Black Book - Insurrection (PUBLISHED)

[bluntblade]

Seeing as we've added some stuff on the non-Astartes troops aboard, I figure that should be added. I was thinking I'd flesh out the fighting aboard the ship, emphasising how canny the Grave Stalkers were and then the madness of the daemonic incursion.

 

I'll need to check with Redd when Cass should emerge in his Dreadnought.

[Sigismund229]

As the Insurrectionist fleets opened fire on the unsuspecting Iron Bears and the dead Iron Bears vessel began to rain down on the world of Kataii, several Godslayers vessels broke away from their squadrons and began to move towards the Kataii Orbital Port. It was within this monolithic structure that many of the Iron Bears' largest ships, including the Dragon of Autumn were anchored and many of Kataii's orbital defences located.

 

From these Godslayers vessels were launched hundreds of Caestus assault rams, each one making a beeline for the Orbital Port. Each of these assault rams was packed with Godslayer legionaries ready for the brutal hell of a boarding action in the Orbital Port's winding, narrow corridoors. Their one objective that we can be certain of was to take hold of the Orbital Port and in doing so take control of its anti-ship weaponry to be used against the Iron Bears, or at least neutralize it. However, while the Stormborn had expressly ordered that the Iron Bears' flagship be destroyed, it has been argued that this Godslayers assault was also an attempt to capture the Iron Bears flagship and largest ships, any of which would be a major addition to their fleet's firepower if captured.

 

Whatever their objectives, hundreds of Godslayer’s caestus assault rams slammed into the Orbital Port and from them poured thousands of Godslayers, many of them veterans of a hundred assaults into breaches in fortress walls. However, when they smashed their way into the Orbital Port, in many cases  they did not find their path unopposed. Many were showered with volley after volley of las fire shortly after stepping foot inside the Orbital Port and this las fire was not shot by any normal troopers but by members of the Solar Auxilia 918^th cohort, the “Star Serpents”, resplendent in their green and white livery.

 

It has become universally acknowledged that to fight a legionary requires another legionary. However, while it was known that they were far and away superior to unaugmented non-Imperial human troops, it was not yet realised just how outmatched the troops of the Imperial Army, even the elite of the Solar Auxilia, were by the warriors of the legions at the time of the Day of Revelation. Since none had ever thought a war in which the legions fought against the Imperium rather than for it was possible, scarce few had ever bothered gauge the effectiveness of the Imperial Army in combat with the legions. So, when the Solar Auxilia first fought against the warriors of the Godslayers, the result was a massacre. Legion void warfare was direct, brutal, bloody minded and above all ferocious, not at all the kind of war the Solar Auxilia had been designed to fight, let alone the Imperial Army.

 

However, the futility of sending Solar Auxilia and Imperial Army troopers without legion support into battle with legions was not yet realised and so Marshal Solar Iri’idus Marzas of the Star Serpents sent tens of thousands of his troops to their deaths in attempts to stall the legions or ambushes and counter attacks amidst the Orbital Port’s metal passageways. However, their las weaponry had little to no effect unless it hit the legionary in the neck or a similarly vulnerable spot whereas the bolters of the legionaries cut through Solar Auxilia as if they were paper. In the aftermath, it was determined that the kill ratio had been somewhere in the region of 106 Solar Auxilia killed for every Godslayer injured badly enough to take them out of the fight.

 

However, the Solar Auxilia were not the only Imperial forces to meet the Godslayers in battle in the Orbital Port. Whereas many of their still living brothers had remained aboard their ships, a number of Iron Bears dreadnoughts had disembarked from their vessels to the Orbital Port. It is worth noting that next to none of these dreadnoughts came from the larger ships of the Iron Bears fleet, meaning that in all likelihood they had needed to board the Orbital Port to obtain repairs that the forges of their own vessels were unable to supply. This theory is given further credence by the fact that many of them were missing weaponry or seemed to have parts of their ironform which were malfunctioning at the time of the Battle of Kataii. However, they may have been severely damaged but each of these warriors was still a dreadnought and was to legionaries as legionaries are to unaugmented humans.  

 

With their legion brothers dying in unprecedented numbers and the Solar Auxilia being massacred in vain attempts to hold the Godslayers at bay, the ancients of the VI^th legion joined the battle. As the Godslayers pursued the retreating Solar Auxilia through the Orbital Port, one by one they began to be confronted by the wrathful revered fallen of the Iron Bears and when they were, the Godslayers ceased to be the butchers and became the butchered, as happened when Ancient () blocked gate 34-a. Both of his legs motors were so badly damaged that he could barely move but his kheres assault cannons still worked and he still possessed the knowledge to use them to deadly effect, mowing down assault after assault by the Godslayers 19^thbrotherhood. In addition, his stand gave troops of the sub-cohort sextus of the Star Serpents a nucleus around which they could rally, forming ranks to add volleys of their own fire to his. While on its own, the effects of their las fire would be negligible, protected by the dreadnought their fire began to have an effect, downing several legionaries even as the fire from the kheres assault cannons shattered breastplates and smashed helms.

 

A similar incident was the so-called charge of the broken. In Spineway 3 of the Orbital Port, elements of sub-cohort quintus and tertius were fighting the Godslayers 28^th brotherhood. While they put up as much resistance as they could, inevitably the Solar Auxilia were being forced back with heavy casualties. This was stopped by the appearance of Ancients (), () and (). A captain in life, () had heard the desperate calls for reinforcements from the Solar Auxilia along the Spineway and had assembled two of his iron brothers. As with all dreadnoughts who took part in the fighting on the Orbital Port, they lacked certain capacities(Ancient () even having lost his artificial sight upon the world of Gareen) yet none the less, when they charged into the Godslayers, they were deadly effective, ripping or blasting apart dozens of Godslayers and forcing the warriors of Zbuch to retreat.

 

However, despite the efforts of the Iron Bears revered fallen, the Godslayers still pushed up the Spineways and towards the docking facilities, bringing down an estimated 17 Iron Bears dreadnoughts, mostly with melta fire and krak grenades or metla bombs but in one case with a Captain Igor Ivanovich pulling the ruined remains of the dreadnought’s pilot out through the contemptor chassis’ roof. It was then, as the Godslayers were fighting their way into the immediate vicinity of the Port’s docking spaces and the remnants of the 21^st and 33^rd brotherhoods fighting their way through to and boarding the Iron Bears battle barge Huron’s Fire.

 

 

Seeing the danger to the vessels of the VI^th legion that remained docked, in most cases due to extensive engine damage caused in the opening moments of the battle, Iri’idus Marzas issued his final order over the vox: the dreadnoughts were to seal their ironforms against the void and his own troopers were to hold the Godslayers in place and prevent any escape. He then overloaded the Orbital Port’s gravitic engines, the very devices that kept it in orbit. The result was a giant explosion which swallowed much of the central port and sent many of the dreadnought flying out into the void and killed most of the Solar Auxilia on board the Port, either through the immediate explosion or exposure to the void.

 

 

However, this terrible price was one the Marshal Solar had been willing to pay. His actions killed thousands of Godslayers in the explosion and cast others out into the void where they would freeze to death. More importantly, those Iron Bears ships still docked, deprived of an anchorage, went crashing down to Kataii’s surface, killing millions but denying their use to the traitors.

 

Apart from the need for Iron Bears names, this chapter should be good

Edited February 10, 2017 by Sigismund229

[Sigismund229]

Next chapter down

 

Just as a fierce battle was raging in the void all around them, an equally savage battle was being fought in the hull of the Dragon of Autumn. As the Iron Bears flagship, it had been the prime target not only for the weapons batteries of every Insurrectionist vessel within range but also for numerous Insurrectionist boarding parties. While those aimed at the bridge and upper levels of the Dragon of Autumn had been blasted apart before they even got close, many that had been aimed at the ship's lower levels had slammed home to disgorge their deadly payloads. As a result, rather than going on the offensive and boarding the Insurrectionist, Daer'dd and his elite Totem Guard were forced onto the defensive, a role they were singularly ill suited to, as were all Iron Bears.

It is said of many legions that they are more dangerous with their backs to the wall, especially the likes of the Fire Keepers. Such legions inflict more casualties upon their enemies in battles where their death is all but assured than they ever would otherwise. However, the VI^th were not such a legion. With their backs to the wall, the Iron Bears fight with desperate savagery and recklessness rather than the Fire Keepers' cold wrath and stony determination. It was here that the true genius of the Kataii ambush, not in the deployment and coordination of the Insurrectionists but in forcing the Iron Bears to fight on the defensive. It was this defensive posture that they were forced to adopt that is partly to blame for the high Iron Bears casualties compared to those suffered by the Insurrectionists in the early battle when compared to other battles of the Day of Revelation. Frustrated by being reduced to reacting to their enemy's movements and seemingly unable to control the tide of battle, many Iron Bears vessels and their crews hurled themselves at the Insurrectionists in brave but ultimitely doomed charges. All of these charges failed, cut to pieces and destroyed almost as soon as they were launched.

 

It was only the determination and steely resolve of Captain Lotarra Sarrin that saved the Iron Bears fleet from its near total destruction. Bloodily and painfully she pieced the Iron Bears fleet back into some semblance of order and united action, reduced as it was. Under her command, it began to make a fighting withdrawal towards the edges of Kataii's gravitational field, the smaller vessels darting in and out of the Insurrectionist fleet making quick attack runs before withdrawing as the lumbering juggernauts such as the Dragon of Autumn loosed volley after volley while slowly moving away from Kataii.

 

As his shipmistress coordinated the Iron Bears withdrawal, Daer'dd himself had been hunting Grave Stalkers and Godslayers in the Dragon of Autumn's lowest levels alongside his Totem Guard. While the fighting had been fierce, few ordinary legionaries could stand against the Totem Guard and fewer still against the wrath of a primarch. In the speed with which these Insurrectionists had prosecuted their boarding actions a terrible realisation came to the primarch of the Iron Bears, confirmed by the discovery of a holo map of the Dragon of Autumn on the body of a Grave Stalker. The ambush, the massacre of his sons, it was planned. It was no terrible mistake. The Godslayers and Grave Stalkers had come to Kataii already knowing of and prepared for the bloodshed above and on the world. What their reasons were the primarch of the Iron Bears was still unaware but the evidence was conclusive. No matter what the Iron Bears did, the Muster over Kataii was always going to end in bloodshed.

 

Leaving much of his Totem Guard to continue their hunt in his flagship's bowels, Daer'dd climbed to the bridge and gave his shipmistress new orders: no matter the cost, she was to find the Godslayers and Grave Stalker's flagships. While his shipmistress attempted to reason with the Bear, he would brook no disagreement. Tens of thousands of his sons floated dead in the void or had been incerated in the death throes of their ships all because of the treachery of two individuals: Koschei Kharkovic and K'awil Pakal and Daer'dd intended to make them pay for his sons' deaths with their lives.

 

So it was ordered, so would it be. Turning around from its withdrawal, the Dragon of Autumn plunged back into the Insurrectionist fleet flanked by the Bear's Blood and Huron's Heart. Taking full advantage of the Insurrectionists surprise at such an apparently suicidal charge to carve a bloody path for themselves with their weapons batteries until finally, the Dragon of Autumn was exchanging broadside fire with the Grave Stalker's flagship. His shipmistress' duty complete, Daer'dd and a handpicked escort of 150 Totem Guard teleported aboard the flagship of the XV^th.

 

With anger hot in their veins and vengeance in their hearts, this assault force murdered their way through the vessel's adamantium halls. Not even a force of Grave Stalkers veterans led by one of their legion's few dreadnoughts could halt the Bear and his Totem Guard, with Daer'dd tearing the dreadnought limb from limb and dragging its pilot's ruined body out onto the cold metal of the ship's floor where he left it to die, twitching and cold.

 

The Bear's rampage was finally halted when he was confronted by his target: K'awil Pakal and a guard of some 200 Reapers, the damned warriors of the XV^th, dead men walking each and every one. It is said that in the dim light of the ship's corridoors K'awil Pakal smiled, an ugly smile more akin to a corpse whose lips are pulled into a grin than a true smile. Without a word, Daer'dd charged K'awil who leapt to meet him with a wordless roar that stank of the grave and the two forces met with the dull clang of ceramite on ceramite, a sound which the galaxy would come to know all too well as the sound of betrayal.

 

To see Daer'dd fight K'awil was to see a battle of opposites. One the one side Daer'dd, striking with great hammer blows and on the other K'awil, darting in and out with his twin blades, inflicting small wounds and retreating. However, K'awil had ever been among the least martial of the primarchs. His weapons were terror and darkness, weapons useless against being such as primarchs, all but immune to terror and for whom darkness held no fears. So, while he held out great deal longer than any other foe the Iron Bear had faced, he was eventually felled, smashed aside by a hammer blow to his chest that inflictes catastrophic damage on even his superhuman body. However, before Daer'dd could finish his kill, a new force took his Iron Bears in the rear led by Koschei Karkovic, who interposed himself between Daer'dd and K'awil. Mighty though he was, this was a battle Daer'dd could not win. Weakened from his battle with K'awil he slowed. His blows became easier to block, his openings easier to exploit. Finally, Koschei brought Daer'dd to his knees. According to many accounts, it was with tears in his eyes that Koschei uttered the words "I am so sorry brother. I cannot turn back now. Please. Forgive me" as he plunged his blade and one of K'awil's into Daer'dd's heart.

 

The Iron Bear was dead.

[bluntblade]

I'd suggest removing Koschei's words. Might be better to simply describe him as being traumatised afterwards or during the act.

 

Plus, for Ka'wil vs Daer'dd, rather than "least martial", perhaps something along the lines of "both were Primarchs, who had slain the champions of entire xenos species and carved bloody trails across the Galaxy. But pitted against one another, Daer'dd's preternatural strength and warrior's prowess gave him the advantage."

[simison]

 

 

 

Apart from the need for Iron Bears names, this chapter should be good

 

 

"...winding, narrow [corridors]."

 

"....capture the Iron Bears['] flagship and largest ships, any of which would be a major addition to their fleet's firepower if captured." Redundant, eliminate one.

 

"...seemed to have parts of their ironform [which  were] malfunctioning..."

 

"...[G]ate 34-[A]..."

 

Double check if 'kheres assault cannons' needs to be capitalized in any way.

 

"...ub-[C]ohort extus..."

 

"...ub-[C]ohort [Q]uintus and [T]ertius..."

 

"...Godslayers['] 28^th rotherhood..."

 

"...Iron Bears['] revered fallen..."

 

"...krak grenades or [melta] bombs..."

 

"...21^st and 33^rd rotherhoods..."

[bluntblade]

I'll tackle the flight, if that's Ok with Sigi.

[Sigismund229]

I'll tackle the flight, if that's Ok with Sigi.

Go for it

[simison]

Next chapter down

 

 

 

"...the weapon[s] batteries of every..."

 

"...genius of the Kataii ambush [lay],..."

 

"...but [ultimately] doomed charges."

 

"...the [P]rimarch of the Iron Bears..." Primarch, when referring to a specific individual, acts as a proper title. Actually, I'm not sure if you ever not capitalize Primarchs. Will need to research this.

 

"...the [P]rimarch of the Iron Bears was still unaware..."

 

"...Muster of Kataii..." I'm unsure of this. Is this supposed to be an official event? I'm not aware of any muster being referred to so respectfully.

 

"...been [incinerated] in the death..."

 

"...two individuals: Koschei Kharkovic and K'awil Pakal and Daer'dd..." Colons are used to start lists, so this looks like Dear'dd is no part of this two-man list. I suggest either turning the colon into a pair of commas or start a new sentence with Daer'dd.

 

"...the Insurrectionists['] surprise..."

 

"...least martial of the [P]rimarchs." I agree that 'least martial' doesn't fit since K'awil is still ultimately a war leader. Maybe something along the lines like 'duelist' or least among hand-to-hand combat?

 

"...such as [P]rimarchs..." After reading a little bit of Betrayal, you do capitalize Primarchs when referring to them as groups.

 

"...weapons useless against being , all but immune..." What happened here?

 

"...that inflicte[d] catastrophic..."

 

"...his battle with K'awil[,] he slowed."

[bluntblade]

Grifft and Squig, how large a force would the Grave Stalkers and Godslayers commit to seizing or destroying the Dragon?

[Big Bad Squig]

Hmmm - fairly large I'd imagine, although my knowledge of the actual numbers is slightly lacking. As many as needed, with a significant amount extra, given that the threat that the ship posed would definitely have been obvious.

[bluntblade]

I'm trying to figure out what the numbers would be - the Dragon might have evacuated a few smaller ships during the battle, but I want a large force to contest control of the ship.

 

My overall plan is for the Grave Stalkers, beaten back from the bridge with the remaining Godslayers and realising the engine decks are too well-defended, go for the Navigators (not intending to kill them but isolate them from the Warp) and disable the Geller Field. Thus, even as daemons attack, the ship loses direction and veers way off from Huron. After the Geller Field is restored, they make for Terra itself, the source of the Astronomicon being all they can perceive in the mayhem.

[Sigismund229]

Annihilation

In the all too short years of the Great Crusade, it was often said that a legion without its primarch was impossible. One could not exist without the other and to think otherwise was pure lunacy. Yet, time and again across the Insurrection this was proved incorrect for even once their Primarchs went missing or were killed, the legions endured and kept fighting in the name of their absent gene-sire. However, what is true is that the loss of their primarch always scarred a legion's soul and left its mark in the mind of every one of his sons in ways that none could predict before it happened. One universal fact was that no legion was ever the same after it lost its gene-sire.

 

The Iron Bears were not a legion famed for their psychic might. However, none would have guessed as much in the hours after Daer’dd fell for all across the cold void above Kataii, it was as if a shock wave had ripped through the ranks of the VI^th, some deep, internal link that no one had even known was there until it was gone, had been shattered. In some cases, the Iron Bears halted their assault, falling to their knees as if hit by a hammer while in others they charged forwards, roaring in helpless anger, all strategic thought gone from their minds.

 

Such cases of out of character and unexpected behaviour just increased as the news of Daer’dd’s death became more widely known among the VI^th. It’s entirely possible that, in death, Daer’dd killed more of his sons that he had managed to save through his last orders as the thin thread of control that Lotarra Sarrin had managed to maintain over the VI^th legion fleet was completely broken by the news of their father’s death. Countless dozens broke ranks and simply charged forwards, guns blazing, seeking to wreak bloody vengeance for their father even as others simply halted, resigned to their fate and having no desire to outlive their father. There are even cases of Iron Bears vessels, once their father’s death became widely known, abandoning the fight and running headlong for the outskirts of the Kataii system in order to make a warp jump, the shock of the tragedy that had befallen them too great to bear.

 

As a result of this sudden shattering of the Iron Bears formation, they became vulnerable as they had been in the opening moments of the ambush. The Insurrectionists were able to sweep in and cut their formation apart into smaller and smaller pockets which could then be destroyed individually, blasted apart or boarded in numbers so great they could not resist for long.

 

As the Iron Bears fleet was falling to pieces, on board the Grave Stalkers flagship, Daer’dd’s Totem Guard had launched a last howling charge to recover the body of their father. While such a charge, against the elite of the VIII^th and XV^th legions as well as Koschei himself, was doomed from its beginning, it is unlikely many of the Totem Guard cared, consumed as they were by rage and grief. In the bloody clash that followed, bodies soon began to pile up in front of Koschei, the target of many of the Totem Guard, bodies of Iron Bears, Godslayers and Grave Stalkers alike. Scarce few of the Totem Guard kept their anger in check and their heads about them to realise that the battle was lost and they would serve no further purpose by staying on board that ship to die. Vengeance would need to wait for another day when the odds were in the Iron Bears’ favour, not their foe’s. These few Totem Guard recovered their father’s body and managed to make an emergency teleport jump back to the Dragon of Autumn, even as hundreds of the Totem Guard still aboard the flagship launched themselves into brave but doomed boarding actions whose only purpose was vengeance.

 

Just as many of the Totem Guard lost control of themselves, so too did many of Daer’dd’s psychic sons. Attuned to the warp as they were, they had felt their father’s death most keenly, the shock of his death only added to by the waves of grief that assaulted them from the legionaries all around them. In their case, almost to a man, they lost control of their abilities, unleashing them on all those who stood in their way, often needing to be forcibly restrained by their brothers, or abandoned. Some damned their units, who refused to abandon them but equally could not contact or control them and so needed to stay and die with them(one such case was that of Daer’dd’s adoptive brother, Aandegg Niimkiikaa, who was knocked out by his brothers once he proved unable to restrain his powers).

 

Only a scant few Iron Bears vessels held the formation strung together by Captain Sarrin, often those captained by veterans of the Great Crusade. Holding their formation, they managed to fight a way out of the ambush, punching their way through the outer traitor cordons and managing to enter the warp, although many sacrificed themselves to give their brothers that chance and more would be swallowed by the warp, their vessels too badly damaged to make the journey.

 

Following their example, there were several more break outs by hastily strung together formations of Iron Bears vessels(notably the Dreaded Claw, a vessel carrying some 400 survivors from those Iron Bears who had been deployed to the surface of Kataii). However, such successes were just a small part of the battle and many more Iron Bears vessels were destroyed than escaped, their hulks left gutted in the void, doomed by their own rage.

 

While lesser forces might have given up in the face of such annihilation, the Iron Bears were warriors of the legions and as such, even as they stared doom in the face, fought to their last breath. Yet such bravery could not carry the day and, after a battle that had lasted five hours, the VI^th legion had been killed or scattered to the wind by the Insurrectionists.

Edited February 26, 2017 by Sigismund229

[Sigismund229]

Death's Haul

As the last of the escaped Iron Bears hauled themselves into the warp, the time had come to count the cost, on both sides. The warfare that had raged in the orbit over and upon the surface of Kataii was a new and brutal way of fighting, legionairy against legionairy and bolter against bolter. Over the long years of the Insurrection, humanity would grow desencitized to such conflicts, numbed to brutality and cost of them. However, at the time of the battle of Kataii, this scale of conflict was as yet unseen and unknown and so the shock of the losses over Kataii struck the galaxy like a hammer blow.

 

The mauling taken by the Iron Bears was enough to drive any loyal to the throne world to despair. Even in the immediate aftermath of the ambush, when the only reports of it were from scattered, confused and exhausted bands of survivors, it was apparent that the damage done to the VI^th legion was immense, some went so far as to say irrepairable. Taking together their information about those ships and brothers they had seen killed, estimates of their losses began to be formulated. Such estimates make for grim reading, with them listing between 65%-75% of those gathered over Kataii as casualties. In some units, notably the Totem Guard, casulaties went much higher but no Grand Wartribe present at the ambush survived as anything other than a theoretical concept, scattered to the winds as they were.

 

However, even as these casualty records were being compiled, the butchers bill of Kataii was not yet complete. For weeks after the ambush, the Godslayers and Grave Stalkers combed the surrounding systems for survivors, ruthlessly butchering any they found. In addition, more Iron Bears were entrapped, for their fleet had been scattered by the warp when it arrived in system over Kataii and, even weeks after the battle, Iron Bears ships were still sailing into orbit over Kataii, unaware of the massacre that had taken place and quickly silenced before they could comprehend the horror of it and flee. Others still would arrive in what they thought to be safe havens only to be blasted out of orbit by worlds that swore themselves to the Stormlord.

 

So, what then was the true death toll of the ambush of Kataii? From information gleaned off of survivors and the Insurrectionists' own records(those that survive) the number of Iron Bears killed or captured in the actual ambush seems to have been around 103,000 killed and another 6000 captured(many of them only once horrendously wounded). However, when the number of Iron Bears who initially appeared to have survived but were later either found dead or seemingly vanished is also added to these initial figures, the number begins to look more like 112,000, a previously unthinkable number of legionaries to lose in a single engagement. Even in the dark Rangdan Xenocides and brutal Qarith War, no legion had suffered so badly at the hands of its enemies before. Worse, along with many of these legionaries was lost their equipment and, more importantly, their gene-seed. Like in every ambush of the Day of Revelation, the Insurrectionists had been especially diligent when it came to the killing of Iron Bears apothaceries. To add insult to injury, many of the Iron Bears who had been captured or among the last to escape claim to have seen Warbringer's apothaceries walking amongst the dead to harvest what the VI^th's apothaceries' could not, although for what purpose would not become clear until many years afterwards.

 

As to the two Insurrectionist legions who ambushed the Iron Bears, their losses are easier to discern. By far the worse hit of the two were the Grave Stalkers, for they had borne a disproportionate amount of the Iron Bears' fury. They lost 2,386 legionaries according to their own records which also admit to another 657 captured or missing(likely from boarding Iron Bears vessels which later escaped) for a total count of 3,043. While this number may seem small when compared to the losses sustained by the Iron Bears, it is worth remembering that, at the outbreak of the Insurrection the XV^th numbered just 10,589 legionaries by their own count, meaning that they lost 28% of their strength to the Iron Bears' fury, a high price. In addition, XV^th legion apothacerion estimates place the losses of their reaper cadre in the region of 70%, around 2,500 reapers. That such high losses were sustained is testimony to no failing on the behalf of the Grave Stalkers but to the ferocity of the Iron Bears once they had discovered the betrayal for what it was.

 

The Godslayers too did not escape lightly. They lost 26,798 brothers killed and another 7,403 missing or prisoner, likely under similar circumstances to those Grave Stalkers who were missing or captured, making for a total count of 34,201 legionaries lost, 21% of their legion. Under any normal circumstance, such losses were considered catastrophic yet over Kataii the Godslayers were considered to have escaped lightly, as unlike the Grave Stalkers and Iron Bears they were able to recover almost all of the fallen warriors' gene-seed.

 

When regarding these losses, one must bear in mind the circumstances in which they were sustained. The Insurrectionist advantage of surprise had been absoloute and they had had a numerical advantage of approximately 20,000 legionaries, a force capable of bringing entire systems to heel in weeks, and still they had suffered such losses, their dead brothers better testament to their loyalty than any oath. This is what war between legions was: fast, brutal and above all bloody, a lesson the galaxy would learn all too well in the years to come.

[bluntblade]

"Helpless anger" doesn't sit right with me. "Unfettered rage" would be my suggestion.

[Sigismund229]

"Helpless anger" doesn't sit right with me. "Unfettered rage" would be my suggestion.

I meant rage caused by their helplessness to do anything about Daer'dd's death rather than anger that they are helpless to stop.

 

Also a thought on the small quote we could have at the beginning of this book:

 

Cry havoc and loose the dogs of war

Edited February 27, 2017 by Sigismund229

[bluntblade]

I got what you were aiming for, I just don't feel the phrasing

[bluntblade]

What do people reckon is a reasonable number of Godslayers and Grave Stalkers to board the Dragon during its escape?

[MikhalLeNoir]

Is there anything similar in canonverse?

[Kelborn]

Only thing I can remember would be during Phal but do we have the numbers of the boarding Fists? Don't know.

 

Otherwise, only via BL books.

[Sigismund229]

The closest canon gets is the flight of the Eisentsein and the IF fleeing Phall on the Contrador.

 

Seeing as these Godslayers and Grave Stalkers are the survivors of the original boarding parties. The cap of Godslayers and GS on board fleeing Bears ships total is

Grave Stalkers: 657

Godslayers: 7,403

 

Seeing as the Dragon of Autumn is a monster of a ship, I imagine they would try to either capture it intact or destroy it and deny the Bears its firepower. So those GS and Godslayers force on it will likely be significant.

 

So maybe, around 1000 Godslayers and 100 or so Grave Stalkers?

[bluntblade]

Sounds fair enough. How many defenders will be aboard the Dragon?

[Sigismund229]

Well that depends how many Bears the Dragon is carrying at the time of the ambush. Normal modus operandi=>take that ad divide by 10

[Chief Captain Redd]

The Dragon carries the full Totem Guard, and over a dozen clan companies from the first or about 15,000 Astartes in total. The other impactful numbers for Astartes would be the 150k Daughters aboard and 3000 Gizhaadan Ogryns.

[bluntblade]

I'd say it's more a matter of "subtract 70% of those who followed Daer'dd onto the enemy ships, possibly adding evacuees from other vessels but there won't be many of them."

[Chief Captain Redd]

Yeah^ Blunt knows Bears modus operandi better than anyone but me, they have very few clan companies dedicated to ship defense, they leave that to what they refer to as The Gizhaadan, it's Daughters supported by power armoured Ogryns. So the only Bears not fighting to punch back would be those that go to defend the huge amount of civilians and augmented support they rely on.

 

Something I'd be curious to see is the Mentality of those boarding the Dragon; because I imagine it'd be intimidating. Like not just being arguably the biggest Imperial ship, with weapon that can doom a system or segmentum fleet if aimed right; but that's where Daer'dd's most powerful creations are kept; things deemed too drastic, that he built just to push the boundaries of his arcane pursuit of science. Like that's where weapons like The Spear of Terra were born, imagine knowing you're attacking the birthplace of that, even if nothing is that nasty onboard right now, it's gotta be on the back of your mind that The Dragon's defenders have some really nasty, horrifying stuff to turn against you.