the priest more or less than the loss of his home.

 

Pict screens showed the projectiles streak down. They blurred, failing to capture the magnitude of the impacts, but that could not disguise the sheer size of the fires that bloomed through the smog. Alarms blared, signifying tectonic ruptures already spreading from the points of impact, but Lotara barely heard them. She stared upwards, through the clear ceiling of the ridge, to the ravaged surface that hung above them.

 

The ground was visible now, centuries of pollution forced away by the impacts and joined by debris from buildings, earth and wreckage that raced on, ever outward.

 

She knew those waves were killing people, comrades, friends. But worse, worse, part of her thought the destruction beautiful.

 

The world tipped away to hang at her left, and she felt the rolling motion cease. Doram, jaw clenched with the effort of keeping his dignity, signalled. "Port novae, fire" she ordered, and her voice too sounded as if it echoed from some far corner of the ship.

 

The second broadside struck twenty kilometres to the north of the first,

covering a span of fifty. The crust buckled, and magma spilled up, dragging chunks of the world with it. Beyond the fiery wound, all light from the surface was smothered, save for lightning that accompanied the choking tide. A few specks showed where enemy escapees were being run down and cast back into the cataclysm.

 

Nibaasiniiwi left open his last few vox links to the surface. The last words of dozens - screams of terror, tearful missives that he was implored to send home, stoic injunctions to make the traitors pay ten thousandfold for this and all their other crimes - blurred beyond even a space marine's ability to separate them. Then the roar came, swallowing voices first in ones and twos, then threes and more, exponentially until it drowned the vox-thieves themselves, and left him with silence. He told himself that far more enemy voices had been silenced by that roar, that whole maniples of Insurrectionist Titans would had been consumed. He hoped that down there, his treacherous cousins had time to see their death coming.

 

The fleet drifted into higher orbits as fresh bursts of fire appeared through the pall of dust. The ruptures spread throughout the crust, tectonic plates spurred into grinding, ruinous motion. Iyacrax had been denied to the enemy. Killed.

 

Perhaps, in a thousand years, its surface would be traversible. Lotara couldn't imagine how long it take to become habitable. She slumped in the throne, watching men, women and Astartes bow their heads and make the sign of the Aquila, waiting to hear confirmations from other ships so she could begin the muster. Hoping the souls of comrades trapped below would forgive her.

[bluntblade]

We have no Void Eagles. I might use Perkenas looking back as his ships withdraw, in that case. Did we specify Insurrectionist commanders?

[Sigismund229]

We have no Void Eagles. I might use Perkenas looking back as his ships withdraw, in that case. Did we specify Insurrectionist commanders?

Kozja is in charge of the force sent to take Iyacrax

[Skalpynock]

I don't remember the Void Eagles being involved, though the number of times the roster has changed for this specific battle is pretty confusing. If they are indeed there, lieutenant Havieux is their commander.

 

Warbringers-wise, Kozja is in charge and Perkenas is present, as is Asaev if you wish to use him.