Black Book 2: Scission (the Schism of Mars Campaign)

[bluntblade]

The Icarion Insurrection, Book 2: Scission

 

Preface

 

In an age of profligacy, humanity strode across the stars, taking for granted our impiously presumed mastery of technology.

Many miracles were achieved in that epoch and we raised ourselves to unprecedented heights, only to be cast low by our hubris.

In the Age of Strife unquantifiable stores of knowledge, our gift from the Omnissiah, were lost through our folly.

Much that should be common knowledge was forgotten.

Of all the scattered civilisations encountered during the Great Crusade it was the Machine Cults born of the Red Planet, who held the most of the past's secrets. It was they who held the responsibility of seeking out the knowledge of the ancients, they who held the ability to comprehend it and implement it. Alas, progress is never perceived by two minds alike, and sometimes the sweet lure of progress by any means leads only to damnation.

Icarion claimed that it was for the sake of progression stymied and stifled by the Emperor's edicts that Mars would be liberated from His rule. Those who had chafed at what they saw as a conquest in all but name took up the cause of secession to further their own quests for knowledge pried from the hands of the dead. The disciples of Kelbor-Hal saw the countless dead and ruined worlds of humanity as an imperative to accept no restraint.

They should have heeded those charnel worlds as a warning.

We sought to build upon the ashes of history whilst avoiding the mistakes of the past. We failed, for our arrogance had not been entirely excised. In the name of progress and through dark and twisted paths, the Stormborn's allies would raze our best hopes for the future. Now we are but a shadow of a shadow.

We forgot how we fell once. We will not survive, should we allow that to happen again.

I saw with eyes of consecrated glass and steel, forged and gifted to me that I might gather information for the Omnissiah, and as part of that sacred duty I offer up this testament. I had my data banks store images as the forges of the Red Planet burned, and recorded the loss of more knowledge than I will ever recover. My implants hold images of Titans, the Omnissiah’s avatars, locked in internecine battle. I saw hoards of Mankind's inheritance purged, and mourned.

For the resurgence of Reason, we keep fast this knowledge.

-B. N.

 

 

As part of our reconfiguration of the Black Books, Mars is going to be its own campaign due to its size and scope, not to mention the sheer wordcount we've sunk into the monstrosity. 

 

Contents

 

 

BotL Participants

 

Loyalist

Halcyon Wardens

Fire Keepers

Abyssii Mechanicum

Legio Tonarum

Legio Contego

House Zivich

House Blinstrubas

 

Insurrectionist

Eagle Warriors

Cognis Mechanicum

Grave Stalkers

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The Schism of Mars

The Blade Falls
The day the dream of the Great Crusade died is one of the best known in the history of the Imperium. The Day of Revelation. Icarion Anasem, once favored amongst the Emperor’s sons, led nine of the eighteen Legions into treachery against their father. Of the rest, eight stood defiant under Alexandros, Warmaster of humanity's armies, and one stood aside. Some, such as the Godslayers and the Steel Legion, followed Icarion in the belief that his rule would herald a brighter future for mankind. Others sought only to further their own agendas, as was the case with the Eagle Warriors, Drowned and Berserkers of Uran.

Worse, factions from several Loyalist Legions also joined Icarion. Halcyon Wardens under Malis defected at Madrigal, and the Morning Stars fleet of the Void Eagles abandoned the Primarch they despised. The Dune Serpents were by far the Loyalist Legion worst affected by this, with a full two-fifths of their warriors turning traitor. Regardless of their motives, when the time came each one of these factions renounced their own sires and took up arms against their comrades. The Stormlord, as Icarion now styled himself, had spent years planning the rebellion, gathering allies and manipulating his unsuspecting enemies into positions where they would be vulnerable. The Day of Revelation was not marked by a single battle, but encompassed a score of betrayals across the galaxy.

Of the worlds upon and over which the first shots were fired, the most pivotal were Kataii and the Stormlord’s own fief. The significance of Daer’dd’s murder and the scattering of the Iron Bears hardly requires explaining. But the defiance of Pyrrhicles over Madrigal, and his determination that word reach the Warmaster, would prove perhaps even more telling in the course of the Insurrection. By Pyrrhicles’ sacrifice, the surviving Halcyon Wardens who had followed him brought the full, awful truth to their father.

Wracked he was by shock and grief, Alexandros moved swiftly to counter his brother’s treason, for only by prompt and resolute action could Icarion be halted. But Icarion had planted the seeds of rebellion throughout the Imperium, and even as violence flared in a hundred systems, the Loyalists made a dreadful discovery. Traitors were already at work on Terra’s doorstep.

 

Part I: Heretek

 

Corrosion
Discord was not confined to the Legions and the Imperialis Auxilia. Every facet of the Imperium was riven, and not least among these was the Martian Mechanicum, where corruption did not merely extend to the upper echelons but encompassed them. Kelbor Hal, Fabricator-General of Mars and de facto head of the Mechanicum, had long come to resent his position within the Imperium. Under the terms of the Treaty of Mars, the Mechanicum existed independently of the main Imperial structure, free to carve out its own empire within an empire, yet in practice its domains were utterly dwarfed by the broader Imperium. The great majority of Mechanicum produce was given over to the Legiones Astartes and the Imperial Army rather than its own Taghmata. Likewise Titan Legios were placed at the service of these forces instead of Mechanicum Taghmata. Knight Worlds were also a sore issue, as Expeditionary Forces secured the oaths of many Houses to the Imperium rather than to Mars.

Worse still, to Kelbor Hal’s eyes, there were provinces of the Cult which had submitted to the hegemony of a Primarch. The Three Fires and Lasaris were the most egregious to him, but there were many others. He remembered every slight and perceived attempt to erode his authority, his anger growing all the while. He had aggressively defended his position against several Fabricator-Generals of other Forge Worlds, in one case ordering Phaeton to greatly diminish the forces it had built up. It is likely that he suspected that the Emperor meant to replace him with a more biddable replacement. Perhaps he genuinely feared that in time, the Imperium would turn on the Mechanicum wholesale, or perhaps he simply fretted for his own power. It is unsurprising either way that, when Icarion’s representatives came to offer an alliance, Kelbor Hal was all too ready to listen.

The Cult of Mars has no afterlife in its creed. Martyrdom, by its dogma, has meaning only if it ensures the survival of the faith and knowledge. The Omnissiah’s victory must be achieved in this life. So there could be no doomed uprising against insurmountable odds for the Fabricator-General. Righteous failure was failure nonetheless, and it would bring down the order Kelbor Hal had guarded so jealously and for so long. That he committed to Icarion’s rebellion demonstrates that he was thoroughly prepared for the conflict.

Whether Kelbor Hal and his minions had plotted subterfuge on their own, we do not know. The proliferation of Forge Worlds and their fiefs in certain territories, the increasing production of battle automata, have been taken as hints, but we cannot deem them any more than that. So much has gone unrecorded, so much knowledge was destroyed or hidden from all but the most powerful. What is known is that Icarion, when he first began to plot, sought to exploit existing divisions within the Mechanicum, and the divisions he found ran through the structure from top to bottom. Kelbor Hal worked doggedly to suborn his own subjects, swiftly assembling a faction with which to purge those who would not fall in line.

For their service, Icarion gave his Mechanicum allies a number of guarantees. The first of these was a consignment of archeotech wrested from the depths of Madrigal, delivered by a delegation from the Cognis Mechanicum and the Eagle Warriors. As well as these gifts, it was promised that they would bring a means to open the Vaults of Moravec, a repository sealed by the Emperor and forbidden to all on Mars. Finally, Icarion assured Kelbor Hal that the Halcyon Wardens would be swayed to his banner, paralysing Imperial forces in the Sol System and allowing Kelbor Hal a free hand on Mars at long last.

Gambit
A few weeks before the Day of Revelation, a plasma generator in the Tharsis region of Mars was attacked and destroyed by a construct which defied categorisation. The blast left only three Knight Scions of House Taranis, charged with defending the generator, shielded from the blast by by their war engines. The strange war machine vanished. In hindsight, this can be seen as only the first shot fired in a war that would tear the Red Planet asunder.

This violence did not arrive ex nihilo. Mechanicum priesthoods were prone to internecine violence for reasons of both doctrine and ambition, factional and personal; Zhao-Arkad is among the most extreme examples. Espionage among magos and posturing among the armed wings of the Mechanicus was commonplace. It was the Legio Mortis, who had long hungered for domination of the Tharsis region, who took the brunt of the accusations immediately afterwards. They had ever been a bloodthirsty gathering, bolstered in their aggressive conduct by the favour shown to them by the Fabricator-General.

Ever since Mars was absorbed into the Imperium, it has been a seething hotbed of tensions, but never more so than at this time. Kelbor-Hal's gambit would ignite rivalries that were decades in the forging. Of the various Magi of the Red Planet there were two triumvirates who are particularly significant to the Martian Schism. The first was led by Kelbor-Hal himself, ruler of Olympus Mons and master of the entire Mechanicum. In keeping with his station, his was the most extensive and prestigious forge on the entire planet, and contained perhaps the most prized store of records acknowledged by the Mechanicum. He was abetted by Lukas Chrom, a powerful magos renowned for his skill in designing automata. His was a surpassing combination of learning and ambition; he had amassed sufficient expertise to create the ancient blasphemy of Abominable Intelligence. Adept Urtzi Malevolus completed the dark triad, pledging his forge city’s labour and fearsome taghma to the Fabricator-General’s agenda.

The opposing triumvirate, while lacking a leader, was not bereft of political influence of their own. Best known among them was Adept Koriel Zeth, for the construction of Magma City, miraculously built within an active volcano. More pertinently, she was famous for inventing the noosphere net as a means of communication, which had already been adopted by sects beyond Mars. Consequently her unorthodox views and loyalty to the Emperor were well known throughout the Mechanicum. Beside her was Fabricator-Locum Zagreus Kane, second in command of Mars and one of the chief suppliers of power armour for the Legions of the Astartes. Equal to neither but still greatly influential was Ipluvien Maximal, whose expertise in plasma generators was responsible for powering forges across the surface of Mars.

The rivalry between Zeth’s faction and Kelbor Hal’s had been simmering for decades, with Kelbor Hal moving to suppress his opponents' influence wherever possible and stifling the proliferation of the noosphere. In return, it would be Maximal who first suspected the Fabricator-General’s disloyalty, and linked the mysterious construct now known as the Raijin Engine to Chrom’s work. Kane would, just briefly before the shattering of the fragile peace that bound the forges of Mars, realise that additional supplies and resources had been directed to those Legions loyal to Icarion.

In the latter half-century of the 30^th Millenium, a further complication entered the mix. The powerful and stubbornly independent Abyssii sect, in preparation for campaigns near the Galactic core - where among other conflicts, the Qarith Crusade would be fought - established a holding on Mars. Kelbor Hal viewed Archmagos Mortera as a rival greater than any figure on Mars itself, perhaps even more than the masters of Phaeton and Anvillus. While those Forge Worlds were more productive, their militancy paled beside that of Mortera's world of Nox. Quite apart from outright political machinations, Mortera was likely to patronise unorthodox individuals of Zeth’s ilk. This would pose a subtle, creeping threat to the Fabricator-General’s power.

Mars was not under the sole purview of the magi however. Away from the grindings of industry and among the red dunes, it was the Titan Legios and Knight Houses that held dominion over much of the planet. The divisions between these warrior factions were revealed clearly at the council of Tharsis, held at the Tempestus fortress of Ascraeus Mons, called to address the generator attack. Normally Lord Commanders Verticorda and Caturix of House Taranis could be relied on to moderate at such gatherings, but this time things were different. Upon the arrival of the Legio Mortis delegation, Caturix openly accused Princeps Camulos of complicity in an assault on Taranis holdings. The Mortis Princeps was no more conciliatory, leaving only after he made a statement that verged on a declaration of war.

It is all too easy to forget when embroiled in the intricacies of Mars that it was part of a wider star system, and one of the most heavily garrisoned systems in the Galaxy at that. Alexandros’ position on Terra meant that the Halycon Wardens were in range to intervene in any struggle that was more than a brief conquest, let alone the Abyssii war fleet docked at the Ring of Iron for repair and resupply. According to Icarion’s scheme, the V^th Legion would take his side and seize Terra, but even then risks remained. Thus he sent a delegation of Eagle Warriors to Mars, accompanied by their allies in the Cognis sect.

It is important to note that while Icarion had given up hopes of gaining Alexandros’ allegiance after the Day of Revelation, this had not been communicated to his Martian allies in time. Regardless, the treacherous Astartes and magi he sent would find themselves even more critical to the revolt than he had planned. Furthermore, the Cognis and Eagle Warriors delegation had brought with them new weapons for data-warfare, in order to eliminate the Abyssii.

Even limited by Icarion's reluctance to use tools that might devastate Mars entirely, these were potent weapons. Had the Martian Schism gone as the Traitors had envisaged it, they would have seized the heart of the Mechanicum industrial base within striking distance of Terra and eliminated a major portion of the military threat posed by the Abyssii in the process. It is an unappreciated irony that for all this scheming, the most devastating blow of the entire war was dealt seemingly by accident.

Red Box: Forbidden Knowledge
For some, rebellion was a matter of opportunity. We cannot know if Artificial Intelligence had ravaged Mars directly, so depleted is the historiography of the Dark Age of Technology, but all Mankind suffered when the Men of Iron turn against their masters. Certainly Martians understand better than most the dangers of machines allowed to run amok. Certain kinds of war machine and Skitarii were devised with the express purpose of cleansing such threats from Mars, and there are catacombs where, in recent centuries, men have only ventured as visitors and plunderers, never able to reclaim the territory.

And yet hubris is a powerful thing. Few societies have been known to persist in or revive the use of AI, but the campaign rolls of the Crusade show that some did. On Mars, a few ambitious magi were suffused with confidence that their new god, their Omnissiah, would provide the insight that eluded them. The Quest for Knowledge demanded that in all areas of understanding they run faster, stretch out to grasp it. Not yet, they told themselves, but one fine day they would have mastery over the technology that had nearly destroyed their species.

The Pact of Mars brought fresh restrictions to this work. No longer prohibited only by religious edict, now the word of the Emperor Himself - the Omnissiah incarnate - forbade all such work. So too were the Moravec Vaults, full of Warp-tainted archeotech, sealed and their location withheld to keep a vast store of technology and knowledge from the hands of men.

Other sciences were forbidden, and while most on Mars were willing to leave these avenues of enquiry alone, and toil to supply the Crusade and the worlds it rendered compliant, others refused to forget. Privately, they questioned how a man who forbade the pursuit of knowledge - of any kind - could be their divine ruler. The Omnissiah embodied perfect mastery of technology; therefore that same entity would have no reason to sequester that technology. Therefore, they decided, the being who had come to Mars with hand of iron in velvet glove was a pretender to the glory of their god, a blasphemer who had shackled the priesthood to unholy ends. This made His overthrow a sacred duty, and the works He had forbidden should be an instrument in that uprising.

Foremost among the blasphemers was Lukas Chrom, Master-Adept of Mondus Gamma. Dignitaries within and without the Mechanicum deemed him odious, but his forge’s productivity was undeniable, and Chrom himself was a master when it came to making weapons of war, especially automata. The finest of these he gifted to Kelbor-Hal as a bodyguard, and doubtless the Fabricator-General counted Chrom among his foremost lieutenants from the start of his planned subterfuge.

By Kelbor Hal’s authority, a veil of secrecy was thrown over Mondus Gamma’s deepest sanctums and forges, so opaque that none glimpsed the work within who was not loyal to Chrom or his master. Yet whispers ran in the machine-codes of Mars, carrying a single word: Raijin. Magi across the planet were left baffled as to its nature, until in the wake of the Tharsis reactor attack, all became clear.

Chrom had gifted the Traitors one of their most potent weapons in the war for Mars. A monstrous, tracked engine of ruin, the Raijin Machine was taught the rudiments of friendship with the personnel who aided in its construction before Chrom set in motion a chain of events which would force it to kill that individual. Whatever passes for a soul in a thinking machine was thus darkened and corroded within the Kaban. From that day on, it was one of Chrom’s deadliest weapons, and the mystery that surrounded it were of great benefit to the Insurrectionists.

[Beren]

Revisions:

.Remove any references to Xander as Xander Travier or Travier.

.Integrate the Nemesis Warbringer Titan somewhere.

.Remove any reference to Xana as Insurrectionist(I had this written down, so I guess it was mentioned somewhere.)

.Zhao-Arkhad should not be referred to as 'well known' given that it was protected by its isolation and obscurity. Maybe an 'extreme' or 'notable' example?

[bluntblade]

Sounds good

[bluntblade]

The Death of Innocence
With the records from Olympus Mons largely devastated, corrupted or stolen away, our understanding of this incident has been gleaned overwhelmingly from a set of communiqués between Icarion and Xander Travier, Arch-Magos of the Mechanicum Cognis. According to these, a few days after presenting Kelbor Hal with gifts of technology plundered from the tomb of the Thunder King, a small portion of the delegation travelled without sanction into the depths of Olympus Mons. There they found the Vault of Moravec, a location long denied to the Mechanicum by word of the Emperor.

Moravec had been an extremist of the Mechanicum, driven from Mars and his works kept under guard even before the coming of the Emperor. The Master of Mankind had further measures put in place, sealing and occluding the Vault and the heretek works which lay within. Yet whispers remained of them, and they were coveted. What truly occurred at the Vault is unknown, but Travier later testified to the Stormborn that his ambassadors had taken some of their prototype scrapcode variants and used them to unlock the doors. Just after the first dawn to follow the Day of Revelation, the Vault of Moravec opened. What happened next can never be forgotten.

The virulent scrapcode unleashed was largely halted at Olympus Mons by safeguards put in place by the Cognis. Beyond its bounds, however, it bypassed every security measure, spreading into the wider data-net. It moved with some twisted parody of intelligence, overwriting and replicating itself in any system it touched. Sinus Sabeaus, Tycho Brahe, the Schiaparelli Repository at Acidelia Planetia, Vastitis Borealis, Medusa Fossae - all suffered. Databases were corrupted into meaninglessness, machines grinding to a halt or malfunctioning in lethal ways. Millennia’s worth of knowledge was lost in the space of hours.

The malign data constructs reached into the void around Mars, killing millions more. The Ring of Iron itself was stricken in places, whole districts suddenly venting their air and leaving menials to perish in the vacuum. Ships too were affected, sending their crews into a frenzy as they sought to restore life support systems. The constant traffic of people and raw materials through Mars’ ports ground to a halt.

The collected might of the Taghmata Mortera hung in orbit above the Western Hemisphere, resupplying after long campaigns in the galactic west. Titanic macro-haulers shuttled back and forth between the fleet and the surface of the Red World, bearing much-needed supplies. Many ships of the Taghmata sat within docking cradles in the Ring of Iron, menials swarming over them to repair damage that could not be dealt with on campaign. Exposed, they would only be saved by a distress signal from the Antionradi Forge Temple, caught in its death throes.

This missive would be their salvation, giving Mortera time to broadcast a critical alert across the fleet. Priests and servitors raced to disconnect themselves, partitioning the cogitator systems on each vessel. It was barely in time, the scrapcode infecting every vulnerable system it found. The battleship Excessive Gravitas suffered the depressurisation of an entire deck, thousands perishing with the loss of air. The Application of Force teetered on the brink of a reactor overload until the magi aboard restored its failsafes.

On the bridge of Mortera's Ark Mechanicus, the Glory of Summer, Magos Itrax was struck down by the malign code, several servitors and magi joining him in agonised deaths as their augmetics rebelled with lethal effect. Mortera herself was stricken, saved only by her rigid will and her extensive cerebral augmentation. Partitioning her own mind to stave off the worst effects of the scrapcode, she and Adept Crastus Mhal tended to the wounded Machine Spirit of her flagship. All around the Glory of Summer, the Abyssii fought to undo the damage, purging tainted code from their systems.

On the surface a war maniple of the Legio Tempestus, provoked into a standoff by the Legio Mortis, were stricken, losing the Warlord Titan Victorix Magna to the death of its machine spirit. The survivors were among the lucky few who had disconnected their domains from the network before the damage became too severe. In particular Magma City and its satraps found that their noosphere networks shielded them from the worst damage. Nevertheless, all but the Fabricator-General's allies were thrown into disarray except for a handful of forges.

Despite facing a threat far greater than that designed to destroy them, the war fleet of the Mechanicum Abyssii endured. They may have been damaged, losing a ship and hundreds of adepts as they attempted to rein in the attack, but nothing more. Here the skill of Mhal, Mortera's machine-touched Master of Automata, was telling. He had spearheaded extensive research programs into data-warfare and now, backed up by the data presences of the majority of the Abyssii adepts present, he was able to fend off the attack. Even as they recovered the interdiction fleet, already in defensive position, began to power up weapons batteries and void shields. Below them Mars screamed out in pain, and the whole system heard its cry.

Red Box: The Cull of the Artisan Astartes
Across Mars, those Astartes who had been selected to learn the secrets of the enigmatic priesthood were given their rituals of induction in numerous tower preceptories, each holding some 30 initiates of different levels of training at a time. For Kelbor Hal this had long been a bitter symbol of the Imperium's domination, only endured for the same reason of all other aspects of the Martian submission; he had no choice. To his mind the Techmarines were unworthy outsiders whose induction defiled the true Omnissiah's divine secrets and their instructors, those Techpriests known as the Artisan Astartes, were little more than traitors. Their destruction would not only see the elimination of a minor threat, but a symbolic blow struck for Martian liberty.

Shortly prior to the outbreak of all-out violence the Fabricator-General summoned the entirety of the priests responsible for training the Artisan Astartes to Olympus Mons. A Techmarine that ultimately survived the Schism later traced their augmentics to various smelting and recycling plants through records dredged from the systems of a surviving data console. With the Artisans eliminated their students became easy targets. Not only were the Techmarines in training isolated from all information, they were left only with whatever armaments they had been working on for their education. Soon this lack of preparation proved lethal as elite and specially selected forces of Skitarii swarmed the preceptories. In some cases the edifices were levelled by Titans in grand displays of destruction.

Many of the newer initiates originating from Traitor Legions were able to evade the massacre entirely or even aid in it, being forewarned by the Eagle Warrior delegations present on Mars. For those nearing their training's completion, those who had been inducted in to the mysteries of the machine before Icarion's machinations even began, those whose loyalty might lie closer to the Omnissiah-Emperor than their Primarchs; there was no mercy. A scattered minority of the targeted Astartes, commonly those who had been in the final stages of their training, survived to make contact with Loyalist forces during the ensuing conflict. The cull would ultimately haunt Kelbor-Hal, for it served to engender irritation amongst several of the Traitor Primarchs that the techmarines of their own Legions had not been spared the blade.

The Sands Run Red
With anarchy now running rampant, on Mars it was still uncertain what or whom had initiated the attack. The period of confusion would last weeks. The first act of open hostility came with the crossing of the Tempest Line by the Legio Mortis, the same incident referred to above. Brazenly violating the border of Legio Tempestus territory, they provoked their old rivals almost to the point of opening fire, though for Tempestus to do so would have been to invite their destruction by the Imperator Aquila Ignix. Instead, however, the scrap code did its malign work. Mortis retreated with their enemies badly wounded, but no cassus belli.

In the time between the scrapcode outbreak and the marching of the Legio Mortis, Kelbor-Hal's mind and those of his analysts and commanders had been working at a furious rate. In places, his allies were not yet ready, having been arming at a cautious rate meant to avoid suspicion. At others, the initial targets had been destroyed or crippled. The Fabricator-General took this into account and amended previous plans as he directed his forces to where he believed they would be needed most. Even as he did so, further steps were taken in order to misdirect those presumed to have remained loyal, so that his victory might be seized untarnished.

It is clear that while he may not have engineered the scrapcode attack, Kelbor Hal now sought to take advantage of it. Perhaps he suspected that the contamination would eventually be traced back to Olympus Mons and the Cognis delegation, seeking to take the initiative before the Loyalists could recuperate. One way or another, the forces beholden to him and his allies marched forth. They would not be unopposed. Even as he ensured that Mondus Gamma continued to churn out Legiones Astartes power armour, Fabricator-Locum Kane contacted his allies to coordinate a response to the unfolding crisis.

It is also known that Adept Zeth received a visit from Ambassador Melgator, a servant of the Fabricator-General, accompanied by a cyber assassin of the Cydonian Sisterhood. The conversation itself is unknown, but it can be presumed that she refused whatever terms offered, as the Ambassador departed afterwards. Kelbor Hal’s allies declared that Zeth had confessed to an unforgivable blasphemy; she did not believe in the Omnissiah. Mere hours later Melgator returned at the head of 300 skitarii, proclaiming a summons from the Fabricator General to account for charges of tech-heresy. This attempt to cow the ruler of Magma city proved both futile and outmatched as she revealed the presence of the full might of House Taranis, poised to fall upon the intruders. Melgator's hurried withdrawal was prudent, for soon after Legio Tempestus itself, with Princeps Calvalerio recovered and installed in the ancient Warlord Titan Deus Tempestus, would reinforce Magma City. Not all would be so fortunate.

Minor outposts were wracked by sabotage and assassinations, leaving the way clear for the armies of the traitor Mechanicum to bring their full strength to bear upon their opponents. The forge of Mattias Kefra in the Madler Crater, responsible for supplying the Solar Guard, was razed by Titans of the Legio Magna. The Cassini Crater holding the engine yards of Magos Ahotep was annihilated by an atomic missile strike originating from the Nilo Syrtis region. Maxen Vledig’s Deathbolts lost 19 of their Titans when their fortress was the subject of a surprise attack by their old rivals, the Death Stalkers under Princeps Ulriche. The battered Loyalists withdrew into the wastes, cries for aid unanswered. Elsewhere, the Athabasca Valles were the site of a bloody stalemate between the Legios Ignatum and the Burning Stars. Thousands of Skitarii clashed within the Herschel Crater, to neither side’s avail.

The taint of treachery had not been merely limited to the upper echelons or military components of Martian society, for thralls rioted seemingly without cause, or took their own lives at the prompting of hijacked electoo implants. Ipluvien Maximal would be the first prominent Loyalist on to suffer the Insurrectionists’ attentions, his city surrounded by hostile Skitarii and bombarded by Ordinatus siege engines. His compatriots were unable to aid him as they themselves found themselves besieged. At Magma City the combined weight of Zeth's Taghmata, the Knights Taranis and the Legio Tempestus slaughtered the attackers in droves. Yet still they came on, and the defenders knew that when the war engines of Legio Mortis arrived, their fate would be sealed. Each held on, for the moment.

Once Kelbor Hal learned that the Abyssii had survived the scrapcode attack, he reverted to his original plan to dispose of Mortera. A clade of Thanos assassins, cybernetic killers so deadly as to rival their counterparts in the Terran Officio, launched from the surface two days after the code attack. Their target was Mortera, their orders to bring her head to Kelbor Hal. A combination of esoteric cloaking devices, the debris-choked void and the lingering effects of the scrapcode served to mask their approach. They cut their way into the massive Ark and proceeded to the bridge, killing anyone who crossed their path.

Mortera remained wired into the ship’s systems, unable to defend herself. Her elite guard of Myrmidon Custos responded immediately as the assassins entered, and the bridge became a flurry of blades and gunfire. The Custos killed several of the assassins but were themselves slain, Magos Militant Jagrus falling to the wasting effects of their sinister blades. Mortera was only saved by the intervention of Charon Discut, a sinister Adept of the Ordo Reductor whose arsenal made ashen ruin of the remaining assassins. Now wise to the danger, Mortera's fleet readied itself for open battle. Seething, Kelbor Hal ordered his ships to do the same.

It is believed that mere days into the Fabricator-General's own uprising his forces had either eliminated or hampered the majority of their opponents on the surface. Countless manufactorums and repositories of knowledge were either razed or firmly under his control. The cog was already turning and the numbers appeared to be in the Traitors’ favour. Loyalists were either outcast from their sanctuaries and fleeing into the wastes to be dismissed as insignificant fragments of once proud armies, or surrounded and under siege, their armies pinned in place and with nowhere to run.

The cost in civilian lives remains staggering, even now. Entire hab-blocks were obliterated by uncaring Titan maniples. Ismenius Lacus came under assault with virus bombs, which killed millions in minutes. This was the single greatest loss of life in the early days of the Schism, and yet it was just another atrocity among many. Masses of people, priest and thrall alike, were scythed down by rapid fire weapons as they fled or suffered a prolonged death in the wilderness, bereft of the climate support systems of the Mechanicum enclaves. To the magi, this was but a shadow of what they saw as the greater tragedy; unquantified stores of data and technology. Amidst the havoc, no one on Mars noticed the ravaged Space Marine fleet that had entered the system in a staggering sprint, racing for Terra.

In the Skies of Mars
For high above the burning foundries and cratered dunes, the sky of Mars was also ablaze. In space it is easier to observe an enemy approach, for there is rarely anything to impede the view. This was not the case above Mars, where hundreds of dead and compromised ships littered the world’s orbit. The fighting was to be at close range by voidwar standards, waged in brutish fashion. When the first Traitors struck, the fire of conflict spread rapidly across the entire Ring of Iron. Outside in the cold void, hundreds of Mechanicum vessels clashed, no quarter asked or given. They exchanged broadsides at point blank range, tearing ragged gashes off one another's hulls.

Many of these would fall crippled and maimed to the surface below, in incandescent trails that meted out even more injury to the planet’s abused surface. The Mechanicum Gloriam plummeted, engines destroyed, and ploughed deep into the dust of the Cydonia Mensae region. In doing so it obliterated the Basilica of the Blessed Algorithms and the Technotheoligians sheltered within. They had been the last group on Mars preaching rapprochement in the face of catastrophe.

The interior of the Iron Ring became a single great, winding battlefield. Alternations of narrow, twisting, conduits and corridors with spaces open enough for war machines to manoeuvre in made for a nightmare rife with confusion and bloodshed. Assaults spearheaded by Myrmidons, Empyrite Thallax and Vorax automata scythed through the masses of tech-thralls arrayed to stop them. In desperation the Loyalists often sabotaged what systems they could before being cut down. Entire decks were rendered open to the void. Battlefleet Solar, witness to the slaughter taking place, attempted to distance itself from the chaos. They were unable to identify who fought or for what cause.

As soon as they had recovered from the scrapcode attack, Mortera's forces had began moving to secure control of the portion of the Ring they were closest to. Resistance erupted almost immediately. The docking region of the cruiser Aspect of Zeal, undergoing an almost complete rebuild, became the site of an especially ugly struggle as the Traitors sought to claim what they thought was an easy prize. In truth, for once it was the Loyalists who held the initiative and pushed onwards. Decontaminator Skitarii, heavily armed close-quarters specialists, proved lethal in the facility’s cramped confines, entire corridors drowning in chem and rad onslaughts. In order to reinforce her troops yet further, Mortera deployed four of the Legio Carnifex's Warhound Titans to the larger docking and cargo bays.

Unable to answer such a display of force, Kelbor Hal's allies were driven back. Outside the structure, the Basilikon Abyssii fought a battle far greater in scope, but no less furious and with much less certainty of prevailing. Their Interdiction Fleet had been first to engage hostile warships, but now every ship capable of fighting was called upon. Kelbor Hal had seen to it that several fleets had been directed to the Sol System under various pretences. Some had orbited Mars, others came from shipyards around Saturn and Jupiter under the pretext of rendering aid to stricken vessels.

Mortera ordered the Glory of Summer into the fray, followed swiftly by the battleships Haloed in Flame, the Void's Justice and Fleetmistress Ariana Furia’s own vessel, the Armageddon's Blade. These were only the start. Soon all the weapons of the Abyssii fleet, be they conventional or esoteric, were giving voice to the anger of their masters. The havoc wrought upon the foe was so great that the battleship Last Unto Twilight broke off to pursue hostile ships throughout the Ring’s Abysii-held portions without support. Two waves of Traitor ships were blasted into ruin by the Abyssii fleet, giving other Loyalist vessels time to regroup or withdraw to safety. The Traitors’ seizure of control over the skies of Mars stalled.

But the battle remained hard-fought, and with the third wave’s approach the Cognis and Eagle Warriors vessels joined the fight. Having been berthed above Deimos, they had waited for the Abyssii to be ground down. Deciding that the time had come to make their attack, a powerful Cognis battleship accompanied by four Secutor cruisers closed in. Prowling at the edge of their formation was a XIII^thLegion strike cruiser named the Unforgiving, a void predator of ancient provenance and deadly armament. Striking the beleaguered Abyssii fleet, they swiftly set about their bloodletting, and the Haloed in Flame was gutted and burned by their attack.

Mortera and her magi grimly watched the developing picture, pulling back and consolidating their positions as increasing numbers of Traitor vessels attacked. They would inflict murderous casualties on their attackers, but the noose was pulling inexorably closed. Then fresh signals appeared, approaching from the system core. Another fleet, come from Terra itself. Either this would be the salvation of the Loyalist forces on and above Mars, or it would seal their doom.

The new presences hove rapidly into scope-range, revealing themselves as capital ships, hued in imperial purple and scarlet, with dozens of smaller vessels flocking around them. The Abyssii noted the signatures of famed vessels; mighty, unmistakably belonging to a Legion Astartes. Zanskat Oath, the venerable Solar Tempest and the Goliath-class Delian Spear, born of Nox’s own shipyards. Vast as they were, none rivalled the Gloriana-class monster that reared up behind them. Twenty-two kilometres from bow to stern, its prow crowned with nova cannon, it was instantly recognisable as the Elpis, flagship of the Warmaster himself. The Halycon Wardens had arrived over Mars, and as they assumed attack vectors, Alexandros spoke across the vox.

“For the Emperor.”

[bluntblade]

Part II: The Warmaster's Blades

 

"Warriors of the First Cohort, esteemed auxiliaries, I'll not try to set lofty oratory beside the Warmaster's words. I will simply remind you of the lives lost so our brothers could bring the truth of this war to us, and the threat beyond the light of Sol. We strike now to blunt the Insurrectionist's blade, but we do it too that our kinsmen and comrades be avenged. Hear and heed my command: teach these bastards the cost of V^th Legion blood."

- Irvin Ruel's address on the bridge of the Solar Tempest.

 

The Emperor’s Shield and Sword
Icarion’s belief that Alexandros would join him proved severely misplaced. Perhaps it would have gone otherwise if not for events at Madrigal and the arrival of the survivors with their message, though in these latter these days it has become an act of blasphemy to question Alexandros’ loyalty to any extent. What matters, however, is the consequences of his choice. Far from securing Kelbor-Hal’s uprising, the Warmaster’s Legion was now well-placed to counter it, but the task would be monstrously hard. Alexandros himself, whilst commanding from the Elpis, was besieged by the fallout from the Day of Revelation. He was therefore unable to take direct action on Mars, save for the void battle and perhaps one other, singularly devastating intervention.

The Sol System had not seen such violence since the blood-red dawn of the Great Crusade. The Halcyon Wardens speared into the Insurrectionist formations with thickets of las-fire and swarms of torpedoes, rapidly fragmenting them as the Abyssii continued to press their own attacks. Nothing could match the Elpis, its spine and flanks studded with guns the size of Imperator Titans, and the Halcyon Wardens’ other battleships were proven warhorses in their own right. Like hooked claws, they plunged into the Traitor fleet and ripped it open.

The Elpis and her escorts made straight for the Eagle Warriors and Cognis, accompanied by the Delian Spear. The Unforgiving, a ship which had carved a bloody trail across the Galaxy since before the Great Crusade, lasted less than a minute under the guns of the Elpis. With no consideration for taking the relic-ship intact, the Gloriana obliterated it with its nova cannon. Then it was among the Cognis ships, broadsides ripping the shields of two cruisers away and tearing the vessels apart. The third was bisected by vortex missiles from the Delian Spear. The fourth fell to the Armageddon's Blade and the battleship, reeling from the Elpis’ broadsides, to the Glory of Summer, Mortera having rallied her fleet with preternatural speed and joined the counter-attack.

The balance in the void was reversed. As the Traitor formations collapsed, the seventeen-kilometre Solar Tempest led a spearhead of Halcyon Wardens ships into the battle around the Ring of Iron, abetted by a flotilla of the Saturnine Rams, oldest of the Solar Auxilia cohorts. From the warships came the V^th Legion’s vaunted fighter and interceptor squadrons, falling upon enemy transports flocking to the Ring of Iron and sending them spiralling down to the surface.

The void around Mars thronged with far more than warships. Transports of all kinds, several dwarfing even the Elpis, filled the world’s orbit. Some had succumbed to the scrapcode and drifted, their crews still working to revive the systems or killed by a host of malfunctions. To those that still flew, Alexandros sent a command over the vox, ordering them to pull clear of the theatre and lay themselves open to the Loyalist vessels. Most complied, pulling out of orbit and striking their flags with all the speed they could muster. A few, however, continued with their attempts to reach Mars. In this they declared themselves apostates and made themselves prey for the Warmaster's fleet.

Several strike cruisers broke off from the Loyalist formations and pursued the mass conveyors. Although the transports were truly gargantuan, they lacked the weapons to fend off a warship of the Legiones Astartes or the Solar Auxilia, and could never outrun them. Swiftly they were cut out, disabled by fire from the cruisers or overrun by boarders. The 52^nd Solar Auxilia, the Zanskat Guard, committed a third of their manpower to this task, their tercios seizing the bridges and vital systems of the massive vessels and stamping out resistance with lethal force. As a result great stores of materiel were secured for the Loyalists and denied to the Insurrectionists, a success which would have major implications for the developing conflict.

Far below, ensconced in his temple, Kelbor Hal cogitated. The Warmaster was his enemy, and therefore the Legion meant to safeguard the subjugation of Mars would be fighting to avert it. He knew well the threat that Alexandros and his fleet posed. The Traitor fleet would not survive more than a day of further fighting against them, if that. At the same time, he was painfully aware that the Abyssii forces above Mars were still largely intact. To successfully weather their assault, he must do so with his Martian enemies broken. If he could cement his grip on the surface, he could endure almost any incursion, secure in the knowledge that the Loyalists would not dare raze Mars entirely. Even as his fleet prepared to spend themselves delaying the Loyalists in orbit, he turned to wipe out those who remained on Mars itself.

With Magma City most prominent among the Forges that had survived the data-djinn attack, Kelbor Hal ordered the Legio Mortis to march with all the force they could muster. A great host went with the Death’s Heads; legions of Skitarii, tank squadrons, Ordinati, maniples of automata and baleful slave-Knights of House Morbidia. It was a force sufficient to bring low entire worlds, as inexorable and merciless as any Space Marine Legion. The surviving engines of the Legio Tempestus and the Knights of Taranis prepared to resist alongside Zeth’s army, but the cold arithmetic of war could not be ignored. This was to be a last stand that could only slow the enemy, and it was next to impossible that the Halcyon Wardens could intervene, let alone save the city.

Yet into this equation, an unexpected factor intruded. Mere kilometres from their objective, the Imperator Aquila Ignis turned upon its lesser brethren with murderous violence. The cause is contested even now, and with the fragmentary evidence left by the Hereteks, the truth will likely remain shrouded for all time. Fragmentary data-ledgers attest to Princeps Camulos declaring judgement and sentence for high treason, claiming to be Alexandros. Some suggest that the volatile and prideful Camulos, corrupted by the tainted gifts of Kelbor-Hal, gave in to madness or was overwhelmed by the bloodlust of the Titan itself. Another interpretation, enthusiastically promulgated by the Loyalist Mechanicum, was literal divine intervention; the Omnissiah venting wrath upon those who turned its avatars to blasphemous ends. Alexandros never commented, and if he was responsible, such an act speaks to power beyond anything he ever overtly displayed.

Whatever the reason, the Aquila Ignix laid waste several of its fellow Titans before they attacked it in turn, the Imperator dying in a spectacular reactor-breach. Those not destroyed by its guns had, in the final moments, succumbed to a rage which overrode any tactical sense or self-preservation, cited by many who believe the theories of madness or Omnissian judgement. Attacking at close range they killed the Imperator, but were themselves consumed in the explosion. The result was the entire Martian contingent of the Death’s Heads destroyed and their accompanying Knights all but eradicated, to say nothing of the tanks, other war machines and soldiers caught up in the devastation.

The scales, so far tilted overwhelmingly in favour of the Traitors, were suddenly shaken, and now the Halcyon Wardens and Abyssii came to the surface, further evening the odds. Led by the former Legion Master Irvin Ruel and Legate Prisfirah Sauhan, V^th Legion forces landed at those Forge cities which remained loyal, supported by Knights of House Zivich and Solar Auxilia cohorts, both stationed in-system and embedded alongside the Legion.

[bluntblade]

Storm Upon the Sands

It is true that, even in the days of Ruel’s tenure, the V^th Legion’s reputation had been that of a blunt instrument, brusque in manner and bellicose in conduct. Yet the Irvin Ruel of the new millennium was a very different commander, tempered by over two centuries of war and the example of his Primarch. Arriving on Mars, his flinty character brooked no impetuous rush to slay the rebels, and instead he began to carefully allocate forces, judging what he could afford to commit and where the Wardens’ intervention would be in vain.

In some cases, particular individuals were prioritised by the V^th Legion commanders. Perhaps the best-known was Arkhan Land, a technoarcheologist who had unearthed the STC patterns for, among other things, the Raider Tank which bears his name. Land and other notables were to be extracted from Arsia Mons by gunship and brought to the nearby holdfast of House Taranis before the enemy could attack, but a shock attack by strange, savage automata threw the plan into confusion.

Unable to hold the city entire, Centurion Kamenos had his men bundle the various worthies into tanks and flee through the city. A frantic pursuit ensued, with tanks, Skitarii dunestrider cavalry and even ornithopters giving chase until a wing of V^th Legion fighters and bombers reached and shielded the convoy. Within the city, the remainder of the Wardens and their auxiliaries inside the city held out for another day, loading their gunships and landers with all the wargear they could carry before fleeing.

The Abyssii, recovered from the djinn attack, were commanded to entrench forces within the districts of the Ring of Iron where they already held sway; the Jovian Grenadiers would reinforce them. The main Abyssii force, however, was needed below. Mortera was intent on preserving her holdfast at Solus Lacus, but beyond reinforcing its garrison, she complied with the Warmaster’s lieutenant and sent her armies to defend the cities Ruel had identified. A few Titans of Nox’s Legio Carnifex deployed to Solis Lacus in a move that proved prescient, as Traitor forces drew near with the intention of laying low this threat to Kelbor Hal’s rule. The Titans were key to deterring them, as the hereteks withdrew after a few probing attacks.

In the meantime, Alexandros pressed nearby Forge Worlds for aid, and their taghma began to muster, filled with both zealous anger at the heresy of Kelbor-Hal and ambition. If the centuries-long reign of Kelbor-Hal and his acolytes was to end, there would be a great deal to play for in the aftermath. In due time, whether for honest motives or otherwise, vast armies of Skitarii, automata, Knights and all the other weapons the Mechanicus could assemble descended to fight upon Sacred Mars.

Above all, Ruel’s primary objectives were the forges of Mondus Occulum, Mondus Gamma and Magma City. The former two produced the majority of the arms and armour Mars provided to the Astartes, and would be of vital importance to the retaking of Mars. Magma City, while less of an industrial powerhouse, nonetheless held a great many forges along with stores of esoteric technology. Moreover, its symbolic value as was not to be underestimated.

Ruel himself led the relief effort at Mondus Occulum, abetted by the main strength of the Legio Carnifex and the Abyssii’s largest Cybernetica cohorts. Led by the fiery Princeps Gallia and Archmagos Crastus Mhal, this force brought a staggering array of firepower, enough to destroy a hive city, let alone defend it. But Zagreus Kane, receiving his allies with little ceremony, warned them that all these forces would be sorely needed to hold the city.

Sure enough, when the Insurrectionists drew near it was with over sixty Titans, taken from various Legios but primarily the Legio Magna, fresh from the burning of Noachis. The great guns of Mondus Occulum rumbled, sending lightning sparking across the plain as their blasts met the Titans’ overlapping shields, but failing to penetrate them. Carnifex, nearly equal in number to the attacking Titans but with several of their engines still not fully repaired, exercised rare restraint, only engaging the enemy when they drew within range. The result was another vicious but inconclusive battle, after which the Traitors withdrew to wait out the Loyalists.

While they lacked a crushing advantage, their forces were sufficient to keep the Loyalists hemmed in. Urtzi Malevolus came to oversee the work, and a prefabricated city of depots and gun emplacements sprang up around Mondus Occulum. For their part, Ruel and Kane focused on ensuring that Occulum’s produce was taken to its spaceport, ready to be spirited offworld if the defences fell. Carnifex’s Titans were discreetly repaired, the Loyalists taking any advantage they could in the circumstances.

Throughout the siege Malevolus had his forces attempt to infiltrate the city with Termite Assault Drills, and intermittent fighting flared up in the depths. Both Ruel’s Astartes and Mhal’s automata, chiefly his Cataphracts, Castellax and Vorax, were kept busy combatting the intruders. The Cataphracts were frequently equipped for excavation, collapsing the tunnels bored by the enemy or burying bombs for future attempts. In one case, early on, the Loyalists took an Assault Drill intact, and Mhal decided to repurpose it as a weapon. Filling it with explosives and placing a carefully programmed servitor at the controls, he set it on a course for the Traitor lines. By calculation or simple good fortune, the tunnelling bomb detonated underneath a Legio Magna Reaver Titan, shearing off its leg and leaving the machine to crash ignominiously into the dust. Such were the dirty tricks that Mhal played on Malevolus’ besieging army, taunting the Traitors with his ruses.

Tribune Pheidias moved to relieve Ipluvien Maximal’s forge, his forces braving heavy fire to land in the shadow of Pavonis Mons, but he found that he was unable to break the Traitor lines around the city. Several times the Halcyon Wardens and Satyrnine Rams attacked, only to be beaten back with heavy losses. Ruel was forced to admit defeat and quickly redirected Pheidias to Magma City, where a second besieging force had arrived and was attacking in great strength, led by thirty Titans of the Death Stalkers. Maximal, knowing his fate, resolved to deny his enemies their prize, evacuating what units he could and overloading his reactors as the Traitors breached the inner defences.

In return, Sauhan and Mortera prised a victory from the Insurrectionists’ hands at Magma City. Sauhan took with him two Battalions of Astartes and the Satyrnine Rams, knowing that compared to Mondus Occulum, Magma City’s volcanic moat rendered it far more defensible by infantry. Any attacker, unless they could force a costly landing from the air, would have to cross the mighty Typhon Causeway and breach the city’s gates. Mortera set two of her lieutenants to the defence: Skatha Mawren, master of her Skitarii regiments and Charon Discut, a grim Adept of the Ordo Reductor.

Red Box: The Mysteries of Magma City
While Adept Koriel Zeth's disregard for the Fabricator-General had been long known of thought the Red Planet, but true enmity between the two originated some 60 years prior to the Death of Innocence. Upon an otherwise unremarkable day Magna City was engulfed in an anomaly of vast proportions. The sky above the city erupted with an inexplicable and uncontrolled flare of astropathic energy so great that it briefly disrupted the Astronomicon itself. This anomaly immediately attracted the attention of not only Kelbor Hal but, due to the disruption's nature, emissaries of organisations vested with the authority of the Emperor himself. Despite a prolonged and exhaustive investigation by the two and often conflicting parties the source of the event was never determined. The Adept's "cooperation" was reluctant at best and obstructive at worst. The investigation was only halted after the Terran representatives were forced to intervene in order to prevent bloodshed after Zeth's protégé, Magos Polk, had his memory augmetics fused in a suspected electronic attack. Despite the investigation's closure, Magma City remained under scrutiny almost up until the Schism. Rumours still speak of a vault, hidden in some forsaken corner of Mars' wastelands or perhaps lost with Maximal's final catastrophic sacrifice, containing some schemata or relic connected to the phenomenon.

The Mountain of Fire
Princeps Cavalerio’s Titans and the Knights of Taranis, reinforced by their brethren among the V^th Legion fleet, were the match of Princeps Ulriche and his Death Stalkers, but the Traitor Legio brought with them a force which, once again, greatly outnumbered the taghmata of Magma City. It was a cruder force than the one that had gone before, the cream of Olympus Mons largely replaced with servitors and Adsecularis, cannibalised from prisoners and the Traitors’ own hives alike. Still, six million machine-thralls were hardly to be underestimated. Armed by the forges of Olympus Mons and accompanied by thousands of tanks, they boasted more than enough firepower to batter down the gates of Magma City.

Worse still, Zeth was already dead. She had been fatally wounded by a tech-assassin of the Cydonian Sisterhood, though Zeth had slain the murderer in turn. Given the events which had gone before, Ambassador Melgator had most likely arranged this base act. Now, having barely survived the disastrous first assault and the destruction of the Legio Mortis, he had returned and waited to see the ruin of all Zeth had wrought. Quite aside from Melgator's own vindictiveness, Kelbor Hal had ordered him to prevail, or not to return at all.

Sauhan made the grim calculations and accordingly divided his own forces into three, doing the same with the Abyssii forces available to him. The first deployed into the city itself, setting down and hastily taking up positions among the taghmata. Sauhan wasted no time in assuming command of the defence, and his first order was a grimly calculated one. Twenty companies deployed into the outer districts of the city, taking up positions as Mortera's personal taghma landed at the spaceport and hastened to the walls. The Titans and Knights feigned being driven away from their position, moving north and allowing the invaders to advance onto the Typhon Causeway. Melgator's forces took the gate, undeterred by the guns of the defenders. Sauhan knew well that an enemy is most vulnerable when he believes his victory assured, and the minds of the Mechanicum priesthood are not exempt from mortal hubris.

The defenders on the battlements sacrificed much to further the illusion. Under the direction of the formidable Tribune Vasilios, they resisted doggedly, mortal and transhuman alike, though gunfire raked across the defences. Discut’s artillery units sent volleys ripping over the walls and the volcanic moat to hammer the Insurrectionist lines, even destroying three of the Traitors’ lesser Titans and buying Tempestus the breathing room to withdraw. Above them, aircraft on both sides wheeled and burned.

For all their resolve, however, the defenders were unable to hold off such a bloated host indefinitely. They blasted several enemy tanks to blackened wreckage on the Causeway, but the enemy dragged the remains aside and continued their advance. When siege tanks placed themselves before the gates and choked the Traitor advance with debris again, Thallax, Adsecularis and automata were sent in by Melgator. They depended on their sheer numbers for success, surging on over the broken vehicles and the corpses of their comrades with an inhuman lack of self-preservation. On the battlements, Vasilios' Wardens, twenty thousand Solar Auxilia and half that number again of Skitarii and Thallax shouldered their guns and fired.

The Typhon Causeway shook. Armour ran molten and spiralled in fragments. Dismembered bodies cascaded from the Causeway in their thousands. Vasilios saw to it that an unbroken torrent of fire fell upon his targets for over an hour. Faced with such punishment, a mortal army would have been driven into retreat, their resolve disintegrating and commanders desperately trying to find an alternative approach. But the shackled minds of the thralls and the robots would not allow for anything but the completion of their task.

Though hundreds of thousands fell, finally Melgator’s host reached the gates. Defenders on the walls began to die in their hundreds and then thousands as the attackers brought more guns to bear. Thanatar robots dragged themselves within range and destroyed the tanks which barred the way with searing plasma. The gates fell soon after, and fighting raged within Magma City as the Halcyon Wardens met the attackers, shields linked and bolters roaring. Beside them were Mortera's personal forces and the Knights of Zivich, and it was only by their valour and the power of their weapons that Melgator's heavy automata did not sweep the Astartes aside. Pheidias’ arrival shored up the defences, as he brought another eight hundred Astartes and ten thousand Auxilia, but it was only a temporary reprieve. At the far end of the Causeway, work had begun to haul away the broken Traitor machines, which would allow more tanks and then the Titans to cross.

As a second wave of iron rumbled onto the vast bridge, Sauhan’s second force emerged; Caestus Assault Rams which had dived into the the crater to elude enemy craft, trusting their thick armour to withstand the furnace heat. Climbing steeply and aiming for the Tempestus positions, they swept up to ground level north of the Causeway, magna-meltas incinerating nearby vehicles. Boarding ramps slammed down, and breacher and heavy support squads emerged. As soon as a beachhead was established, the devastators turned their guns toward the Causeway, las-fire and missiles slamming into the Traitor flank. More craft followed, Abyssii robots and Myrmidon Destructors preventing the inevitable counterattacks from overwhelming their allies.

Now back came Tempestus and House Taranis, their fury renewed. Ulriche, filled with zeal and battle-fervour, ordered the entire Death Stalkers force to confront and wipe them out. As far as he was concerned, Magma City was as good as conquered, and he had no desire to nursemaid what he saw as mere dregs when there was glory to be earned in Titan-killing. Intercepted communications suggest that Melgator and some of the magos under him felt otherwise, but their faith would not permit them to withdraw when the Death Stalkers’ blood was up, and risk the loss of god-machines through negligence.

Hopeless as the Loyalist position seemed, such misgivings would not prove misplaced among the Traitors. Sauhan played his third card. Already engaged against Zeth’s air force, the fighters and gunships Ulriche had brought with him were set upon and overwhelmed by a fresh force of V^th Legion and Abyssii interceptors and fighters. Thus his ground forces were laid bare to attack from above. Even as bombers strafed the Traitors, killing tens of thousands, Melgator drove his army on. Yet his efforts were in vain, as the third force, far larger than the second, set down to encircle Ulriche’s army.

Held in reserve until now and inserted by gunships, Tribune Tannhauser led a monstrous force of tanks against the Traitor’s rear, hundreds of V^th Legion vehicles churning the sands. On their flanks were Solar Auxilia - the Balovian Vanguard, famed for their skill in armoured warfare - and the Abyssii tank echelons led by Silon Rex. Combined, their armoured units outnumbered the Astartes twice over. Jaws of steel had closed around the Traitor army. Six spearheads of Sicarans and Krios tanks raced ahead, splitting the Traitor lines and leaving them exposed for the Predators and heavier tanks which came in their wake. Rhinos and Land Raiders carried Astartes and tech-guard into the midst of the attackers, there to make mangled corpses of Melgator's cyborgs.

The Traitor Skitarii held out longer, pushing on to the Causeway, but there they met their Abyssii counterparts, marching with tanks and automata of their own. As the encircling attack bled their momentum, they were less able to press the attack, though they had cost Sauhan’s marines and Auxilia heavily. At Mortera's word, eight Triaros transports rumbled through the broken gates. The Taghmata Mortera followed, a lance sweeping aside the scarlet column and plunging into the main body of Melgator’s army.

On the plain beyond, the Halcyon Wardens’ heaviest elements advanced over the broken bodies of their foes as Tempestus closed with the Death Stalkers. Tannhauser himself rode with one of two squadrons of Cerberus Heavy Tank Destroyers, and their prey was the Traitor Titans themselves. Caught between their neutron lasers and the weapons of Tempestus, the Traitor Titans were rent apart and toppled, crushing the troops around them. Ulriche perished when his Warlord’s head was severed by Cavalerio's Deus Tempestus, and the last Traitors were swept over the crater’s edge to perish in the caldera below. Magma City had lost its mistress, but it endured. Mortera took control of its forges without delay, commencing a program of salvage within the city and outside on the plain. Melgator’s shredded remains were identified two days after the battle.

These were the grandest Loyalist interventions, but far from the only ones. Individual Brigades and cohorts of Solar Auxilia deployed to lesser Forges, shoring up their defences. Retreating armies loyal to Kelbor Hal were set upon by strike forces deploying by drop-pod. Smaller forces, centred around the Legion’s swiftest armour companies and Skyhunter units, were set loose to harry the opposition, striking at isolated units and supply lines in a series of risky but effective attacks. Wherever the Halcyon Wardens struck in force, they were followed by the Magos of Eskut, salvaging any wargear that was not blasphemous in its origins.

Such dramas played out across all the remaining Loyalist strongholds on Mars over the next two weeks as Ruel and Sauhan fostered proper strategic cohesion. With Mortis in ashes and Magma City secure, the presence of the Legio Carnifex deterred the Burning Stars from another attack on Ignatum, who were now free to undergo much-needed repairs. A handful of V^thLegion companies sought out the distress calls from what remained of the Legio Honorum, finding them in the chill northern deserts of Olympus Undae. The Raijin Machine, meanwhile, had vanished after attacking a civilian transport, and while captured Traitor archives have done nothing to disperse the mystery around this event, it was a boon to the Loyalists. None of Chrom’s other creations approached the cunning and malevolence of its machine spirit. Some conjecture about its disappearance has emerged, but it falls outside the purview of this history. The fate of the Raijin Machine, therefore, must remain among the unsolved mysteries of the Insurrection.

The Fire Rises
The fighting entered a phase of strange inertia, though still violent enough to stain the sands red anew, for the Traitors brought out fresh weapons from stores previously forbidden. Equilibrium could not last, and every Forge churned out weapons and the soldiers to wield them. Now fresh actors arrived to usher the drama into the next phase, some summoned, other arriving utterly unlooked for.

The latter were the core of the Iron Bears’ First Grand Wartribe aboard the Dragon of Autumn, accompanied by a few escort vessels and the handful of survivors they had rescued in the battle over Kataii. The Bears were sorely reduced, having borne the corpse of their Primarch back to the flagship and then endured a harrowing Warp voyage. Lord Chief Cass lay in stasis, wounded unto death and awaiting internment in a Dreadnought sarcophagus, while command had passed to Achille Nibaanisiiwi of Clan-Company Tacharian. The Daughters of Daer’dd were similarly mauled. Nonetheless, the remaining Bears were welcome allies, and brought with them Knight walkers and a War Maniple of the Legio Auris.

The Fire Keepers arrived in far greater strength over two months, recalled from the tasks Niklaas had set them to in the wake of the betrayal. By strange chance, the warriors of Tribe Barinthus brought with them a few dozen Scions Hospitalier from their search of Untara, led by a single Praetor - Second Captain Odyssalas, honour-brother to Nibaanisiiwi. Bereft of his own Legion save for his fellow survivors and a company stationed on Terra, Odyssalas would spend the campaign at his friend’s side, the warriors of Barinthus, the XIX^th and the VI^th forming a hybrid force as the war turned to sieges and lightning raids against Traitor-held forges.

As more of the Halcyon Wardens came to the Sol System, they were joined by the first of the taghmata which Alexandros had summoned from other Forge Worlds. Eskut, closely allied with the V^th Legion, answered soonest, a full demi-Legio arriving with Legate Antipaton and the Wardens' Third Cohort. Aid also came swiftly from Voss, Phaeton and Stygies.

From further afield, the news was less welcome The mighty Forge World of Anvillus was wracked by internal strife, and Ryza and Lucius could spare little in the way of troops or materiel with the Insurrectionists so close to their own borders. Alexandros set the new arrivals to purging the Ring of Iron, which they carried out with brutal fervour. Graia and Gryphonne offered further reinforcements, but Alexandros was obliged to set them to the defence of other worlds. As a result, the new arrivals barely approached the strength of the Abyssii contingent, but their presence was still a great help to the Warmaster.

Mortal soldiers too came to Mars, regiments attached to Legion fleets or seconded from garrison duties. For the most part these were unexceptional bodies, but a few such as the Jurad Rangers were renowned among the Auxilia, potent additions to the Loyalist cause on Mars. The Jovian Grenadiers, Zanskat Guard and Satyrnine Hoplites, who had bled heavily in the early stages of the war, were relieved and placed on garrison duty at Magma City and Mondus Occulum, where production was stepped up even further, fed by a steady stream of bulk landers from orbit.

At Mondus Occulum, the siege was finally lifted when four Battalions of the Halcyon Wardens made planetfall with the Balovian Vanguard and, more pertinently, Titans from Eskut, Voss and Phaeton. The Traitors fell back in good order, but menaced by the new arrivals and Carnifex, they were forced to abandon much of their weaponry. The Legios Osedax and Invigilata harried the retreating engines of Magna, felling several Titans before the Traitors got beyond their reach. Kelbor Hal made another attempt to crush the House Taranis stronghold, but his forces were stymied by the arrival of Fire Keepers from Tribe Mogon. Mogon’s contingent of Legio Tonarum Titans had been lost in the ambush on Mena-goth, but a maniple of the Legio Accatran proved an effective substitute.

Upon Niklaas’ arrival, with his forces reinforced by fresh V^th Legion detachments and taghmata from half a dozen Forge Worlds, Alexandros went on the offensive. The fighting on Mars now entered its most ferocious stage, as two Primarchs brought their mastery of war to the surface. Niklaas’ wrath was volcanic, dormant ever since Mena-goth and now given license to erupt. With Ordinati, Titans and all the terrifying works of the Ordo Reductor at his fingertips, he embarked upon a campaign of destruction which Kelbor Hal was able to slow, but powerless to halt.

As the Loyalists struck at Traitor forges and fortresses, Mortera elected to lead the seizure of Mondus Gamma. It lay in the hands of Lukas Chrom, and she asserted that her understanding of his works was greater than that of any Halcyon Warden. Alexandros thought it prudent not to argue, and acquiesced to her demand. While Mortera's ambitions of seizing Lukas Chrom's facilities intact precluded the unlimited use of Titans within the forge’s boundaries, this was an acceptable limitation, given that the heretek lacked such war-engines of his own. With the Legio Carnifex and Osedax deployed to blockade the city and provide ranged bombardment if necessary, the Abyssii began their assault. For two nights of savage violence, the walkways ran with blood and toxma.

First came the ranks of tech thralls, Thallax and lesser Skitarii, supported by many of the less arcane artillery vehicles of the Ordo Reductor. Initially they seemed unopposed, outlying structures abandoned. Yet within minutes of breaching the defenses proper, the dragon's half closed eye snapped to full alertness. The Abyssii vanguard was beset by Skitarii whose savagery outstripped their discipline and maniples of strange automata, whose design went against every tenet of the Legio Cybernetica. Here was a foe that would not reel or break under pressure. The Abyssii vanguard seemed to waver as tanks were torn open and infantry reduced to bloody viscera. From her position in low orbit, observing the battle, Mortera decided that the requisite sacrifice had been made and sufficient data collated. Now the assault began in full.

Airstrikes and Titan fire reduced the largest concentrations of hostiles to atoms. Defensive installations suffered the same attention. A shock force of the Abyssii's own Cybernetica, led by Mhal and backed by the Knights of House Lancea, punched through the breach left by remnants of the first wave. Where Chrom's constructs fought with a lethal bestiality and were prone to uncontrollable bursts of malefic action, Mhal's automata operated in flawless cohesion. When a Scion of Lancea seared away a swathe of combat servitors or shattered a maniple of heretek battle robots, the Abyssii robots pushed forwards as one. When it seemed they might be buried beneath a tide of steel, they retreated seamlessly. Their combined and concentrated firepower overwhelmed the increasingly disorderly opposition.

At the same time, roving cohorts of Thallax and Ursurax tore into unsupported infantry, utilising their mobility to identify and exploit any weaknesses in Chrom's battle line. The Traitor forces began to find themselves surrounded and cut off. The mightiest war machines, if they were beyond the Knights’ reach, were brought down through either carefully targeted attacks or sheer weight of fire. The combat zones shrank to the forge perimeters, where Chrom now had new war machines joining the battle fresh from the production lines. Even facilities as industrious as his, however, could not counter the Abyssii's now crushing advantage.

With the scales of battle tipped in her favour, Mortera had little intention of giving Lukas Chrom time to escape. As the second dawn rose over the embattled city, Silos Rex's Mymridon Custos were inserted atop the heretek's sanctum via a single Warmonger Gunship. Cleaving their way into Chrom’s quarters, they found no trace of their target. Instead they witnessed an unholy pattern of Scylla Guardians networked together into a single conscience. Despite their ire at Lukas Chrom having escaped them, the destruction of the Scyllax abomination seemed to rob Mondus Gamma’s defenders of what little coordination they had.

With another bloody night's work, the city was purged. The convoys of tanks and transports that attempted to flee ran straight into the shadow of the Legio Carnifex. Chrom was presumed to have fled aboard his personal gunship, leaving his forge in Mortera’s grasp and surrounded by charred vehicles. Halycon Wardens interdiction craft intercepted several vessels en route from Mondus Gamma to Olympus Mons, although Chrom's craft was not confirmed to be among them. It can only be presumed that if he did indeed survive to reach Kelbor Hal's domain, he was slain in the tempest that followed and the last of his abominations with him.

The fall of Mondus Gamma is of a piece with the other battles fought at this time. The calculus of war had shifted heavily in Alexandros’ favour, and with total control above the planet, his forces could deploy with overwhelming speed across the planet. The strongholds of Traitor Titan Legions were taken intact wherever possible and their facilities used by the Loyalists’ own. Fortresses were torn down and armies scattered until, two weeks after his arrival, the Primarchs brought the war to the Fabricator-General’s doorstep.

[bluntblade]

Part III: Castigation

 

"Soldiers, the enemy taunts us. I hear the ghost-words over the vox as clear as any of you. Even with his armies broken across the Red World, Kelbor Hal fleers at us. Against the Grand Mountain, his sermons claim, we have no hope of prevailing. 

Does that daunt me? Do I hear those words and feel a pinprick of apprehension? Does it hell!

I look upon the army around me and I see more than a host of men and women and their weapons. I see a fearsome tally of victories, some of the greatest won in our Crusade. Among my kinsmen are hands that built the Ebensagab on my home world, a fortress hardier even than the one that stands before us. Here I see warriors who have torn down the mightiest holdfasts of a score of civilisations. Do I not see here veterans of Kasun? Of Dresq? Qarith Prime? Stengah?

Then hear me now and know that we will smash down Kelbor Hal’s defences and take back Olympus Mons. His soldiers will be broken by our guns and ground beneath our boots. The false Fabricator General will be rendered down to cinders for his treason.

Mistake not my words for any claim that this will be easy. But then when has ease had any place in our wars? The victories we have won have always been bought with blood. If you fall upon the Grand Mountain, you will have found as glorious an end as any soldier of the Emperor has earned. You will be a martyr to Imperial Unity. By your sacrifice the Arch-Traitor’s fall will be guaranteed.

Blood and victory! For the Emperor and his Warmaster, shake Olympus Mons to its roots! Onward!”

Sovereign Shamgar Arnath’s address to Escalade Force Eta

 

The Mariner Plain
The Loyalists might have simply crushed Kelbor Hal with orbital bombardments, but the void shields over Olympus Mons were as potent as those of any fortress outside Terra. Besides, the forges and the technology within were of incalculable value, to say nothing of the mountain’s holy status to the Mechanicus. It would have to be taken in the old manner, and Kelbor Hal’s remaining armies barred the way.

Though the Death Stalkers and Legio Mortis were reduced to a war maniple each and the Burning Stars hardly more numerous, his forges had been busy indeed. Lukas Chrom had designed machines that rivalled Titans in size, driven by Abominable Intelligence. Even if the heretek had been slain, his blasphemous vision endured. Olympus Mons and its neighbours were purged of useless mouths, who were converted into millions of fresh soldiers. Any spare organic matter became nutrient gruel.

The Loyalists knew well that before they could reach the city's walls, they would have to give battle in its shadow. The resulting Battle of the Mariner Plain has been the sole subject of multiple books by an assortment of military scholars, such was its scale and importance. It raged for forty hours, covering the fifty kilometre-deep defences which Kelbor-Hal had set about his stronghold. Over one hundred and twenty Titans and some six hundred Knights clashed above the masses of tanks and infantry, whose own numbers were more typical of a planetary Compliance campaign than a battle for a single city.

The first ten hours of the battle took the form of an artillery duel; primarily waged by Titans on the Loyalist side, but the Abyssii brought their Ordinatus Majoris to the battle, with firepower that exceeded any single Titan weapon. On this scale, there was no room for subtlety; embodiments of the Omnissiah’s wrath, unleashing all of their power upon one another. The Martian night was banished across an area of seventy kilometres to the north of the Grand Mountain and anything not warded by Olympus Mons’ shields was reduced to dust. The sands lay glassed and strewn with the remains of fortifications.

Then came the bombers, slipping through the city’s shields to bathe gun emplacements with fire as tank companies raced forward and Ordinati Minoris rumbled behind, crunching over the piles of slag left by the Ordinati. In response, Kelbor Hal sent forth his own armour and the last Titans left to him, with the guns of Olympus Mons thundering in support. These were still a deadly host, fifty god-machines with their retinues of Knights, war-sirens blaring. The Loyalist Titans responded in kind immediately. Alexandros watched the god-machines of a dozen Legios stride into contact, and ordered his own forces forward.

The Space Marines and their allies fought through the carnage with a precision that defied sense, defeating their enemies piecemeal. The Fire Keepers and Halcyon Wardens formed the vanguard in the centre, backed by the Solar Auxilia and their allied Army regiments. The recently arrived Mechanicum armies, cohering around the proven Archmagos of Eskut, took the left wing. The Abyssii and Phaeton taghmata, both eyed warily by their fellows, took the right. In truth, each wing functioned as a force unto itself, multiple spearheads striking into the Traitor formations. Super-heavy tank squadrons converged on Titans and artillery emplacements, softening them for the hammer blows of the lesser Ordinati.

Mortera hovered above the battlefield on a grav-pulpit, her augmetics enabling her to perceive the entirety of the Abyssii’s fight through the eyes of her troops. At her direction soldiers advanced, Titan guns spoke and the entire taghmata moved as if governed by one intelligence. In a way this was indeed, the case, Mortera steering her cult with adamantine ruthlessness and a skill which rivalled the Primarchs themselves. Her Martian foes were practiced commanders, no doubt, but against a cult so steeped in blood as the Abyssii, their power was the lesser. If the Abyssii lacked the flair which the Legiones Astartes possessed, they made up for it with unerring precision, and outpaced their fellows on the left wing, even the vaunted army of Eskut.

Except perhaps for the slaughter on Kartyg, this was the most devastating terrestrial battle yet fought in the Insurrection. Any cover that had existed before was gone, erased by the Ordinati and Titans. The shields of a god-machine or super-heavy tank might provide shelter, but even that was far from certain to last. Hundreds died with every blast of the greater Titans’ guns, pockets of the battlefield becoming utterly impassable when the largest of them clashed. Several Titans suffered reactor failure, nuclear fire washing over the sands around them.

Here the telepaths of the V^th Legion came into their own, reading the intentions of enemy leaders and putting their talents to more devious, aggressive use. Traitor units abruptly turned on one another, opening gaps in the line. Their acts of betrayal naturally earned them summary execution by their fellows, and the Traitor lines convulsed. As a Vorax maniple attacked and killed the Skitarii Commander RTY-342, the Halcyon Wardens and Fire Keepers attacked en masse, splintering the disordered ranks they struck.

The Insurrection formation began to crumble, Antipaton driving the V^th deeper into their ranks, and any isolated pockets of troops felt to the stabbing swords and roaring bolters of the Halcyon Wardens. The surviving commanders on the Insurrectionist side grew desperate, seeing how Alexandros intended to split their formation down the middle. Their response was unequivocal; a flanking attack on Niklaas, to lay the Primarch low and open the Loyalists to ruin in their turn.

Seeing the danger, Alexandros led his Athenoi and a hastily collected knot of companies in a supporting charge to reinforce his brother. The Primarchs fought side by side with their guards against Domitar robots, Ursarax thralls and less recognisable foes, Kelbor Hal’s commanders sending more and more machines in an effort to bring down the sons of the Emperor. But then Irvin Ruel and his Blitzer squads launched a counter-attack which, coupled with the Terminator elite of both Legions, crushed the decapitation force.

Together, the two sons of the Emperor were unstoppable. Alexandros, finding openings before they appeared, his gladius punching through the weak points in armour as if his kills were fated. Niklaas, his hammer shearing through plate that could stop a barrage of bolter fire, his strength sufficient to overpower even a Domitar robot.

Leaving a trail of broken metal in their wake, the Primarchs dismembered the machines sent to slay them. Now there was nothing that could halt Antipaton's assault. The entire weight of the Loyalist centre was behind him, parting Kelbor Hal’s sea of iron.

Cut in two and assaulted from multiple sides, the two halves of the heretek army were doomed. The order was given to retreat, but the wreckage-strewn plain prevented any orderly withdrawal. Squadron by squadron, maniple by maniple, the Traitor forces were dismantled. Now came the siege of Olympus Mons.

[bluntblade]

The Mountain Torn Open
With the surrounding terrain firmly under his control, Alexandros handed over tactical command to Niklaas, whose expertise in siege warfare far outstripped his own. With the grim magi of the Ordo Reductor, Charon Discut prominent among them, the Steel Prince began to lay down plans that would see the gates of Olympus Mons shattered. In total there were six of the grand entrances into Olympus Mons, alongside dozens of smaller passageways. The largest of these was set into Olympus Mons' northern wall. While its fall would be the hardest to achieve, it would be the most symbolic blow, a blunt display of how the treacherous could never escape the vengeance of the righteous. 

The Ordinatus Nox, an apocalyptically powerful weapon capable of dueling with starships in orbit and the only surviving Ordinatus Majoris on Mars, would be given the task of breaching the wall. Yet there was a danger. A fortress’ entrance is always its weakest point, and as such it is always the most fortified. Olympus Mons was no exception. The mightiest gate to Kelbor-Hal's domain was studded with weapons varying from heavy bolters to macro cannon emplacements and even vortex missile silos. The Loyalists were loath to risk their most powerful weapon against such concentrated fire, so a solution was devised. 

While Niklaas masterminded the assault, the Abyssii often claim and with reasonable cause that the breaking of the gate was their triumph. Not only would it be their weapon that shattered the gates, it would be their machinations that compromised the inner defenses. Not content to use the research gleaned from the Ater stations for defensive purposes alone, Mortera had ordered a Djinn-virus weapon of limited capability be placed at her disposal, in preparation for circumstances that might necessitate its use. Such circumstances had assuredly arisen. It would have to be activated within almost immediate proximity if the defenses data network, but once activated the weapons surrounding the target would be rendered impotent. 

Mortera presented this device to Niklaas as plunder looted from Traitor facilities later razed to the ground. No sooner had Niklaas been informed of this than strike and infiltration forces were assembled, composed of X^th Legion Seeker squads, Skitarii Rangers and Thallax. Utilising a portion of the transportation network that had once brought supplies and personnel from across the domains of the Red Planet to within the walls of Olympus Mons they would fight their way to a location within range of the targeted machinery: once there it would be activated. Their chances of success were deemed relatively high. Their chances of survival were not. 

In the depths of the Martian night, the strike and infiltration forces set out. Four hours elapsed between their departure and a report that the objective had been obtained. Sergeant Baruk spoke only to confirm that dozens of Astartes had fallen and the Thallax had been destroyed in their entirety, but the device had been activated. Nothing else would be heard from him and the remaining infiltrators until their miraculous return to the surface a day later, greater events serving to conceal their withdrawal.

Niklaas and Mortera could verify that fact for themselves within a minute. The data-virus spread rapidly, halting guns, jamming auto-loaders and sending turrets into a fizzing, sputtering dance across the circumference of Olympus Mons. Auspex scans reported a concurrent spike of activity within the walls, the panicking Traitor magi rushing to identify the cause and remedy it. Even as the colossus began to grind its way forward, desperate measures were taken to prevent its attack.

Those Insurrectionist Titans still remaining before the gates, faintly lit by the rising sun, strode forth in a vain attempt to impede the Ordinatus Nox's progress and were felled by the blistering fire of pre-positioned artillery bombardments previously planned by the Primarch. The Burning Stars Warlord Ictum Interficiens and its escorts ignored any other target in favour of closing the distance between themselves and the Abyssii war engine. Their guns set the Ordinatus’ shields rippling, but it was too little and much too late. 

With the sound of the air being torn in twain a searing beam of energy flashed forth. An outlying Warhound was spared briefly, but its fellows vanished in the blink of an eye. For another second the Ictum Interficiens reeled amid the glare, then it too was annihilated. The momentary obstruction gone, the beam lanced into the gate structure itself. An edifice built to resist armies was reduced to a funeral pyre for the troops that lay within, thousands of them incinerated in a heartbeat. Within moments, the growl of combat machines and the tramp of steel-shod limbs rose to a crescendo. Legio Tonarum Titans raised their guns and felled the last Burning Star in a flurry of missiles and plasma. With Niklaas at their head, the armies of the Warmaster marched onwards.

Fire-Crowned Towers
Niklaas and Alexandros had no intention of forcing breaches at ground level alone. Indeed to a siegemaster such as Niklaas, to simply break down the greatest gate of so vast a city was an offensively crude proposition. Olympus Mons was to be breached in many places, all across its expanse, and the minds of the Steel Prince and all his lieutenants were set to the task. Points along the cyclopean wall were identified for bombardment by Ordinati, Titans and massed artillery. Transport tunnels were made the target of Skitarii infiltrators, Vorax automata and Astartes Seeker squads.

Above ground level too, Niklaas sought and found opportunities. As the gates and walls came under attack, the clouds above Olympus Mons were split. Wings of Corsair bombers, aglow with the heat of atmospheric entry, descended from on high, accompanied by interceptors and fighter craft. Niklaas had deployed hundreds of Xth Legion craft for this task, and they rained fire down upon the proud spires of Olympus Mons. Anti-air batteries blazed up at the attackers, destroying scores of them, but already the Loyalist craft were loosing bombs and missiles against them. 

Kelbor Hal ordered his city’s air fleet into the skies, but even as fighters and ornithopters rose from their hangars, the second Loyalist wave was inbound. Vth Legion Xiphon interceptors and Lightning-Primaris fighters homed in on the city from the south and the northwest, hugging the red sands until they drew close. The Fire Keepers craft pulled clear of the spires to regroup, and as the traitors rose to pursue them, so too did the Halcyon Wardens strike from below. Another force of Fire Keepers craft came screaming down from orbit, and the Insurrectionist squadrons were dismembered like a great shoal of fish caught by ocean predators. 

As the Loyalists cemented their control of the skies, the bombing runs were renewed. Most of these targeted the massive cannons which threatened their ground forces, but here and there gaping holes were torn in the upper walls of Olympus Mons’ towers. These appeared to be mere side effects of the onslaught, but this assumption was proven wrong as Legion assault rams and gunships emerged from the clouds. Niklaas had identified areas where Astartes might enter the upper levels of the metropolis and severely disrupt Kelbor-Hal’s defences. The Caestus rams used their magna-meltas to widen breaches made by the Corsairs, and in their wake came Stormbirds and their lesser kindred. 

Mortera’s aerial forces were hardly idle at this stage, and at her command Abyssii craft joined the attack. Hundreds of Arvus lighters swept in, holds filled with Skitarii, Thallax and combat servitors, while larger transports ferried robots and Kataphron servitors to the breaches. Though the traitors’ defences had destroyed scores of craft, Niklaas’ careful planning had seen the gun emplacements entirely destroyed, and Kelbor Hal’s aircraft had been reduced to fragments, raining still more destruction down upon the sprawl.

The first wave of Loyalists who penetrated the city from above comprised some 8,000 Astartes and 20,000 Skitarii, the latter aided by sundry other Mechanicum units. A large part of the Astartes were Terminator, breacher and assault units, as these stood the best chance of success of establishing beachheads and fending off the hordes of Adescularis, Skitarii and automata sent to kill them. More followed, bolstered by Dreadnought talons. In claustrophobic passageways and vast forge chambers, battle was joined with bolter and blade.

The most daring of these assaults was carried out by Nibaasiniiwi’s Iron Bears and Tribe Barinthus of the Fire Keepers - a direct attack on Hangar Eydisiun in the northern part of the city. Flanked by Fire Raptors, they deployed by Stormbird into the hangar even as the gunships’ cannons turned the space into a mess of scrap metal. With them came Thunderhawk transporters carrying Predators and Sicaran Battle Tanks, but these paled beside the bulk transport that followed once the gunships had destroyed the turrets emplaced within the hangar. Setting down, its embarkation ramp lowered to reveal seventeen Knights of House Blinstrubas. They strode out to face the rallying traitor forces, war sirens blaring and weapons thundering.

The defenders had already roused automata and tanks, fearing the Loyalists’ intent, but with their forces stretched across the city, they could not overcome the vanguard. Skitarii and thralls were deployed in their thousands, only to be destroyed by the Iron Bears and Fire Keepers, who were rapidly entrenching themselves and bringing in more troops. In his desperation, the zone commander sought and received permission to use greater force, and a detachment of House Morbidia were sent into battle, twenty grim walkers manned by pilots who lived only to kill in Kelbor Hal’s name.

These condemned warriors met the Knights of Blinstrubas in the middle of the cavernous hangar, and such was the violence of their clash that even the Astartes took cover. Any lesser combatants caught between the warring Knights were obliterated in the crossfire. Morbidia fielded the more resilient machines, but Blinstrubas fought with the greater fury, and several carried armaments crafted by Daer’dd himself. They were quite capable of meeting the threat that Morbidia posed.

Several of the Sicarans were of the formidable Ustor variant, armed with volkite cascades which had already devastated the defending machines, and reduced servitors and Skitarii to ash by the hundred. Advancing in support of their Knight allies, they brought these murderous weapons to bear upon Morbidia. Five Blinstrubas Knights had fallen, but aided by the tanks and Astartes’, the rest savaged the slave-Knights and tore them down. Thus the hangar was secured, paving the way for more Astartes to land, followed by tercios of Solar Auxilia and Graian taghma. From this point the Loyalists began to steadily advance, slaying all those who obstructed them.

Beyond the Gates
As Niklaas ordered the Ordinatus Nox into position, offensives began against the other five main gates. Ordinati Minoris and Titans were brought forward to batter the defences into submission, bombers and gunships swooping overhead to add their weapons to the firestorm and wipe out any remaining emplacements which might threaten their allies. Shields burst, ferrocrete crumbled and metal ran molten under the bombardments. One by one, the gates and walls fell, and the Loyalists brought judgement to Olympus Mons.

The Abyssi’s siegemaster Charon Discut was the first to break through after Niklaas, his Triaros entering the city behind the Titans of Carnifex. Chief Eshad of Tribe Grannus began his escalade shortly afterwards, and before long the rest were advancing too. At the Galvanius Gate, the Legio Tempestus cast down the great lightning-marked door, and Irvin Ruel’s tank companies thundered over the threshold. Gliding in above them came Stormbirds, and no ordinary Stormbirds at that. These were Maahres-pattern gunships, adapted from the vast Apophis template on Nox and fitted with even more punishing weaponry. The Abyssii had designed them for the master of the V^th Legion, and sure enough it was Alexandros and his chosen companies who rode them into battle.

At each gate, the Loyalists’ most redoubtable elements had been placed at the fore. Squadrons of Proteus and Achilles pattern Land Raiders and Spartans rumbled behind siege tanks, Leviathan and Deredeo Dreadnoughts striding with them. The Mechanicum forces called upon the most robust automata at their disposal; Castellax, Cataphracts and Colossi in the main. Here and there were rarer, more advanced machines. Domitar robots formed spearheads for melee combat, while the monstrous Thanatar towered over their compatriots. Still larger loomed Knights and Titans; so high were the arches of the greatest gates that Warlords could pass underneath them.

Taghmata stood ready to halt the Loyalists, among them the surviving Traitor Titans and Knights, arrayed on the greatest of the city's concourses. Yet the Loyalists’ strength was the greater, and their fire raked across the inner defences. Within an hour, whole blocks around the gates had been levelled. Skitarii and other machine soldiers simply ceased to exist, their remains lost in the dust of ferrocrete and stone. Knights and Titans collapsed on splintered limbs. But on came strange war machines, many of which bore no resemblance to any yet encountered, and here the Loyalist Knights and Titans found a sterner test. At the Galvanius Gate a swarm of insectile machines, moving at implausible speed and bearing energy weapons of fiendish power, cut off several companies of Halcyon Wardens. Laying waste several Rhino squadrons, they would have massacred the Astartes had the Knights of Zivich not intervened and destroyed them in a hard-fought melee.

To give a blow-by-blow account of the battle within the walls is to court futility, for in truth it was a war in its own right. For a week the Loyalists fought their way deeper into the Grand Mountain and destroyed all the enemies they found there, but faced an unforgiving struggle. Kelbor Hal marshalled his remaining forces to hold back his foes, the last of his elite Skitarii among them, and even the forge-thralls of the city were compelled to fight via their electoo implants. Many of the Army units found themselves occupied with fending off the hordes that resulted, and the corpses piled in the streets. Servitors prowled behind the Loyalist advance, gathering Loyalist corpses for cremation and those of Traitors, willing and enslaved alike, for processing.

The Astartes were just the tip of the spear once the gates were taken, vastly outnumbered by the Skitarii and mortal soldiers who fought alongside them. Against the garrison of the Fabricator-General, now augmented by Kelbor Hal’s tech-heresies, the brave men and women of the Excertus Imperialis suffered greatly, the death toll running into the hundreds of thousands in the first three days. But the momentum was with them, and street by street, chamber by chamber, the city was swept clean. Urtzi Malevolus was slain on the second day, his personal hangar torched by Fire Raptors and the Heretek incinerated by X^th Legion Terminators.

Kelbor Hal watched as his dominion crumbled away, the soldiers of the hated Warmaster and his own erstwhile vassals cutting down his guards, and knew he must flee or perish. With the Loyalists snapping at his heels, he fled with the Eagle Warriors and magi of Cognis to a concealed hangar in the bowels of the city. Icarion, after the debacle over Madrigal, had known of this possibility and dispatched a series of vessels to evacuate him. Most of these were intercepted and destroyed before they even arrived, but a Grave Stalkers vessel, a strike cruiser named the Subtle Knife, successfully made its way to the Sol System.

By the strange and sinister arts of Lasaris, it escaped detection until it drew near to the Red World on the fifth day of the battle, and made its presence known to the hereteks. Several squads of Eagle Warriors mounted a rearguard action along with the Cognis Skitarii and robots accompanying them. Assailed by Mortera’s elite Myrmidons they were slain to a man, but their purpose was achieved. Kelbor Hal and a clutch of his surviving cronies fled the surface along with the Abysii, dozens of craft spending themselves to enable the escape. The Subtle Knife took in the escapees before any Loyalist vessel could intercept them, and though the Fire Keepers cruiser Wrath of Aldimach gouged its armour and blasted one of its spinal towers to smithereens, it slipped the net and fled the system.

With Olympus Mons in their grasp but denied their prey, Alexandros, Niklaas and Mortera scoured the Grand Mountain from peak to roots over a week after the battle. Kelbor Hal had covered his tracks with suicide parties of Skitarii, automata and thralls, along with traps which would require the attention of techmarines and magi to disarm. The purge of Mars itself would take much longer, but the Traitors’ hold over the world was gone and the Sol System secured. 

[bluntblade]

The Red Dust Settles
Kelbor-Hal arrived in Icarion’s realm with his authority greatly diminished, but not reduced utterly. Certainly at this stage no rival to his power existed within the Mechanicum sects pledged to the Stormlord, and the dread authority of the Fabricator General was not easily negated. Kelbor-Hal turned his brilliance and adamantine will to shoring up his position without delay. Seeking a new base of operations from which to do this, close to the centre of Icarion’s power, he alighted on Hatross.

Hatross was one of the most industrious Forge Worlds close to Madrigal, and certainly the most militant. Moreover, it was allied with the Fire Keepers and had supplied the Halcyon Wardens in the past. It is likely that, even with such stunted emotions as his augmetics left him, Kelbor-Hal viewed the magi of Hatross with loathing and relished the chance to wreak some measure of vengeance upon the Warmaster and the Steel Prince. While Icarion’s forces had blockaded the world until this stage, now Kelbor-Hal mustered an invasion force from the taghmata of several Forge Worlds and his surviving followers, and launched an all-out assault upon the world. The defenders of Hatross, including a garrison of Fire Keepers and Halcyon Wardens, were butchered, their sect's surviving works turned to the cruel purposes of Kelbor-Hal.

While none yet challenged Kelbor-Hal’s primacy, there were those who took note, and began to scheme. Certainly several factions escalated their work with a newfound zeal, foremost among them Xana and Cognis. Freed from many of the constraints their Loyalist counterparts continued to toil under, Icarion’s allies delved headlong into forbidden sciences, many senior adepts driven by personal and factional ambition as much as they were by religious fervour or scientific curiosity. For the cunning, powerful and well-connected, disorder was a ladder, and untold power beckoned from the top.

Not that there were no disincentives at this time. While the Cognis delegation and their Eagle Warrior escorts had successfully fled Olympus Mons with what little of Moravec's artifacts they could spirit away, they were soon held to account by no other than Icarion Anasen himself. It seems that the carnage unleashed on Mars went far beyond the Stormborn's intentions. The Cognis’ actions placed them under suspicion of being influenced by powers Icarion would have no truck with. These events and suspicions would undermine the relationship between Icarion and the Archmagos Xander for years.

Soon enough a message was sent to the Stormlord, stating that the delegation would be summarily turned over to him for judgment, along with countless platitudes regarding the catastrophic mishap that had occurred. Not long after another correspondence was exchanged in which Icarion accepted Xander's apologies, sentenced the involved priests to execution, and retracted his sanction for any further use of scrapcode weaponry. Throughout all these communications, the seized records hold no mention of any devices retrieved from the Vault of Moravec, despite numerous pict-captures that show the renegade tech-priests escaping with an assortment of small and well secured storage units.

The victorious Loyalists had much to attend to on the Red World. Mars was placed under the control of a diumvirate of Zagreus Kane, the most senior of the loyal magos to survive the Schism, and Mortera. The representatives of other Forge Worlds did not presume to challenge her, for the Abyssii had spent far more blood and treasure in the campaign than any other sect not of Mars. However, the rest did each lay claim to territories which had formerly lain in Traitor hands. Under the oversight of Mortera and Kane, Mars returned to productivity, though it was severely diminished. While great effort and vast resources were expended to restore what had been lost, many works such as Zeth’s Akashic Reader could not be repaired or replicated. The sheer extent of prototype or relic technologies lost forever is long enough that no serious attempt has been made to catalogue them.

Shipments of raw materials, held back for up to half a Terran year if they had not been directed elsewhere, were renewed, transports flooding the Martian skies. Forge cities, depopulated by collateral damage and the Traitors’ desperate shoring of their armies, were filled with imported labour. Already the Insurrection had produced billions of refugees, and even a lifetime of toil on the Red World could be a more attractive prospect that a dislocated and uncertain existence. Still, it would be the work of several years to replace that lost manpower, even with nearby forge worlds contributing millions of their own surplus thralls and later on with prisoners of war added to the influx. The Red World’s restoration would only be achieved at the price of great hardship.

Mars had been dragged back into the fold, denying its produce to the enemy and ensuring that the core system of the Imperium remained whole. A leading Insurrectionist had suffered a very public disgrace into the bargain, and a much-needed, prominent victory had been won by the Emperor’s servants. The Loyalists had little reason to celebrate, however, as they counted the cost and viewed events beyond the Sol System. For while the Imperium’s heart and the surrounding Segmentum were secure, events elsewhere threatened to overwhelm the Warmaster’s forces.

Even considering that Mars was the first Forge World whose surface I had walked, as a lowly sergeant and then newly made captain, Olympus Mons was a revelation which precious few sights have since eclipsed. Knights and Titans, which I have seen dominate the vista in so many urban warzones, were dwarfed by the architecture. So vast was the Temple of All-Knowledge that we could not discern its true shape in the dark, though its shields blazed under our bombardments and fires lit it from below.

I am an Angel of Death, wrought into a weapon of war and baptised in the Koloss Syntheticide; I am no stranger to bloodshed on a grand scale. But the Grand Mountain was something else entirely, even if now it seems only a portent of what was the come. Space Marine, automaton and Skitarius slew each other. Mortal soldiers perished by the thousand when radiation or poison gas flooded a zone.

Kelbor Hal sent his slaves against us, where our Seekers had not managed to disrupt the electoo relays. Words fail to describe the perversity of that act, forcing us to turn our guns upon men and women who fought with bare hands and crude tools. Human beings were stripped of all reason and self-preservation, throwing themselves at us to clog chainswords with blood and meat. They ran straight into our volleys, never once flinching as our guns roared. What was left, scraps of clothing and flesh, fluttered like leaves cast into the air. I saw three Stormlord tanks of the Zanskat Guard unload their mega-bolters into one such mob, and nothing remained but red mist.

By the time we reached the Temple, my Century contained fewer than a third of the men who were there at the start. I remained Centurion, but we had been recombined with two other shattered Centuries. The systematic element to Imperial warfare never abated, our commanders working throughout the fighting to ensure our efficiency and cohesion. Against the debased Martian Mechanicum, we could not afford to fall short.

The forces of a taghmata are so varied as to be bewildering, even under the most conservative magos, and of course the Traitors went far beyond the usual bounds. AI constructs the size of tanks, automata of strange and murderous designs, conjoined combat servitors, we faced all these and more. If not for the presence of the Abyssii and, above all, the Primarchs, we would have broken ourselves in the process of driving the heretics out.

We violated a great many of the informal codes regarding taking the weapons of foes. When Seleucus and I made our stand against the Ruststalker clades, back to back beneath the Arch of Reason, I fought with a Skitarii sword claimed on the Mariner Plain, Seleucus with an Arc Maul and his gladius. Just as our superiors laboured to ensure they had coherent bodies of men to fight with, we replaced broken blades and empty magazines with war spoil rather than resort to our supply chains. Techmarines salvaged and repurposed any tank or heavy weapon they could; by the end we had several Dreadnoughts armed with Castellax claws and grav-hammers. So strait were the conditions that any weapon that could be used without fear of outright heresy was swiftly put to use.

And yet we may now look back on this enormity as a time of relative innocence, when the true face of our greatest enemy was veiled, when the greatest blasphemies of the renegade Mechanicum were unborn. But even as my fleet prepares to light the skies of Anvilus with scourging flame, I know that the contagion is, at root, the one we tried and failed to stamp out on Mars.

Excerpt from the Account of Legate Akylles, generously donated to our order

[simison]

The campaign fluff alone comes to 17,700 words. *glares at Blunt*

 

For the Anthology, we have Children of the Destroyer God (by Blunt at 4,500 words), Requiem of Legio Mortis (by me and can either be the short version at 300 words or the full version at 1,600 words), Temper your Pride... (by Talonair at 660 words)

 

At maximum length, this is a combination of 24,460 words, just on the edge of being too much. I'd be more than happy to use the shortened version of Requiem, which brings it back to a more reasonable 23,160 words. I'd actually prefer the last 800 words be used for snapshots that feature stories not including the Primarchs and Astartes. The only exception I might consider is Talon's idea of a vortex grenade being used on the infamous Vault. 

 

EDIT: Actually, this does not include any of Talon's work on the attempted assassination of Mortera, but that's unfinished at this time.

 

Finally, I want a roll call of involved Factions. All involved Factions will get additional slots for rules. From a scan, I'm seeing the Abyssii, the Cognis, maybe Hal's faction if that's still happening, the Halcyon Wardens, the Fire Keepers, and the Eagle Warriors. 

 

 

Black Book Readiness Status

 

BL Fluff Segment (12k words)

Anthology: 30% - Unknown

FW Fluff Segment (12k words)

Campaign Fluff: 30% - Complete

Crunch

Campaign Crunch: 20% - N/A

Faction New Rules: 20% - N/A

 

Total - 30%

[bluntblade]

Then let's just put out the campaign stuff here, I suggest

[Doctor Perils]

Can you include a bulletpoint list of Who, and What, and Where and When in the first post please?

[Kelborn]

That would be recommandable for all black books. That way, one does have a better overview of what's going on.

 

I, for example, don't have a clue except for Mechanicum civil war.

[Doctor Perils]

That would be recommandable for all black books. That way, one does have a better overview of what's going on.

 

I, for example, don't have a clue except for Mechanicum civil war.

And I'm not even sure that one's up to date

[bluntblade]

I've appended one to this thread's first post.

[simison]

Since when were the Grave Stalkers involved? 

[Beren]

They exfiltrate the Eagle Warriors/Cognis/Kelbor Hal I think.

[simison]

I see that. Guess I was thinking of factions that would get rules, and Blunt seems to be going by a different definition.

[bluntblade]

I went by who was most plausible to extract Kelbor Hal. This is old fluff, something like a year old.

[simison]

I went by who was most plausible to extract Kelbor Hal. This is old fluff, something like a year old.

 

My issue isn't that the Grave Stalkers did the extraction. My issue was that you seemed to be suggesting that the Grave Stalkers be given rule slots for a cameo. That was at the heart of my misunderstanding.

[bluntblade]

Not at all.

[bluntblade]

Right, I still need to work the Legio Auris in more, and properly add Contego.