Editing Story:Warhammer 60K: The Age of Dusk (section)

==Additional Background Section 39: The Primarchs’ Muster==

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'''Part One: Pentus'''

A galactic war is a colossal feat of warfare, but more than that, it is a near-insurmountable logistical challenge the likes of which few men have ever been faced with before. For much of the galaxy’s history, the largest empires were conquered for the most part though political maneuvering and coercion; fear of orbital assault and economic pressures force the hands of planetary rulers to throw in their lot with the more powerful faction. 
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Few men are capable of performing a prolonged and adequately coordinated campaign for widespread interstellar combat. The legendary Macharius was one, Temestor Braiva was rumored to be another. Only the Primarchs, through their might and cunning and warp-born power, had proven themselves capable of such a monumental war.

They had done so before; before the Second Strife and before the Imperator perished. They would do so again. This section shall try to convey the extensive preparatory efforts of both factions of Primarchs before they met on the field of battle. The Primarch War actually began half a decade before the first macrocannon batteries fired in anger.

First, we shall look at the Imperium Pentus’ marshaling of their forces.

The primary concern of the Pentus forces in the run up to the war was disguising their military buildup from their ever-vigilant rivals in the west. Munitions were shipped amidst food shipments between the Imperium’s twenty thousand worlds. War machines were built in modules, with multiple different worlds constructing various parts of these machines without ever meeting one another. Gun barrels would be forged upon one industrial world, while the track links or engine systems were crafted on another and the armor plating fashioned by yet another desperate planet.

The five brothers and their most trusted generals made numerous unofficial ‘planetary festivals’ in their honor over this period as well. These apparently social events were, in fact, opportunities for the generals and their staff to select the cream of the armed forces of the Imperium, discreetly siphoning these units and regiments towards their gathering forces, that began to congregate around the prosperous Elysia system. Elysia was a major CoJ (''Confederation of Justice'') stronghold sub-sector, alongside Harkon and Fentaine. Their agricultural tithes were marginally increased; a tax artfully disguised by Imperial bureaucrats. This additional yield from the tithe was channeled towards the growing fleet anchored there. The great supply ships of the fleet were piled high with food and munitions, as were each of the larger warships and escorts.

The force was not solely assembled at Elysia however, for Vulkan and Corax expressed concern that should they amass forces in a single location too early, Lorgar’s spies might suspect something. Thus, Leman Russ gathered a large crusade fleet around the Nocturne sector, which lay close to Ahriman’s empire, while the Lion and the Khan began to muster around Ryza and Catachan respectively. Splitting the force into three was intended to fool the enemy into thinking Vulkan meant to strike out at all three chaos empires at once, when in fact the Primarchs intended a far more concentrated assault on the Western Chaos Imperium. This split mustering also meant that each third of the force could assemble supplies from their local sectors, and spared Elysia from shouldering all of the burden.

The majority of the Nova Astartes Commanderies remained on garrison duty, acting as security to maintain the Imperium Pentus while the Primarchs prosecuted the war. However, seventeen Commanderies were able to provide almost their entire compliment of Astartes to the war. The Commanderies present were as follows:

'''The Salamanders''' – Twenty Double-Strength Companies. A hundred Salamander Forge Guards remained with Vulkan at all times.

'''The Camouflaged Nemenmarines''' – Nineteen Companies.

'''The Dorn Revenants''' – Sixteen Companies.

'''The Fatemakers''' – We cannot be certain how many companies the Fatemakers committed to the final war. It must have been more than five though, after the Saranus event early on in the war.

'''The Iron Hands''' – Fourteen Companies. 

'''The Fire Beasts''' – Seventeen Companies.

'''The Sons of Corax''' – Twelve Companies.

'''The Jade Princes''' – Ten Companies.

'''The Wolf Brothers''' – Seven Companies. They also took their most holy relic, the Mjolnir stone, into the war. This stone was a fifty meter slab of rock from their former homeworld Fenris, and they vowed to return the stone to Fenris after the planet’s liberation.

'''The Brass Ravens''' – Seven Companies.

'''The Sons of Thunder''' – They brought with them Nineteen armoured Companies, which included many of the brand new tank variants from Armageddon’s Promethean Cult forges. The majority of their fighting strength was mounted in some sort of vehicle.

'''The White Lancers''' – The Khan and the Lion’s shared Commandery. It consisted of sixty Companies, and was by far the largest Commandery. It committed almost fifty Companies to the war.

'''The Rout''' – The Wolf King’s newly formed Commandery. This Commandery had no homeworld, being fleet-based nomads. As such, they committed all twenty of their Companies to the war. They formed the diamond-hard core of Russ's fleet.

'''The Warrior Kings''' – A new Commandery, formed with Ultramarine geneseed. This Commandery could only spare five Companies, led by Sub-Commander Gaius Tolvanus Marius, to fight in the Primarch War, as the majority of the Warrior Kings were required in the war against Khaine in the east. Nevertheless, Gaius Tolvanus Marius was a formidable leader of Adeptus Astartes stock, known to the men of Ultramar as the ‘Hammer of the Angyls’ due to his role in the Rout of Celestine a dozen years prior.

Almost all factions within the Imperium Pentus provided forces, ships and manpower to the conflict. Those that could not formed the hubs of colossal freight fleet routes, that utilized the least-congested warp portals and merchant shipping lanes to slowly and quietly resupply those worlds whose resources were depleted through fitting the fleets. Only the Realm of Fathers refrained from doing so, for they were the key force required to hold the eastern reaches of the Imperium from Khaine’s rampages. 

However, manpower and the multitude of ground forces available to the Imperium of the Five Brothers would have been all but useless without the massive shipbuilding projects undertaken by the primary manufacturing worlds of Ryza, Nocturne, Necromunda, Armageddon and Balor Barrasis. It would take countless pages to name all these thousands upon thousands of ships. However, some vessels demand observation and recognition.

In honor of Leman Russ, the people of Nocturne helped construct his mighty battle barge and flagship. This unique battle barge, named Sleipnir by Russ himself, was a savage wonder to behold. It was built to resemble some ironclad mountain peak, festooned with weaponry, launch bays and nova cannons of a glorious plethora. This was to be the Primarch’s steed into battle, and the Nocturne people made sure it was a kingly mount.

Antioch was the Lion’s vessel, which was converted from a mighty Ark Mechanicus explorer vessel, expanded and refitted by dedicated armies of Ryzan tech priests. Upon its prow was fitted the White Spear. The White Spear was the pinnacle of Ryzan plasma weapon science; the largest lance beam weapon ever built by the hand of man. The White Spear of Antioch would soon become infamous among the forces of the Imperium of Travesties.

Ryza also constructed a vast command carrier for use by the crusade fleet. Known as the Devil of Catachan, the vessel was phenomenally vast; it was said a battlecruiser could fit comfortably inside its cavernous hangar bay alone. On-board it held hundreds of thousands of fighter craft, bombers and combat shuttles, and the facilities to maintain an entire forest environment inside it for training purposes. This vessel was a factory, a carrier and a command center all in one, all built under the watchful gaze of the Techno Magi of Ryza.

Lastly, Vulkan had the Phalanx resupplied and renovated in anticipation of the coming war. He had heard rumors that Perturabo had managed to rebuild the Goliath Engine; the spiteful Iron Warriors Primarch would no doubt attempt to destroy the pride of Inwit, the last monument to dear departed Rogal. Vulkan thus had the Phalanx’s void shields enhanced, with multiple redundancies and generators that could withstand the torments of a world-rending daemon cannon. He also had a shrine and statue to Dorn built deep in the Phalanx, which Vulkan would visit (it was said) every day, giving thanks to his brother for the continued use of his vessel.

As these ships were being built, the training of the billions-strong invasion force began in earnest. Corvus Corax insisted upon inter-factional and inter-Commandery training exercises. Overspecialization and inflexibility would be the death of armies if they ever got split off from the main crusade. He wanted the Pentus Crusade’s armies to be self-reliant and ready for any situation. Plasma Commandos fought in complex Harakoni rapid reaction warfare, Kalthonian Light Infantry learnt how to defeat tanks while training with the Thunder Lizard Tank Legions, while the Tank Legions in turn discovered means of flushing out guerrilla resistance without risking their tanks in ambush.

One of the most famous cross-discipline training events involved the Nemenmarines and the Fire Beasts. The Nemenmarines were known for being somber and sensible, and indeed were the only faction of Space Marines to wear camouflaged armor. Famously, they would never commit to battle unless they had every minuscule detail of the battlefield mapped out. They thus required a significant amount of preparation time before they prosecuted an attack, but when they did, their plans were usually flawless. The Fire Beasts, in contrast, were consummate improvisers. They threw themselves headlong into battles, even when the odds were not in their favor, and relied upon their ferocity and destructive power whenever their battle plans went awry. These were two fundamentally incompatible military philosophies. Not only this, but when forced to train with one another, the two forces would invariably come to blows. The Nemenmarines saw the Fire Beasts as simpletons, all too eager to leap into battle with nothing but a dagger and a forlorn hope. Conversely, the Fire Beasts constantly goaded the Nemenmarines, deliberately spoiling their carefully laid plans in favor of their own boisterous tactics. 

The two seemed deadlocked, until Corax devised a solution. He organised a wargame upon a death world known as Kanvar’s Doom. The Fire Beasts and Nemenmarines would attempt to wrest control of the world from the Sons of Corax. However, Corax ordered that the two Commanderies pair off their Nova Astartes with a Space Marine from the opposing Commandery, one Fire Beast per Nemenmarine. These small teams would have to cooperate in order to defeat the Sons of Corax. Initially, the wargame went poorly for the impromptu Nemenmarine/Fire Beast alliance. Lack of cohesion meant the black armoured Astartes could easily outmaneuver and ambush the attacking force piece by piece, team by team, as they marched through the fetid jungle. However, one team of two managed to evade the Sons, and were forced to confront their differences. The fortunes of the Sons of Corax were reversed when a small alliance of Nemenmarines and Fire Beasts, led by two tactical marines from each Commandery, managed to infiltrate the primary fortress of the Sons. First, they sabotaged the generators for the sentry guns, then entered the fortress as the guns exploded. They utilized the local flora, by tossing five meter tall seed pods from Kanvar’s jungle into the compound. The plants rapidly grew and spread through the fortress. However, as the Sons of Corax began to recover and bring the situation under control, the alliance rushed their foes, storming the breach from the undergrowth, throwing aside the mud and plant matter they had used to cover their initial advance. Within two hours, they had cornered the Sons of Corax Command HQ, and victory was declared. Brother Alistor of the Fire Beasts, and Brother Castron of the Nemenmarines, were subsequently promoted to line sergeants in light of their innovation and skill. Despite developing a form of friendship on the field of battle, the two continued to outwardly display contempt for each other throughout the rest of the war. Alistor decried Castron's ‘relentless, boring sensibleness’ while Castron was known for referring to Alistor as ‘that backwater simpleton, married to his knife’. 

Many bonds of friendship and animosity were forged and indeed broken in the war to come. Legends were made and hearts were broken. Brother fought brother for one final time, beneath the cruel gaze of enslaved gods.

'''Part Two: The Travesty'''

To call the reign of Emperor Lorgar Aurelian and the Draziin-Maton as a ‘development’ or ‘military build-up’ does not truly represent the awful effects of the ascendancy of chaos in the Segmentums Obscurus and Solar. When we call Lorgar’s realm the Imperium of Travesties, it is not some overblown title to conjure fear in the foolish. It was profoundly true.

Lorgar had destroyed the pylons, the only check upon the expansion of the Eye. Over the decades, the warp spilled out across realspace like a virus, writhing and wriggling tendrils of warp storms infecting countless sub-sectors across the Imperium of Travesties. Thus, through these conduits of madness, were the Draziin-Maton able to infest thousands of worlds. And in the wake of these impossible entities, daemons sprang up like a bloody wake behind a feasting shark. The Imperium became a patchwork of warp storms, fractured and spread across the Segmentum like broken glass. Only sector-sized patches of realspace survived between these rivulets of insanity. Daemon worlds were formed daily, their surfaces melding and mutating as their miserable denizens were devoured mind, body and soul by the rising chaos.

Life became suffering for mortal kind, left as playthings to the rising abominations that tore at the flimsy fabric of reality with talons of midnight. People died in their uncountable millions. They were the lucky ones. Those were the ones whose souls were not violently and eternally smeared over the skein of the Immaterium, to suffer and die over and over again, only to return to life and be destroyed once more.

The Second Word of Lorgar was brought to the survivors at the point of a Crozius, and learned by rote in the flames of purging fire and horror.

Following the death and ascension of Kor Phaeron to one of the ‘Choir Immortal’ (''the name given to Lorgar’s parliament of daemon princes and warp entities''), the fiend Erebus anointed himself Dark Cardinal of the Word. Erebus took the Second Book of Lorgar to every world in the Imperium he could reach. His fleet of star-shaped Word Bearer Altarships was led by the last of the Blackstone Fortresses. This served as Erebus’ grand Cathedral of the Mark, and from here he directed a significant fraction of the Imperium of Travesties’ military and ecclesiastical might. Kor Telhal, the mightiest general of the Word Bearers, was at his beck and call, alongside almost thirty thousand Word Bearers, by far the largest faction of Chaos Space Marines still in existence. In addition, Erebus can control of the endless tides of the Cult of the Arizen, a mortal force of traitors farmed from the demented feral worlds and decrepit industrial planets still surviving in the Imperium. These were under the control of a mortal demagogue known only as Vermenthrax.

Kol Basilis and the Blasphematii, the specialist Angyl-hunters infamous for wearing suits in mockery of the Grey Knights, were one Word Bearer faction who remained apart from Erebus. They held the line against the northern Storm of the Emperor’s Wrath (''until the rise of Thor Incarnus of course''). They forever remained a rival to Erebus, but while out on the fringes of the Imperium, they posed no threat to his building power base. 

However, Kol Basilis was useful in other ways. Basilis was a paranoid madman, always seeing plots and schemes wherever he looked. Thus, he always suspected the Imperium Pentus would attack at any moment. He therefore set about creating the Flesh-Wardens. The Flesh Wardens had once been Navigators, until Basilis had vented pure, solidified warp stuff into their bodies, and turned them into towering, slug-like fiends, sprouting dozens of vestigial limbs and, more importantly, hundreds of warp eyes. These wardens were placed on the Travesty/Pentus border, where they could scan the warp from all angles of approach. If any ships should enter Travesty space without heralding their intentions, Basilis could unleash his fearsome war dog upon them. This ‘war dog’ was a mysterious Space Marine known only as Decimus, who ruled a former-Night Lord warband called the Midnight-Clad. His fleet of terrifying reavers constantly prowled the desolate region of space between the two Imperiums. There, they toyed with the few colonies and settlements of humans and aliens that still existed so far from the primary warp storms of the inner Imperium. They had hoped and prayed that this distance from Cadia might have protected them from its predations. Alas, they were horribly, terribly wrong.

As the Imperium built in power, so it built in incoherency and monstrosity. The Imperium of Travesties was under the control of Lorgar; the collars of the Draziin-Maton ensured the other fallen Primarchs were his. However, the collars were not built to unify or control the actions of the great daemonic rulers of chaos; that would be contrary to the nature of the power that was rising. Lorgar did not control this Imperium, he merely basked in its glorious enmity and fed upon its suffering. By the time of the Muster, Lorgar had not been seen for many years; hidden within the great Bone Keep of Cadia. Streams of invisible warp energy surged into Cadia every second, turning the surface fluid and ever mutale. Only the Bone Keep remained, and inside, Lorgar grew in power. He cared not at all for his subjects, nor the coming war. Thus, when we consider the Muster of the Daemon Primarchs and the other major generals of the Imperium of Travesties, we must consider it as several independent military escalations, undertaken in parallel with the other warlords.

The Keeper of Secrets known as the Heartslayer gathered his daemon legions unto him, and used the corrupted Craftworld of Kher-Ys as his personal battle chariot for the coming conflict.

Angron the Red Angel, the mighty Gladiator King, was driven to new heights of insane rage over his enforced allegiance to the Godling Lorgar. This fury was beyond the ken of mere mortals, and his forges of hate burned white hot with his anger. The legions of Khorne flocked to his banner; many Beasts of Annihilation, possessed by daemons every bit as insane as their Space Marine hosts, cast skulls and oceans of blood at Angron’s feet, even as he forged himself armies and weapons of a grand multitude. The Khorne Berserkers gathered to him like snow around a falling boulder on a mountainside, the stone that would conjure the avalanche. Not of snow, but of brass and bile and blood. Where the Red Angel passed, the populations of those worlds rose up and ripped each other to shreds, and their souls were burned in the soul furnaces, which fueled the monster’s war machine ever more. Soon, his fleet was complete, and the Primarch’s battle barge, the Conqueror, rose again at the head of a fleet with one goal; the utter extermination of his brothers. In particular, Angron wished to test himself against Leman Russ. There had always been rumors and sagas about how Russ was the greatest of the warrior Primarchs, the favored wolfhound. Where Angron had been slighted and denied the brotherhood of his gladiator comrades, Russ’s werewolf abominations had been accepted by the Emperor with open arms. The Wolf King’s head would be Angron’s, and no one would stand in his way. 

Kharn the Betrayer followed no ruler. He continued as he had always done; moving from warband to warband, fighting and butchering whomever fell beneath Gorechild. There were no friends or allies for Kharn, only foes to behead and claim. Spies close to Kharn apparently claimed the World Eater had a rivalry with the Bloodletter known only as Skulltaker. Both were furiously attempting to outdo the other in kill tallies and hence prove themselves as the perfect child of Khorne. Only an invasion on the scale of Pentus’ could have hoped to draw their attention away from self-destructive murder, and towards a common foe.

In the Southeast, Doombreed began to form an alliance of daemons; a vast congregation, larger than any gathering of daemons yet seen since the Fall of the Eldar and the birth of the Eye. Doombreed was the bloodied Prince of the Terran hell, a warp storm formed around Terra itself. His flagship, much to the horror of Pentus historians, was a gigantic carrier ship called the Imperator Sominus. Once, long ago, the vessel had been the Emperor’s personal vessel. Under Doombreed’s attentions, it became a grandiose, ugly thing of crenulated towers and writhing maws, its hangar decks filled with rookeries of winged daemon-spawn, its corridors haunted by lost souls and malevolent energies. Many believed Doombreed wished to challenge the Draziin-Maton as well as the Imperium Pentus, but who can truly understand the mind of a daemon?

Cherubael the cruel moved through the Imperium, enticing mortal dupes and errant Astartes warbands to his banner. The unbound Daemon Prince had formed a pact with Balphomael, the Horned Darkness, and together those two ambitious daemon-things spread their influence across an entire sector. It is said that Cherubael, unlike many daemons, had lingered in the materium for so long, he could almost think as a mortal general or politician might think, and this allowed the glittering, angelic being to spread its venom through human and xenos warbands with unrivaled skill.

Of Fulgrim, little is certain. It is known he resided upon a pleasure world in the eye, and that reluctantly, under the influence of the collars of the Nex-'''[CURSEALLYEWHOENTERHERE]''', Fulgrim was compelled to construct a fortress and gather a sizable force. However, it seemed as if he felt the war to  be beneath him somehow. Perhaps defeat had mellowed him? Or, more likely, the serpent had more nefarious, unseen goals? Similarly, Mortarion's and Magnus’s actions are lost to history at this point. One can only speculate on what they were scheming.

Among his brothers, only Perturabo truly made coherent plans to oppose his loyalist brothers when they invaded, as he knew they must. Perturabo had found a new patron. His god was Valchocht the Maker, the God of the Soul Forge and the terrible apogee of Dark Mechanicus science-sorcery. Valchocht was a thing of pistons, sinews and gears, of cog wheels, splintered metal maws and impersonal, industrial destruction. Valchocht mirrored the utterly psychopathic, inhuman nature of Perturabo, as did the Daemon Primarch reflect the Maker’s infernal genius. Medrengard was brought under the control of Perturabo, and the Warsmiths who presumed to oppose the unification of the Iron Warriors were killed out of hand. Once united, Perturabo began to build, to create horrors, fortresses and daemon engines on a truly phenomenal scale. Forgefiends, Heldrakes, Maulerfiends, Helbrutes, Defilers and Soul Grinders; countless were the things given horrific life in his semi-organic factory wombs, installed on every world under his control. The Obliterator virus was allowed to run rampant through the populations of a thousand worlds, and the Mutilators and Obliterators that came howling and screaming out of those war-torn worlds were absorbed into the Grand Legion of Iron.

The Goliath Engine, smashed into fragments by the Planet Killer, was reborn. For a scion of the Maker, there was no machine that could not be rebuilt and reformed into an even more twisted horror. But one flagship and the Soul Forge’s creations were not enough. Perturabo craved an army, a disciplined force he could rely upon. Once, perhaps, the Iron Warriors could have been enough, but no longer. The Chaos Space Marines were dying out as a post-human race; their geneseed was utterly beyond saving, and there would be no new neophytes to replace their losses. Fabius Bile had created a race of so-called ‘New Men’, led by a monstrously powerful being called Mulkivas Bile-Blood. However, the New Men were a flawed creation. They were vile and insane, as likely to destroy a planet as they were to fortify and garrison it. Also, their tendency to devour their allies made them unpredictable and functionally useless for a tactical mind like the Iron Warriors Primarch. Even Perturabo could not provide his own blood to build new sons as Vulkan had done for his Nova Astartes, for he no longer bled true blood. He was a daemon; he bled battery acid and oil, his skin was armor plate and his innards were coiled, snaking cables and cruelly-bladed gears. 

The Legio Astartes were doomed.

Perturabo did not truly care, though. He found a way around this lack of reliable shock troops. He found the daemon world of Kai, where the tech priests there had created great Kai guns, daemonic ranged weapons of devastating power. Perturabo wanted the Priests of Kai to build him new soldiers. Thus, he used the Goliath Engine to drag the entire world across space and through the warp, and set it into orbit around Medrengard. Terrified of the Primarch’s wrath, they did as he demanded. They built for him hundreds of thousands of tall, hulking suits of armor. Taller than an Astartes and heavier than Cataphractii warplate, these empty suits were armed with a plethora of Kai guns and their variants. Their oversized shoulders made them look like huge hunchbacks, and their long-snouted helms were shaped like a vile chimera of a shark and a savage boar. Yet, these suits were empty and inert. But Perturabo was cunning. He summoned the furies, the weakling daemons who had forever been trapped as pathetic vulture-fiends, lingering like flies in a corpse. The furies loathed all life, for they were the embodiment of bitter rejection and the futility of chaos. These daemons craved a chance to punish the universe for forsaking them. The once weak daemons, Perturabo claimed, could be strong beings clad in daemonic iron. They eagerly accepted the Primarch’s offer, and swiftly inhabited the armoured suits. Suddenly, the giants were animated with flickering yellow and black flames from within. The Kai Bane Host was born.

Perturabo wished to test his new army against Astartes, as the Nova Astartes would be his primary opponents in his opinion. Hence, in Perturabo’s typically callous manner, he tested the Kai Bane Host by attacking and destroying the Angels of Ecstasy, a Chaos Space Marine warband allied to the Iron Warriors. The ambush was swift and brutal, their ships were boarded, and their generals were dragged out from their bridges by the fury-possessed Kai Bane. The Lords of the Angels of Ecstasy were then bidden to watch as their men were unceremoniously slaughtered, one after another. The Host of the Kai Bane had proved their worth to Perturabo. He wished not to defeat, but to crush his brothers so that the whole galaxy would have to finally admit that Perturabo was the greatest Primarch; the one true Warmaster.

Little could he have realized that his chance to prove himself would come earlier than he anticipated. For the Flesh Wardens, despite their seemingly impenetrable gaze, had a single blind spot, a single chink in their chain of observatories and watch towers. A chink that the Imperium Pentus would exploit to the fullest.
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