Raid on Greyshroud

In 944.M41 the Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue struck at the Imperial hive world of Greyshroud. Throughout the battle, the Kabalite forces displayed effortless superiority over the Imperial defenders, making the humans appear clumsy and foolish as they reeled from one crippling blow after another. Yet the breathtaking precision and efficiency of the Greyshroud raid was the product of many months’ meticulous planning by one of the Dark City’s greatest minds, Lady Aurelia Malys herself. Over a period of a single day, Lady Malys and her allies enacted a complex plan of attack that crippled the planet’s infrastructure, confounded its defenders, and allowed the Dark Eldar to successfully make off with many millions of captive souls.

1 - HOUR 1 Out-system augur platforms are silenced with pinpoint lance fire from Kabalite spacecraft, their destruction timed to coincide with solar flare activity from Greyshroud’s star. Their loss goes undetected and unremarked, yet it leaves the hive world deaf and blind.

2 - HOUR 4 Orbital Defence Platform ‘Angel Defiant’ goes ominously silent. Scourges slip undetected from the webway, deploying haywire weaponry to knock out the platform’s primary generatorum. Plunged into freezing darkness, their oxygen venting rapidly, the garrison have no way to call for help as Mandrakes crawl from the shadows and begin the hunt.

3 - HOUR 7 Some days previous, the Imperial Navy warship Hammer of Pride was stationed in orbit above Greyshroud in response to localised pirate activity. After routine vox-hails to Angel Defiant go unanswered, a request is made to the Hammer’s captain to investigate. Privately cursing the ineptitude of the planetary defence force, the captain acquiesces and the Hammer makes to rendezvous with the platform. It never reaches its destination.

4 - HOUR 8 Hammer of Pride comes under sudden, furious attack. Swarms of Razorwing Jetfighters and Voidraven Bombers appear as if from nowhere, harassing the ship mercilessly and crippling key shields and weapons. Swamped by targets, the Hammer’s turrets fail to intercept a salvo of barbed warheads that arc down to strike the warship’s bridge. Though they cause only minor damage, the missiles discharge a tailored puppet-plague into the air of the bridge. Moments later, the crew lose control of their own bodies as the neural infection compels them to place the Hammer of Pride onto a new heading. Its crew shrieking with helpless, horrified laughter, the Hammer is seized by Greyshroud’s gravitic field and drawn onto a collision course. Following a perfectly calculated trajectory, the warship plunges through the atmosphere and crashes into the barracks-fortress of the 4th Greyshroud PDF, engulfing the complex in a storm of plasma and killing hundreds of thousands.

5- HOUR 9 Under cover of severe atmospheric disruption caused by the impact of the Hammer of Pride, a sizeable force of Raiders, Ravagers and Venoms emerges from the webway above the continent of Morlos. With the 4th PDF annihilated, few stand ready to oppose the invaders. An elite force of Incubi, Kabalite Trueborn and Scourges breaks open the defences of Morlos’ generatorum primus, gleefully butchering all resistance. Moving with slick efficiency, the Dark Eldar rig the plasma generators with hyperdense containment fields. For over an hour the generators run at ever greater outputs, unable to vent or disengage until their own enhanced efficiency causes them to detonate. A vast power surge roars out through underground ducts and cabling, overloading systems across Morlos and beyond. As the void shields and defence batteries of Morlavia Hive experience sudden power loss, Lady Malys’ force – which has been waiting patiently in the lower atmosphere for a window of opportunity – descends. Gaping rents are blasted in the hive’s iron hide and swarms of piratical craft and whooping Hellions pour inside. By the time the hive’s backup generators begin to kick in, it is far too late.

6 - HOUR 11-20 As word of the plight of Morlavia Hive spreads across Greyshroud, PDF units scramble to mobilise. On the southern continent of Larnos, Imperial reinforcements are forced to reroute after dozens of outlying settlements come under attack. Wings of Valkyries soar over the snowfields, but each time the defenders arrive too late. In several cases Imperial forces are ambushed shortly after deployment, corralled and massacred by lightning-fast Reavers and Wyches. On Sarlon, the 1st and 5th Greyshroud PDF deploy en masse in response to reports of deformed horrors raiding agriponic settlements near Salarad Hive. Piling out of Chimeras and Tauroxes, the PDF find the agriplexes deserted. Yet terror engulfs the soldiers when crop-misting servitors shudder into action, releasing clouds of atomised combat stimms. Amid the banks of purple-tinged fog, the PDF troopers fall upon one another in a frenzy, tearing at each other until the walkways run red. On the northern continent of Galmar, a trio of 2nd Regiment drop-craft clear the southern coast, their passengers unaware that they are carrying monstrous stow-aways. Crushed into the hollow spaces within each craft’s superstructure, Grotesques lie dormant as the timers on their spinal sumps run slowly down to zero. One after another, the lurking horrors are activated, stimulants flooding their bodies until they tear their way into the troop-bays with deafening roars. The interior of each lander becomes an abattoir as the Grotesques vent their fury upon passengers and crew alike. One by one, the craft plunge into the icy waters of the ocean to disappear without trace.

7 - HOUR 21 Bereft of reinforcements, cut off in the dark, the citizenry of Morlavia Hive are harvested in their millions. Localised Arbites forces manage only a token resistance, while the nobles of the hive spire lock themselves away behind gold-chased bulkheads and abandon their people to their fate. This does not save them. By the time the battered forces of the Greyshroud PDF finally reach the crippled hive city, millions of citizens have been spirited away by Lady Malys’ forces, never to be seen again.