Warzone: Krot – The Devouring
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| [//Gyrwein: Harrower: Gilded Hand+] [//@thrones_arcane+] |
‘Hennox failed, so did the Gilded Hand.
We have come, we will fill your mountains with the dead. Your hills, your trenches, and your bunkers will be filled with people slaughtered by the sword.
We will make you desolate forever. Your cities will never be rebuilt, Your armies never remade. Then you shall know us.
Do not be afraid. We are peace; We are salvation.
You called to us, and we came.’
[//First Headsman Almeer Shang. Star Wardens Chapter.+]
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Précis
[//identfile=Warzone Krot+]
[//Princip. belligerents={Pentarchy}//] + Orthodox Imperial Guard: ca. fifteen Regiments + + Orthodox Planetary Defence Force: equiv. 2 Regts.+ +Flesh Eaters: ca. two understrength Companies; Voivode Ukadir named – incerto. theatre commander[?]+ +Vigilant Killteams: Highbreed, Judgement + +poss. Death Eagles II+
[//Princip. belligerents={Partisan}//] +Star Wardens+
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| [//Star Warden bearing the markings of the Red Right Hand sub-sect.+] [//dan_j/@dark_isles+] |
The records of Krot are peculiar for their completeness – bar the location of the supposed planet.
Beyond this crucial lapse, the record is astonishing. Rather than being the pieced-together scraps of sundry sources as is typical of the War of the False Primarch, the following notes were recovered and decoded from the Watchment – a peculiar regional group whose activities have long been under the auspices of the Ordo Pacificus, if not their control. Their agents seemingly specialise in stalk/elicitation/redaction missions profiles, though owing to their secretive nature, much is classified. That this strange record of Krot was recovered – intact and seemingly without conflict – is testament to the thoroughly peculiar nature of their skillset.
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| [//Unconfirmed pict-ident of Watchment agents+] [//dom_g/@baron_filth] |
The record dates the battle to M40; and it is this simple asynchronous quality that may have spared it from redaction. Its existence represents a rare slip-up by the Ordo Redactus – or perhaps, owing to a number of jarring contradictions with other records of the Star Wardens, an intentional plant intended to throw researchers off the scent of this forbidden war.
Calm
Inactive during much of the earliest actions of the war – supposedly owing to the Chapter's engagement in a xenocidal action in the Heliopolis region – Krot marked the Star Warden's most aggressive campaign of aggression to date in the war. So successful was their attack that it would infamously come to be whispered of darkly as 'The Devouring' amongst the Orthodoxy.
Freshly resupplied from Coldforge, First Captain [//honorifval=TRUE: 'First Headsman'+] Almeer Shang gathered a flotilla of eight vessels to form a large-scale raid on the Pentarchy stronghold of Krot. This aggressive push into Pentarchy territory triggered a ‘reshuffling’ of officers within the Chapter down to a squad level.
What allowed this pooling of the Star Wardens' usually fractured war-groups remains unclear, and a point of contention amongst researchers. The most likely explanation seems to have been the identification of the Caputmori lost to the Pentarchy during the invasion of Neo Jove – the so-called War of Broken Bones. Inter-Partisan communications between the Star Wardens' high command and elements of the Firebreak Chapter’s leadership was high during this period, perhaps linking the two.
Another theory suggests that the death of former Chapter Master Argo Jext’ar on Moreaumunda finally caused the long-festering divisions in the Chapter psyche to come to a head. His heir apparent, First Headsman Shang, was reputed to have adopted the title Chapter Master almost immediately, but refused to don the title of ‘Lord Harrower’ – a refusal which deeply offended those who followed the late Argo’s notably (and inexplicably) rigid and conservative teachings.
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| [//Almeer Shang+] [//dan_j/@dark_isles+] |
Under the command of Shang, a markedly bellicose veteran, perhaps it is no surprise that the Star Wardens' resources were pooled and immediately sent into fresh campaigns of wholesale barbarity.
***
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| [//Star Wardens, hesitantly identified as members of the 1st Cadre ‘The Red Right Hand’, advance through haphazardly-manned defensive positions toward Flesh Eater positions.+] [//dan_j/@dark_isles+] |
Initial contact was recorded locally at sidereal 02:32, when the moon's O.O.R.A [//Orbital Observation-Response Automata’+] detected a foreign void vessel – later identified as the Battle Barge Silent Disregard – entering low orbit.
Immediately after detecting the vessel, O.O.R.A sent a number of distress pulses across Krot’s military installations. These were short-lived, owing to an immediate bombardment which reduced much of the O.O.R.A primary installation to smouldering rubble. Following the first bombardments, a number of other military ‘hardpoints’ sent out similar distress signals. Alas – by this point Star Warden warships had dispersed across the moon of Krot and had begun a series of bombardments which continuously hammered Pentarchy elements for a recorded three hours.
During these bombardments a number of pict-feeds positively identify Star Wardens deploying en-masse via Stormbirds in addition to large scale deployments of Javelin attack speeders at the boundaries of hardpoint anti-air batteries. As a noose of steel was draped across the world all communications to off-planet elements of the Pentarchy was severed.
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| [//'If violence be not the answer, you are not applying sufficient violence.' Imperial Axioms, vol IV +] [//chris_b/@chrisbuxey+] |
‘The Flesh Eaters, godlings they are, sobepraised – played right into the hands of the traitor scum. Throne forgive me, but I speak true. They abandoned our earthworks, redeployed under that hell-rain of missiles. I’ve never seen anything like it. They charged right into the teeth of the Partisans.
I watched three squads, three full squads – bolters primed and blades whirring, ready to kill, mean as yer’ like.
An' then they just…
[//Subject gesticulates//]
Disappear.’
***
Strangling
Krot had minimal ‘stopping power’ in terms of military presence. Much of the moon’s defence force was mortal auxiliary forces, comprising some seventeen battalions of soldiers, arms, and armaments under no single centralised command. The near-total loss, therefore, of the Flesh Eaters in the opening hours of the conflict was a devastating blow to both the military capacity and morale of the mortal soldiers who remained. No doubt it is this that caused severe dissonance within Krot’s Planetary Defence Force as they attempted to revive neglected command networks.
Two of these auxiliary forces gained a well deserved fame during the massacre-war of Krot, the 342nd Tsarum Lances and the 888th Cthodan High-guard. The former was a largely mechanised infantry force sourced from a formerly powerful system of industrial-moons. The latter, however, was an elite regiment of mysterious provenance, sourced from the distant and largely undocumented Cthodan-Abyss. The soldiers of the 888th are mind-shackled transhumans; rarely, if ever, seen apart from their House Methuselahn navigator handlers.
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| [//Cthodan 888th+] [//dan_j/@dark_isles+] |
Both of these regiments fought valiantly and with tenacity rarely seen in Imperial Guard regiments in the face of such calamitous circumstance. Both were to prove integral to the stalling of Partisan forces.
For the duration of the conflict, the Tsarum Lances provided indispensable armoured support all across Krot and often proved themselves a match for Astartes tankers – though robbed of orbital supremacy, they were to fall victim to the Partisan’s air support and fast-moving Astartes heavy support teams. The Cthodan High-guard served in a much more subtle capacity; assassinating Partisan officers, scuttling resources deemed too important or sensitive to fall into Partisan hands, and escorting a number of unidentified Imperial officials off-world.
While the Star Wardens were to suffer a number of setbacks – notably the reappearance of the Flesh Eater Voivode Ukadir, and his subsequent rallying of a significant counter-force – none were to prove fatal to their plans. In hindsight one can appreciate the subtle but unmistakable strength of the Wardens' method of war: by successively and rapidly redeploying their idiosyncratic ‘Dread Squads’ during the conflict, they were able to encircle and destroy pockets of resistance before they could become established. Secondly, their heavy use of attack speeders – a Chapter specialism born of their void war experience – was crucial in rebuffing any relief elements or communication attempts between the hard-pressed defenders.
As the Partisans pressed onward with their cold, practised, and insidious methodology, the defenders – despite outnumbering the Wardens handily – were thus efficiently isolated and given the impression of being alone and without hope of relief. In such circumstances, it is perhaps no wonder that the nerve of the defenders was tested to its limits, and finally broke, with predictably disastrous results.
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| [//Rom] [//dan_j/@dark_isles+] |
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The wall exploded, rubble and dust filled the air. A shape skidded to a halt, legs splayed and a bolter held level and low. The grenadiers scattered into a loose firing line, firing through the dust at the shape. Panic and chaos reigned.
Rom returned fire, bolter kicking wildly as he turned the chamber into an abattoir. For soft targets such as mortal soldiers, fully automatic bolter fire was comically inefficient. Rom didn't care. Rom lived for the carnage.
The madness was over in a moment, Rom breathed deeply, closing his eyes to better savour the death-silence. His breathing was measured, but his rebreather rendered it an ugly animalistic growl. Another shape entered through the breach behind him, one of Rom's kin.
'You sound tired, old man.' the bloodbrother japed.
Rom opened his eyes and straightened himself out with a grunt. He ejected the magazine from his bolter, letting it clatter to the floor before kicking it aside. He turned to face his kinsman. The bloodbrother wasn't wrong. Rom was old, his face cadaverous, pitch-black eyes sunken and ringed by deep purple hues. His flesh was void-pale; the only suggestion blood flowed beneath were the angry red rashes around his augmetics.
He was testament to transhuman life spent fighting in the bloodiest hell-conflicts a cruel universe could devise; enforcing the bleakest punishments the Imperium had writ to order, on ever-bleaker campaigns.
Rom was old, but he was also an eager and well-versed killer.
'My knees ache and my blood doesn't sing like it used to,' Rom said drily, whilst slotting home a fresh magazine into his bolter. 'Perhaps I am gettin' too old for it.'
Rom's face didn't move, but his tone was playful. The bloodbrother tittered as he passed the veteran, patting on his heart.
'Come on then ol' man, lets get back to it.'
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Devouring
It is with the deepest chagrin that the mortal defenders of Krot saw the product of the Flesh Eaters' fateful decision to sally forth. [They were] unable to withstand the hell-storm of sub-orbital bombardment, slaughter of their kinsmen, and inability of their mortal allies to hold ground.
[//Hykin; Watchment Assessor-luminary+]
Key to the Orthodox defeat was the supposed actions of the Flesh Eaters. The records suggest that the Flesh Eaters garrison 'charged forward with reckless abandon into the jaws of the Red Right Hand [the Star Wardens]'. Such forlorn hope tactics are not unknown amongst the Adeptus Astartes – and particularly the likes of the Flesh Eaters – but we perhaps ought to take this statement cum grano salis. Ukadir, seemingly the Flesh Eaters' local garrison commander, was an experienced veteran and not given to high-risk strategies – and so his being gulled into an obvious feint and ambush seems out of character.
War, of course, brings forth strange traits in its children.
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| [//unidentified Star Warden patrol; Dolmen Abyss-theatre. +] [//dan_j/@dark_isles+] |
Flesh and steel
If we are to take the record at face value, it is unsurprising that this counter-assault played out to the Wardens’ advantage. Their front splitting open, the black-armoured warriors ‘swallowed the Flesh Eater counterattack whole’.
Valiant, but ill-equipped to deal with the weight of arms the Partisans brought to bear, the Flesh Eaters soon found themselves fighting a bloody fight of survival. There was no drawn-out battle of attrition here, and within minutes it became a matter for both sides to find cover, fire one's weapon until it ran dry, then launch into the inevitable melee combat.
Both Wardens and Eaters fought with a violence becoming their reputation. The former stormed trenches in large twenty-man squads; carving, bludgeoning, and gunning down the foe, meeting the fury of the sons of Sanguinius with cold frenzy.
Numbers would tell, as would the Flesh Eaters’ comparative lack of experience – for the garrison was largely made up of newly-created warriors. Deadly; but unproven.
As their numbers dwindled, the Orthodox bunkers and fortifications began to be battered by volleys from Devastator and support squads that had taken advantage of the close-in fighting to infiltrate behind the reaving lines of the Flesh Eaters. Fire engulfed the corridors and passages, incinerating the quailing Orthodox Guardsmen still holding their ground in the trench-complex.
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| [//‘Explosive hull decompression sounds the same in any language.’ - Brother Oram, Assault Marine+] [//chris_b/@chrisbuxey+] |
Martial virtues: the Star Wardens’ way of war
The true show of Star Warden ingenuity and tactical finesse came to pass after their initial pushes towards Krot’s primary military installation. Some hours after the bulk of the Flesh Eaters force had been defeated, Voivode Ukadir mustered his scant few reserves alongside two Tsarum Lances tank Companies and the bulk of their accompanying Grenadier Regiment to form a force capable of counter-attacking the fierce Partisan advance.
Apparently undetected as the fast-moving Star Wardens pushed through, Voivode Ukadir and his assault squadrons' counter-attack resulted in the Partisan frontline shattering – though not as one might have imagined. Rather than attempting to hold the ground only recently won, the Partisan line turned about unbound by formation. While some formed into large blocks of infantry and attempted to dig in and hold ground, a substantial proportion of the larger Star Warden formations broke into teams of as few as two Astartes and seemingly disappeared amidst the chaos of battle, making the battle devolve into a mass of struggling knots almost impossible for the unenhanced soldiers to adapt to.
The crucial element of the Star Wardens’ tactical package, however, was the continuous strafing and harrying of Orthodox formations by attack speeders and Fire Raptor gunships. Unable to cope with the unpredictablity and apparent unbiquity of the reaving forces of the Star Wardens, whose formations shifted erratically during the engagement, the Flesh Eaters' valiant counter-attack failed and Voivode Ukadir slain – though not without causing a respectable tally of losses to the black-armoured invaders.
***
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| [//Ancient Amok, the Radicant. +] [//@thrones_arcane+] |
A fractured mirror
If it were only in providing intelligence on the Wardens’ strategies, the Watchment’s reportage would still be valuable. However, most curiously of all, the Watchment file also reports that Star Wardens were seen firing on their own; a development that would prove crucial to their eventual undoing, and arguably, that of the Partisan cause more generally.
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| [//ident: Battle Chaplain Erisor Rohaan+] [//sean_d/@monstrasumus+] |
[//BEGIN-PLAYBACK/+]
[//AUDIO_TRANSCRIPT_SPOOLING/+]
[//REDACTION_ROUTINE_INITIALISING/+]
‘Artillery had reduced the bunker to a basin of debris and mud. The slain ground into the slurry; Flesh Eaters stood their ground among their dead. The Star Wardens descend upon the crater, bolters slung, blades and axes high.
The lead Warden [//Query; Officer_Identity?/+] is clad in MKIII Ferrum pattern plate, visuals suggest artificer-modification.
“████████████████████████”
The lead Warden holds a █████████ pattern Chainglaive.
Approximately ten Star Wardens are seen descending into the crater. All of whom are noted clad in heavily modified MKVI ‘Maximus’ pattern plate [//ident{TRUE}; MKVI Corvus plate? Coldforge pattern/+]
Of the initial number of Flesh Eaters enumerated at around nine [//Query; Unit_volume_numeral?/+] four are slain immediately.
A series of protracted melee combats ensue after the initial shock of the assault. █ of the Star Wardens simply move to the rim of the crater taking up firing positions - others stand idle to watch the remaining bouts.
Aforementioned lead Warden [//Query; Officer_Indentity?/+] slays █ of remaining combatants.
Partisan squad regroups and rapidly moves on from pict-feed range.’
[//END-PLAYBACK/+]
[//AUDIO_TRANSCRIPT_COMPLETE/+]
[//REDACTION_ROUTINE_COMPLETE/+]
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The ‘Red Right Hand’ – the First Cadre, and Shang’s most loyal – had little need for overt displays of cruelty to instil fear in their opposition. Echoes of the living hell which spread through the fortifications drove many mortal defenders to end their lives cleanly. Over the following days, suicide rates and desertion skyrocketed exponentially. Unremarkable by the standards of the first Cadre, such was their reputation for violence; yet the madness spread in the wake of their assault seemed to fuel the cadre to ever-greater feats of degenerate, hateful, and singularly sadistic barbarity.
Chroniclers disagree on whether this violence was fuelled by a desire to ‘redeem’ their chapter from the shame of losing their fabled Golden Caputmori. While surface investigations favour this clean, reductive argument – caricaturing the Star Wardens as deluded fanatics more concerned with their image in the eyes of their False Primarch – another theory, posited by Cassar Illiatauri, suggests that even at this comparatively early stage of the war, the loss of Argo had created an irreparable division in the Chapter: philosophical, martial and terminal.
His writings indicate that First Headsman Shang and his kinmen were venting the discontent and rage that had long built under the surface of the seemingly-unified Chapter that had hailed the return of 'their Father'. The death of the stabilising former Lord-Harrower had released a long-suppressed streak of dissonance in the mustering centres of the Wardens. The division of the 'Scarlet-handed', and 'Gilded-arm' Astartes within the Chapter widened ever-further.
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| [//Adored by the Star Wardens' mortal allies and detested by the forces of of the Pentarchy. Multiple pict sources and interrogation transcripts show Volk treating mortal allies while under fire, earning him heroic status amongst the mortal dregs fighting for the abomination. Amongst the true and faithful Volk had a different reputation. He was marked as a magenta level target during the conflict, due to multiple accounts of Volk harvesting and consuming the geneseed from multiple loyal Astartes while they lay dieing – an indication, were any needed, that the Gilded Arm were as vicious as those of the Scarlet-Hands. +] [//james/@inky.beard+] |
Of the six-hundred Star Wardens who landed upon Krot, casualty rates can be loosely estimated at around thirty-five percent, with a wide margin of error, largely on account of the indiscriminate property damage meted out by both aggressors and defenders. Hidden within this statistic, however, is another more sinister pattern: for of the two hundred or so fatalities, the vast majority were those bearing the post-Volnoscere ‘Gilded-Arm’, or hybrids of the aforementioned livery and the pre-war ‘Scarlet-Hand’ livery. In short, all those loyal to the vision of Argo; and philosophically opposed to Shang.
***
The warriors stood in silence, the sky was a haze of dark ash and smoke. The light of stars smothered in the miasma, only the pin-pricks of light produced by low flying gunships and sub-orbital battle barges pierced through the veil. The muster yard was on fire, the defenders slain, rockcrete walls felled, and towers finally crumbling. The barbarians who put this moon to the torch remained, unaware or uncaring of the carnage around them. A single figure stood at their head, Almeer Shang.
At either side of his grim figure were shapes of astartes, prostrated in the filth. Alive, yet face down in the layers of ash and viscera. Their helmets had been removed, confusion and a deep agony burned through the dark and uniquely gaunt features of their gene-provenance. Ahead of the warriors, Shang, and the accompanying prostrated warriors a bulkhead of plasteel sat deformed and steaming.
From the cavernous interior another Astartes stepped out, unremarkable save for his raised arm. The bounty of their plunder was revealed; The Golden Caputmori.
“The treasure you so desperately sought, Kinsmen.” Shang spoke with a balanced malice in his voice, only further enhanced by the rebreather fused to his jaw.
“Tell me, was this trinket – bribe – worth the lives of your brethren? How many might you have allowed to perish on this wretched moon to retrieve it?”
The prostrated Astartes to Shang’s left bared his teeth and clenched a gilded gauntlet. “Have you no shame?”
“None.”
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| [//dan_j/@dark_isles+] |
Shang rolled his shoulders, seeking to ease his fingers' ceaseless twitching. A once maddening tic had become a habit, his glaive roared into life with each twitch of his finger - at first it groaned and seized on gore but soon it snarled and gnashed. The many warriors behind him gunned their chain-weapons. The yard became a court of braying animals, chain-weapons bawled and warriors spat insults to their gilded kinsmen.
“You’ll feel shame. The deepest shame. A traitor’s shame.” Snarled the prostrated astartes to Shang’s right. “You’ll be struck dead by Volnoscere himself. Justice-be-done you’ll die slowly.”
“M’kall?” Shang called softly, gesturing to the astartes.
A warrior broke ranks, M’kall, a giant amongst giants. An Astartes a head and shoulders height above any of his kin stalked forwards. For all his sheer size M’kall moved with an eerie calmness. The giant raises his maul, a grunt barely registered by his helmet's vox-speaker escapes him, the maul falls down and finds its mark. The astartes on the right of Shang dies immediately, a head reduced to red pulp and splintered bone.
“Bastards! Filth! All of you!” The remaining gilded-son is silenced as the maul finds its mark once again.
Only the dead remained upon Krot. Stripped of all equipment, dignity, and identifying attributes; all except the golden plates of the gilded-arm.
The quiet of the muster yard returned.
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| [//@thrones_arcane+] |