Orphean War

The Orphean War is a military conflict of epic proportion that has recently ravaged the Orpheus Sector. This once powerful Sector Imperialis located at the very border of the Segmentum Tempestus had always been troubled by strange phenomena and events, which were however never linked together as the evidence of Necron activity. Following the awakening of at least a part of this ancient race, labelled the Maynarkh Dynasty by Imperial savants, these Xenos attacked the Orpheus Sector in full force, leading to the cataclysmic Battle of Amarah which ended inconclusive for both fractions but nevertheless sealed the fate of the Orpheus Sector. While still ongoing, following the disastrous losses on Amarah, the Imperium is currently retreating all strategic assets from the Orpheus Sector, hoping to box in and hold the Necrons at bay long enough for a full-fledged Imperial Crusade to be launched. To this day, the Orphean War stands as a scaring exemplar of what might befall the Imperium if the Necron menace is not quickly identified and dealt with.

History
"He that sees the face of the enemy sees only his death, he that hears the words of the enemy hear’est only lies, but he that know’eth the heart of the enemy, hath the wisdom to slay’eth all before him in their measure."

- The Sermons of Saint Marduk,Cantos 12-84

From what later investigations have discovered, it would seem that the Orpheus Sector was partly created on what had, in the distant past, been the domains of the Maynarkh Dynasty, given to them by the Silent King for their contribution in the War of Heaven and the elimination of the C'tans that followed after it. Numerous pre-Imperial ruins -- obviously of xenos origin -- were notoriously discovered and in some cases even explored in the Drucillan Sub-Sector, but no xenoarcheologist could have made a link to the Necrontyr-civilisation. While the Maynarkh’s coreworlds are believed to lie outside of the Imperium of Mankind, it seems evident that some of the outlying planets had been colonized by Man.

Time and time again the Orpheus Sector was subject to many strange phenomena -- whole fleets vanishing and worlds going silent without the Inquisition ever making the link between these events. Under other circumstances, an Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos might have raised the alarm in time to destroy the Maynarkh, but as it was the Orpheus Sector was firmly in the grip of the Ordo Malleus, the part of the Inquisition that specialised in hunting down the servants of Chaos and its daemonic emissaries. In the late 41st Millennium, the Orpheus Sector had been increasingly weakend by a notable rise in Warp-activity: once safe Warp-routes were rendered dangerous through Warp Storms, whole populations became plagued by warp-induced nightmares, and crisises of dementia and hysteria ran rampant. In 819.M41, on the world of Chemarium II, an entire Hive City succumbed to seemingly contagious waves of madness and despair. Civil order dissolved quickly and the madness quickly spread to other cities. Chaos-aligned Cults like the "Endless Tide" and the "Crawling Darkness" swiftly rose to power, following their dark prophet Ranker Nonesuch, the so-called "Beggar King." With the civil war erupting on other planets of the Chemarium System, it is understandable that as the first reports came, the blame was put on the Ruinous Powers or Eldar Corsairs rather than the Necrons.

The Nightmare Awakens
For millions of years, the Maynarkh had slumbered and during their sleep, aeons passed and the Imperium rose to power. The awakening of the Maynarkh Dynasty is believed to roughly coincide with an unusual stellar phenomena that was consigned to the records of the heavily defended Mechanicum outpost of Harrow Watch in 990.M41 -- the death of the Caracol System. Caracol was a binary star system, yet both its suns rapidly degenerated and went supernova way ahead of what the Magos of the Cult Mechanicum expected to be their natural lifespan. The phenomena did not raise further questions but was accompanied by an even more unusual event within the aetheric spheres -- a great bow-wave that rippled through the Warp and entirely snuffed out the Warp turbulences that had been plaguing the Orpheus Sector for the past centuries. Only the particularly fierce Warp Storm to the Sector’s East -- the Howling Vortex -- remained untouched. Throughout the Orpheus Sector, hundreds of Astropaths burned out instantly and thousands of Imperial citizen perished as their ships were broken in two while still in the Warp. No Magos, savant or Inquisitor could have guessed that these events were in fact connected, and while not intended as a weapon, the warp-wave had already weakened the sensitive Imperial communication network.

When the attack came, it was with a ferocity and swiftness no one expected. Not one, or a dozen, but a score of worlds were targetted simultaneously, the frontline of this new attack moving so fast that the only evidence available to those worlds not yet fighting was the utter silence that answered routine communication or scheduled exchange of information. Many of the worlds assailed by the Necrons did not even have time to send a distress signal, or if they had no message reached the part of the Sector still in Imperial hands. The Maynarkh’s victory was so swift and complete that even in hindsight nothing can be said for certain on the fate of these border worlds that first fell to the Necron advance. Pallasite, Khatris, Borus Landing, the Feudal World of Ayrith and the old Agri-World of Epirus, all virtually ceased to exist overnight and even the heavily fortified outpost of Harrow Watch was defated. All in all, the Orpheus Sector lost nearly sixty inhabited planets, outposts and colonies within the first days of the Orphean War and without even noticing it before it was too late.

It was only when the Necron advance reached the Inquisitorial fortress world of Apollyon, close to the heart of the Orpheus Sector that the alarm was raised. A single black ship, burned from stem to stern was able to launch and make the perilous voyage to Amarah, surviving long enough to transmit a warning to the Sector’s capital. On Amarah, reactions were mainly of shock and disbelief, but the seal of the Ordo Malleus quickly overcame initial doubts on the veracity of the message. Its content and the appended codes were quickly verified by the Inquisitorial representatives on Amarah and declared valid. Almost immediately the general call to arms was issued. Planetary Defence Forces were activated and the Orphean Guard mobilized. Battlefleet Orpheus was tasked with ferrying the mustering Imperial Guard forces already assembling for a renewed assault on the Chemarium system to Amarah. Battlegroup Salvation was also retasked and ask to redeploy in defence of Amarah Prime. As astrophatic communications encountered increasing difficulties and was deemed unreliable, Battlefleet Orpheus was called upon to relay the call to arms through fast warp-capable messenger ships. Only when the first of these ships failed to return did the true extend of the invasion become clear.

The Bloody Hundred
Given the allegoric nature inherent to astrophatic communication, even with the alarm raised, the true nature and identity of the ennemy was still unknown. Those messages sent to the outerlying worlds were seemingly swallowed by the darkness, and even those messenger ships despatched to carry forth the warning vanished. Following a simitar-like curve stretching from Tlaloc to Epirus, an impenetrable dark veil had fallen upon the Orpheus Sector. This fact alone greatly put the Orphean Command on edge, but the total absence of contact with Libertha send the Imperial Commander almost reeling with panic. Libertha was the homeworld of the Angels Revenant Space Marines Chapter, the most stalwart and powerful of the Orpheus Sector's defenders, and more than any other factor it was the silence of Libertha that saw Orphean Command throw themself into hasty and panicked preparations rather than stricking out in blind aggression. First of all, squadrons of Battlefleet Orpheus were despatched on piquet duty around the sensible worlds of Midwinter - which harboured the Battlefleet’s own naval yards - and Drucilla Majoris, worlds once deemed safe but now found themselves threatened by the rapid advance of the frontlines.

With a mounting sense of dread, log-range auspex systems, Aetheric surveyors and even ancient optical scopes were all trained on those worlds haveing gone dark, but none of them could perceive the veil that had fallen on the Emperor’s domains. With the Sector’s capital directly threatened, the ever more paranoid Calibron Laan issued several edicts by dictatorial command to bolster Amarah Prime’s own defences, stripping the Arcantis Cluster of both armies and materiel to ensure that his world was safe. Warships and merchant-vessels alike were brought together during a great muster at Battlefleet Orpheus’ principal Fleet Anchorage at the edge of the Amarah system. With the military powergathered at Amarah growing day by day, and week by week while still no sign of the enemy had been noticed, tension drew on the nerves of all that were in command. The dire warning of Apollyon had spurred the Sector intoaction but as the weeks turned into months, impatience grew to the point that Laan's own nobles and military commanders pressed the Governor to act and not merely wait for the enemy’s next blow to land.

In frantic activity, both within Orphean Command and Battlefleet Orpheus tactitians and commanding officers had drawn plans ranging fro fleet-scale reconnaissance missions conducted by the Imperial fleet alone to a fully-fledged counter-attack. Those generals of the Chemarium taskforce reasoned that with the ressources available to Battlegroup Salvation an attempt could be made to strike out for Liberthas, where the Angels Revenant although cut-off would surely still be fighting the enemy. Sector Governor Laan would have none of it. Backed by the esteemed Lord Inquisitor Hiram Ntshona, a veteran of the Ordo Malleus and now the sole surviving member of the Inquisition’s Chamber Apollyon which commanded much individual might, Laan dismissed every optio laid before him, adamant on securing even more men and ships for the defence of Amarah. This was the sole task the increasingly unstable and desperate Laan showed any interested in. To Ntshona, who strongly believed this attack to be the work of the Ruinous Powers, the build-up of power on Amarah was the only right course of action, for as soon as the warning had been heard, Lord Inquisitor Ntshona had secured access to the most powerful Astrophat on Amarah to contact his superiors within the Ordo and their Chamber Militant, the Grey Knights. Who else but the Gods of Chaos could calm the Warp before their marching armies, yet hinder their opponents through storms? Who else could engulf entire systems in shadows and thus shield the battlefields from the inquisitive glance of the Imperium? These were the reasonings of Ntshona, a tragic mistake that would reave its bloody rewards later on in the campaign.

From what has since then been gathered from Lord Inquisitor Hiram Ntshona's personal records -- released post-mortem to the Conclave of Eurydice -- it appears that almost at the same time that the Necrons attacked the Orpheus Sector, the Sector’s Governor began a slow descent into madness. Being a close advisor and confident to Calibron Laan, Lord Inquisitor Ntshona was privy to sensible informations regarding the health of the Governor. Laan had become plagued by a series of repeating and ever more vivid nightmares in which he found himself seated at a great feasting table, surrounded by terrifying figures Laan himself described as "deathly" and "masked in bone and gilded steel, (...) clad in the golden and darkly jewelled raiment of barbarous and alien kings and princes." The table upon which they were seated bore plats of grey dust, glowing cinders and raw meat, so fresh it still dripped with blood. From this last dish, a sole figure, draped in raw skin was the only one to seemingly enjoy the feast, grapping the raw meat, smearing bloody chunks of flesh into its twisted mask, unable to chew the meal it craved and unable to drink the flagons of steaming blood it tried to wash down its sinister meal with. The rest of the assembly silently watched Laan, seated before an enthroned figure more terrible than the rest upon which Laan never dared to look upon. Silently, one of the figure bid Laan to taste the strange meal, all eyes fixed malevolently upon him before Laan would break. Screaming to be let go, a hooded and shrouded figure would seemingly manifest itself out of thin air behind him and whisper to his ear:

"These are worlds that were once ours, the worlds that you trespassed upon and are now ours again. The worlds on which we haven risen have already been cleansed. The worlds where we once walked we shall now walk again. As the rites demand you are given a cyle of the pale stars to prepare yourself for extermination, Maynarkh comes and the banquet shall be served again."

Dismissed as Daemon-induced lies, Ntshona saw these dreams as an act of psychological warfare designed to sow panic within Imperial forces and misleading them on when the Archenemy would eventually strike. It is unknown what measure the venerable Lord Inquisitor took to preserve the Governor from these nightmares, given most likely that the Governor’s quarters must already have been warded somehow against psychic intrusion. As unbelievable as this may sound - Laan’s so-called dream must in fact have been reality, the Maynarkh Dynasty somehow bipassing all security measures protecting the Governor and abducting him, taking him to an undisclosed location and giving him warning of their coming. Had Ntshona not misinterpreted the signs, or been of the Ordo Xenos, he would have reckognized that the Necrons had only been stating the truth, and that the vast concentration of armies on Amarah played right into the hand of the Maynarkhs : a challenge the Maynarkhs would not be able to refuse.

Maynark Comes
As suddenly as it had fallen, the ominous silence was abruptly shattered on 3806991.M41. Where before there had only been darkness, there was now a savage blaze of light, the mass of information streaming from the lost worlds now so important that it blinded the super-luminal auguries of several watchposts. Scores of Astropaths reeled and even died under the stress of having to process incoming communication, the channels having been filled by an overlapping cacophony of distress calls and the death screams of those dying, tdistorted and folded in overlapping time, it was as if the astrophatic message had been suddenly unleashed after having being frozen in the Warp for several months. Scanners and empirical detection devices showed strange energy spikes on the borders of the Veiled Region whose strange radiations and particle storms travelled along the Sector’s Warp routes, clinging to the hulls of ships and orbital stations carrying its message, invading even secure vox channels and communication webs, a gibberih of strange-sounding and gibberish phrases, eclipsed by the fading echoes of screams of agony and a single phrase, repeated over and over "Maynarkh comes".

Wherever the malign signal had gained entrance, communication systems and machinery suddenly failed, the electromagnetic contagion causing it to shut down entirely or to malfunction. Cogitators froze or fell into terminal loops, while servitors were driven mad or went rampage. Any normal safeguard against malefic intrusion established to precisely prevent this sort of affliction soon proved useless and the menials, Adepts and Tech-Priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus increasingly resolved to use galvanic purges to free their machines and instrument from this influence. This at least successfully created a firewall which stopped the signal to cause a true rampage amongst the Sector’s most sensitive networks, but Imperial communication would take weeks to recover from it. On some planets like Amraphel and Midwinter, the signal lingered long in the public vox network, bombarding the fearful Imperial citizens with strange flickering symbols and cries of pain, leading to mass hysteria, rioting and brushfire insurrections that the local forces of law enforcement and Imperial rule had to fight with uttermost brutality to keep them from spreading.

With the veil having finally parted, the true extend of the catastrophe could be asserted for the first time. On Apollyon, the former fortress of the Ordo Malleus, every trace of Imperial had been obliterated, the planet having been shattered, the broken debris of its continents now orbiting the orb as a new asteroid chain after its moon, Elohiem Mortua, had been propulsed at the planet and hit it like the fist of a wrathful god. Sector command’s worse fears were soon confirmed, as scans confirmed that Libertha where once hundred of basilicas had been raised to honour the blessed death had been reduced to a fiery ball of cooling lava and ash deserts, the Angels Revenant's mighty Fortress-monastery broken and apparently overcome by the planet's fiery lifeblood. The Sector’s most powerful defenders were no more. As these news became more general knowledge, panic flared and several worlds were brought at the brink of total anarchy. Fortunately for Laan, the first troop transports and a detachment of warships from the neighbouring Eurydice Sector were already inbound and put to good use. Yet these meagre reinforcements could not hope tochange the cause of the oncoming war.

The next blow landed on Drucilla Majoris, one of the principal worlds of the entire Orpheus Sector and capital iof ts own Sub-Sector. One the day of the attack, the sun failed to rise on the doomed planet. All vox-contact with the world itself and with those elements of the fleet despatched to it abruptly ceased, a lone Astrophatic message breaking through the blackout on 4917991.M41. This last broadcast spoke of a chilling cold settling on the planet, as if Drucilla Majoris had been plunged into an unexpected and unheralded nuclear winter, temperature steadily declining to reach critical levels for the world’s population. Elsewhere on the planet, strange structures like basalt obelisk and outlandish pyramids of sombre, almost black metal erupted from the bowels of the earth, sinister necropoles emerging from the dying planet's crust. Shortly after this new calamity, the space between the Drucillan Sub-Sector and Amarah was filled with new distress signals and calls for aid, ship traffic coming under attack by unknown foes. This at least helped Imperial strategist to pinpoint the enemy’s location : he was heading West, towards Amarah.

With the enemy definitely coming, Amarah’s calls for assistance became more frantic, especially when its direct neighbours came under attack. Fortress Tarris, a Ramilies-class Starfort protecting Battlefleet Orpheus’ shipyards orbiting Midwinter was powerless to repel a massive enemy incursion, led by strange ships before being boarded by metallic figures "fashioned as spectres of death", the foe manifesting itself within the very cursives, decks and vaults of the fortress before the system fell silent. Yet still, Calibron Laan refused to take offensive actions, cowering within the emergency bunkers built in times past beneath his palace, impotently watching as one-by-one the systems surrounding Amarah fell to the enemy, millions and millions of fighting men and women and hundreds of warships standig by but taking no action. Ultimately, only Amarah remained, cut-off from its former domain and still sending out pleas for help. With the "Bloody Hundred" over and the Orpheus Sector cut in half, the stage was set for the Battle of Amarah.

The Battle of Amarah
As emphasized by the writings of Inquisitor Ha’Vass of the Ordo Xenos, the Battle of Amarah would finally reveal the true identity and the vast strength that was that of the foe. The Battle of Amarah was to prove a crucial turning point in the history of the Orphean War and constitutes to this day the single greatest loss of life within the entire Segmentum Tempestus. It would be in aftermath of this battle that the Imperium would be forced to launch was has since become known as the Orphean Salvation Campaign, the protracted counter-assault to hold back and defeat the Necrons.

On the Eve of Destruction
In less than a standard hundred days, the Orpheus Sector had been cut in half, habitated system after habitated system falling before the still unknown enemy. Yet this enemy flew from victory to victory, battles becoming desperate retreats and retreats becoming anarchic routs. No Imperial force could vanquish the foe, but with their life did they slow the enemy advance, buying other worlds precious time to prepare. Than, inexplicably, the enemy invasion stopped.

It was at Amarah Prime, the Sector’s capital that all military decisions rested within the hands of Sector Commander and Governor-general Calibron Laan. Not knowing how long the respite would last, the Governor concentrated every available ressources at Amarah, the Laan’s slow descent into madness weighing heavily in the Imperium’s battleplans. What out-of-sector reinforcements were starting to arrive were directly routed to Amarah, joining those troops of the Chemarium-taskforce already requisitionned by Governor Laan. The built-up of military forces was further augmented by local units stripped from their respective planets and transferred to Amarah, weakening other worlds to reinforce the capital. Yet this decision considerably impacted morale and planetary politics and even leading to several cases of outright mutiny which needed to be brutally dealt with by the Commissariat.

Since the beginning of the hostilities, the military built-up at Amarah had reached colossal proportions with over nineteen million Imperial Guardsmen firmly entrenched and supported by perhaps ten times this number in reservists. Thanks to the industrial might and great wealth of Amarah, this militia and reservists were thouroughly equipped according to the Cadian-pattern of the Departmento Munitorium. Amongst the last to arrive were two million guardsmen drawn from the notoriously effective and resilient Death Korps of Krieg, which were spearheaded by the veteran 17th Line Korps under the command of Mashal Karis Venner, the Castigator of Valtine. Several detachements of the Adeptus Astartes had also answered the call to arms, chief amongst them the entirety of the Minotaurs Chapter, which alongside a company of the Marauders Chapter had already seen actions against xenos raiders of the Eldar, which had been forced from their lair within the Hesod Nebula. Battlefleet Orpheus, also mobilized since the dawn of the invasion had been severely reinforced, the armada now numbering over sixty rated Cruisers and capital vessels of at least seven were of Battleship-grade. Knight-Commander Georg Carew, Grand Admiral of Battlefleet Orpheus would personnally lead the armada from the bridge of his mighty flagship, the Apocalypse-class Battleship Arica Dominus. With ad least sixteen other Seldom in the history of the Imperium had such an overhelming force been gathered in the defence of a single star-system.

The Black Fleet
With Calibron Laan and Inquisitor Ntshona forcibly stalling every offensive action, Battlefleet Orpheus had looked after its defences and moulded the battlefield to his liking. On the system’s exterior, the battlefleet had deployed an extensive net of minefield around Amarah's Mandeville Point, the location where Warp/real-space translation was safe and could not be interfered with by the sun’s gravity and radiation. Orbiting Amarah's third planet -- locally referred to as Laymon -- laid the fleet proper, ready to intercept any formation breaking through the minefield and heading in-system and if possible stopping him from landing troops on Amarah. If the enemy prove too powerful in this first engagement, Battlefleet Orpheus and its allies could still fall back and anchor their second line on Amarah's orbital defence platforms. According to conventional wisdom, the battle plan was a sound one, and Grand Admirral Carew and his crew onboard the Arica Dominus had much faith that the battle against this mysterious and yet unidentified foe could be won in space alone.

When the attack came, it came suddenly, with now preamble or warning. No auguries, no deep-space scan had warned the Imperials from the Necron's arrival, nor had the attack been predicted by the visions of an Astropath, seer or Librarian of the Adeptus Astartes. In other words, the Imperium was teken totally unaware and by surprise. As previously, the Necrons used an unknown technology to disorientate, weaken and disorganise their foes. At 1534202 local time of 3970992.M41, auspex readings and other sensoria registered a gravitationnal anomaly manifesting itself in close orbit to Amarah’s sun, destabilizing the star’s fiery corona which began to expulse huge amounts of plasma and radiations in gigantic solar flares. The star’s projections were so massive that on Aurici, the innermost planet of the Amarah-system, it even reached the surface, flash-incinerating everything on its day-side, whilst the radiations, gravitational anomalies and solar winds vomited in space blinded every augury of both fleet and defence grid and caused a major communication breakdown. Blinded and reeling from this unexpected turn of event, Battlefleet Orpheus did not detect the enemy fleet emerge within the system. By unknown means, the Necron fleet had entirely bypassed he minefields and seemingly manifested out of the void well within the system. Blacker than the black of the void, the strange shapes of the Necron vessels went straight for Amarah and it was only when battle station Sentinel 4 in deep orbit around Amarah Prime exploded that the Imperial fleet truly realised that battle had been joined. Still at anchor, the fleet could only watch helplessly as the black fleet of the enemy passed them by, utterly ignoring them and heading for the system’s core whilst moving at a speed no Imperial vessel could hope to match. Grand Admiral Carew watched impotently as the strange silhouettes of the enemy ships headed to the world he had sworn to protect. Ordering the fleet to mobilize and the Arica Dominus to cycle its generators to full power and engage its engines, the armada of Imperial battleships began to stir, but for Amarah it was already too late. By the time a warning could be send, the Necron-ships had already obliterated the interior minefields and destroyed first Sentinel 2, and then Sentinel 1, each station harbouring the firepower of an entire cruiser squadron. Systematically, Amarah was stripped of the defences so much time, efforts and ressources had forged. The stations’ fiery demise illuminated the night-sky above Amarah, stiring the ground-based defenders into action.

Planetfall
Virtually unopposed, the Legions of the Maynarkh Dynasty landed on Amarah. Ground based orbital defence batteries and great missile silos, concealed under Amarah’s grey seas soon opened fire, raking the skies with their power, but the strange half-moon and spear-shaped of the invaders easily eluded them. The first sign of enemy invasion were unnatural storms that darkened the skies, riven with vivid lightnighs, while strange glooms, eerie lashes of light and pale radiances randomly illuminated the great spires of the Hive-cities, or even more strangely in the subterranean tunnels and passageways. Still impended by the electromagnatic interferences caused by the solar flares, communications proved difficult, Amarah’s unprotected tactical vox-networks befouled by static and other interferences suddenly came back to life, filled with panicked reports of simultaneous and multiple attacks.

Between two lightnigh flashes, a spectral army of black skeletons of living metal manifested itself on the great ceremonial plazas of Callowsheen Hive, opening fire on the civilians gathered there and wrecking a fearsome deathtoll. Slauhtering all before them, the enemy began to spread into the city’s street. At Duneratd Star Port, Amarah’s main orbital transit facilities, a ravenous swarm of metallic beetles unearted themselves, erupting from Amarah’s very soil to attack troop shuttles and gunships stationned on their slipways. The defenders of the starport were literally swarmed by these constructs later identified as Canoptek Scarabs. Elsewhere, in New Vassburg City, the largest of Amarah Prime’s arcologies, the enemy descended from the skies, the sleek shapes of Doom Scythes and Night Shrouds attacking the defenders from the storm-wracked skies, eliminating artillery positions and armoured redoubts to pave the way for the Necron Phalanxes. The Night Shrouds’ antimatter bombs ripped their targets into oblivion, tearing great wounds in the arcology’s spires and infrastructure until the towering structure began to topple and crash down, burrying thousands beneath the rubble. Only a powerful and determined counter-strike led by Space Marines of the Minotaurs Chapter would keep New Vassburg to fall entirely into enemy hands.The oceanic, half-submerged Tritonus Hive was similarly soon undone, the Necrons emerging from the black waters on great, funeral barques. Having no need to breathe and stalking the darkness in search of their prey, the Necrons even benefitted from the labyrinthic and flooded meandre of streets and sub-levels that formed Tritonus Hive’s principal defences to bypass the defenders barricades and attack from the rear or unexpected quarters. Particularly, scissor handed skeletons known as Flayed Ones stalked the darkness, crawling from the shadows and mercilessly murdering every inhabitant. After the great massacre was completed, Tritonus’ air-domes and coral-like heights were collapsed, to further trap the survivors inside the Hive, its watery streets echoing with the screams of the dying.

The Maynarkh concentrated their first attack on Amarah’s cities and with the notable exception of the Duneratd Star Port, military targets were only attacked in a second wave. The foremost of these military outposts was the polar base of the Bastion Militaris, a true lynchpin of Amarah’s planetary defences was the first to be besieged, strange hulking war machines that silently floated over the ice flow. The Necron Phalanxes were seemingly unstoppable, ignoring the large rents torn in their formation by the base’s cannons and closing in on the Bastion Militaris, The base’s curtain wall, made of solid granite were destroyed by flashing blasts of energy and strange waves of seismic force and crumbled as if they were made of sand. On the Marcovan Peninsula, where prefabricated barrack-blocks had been erected to house nearly a million Guardsmen, the mustering armies were simply annihilated from orbit, blazing lambent shaft of light leaving the bodies of Guardsmen as mere ashes and turning the peninsula itself into a plain of fused silica glass.

With the enemy seemingly materialising out of thin air and attacking everywhere at once, the defenders of Amarah were hardly pressed and despite the problems they faced, in the purest tradition of the Imperial Guard, they fought back nevertheless and fight back hard they did. At Callowsheen Hive, the rampanging Necrons were met by the tanks of the Tekarn 234th Armoured Battalion. Unfortunately for the counterattacking Tekarns, they soon had to realize that even the modest Gauss Flayers of the Necron Warriors they faced could harm even their heaviest armour at close range. Not wanting to let themselves be hemmed in by the streets of the Hive city, the Batallion retreated back into the wide concourse where their superior range could be brought to bear. Choking the streets with their Leman Russ tanks, Manticores and Basilisks, the Tekarn drew their line on the wider avenues and blasted at the Necrons with everything they had as soon as their foe emerged from the buildings. The unrelenting barrage of shellfire would have annihilated a lesser foe, but the Necrons were made of sterner material. Even as rank upon rank of Necrons were blasted apart and shattered warriors were sent spinning into fragments, more took their place and even more dragged themselves up from where they had fallen and began to re-assemble themselves. The Tekarn watch on in horror as their fury was doing nothing more than holding back the tide that threatened to submerge them, yet they could not relent. With even greater haste, shells were slammed into breaches and the Tekarn’s guns soon began to glow dull red with the friction heat of the shells flying at the Necrons, upholding the stalemate. Yet, it was a stalemate the Tekarn officers knew they could not sustain for long.

The valiant Tekarn would however never have the chance to see how long their defiance would have lasted as their doom already approached. According to the testimony of Trooper Yeon Bak, sole survivor of the entire 234th Batallion, the enemy struck from both above and below. At first, the din caused by the Tekarns own guns made the Necron attack go unnoticed and it was only when the new foe fired their weaponsystems that the true threat became appearant. Tooper Bak, then part of the shell-carrying train reported that the first sign he got from the enemy was when the trooper directly in front of him was instantly incinarated by a focused beam of heat. This same beam also cut through the leg of a Sentinel Power-lifter, causing the walker to tumble and break into flames. Bak further described the unknown weapon’s effect to have reminded him of the Meltagun-technology used by the Imperium, only that the beam seemed more prolonged and focused. Fortunately for Bak, he and his comrades were just returning from the frontline, otherwise the searing heat of the beam would surely have ignited the ammunition they usually carried. Bak himself attributes his survival to pure luck, throwing himself into cover at the first notice of danger, Bak distinctly saw the shape of this new enemy: huge black robotic insects, crawling along the habspires on their multi-segmented legs. Some of them flew over him, producing a notorious buzzing sound when they did so. As tall as a man, this swarm fell upon the Tekarns’ rear, trapping the tanks of the 234th Armoured Batallion between the Necron Phalanxes and themselves, their cutting beam slicing even the heaviest armour apart before hacking the crews apart with their bladed limbs or energy-weathed stingers. Trapped so close to each other and unable to move and bring their weapons to bear on these new assailants without hitting their own troops, the Tekarns were slaughtered. Tekarn Command valiantly tried a counter-attack with its infantry platoons, hoping that concentrated fire from Hellguns and portable Plasma Weapons would overcome the enemy, but the counter-attack was quickly countered by further Necron reinforcements: rapidly moving arthropod like constructs erupting from the ground and setting at the Tekarns with metallic claws. Fast and appaearantly able to move through solid matter, these hence unknown killing machines swiftly completed the massacre of the Tekarns, the entire 234th Armoured Battalion being eradicated in less than twenty minutes. Trooper Bak himself survived, crawling into a sewer duct and being carried away by the flow of human faeces and spoiled water, his testimony constituting the first account of what the logisters of the Ordo Xenos have since categorized as Acanthrites and Tomb Stalkers. After recovery and debriefing, Trooper Yeon Bak was duly executed for cowardice in the face of the enemy.

The Valour of the Death Korps
In the days that followed the initial Necron assault, Amarah was laid to waste and blasted into burning ruins. The Maynarkh had concentrated their efforts on wrecking a blood toll amongst the civilian population, concentrating their assaults on the planet’s Hive cities and other centres of settlements which were soon all under enemy control. The Necrons gave the fleeing civilians no quarter, nor did they take prisoners. This left the outer reaches of the hives - where many of Amarah’s defenders had been stationned in expectancy of a traditionnal ground assault - relatively intact. While the settlements themselves burned, Imperial resistance on Amarah was far from spent. In those stretches of Amarah’s urban landscape spared either by accident or design from the orbital and aerial bombardments, ad-hoc units of survivors established rallying points, with the most important formation being commanded by Marshal Karis Venner of the Death Korps of Krieg.

Given the Death Korps reputation and the averse effect the proximity of the bleak men of Krieg had on other Imperial units, especially on the local forces of Amarah’s Planetary Defence Forces and Orphean Guard, the Death Korps had been stationned far away from local barracks in several out-hive areas of New Vassburg City : the Karalsa industrial plaines. Having arrived late in the great muster of Imperial forces, the 17th and 60th Line Korps found their intended quarters, a hundred square kilometres of warehouses and manufactoria wholly inadequate. The buildings were deemed not secure, and so the Kriegsmen set out to transform their dwellings according to their doctrines of siege-warfare. Where possible, buildings were reinforced, trenches dug and bunkers improvised, but most of all, the Death Korps Engineers made use of the underground network of utility tunnels that criss-crossed the area, expanding the network where deemed practical to store both ammunition, fuel, arms, tanks and men. Safely billeted underground, this foresight would allow the Death Korps to emerge almost unscathed from the initial Necron assault.

Determined to drive back the enemy invaders, the Death Korps emerged in their thousands, establishing a security perimeter around their own defensive positions before dispersing in the ruins of the Karalsa plains, conducting methodic sweeps of the area. Where the encountered the enemy, they fought, and where they encountered other Imperial units, they linked up with them whilst the experiences Quartermasters would explore abandonned positions and strip them of arms, ammunition and fuel. Overall tactical command resided with the Death Korps own commander, Marshal Karis Venner which ordered the summary execution of several senior officers of the Orphean Guard that he considered to have failed in their duties to the Emperor and retreated before the enemy. To the surviving officers he offered a simple choice: share their superior’s shame and fate or continue to fight and gain glorious martyrdom against the enemies of the Emperor. Nearly two hundred Guardsmen rallied to Venner’s banner, including a dozen squadrons of Imperial fighters and attack aircrafts constituted from survivors of decimated formations. These aircrafts, Venner dispersed into smaller groups, ordering his engineers to clear portions of the great macro-crawlers highways to use as airstrips.

The fighting with the Necrons was fierce, but the Death Korps were veterans of the most terrible battlefields of the galaxy and experts in fighting on such a broken landscape. Every ruin was turned into a strongpoint, every half-crumbled wall hid a lookout and the Death Korps were not beyond hiding snipers within the mounds of the day. Yet the Necrons proved particularly resilient to the weapons of the Guardmen, their metallic Necrodermis almost impervious to las fire and their strange war-constructs capable of shrugging off most of conventionnal heavy weapons fire. But the Death Korps were more than willing to match the implacable Necrons through relentless determination, to even the odds no matter the cost in lives. Learning to fear the Necrons firepower, the Death Korps quickly shifted tactics, combining long range indirect artillery fire with extreme close quarter assaults, overhelming the Necron Phalanxes through sheer numbers. While covered with success, it quickly became evident that the cost of this new methods could not be held up indefinately,even without the Necron’s ability to self-repair. Underground the war also continued, the Death Korps Engineers, experts in tunnel-fighting resolving to seismic detectors to warn them of enemy assaults from Canoptek Scarabs, keeping them at bay with flamer and meltasquads standing at ready around the clock.

Marshal Venner knew that the gains he had made were at best transitory: with no reinforcements to be expected, cut-off from other Imperial units and with much of Amarah’s surface controlled by the Necrons, it was only a question of time before the 17th and 60th Line Korps were surrounded and eradicated. Before he would let this happen, Venner was decided to strike out and pursue martyrdom in the destruction of the Emperor’s enemies rather than let his forces be bled dry to no effect - all he needed was a target.

Despite the numbers of the Death Korps, they were perhaps not the most fearful defenders still on the ground, as some elements of the Minotaurs Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes had become trapped on Amarah as well.Having engaged the enemy in what remained of New Vassburg hive, the Minotaurs had been able to identify an enemy stronghold in the ruins of the former arcology. Where previously there had been only tons of ruins and wreckage, a strange and sinister pyramid now rose, its walls coming together at strange angles and appearently made form green-black stone which somehow contained arks of emerald energy that would manifest itself as veins in a block of marble. The sinister pyramids rose high in the sky, drawing lightning bolt after lightnigh bolt to its apex, appearantly feeding on the energy of the elements, for as each lightning struck, the entire pyramid burned with glimmering ghost fire. Around the main edifice, several lesser structures made of the same sombre stone had appeared, their strange battlements studded with arcane weapons emplacements. These outerlying builings where connected to the main structure by angular trenches filled with a glowing fog. The enemy patrolled heavily around the pyramid complex, and the Minotaurs had been able to observe that a multitude of corpses and pieces of wreckage were brought into the pyramid, as if the dark mountain was swallowing the detritus of war as if a living being. It would be against this target that Marshal Karis Venner would unleash the fury of the Death Korps. As the Death Korps mustered in cover of the ruins, forward observers reported that a portal of green energy had been opened into Amarah’s tormented skies, showing distant and unknown star constellations, it was from that portal that the lightnings of energy that struck the pyramid at regular intervals originated. Silently, the assault brigades formed up, kneeling in the dust and ashes to better avoid discovery, waiting the silent signal to go over the top and attack the Necrons. The men of the Death Korps knew from the beginning that it would be a costly affair, for between their forward positions and the Necron defences, a strip of nearly one kilometer had been cleared from debris, turning it into a perfect killzone. Yet when the signal finally came the Death Korps did not flinch and attacked as one.

Almost immediately, Necron Sentry Pylons materialised on the battlements of the Necron citadels, training their strange guns at the Imperials. Power visibly surged upon the walls, gathered around the Sentry Pylons and flew at the attackers. This was then when the killing began. Howling beams of emerald energy blasted at the Death Korps, obliterating great swarhes of men from existence, while Tesla Cannons incinerated everything their lightnings touched. Hundreds of Guardsmen died within the first moments of the battle, reduced into their consisting atoms by Gauss weaponry or left as cinders mingling with the dust of the ground. But these fatalities did not stop the Imperial advance, as undeterred, observers and Quartermasters noted the coordinates of the Necron gun-emplacements and transmitted them to their rear lines where the Imperial artillery waited to spring into action. Venner had ordered every gun and every shell to be mustered: there would be no reserves, nothing to fall back to. With diligence, the Death Korps had prepared their Basilisks, their Medusas, Colossus’ and Praetors and these guns answered the Necron heavy weapons in a furious bombardment, hurling tonnes and tonnes of shells at the Necron fortifications.

Almost instantly, the pyramid and its sub-citadels were wreathed in a mantle of flame as hundreds of shells burst against the alien structure. Great chunks of green-black stone were torn free, one of the outerlying pylons even being destroyed under the relentless bombardement. Upon the pylon’s destruction, the pyramid flickered as if vanishing from this reality only to become solid once again. Faced with this tremendous  firepower, the Necrons soon redirected their own guns upwards, lashing out at the onrushing shells and missiles, causing them to explose while still airborne. The twin bombardements cancelling each other out, the Death Korps used this respite to press their advantage,rushing the outer defences while their tank companies - held in reserve until now - now joined the fray. As the forward elements were roughly a hundred meters from the nearest sub-citadel, the ground burst open under the feet of the Guardsmen, disgorging a swarm of murderous Canoptek constructs directly into the onrushing Death Korps. The big Tomb Stalkers rose on their articulated bodies, tearing through the forward platoons, whilethe smaller Canoptek Scarabs dragged men down, stripping their flesh from their bones. They were met with bayonet and Lasgun, Flamer and frag grenade, the Death Korps did not falter, like the incoming tide,the men of the Death Korps rushed past them in great waves of men. Behind the Canoptek constructs, Necron Warriors were mustering, streaming from he citadels, but soon became the target of the advancing tanks, throwing shells from their Battle Cannons into the ranks of the Necrons.

On the left flank of the Imperial advance, a squadron of Macharius Omega super-heavies unleashed the fury of their Plasma Blastguns, each of them blasting away with the power of a miniature sun, heedless of the overheating cannons such was their determination to rid their comrades of the threat posed by the Necron Sentry Pylons. On the opposite flank, Centaurs sped forwards, their Quad Launchers in tow, trying to deploy them as close to the enemy as possible. Scores of them were destroyed by gauss fire, but the remaining crews continued undetered. Thousands of men were dying and tanks erupted into fire but Marshal Venner’s plan was working : with the destruction of the first Sentry Pylons, ever more shells were landing on the pyramid, whose smooth surface began to crack, lightning playing sickly across its splintering surface and smoke billowing out of the pyramid’s interiors. Far to the rear, the infantry companies left behind to defend the firing positions of the Krieg’s big guns were suddenly assailed by claw-handed foes emerging from the shadows and were soon leading a desperate battle for survival. Necron attack craft shrieked from the skies, conducting straffing runs on the Krieg artillery, but were soon intercepted by squadrons of Lightning-fighters and the heavier Avenger. Weapons blazing in the night sky, each pilot commended his soul  to the Emperor before diving bravely into the heart of the enemy Night Scythes-formations.

By now the die was cast and there would be no going back. Ten thousands had already died, but true to his oath, Marshal Venner ordered the second wave to storm in the path of the first wave. To show his committement to this task, the Marshal himself raised his sword and personnally led the charge. Another tide of men in greatcoats surged forwards across the blasted battlefield, toppling and crushing the remaining Tomb Stalkers in a sheer wave of flesh and limbs, trampling the Scarabs beneath their boots, human soldiers soon swarming the fortifications as ants. By now the bombardement was slowing down, the guns destroyed or their ammunition stocks entirely spent, but the damage had been done: the Death Korps had invested the pyramid complex. The Necron Warriors were surrounded and taken out in murderous crossfires, pressing back the skelletal figures. This was bloody business, but for every man of Krieg the Necrons fell, a dozen took his place. Having reached the pyramid proper, the Death Korps carefully placed Demolition Charges, slamming Meltabombs into those cracks opened previously by the bombardement or those energy conduits unearthed by the fighting.The violent explosion that ravaged the black pyramid blinded onlookers from five kilometers away, carving an ash-white crater within the soil of Amarah, a crater that was even visble from space.

Although the Death Korps were not the only Imperial defenders that succeeded to hold off and even repell the invaders, these hard-fought victories were unable to deny the fact that the Necron invasion had been murderously effective: Amarah’s three major hive-cityies all lay in ruin, the Sector’s rulers, Governor-General Calibron Laan and Lord Inquisitor Hiram Ntshona,  presumably slain, Duneradt Starport in ennemy hands and Amarah’s key defensive facilities reduced to rubble, stategic victory could only be gained by one great gambit - a decapitaton strike.

The Minotaur and the Reaper
With its task accomplished and the Undying Legions of the Maynarkh now deployed unto the surface, the Necron fleet turned it’s attention to the interplanetary space, leaving Amarah Prime’s atmosphere shrouded in black storms, the blackness soon illuminated by the fiery trails of the reentring debris that were all that subsisted of Sentinel 1 and 2. Now awoken and arrayed for battle, the Imperial armada was waiting for them, heading at fullburn towards Amarah. When the Necron ships began to stir, the Imperial captains swore, believing that the enemy would run before their gathered might and leave them bereft of their only chance to avenge their previous failure. They were wrong. Turning with almost contemptuous grace, the black fleet formed a perfect crescent-shaped attack formation and locked onto an intercept trajectory that would take them straight in the heart of the Imperial Battlefleet. With a sudden acceleration none of the Imperial ships could have matched, the Necron ships picked up momentum and rushed right into the path of the Imperial armada.

On the bridge of his flagship, the pride of Battlefleet Orpheus, the Apocalypse-class Battleship Arica Dominus, Knight-Commander Grand Admiral Georg Carew watched the tactical holo-sphere of the bridge relay the mouvements of the Necron fleet with some kind of apprehension. Although he desired nothing more than to make up for his failure and avenge the losses of Battlefleet Orpheus and the slight made upon its honour, unlike many officers and ship captains under his command, Carew would not let himself be blinded by his wrath. He commanded the greatest battlefleet ever assembled within the Sector, a gathering of Imperial might never seen since in the records of the Orpheus Sector and whose firepower ranged in the unimaginable - a mere fraction of is firepower would already be enough to shatter worlds and let their blood spill amongst the stars; surely the enemy could not ignore this fact? By conventionnal wisdom the Imperial fleet outnumbered and outclassed the Necrons at least four to one.With the fleet’s auspexes repaired, Carew could draw a precise picture of the enemy fleet’s makeup, not only did the Necrons field less than a quarter of the ships he aligned, but most of their craft where considerably smaller than his own vessels and would  correspond to Escorts in Imperial terminology. The larger vessels, identified as Scythe-class Harvest Ships thanks to the intelligence provided by the Ordo Xenos, numbered only twenty and were led by the two crescent-shaped behemots of Cairn-class Tomb Ships. These tomb-ships were truly gigantic, each one being over fifteen kilometers in span and surmounted with strange pyramid-like structures whose energy reading baffled even the highest-ranking Magos of the Imperial fleet. Labelled as the Sun Killer and the Dead Hand, these two monsters had been designated as priority targets for the Imperial fleet, but Carew was confident in the abilities of his eleven Battleships to overcome this foe. The fleet arrayed against him represented the largest concentration of xenos vessels in Imperial records and what Carew had gleemed from the heavily censured reports ofprevious encounters with the Necrons, their warfleets should not be underestimated. It was therefore that Carew had conferred with Asterion Moloc, the sinister Chapter Master of the Minotaurs Chapter to keep his Adeptus Astartes-support close at hand, the Minotaur’s mighty relic assault-ship, the Deadalos Krata, leading its own echelon of a dozen of Strike Cruisers and no less than three Battle-Barges. This second echelon was deployed some way behind the armada’s main battleline, ready to deliver the killing blow after the lines had clashed or poised to intercept any vessel breaking through the Imperial line if the enemy decided to punch through rather than face the Imperial fleet. For this was surely what the Necron fleet commander intended? To his own vessels, Carew had issued the direct order to all vessels to maintain formation and engage only as directed, on pain of death. The battle-hungry captains of many destroyers and cruisers baulked at the order but knew they faced summary execution by their own Commissars should they disobey the Admiral’s order.

With frightening speed, the Necron fleet closed the gap between themselves and the Imperials. Before any additionnal orders could be given, they had entered extreme weapons range and Admiral Carew knew that he could not hesitate now. Upon Carew’s order, the Imperial fleet was first to speak with hundreds of torpedoes spitting from the launchtubes of the massed destroyers, frigates and cruisers, blazing straight and true on great pillars of flame. The Necrons came on undeterred and made no attempt to evade the wave of ordonnance now bearing upon them, even as the torpedoes closed with their targets,no evasive manoeuvres were taken and no defensive fire threw up a curtain of fire to thin out the wave of incoming missiles. On the flag bridge of the Arica Dominus, all eyes were fixed on the holo-sphere and were watching on breathlessly as the little blue icons representing the torpedoes entered terminal range. Suddenly, mere hundreds kilometers from impact, red alarm glyphs flashed frantically and simply disappeared. Scores of torpedoes simply ceased to function, their thrusters cutting out and the inert cylinders simply tumbling out in the void, their warheads deactivated by some strange technology the Imperial auspexes could not even detect. Others inexplicably self-destructed or largely veered off-course as if suddenly blinded, only a few - far too few - flew true, and these the Necron vessels avoided with contemptuous ease, while the tomb-ships even took a few hits, but their impassive black hulls easily absorbed the atomic spite of the torpedoes. Blacker than the surrounding darkness, the Necron ships came one.

Mere minutes after the spectacular failure of their first volley, the Imperial armada and the Necron fleet entered lance-range, but this time it was the Necrons that opened fire first. On every Imperial ship, alarm sirens began to howl as massive gravitationnal distortions were detected, closing fast with a speed barel below that of the speed of light. No countermeasures or evasive manoeuvres could be taken. Unlike the Imperial torpedoes, this volley would fly true. Only too late did the struggling cogitators and machine spirits of the Imperial fleet identify the nature of these projectiles : solar matter, fragments of dead stars. Made of pure plasma, these bolts of oblivion shattered through void shields with bright actinic flashes, tearing open ships with unsettling ease. All along the Imerial line, ships - both great and small - vanished into oblivion, flashing out of existence. Alongside the Arica Dominus, the honoured battlecruiser Richtenback, which had served the Imperium even before the Great Crusade, was struck amidships and exploded, showering Carew’s flagship in fire and debris. Holding on as not to tumble while around him the Arica Dominus shook, Admiral Carew bellowed his order despite the tumult that reigned on his bridge : the fleet was to come about to broadside and fire at will. Soon, the void between the two fleets became a blinding storm of blazing lance beams, plasma fire, macro-cannon shells and roaring missiles, whilst the Necron answered with a fury of blasts of emerald and amber light. The two fleets interpenetrated and the parted, raking each other mercilessly as they passed each other and Carew could only watch in horror at what the tactical data of the holo-sphere was showing him. After the initial chaos, details came flooding in, as did the casualties, for the moment a flickering list of Mechanicus-cant only a trained and augmented could read, but which was being translated rapidly. Fully a quarter of the Imperial fleet were registered as either destroyed or crippled whilst the Necron had only lost so very few of its own. Horror mounted on horror as after having flown past, the Necron fleet arrested its inertia and turned upon itself, coming right back at the Imperial ships, engaging them from their vulnerable rear. What happened before his very eyes was physically impossible and yet it was happening even as Carew watched on.