Ullanor Crusade (Hektor Heresy)

Ullanor Crusade
Date	994.M30 to 000.M31
Scale	multiple sectors
Theatre	Ullanor Empire
Status	Decisive Imperial Victory
Belligerents
Imperium of Mankind	Orks
Commanders and Leaders
The Emperor of Mankind Golgothos Arelex Orannis Hektor Cincinnatus	Khork, the Megaboss of Ullanor
Strength
multiple Expedition Fleets	billions of boyz
Losses
heavy	uncountable
Outcome
Main strength of the Ullanor Empire broken

This article is about a battle in the /tg/ Heresy project, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40k universe.

The Ullanor Crusade was a military campaign in the Great Crusade. Under the command of the Emperor and Hektor Cincinnatus, forces of the Imperium destroyed the largest Ork Empire in the Galaxy, eliminating the last great threat to humanity.

Background

Rogue Traders had discovered the Ullanor Empire early in the second century of the Great Crusade and the Imperium slowly became aware of the scale of the threat. Although the War Council considered devoting forces to roll back Waaagh!s led by Khork's lieutenants, the demands of the Ruavu Grun Xenocide - not to mention wars in other Segmentums - ruled out the kind of offensive that would be required to break the power of Ullanor.

Instead, the Imperium endured decades of what Gufarnus Altmakar called a "loathsome stalemate". Orkish Waaagh!s regularly emanated from the fortress-worlds of Ullanor, but Altmakar kept massive Imperial Army forces on hand to contain and repel the greenskins. After the death of the Father of the Army, keeping watch against the Orks fell to Alexandri of Rosskar, who had assumed the title of Regent while the Emperor led the final crusade against the Ruavu Grun. Alexandri began to deploy his own Silver Cataphracts in anti-Orkish operations, believing that any Ork who escaped was one who would have to be defeated once again.

Following the end of the Ruavu Grun Xenocide, Imperial planners began to consider a war against Ullanor. By this point in the Great Crusade, most of the sages and generals who had served the Emperor since the Unification Wars had died of old age, and the decision was left to the war-like sons of the Emperor, the Primarchs.

Vetrovnak Incursions

The Imperium of Man had every right to take pride in the triumph of the Ullanor Crusade. It was after all the the end of a hated foe that had beleaguered its borders for decades. While many believed this victory to belong to mankind alone the truth of the matter was that a third party had a hand in the destruction of the foul orkish empire. This fact was known only to the chosen for it warned of an great enemy with weapons of untold destruction.

Over the course of the Ullanor Crusade the Imperium's finest and brightest had amassed a collection of evidence that pointed not to new foe but to one that been lurking in shadows of the galactic north and east all along for most of the decade. They had heard of the Vetrovnak, the Phantoms of Hvar, only in hushed tones by superstitious locals fearful that merely speaking their name would see their entire world spirited away into the void. That had seen that when the Vetrovnak struck they left little evidence of their passage save for an emptied planet with minimal signs of a struggle. For those that didn't dismiss them as an overblown rumor saw them as a nuisance at best and a minor threat at worst given the sparsity of incidents.

Of the thousands of systems that had fallen under the yoke of the orks only a few dozen had been struck by the children of Hvar which would force the Imperium to recognize them as an existential threat . These systems were subject to such overpowering force that it made the Sons of Fire, peerless in their application of planetary ruin, seem as if they were but children playing with sticks. It was not just the power brought to bear though, if it had just been that the mortal men and women who beheld it would not have been stricken with such unease. What truly showed the disparity between the Imperium and the Vetrovnak was the speed and precision with which they worked. The majority of the attacks occurred within mere months of each other.

Destruction of Su-Xo-Ung

Su-Xo-Ung was, prior to the Ullanor Crusade, a gargantuan blue giant situated in the Letwe Sector just outside the vile heart of the Ullanor Empire but still well within its boundaries. It hosted 63 planets and six distinct asteroid belts with its massive gravitational pair, one which would have been hospitable for humanity were 98% of its surface nor covered with water. Two of its gas giants had between them five moons varying in size from Terra to Mars. What made it notable though was that its densely packed first asteroid belt, the remains of a planet shattered some ten million years prior, possessed an overwhelming abundance of adamantium ores and other minerals of strategic importance.

Called the "Rok Belt" by the green-skins, it was a fertile ground for them to build their roks and kroozas. Orbital foundries and shipyards, though crude and ramshackle, churned out ships and armaments at a feverish pace fueled by the constant stream of materials produced from the hollowed out asteroids or hauled up from mines on the many planets. The pace at which they worked called for a steady stream of slaves - human and xeno alike - to fill the demand for labor.

The green-skins of course knew the value of Su-Xo-Ung and had dug in accordingly. In orbit they had formed mighty fortresses of roks lashed together. On the 7th planet, name long since lost, they patrolled the singular mini-continent and its surrounding atolls with behemoth ships and submersibles while its coasts were ringed with massive gun batteries pointed skyward. The masterminds of the Ullanor Crusade knew that Su-Xo-Ung must fall and it must fall as soon as possible or else they would suffer no end of the ork's fleet. The battle would be harsh without measure and it was projected to be perhaps one of the bloodiest in the entire crusade but it was one that had to be done.

The Imperium would never get the chance to though as a three years after the crusade began in earnest before the star winked out of existence. It was not the only star to vanish: another object in the Letwe sector believed to be a quark-degenerate star by the astrologians attached to the various fleets. The Imperium was only able to learn of what transpired in the system thanks to a fortuitously placed XIIIth legion advance reconnaissance ship that had been loitering on the outskirts of the sensor ranges of the orks that had managed to escape at the last moment.

Based on the report the Imperium was able to conclude that the Vetrovnak, using four of their largest classes of ship available, had managed to somehow teleport in along with the degenerate-quark star just outside of the rok belt. The four ships, later referred to as alpha carriers, immediately departed while the quark star began its spiral toward Su-Xo-Ung, plowing through one of the denser regions of roks. Even if they had prior warning the immense gravitational pull of the quark star was too much for the engines of the roks and kroozas in its path. In a single stoke the Vetrovnak had managed to put the entirety of the Su-Xo-Ung system into disarray while destroying approximately 1/7th of the fleet in an instant.

Utilizing the chaos the four alpha carriers would disperse into the system to lay siege to the planets and key systems. Given the bright flashes witnesses by the recon ship it can only be surmised the Vetrovnak were utilizing weapons that they had not chosen to bring to bear in any prior attack. Whatever the case may be the ships did not immediately depart once they were believed to have taken control of the planets; they remained and continued to engage the orks over the next four months. This gave orks from nearby systems and sectors time to descend upon the four alpha carriers.

Carefully over the next two months as the quark star began to near Su-Xo-Ung the Vetrovnak skirmished with the green skins. The recon ship reported that occasionally the alpha carriers would vanish momentarily. At first this was believed to be short range teleportation however after careful analysis of the data it can be concluded that the Vetrovnak were rotating up to seven alpha carriers in and out of the fight to prolong it. In the final month the quark star had gained enough mass to collapse into a black hole, releasing a shock wave of high energy radiation in the process. It is at this point the four alpha carriers retreated, prompting the recon ship to do the same.

No orkish vessel is believed to have escaped, though when the Imperium did arrive to investigate it they did find that a small number of roks had managed to avoid falling into the black hole. In doing so they had of course burnt out their engines and with the lingering damage of the radiation burst they were easily dealt with. Fortunately for the Imperium several large adamantium rich asteroids did get flung out of the system by the gravitational disturbance rather than consumed by the maw of the black hole.