Coldforge
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| [//edward_r/@death_of_a_rubricist+] |
'The tolling of the long clock will mark the outcome of the greater war, one way or another. Either the Primarch stands, or he falls. Coldforge is the next swing of the pendulum.'
'Five minutes to midnight'
[//Vamma Andreia Pushkin, High Lord of Terra+]
Summarium
The anvil upon which the Pentarchy Chapters were annealed, Coldforge is usually acknowledged as a key turning point in the war. The planet – a key regional Forgeworld – had remained nominally neutral, the official stance of all Adeptus Mechanicus facilities, as decreed by a Bull of the Fabricator-General, one of the High Lords of Terra.The manner in which Coldforge had pursued 'neutrality', however, owed rather more to the letter of the law than the spirit. The Magi of Coldforge eagerly courted representatives on both sides of the Imperium – Orthodox and Partisan alike – through the black and grey markets.
Their desire to play both sides off each other was a strategy that might have paid off – were it not for the system's critical location on the outskirts of the Myrean League.
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| [//Hand-edited transfermap highlighting Warzone: Coldforge+] |
The curious relationship between the Imperium and the Martian domains was, and remains, complex and shifting. The attitudes of the individual Forge worlds was inconsistent, varying hugely from one forge to another. In this, the empire-within-an-empire was not unusual, but such is humanity's reliance upon the descendants of Mars that these vagaries – excusable or ignorable in an Imperial world – had numerous knock-on effects.
In the case of Coldforge's willingness to supply both sides with the materiel demanded of it, this stubborn refusal to pick a side was to prove their downfall.
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| [//Polios {tithegrade=} Exactis Median+] |
Records suggest that at least three major wars were fought over Coldforge during the War of the False Primarch:
The first saw the Void Barons, Riven Lords, and Inheritors – later joined by the Iron Guard and a substantial Silver Stars presence – engage and drive off isolated garrisons of the Death Eagles and Charnel Guard and (rumour has it) Flesh Eaters.
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| [//Operational+] [//paul_h/@the_midnightmare+] |
The second, some five years later, saw the Star Wardens, Jade Talons and Silver Stars once more fighting the Death Eagles, this time joined by the resurgent Red Talons.
The final war saw the stretched Partisans attempting to hold Coldforge – by now virtually in ruins save for its principal manufactories, attacks upon which were pointedly avoided by both sides – in the face of a colossal Pentarchy army group made up once more of the Death Eagles, Red Talons and led by the Charnel Guard. Facing them were little more than strung-out Partisan survivors; a motley hotch-potch of warriors from the Riven Lords, Argent Heralds, Silver Stars, Star Wardens, Wormwood Sons. These were joined, at last, by the Storm Tyrants, as it became clear that Coldforge was the chosen foothold the Pentarchy desired for the assault on the Tyrants – and the False Primarch's – chosen ground of the Shieldworlds.
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| [//Vassily Kurnikov was in the forefront of the event's during the coldforge campaign. He led his group of Orthodox Ecclesiarchical fanatics in the immediate wake of the spearhead formations of the Charnel Guard to cleanse the heretics and unbelievers.+] [//@farnessbeta+] |
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| [//"Conspicuous in their absence during the opening acts of the War for Coldforge in M33 during the aforementioned War of the +REDACTED+ , the Marines Saturnine nonetheless made their presence on the beleaguered Forgeworld known as the conflict heated up. Whilst largely engaging in fleet actions above the planets surface in an attempt to gain Partizan supremacy, they also sent a token offering of Astartes planetside to assist the Silver Stars in their gambit."+] [//@ghostys_neon_rust+] |
'Irresistible force. Immovable object.'
[//ident unconfirmed+]
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