Gothic War

The Gothic War, also called the 12th Black Crusade, was a vast military campaign against the Imperium of Man launched by the Warmaster of Chaos Undivided Abaddon the Despoiler of the Black Legion in 139.M41. Abaddon managed the rare feat of uniting the disparate forces of the Ruinous Powers under the banner of Chaos Undivided and led his Chaos Space Marines and the rest of the Forces of Chaos from the Eye of Terror into real space where they engulfed the strategically important Gothic Sector of the Imperium of Man in war. The conflict consisted of hundreds of planetary invasions and naval battles and only ended when Abaddon was forced to retreat to the Immaterium with the arrival of Imperial reinforcements. It saw the destruction of several planets and four of the six known Blackstone Fortresses, as well as the deaths of millions, if not billions, of Imperial citizens.

The Gothic War is the most common name for the wider conflict stimulated by Warmaster Abaddon's 12th Black Crusade against the Imperium, which spanned the dates 139-160.M41. The conflict was fought almost entirely around the Gothic Sector of the Segmentum Obscurus of Imperial space, which was cut off by Warp Storms generated by the Ruinous Powers from all contact or communication with the rest of the Imperium for almost a decade. The 21-year-long war resulted in billions of casualties, at least one Imperial world was completely obliterated, many starships were destroyed and some very important Imperial personages were killed or incapacitated. Most significantly, the events of the Gothic War revealed the true nature and purpose of the ancient spaceborne alien artefacts known to the Imperium as the Blackstone Fortresses.

The Gathering Darkness, 139 - 142.M41
While the vast majority of the Imperium of Man's defences around the Eye of Terror Warp rift in the Northwestern Reaches of the galaxy are based in the area known as the Cadian Gate, there are many Imperial monitoring stations scattered throughout the Segmentum Obscurus. These outposts are constantly raided and attacked by the various forces of the Chaos Gods, but during the second century of the 41st Millennium the number of these assaults dramatically increased. The most important of these attacks that served as a prelude to the horrors that were soon to come was the assault on the Imperial watch station on the world of Arx. Due to its low strategic importance, Arx was inhabited by only a small garrison of the Imperial Guard which was tasked with protecting the few tech-adepts of the Adeptus Mechanicus who were needed to maintain and operate the station's observation equipment.

Early in 139.M41, the Imperial Navy scout frigate Ascendance received a telepathic plea for help from the Arx station's elderly Astropath. The identity of the attackers was unknown and when reinforcements arrived a full four months later, there was no sign of the raiders. The Imperial Guardsmen stationed on the planet had been wiped out and their bodies had been horribly mutilated and left to be devoured by the wild dogs that were Arx's only real predators. The Inquisition sent one of its agents, the experenced Inquisitor Horst to Arx to investigate the matter, but there was little evidence left for him to sift through.

If Arx had been the only outpost so attacked at this time, the raid would have become just another unknown in a galaxy filled to bursting with enigmas. Yet, over the next three years a number of similar attacks were reported thoughout the neighbouring star systems and then spread into the adjacent Sectors. Inquisitor Horst suspected that some larger plot against the Imperium was in motion, yet he could find no evidence to support his well-honed instincts or identify the nature of the attackers, so he decided to watch and wait for this canny enemy of the Emperor to make their next move.

In 140.M41, several Imperial patrol vessels made grisly discoveries in the Athena Sector. A number of Imperial merchant starships and warships, one of them an Emperor-class battleship, were discovered to be drifiting through the void uncontrolled. Upon being boarded, it was learned that the crews of all these ships were dead, their stinking, disease-ridden corpses strewn along corridors and control panels, some still manning their stations. Each starship also bore the scars of weapons fire and a brief space battle, as well as signs of being boarded, though none of the enemy dead could be found. Inquisitor Horst puzzled over these developments while his Acolytes and spes brough him more news. A rumour had spread among the vessels of the Imperial Navy in the Segmentum that the attacks were being carried out by an ancient Chaos ship called the Plagueclaw, a vessel whose diseased followers were dedicated body and soul to Nurgle, the Plague Lord, and had been attacking Imperial shipping for close to 4,000 years. The infection of the decimated ships' crews and the reappearance of the Plagueclaw were no coincidences, a reality which became all the clearer when the Death Guard Traitor Legion, the Chaos Marines dedicated to Nurgle, sacked the hive world of Morganghast. Horst became convinced that the Forces of Chaos were planning another massive incursion against the Imperium united as Chaos Undivided. The watchposts around the Cadian Gate were put on high alert and Imperial Navy warships from all over the Segmentum Obscurus were ordered to defend the space around Cadia.

While Inquisitor Horst investigted the Chaos activity around Arx and its neighbouring star systems, events turned even more sinister in the Gothic Sector of Segmentum Obscuras, 2,500 light years from Arx. The Navigators of the Navis Nobilite reported greater disturbances than usual within the Warp of the Gothic Sector with the incidence of Warp Storms increasing as the year wore on. On many worlds in the sector, this news was received with panic, a situation made even more precarious by several religious fanatics declaring that the Emperor was displeased and was sending Warp storms to purge the sinful. A number of new hard-line religious sects formed, their adherents stricken with feelings of impending apocalypse. They were desperate for the Emperor's forgiveness and began to flagellate themselves and demand that their friends and neighbours purge themselves of all their sins and inequities in the sight of the Emperor. On many planets in the Gothic Sector these cults became very politically powerful, swelled by popular support to such a degree that the Ecclesiarchy (and often the planetary governments) could do nothing to stop the rampaging mobs of hysterical flagellants. As the religious hysteria spread, lynch mobs roamed hive cities and mining colonies alike seeking the impure. Improptu burnings and hangings became common as the desperately fearful citizens threw themselves into a fervour of eschatological abandon, scouring their friends and loved ones to atone for real or imagined sins against the Emperor. yet all was to no avail as the Warp continued to become more active, the frequency of Warp Storms and their intensity continuing to increase.

Under the cover of this widespread paranoia and religious excess, secret cults and covens insinuated themselves into positions of power, subvertign ever more people to their dark causes. Misguided followers of the Ruinous Powers openly proclaimed that Chaos would save humanity when the Emperor had turned from them. Thousands, even millions of desperate Imperial citizens were deluded by these false promises, flocking to these cults and the Inquisition's Ordo Hereticus was hard-pressed to root out every cultist, deviant, mutant and heretic. To make matters worse, several Imperial Navy vessels were destroyed in dock by plasma reactor overloads and magazine explosions. Though official reports declared the incidents to be accidents, many believed the tales of sabotage and rebellion within the Navy's own ranks.

While the Gothic Sector was being engulfed in anarchy, religious strife and confusion, INquisitor Horst was searching for more clues to the plans of the heretics. When he heard of a Chaos attack on the Imperial world of Purgatory, he chose to accompany the investigating fleet. There was one thing which made Purgatory different from dozens of other Chaos raids in the region - the device known as the Hand of Darkness. Its existence was known only to a few of the most trusted members of the Inquisition, for the Hand of Darkness was an incredibly ancient alien artefact located deep beneath the planetary surface of Purgatory. All attempts by the Adeptus Mechanicus to discern its purpose had failed, yet the legends of other, older races like the Eldar spoke of the Hand of Darkness with horror and revulsion. It was widely beleived to be a weapon of immense power. When Horst arrived on Purgatory, the Inquisitor's deepest fears had come true -- the Hand of Darkness had been taken. If the followers of Chaos learned how to activate the alien weapon, they would be able to unleash incredible destruction upon the defenders of the Imperium.

Horst knew of another artefact connected to the Hand of Darkness in the old xenos myths. Called the Eye of Night, it was located on the Ratling planet of Ornsworld. As Horst sped towards that world on the fastest vessel he could commandeer, a report came in by astropathic message of an attack upon the Ratlings. A small force of Chaos renegades had lanced close to where the Eye was embedded in an ancient statue, worshipped as a god by the Ratlings in pre-Imperial times. After a brief skirmish, an Imperial Guard recruiting force stationed near to the Chaos forces's landing site had driven off the raid. However, a month later Chaos starships blockaded Ornsworld and a full-scale invasion began. The defenceless Ratlings stood no chance against the depraved Chaos Space Marines and the death toll reacked into the millions as the hills and mountains of the world were scoured with fire and shells by the most potent followers of the Dark Gods. Tens of thousands of Ratlings were simply murdered outright as the forces of Chaos carried out a purge genocidal in its intent and scale. Among the carnage, the Eye of Night was torn from its mounting and the thief slipped away from the planet. The Forces of Chaos now possessed both the Hand of Darkness and the Eye of Night and thus the potential power to overthrow the Imperium of Man. Inquisitor Horst desired only to know where the Forces of Chaos would strike next.

The old Inquisitor began compiling scattered reports of unusual activity in an ever-widening area and learned of the Warp disruptions plaguing the Gothic Sector. As he headed for the region, more reports came in of sightings of Chaos starships in the region, reinforcing the notion that the Gothic Sector was the target of Chaos' next incursion. A month after Horst arrived in the sector in 142.M41, a cataclysmic shockwave passed through the Warp. The resulting massive Warp Storm engulfed the Gothic Sector in swirling tempests of Warp energy, cutting the sector off from trade or astropathic communication with the rest of the Imperium. The defenders of the Gothic Sector would face the darkness that was to come utterly alone.

Invasion, 143.M41
The first outright battles of what would be called the Gothic War were fought as the year 143.M41 came to its close. During the first few months of the conflict, Chaos fleets launched a number of wide-ranging attacks against Imperial Navy bases within the sector.

Reports of attacking Chaos fleets flooded in from all across the Gothic Sector as the Warp Storms reached their peak of activity. Much planning must have gone into their all-important first strike, as the Chaos fleets targeted a dozen major Imperial Navy bases in the sector. With no advance warning, the Traitors struck hard and fast, ambushing Imperial warships as they were in orbital dock or at rest at their stations. Caught unaware and already overstretched by the growing unrest in the sector, the Imperial Navy as poorly prepared to respond to this sudden offensive. At the world of Bladen, the Rhadamanthine had her starboard flight decks blow clean off by spatial torpedoes, while at Cherys, Doomfire bombers from the Heartless Destroyer damaged the Warp engines of the Battleship Lord Sylvanus so severely that it took nearly two years of repairs to before the warship could make Warp jumps of greater than 5 light years.

Orbiting Imperial space stations also fell to the Chaos forces, destroyed or captured by the swiftness of the attack. The loss of many orbital shipyards such as Tripol Docks, Port Imperial and Gathara Station was particularly disastrous, not only where Imperial starships were badly in need of refitting, but because they were soon put to use by the enemy. Captain Grove of the Admiral Drake, an old Relentless-class cruiser used as an Imperial Navy training vessel, was one of the few survivors of the Chaos attack at Halemnet Base in the Cyclops Cluster, which was typical of the attacks made by the Chaos warships. Grove and his crew were lucky to escape the vicious assault. Fortunately for the crew of the Admiral Drake and many other Imperial vessels, the Chaos fleets were not disposed towards lengthy battles, preferring instead to hit hard and then retreat, leaving the Imperial Navy suffering heavy losses, with many of its capital starships destroyed or needing months of repairs and refitting to return to operational capacity.

Yet the Chaos fleets did not achieve total success in their first strikes. In a few battles the Traitor Fleets suffered serious defeats, most notably during the defence of the hive world of Orar. When one of the many Chaos warfleets involved in the conflict, led by the Chaos Warmaster Malefica Arkham, ambushed the Imperial battlegroup that was stationed in orbit of Orar, they did not find their enemy taken unawares. Having just received orders to help put down a rebellion in a neighbouing star system, the Imperial battlegroup, led by Captain Compel Bast on the battlecruiser Imperious, was just preparing to break orbit. Already at full alert status, the Imperial flotilla easily evaded the attackers' initial spatial torpedo salvo and counter-attacked. Aided by the planet's orbital defences, the Imperious crippled the Chaos battleship Soulless with a blast from its Nova Cannon and the Imperial vessels went on to score a rare victory against the Chaos warfleet. Only a handful of Chaos escorts escaped without damage and the battlecruiser Deathbane and its fleet were pursued out of the system by vengeful Imperial captains.

Orar was the only major setback suffered by the Forces of Chaos during the opening stages of the Gothic War. In one incident a small Chaos warfleet consisting of several Iconoclast and Infidel-class escorts, heading for a raid on Denerair in the Cyclops Cluster, fell foul of the numerous bands of Ork pirates in the region. Using their traditional tactic of lurking in an asteroid field for an unwary victim, the Ork vessels emerged from hiding and plunged into the heart of the Chaos fleet. Unable to use their greater manoeuverability in the swirl of asteroids, gas and dust clouds, the Chaos starships were mercilessly hammered by the Orks and not one Chaos vessel survived the battle. Such occurrences were rare and the greenskins were as happy to continue attacking Imperial shipping as they were to fight against the warfleets of Chaos.

The Battle of Blackstone IV
The initial Chaos attacks struck at important Imperial installations such as Adeptus Mechanicus Forge Worlds and orbital naval bases used by Battlefleet Gothic. Of the 17 such bases in the Gothic Sector, six of them were founded upon the Blackstone Fortresses. The Blackstone Fortresses were immense defensive bases constructed millions of years before by an unknown alien hand that had remained dormant since their dicovery by the Imperium in the 32nd Millennium. Even with most of its poorly-understood systems inactive, the Blackstone Fortresses had been transformed into incomparable Imperial Navy bases. After extensive refitting by the Adeptus Mechanicus, with Imperial defence turrets and primary weapons systems added, the Blackstone Fortresses' defensive capabilities rivalled those of the Naval Command stations at Port Maw itself. It was the pride of Battlefleet Gothic that no Blackstone Fortress had ever been taken by an enemy.

This was to change at the Rebo System, where the Imperial naval base Blackstone IV orbited that system's fifth world. A Chaos fleet, probably led by Abaddon the Despoiler himself, struck at Rebo V. The Imperial starships on station put up a ferocious defence, but were ultimately overwhelmed by the size of the fleet facing them. Twenty capital ships, including two Despoiler-class battleships and a score of escorts, swept through Rebo's outer system defences and attacked Blackstone IV.

The battle was short and bloody - just as the Chaos fleet approached within range of the fortress, Blackstone IV's power systems shut down completely. With its energy grid down, the fortress' guns were unable to fire, the armoured gates to the fighter craft bays could not open and the personnel on board were defenceless. Soon after this turn of events was transmitted in a final message by the station's Chief Astropath, Blackstone IV fell to the invaders. These was no more word out from the Rebo System and it was assumed as a matter of course that the Chaos forces had left no Imperial survivors. The Battle of Blackstone IV was to be the first of a number of critical blows unleashed by Chaos that imperiled Imperial forces right from the start of the conflict.

The Death of Savaven
Even as the Warmaster Abaddon pushed home Chaos' attack at Rebo, more disater befell the Loyalist defenders of Gothic Sector. At the world of Savaven, a Cardinal world of the Ecclesiarchy, the few system defence ships could do little to protect the planet against a new and unprecedently powerful Chaos starship. Simply called the Planet Killer, this monolithic starship bristled with gun decks, lance batteries and torpedo launch systems. As the defence monitors withdrew from its implacable advance, the Planet Killer made orbit over Savaven. Drawing upon unimaginable resources of power, the massive vessel unleashed an energy beam from a number of ports on its surface that lasted for almost thirty minutes and cracked the very crust of the planet. The bolt bored its way thropugh miles of the planet's crust and seared through the molten mantle beneath. As the attack finished, the magma surged forth through the continent-sized would the blast had made in the planet's crust. breaking Savaen apart from within. The oceans boiled, the ice caps melted and whole continents sunk beneath the blazing tidal wave of molten rock vomited forth. Savaven was blown out of its natural orbit by this titanic release of geothermal energy and eventually simply imploded into millions of rocky fragments. Only an incredibly dense asteroid field now lies in orbit of the star where Savaven once circled. There were fourteen billion people living on Savaven, who all died in less than an hour.

The effect on Imperial morale of this new weapon unleashed by Chaos was predictably devastating. All had heard of an order of Exterminatus being carried out upon a world by the Inquisition or the Space Marines using cyclonic fusion torpedoes, virus bombs or mass drivers, but to know the enemy had the ability to destroy an entire planet from the inside out, not just all life upon its surface, was the most chilling though that any Imperial crewman or soldier had ever faced. As the Imperial Navy reele at this news, Inquisitor Horst was left wondering if this was the power that had been gained from the Forces of Chaos' possession of the Hand of Darkness and the Eye of Night. If not, things were perhaps looking even worse for the Imperium.

The Eldar Problem
A constant irritant for Lord Admiral Ravensburg, the overall commander of Battlefleet Gothic, was the presence of a large number of Eldar in the Gothic Sector, making swift forays as raiders from their hiding places within the Graildark Nebula. It is believed by the Inquisition that an Eldar Craftworld was in the sector during the war, though there were no confirmed sightings and its location was never successfully determined. Of the pirate forces plaguing the Imperium, the Eldar force called the Executioners became highly active as the Gothic War progressed, until the number of their raids and attacks had increased from only three in 143.M41 to right n 147.M41. Unable to track the advanced Eldar starships back to their base and strongly suspecting that they were connected in some way to the elusive Craftworld in the sector, Ravensburg could do little to defend against the xenos and it was up to individual battlegroup commanders to decide how best to against such slippery foes.

Not onlt the Eldar preyed upon the transports and merchantmen of the Imperium. Bands of human pirates, Chaos renegades from the Eye of Terror and even the vessels of other alien species all increased their activity as the anarchy caused by the Chaos invasion spread across the sector. Called Wolf Packs by the Imperial Naval officers who chased them, these roving bands of small vessels hunted the starships and convoys of anybody and everybody in the sector. The Imperial Navy was fighting two enemies: the Chaos warfleets and the Ork, human and Eldar pirates that had always been a threat to Imperial shipping even before the Gothic War began. Everywhere, the Imperial forces were on the defensive, driven from planet after planet and system after system. Lossess were high and the shipyards and orbital space stations fought a battle with one another over the restricted supply of materiel and manpower. Darkness seemed to be falling with increasing swiftness over the Gothic Sector.

Abaddon and the Blackstone Fortresses, 144.M41
The Imperium was beset by many Chaos fleets led by individual Warmasters (estimates at the time ranged from 8 enemy warfleets to 20 or more). Each was a rival to any battlegroup Lord Admiral Ravensburg could muster. One in particular, led by Abaddon the Despoiler himself, posed the greatest threat of all.

The Imperium Returns

 * Battle of Gethsemane
 * Reinforcements arrive
 * Destruction of Tarantis
 * Attack on Schindlegeist and Blackstone V
 * Destruction of the Blackstones
 * General wiping up battles and 8 years to reconquer the planets
 * Killing off of pirates/orks

Summary

 * 20 years of war
 * Killed millions
 * Destroyed planets
 * 4/6 Blackstones destroyed, 2 stolen
 * Horst spent his days looking for the Blackstones

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