mmediate days prior to the calth atrocity to a spike in murders of a most extremely brutal nature alongside this missing person reports skyrocketed both in the civilian population and exertus imperialis regiments stationed across the city the wave of incidents culminated in the day before the eventual attack when a fully loaded passenger maglev train arriving at its terminal station did so entirely empty save for blood and viscera coating every interior surface in staggering quantities this latter event was so extreme as to require escalation far above municipal authorities calling as they did for the eyes of the ultramarian regime's secret police the vigil operati a report filed alongside the request curiously and specifically states that these incidents should not be attributed to the calak war host the host's insularity and apparent barbarism as well as lack of cooperation with local authorities had marked them for many as deeply suspicious citing however ultramar's creed of tolerance for the lesser cultures of the imperium the author commented that it was not uncommon for armed forces drawn from worlds grown savage during the age of strife to be treated poorly abroad across the imperium in that the calak's technology was clear proof that for all their moral and social regression they were a proud people and that the word bearers had readily and easily brought them to compliance not two decades before only in the wisdom of hindsight are the author's defences laid bare for what they are when the fleet tender campanile struck calt verdean anchor the disaster was not immediately made apparent to the residents of itrica located as it was in the southern hemisphere calt's own mass concealed the light of the orbital detonation local dinoral it was mid-morning meaning the port was in full logistical productivity legio's surter vorra and presages in conjunction with the rigorous timelines of the muster had finally moved to embarkation massive orbital bulk haulers were being deployed to ferry the god machines to mass conveyor barks in the void above given their prestige within the realm of ultramar the true messengers had been granted the honor of first embarking the bulk of it's battlegroup some 70 titans in number were arrayed in close marching order at the primary macro alpha landing zone with sub deployments seconded as they were to other orbital ships spread across relatively smaller but still vast landing pads of macro beta at the alphas edges the most venerable and thus heaviest and most valuable of presages's engines had already been ensconced within the cyclopean holes of the arutan a purpose-built mechanical titan conveyor two kilometers in length and a kilometer across such was the sheer mass that the very passage of this craft caused atmospheric disturbances to local weather conditions for days following its passage so powerful were its plasma lift engines the dedicated air traffic lanes had been rigorously enforced around it effectively grounding all ships within a large radius of the landing zones for the time being the vessel had only just cycled its titanic engines to full power its impossible bulk only beginning to rise from Calte's service when the constant new-spheric data deluge the coordinating logistical life-blood of the world died in an instant the victim of the Campanile's attack on Viridian anchor on the planet's far side the arutan continued to rise above Ithrica as those magi not killed by neurosystemic feedback that was caused by the initial failure cascade tried desperately and ineffectively to reignite the manifold establish connection with the planetary new sphere or even affect improvement of local Vox networks in place of the moments of dreadful total silence that followed the initial break a rising tide of incomprehensible audio and neural signals was now present the bow wave of a scrap code infestation now claiming ruinous ownership of Calte's data grid every networked cogitator every networked magus was now assailed by the pernicious code as it rampaged across the realm of information killing and destroying with utter abandon to those traitors present the silence and the subsequent howling from the grid neither affected nor surprised them it was not a death shriek of technological systems it was a holy call to arms the signal they had been waiting for to strike Sertovora as one rose to almost full engine bloom reactors powering to maximum as hard and as fast as even the feckless engine seers of the so-called true mechanical could risk unencrypted still operational Vox networks legio-princepts barked orders in the harsh Martian dialect born of their home within the Mons Sertura as the engines of the firemasters began to move the first firing solutions were tracked destruction began to fall from orbit the first strikes by the orbiting wordbearers fleet had been pre-targeted carefully planned to arrive at the attack on Viridian anchor it is testament to the 17th knowledge of the sheer martial power gathered at Ithrica that this took priority even over engaging crippled void ships in their proximity lance beams supplemented by plasma burst cutter barrages struck landing zone macro-alpha as the princeps of presages deaf and blind within their data-deprived engines they were certainly attempting to establish simply what had happened they were of course utterly helpless and the destruction was only beginning the Arutan and its embarkation schedule have been widely known ahead of the attack the logistics of the matter were common knowledge on channels for both legionnesus startes involved in the conjunction the fact that her departure was seemingly timed with the Campanile's attack run was likely to have been at best coincidence but one that served the traitors' purposes extraordinarily well lance beams attacking Ithrica from orbit bit deep into her hull designed to deliver the god engines of the titanica to active war zones the armor of the bulk conveyor was no paltry thing she was more akin to a battleship in robustness than a mere freighter what she lacked of course was active void shields there was no need for them in peacetime the power requirements could be much more readily used in simple engine management her upper hull took the full brunt of several battleships worth of broadsides even armor of this quality could only survive for so long the plating heating red and beginning to become molten the Arutan wavered in its ascent slipping slowly sideways in the air until one of the four plasma engines took the full brunt of a multi lance strike breaking from the hull and plunging in fiery death planet side the Arutan slowly terribly began to fall three remaining engines still burning this was not a simple direct downward plunge the Mechanicum conveyor slid across the skyline of the city the Navarcos aboard desperately attempting to maintain lift to no avail her passage began to tear the tops off the tallest buildings obliterating towers, hab blocks and thermal exhausts by her passage before it came to a meteoric landing in the civic park lands in the city core the Ligio Prasagius though horrifically mauled were far from the only victims of the punitive orbital strike whole squadrons of fighter craft had been obliterated alongside orbital lifters, gunships and shuttles idle in Ithrica's many landing zones as lance beams tore through munition dumps runways and fuel reserves further horror was unfolding outside the city's boundaries in the massive barracks zones of the Exyrtus imperialis billeted together in attempts to improve inter-regimental coordination loyalist forces were now set upon by traitors in the most mundane of spaces commissaries recreational halls training fields supply depots their own beds across the barrack blocks soldiers were gunned down at point blank range in utter surprise parade formations were set upon by armored vehicles grinding stunned loyalists to pulp underneath thundering threads blades plunged into sleeping off shift troopers it was murder, venal and base played out now here as it was across the entire planet 15 minutes into the massacre and a deep thunderous sound was reported to have echoed across the city of Ithrica powerful enough even to drown out the howling of disaster sirens and the on-going tumult of weapons fire and explosions given cross-comparators with the mark of Calth per ultramarine records and taking into account distance this can be surmised to have been the impact of the grand cruiser Antrodamicus in the city of Calca's fortilece to that metropolis's utter devastation the death of the cruiser was immediately answered across the burning swath of Ithrica by another howl all together more malevolent the hundred or so titans of the Ligio Sertervora sounding their warhorns in bloody exultation a legion bellowing for the kill as one to the titans of Prasagius isolated from the unfolding battle on the fields of macro-alpha it was one more mystery atop the torrent they had been subjected to their engines had been rendered almost helpless by the loss of the newspheric links those that had managed to fire their reactors light their voids and restore some measure of all specs had done so only to see the lords of their legion plummeting to apparent destruction as the Arutan fell from the skies the true messengers were aware that they were likely under attack but were bereft of information as to how or where from the actual fighting at this point in the atrocity was primarily restricted to the imperial army zones the forces of Prasagius and the mechanicum Tagmata Xerxes were far too isolated to know how to react and still under the presumption that this was either a dreadful accident at best or a xenos incursion at worse it was to their credit an exemplary reaction by imperial standards fire was withheld the destructive power of the titans known all too well to their the knowledge that were they to open such fire they would be doing so at the center of millions of civilians and this only strengthened their resolve to navigate some means out of the catastrophe the true danger, of course would come far too late for the true messengers to properly react to the southwestern flank of the city seismic alarms were sounding detecting an entirely different set of activity distinct from the aftershocks rippling through calce crust from the impact of the antrodamacus from out of the great span of the spur wastes a barren scrub land that separated landing zones macro alpha and beta drawn out in a curved battle line 7 kilometers in length over 100 titans charging, running at full stride like a line of ancient clansmen they were surter vora all the near full might of that fallen legio baying for war anything in their path and there was plenty in their path was simply pulverized barracks, bivouacs, armor pools supply depots, friend and foe both all were dashed to rubble or bloody gore by the passage of surter vora flattened by the pounding of the god engine's strides the sheer speed of their advance was nigh unmatched in the annals of the caligio titanica only the imperial hunters of the legio solaria had ever been recorded for having been able to move titans over such distances at such speed in such coordination but historians have been quick to point out that only the overwhelming element of surprise and utter disregard for collateral damage allowed the fire masters to accomplish this similarly, they note that weapons fire was held until what was for titan class engines point blank range this is certainly verifiable and ensured the targets of surter vora were kept in a state of unawareness until the last possible moment prosaegius, attempting to regroup across the spans of macro alpha and macro beta were unable to detect their foes until it was far too late rounding a line of bombardment shattered and blazing refineries at the boundaries of the landing zones the power that had been diverted to the titans motivators were shunted to weapons systems even before the legio had brought up its voids turning from full charge to maximal fire mode where systems could manage surter vora prepared to open fire as this was unfolding above the city, blooms of light pulsing instances of half sun's birthing and dying indicated a fight in orbit to anyone who had cast their gaze skywards slowly, at first but increasing in quantity and lethality debris began to fall on ithrica the fragment corpses of ships caught in the gravity well of kelth the indiscriminate impacts added exponentially to the chaos unfolding in the city as civilian infrastructure was overwhelmed both by disaster relief efforts and simple crowd control terrified workers fleeing for their lives in every direction one such fiery orb plummeted skywards somehow managed and any observed to arrest its fall instead to a just visible stationary position within the atmosphere far above the metropolis the inferno was thanks to recovered sensorium logs the sign of the orbital reentry of the mecanicum tritonos class galleus dirac's lament the vessel was both principle conveyor and sovereign domain of a covenant of the ordo reductor known as mormoth null beholden to no one forge in particular but serving as mendicant destroyers for whatever tag meta elected to contract their services obtaining position in precise geosynchronous orbit above ithrica the galleus fired every single one of its missile batteries simultaneously rather than the one supposes comparatively merciful atomic bombardments of some cities across kelth this was altogether more slower a death the warheads contained within the missiles fired were directed melted charges precision instruments of destruction a great many of them targeted the ithrica heliocon the command and control hub of the city's mecanicum wherein even now frantic clades of lex mechanics were attempting to reignite the manifold and regain some level of control over the rampaging scrap code other missiles streak towards less primary but nevertheless valuable targets surviving generator hubs medical facilities arbiters precincts all targets designed to inflict the most amount of damage to infrastructure that was possible precisely 50 meters above these targets the missiles detonated their systems channeling their power in exact downward facing cones of annihilation heat and radiation equal in brightness and lethality to a late stage star obliterated all before them adamantium was liquidized ferrocrete was turned to black dust the heliocon bearing the brunt of the bombardment simply ceased to be the fusion energy unleashed by the order reductor marking its presence in a vast unspeakable mushroom cloud rising skywards the pressure wave of superheated air incinerated tens of thousands of civilians in an expanding circle flash burnt to their ashes the howling winds demolishing train lines and scattering ground autos like children's toys on the landing zones the titans of prosagius angled their voids and shifted their frontage to face this bushing danger to best protect those engines only for at this moment the engines of certivora to strike at this instant at their most vulnerable flanks the attack of certivora was savage beyond anything prosagius had ever experienced despite their bravery upon the fields of the crusade against a gargantuan zenos horrors the consciousness of the hated fraal could match the gluttonous murder lust the firemasters displayed in their shock assault a score of true messenger god engines fell to the first devastating volley their exposed superstructures bared to the onrushing certivora legio sundered by searing melted barrages torrents of mega-bolter fire and pinpoint volcano cannon strikes reactor casings were torn open the caged sons of the titan hearts going critical in a pico-second birthing fusion reactions of unholy lethality right in the middle of their mustard lines smaller engines caught in these blast waves reeled or were fully toppled even as they hurried to adjust their facings against the storm assault the slaughter was literally unprecedented never in the history of the imperium had so many titan-class machines been destroyed in so quickly a time and yet still certivora advanced murder burning in hearts as fiercely as the fire emblems of their panoply war horns blaring their triumph to the falling skies on the far side of the city further slaughter unfolded on a smaller scale but no less savage and hideous for it the calak war host reached the cordons of macro-landing zone gamma having already killed every exertus imperialis trooper not allied to their secret cause present in their barracks the host now fell upon the civilian population with unrestrained ferocity murdering with complete abandon into fleeing crowds did they send their tanks the bladed dozer plates at their fore crushing panicking civilians into wretched pulp they tore open disaster shelters laying into the huddled terrified masses within with bayonet and combat knife dobbing the walls and their armoured transports even themselves but the blood of their victims in acts of profane lunacy any resistance met be it hastily assembled auxilia defensive positions or even a canny tech priest coven having locked down their manufactoria the calak war host directed overwhelming armor or air support to crush their enemies a wave of super heavy tanks or a mass flight of lightning and avenger strike flyers obliterating whatever in their path with saturated fire despite these clearly coherent responses to mounted enemy defenses it was clear from reports recovered that the calak objective seemed to be simply genocidal slaughter their pursuit of the helpless citizenry of ithrica was simultaneously clinical and lunatic they seized no ground nor held any their divisions that rampaged through the metropolis followed ospex screeds detecting mass human life sign readings their malignant hunger for bloodshed appeared insatiable as the calak spread ever outwards new fiery contrails appeared in the skies above the metropolis heralding the planetfall of more than just orbital debris for now unto ithrica came the arterial red gunships of the word bearers and the sinister configurations of ordo reductor war crucibles on the fields of macro alpha a sterling testament to the character of the legio prosaegius was entered into history despite the apocalyptic fury of ser ter vorra despite their unprecedented casualties the true messengers did not break or even falter those engines that survived the initial barrage of their lines rallied with admirable speed and coherency falling as quickly as they were able into a well-drilled trinity shield formation a favored defensive tactic of the legio the alignment consisted of three maniples of five titans each the heaviest surviving engines forming a wedge formation void shields were brought to maximum all spare reactor charge directed to their integrity and arranged to overlap with their fellow titans behind this shield wall engines of lighter tonnage were gathered in order to protect them the warhounds and reavers of the true messengers fell in behind the formation led by a wall of as yet undamaged warlord class titans an indomitable fortress under most any circumstances save for the one they now found themselves in even the void shields of the warlords powered to maximum integrity were taking fire from a hundred engines annihilation grade barrage weaponry affecting them in unrelenting torrents the ground itself was becoming vitrious due to the sheer heat of the incoming fire and its impacts upon the void shields the landing zones tarmac steadily turning into cracked glass with the entire legio senior kadra believed dead in the crash landing of the arutan command passed to princeps senioris rico triest of the warlord class titan oric pegasus committed to the heart of the shield wall her assessment of the situation could not have been clearer her legio was hopelessly and fatally outgunned their enemies erstwhile brethren of now hated serter vora continue to close their motivators still recovering from the sheer speed of their initial advance but no less implacable triest knew that when the distance was closed the slaughter would be final the fire masters were simply too many in number and their broad kilometers wide battle line was primed to fully encircle the engines of presagius her first and indeed final command as warmistress of the legio was issued with all possible haste those engines sheltering behind the shield wall war mongers reavers dire wolves and warhounds as well as a few heavily damaged warlords were to immediately retreat at full stride into Ithrica proper and disperse cover was to be sought where at all possible and all efforts bent towards a restoration of void shields and laterally weapon systems the man made ravines of the city were tall enough to conceal even Titan class engines which coupled with the division of legio-manipals would hopefully serve to deprive serter vora of its sheer numerical advantage nine warlords would buy their kin the time needed to accomplish this including oric pegasus itself mounting a full charge at the line of the fire masters two never even made contact with their enemies one torn to fragments by sustained fire the other literally knee capped by a volcano canon strike and crashing to the ground this latter warlords carapace weaponry continued firing blindly for several seconds stabbing into the tumultuous dust cloud its fall had thrown up until it was overrun the remaining seven engines collided with their traitor foes with enough righteous fury to sunder their line forcing serter vora to prematurely stagger and close their encircling maneuver to compensate the scorned ferocity of the true messenger served them well as did the sheer power of their engines a warlord Titan motivated by pure hatred is no mean thing and for the first time since the attack began prestigious reaped vengeance from the traitors it was of course an inevitably suicidal attack one by one the counter attacking titans succumbed to the sheer numbers of the fire masters accounts considered by some to be apocryphal owing to the narrative satisfaction they carry state that it was oric pegasus who survived the longest beating back the enemy with the severed head of a serter vora reaver titan clasped in its fist the carapace weaponry were severed ashen stumps its armor was beginning to flow like liquid under so many sustained melt a weapon strikes it and its fellow six warlords died with honor and success their counter attack had bought the rest of the legio time enough to reach the cover of the city's core their names are forever etched into legio memory enshrined as the nine paragons of ithrica oric pegasus putarkos the lion of mars the triumph of acotran reasons thunder the silverthorn this reginum and the will of adamant this majority muster of the legio was not alone in their miraculous retreat smaller subdivisions of the true messengers had mustered elsewhere in the macro landing zones some had suffered terribly battlegroup peregrine was utterly annihilated by a fusion missile barrage from the ordo reductor in the upper atmosphere but others were luckier battlegroup argentus the lever titan invigilator at its four was saved from the bombardment by their proximity to the legio certer vora's own muster site at the time of the attack under fire from the firemaster's trailing elements they had immediately retreated desperately trying to raise comblinks with their kin on the fields of macro alpha to no avail elsewhere the armoured squadrons and battle automata maniples of the mecanicum's tagmata xerxes had also suffered minimal losses from the orbital strikes electing in the face of what they had correctly discerned to be a massive engine scale conflict to fall back to an industrial zone in ithrica southern quarter which embedded magi and mermadons calculated as being the most defensible location within immediate reach traitor auxilia drawn from the mordecai occlusion attempted to intervene in the tagmata's retreat but were in a rare stroke of loyalist luck completely outmatched the occlusion was a string of feudal worlds and while outfitted with decently modern imperial weaponry its regiments were ultimately lightly armed and armoured driven primarily by word bearer aligned faith more than actual skill or leadership the mecanicum simply annihilated them suffering nothing in the way of losses automata and mermadons carved a pitiless clinical path through the traitor auxilia as knight suits secured their flanks the heavier weaponry of the scions deemed a waste of ammunition against such meager opposition with these elements and the remains of prosaegius now disengaged and fortifying themselves within the depths of ithrica the initial phase of slaughter and destruction was concluded but the battle of ithrica was far from over as the conflict entered into its second hour it took on a wholly different character prosaegius now scattered and embedded in the artificial canyons of ithrica sought to use the towering ferrocrete hab and administration towers as cover to lay ambushes for the engines of serter vora while the pharomasters now brought the same murderous fury they had displayed on the landing fields to their destruction of the city attempting where possible to lay waste to whole quarters in their efforts to flush their prey out counterattacks by the true messengers could only mitigate so much collateral damage as they sought to bring the foe to bear and it was not long before the flashing plasma arcs thundering apocalypse missile barrages and howling shellfire began to lay utter waste to ithrica towers were reduced to bullet shredded corpses of their former selves before collapsing entirely victims of the titan battle dust clouds rapidly rendered all visibility entirely moot this was an engine war after all fought in the realms of all spexes decided upon by skill and tenacity of the sensori and their princeps midst all of this crowds of civilians unable to previously escape fled in utter panic from the clashing giants thousands were caught in the torrents of frometium fire unleashed by certivora's favored inferno cannons flash incinerated to ashen ghosts reactor death of titans irradiated whole city blocks in instants their destruction only adding to that already reaped by weapons fire a false knight fell on ithrica a choking toxic miasma of masonry dust and human ash through all this the presagious battlegroup argentum miraculous survivors from earlier pressed through it all under the superlative leadership of the reaver invigilator out fighting and outmatching every foe they encountered they were dogged in their pursuit of a singular goal to reach the downed wreck of the mass conveyor arutan for within the precepts of the manniple bore hope that their salvation may yet live in ithrica's eastern sectors the calak warhost reigned supreme the murderous advance still wholly unchecked their death toll impossible to ever establish accurately they were finally now opposed by the ultramarines of the scattered 4th and 24th chapters squads and companies from these chapters had been sub deployed across the city diverted and separated in what one must presume was a deliberately premeditated attempt to deny them coherency at the outset of the betrayal many of these subdivisions had been caught in the blast wave caused by the helicons destruction and these survivors now rallied under knowledge far more grim their command elements had all been ensconced within the depths of the now annihilated command center this did however provide all points with the mustering site desperately all were seeking to access the massive subterranean network of bunkers that had formed the helicons foundations the main site was simply a disaster any entrance ways were now literally molten rock flowing like liquid in the aftermath of the ordo reductor's dread attentions auxiliary access tunnels were slowly being opened often by mechanicum adepts or ultramarines taking direct enemy fire and trapped astartes below were being painstakingly rescued the 13th legion however could not simply ignore the rampages of the calak this was both tactical exigency and moral duty while defending the rescue operations was a consideration the wanton murder of civilians self-same civilians the ultramarines were essentially sworn to protect and defend led many squads to break away from the helicons zones and seek retribution in the eastern sector counter-attack of unbridled fury slammed into the advancing calak just as the savagery of the zogdilia had met little to no resistance in their slaughter of helpless innocents so too were they now powerless against the legion small arms fire pinged uselessly off power armor just as their bayonets and ritual knives could find precious little purchase in cobalt battle plate the violence was astonishing as anyone who has ever beheld astartes facing baseline humans will ever attest to the calaks overrun forward elements almost entirely light infantry were reduced to piles of viscera severed limbs and detonated bodies it is a testament to the discipline of the ultramarines that their desire for vengeance did not see them make the same mistake their foes had when calak walkers and armor were encountered tactical withdrawals were immediately ordered until heavier weaponry could be drawn up to further punish the traitors the sheer malicious fury present amongst the nigh rabid calak war host since their first atrocities in their barracks zones were now being documented amongst other traitor forces in the war zone the tagmatas xerxes recorded a marked uptick in baseline human auxilia hurling themselves at the mechanical defences seemingly without consideration for survival carefully delineated kill zones methodically mapped out by the tagmatas savants of destruction became clogged with bodies yet still the waves and waves of soldiers came heedless of losses insensate in raptuous kill lost so constant were these human deluges that the esoteric weaponry of the mechanicum began to overheat forcing the application of close quarter combat protocols in carefully timed sequences so that the magi and automata may preserve their ammunition supplies and weapons barrels the potential source of the zealous lunacy was soon to reveal itself amongst the human masses now strode figures altogether more massive the word bearers the estartes present at these engagements thanks to rigorous mechanicum data extraction were documented as having quite non-standard upgrades to their power armor many bore what appeared to be votive sensors swinging on chains and vomiting forth clouds of hallucinogenic narcotic gases augmented helm speakers blared plain song or hymnals in languages unknown to the tagmata but the effect that these estartes had amongst the unaugmented thralls was clear mathematically verifiable even wherever they strode the suicidal intensity of the auxilia was driven to even greater heights not only that but the estartes themselves were of course no slouches in combat and had brought up field weaponry to match that of the tagmata xerxes significant damage was now being reaped upon the mechanicum previously merely outnumbered the magi were now becoming outgunned forcing retreat algorithmica to plot withdrawal courses to hastily but exactingly constructed defensible positions not even the once noble engines of the legio sertovora were spared from the murderous wrath but the masters of the titans did not seem to pay it any heed even their holy name appeared to be a thing of the past though the legio was born of mars herself ancient even by the standards of the kilesia titanica ithrica was the moment they shocked that identity holy a new name was being blared across open vox lines howled into the wind with a rage unbridled infernus it was appropriate on that damnable day more than any others the fire masters they now truly were inferno cannons incinerated city blocks with abandon or deluged presagious engines with crawling melting fury as the hours of engine war ground on legio infernus titans seem to abandon any tactical rigors of god machine scale conflict they transformed slowly but surely into less of a coherent fighting force and more of a horde of gigantic beasts unleashed engines of the true messengers were hounded like wounded prey but increasingly infernus titans would abandon these pursuits in favor of glutting themselves upon the helpless humanity that fled from them in all directions the methods employed in these slaughters had previously only been done so against non-compliant human regimes or zenus populations using the sheer overwhelming sonic power of the engine warhorns the titans drove people like livestock deafened their ears bleeding herded into groups contained by the very architecture of the city before engaging their inferno cannons and turning the screaming begging humanity into cinders not one scrap of mercy was offered the sheer horror of the murder was apparently the exact point for the beleaguered engines of presagius the massacre of ithrica's civilians granted them a degree of respite distracted infernus engines were peeling away from pursuing them battlegroup argentus spared from obliteration rounded upon the downed hulk of the arutan only to find their path barred by a hulking nemesis warbringer class titan accompanied by two warhounds while not the demi legio they had feared to discover gloating over the wreckage of the mass conveyor the nemesis outmatched any single engine in argentus who now steeled themselves for the fight of their lives the battle of ithrica is almost unique upon calth for being a warzone where a no-combatant held the upper hand for any significant stretch of time during the betrayal a status quo typically ended up establishing itself within the first hour of hostilities in favour of one side or another this was of course overwhelmingly in favour of the traitors possessing as they did total surprise and superiority but loyalist victories did still exist in ithrica no such decisive position was occupied for many many hours by the sixth hour of fighting ultramarine reinforcements drawn from the 17th and 18th chapters had poured into the city via gunship and rhino transports having mustered far outside the metropolis's boundaries these survivors nevertheless reckoned that ithrica would provide a more defensible position than the empty scrubland surrounding it it was no safe harbour that much was certain but it would at the very least provide cover from aerial strikes of word-bearers black comet chapter fliers that had so punished them since the first wave of attacks additionally, corfeiron's control of the planetary defence grid had seen renewed orbital strikes targeting locations in the planet's southern hemisphere commanders of the 17th and 18th reasoned that in no way certain the word-bearers were less likely to commit orbital fire on a war zone containing their own elements in the depths of the ruined city the remnants of the ultramarine's fourth chapter had coalesced under the leadership of captain mantargo who had led a heroic breakout from the subterranean bunkers with the sizeable amount of his chapter's armour and artillery divisions in a superlative tactical decision the captain deployed his war machines on the high ground offered by the massive trident aqueduct its systems, savaged by the war it nevertheless had been built to withstand thousands of tons of water every second making it the perfect platform for the armour of the 13th legion from here, captain mantargo was able to direct counter-battery fire at targets of opportunity across the entire metropolis although these efforts were limited by vox lines constantly jammed with overlapping hymns and chants so intense and garbled now that they resembled nothing less than constant primeval howling at the site of the downed arrutan the nemesis titan revoka had finally fallen but only at great cost to battle group argentus the warlord class evocatus and the warhound deathrunner had been lost with all hands while the commanding reaver class later had suffered heavy damage along with its two surviving kin drawn by the fighting almost the entirety of prosaegius beliedgird legio had gathered in the city areas around the arrutan rallying around the conveyor as on all sides they were pressed by the mad dogs of the reborn legio in furnace this was however no forlorn last stand at such close proximity the hopes of battle group argentus were realized voxlings had been raised engines yet lived within the holds of the arrutan survivors of the crash contained within their god machines but trapped within the massive bark void shields could not be activated and though many may have sorely wished it none had dared to activate weapons to cut their way out for fear of detonating fuel lines or worse munition resupply bays legion techmarines skittarii overseers and mechanica magi were frantically working to free the command echelon of the true messengers even as titan grade weapon fire barrage to the gathering prosaegius voids wavering under such punishing barrages elsewhere the tactical situation of the tagmata xerxes was growing ever more dire temporary relief had emerged in the form of attachment of knights from the stranded house vornhair but the traitor horde had only grown with the arrival of more and more word bearers and the emergence on their flanks of the black and crimson siege automata from the ordo reductor covenant mormoth null the herrotech obliterators who had laid waste to the helicon from the stratosphere as the scions of vornhair against thanatar battle robots and word bearer heavy armor the magi of xerxes worked furiously on a hastily ratified plan to reconfigure a large plasma reactor the housing of which had become the site of their now seemingly final stand at calthmark 06.36.04 the tagmata xerxes mounted a counterattack against their besiegers a wedge formation of the mecanicum's last castellax class automata drove into the traitor host using servo claws, blunt fists and powered blades in favor of now spent firearms to tear through the poorly equipped cultic auxiliaries sent reeling by the scale of the counter assault a moment was bought for three damaged but operational thanatar siege robots to drag the modified reactor forth as fast as their hammering piston legs could carry their massive frames and the barely contained nuclear firebomb their magi had rigged the zealot mob was seemingly oblivious to this driving forth upon the automata with abandon but what was about to transpire was no doubt obvious to some of the canier word bearers in attendance and was certainly obvious to the captain of the dirac's lament being in stationary position above the city arch majos barbatos hexad dominus of the mormoth null covenant registered the phenomenal and barely contained reaction immediately and ordered his ordo reductor to withdraw from the field with all possible haste it was for the traitors far too late logisticians amongst the tagnata xerxes had calculated the inevitability of their forces destruction the total loss of the tagnata was a mathematical inevitability dependent only upon timing and unpredictable factors beyond the reckoning of their statistics accordingly the governing magi had enacted procedures of mutually assured destruction the communion remotely detonated their device an area half a kilometer in diameter was immediately atomized in plasma fire along with anything or anyone that was enough to be contained within the sphere of atomic annihilation the blast wave went on to consume 23 city blocks worth of territory with a similar yield to that which had wiped out the helicon reducing anything living to dust and anything of metal to molten slag it is illustrative of the sheer magnitude of the bombardment the legio-presagius was weathering that the destruction of the tagnata xerxes was utterly unnoticed by the titans guarding the arotan the half-dead invigilator was now the sole engine of argentus that remained standing maimed, yes, but defiant the sacrifice of its battle group was thankfully not in vain at mark 07.03.21 the massive assault door of the arotan hit the earth with a near seismic force unlocked at last by the valiant efforts of loyalist technicians from within the cavernous hold of the conveyor strode forth the mightiest engines the true messengers possessed at the fore was immortalis domitor a warmonger-class emperor titan fully twice the size of the two maniples of warlords that now walked alongside it their first volley simply annihilated the park lands in a three kilometer radius of their targets initial volley destroying in an instant the infernus titans tyrant's fist orias deus visago and consecratus inferna a single coordinated group under the command of the legio's princeps maxima the march of the true messengers was now unstoppable even with vox rendered inoperable by the eldritch howling of the traitor communications the princeps of prosaegius utilized tried and true methods of warhorn signaling short blasts forming robust signals of advance defense and targeting the blood-mad frenzy of their foes both the legio infernus and their human auxiliaries simply fell before the precision and discipline of the true messengers the titanic advance spared the harried ultramarine companies allowing them an opportunity to consolidate their forces and for the first time in hours aid in the coordination of evacuation efforts hurrying what civilians had managed to survive the apocalypse unleashed upon their city into the largely secured subterranean routes to the archeologies far below ground these efforts, though paltry in comparison to the death toll should not go unnoticed the first dread notice of what was to occur came with the sudden and total silence of the vox lines the howling that had blanketed ithrica for hours suddenly simply was not for an instant quiet reigned until it was followed by another surge of calm traffic this time from loyalist units attempting to establish whatever they could of the broader tactical picture every possible request came to the lines please for medical aid demands for command authority confirmation requests for situation reports simple please to know why the imperium's own had turned upon them above all this shunted into the highest priority bands came a call from the legio-presigius warhound engine lecadrio the scout titan had been dispatched to the last known location at azirxes who had proven impossible to raise on vox for reasons obvious to us in this historical record shielded as it was against the intense radiological fallout of the devastated industrial zones lecadrio had discovered not simply a smoking blast crater but a horrific forest of twisted metalwork raised to host thousands of charred but clearly human corpses pinned in place as if by some predatory avian the arrangement of these spars in concentric circles was so clearly not the artifice of any weapon system known and the scout titan's aspect's grids were so overloaded with contradictory life sign readings that it raised its legio's leader immediately to deliver the report but was cut off shortly thereafter attempts to contact it both by the princeps of immortalis domitar and several ultramarines damatlys rhinos nearby were met with failure for the next several minutes until a garbled heavily distorted vox burst was received and routed for all to hear the snippets spoke of a figure not a titan but taller than one winged skin, blood red armor of beaten brass surrounded by a blood fog it spoke that their void shields had failed that their armor had been compromised that, that, that their souls must be commended to the omnisia that, save us then silence there is little in the way of a concrete narrative that can actually summarize the final hours of the battle of ythrika the 8th hour had been ushered in with the death of lycadrio what was recovered in the aftermath is a scrambled mess of legio-prasagius lithocorders legionazostatis helm logs ordo reductor cogitator banks and legio-cybernetica necroportical implants it is all of it, fundamentally corrupt and unreliable even by the standards of records saved from kaoth following the atrocity as for eyewitness testimony the battle had pitifully few survivors and one's acolytes should be well aware at this point of the memetic hazards posed by testimony of those who witnessed what they did this is one of the reasons mentioned at the outset of this particular chapter of the betrayal of kaoth that ythrika presaged in so many ways the battles of the age of darkness a rising intensity of horror and destruction that would end with the sundering of all that was known what can be verified is that at the outset of the 8th hour of battle, several localized rifts in corporeal reality occurred within the city's limits the tears ruptures in the sky that separates materia from immateria our world from the warp provided vectors from which the predatory entities of that realm the neverborn those without the ken to realize the words power will call demons flooded into the mortal plane the largest of these schisma occurred at the site of the tagmatas xerxes's destruction while others emerged at seemingly random sites around the metropolis its industrial zones, its mustery arts others of the damned have noted of course that these sites were likely far from actually random rather they had been locations where the slaughter had been the greatest, the most vile were the most possessive of narrative significance the sheer scale and malignancy of the murder performed by the legio in furnace and the calak warhost was now given dreadful, tangible purpose it was ritual its significance on a scale hitherto unseen by the imperium of man against the torrent of immaterial entities that emerged from these portals there was no preparedness their nature was utterly unknown to the loyalists even the most senior of ultramarine's commanders are legio prosaegius princeps at best they would have been aware that predatory xenos, unstudied by humanity existed within the warp had they been, whatever vomited forth from the rents in reality bore absolutely not one shred of resemblance to whatever prosaic, heavily redacted account they had read their forms were a cacophony of malevolence tidal waves of verminous things, capering half forms in mockery of humanity hybrid anemilia with too many mouths libering uncreations of eyes and fire bestial monstrosities in the aspects of legion soldiery their sizes were as diverse and insane as their forms but amongst them strode incarnations the size and equal of the god engines that had ruled the battle zone for hours some plunged from the sky the color of bruises made of loss enveloping enemy titans loyalist titans sundering them in fell swoops at the avarice plaza the revertitan nosos was recorded on legionary helm vids being crushed by a gaseous emanation that resembled nothing less than a cloud of serpents who coiled around the proud engine to its end the 312th solar auxilia were torn to shreds by half incarnated things hooting as they rode bladed chariots through their ranks the attacks of the neverborn were not restricted to merely loyalist ranks or to the slaughter of remaining civilians the ordo reductor coven of mormoth null were beset by the bale fire and toothed maws of lesser emanations fleeing for their dropships to evacuate to the derexlement far above traitor auxilia likewise perished some in religious rapture but many, many more weeping in terror and insanity only the word-bearers were spared the attentions of the emanations passing through their immaterial ranks untouched on the aqueduct of the trident the previously entrenched to ultramarine's fourth company were plagued by a threat from within as from the body of a captive word-bearer incarnated a massive neverborn creature canine in aspect but with monstrous wings a body the size of an imperial knight and its coming brought great slaughter its size only grew as it killed and killed and killed until its destruction was brought by a strafing run of fire raptor gunships the incident bears further parallels with a similar incarnation elsewhere on calth several similar incarnations in fact where in identical scenarios near identical creatures emerged all of which were reported to have been chanting the same word this word has of course been removed from this record for cognitohazard reasons as all archival menials committed to confirming its validity died in the process one must assume that this neverborn is part of one of their wicked gestalt emanations vestigial fingers of some wicked hole contained beyond the veil yet grasping through it although ultimately overcoming this emanation the encounter and what he had been able to glean of the beyond dire tactical picture convinced captain mantargo of the ultramarines that not only could victory at ithrica simply not be claimed but that even their deaths would inflict negligible damage upon their foes by the 13th hour of the battle of ithrica the captain had sounded a general evacuation order having discerned he was probably the last surviving higher authority within the devastated city the order was quickly taken up in the northern sectors which had been spared much of the rampages of the calak war host and thus the neverborn incursions elsewhere macro gamma landing fields became a helpful escape vector they had been spared the initial orbital strikes owing to their status as a traitor mustering point and now served as an embarkation point for surviving loyalist flyers and overland transports in the southern and eastern reaches of the city however the order went essentially unheeded not out of disobedience far from it but simply because any human or astartes alive within those parts of ithrica were far too occupied fighting for their very survival to even contemplate withdrawal the enemy was numberless their forms limitless they obeyed no law of the world physical weapons ceased to function against them just as how the situation aboard the mcrags honor had overwhelmed the ultramarine capacity for practical application of theoretical rules of warfare the greater and lesser emanations of the dark powers made full use of their stunned foes inability to combat them and the orgy of violence that descended upon ithrica was of a kind unheard of in the annals of imperial history redolent instead of ancient terran wood carvings and madman folk tales of the darkest depths of the age of strife no record exists of survivors from these theaters of the battle of ithrica they have been assumed as far as history can establish to have all simply died torn to shreds by capering never born only the testimony of those few true messengers who survived give any hint as to the fate of the legio presages even though scant handful only lived through the calamity in hopelessly crippled engines that staggered to some degree of relative safety being rescued by other imperial armed forces in the aftermath abandoning their god machines to silent death it is likely that once the situation became clear once the very gates of hell itself had been thrown open and madness reigned the legio knew that there dozen or so surviving titans could simply not escape the arrow town was going nowhere little more than a smoking husk at this point the only titan capable landers were those of inferness at landing field macro beta to which even now the fire masters were retreating to less they suffer the attentions of their never born allies the lords of the true messengers knew that even if they were somehow capable of staging a breakout action and making it to the scrub land surrounding Ithrica it would be exposed wholly left to the whims of aerial or orbital strikes the fate presages resigned themselves to was clear the last futile fighting stand against the hordes of war emanations that they in their actions may buy time for humans or astartes elements to flee it is unlikely that they knew or could have known the degree to which they succeeded it is unlikely that they cared theirs was not of a character that required such flattery duty to presages was the only reward that was needed not a single titan of the legio survived the battle of Ithrica it is however estimated that through their sacrifice some 4000 ultramarines were able to escape the doomed metropolis living to fight on against the tides of darkness that were yet to come by mark 21.00 it could be considered a safe statement that many of the survivors of Talth had resigned themselves to death under the light of the veridian star it should not be taken as a surrender to meldon collie indeed far from it the astartes of the 13th legion ultramarines continued to comport themselves with the utmost discipline and dedication relentlessly applying themselves to the immediate practicalities of their situations but for many their fates now seemed clear whatever recompense they were to earn would be bought from the enemy in blood and destruction and they would count it good all however was not lost the battle was not yet won by the traitorous 17th legion and their allies as one has elucidated upon previously the word-bearers despite being in a position of near-total tactical and strategic superiority from the very moment of their betrayal had at least in base military terms squandered this position in favor of their pursuit of matters altogether more esoteric on the full extent of these eldritch machinations were yet to birth it had allowed the 13th legion an iota of room to regroup reinforce and begin to plan the ultramarines of course were led by one of the greatest planners in imperial history and robot gulliman recovered now from his imprisonment in the thin atmospheric shell surrounding his flagship was striving to develop the situation into something that would deliver his legion from annihilation the key to victory or perhaps more accurately the key to survival past the next several hours lay in the usurped planetary defense grid the thousands of weapons and placements both on the planet's surface and in orbit had been captured by the word bearers earlier in the battle and turned by the traitor mecanicum to the command of core pheron since then the first captain of the 17th legion had wielded the grid not only to punish ultramarine orbital and ground forces but to murder the entire verdidian system while slaved to traitor control no significant muster of force could be managed by the ultramarines as core pheron would immediately retest the grid to punish and annihilate thanks to marius gaige's recapture of the macrags honors secondary bridge gulliman was able to coordinate planning with the largest loyalist force that had established contact from the surface that of fourth company captain remus ventanus ventanus had during the course of the battle linked up with mere edved tauren who was believed to be the most senior surviving mecanicum adept on calth from tauren the captain and laterally his primark had learned that a data engine potentially the only one on calth not infected by pernicious scrapcode lay within the land shear guild hall this engine would allow loyalist mecanicum to reestablish the newsphere and thus control over calt's networked weapons and placements but this would only be possible if control was also taken from the data overseer engine currently being used by the wordbearers to command the grid this engine locus was currently in zetsun varied yard the last surviving orbital shipyard and the base of operations for core phaeron the attack on zetsun varied would be led by gulliman himself while the primark acknowledged that his role was as a general not a warrior he nevertheless stated to marius gaige that he would not allow any of his sons to deny him the satisfaction of killing the first captain of the wordbearers with his own hands ventanas' attack began with a rapid advance in force into the ruins of land shear city the formations he possessed were heterogeneous a diverse mix of imperial military elements the majority was of the captain's own fourth company survivors supported by solar auxilia, exertus regiments and mecanicum tagmata elements under mageos tauren and skitariai marshal aroc serotid it was a motley assortment of survivors to assure swept up into ventanas' mission by shear luck and fate the remnants of the nereid tenth marched alongside mecanicum tech priests under the massive bulk of shadow sword super heavy tanks while at the vanguard ventanas led a wing of 13th legion land raiders a first detected opposition was also their first kill a sole warhound scout titan of the legion mortis the engine was alone and unsupported its princeps had clearly been granted leave to indulge their darkest destructive fantasies on land shear city this they would pay despite pushing its voyage shields to maximum the warhounds force bubble popped under a hurricane of fire from predator whirlwind and sycaron tanks before a pinpoint strike from a shadow sword ended its wretched existence the portentious engine kill marked the start of the engagement ventanas' forces fell upon the word bearer defenders of the guild hall with the fury of the betrayed ultramarine discipline and cohesion kept barely in check in the face of a fury most righteous word bearer gal vorbach reaped a fearsome tally from the attackers but the rage of ultramar would not be denied ventanas' forces captured the guild hall and delivered the mecanicum to their work their success was buoyed by the arrival of new allies the 111th and 112th companies bereft of their command cadres had been led to the guild hall by a single sergeant named ann shees while captain aethon of the 19th company so called the honored also arrived a whole mortal host soon too made their presence known led by ultramarine tetrarch icos lamiad as well as the honored dreadmark tally macros the reprieve welcome as it was would be short-lived all specs feeds registered a massive inbound enemy force led by hall belloth despite the mecanicum's possession of the data engine the corresponding overseer engine in zetsun vered had yet to be freed from word bearer control unless it was the efforts of ventanas' companies would be for nothing and hall belloth's word bearers would annihilate them within the hour yet in orbit around half of the 13th legion's desperate gambit was now underway gilliman himself led a teleport assault from the macrags honor to the zetsun vered orbital the flagship could in no way risk movement for fear of alerting the weapons grid so dangerous a maneuver was now the only one left at the primark's disposal the sheer range of the teleport would draw so much power from the ship and shunt so much of it through the ancient systems that they would surely overload rendering extraction by this method impossible it was a final gambit and was understood as such failure would see the primark dead, kath lost and the legion nigh exterminated the risk was the only course possible for gilliman without control of the weapons grid his legion would simply die regardless it was only a matter of time the battle between the primark and the master of the faith was unlike anything hitherto seen in the age of darkness corfeiron had ascended to becoming a debased magister of the powers of the warp he had drunk deep from the cups of sorcerous might and the full scale of his present abilities were unleashed upon gilliman as soon as the ultramarines attacked the command center invested with the responsibility of the loregar himself for the kath operation corfeiron withheld nothing blasting astartes to ash with warp spawned maledictions before turning upon gilliman himself even the primark was rendered near helpless before the sorcery of the master of the faith driven to his knees by a beam of blackest unlight gilliman was sprung upon by corfeiron who pressed the blacked flint of anathemae to his throat this cursed dagger was one of the eight shards of the anathemae blade forged by the zenos kinabrak and stolen by wordbearer's first chaplain arabus at the outset of the inter-ex crisis the self-same blade had been used to mortally wound horitz lupercal upon the moons of davin delivering the primark to that world's sinister lodge priests for care its new blasphemous children had been wielded by several individuals throughout the battle of kath and one was now poised to reap the life of a primark however at the exact moment when the killing blow could have been struck corfeiron stayed his hand instead choosing to whisper into gilliman's ear an offer he had no authority to make the primordial annihilation a place of great honour amongst the ranks of the dark pantheon's followers all the 13th primark had to do was pledge himself to the worship and devotion of chaos but for his word the master of the faith offered him a place within a new universal order and all the power of the primordial annihilation and all the power that came with it gilliman said nothing his armoured fist canoned into corfeiron's torso the 13th primark's response to the cilebant offer was to tear corfeiron still beating heart from his body and cast its ruin upon the cold metal deck at the landshear guild hall salvation began to reign from the heavens in blinding columns lance beams seared planet word but they did not impact the beleaguered defenders the might of the kouth defense grid was turned instead upon the traitor host and in an instant extinction had been turned to retribution an immediate planet-wide counter-attack was mounted on every major word bearer force currently operational orbital strikes rained hell upon the traitor hosts punishing each and every one in extremis still reeling from the wrath of the defense grid these forces were now set upon by vengeful loyalists astartes, mechanicum, exertus units rising up against their attackers in near unison this was not just merely upon the surface in orbit word bearer ships that had ruled kouth near space unchallenged now had the weapons grid turned against them the platforms had been designed to fend off a threat approximate to a full battle fleet in proper standing order the scattered word bearer ships which for a near full day had been gleefully hunting helpless targets of opportunity were now annihilated in kind vessels of the 17th legion that had centuries of service perished in instance torn into by the unbridled fury of the weapons grid still choked with the carcasses of the ultramarines grand fleet those perished loyalists in orbit were joined by the wreckage of their attackers the sheer volume of debris the 13th legion counterattack now added to would create an artificial set of rings for kouth the planet becoming encircled with the corpses of those ships fallen in the great portrayal forever more on the bridge of the infidus imperator it is known that corphyron manifested shortly into the counterattack still somehow alive in the aftermath of having his heart torn from his chest it is believed the master of the fate survived through sheer mastery of warp craft he was however apparently in no fit state to issue commands it was the ship master of the 17th legion craft antonius antwark that ordered the vessel's disengagement from the battle reasoning that their contributions to the portrayal and its arcane significance had been accomplished within reasonable parameters the infidus imperator came about and made full burn for the nearest mandeville point bored the mccrags honor its flight was immediately spotted by the sensorium adepts and reported to marius gage who in turn raised his victorious primark on zetsun varied absolutely unwilling to allow the ship and presumably corphyron to escape gilliman ordered gage to mount an immediate pursuit aboard the honor both vessels vanished into an unknown warp disturbance at the edge of the system their fates would remain unknown for years to come gilliman himself would not learn of the fate of his flagship his first chapter master or his loathsome enemy for quite some time and indeed the full tale of this insane clash must be reserved for another record although the ultramarines had mounted a stunning last minute reversal of fortune this was not victory by any means the delegation of counsellors led by a group of mechanicum adepts surviving fleet navigators and clearly traumatized astropaths petitioned gilliman for time for dire portents had emerged that acquired the primark's immediate attention the viridian star had during the hours of the weapons grid being in word bearer hands been explicitly targeted by the 17th legion along with the remaining stellar bodies in the system that they had murdered likely through the use of specialized ammunition the traitors had inflicted horrific damage to the star's fusion reaction whatever they had seeded into its mass it had caused viridia to begin outputting increasingly lethal levels of radiation the poisoned solar winds were now beginning to pommel calt's atmosphere which had already been grievously wounded by almost a full tyrant day of continual weapons bombardment and atomic attacks not only were its tectonics irreversibly impacted the sheer amount of smoke unleashed by firestorms that still raged across its continents were choking the skies the combined effects the mechanic would within days render the planet's surface utterly inviolable for human life with full evacuation from the planet impossible due to the sheer lack of legion vessels still operational not to mention the time involved the only recourse was the withdrawal of all the whalists still alive upon calt to the subterranean arcologies the planet was rich with a network of tunnels through its porous crust during its development many of these had been turned into arcologies underground cities connected and linked with future expansions already planned while far from ideal they were well suited to immediately absorb all surviving civilians astardes and other humans and could provide at least some shelter from the fury of the now poisoned veridian star captain ventanus volunteered to lead this operation without hesitation his fate now seemingly irrevocably bound to the planet the master of the fourth company announced over every open vox channel that this was a primarch's directive the fleet or what remained of it would embark to what craft they could the remaining surface armor units as well as what god engines of the calesia titanica were still operational even as this was being conducted the navigators and astropaths of the legion brought the primarch yet more dire news pleas for aid from across the entirety of ultramar calth it appeared was the beginning of a much larger conflict the 500 worlds were being assailed by, according to reports not merely the word bearers but the 12th legion world eaters and their primarch angron dozens of systems and ultramarine's forces were reporting the same dire situation this was no less than a full scale invasion calth gilliman grimly surmised had merely been an opportunity to exterminate the bulk of the ultramarine's legion allowing the traitors to then conquer and reave nigh unopposed through the jewels of the eastern fringe in this they had essentially failed the legion and its legion were very much alive and could be rallied but the price they would pay and had paid was undoubtedly dire almost 120,000 ultramarines lay dead with a further 20,000 crippled and in dire need of medicaid care in many ways the word bearers succeeded it could hardly be argued that they had not the final piece of information for gilliman was altogether more difficult to comprehend in scope but no less pressing for it the navigators were reporting that the currents of the warp were becoming extremely restive the tides of the imiterium insignificant flux for whatever reason these disturbances were centered around calth and the viridian system at best estimate the fleets navigators surmised that the system would become cut off from the wider galaxy by an oncoming storm of unprecedented power and that the storm may in fact be spreading outwards already capricious this past year the rising warp instability sealed gilliman's course for him once the final units could be embarked from the surface and the warp capable ships would flee the system at calth mark 23.43.00 remus ventanus limps to the surface of the world that he suspected would be his very last time loyalist mecanicum elements mostly the remnants of arch major karn barbarels tagmata took the brunt of the final phases of the retreat far more resilient as they were marks of increasingly debilitating radiation unfortunately for the loyalists the traitor forces still alive upon calth had read the signs and had heard ventanus' proclamation where possible significant elements of word bearers likewise retreated to the archeologies this marks the beginning of the underground war a near decade of conflict that would only conclude the traitors on terra at the end of the horrors heresy the betrayal at calth did not conclude in the manner of other battles in the age of darkness that only was the underground war its dreadful successor continuing the battles on the planet years after the initial shock of perfidy the unfolding shadow crusade saw gilliman immediately engaged as soon as the evacuation force made wake calth's tale of the heresy itself the last of the 17th legion was not purged from its tunnels until the fall of the war master the mark of calth itself was kept running by the 13th legion until approximately mark 219,479 0.25 0.03 during the scouring when captain ventanus hero of the underground war led the ultramarines to caltris the home world of the word bearers and lorgar with them they brought death the planet for a planet was scant recompense like the continued running of the mark it was a thing of symbolism and little else of course the purging of a war-painted population was a matter of significance in the years of the scouring but the real heft of the matter lay in the base revenge of the act symbols as the imperium had learned during the horus heresy carried significant weight crimes of lorgar and his legion could not be repaid in the simple death of one world but caltris's destruction yet mattered the word bearers themselves some scholars have speculated that the mark of calth may yet still run in the depths of the great eye or the maelstrom the countless pockets of blackest treachery to which their craven kind ran the mark too was not merely that of ultramarines battle records or the obsession of the word bearers while the legion still lives colloquially mark of calth was the name ascribed to severe radiation burns suffered by the survivors of the betrayal it was caused by the poisoned light of the viridian star the scouring was distinct and in many cases quite serious but veterans of the battle would often forego skin grafts and medicaid procedures wearing them as a grim badge of honour the mark too also refers to psychological damage endured by those who had survived the treachery of the word bearers the trauma of the attack was significant enough to brand itself on to even the psychoconditioned minds of the legion as a starties survivors of the massacres formed groups apart from fellow legionaries who had by virtue of chance simply not been present at the conjunction in the broader context calth presaged the wars of the age of darkness in ways that would only become evident in dread retrospect while it was perhaps the last grand full scale display of the sheer surprise of concealed treachery the utter devastation of civil war between imperial military forces was now writ large upon the scarred rent surface of an entire fully populated imperial world a star system had been murdered in the space of a day billions lay dead in less than 24 hours this was one system one world the battlefield to come was galactic in scale until such a time as one may relate further tales of this benighted epoch ave imperator and gloria in excelsis terra this video and this channel were made possible thanks to the very kind donations and support from my patreon subscribers if you'd like to help support the channel head on over to patreon.com slash oculus imperia if you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos you can contact me or follow me on twitter at oculus imperia otherwise please like subscribe comment let me know your feedback and as ever thank you very much for watching