Editing War of Beasts (section)

==All Downhill From Here==
As you would probably expect, the Imperials were left badly reeling from the Voidclaw's activation. Calgar managed to salvage things somewhat by manipulating Chaos forces into clashes with the Speedwaaagh!, but even then the Imperials were struggling and countless hives had been badly damaged if not outright destroyed.

===Mortwald Falls===
At Mortwald, the Imperial Fists and Iron Warriors had been engaged in a long trench war, but when they and Deinos' elite forces were forced to redeploy against other threats the Hivesprawl fell to the forces of Chaos. The nobles that had been hoarding food all this time unsurprisingly fell to Slaanesh, a situation that the [[Flawless Host]] used to their advantage by overwhelming the defenders with Daemonettes as they shut down the automated defenses. By the time the Imperial Fists could respond, the rioters opposing the corrupt nobles had devolved into cultists of Khorne.

===Purge-ing Dontoria===
At the peak of the Death Guard invasion of Dontoria Hivesprawl, the Gellerpox-infected freighters that had departed near the beginning of the war came back, now full of mutants eager to claim Dontoria for Nurgle.

[[The Purge]] were insulted by the Death Guard's sudden influx of corrupted life, and sought to deal with it in their traditional manner: lots of chemical weaponry. Citizens and mutants alike were thrown into manufactorums, producing a foul miasma that suffocated everything it came into contact with. As you might expect, the Death Guard and the Gellerpox Infected did not appreciate the interference and the two Nurglite armies quickly turned on each other.

Marneus Calgar decided that breaking their stalemate would not be worth it; even if the Nurglites could be driven off, Dontoria was now a hopelessly corrupted shithole too far gone to be saved.

===Blizzard Battles===
The Dark Eldar and the Thousand Sons spent most of the later parts of the war fighting over the Webway Gate at Kaelac's Bane. The Dark Eldar seemingly triumphed after unleashing stolen terraforming devices that froze the Rubric Marines solid, but before they retreated to the Webway [[Troll|the Rubric sorcerers left them a "parting gift": a Keeper of Secrets.]] This particular Keeper of Secrets, known as "The Pale Stalker", was able to blend in perfectly with the blizzards and within three weeks it had slain nearly a third of the Dark Eldar forces. The survivors were left so petrified of the daemon that they abandoned Vigilus outright. After one last slave raid, of course. I guess you could say the Thousand Sons are good guys? Or at least cheeky bastards.

===Like Primarch, Like Chapter Master===
The Imperial forces were increasingly confronted with the possibility that they were going to lose. Chaos kept gaining ground, and the remaining relay stations on Neo-Vellum were warning that the Great Rift was expanding closer to Vigilus. Left unchecked, the world would be lost to the Warp and the entirety of the Imperium Nihilus with it.

Some among the Vigilus Senate brought up the prospect of Exterminatus, but Marneus Calgar reminded them that Guilliman told them not to abandon the planet under any circumstances. More importantly, the Chaos forces were still being weakened by the xenos and Imperial forces were still eking out victories here and there.

While seeking the aid of the Orks was out of the question, Calgar decided that an alliance with the Eldar of Saim-Hann would work to their mutual advantage. During a lull in the fighting, Calgar was able to call for a parley and meet with Farseer Keltoc. While Keltoc was still upset with the death of Autarch Rhyloor, the Farseer agreed that the Eldar could not afford for Vigilus to fall.

The exact details of the pact Calgar made with Keltoc are uncertain, but given that the Farseer and his senior chieftains were allowed into the Governor's Palace and that the Planetary Governor and the other members of the former Aquilarian Council who had a role in Rhyloor's death were never heard from again, it isn't difficult to figure out the terms. In exchange, the Eldar agreed to allow the Imperials the use of the stealth ship ''Vaul's Ghost'', which Calgar needed to carry out his plan to force the Black Legion's withdrawal.

The Eldar soon began to create a diversion for the Imperials, leading Orks into Chaos Space Marines strongpoints across Vigilus. While countless battles continued to rage, only Calgar, Keltoc, and a handful of Ultramarines commanders knew that only one - the battle for New Vitae Docks - mattered. Countless bulk freighters were sent into low orbit despite the Iron Warriors' best efforts to shoot them down. Most were decoys, but one of them was carrying a payload of six Deathstrike Missiles, including two Vortex Missiles. Meanwhile, the Imperial fleet had been hastily reassembled to engage the Black Legion's fleet, in the hopes that it would buy enough time for ''Vaul's Ghost'' to pick up the missiles.

===The Main Event===
To ensure that the Warmaster couldn't catch onto what the Imperial fleet was planning, Marneus Calgar challenged Abaddon to a duel at Saint's Haven. The Despoiler was eager to humiliate the Chapter Master and promptly teleported there with a retinue of Terminators and Possessed.

As their bodyguards fought, Calgar and Abaddon exchanged volleys of bolter fire before a loose flagstone left the Chapter Master off-balance long enough for the Warmaster to damage one of the Gauntlets of Ultramar. Calgar countered with a punch strong enough to knock Abaddon off his feet, but a slash from Drach'nyen cut off two of Calgar's fingers, badly damaged his armor, and destroyed his secondary heart.

As Abaddon prepared to finish off Calgar, he received an urgent warning from Worldclaimer: ''Vaul's Ghost'' had crashed into the ''Vengeful Spirit'', detonating the Deathstrike Missiles in its hold and blowing a massive hole in the Black Legion's flagship. The critically damaged battleship would soon make an emergency Warp jump out of the Vigilus system and Abaddon would have no choice but to teleport back to attend to the ship.

The Despoiler chose to leave his Possessed retinue behind to make sure Calgar didn't have the chance to learn his plan worked, but his Belisarian Furnace kicked in just in time to help him fight them off. By the time the Victrix Guard arrived, Calgar was on death's door (again) but was saved by his Apothecaries. However, he hasn't taken the field personally since then and is likely still recovering.