Warzone Toring
'Steel Legion of Armageddon? Never heard of them. Hivers they are, you say? Well, get them out of their Chimeras and assign them to sector B34. Yeah, I know it's a death-trap swarming with Partisan forces. But it's an Underhive death trap swarming with Partisan forces. They should feel right at home.'
[//General Dir Trevor+].
The Toring Reliquaries
Those enacting an Edict of Eradication have the power to destroy anything and everything within their remit. It is a power granted with much expectation and little leeway. Agents who are found to have spared too much by applying the Edict too conservatively will find themselves included in the Edict's bounds – and destroyed by other, less squeamish or sentimental agents.
For this reason, the Edict enacted by Inquisitorial Master Osric Domalde of the Ordo Redactus was hugely successful in removing even minor traces of the War of the False Primarch. Even the fragmentary evidence we do have is likely to reflect genuine oversights rather than intentional exclusion. The Toring Reliquaries – a series of small vaults on the Civilised world of Toring Quaternary are an exception to this.
The iron-hard earth of the planet prevented all but professional excavation, and so small memorial-vault shrines were set up each settlement (or each street, in the larger cities). Common to the Imperial Cult strictures on the planet, tokens of the dead were interred in place of bodily inhumation, giving relicts and mourners a focal point for their grievance.
Critically to our investigation, the shrines were used during the War – both as dead letter boxes for the Partisans, and for their intended purpose as memorial shrines by the soldiers that fought and died around them.
The War of the False Primarch was followed by a power struggle within the High Lords, with the Ecclesiarchy exerting its political strength against the Inquisition. For this reason, the religious sites within Sector Morqub are amongst the best sites for finding tantalising hints of the War, as the priests of the Ecclesiarchy opposed or reduced the Inquisition's ability to access areas and vaults belonging to the Imperial Cult; claiming that they would clean their own houses, or that the taint of the turncoat and heretic Morgetheon must be excoriated by his righteous successors, not another party.
While the contents of the Toring Reliquaries were not excepted from the Redaction teams' works, the shrines themselves were not – and as a result, the fluted and complex designs came to reveal a number of fragments and ephemera behind shelving or vaults that were missed. In an incongruous turn of events, then, it was the Ecclesiarchy itself – hugely opposed to the idea that the 'Primarch' was genuine – that unwittingly left us with the largest pool of reference.
***
Humanity at odds
While the glamorous and terrifying Chapters Astartes and world-bestriding Titan Legions often fought the most eye-catching and critical battles in the name of the Primarch – or opposing his relentless advance – the thousands of Imperial Guard regiments that fought on both sides are easily overlooked. The Toring Reliquaries throw light on the oft-missed mass of humanity that fought during the War.
A Civilised world in a minor system that had the misfortune of being near the Corewards extent of Sector Morqub, Toring was a stepping stone from Sector Heliopolis into the Delphurnean League. The Extinction fleets swept over the planet and invaded, resisted by dozens of well-armed and equipped local Regiments. Hitherto largely apolitical, the planet declared for Volnoscere and the Partisan cause as a direct result of the invasion.
Forty Regiments of Imperial Guard loyal to the High Lords and Orthodoxy were reinforced by three of the Ecclesiarchy's irregulars, a cadre of the Frateris Templar, elite Ordo Stormtroopers and a handful of the Vigilants. This force was deployed in the initial assault; meeting staunch resistance from the Toring PDF, and allied Delphurnean League Levies, hurriedly shipped to the system ahead of invasion.
The fragments recovered from Warzone Toring – confused and sometimes contradictory – indicate a planet on which war smouldered for nearly the entire eight decades of the War; flaring up when one or the other side demanded a critical push, sent in additional reinforcements, or desperately retreated across this convenient staging post.
While specific records of the vast majority have been lost, some recovered mementoes of the war reveal a glimpse into the struggles and desperation of the normal men and women in the service of both sides. Their sacrifice and courage of those who fought – whether in the conventional warfare of the first invasions to the spiteful and pointless final campaigns, in which the gore-soaked, sleep-deprived and traumatised soldiery fought knee-deep in the dead – goes otherwise unrecorded.
***
The Ghouls
'For every battle honour, a thousand heroes die alone, unsung, and unremembered.'
[//Imperial Proverbs+]
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| [//17th Steel Legion, Armageddon Regiment+] [//@auxiliarymirelurk+] |
When the war of the false Primarch broke out, Armageddon was a relatively unimportant but upcoming Hive World in the distant Segmentum Solar. Settled scant centuries earlier, the battered planet's settlements had swiftly developed into hives and proto-hives under a wave of industrialisation. Feeling a patriotic and religious obligation to honour the High Lords' call, the ruling family of Van Straab saw a possibility to ingratiate themselves with the Senatorum Imperialis and sent several newly-founded regiments to partake in Master Enoch's Execution Armada.
One of these new foundings was the 17th Steel Legion, who were deployed to Warzone Toring, one of the dozens of minor systems that made up the Delphurnean League, under the protection of the Red Fish and Inheritors. Unprepared for the full onslaught of the war, these troops suffered massive losses. Those who survived quickly became hardened veterans, excelling in the gruelling art of city fighting and, later, during the Years of Sorrow, highly-valued urban Killteam-operatives.
The question of how they found the means to survive on Toring Quaternary, which was successfully blockaded for six months by the Partisans, was never adequately explained. The Edict of Obliteration means that even the rumours are long-since gone.
All that remains that allows even the minor account above are a single 'dog-tag' identification found strung around an Infantryman's journal within one of the Reliquaries – in the absence of grave markers, a common way for hiveworld soldiers to memorialise their fallen comrades was to bind their personal effects with one of their paired ID tags. Both the tag and the journal itself was heavily redacted; the name being struck out of the tag, and bold black bars obliterating the bulk of the text. However, a map pocket at the back was seemingly overlooked. Within this was found a picture of what has been posited to be the soldier's husband; and – more usefully to the investigation – a hand-written missive left by a Partisan. Presumably intended to be collected at a pre-arranged time, the note was either overlooked or the intended recipient proved unable to recover it.
Most of the letter is concerned with coded troop movements and plans, but a personal note at the end reveals a little of the regimental gossip and banter common to the Imperial Guard – amongst which is a fairly direct reference to the Armageddon 17th; suggesting that their nickname 'The Ghouls' was based on a kernel of truth – and inciting a curse on all the re-foundings of the 17th; that would see it whittled down to a mere desperate handful in penance for those foul deeds done by their forebears on that distant world.
***
Echoes of Toring
[//chronoident: #WarriorCowardice: Stage III of the War+]
[//locale-val={TORINGIV}=true+]
[//Belligerents: Partisan – Inheritors; Pentarchy – VAL-false; Ecclesiarchy Frateris Templar elites Val=TRUE+]
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| [//Inheritors Marine bearing an unidentified heavy weapon; non-STC+] [//lars_j-d/@lars.j.dahl+] |
"What is that?" Sergeant Karnam's customarily angry voice was tinged with confusion as he addressed brother Velibor. Only dust remained of the predator tank that had been advancing on their position.
"So much for a little gratitude." Velibor mumbled as he strode past Karnam, feeling the usual feeling of irritation beginning to rise. The small arms fire had dropped away after the shot, but las-rounds and scuttling noises began filtering back in.
"What. Is. That." the sergeant repeated, any hesitation lost.
"It's a weapon, sergeant. A gift." he answered, readjusting his massive shoulder cannon.
"A gift from whom?" Karnam hissed, "I have never seen a weapon with such horrifyingly destructive qualities".
Velibor glanced toward his brother. "The Wormwood Sons opened their black vault to me in gratitude; for me to continue to fight in the name of Solarion, our Chapter and Volnoscere. This adrathic dest–"
Karnam interrupted him, outraged by the revelation, "What in the name of the Seven Pillars, Velibor? That is forbidden archaeotech. You dishonour the Inheritors merely by touching so foul a tool".
Velibor's patience – never the most balanced – failed. He roared his defiance to the sergeant. "I am doing everything in my power to see us victorious, to see us and the cause survive the onslaught of the monster's of Terra. I'm not sure if you've noticed it, Karnam, but our Chapter is dying." He turned away. "It has been for months now. And I'm sure as hell not going to sit idly by and watch. I intend to fight with every iota of power I possess, using every tool at my disposal. I will not see us go quietly into the night, if that is our fate."
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| [//lars_j-d/@lars.j.dahl+] |
***
The Toring Crisis
Rengar, temporary capital of Toring IV and home to the Governor-in-Exile by the later stages of the war, had been a minor settlement during the first war. After the manufacturing districts of Priam and Osteos were devastated by the first invasion, Rengar was massively enlarged and substantially rebuilt with the support of Partisan forces, who by this point had temporarily wrested the bulk of the planet from Orthodox control.
Intended to provide arms and ammunition for the Partisans ahead of the Primarch's planned drive for Heliopolis, Rengar was an obvious target for the notorious Kill Teams of the Vigilants ahead of the Extinction Fleet's planned return. Hoping to spark a counter-insurgency from those Orthodox troops left stranded on the planet during the Third Retreat, the Ordo Astartes deployed more than a dozen Kill Teams to the planet during the Years of Sorrow.
This part of the ongoing war over Toring saw the last large-scale conventional battles of the war, with the planet's populated areas being reduced to little more than smouldering ruins within a decade.
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| [//A banner of Esquires from the 1st Royal Household Guard make their way through the rubble of Brideshead Palace, home of the Governor-in-exile+] [//marcus_h/@art_of_the_twist+] |
The pict-capture above reportedly shows Esquire Ingrem Utan and two other unidentified soldiers of the Lancaster Royal Guard. The Esquires saw some of the heaviest fighting during the Toring Crisis, their heavy armour and weaponry making them the best option for the hard-pressed Partisan forces to close with and counter-act the Vigilants who had claimed the Palace. Despite heavy casualties among his banner, Ingrem Utan would survive the Crisis and be knighted for his bravery.
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| [//Veteran Brother Arteus of the Astral Knights, serving the Vigilants of Ordo Astartes as part of Killteam Cast-fear. Pictured here during the brief but intense fighting of the Toring Crisis, holding off the enraged ground forces of House Lancaster assaulting the governor's palace of Toring IV.+] [//marcus_h/@art_of_the_twist+] |
***
'A warrior's faith in his commander is his best armour and his strongest weapon.'
[//Tactica Imperialis+]