Hethgard

A fortress unmanned is as a corpse—it bears the shape of what it is supposed to be, but lacks the vital heart and strength that comes from life, and is instead hollow and purposeless. A fortress manned by a number of soldiers is amongst the most wondrous and terrible things to behold, for few things can stand firm against stone and steel with flesh and blood behind it. – Attributed to Rogal Dorn, Primarch of the Imperial Fists

Hethgard is a vital Fortress World within the Orpheus Salient of the Jericho Reach. It has survived battles against the forces of Chaos, separatists, Ork Freebooters, and now comes under assault by Hive Fleet Dagon.

Overview
No servant of the Emperor has ever set foot upon Hethgard and felt anything but awe at the scale of what Mankind has created there. The fortresses of Hethgard are a monument to warfare, a testament to the toil and labour of millions and the blood that millions more will shed in defence of the Imperium.

Hethgard exists for one purpose: to defend the rimward flank of the Achilus Crusade's advance, to prevent the enemies of man from reaching the Well of Night and the Jericho-Maw Warp Gate within it. To that end, it has been remade as a world fortified, with every square kilometre of its surface and many hundreds of metres below ground devoted to the protection of its defenders and the repulsion of an invading force.

Designed by a coterie of Divisio Tactica siege engineers and Adeptus Mechanicus artisans, Hethgard's fortifications have been carefully arranged to allow for the swift and effective detection and destruction of invaders, its structure devised by ancient strategic lore, arcane formulae, and the results of intensive prognostication.

Hethgard has held off several attacks over the decades of the Achilus Crusade, its defenders overcoming all those who have sought to oust them from the world's fortresses. However, now Hethgard's garrisons are confronted with a foe unlike any they have previously encountered -- Hive Fleet Dagon is poised to overwhelm the world, and Hethgard's precision-designed defences are pitted against an enemy that seems to be without number and entirely uncaring of the horrific casualties that Hethgard's guns cause.

History
Originally a mining world serving the Schwartzmark Subsector of the Jericho Sector, Hethgard has been under Human dominion for over seven thousand years.

According to the limited records available, an Adeptus Mechanicus survey expedition set foot upon Hethgard in 312.M34, evaluating the world as having extensive mineral resources sufficient for several millennia of intensive tithing.

For centuries, Hethgard's wealth went to nearby Castobel, its abundant raw ores shipped in massive refinery-haulers to the bustling Hive World. Even as the Jericho Sector collapsed into anarchy, Hethgard continued to supply the still-loyal Castobel for several centuries as the two worlds' respective infrastructures diminished in the absence of the Imperium.

Hethgard’s population fractured into distinct nations and city-states over the generations that followed, with clans of miners struggling to survive on the limited quantities of food and potable water available on so barren a world.

These factions changed frequently over the millennia, shifting due to wars and alliances and adapting in response to the intervention of off-worlders. Some of these outsiders were occasional supply ships from nearby Castobel, while others were raiders and the vassals of petty dictators who sought to exploit Hethgard’s wealth for themselves.

By the time the Achilus Crusade reached Hethgard, seven weeks after the fleet passed through the Warp Gate, Hethgard's population was divided into eleven distinct nations, eight of which capitulated without hesitation to the Imperial forces that appeared suddenly and menacingly in the skies above them.

The remaining three chose to defy the Imperium, digging in and fortifying the mines beneath their cities to stave off annihilation by orbital bombardment.

For four long years, the Imperium fought against the entrenched population, with millions of men delving deep into the mines from the already compliant cities to wage war with those who refused to accept the Emperor.

The commander of the Imperial Guard on Hethgard, Lord General Antevan Creaigne, was an expert in more traditional forms of combined arms warfare, used to relying on the might of armour and artillery in conjunction with his infantry, and struggled to deal with the brutal tunnel fighting that denied him the use of much of his forces.

Worse, it became quickly apparent that the forces arrayed against them were more than mere heathens and separatists, but were instead driven by servants of the Ruinous Powers, a group identified by the Inquisition as the Stigmartus, a known heretic faction encountered on many worlds across the Jericho Reach by scouting expeditions.

Warp spawned sorcery and blasphemous rites joined insane fanaticism and vicious close quarters-battle, and only the intervention of an Astartes Task Force -- comprised of Battle-Brothers from the Storm Wardens, Relictors and Dark Sons Chapters and several battalions of Storm Troopers -- was able to break through the bloody stalemate and cleanse the Stigmartus' taint from the world once and for all, after an eighteen-hour assault.

With Hethgard claimed, its fortification could begin. After millennia of exploitation, Hethgard’s resources were all but depleted, as had been predicted so long ago, but mining was not the reason the Imperium had returned to Hethgard.

The newly repatriated citizens of Hethgard were put to work almost immediately, charged with removing the last of their world's mineral wealth even as the landscape was remade around them.

Hethgard's mountains and volcanoes were carved and shaped by the searing fire of orbital lances, clad in massive armour plates and fitted with batteries of macrocannon and surface-to-orbit missile silos.

By the time the Orpheus Salient was established, the mountain fortress of Bastion Primaris was complete, and nine hundred kilometres of tunnels had been excavated, extending out from the fortress to reach the three nearest cities and their mines, turning caverns into storage vaults, munitions dumps and barracks.

In addition, work had begun on both standalone firebases across the planet, and the process of turning the cities into secondary fortresses, an undertaking that would take decades to complete.

Hethgard's defences were first tested a few months later, when a flotilla of raiders from deeper in the Reach arrived to extort resources from the miners, as they likely had been doing intermittently since before the Achilus Crusade began.

Unprepared to face the full might of Hethgard's defences, the raiders were obliterated within minutes of arriving in orbit. Since that first assault, countless foes have attempted to strike at Hethgard and been found lacking, but only two instances in the decades-long history of the fortress world are particularly noteworthy.

The first came in 796.M41, when an Ork warfleet appeared in-system, broadcasting its identity in the self-aggrandising manner common to Orks. Xenolinguists swiftly translated the declaration of identity as being from a Freebooter band known as the Brass Eye, led by Kaptin Azrukk Ur Nazdakka. The Brass Eye fleet was massive -- dozens of ships and millions of Orks, whose belligerent mentality saw the fortress as a challenge concealing valuable technology to plunder. The Orks had emerged from the warp mere hours out from Hethgard itself, dangerously close, but avoiding the picket ships and sentry stations and granting them a measure of surprise over the forces stationed below.

Less than 20 hours after arrival in-system, the first Orks had made planetfall, employing crude drop pods to land swiftly and begin their assault.

The Ork assault was predictably long and gruelling, the greenskins’ tenacity and bloodthirsty joy difficult to quell even with the heavy firepower and millions of men defending Hethgard. After eighteen months of non-stop conflict, the Orks were still deeply embroiled, having forced their way into the tunnels through several of the smaller firebases.

Eventually, through brutal attrition, the Orks’ will was broken, their forces on the ground reduced to scattered pockets of resistance and their fleet driven off. In order to contain any re-infestation, annual purges of the formerly Ork-occupied regions are mandatory.

The second major attack occurred years later, and was a far more successful assault. On 5212809.M41, the picket ship Achilus' Eye detected a localised Warp anomaly approximately seven hundred thousand kilometres from Hethgard. A day later, four picket ships and two of the sentry stations were destroyed, and an unidentified spherical object had arrived in Hethgard's orbit. Astropaths given secret Inquisitorial ciphers immediately notified their masters of the strange and menacing presence as it disgorged vast numbers of smaller, spherical craft, which plummeted to the world below.

The spherical war engines, and their bizarre amorphous occupants, possessed a terrible power to unmake flesh and steel, projecting auras of incandescent fire that turned all it touched to black ash and noxious vapours.

For fifteen weeks, these creatures -- who remain unidentified to this day in spite of the best efforts of the Ordo Xenos -- tore across Hethgard for reasons unknown, but which Departmento Munitorum propagandists attributed to "the envious malice inherent in all xenos breeds."

At the start of the sixteenth week, aid arrived, in the form of the Deathwatch Strike Cruiser Wrathbringer, bearing four veteran Kill-teams clad in priceless suits of Tactical Dreadnought Armour, who struck swiftly from orbit by Teleportarium, clashing with the greatest concentrations of the unknown xenos.

Thirteen Astartes died in the savage combat, their blood spilt to locate some weakness or vulnerability in their foes. For their sacrifice, the Deathwatch overcame their foes—the unknown xenos withdrew in the face of heavy casualties, their ship retreating under fire from the Wrathbringer and Hethgard's defence fleet, and torn asunder before it could translate into the warp.

Hethgard was regarded as a fortress second only to Karlack in its might, but even a world that well defended could not adequately prepare for what was to come next -- Hive Fleet Dagon. In 816.M41, the first vanguard ships arrived, followed soon after by larger kraken and eventually a colossal Hive Ship. None could have predicted that the Tyranids would have pushed so deep into the territories claimed by the Salient that quickly, and to have them assaulting one of the worlds of the Iron Collar was an eventuality that few had the courage to consider.

The world is now under continual assault by the Tyranids, and while the defenders have the advantage of massive fortifications and extensive stores of supplies, the Tyranid presence prevents those supplies from being moved to worlds elsewhere in the Salient as was their original purpose. In besieging Hethgard, the Tyranids may have inadvertently set in motion the slow and painful demise of the entire Salient, starving it of vital reinforcements and supplies.

Key Locations
The following are a number of significant locations on Hethgard, still holding out against the continued onslaught of the Tyranids.