Editing Nobledark Imperium Drafts (section)

==== The Ullanor Crusade ====

Editor's Note: Needs to be edited with changes discussed in Thread 62, put here to avoid it getting lost since it is mostly done

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> '''''The Prelude to the War of the Beast:'''''

Imperial historians generally consider the Ullanor campaign to be the last major military action of the Great Crusade and a harbinger that set the stage for of the War of the Beast shortly thereafter. However, to those who participated in the crusade itself, there was little to suggest the Ullanor campaign would be of such significance. Ullanor was seen as one of the last major pockets of significant military resistance in the galaxy, but at the time of the Ullanor crusade peoples’ minds were beginning to shift away from exploration, warfare, and conquest and more towards consolidation and rebuilding. Most of the major threats to the Imperium during the Great Crusade were seen as dealt with. The [[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#The_Rangdan_Xenocides_and_the_Slaugth|Slaugth]] were believed to be extinct. The [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Yu'Vath|Yu’Vath]] were seen as crippled, though not completely eliminated. [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#the_Realm_of_Ultramar_and_the_Imperium_Secundus_Plan|Guilliman’s fear of a “counter-Imperium”]] located somewhere in the galaxy seemed to have never been realized. The map of the Milky Way had not been completely been filled in, but there was less and less of an area for any such an empire to hide. However, few would claim the Great Crusade was nearly over. Many planets were still in the process of reconstruction, a process that was expected to take several centuries given the extent of the damage from the Old Night.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

The empire at Ullanor was discovered quite unexpectedly by the Imperial Fists as part of their unification of the neighboring Osroene Sector near the border between the Segmentum Obscurus and the Segmentum Ultima. The people of the sector had reported numerous Ork raids over the years, most of which had been beaten back at great cost. They said the raids had become more intense over time, but had little more information on where the Orks were coming from or why the raids were so frequent beyond their general direction of attack. Similar sectors had reported the same thing, to the point that one Imperial map made shortly before the Ullanor Crusade has the Ullanor Sector rather cheekily labelled in High Gothic as “Hic Sunt Orcorum”. The Imperial Fists made a short Warp jump, expecting to find little more than a pirate base formed by a particularly successful Freebooter. When they saw the actual source of the raids, they immediately turned around and sent an astropathic message to Old Earth for backup.

What the Imperial Fists reported from Ullanor was shocking. Normally Ork camps resembled nothing more than the camps of a simple warband writ large. Nothing more advanced than a series of tents and ramshackle huts, and nothing more permanent than some Mekboy quarters and da Drops. Not Ullanor. Ullanor had been united by a rather ambitious warboss, who had decided to build his influence over the sector slowly than let his reign be a simple flash in the pan. Instead of a simple scrap-ridden wasteland and encampment, the planet had been criss-crossed by a series of Ork-made bunkers, crude and spartan but nevertheless planned in terms of their placement. These buildings were but crude fortifications compared to the permanent structures erected by the Orks at places like Gorkograd on Prax. However, at the time of the Ullanor Crusade, it was an unpleasant surprise.

The increasing Freeboota attacks on the neighboring systems weren’t simply raiding parties. They were the signs of an empire ready to expand.


The threat posed by Ullanor was clear, even to the Steward. Having nearly been choked to death by a similar Warboss after a hasty and ill-advised personal assault on the hollowed-out world of Gorro, the Steward knew full well of what a Warboss of that caliber was capable of. Such was the threat posed by the empire at Ullanor that five primarchs and their respective Space Marine legions were called in to deal with the threat: Rogal Dorn and the Imperial Fists, Fulgrim and Terra’s Sons, Mortarion and the Death Guard, Jaghatai Khan and the White Scars, and Horus Lupercal and the Void Wolves. Each had their own role in the campaign. Mortarion’s troops were to form the backbone of the army, a fighting force of such fortitude that they could weather anything the Orks could throw at them. Terra’s Sons were to act as shock troops, striking at points of particularly hard resistance and cutting down the ‘ardest Boyz. Rogal Dorn’s job was to tear down any Ork fortifications and prevent the Orks from using the terrain against them. Jaghatai was to chase down any survivors to prevent them from regrouping, as well as contest the mechanized cavalry game with any Ork bikers. Horus was to hold the orbital high ground and use the Void Wolves to board and clear out any ork ships in orbit.

The Imperial Crusade had hoped to simply pick off the warboss and see his nascent empire implode. However, the Warboss at Ullanor, Urlakk Urg, was clever. Instead of exposing himself to danger by leading his army from the front, he kept himself hidden, where Imperial assets could not simply pick him off. In order to keep morale up, he used the bunker system spanning Ullanor to appear where he needed to be in the thick of the fighting to show his Nobz he hadn’t lost his stomach, then taking advantage of the chaos of battle to avoid being sniped. Further complicating the matter was the fact that Urlakk Urg didn’t always give his orders in person, instead creating a system of messengers to carry his orders for him when he had to be elsewhere.

In the end, it fell to the primarch Horus to end the threat of Urlakk Urg. Taking his flagship, the Vengeful Spirit, Horus opened a channel to recievers on all frequencies and began insulting the Warlord. For two hours Horus taunted Urlakk Urg, claiming he was cowering in his bunker like a pansy instead of fighting where everyone could see him and suggesting that rather than an ork perhaps he was merely a particularly overweight and foul-tempered gretchin. Urg tried to resist for as long as he could, recognizing correctly that it was a trap, but eventually his temper got the better of him. Eventually, Urg broke down, sending a message back to Horus incensed that he would say such things from behind the safety of a starship and claiming he wouldn’t be so glib if the two were meeting face to face. Horus, having finally figured out which bunker Urlakk Urg was hiding in, responded by slagging Urg’s bunker from orbit with a Rok-Buster torpedo.

''“And that, gentlemen, is how you do it. Now, let’s go apply some fungicide.”''<br>
-- Primarch Horus Lupercal, after hearing Urg’s response to his message


At the apparent death of their Warlord, the Orks began to lose morale and the tide began to turn in favor of the Imperium. On a local scale the Orks recovered quickly from the loss, with the various lesser Warbosses taking over where Urg had left off, but without Urg to hold them together the different Warbosses could no longer act as one, and as a result were picked apart piecemeal by the Imperium. Many Warbosses spent their last moments engaged in a war on two fronts, both fighting the advancing forces of the Imperium as well as their fellow orks for control over the WAAAGH!

The Imperium celebrated at the destruction of Ullanor. Some rumors say that Ullanor was turned into a world dedicated to the Imperial triumph there, though the Steward would be quick to point out that this was not the case, as removing the Orkish spores from Ullanor alone would have taken more time than elapsed between the Triumph at Ullanor and the War of the Beast. Ullanor was worth more as a productive world than a self-congratulatory glory shrine anyway. Nevertheless, a celebration was held on Ullanor the likes of which had not been seen before. Eleven of the nineteen primarchs showed up, the five who had served at Ullanor who were awarded additional honors in recognition of their service as well as Lorgar, Magnus the Red, Angron, Sanguinius, Guilliman, and Perturabo, as well as numerous chapters of their various legions, regiments of the Imperial Army, representatives of the Titan legions and the Adeptus Mechanicus, and more. An invitation was even extended to the eldar, though only the inscrutable Eldrad showed up, and much of what he did on that day was unknown.

Unfortunately, their celebration proved premature. Although Horus’ patented strategy of sniping the enemy leadership with extreme prejudice and cleaning up whatever disorganized remnants were left after the chain of command was disrupted had worked numerous times before on the battlefield, here it had failed. After Horus’ bombardment Urg was still alive, though wounded, beneath the rubble. Blood dripping from his wounds, Urg made his way to a device in his chambers, a Mekboy contraption the Orks had taken to call a tellyporta, which transported him to a nearly airless rock in the middle of nowhere before the Imperials began sorting through the rubble. This world had been Urg’s backup plan in case the Orks at Ullanor were defeated and had to come around for another go, but it had now become his place of exile. Urg bellowed in rage, furious at the Imperium for taking his empire, furious at the git that defeated him through such deceptive and underhanded means, and furious at Gork and Mork for allowing such a thing to ever happen. This rage brought Urg to the attention of [[Chaos_Gods|four other beings]] who shared Urg’s hatred of the Imperium and had a very vested interest in seeing it destroyed.

</div>
</div>