Black Book - Insurrection (PUBLISHED)

[Sigismund229]

I stuck it up over in the Book 2 thread. There's a bunch of general chapters and then to round it off I'm going t write a seperate final chapter for the first part of each 3 introducing the campaign of that sub-book

[simison]

So, a general history chapter for each 'issue', correct?

[Sigismund229]

 sim, my idea was that all this goes at the beginning of each of the Expansion sub books along with another chapter introducing the specific campaign, so the expansion around the Maelstrom, Eastern Fringe and battle of the Forge respectively

 

The Great Crusade is over, and the galaxy will burn.

 

The arch traitor Icarion continues his slow and steady domination over the Imperium, cutting the throat from the Emperor’s dream of a galaxy in unity, keeping the staunch loyalists hard pressed to hold on to the crumbling fragments of the shattered jewel that was formerly the Imperium of Man. Like a cancer, they consume the galaxy in unholy purgatory. Torn asunder and ripped into hundreds of tiny pockets of conflicting loyalties, is where we find ourselves: a far cry from the glory we were promised as a species so long ago. The eastern fringe buckles, its borders are stretched thin and worn away by years of conflict. Any soul with the misfortune to be beneath this shroud will find betrayal at their doorstep. Crestfallen by the Day of Revelation and the string of tragedy that ensued, the Imperium endures nonetheless, even as teeters on the brink of damnation.

 

Doom is the name that calls forth the legions of the dead to play their final act. Doom ushers in a new era of uncertainty, where the seeds of doubt have been sown, and begin to grow their putrid flower. Doom is the last thing many of us will ever see, in our short and melancholy lives. Deceit calls out, hungry and starving for it’s snare to trigger. In only a single moment, deceit is our master, controlling everything through abundance of human hubris. Deceit has opened the floodgates to the end of days, a catalyst for the erosion of time. There is hope however, in these despairing times. Listen not to the propaganda of the unfaithful, nor the lyric of the traitor’s sonnet, but seek refuge within one’s self. Only there can one truly master their spirit. Hold fast and be firm. Stand your ground and give not an inch. The labours of every man woman and child built the human race, and they will preserve it, given the inspiration.

 

I too labour, and create this record, of which rests in your gritty palms. Read and absorb the text you read, and learn the truth buried behind the veils of doom and deceit. My inspiration, you ask? The will to live, and endure, and hope that my ancestors can enjoy the serenity of a peaceful existence, and not have to suffer for the sins of their fathers.

 

If there is one thing I can warn you of now before you proceed further into this record, it is the undoubted certainty that, no matter the cost to either side:

 

The galaxy will burn.

 

 

 

 

 

(A new darkness has come upon the galaxy,

None know how it began,

None shall live to see its end)

-Quote to go on the page before the real fluff begins

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A kingdom divided

The Lightning bolt strikes

In the year 031.M31, the Imperium was hit by the deadliest attack it had ever faced. Hundreds of thousands of legionaries from eight of her legions had been slain, their lifeblood draining away into the soils of distant worlds or their lifeless corpses drifting through the endless void of space. Two legions had been all but shattered, the Iron Bears and the Dune Serpents, the Iron Bears losing their primarch and the Dune Serpents plagued by desertions.

 

However, this was no normal war that the legions had been dragged into. These losses had not been inflicted on them by any xenos or rebel faction, none still existed in the galaxy who could threaten the legions. Instead, it was their brother legions who had turned on them and butchered them by the tens of thousands. Twelve of the Emperor’s vaunted Legiones Astartes and their primarchs had entered into open rebellion, led by the foremost of the primarchs: Icarion Anasem, the Stormborn, now Stormlord.

 

With his rebellion, the Stomlord had extinguished the bright torch of the Great Crusade. Darkness had descended upon the Imperium and monstrosities stalked the shadows as brothers fought to decide the fate of humanity. The brotherhood of primarchs had been broken and they had already begun to fall. All hope is gone. Time ceases to have meaning. There is only bloodshed and war as all humanity is cloaked in a second Age of Darkness.

 

Domains of the Stormlord

In the weeks and months following the bloody massacres of the Day of Revelation, it would begin to become apparent just how long Icarion Anasem had spent seeking out support before he made his first move and just how deep the love and admiration for Icarion Anasem ran on many Imperial worlds. In the wake of Icarion announcing his Insurrection against the Emperor, thousands of worlds rose up in rebellion alongside him, pledging themselves to his cause. From mining outposts that had long been forgotten by many to bustling hive worlds at the heart of the administration of entire systems, worlds renounced the Emperor and swore themselves to the Stormlord. All told, nearly a third of the Imperium's worlds swore allegiance to the Stormlord.

 

It is likely that this number would have been higher had it not been for the incessent work of the Warmaster and his efforts to rapidly integrate worlds into the Imperium and smooth over wounds caused during compliance. While many had critisised him for this in the decades since the Qarith Triumph, stating that he was the Warmaster and such matters were better left to the Council of Terra, his work now bore fruit and, while many worlds deserted to join the Stormlord's nascent empire, the majority of Imperial worlds stayed true to their oaths of allegiance and stayed loyal to the Emperor and Terra and began to muster troops when the Warmaster issued the Commission of Array.

 

As a consequence of this, the Imperium was torn into a ragged patchwork of conflicting loyalties. Many systems raised their banners in rebellion only to discover that their neighbouring systems had stayed loyal and many stayed loyal only to discover their neighbours had sworn themselves to the Stormlord. As a general rule, the areas of space immediately surrounding legion homeworlds were loyal to the same side as the legion whose homeworld they found themselve next to. However, aside from this, there were no clear cut battle lines in these early years of the Insurrection. There were no borders between the Imperium and the Stormlord's domains, just a confused and thoroughly muddled patchwork of loyalties, with the Imperium being stronger in some sectors of space and the Insurrectionists in others. This was further confused when some worlds heard of the Insurrection and rebelled but to regain their own independence rather than to see the Stormlord seated on the Golden Throne of Terra. These systems and worlds would be targeted by both Imperials and Insurrectionists alike and some would see some of the fiercest fighting of these early years of the Insurrection.

 

The capital of the Stormlord's new realm was Madrigal and the Maelstrom zone, which he quickly set about ridding of Imperial resistance. A large number of the worlds that supported Icarion were located in the Ultima Segmentum and so that would be the Segmentum which the Imperial forces would need to fight hardest to hold into. However, Icarion was also able to call upon a lot of support on the Eastern Fringe, where he was only resisted by the already badly mauled Dune Serpents. So it was that Icarion set about expanding and unifying his domains, eradicating Imperial resistance in the Maelstrom and then gradually pushing out into the east and the rest of the Ultima Segmentum.

 

It was in these regions that the earliest campaigns of the Insurrection would be fought.

 

The Tides of Loyalty

Throughout the Insurrection, not even the loyalty of the legions could be trusted, nor could it be predicted. Just because a primarch had sworn his allegiance to the Emperor or the Stormlord, it was far from assured that all or even a clear majority of his sons would do likewise, with many legionaries, especially those who had served on detached duty for many years, choosing to defect and follow a different path. In some cases, these legionaries would defect only to be tortured by guilt over their betrayal of their father and brothers and defect again in order to be reunited with their legion. In a few rare cases, they would later decide to switch their allegiance back to how it originally fell. One example of such a case was the Godslayers 108th Brotherhood. Scarcely a year after the Day of Revelation they saved a unit of Scions Hospitalier from their destruction at the hands of a combined force of Harbingers and Eagle Warriors over the third moon of Ekra, mercilessly pursuing the Insurrectionists to the edges of the system and inflicting heavy casualties upon them. However, just two short years later the 108th was spotted again, this time as part of the massed Godslayers assault on Oskis in the latter stages of the fighting in the galactic core, a battle during which they were thought to be broken. Yet they were not and over the next twelve years there would be multiple sightings of the 108th as part of raids on Insurrectionist supplies alongside legionaries of the Drowned and Predators. They appear to have been broken for good by members of the Steel Legion, as while there are a few scattered sightings of legionaries in their livery they are never in strength, even at the Siege of Madrigal numbering just a few dozen.

 

Rarer still were those legionaries who, while they fought for the opposite side to their primarch, still obeyed their primarch's orders and refused to fight their former legion brothers. Such was the case with the Dune Serpents 97th and 32nd companies. Both renounced their allegiance to the Emperor and took part in both assaults towards Terra as well as assaulting refugee ships fleeing the Blood Crusade. However, during the campaigns on the Eastern Fringe there are pict feeds of Dune Serpents from these two companies boarding several Steel Legion strike cruisers. At no other point are they seen fighting against the Insurrectionist so it seems that their loyalty was to their primarch and legion first, the Stormlord second.

 

More common than this were those legionaries whose minds were broken by the sheer magnititude of the betrayal ripping the Imperium apart. Hailing from Loyalist and Insurrectionist legions alike, these broken legionaries seem to have been drawn disproprtionately from the legion's Terran elements. It is known that the Grave Stalkers and Warriors of Peace, the last legions whose primarchs were found, seemed to suffer more from this manner of defection than from changes of loyalty. Two prominent examples of this type of defection were the Sons of Grief and the Scavengers. Both scoured all heraldry, leaving their armour bare metal after the fashion of the early founding of the legions in the late years of the Great Crusade and sought whatever death their broken minds drove them to search for.

 

The Sons of Grief seem to have hailed predominantly from the IIIrd legion's remaining Terrans. Led by a dreadnought, Venerable Leif, they fought across the northern Imperium, venting their grief at the destruction of their life's work on loyalist and traitor alike. They were finally destroyed by the Iron Bears nine years into the Insurrection on Kranath, near the Three Fires sector, their last vox transmission reading We fought. We lost. Now we rest. Thank you brothers.

 

The Scavengers were another such group active near the Maelstrom, seemingly composed of a mix of Void Eagles and Grave Stalkers. By the time of their destruction at the hands of the Harbingers, there was little left of whatever they had once been. Grief and rage obscured all else to the point that many could not remember their own names and had become more beast than legionary, beasts which needed to be put down for their own good. In the years before their destruction, they had attacked nearly every legion they ever encountered and laid waste to any civilian shipping they could, seemingly believing themselves to be the only true loyalists left in the galaxy.

 

Such tales of loyalty from sons of traitor legions or traitor sons of loyalists are more common than any know or will admit. Amidst the chaos and confusion of the Insurrection, there are hundreds of tales that went unrecorded by witnessess and whos participants did not live to see the end of those dark days. Not even pict evidence can be entirely relied upon. Sometimes units used fake heraldry in order to confuse the enemy or infiltrate into his ranks. However, more common is the simple reason that over the course of the Insurrection many units were destroyed and reformed several times as legions took losses and rebuilt(the Berserkers of Uran 112th company was founded no less than eight times over the course of the Insurrection, the Warbringers 27th March and Halycon Wardens 9th company five times, although these are exceptional cases). Therefore, survivors of the original unit might be part of an ad hoc unit and still bearing their original heraldry while the official refounded unit was elsewhere, giving the impression that some units were deployed to several warzones at the same time when in fact it was members of different iterations of the same unit, sometimes fighting on different sides of the Insurrection.

 

A galaxy at war

It is common to speak of battles which involved many tens of thousands of legionaries, led into battle by their god like primarchs. However, for every such battle there were tens of thousands of smaller engagements fought between a few thousand or hundred, sometimes even a few dozen, legionaries in a system that might, for whatever reason, be considered the front line. It was these engagements which made up the vast bulk of the Insurrection.

This fragmentation of the enormous martial might of the legions can be explained by the sheer size of the Insurrection. During the Great Crusade, the legions had been able to operate as enormous blocks of martial might, hammer blows struck against the distant fastness of the xenos and rebel. They had been able to do so as they were not fighting a united foe and so their enemies would often have to stand and fight them where they first encountered the legions.

 

By contrast, the Insurrection was fought across the entire Imperium, with both sides struggling to take and hold ground, necessitating a fragmentation of the legions into smaller units that could operate over a wider area. So, while the primarchs still retained personal command of the core of their legions, as the Insurrection wore on there were a greater and greater number of smaller units fighting across the length and breadth of the Imperium. When taken together with the chaos and division caused by the warpstorms that wracked the galaxy, this meant that many units ended up waging their own wars across the galaxy, almost independent of the wider war, only linked in that they shared broadly the same goals as the faction with whom they affiliated themselves.

 

It was because of this fragmented nature of the civil war that engulfed the Imperium that the Insurgos warbands were a viable force. Having turned away from the main body of their legion, most of these forces lacked the numbers to operate as a separate force in the grand battles that are so often thought to have constituted the majority of the fighting during the Insurrection. In such grand battles, the Insurgos warbands would doubtless suffer heavy losses or, more likely, be annihilated by a more numerous force from one of the larger legions. However, in these smaller scale operation, the Insurgos could be used to maximum effect in operations such as against the Joryk astropathic station, where a force of some four hundred Wendiigo disabled the astropathic station. As a result of this operation, a not insignificant force of Void Eagles was kept blind to Yucahu’s orders for his legion to regroup in the Eastern Fringe, in accordance with the Warmaster’s orders. Having not received those orders, these Void Eagles would continue their own war in the Ghoul Stars against the Insurrectionist forces there, being absent from the fighting in the more crucial eastern and central theatres until many years later.

 

A realm in ruins

In many histories of the Icarion Insurrection, there is much talk of borders and systems changing hands between the Imperium and the realm of the Stormlord. Such talk is misleading, for by 037.M31, at the latest, much of the Imperium and realm of the Stormlord were entities confined to the realms of theory and the neat, ordered requirements of histories. Neither could truly be said to exist any more than notionally beyond their hearts and the borders, such as they existed, between the two changed hands so often and were so patchy as to make any attempt to map them an exercise in futility.

 

The reality was that, as the brotherhood of the primarchs crumbled, so did the authority of the Imperium. At a functional level, many systems became beholden to a warlord of some kind who would enforce his own laws upon the worlds he ruled and aligned himself with whichever side he chose, either through loyalty or self-interest. During the brief lulls in the fighting, the power of these warlords would decrease as the Warmaster or the Stormlord began to assert their authority more forcefully over their realms, only to increase again once the fighting began again in earnest. In many cases, these warlords served their own ends rather than those of the empire they chose to support and could change allegiance as easily as the wind changes direction, as happened with General Rakkara. For the early decades of the Insurrection, he was an eager supporter of the Stormlord. However, as soon as one of his neighbours defected to the Stormlord, Rakkara rejoined the Imperium and launched an invasion of her territory, nominally for the Emperor but actually fuelled by his own self-interest.

 

The only places where the Imperium and realm of the Stormlord genuinely existed as functional entities was at their cores, the Segmentum Solar in the case of the Imperium and the Maelstrom and its surrounding regions. As such, one of the most common missions for many smaller units of the legions was an assassination or surgical strike to remove the warlord of a given piece of the Imperium and replace him or her with another who was more favourable to their cause. On the Insurrectionist side, these operations were frequently conducted by legionaries of the Grave Stalkers who accomplished these missions with an execution that was as messy and visible as possible, in order to terrify warlords who had sided with the Stormlord out of any thoughts of defection.

 

One such instance was a strike against the Magister-Militaris of Keredos. Having at first sided with the Stormlord, he later defected when faced with the prospect of an invasion by legionaries from the Fire Keepers. Just three months after this defection, his head was found placed on his throne with a XV and a star carved into his forehead, his body parts found scattered across his palace. Another was that of Admiral Gurthas, who had joined his forces to the Stormlord’s cause. He was executed on the bridge of his flagship, at the base of his command throne, by a group of legionaries of the Crimson Lions, his death an unmistakeable lesson in loyalty to those who had abandoned the Imperium.

 

The Stormlord’s Armies

The names of those who turned their backs upon the Imperium on the Day of Revelation were many. Foremost among them were the legions of the Adeptus Astartes who had sworn their allegiance to the Stormlord: Harbingers, Berserkers of Uran, Godslayers, Warbringers, Eagle Warriors, Grave Stalkers, Drowned, Warriors of Peace, Steel Legion. The names of these nine legions would echo across eternity in infamy, for off all those who joined the Stormlord, their betrayal was the greatest. Once the defenders of humanity and prosecutors of the Great Crusade, they would now be the Stormlord’s shock troops in his insurrection.

 

However, it was not just the legions who had joined the Stormlord. Perhaps half of the Titan Legions and a third of the Imperial Army joined him, placing themselves at his command. Some were deceived, others followed him because of ancient oaths of honour, others still followed out of loyalty to the legion to which they were attached. Their reasons for joining themselves to his cause do not matter. All that matters is that they followed him in his treachery, giving him countless millions of troops to call on and even the god machines of the Mechanicum. Both would serve their role in his war. Yet for all the vast numbers of the Imperial Army and the enormous power of the titans, neither was capable of seizing Terra. A thousand ships and ten million men could assault that world’s mighty defences and a thousand ships and ten million men would be killed or thrown back by the defenders of the Imperial Palace, the Adeptus Custodes and the Warmaster’s Vth legion.

 

The war would be decided by the legions and so it is that the Stormlord’s strength could be accurately represented by the number of legionaries he commanded. Thanks to the success of the Stormlord’s forces upon the Day of Revelation, many of his legions had yet to suffer serious losses and they had inflicted terrible losses upon those who held fast to their allegiance to the Emperor. The only exception to this were the Grave Stalkers. Despite the element of surprise, they had been hit hard by the wrath of the Iron Bears once the Grave Stalkers and Godslayer’s treachery was apparent. While they had inflicted grievous wounds on the Iron Bears, they had been badly mauled in return and their primarch, K’awil Pakal, had suffered horrendous injuries while fighting his vengeful brother, Daer’dd.

 

Yet the Grave Stalkers aside, the Stormlord’s superiority in legionaries was easily evident. While it is difficult to obtain verifiable figures, most estimates place the number of astartes under arms in his cause at around 1,000,000 or higher. In addition to their numerical superiority, many of these would be veterans of the Great Crusade, experienced in war and tested in battle against other legions by the Day of Revelation.

 

The Strain of War

In these opening years of the Insurrection, it rapidly became apparent that the Insurrection would test the legions in fields other than the battlefield. Faced with the unforeseen foe of other legions, attrition rates among the Adeptus Astartes were high and with the destiny of the Imperium and by extension the galaxy and all mankind at stake, neither side could allow their foes to gain a numerical or equipment advantage on them.

 

Far from simply allowing themselves to be steadily worn down by attrition, all legions began to launch major recruitment drives, Loyalists and Insurrectionists alike. Tithes of manpower were demanded from hundreds of suitable worlds and the nets of each legion's recruiters were cast far wider in an attempt to find as many suitable recruits as possible. Often one of the first actions of a legion upon subduing or recapturing a world was to assess the local population for potential recruits, such was the desperate need for recruits to replace losses on both sides.

 

However, while such wide recruitment helped to keep legion numbers at acceptable levels, it was not on its own sufficient to replace the enormous losses being suffered by legions in the field. In order to do this, both the Loyalists and Insurrectionists turned to documents long locked away by the Baal decree, many penned by Kozja Darzalas and the Jade General, two Insurrectionist primarchs. Using these treatises, all legions began to cut down on the time it took to turn a recruit into a fully formed legionary, in some cases reducing it to little as two years. While the extra strain this inflicted on recruits bodies killed many, the need for legionaries on the frontline outweighed the cost in number of recruits these new techniques caused.

 

Among those legions with well-developed apothacerions and stable gene-seed capable of mass implantation, it was not uncommon to see large spikes in their numbers during times of relative inaction as enormous numbers of recruits were taken in and turned into legionaries. Formed into squads alongside smaller numbers of veterans of the Great Crusade or early Insurrection, these mass-produced legionaries would be cast into the fires of war without the years of training that had been given to the legionaries who fought the Great Crusade. For them, their first engagement would be a trial by fire in which they learned their craft quickly or died. However, the battles of the Insurrections were a brutally effective crucible in which these new legionaries would be trained and hardened by war.

 

However, this accelerated recruitment was far less stable than the recruitment of those legionaries who had fought in the Great Crusade. In a number of legions, it caused significant problems, notably in the Halycon Wardens where cases of the madness that afflicted the legion was 123% higher among these rapidly recruited legionaries than in those created using older, slower methods. Similarly, in the Dune Serpents these new legionaries proved less adept at restraining their urges and many fought solely for the pleasure they derived from inflicting pain.

 

In addition, while this rapid recruitment and induction kept the number of astartes a legion could field at acceptable levels, it also led to other problems, notably serious problems with supplies of things such as armour and weaponry, let alone ships and tanks. While all the legion had started the Insurrection with large stock piles of armour and weapons, with the high rates of attrition on the front they soon stripped through their available supplies and fresh armour and weaponry was slow in the coming from forge worlds and often in insufficient quantities.

 

Such equipment shortages meant that more often than not legions were reduced to scavenging any equipment they could off of battlefields. Tech marines from all legions cobbled together functional suits from scavenged plates or forged new ones from the melted down ceramite of plates so badly damaged they were unsalvageable. Yet these suits of armour were little more than a stop-gap measure and their shortcomings were all too evident. Often the synthetic muscle contained within the suit would seize up in combat or the helm's filters stopped working properly.

 

The shortage of equipment on all sides and the deficiencies of the stop-gap armours meant that forge worlds rapidly became among the most hotly contested objectives in the entire Imperium. Entire campaigns were fought to control them and often their manufactories would be destroyed rather than left to fall into enemy hands, further worsening the crisis of equipment that both Loyalists and Insurrectionists suffered from. It also soon became practice for legions who were going on the offensive and leaving behind steady supply lines to send out raiders to attack enemy or, if the situation was severe enough, allied supply convoys bound for other legions, seizing the supplies they contained for their own use. In some theatres of war, notably the Eastern Fringe, this would become the normal manner through which legion forces kept themselves supplied with even basic necessities such as ammunition.

 

To further explain why I suggested adding units which are "general" to factions is that, as the Insurrection rages on, differences are bound to emerge in terms of organization due to their different focuses and the ways in which they are forced to fight. So for instance, the Insurrectionists and the enforcers or the loyalists needing to cooperate to a greater degree with the Imperial Army. These differences emerge even before the chaosification of the Insurrectionist legions so surely we should deal with them before no?

[simison]

Wouldn't that get repetitive, having the same opening for each mini-book with only a different ending?

[Sigismund229]

Yes. However, the openings are always going to be similar as they're about the same part of the Insurrection and you can always skip to the end of that part if you've read it before

[MikhalLeNoir]

Only if we stretch it too far. I thought more of a short general opening which tells in short all the details. Then book 2.1 covers certain points and the others vice versa. Togheter the books create the whole piece. But at the same time they function in some way on their own.

[Sigismund229]

Precisely what I had in mind(remind me not to post when I've just woken up. I am incapable of stringing my thoughts together at that time of the morning)

[MikhalLeNoir]

Then remind me to remind you, because early in the moring I forget even my name.

[simison]

I bring this up because I'm thinking about giving Book 1 the same treatment. My concern is that Book 1 has two intro chapters, the first being fairly long. So, I wasn't sure how this all worked if you're repeating the first chapter. But if the execution can work, then I think I'd prefer this style, as we can reach more 'publishing' benchmarks easier. 

[Sigismund229]

In my opinion, book 1 should not be split into several sub-books as it's all about the Day of Revelation which(comparedto book 2) is a relatively small timeframe and I feel it's better if we keep it all together. By contrast, in book 2 we're dividing it into the Maelstrom, battle of the Forge and Eastern Fringe, each of which can be divided into several Parts.

 

I also had a question: what are we doing about thr other DoR battles? Simply listing them or...? And how do we want to conclude book 1's fluff?

[simison]

In my opinion, book 1 should not be split into several sub-books as it's all about the Day of Revelation which(comparedto book 2) is a relatively small timeframe and I feel it's better if we keep it all together. By contrast, in book 2 we're dividing it into the Maelstrom, battle of the Forge and Eastern Fringe, each of which can be divided into several Parts.

 

I also had a question: what are we doing about thr other DoR battles? Simply listing them or...? And how do we want to conclude book 1's fluff?

 

Fair points.

 

Three other DoR battles are supposed to be covered in red boxes. Outside of the boxes, they'll have to appear in background text. 

[MikhalLeNoir]

I am a total fan of it. Japanese comics work roughly that way.

 

One prob i see with book 1 is that all happens at once. If we decide what happens when. Then splitting the book into pieces is not a prob.

[simison]

As for concluding, reading over Betrayal, it seems the campaign chapter has one last section devoted to setting up the next book.

[bluntblade]

I suggest we get different people on the introductions, to ensure there's some stylistic difference.

[bluntblade]

We should add a red box for the smaller ambushes that occurred, specifically with certain Army units and smaller detachments of Astartes. So, as I suggested, the Morning Stars could go after one of the less pleasant III Legion Clans, we already have some rogue Dune Serpents trying to kill Antonidas of the Scions.

[bluntblade]

Ideas for Untara. Pionus, once extracted to a battleship (Arm of the Sea, Benthic and Venator in Umbris are my suggestions for names) is sufficiently conscious to coordinate a retreat from the bridge as his sons begin to treat him (a healing coma ensues later). Morro, having taken a whole lot of ordnance to the face and then cut his way through the company who cover Pionus' retrieval, is now seriously hurt himself and the shipmaster of the (damn, The Drowned's Gloriana has totally see slipped my mind) prioritises extracting him. Naturally he is killed for his failure to properly commit to the destruction of the Scions fleet.

[MikhalLeNoir]

I suggest as working name " day of the tentacle" for the glorianna^^

[bluntblade]

My suggested ending for Underwater Madnes:

 

+++++

 

Pionus, once aboard, had recovered sufficiently to assess the situation, and point-blank refused his men’s efforts to move him to the Apothecarion. Instead, with his Apothcaries attending to his wounds as best they could on the bridge, Pionus orchestrated a withdrawal, pulling ships back wherever possible and springing counterattacks as necessary. It was costly, and the Scions lost ships with every action, but gradually the XIX Legion pulled free, making for the Manderville Point.

 

Critically, the Drowned’s flagship did not intervene; had it done so, it is unlikely that even Pionus could have saved his fleet from total destruction. However, Morro had sustained grave wounds both at the hands of the Depthstriders and the company who covered Pionus’ evacuation. Flag-Captain Baerlun broke from combat and brought the ___ into a lower orbit in order to gain a teleport locus. More broadly, the XVI Legion formation was disrupted, and in the confusion it took longer for them to recognise which vessel was leading the retreat. Morro wasted little time in executing the mortal for his failure to pursue and destroy the Scions.

 

With no realistic chance of catching Pionus now, Morro turned his attention to finishing the battle on Untara itself. Over the following two hours, the last Scions were hunted down on the station, and the surrounding waters were scoured, as was the void around Untara. Those few Scions who were found, comatose but alive in sealed armour, were killed on sight. Their equipment and gene-seed was taken by The Drowned just as they salvaged from the bodies of their own. The Ember Host were permitted to take a share of the plunder, and were given transport to Madrigal for an audience with their new liege lord.

 

The harm inflicted on the Scions was grave: some 80% of the warriors Pionus had brought with him died in the ambush, and they represented some of the Scions’ most skilled and experienced personnel. Of the Synedrion officers present, only Mytakis and Orion escaped the system with their Primarch. Odyssalas was presumed to have been lost with the rest of Second Company, and his brothers would not learn otherwise for several months.

 

Severe as the damage was, it was mitigated by the dispersal of the XIX Legion. Even with as many of them grouped in one place as Icarion could achieve, the force at Untara only constituted half their total strength. Ambushes were planned against three more of their fleets, but in those cases the Scions proved able to fight their way free, although each detachment paid in blood for their escape. With their Primarch alive and the scientific riches of Iona at their disposal, the Scions Hospitalier remained in play.

[simison]

I like it. 

 

Also, one Harbinger fluff banner escaped me: the Volta. So, I'll do that next. 

 

As a reminder, in 6 days, I will open the Drowned to be developed by others if Hesh is still unable to do so. 

 

We're working out the Godslayer in light of the new Pariah rules. 

 

Once these three Legions are finished, Book 1 Alpha Phase will be complete.

[bluntblade]

I've flicked Grifft a reminder about some minor alterations that need making to Antonidas' character page - his little summary needs removing and his banner text needs adding

[bluntblade]

Is anyone in a position to try and get some photos of their models to use in scenes like those in the FW books?

 

Also, had a few ideas for "specimen Legionaries". Reminds me I need to send a XIV Legionary one to Drak and pop the fluff in the Serpents thread.

[MikhalLeNoir]

Mostly in B&W as they lack color ( I know, I am horrible at painting)

I need a proper setup for the pics as well Photobooth where are you?

[Kelborn]

Don't collect or paint minis. So, I'm outta here. ^^

[bluntblade]

Wanna try and get this ball rolling properly. We can use whatever Legions for the Great Crusade summary, but really we want those involved in the events of Insurrection. I'd still encourage Mikhael and others to get some shots of their Legions, so we have something to use for further books.

[simison]

Ah, well, you've seen the models I have. Besides them, I have one officer painted that I haven't posted a picture. But that's it, and I have no idea how to make those FW images.