Hive Fleet Dagon

Hive Fleet Dagon is the first major Tyranid incursion into the Jericho Reach. The 'Shadow in the Warp' cast by the Great Devourer within this volatile region of space, first heralded the arrival of this new hive fleet in 812.M41. Communication between parts of the Achilus Crusade and re-conquered areas of the Jericho Reach is lost without warning. Particularly affected is the Orpheus Salient which disappears behind a crawling shadow of Warp interference. In 814.M41, the Deathwatch warship Thunder’s Word enters the Freya system to investigate the silence of an Astropathic relay. It finds no trace of the relay and indeed no trace of any life in the Freya system. Preparing to leave the system, the Thunder’s Word encounters two Tyranid drone ships. Its hull scored and pitted with acid and its magazines nearly exhausted, the Thunder’s Word arrives at Watch Fortress Erioch bringing news that the Great Devourer has come to Jericho Reach.

The name of the Tyranid attack into the Jericho Reach is officially designated as Hive Fleet Dagon, and identified as the greatest single extant threat to the crusade, and indeed the lives of every living being in the Jericho Reach. The Deathwatch remains fully engaged in facing this threat. Not much is known about the origins of Hive Fleet Dagon other than that it heralds from the edge of the galactic rim, far to the galactic east. It is highly suspected by Imperial magos of the Ordo Xenos that this particular hive fleet may be a remnant of the decimated Hive Fleet Behemoth, which was destroyed during the First Tyrannic War in 745.M41 by Imperial forces.

Amongst this new hive fleet, ancient and now all too familiar horrors have arisen. Alongside the familiar, however, come new and disturbing Tyranid variations, proving once again that as soon as the Imperium believes it understands the Tyranid, the Tyranid changes and adapts once more. For the Jericho Reach, the force of the Tyranid assault was like a mighty hammer blow, catching the Achilus Crusade off balance and forcing Imperial Commanders to scramble to face this new and encroaching threat before too much ground was lost and too many worlds had fallen. Meeting the swarms head-on, millions died in those first desperate years of Dagon’s arrival, and many planets could not be saved, disappearing forever under a tide of chitin and claws.

Commanders and soldiers alike came to know the signs and character of the swarm, the nature of its beasts and the unique hunger it seemed to possess for the Jericho Reach, as if it had a taste for that sector specifically and the worlds that lay within it. They also noted how it adapted and changed with each world it consumed, each battle it won (or lost) and with each light year it came closer to the Iron Collar and the Warp Gate. This kind of rapid adaption had been observed in other fleets of course, however in Hive Fleet Dagon it seemed to take on an even more sinister slant, as if the fleet were aware of the pain and suffering it was inflicting and the terror in the hearts of the soldiers trying to stop it. In the space of a few short years, this evolution and mutation within Dagon led to a number of unique bio-constructs and weapons never seen before by Imperial scholars; the most terrible of them all being the Dagon Overlord.