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Celestians

2020-01-23T20:52:23Z

2600:1006:B11C:C15A:7C16:E412:E60C:4906:

[[File:SoBCelestian.jpg|thumb|right|CEASE AND FUCKING DESIST, HERETIC.]]
{{topquote|Many aspire. Few attain.|Celestian in ''[[Dawn of War]]: [[Dawn of War#Soulstorm|Soulstorm]]''}}

'''Celestians''' are the best of the best within an order of the [[Sisters of Battle|Adeptus Sororitas]]. To earn the rank of Celestian a sister must have proved herself on dozens of battlefields and must be skilled with every weapon in the [[Ecclesiarchy|Ecclesiarchy's]] armory. These ladies are some of the hardest SOB's (DOB's? or are they just B's? {{BLAM}} {{BLAM|HERESY! THEY ARE DAUGHTERS OF THE EMPEROR!}}) you'll meet save for the <s>space marines</s> Imperial Guard. Off the battlefield they have many of the duties of a sister superior in addition to serving as go-betweens for the Cannoness and the other sisters of her order. They also serve as bodyguards [[PROMOTIONS|and advisers]] to important members of the Ecclesiarchy.

==Types of Celestians==
There are a few variations of the normal Celestian Squads. These include....

===Celestian Superior===
The senior Celestians in an Order, Celestians Superior aid the [[Canoness]] with the day-to-day running of the Order. They specifically act as administrative liaisons between the Sisters Superior and the Canoness, and may even lead Battle Sisters into combat when the Canoness is otherwise engaged.

===Imagifer===
A single Celestian in a Celestian Squad may be nominated as a Imagifer or Imagifier AKA Banner Bearers. These often carry a Simulacrum Imperialis, one of the Orders' ancient banners, into combat unarmed, to inspire their fellow sisters to fight harder against all odds. They are only found in Celestian, Battle Sister, Dominion and Retributor squads as they are always Sisters units. Within Seraphim squads the Veteran Sister Superior carries the Simulacrum Imperialis, effectively becoming an Imagifer.

===Celestian Bodyguard===
Occasionally, Celestians may be formed up into bodyguard groups for senior members of the Order, such as Celestians Superior or even a Canoness. To be selected for such a role the Celestian must have previously distinguished herself in battle. The most noble warriors of the Order, Celestians approved for bodyguard duties may also be given additional responsibilities, such as becoming a banner-bearer, an Imagifier or a being assigned a particular duty in the Convent-Shrine.

===Ophelian Celestian Squad===
Ophelian Celestian Squads are formed from the best Celestians of the Orders Militants, hailing from the convents on Ophelia VII. If the need arises the entire squad can be requisitioned into serving in a Canoness' personal retinue.

==Tabletop==
With the new 8th edition codex, Celestians make a lot more sense. Better melee stats, higher Ld, and the ability to intercept wounds for characters make them a solid bodyguard choice, as in the fluff.

{{Template:Sisters-of-Battle}}

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Sisters of Battle]]

Mutant

2020-01-23T20:14:00Z

2600:1006:B11C:C15A:7C16:E412:E60C:4906: /* Warhammer 40,000 */

{{Heresy}}
[[File:MutantChaos.jpg|300px|right|thumb|LOVE ME MUMMY!]]
{{topquote|Beware the [[xenos|alien]], the [[mutant]], the [[heretic]].|Thought for the Day}}

A '''mutant''' is a creature with a genetic ''mutation'' that makes it differ noticeably from the majority of the species.

When [[Earth]]-creatures reproduce, their cells reproduce and have to copy their DNA. Reproduction is imperfect, so there are many error-detecting and error-correcting mechanisms to increase reliability. Of course, those mechanisms are themselves imperfect, so in any given copy operation, something like one in every hundred-million base-pairs is copied incorrectly; additionally, environmental conditions, like exposure to radiation, certain chemicals (called ''mutagens''), or certain viruses, can introduce errors into a cell's chromosome. These changes are mutations, and are basically the typos of the genetic world. Of course, even when you get one, that's still just ''one cell''; if the mutation occurs in a mutlicellular organism, then it usually won't actually be expressed unless it occurs ''very'' early in the organism's prenatal development (like, when it's still a clump of cells you can count on one hand, or even still a gamete in it's parent's junk).

In the real world, mutations are usually of limited effect. At best, a single mutation might improve the efficiency of some metabolic pathway; most will have no or minimal effect; and at worst, a mutation can cause [[cancer]] or other genetic diseases. Over many generations, a species can change quite dramatically, depending on what selective pressures they face in their environment, and what effect mutations have on their bearers' ability to reproduce; this is the process of evolution. That said, the effects are usually not perceptible on the human time-scale, unless you go to a species like bacterias or viruses that move though few thousands or even billions of generations per year (as opposed to human 0.05 per year), or Cephalopods which evolve via RNA editing, which can sometimes evolve without needing natural selection.

In fiction, mutations have much more extreme effects, like granting superpowers. This is especially the case in the world of [[/co/|comics and cartoons]], as exemplified by groups such as the X-Men: an unknown-to-modern-science "X-gene" (or similar in-universe term) is somehow activated (usually during puberty, but sometimes during a suitably traumatic origin event, or from birth) and grants the bearer superhuman abilities, and occasionally a dramatically changed (though not necessarily hideous -- but some ''are'' disgustingly ugly freaks) appearance, due to the implications of such genes, mutants are classified as a separate sub-species of humanity despite the fact that it essentially rapes basic biology up the ass and gives evolution the middle finger, alas this is what most would call as comic bullshitium. Marvel Comics specifically designates mutants as people who bear their mutation from birth (though, as mentioned, it may not express itself until later), distinguished from "mutates," who are genetically altered later.

On the other hand, in [[grimdark]] works, mutants are generally depicted as beast-like, malformed, monstrous, and otherwise sub-human creatures. They are often enemies to be destroyed without feeling guilty, or occasionally wretches to be pitied, especially if they started out "normal."

==Warhammer 40,000==
[[File:Mutant_Rabble.PNG|320px|right|thumb|Mutant Rabbles. No, there is no such thing as [[Tzeentch|too many mutations.]]]]
The [[Imperium of Man]]'s thoughts on mutants can be summarized by the page quote: "Beware the alien, the heretic, and the mutant." Or the much shorter quote “Kill the Mutant” which is a bit more accurate. After all, mutation of the body from the Holy Human Form is a sure sign of [[Chaos]] taint, and for that matter reflects poorly on the parents of the mutant in question, for surely the child would not be mutated if the parents were truly faithful to the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor]]!

That said, some mutants are tolerated in the Imperium, because they are necessary and/or relatively stable. This includes [[Navigator]]s, who are necessary for [[Warp]] travel, [[psyker]]s, who are important for astropathic communication, powering the [[Astronomican]], and feeding the Emperor, and the various strains of [[abhuman]]s, who are stable and useful.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, followers of Chaos treat mutants very highly, as they are considered favored by the [[Chaos Gods]]. [[Tzeentch]] in particular doles out mutations like there's no tomorrow (and knowing 40k, there legitimately may not be), giving his followers extra eyes, arms, legs, and even heads.

It's noted in the fluff that the reality is that most mutants are actually the result of legitimate flaws in the human genome, thanks to countless centuries of pollution, radiation, and bio-warfare; in Imperial space mutants caused by worship of the chaos gods make up a distinct minority in comparison. However, the Imperium treats all mutants the same, with a "better safe than sorry" mindset, and it's made pretty clear that this is actually why ''regular'' mutants are so eager to throw in with the forces of Chaos if given the chance.

An exception is found by [[Eisenhorn]] when he tracks a [[Inquisition|REDACTED TO PREVENT SPOILERS]] to the agri-world of Eechan; the world has a large lower-caste population of mutants who work the farms and crop-mills. These mutants are tolerated because purging them would mean the loss of food supply to many systems until the world can be repopulated, and it is possible they are mutant because of a factor caused by living on Eechan itself.

However, the state on which mutation becomes a crime varies between worlds. Usually, minor mutations such as bizarre skin color or an extra finger or toe is often brushed off or easily fixed via surgery and considered radiation caused or simply mundane birth defects. Major mutations such as an extra set of eyes or reptilian or slimy skin would be more likely to be looked into by either the [[Adeptus Arbites|Arbites]] or the [[Inquisition]] as the chance of these being related to Chaos is unsurprisingly quite high. Because of this, some of these mutants often flee into the deepest pits in Hive Worlds or escape and hide within the vastness of space. Usually these mutants find companionship and trust in the [[Lost and the Damned]] whom use them as specialized shock troops due to the fact that no two mutants are the same and have differing qualities and quirks that can prove advantageous in battle. These rag-tag teams of mutants are called mutant rabbles and are often undisciplined and rowdy.

There are a few instances of mutation where the subject actually turns out to be physically wholesome to the point of unnatural beauty, this may come together with psyker powers, think something akin to Sanguinius, either if this is the result of the current biological threshold the human race is going through or some artificial or warp-based agent may depend on an individual basis.

Usually the laws of Imperial worlds normally forbid such creatures from possessing armaments; those weapons that mutants do possess are usually limited to crude homemade firearms, chains, whips and clubs which can be easily made and concealed.
{{Lost-and-Damned}}

==[[Warhammer Fantasy]]==
Same as 40k, but with more connection to the actual wargame rather than just background fluff. Humans are less inclined to hate and kill their own mutated children (probably due to not having anywhere near as much propaganda and indoctrination), so instead unless there's a [[Witch Hunter]] in town to catch them, they tend to just leave their offspring out in the wilderness. Said humans are taken in by a race of similar mutants as well as various other types of Chaos beings called [[Beastmen]]. Said Beastmen generally rape, kill, murder, and eat (in an order based on mood and convenience) anything human or civilized anytime except when dropping these children off. Said children become the lower class of the Beastmen called Gaves, who will mate and have their offspring as the higher breed of Beastmen (the more mutated, the higher rank). If this sounds anything like a metaphor, its important to remember that Warhammer Beastmen are just [[Broo]] from [[Glorantha]] that were changed ''just'' enough to not get sued.
The only real exceptions to the rule of mercy are the various Chaos-worshiping peoples (other than the father of [[Aranessa Saltspite]]) who consider mutations as gifts, and the peoples of [[Kislev]] AKA Warhammer Russia who are always being invaded by Chaos and as a result are more in line with 40k peoples (strangely enough other than the 40k Russia analogue). Of course nobility, even those who aren't members of Chaos cults, oftentimes hide the mutations of their children and themselves. In some canon even the Emperor himself, [[Karl Franz]], had a nephew who was a VERY mutated Chaos Mutant named [[Wolfgang Holswig-Abenauer]].

==Fallout==
In [[Fallout]], mutants are all over the place, both humans and animals. Fallout mutants are often associated with radiation, but the truth is that they are actually a result of infection from the bio-weapon known as the Forced Evolutionary Virus (F.E.V. for short), which escaped during World War III and interacted with the radiation to create the various monstrosities. The most iconic mutants in the Fallout series are the Ghouls, the Super Mutants, mutated animals, and the Centaurs.

Ghouls are humans who were exposed to both intense radiation and to F.E.V., which left them with burned, decayed, corpse-like bodies but biological immortality; the first ghouls were created during World War III, and have been around ever since. However, an increasing number of them are losing their minds and becoming mindless predators, "Feral Ghouls", and for this reason there is a lot of prejudice against Ghouls. The vast majority of the sane Ghouls are actually some of the nicest people in the games.

Super Mutants are humans who were exposed to pure F.E.V and so responded "well" to F.E.V. The result are [[Orcs|hulking green humanoids, dramatically stronger and tougher than humans and biologically immortal, but also savage, violent, crazy, dim, and sterile monsters]]. If the subject/victim is uncontaminated by radiation or earlier F.E.V. exposure Super Mutants with superior intelligence are created instead and they can be quite civilized, even nice, because F.E.V. was first designed as a super serum. There's also the Nightkin, [[Ork Kommando|blue-skinned and sneaky offshoots]] who've all turned into schizophrenic blue super mutants from overusing invisibility tech; which is also what makes them sneaky despite being the same size as normal Super Mutants.

Many animals exposed to radiation contamination and the F.E.V. virus have mutated into larger, stronger versions of what they once were. Many insects have grown to huge sizes, such as football sized flies called Bloatflies, massive scorpions the size of a cow, huge mosquitoes bigger than a dog, and ants big enough to pose a threat to even armed humans.

Centaurs are pretty much what happens to anyone with severe genetic damage is exposed to F.E.V.: a mindless crawling mess of meat, kind of like a [[Chaos Spawn]]. '''Oh GOD BHHUBLUBBBBBBB'''.

The player can become one in Fallout 2 if he/she walks around for a bit in radioactive waste without proper foot protection (rubber boots). It's a sixth toe which can be amputated and then [[What|fed to people or eaten]].

==Judge Dredd==
In [[Judge Dredd]], mutants are generally treated as subhumans. They are the result of the ABC (that is, Atomic, Biological and Chemical) weapons deployed during World War III. They are banned from Mega-City One (though Dredd is working on changing that -- in fact, he happens to have mutant relatives, all of whom have a lantern jaw as big or bigger than his) and forced to live in the radioactive Cursed Earth.

==Paranoia==
In [[Paranoia]], mutants are de-facto traitors. Friend Computer has as little tolerance for genetic deviations as the Imperium. Some mutants in Alpha Complex can register their mutations, avoiding mandatory execution. These mutants are required to wear an armband at all times identifying their status, and no matter how useful their powers this identifier will keep them from ever being really accepted in society. That is, if they survive long enough to fill out the registration forms without being killed first.

Mutant powers in Paranoia range from the typical and expected (telekinesis, [[/co/|mutant healing factor]]), to the hilarious and bizarre (Matter Eater). Nothing quite like walking away scott free because you ate the evidence before your arrest, especially when that evidence was a 14kg plasma rifle. Eating the evidence is Treason. Treason is punishable by Death.

Of course, friend computer is perfect, and would never allow a mutant to be assigned to a Troubleshooter team. You can trust your teammates completely. This also means that there is absolutely no way that ''you'' have any mutations. Disregard what it says on your character sheet. The Computer is perfect, so your sheet must be in error. Sheets in error are Treason. Treason is punishable by Death.

There are rumors that there are some mutants who can telepathically communicate with machinery, such as robots, devices, and even Friend Computer itself. Rumors are Treason! But, if such a mutant ''did'' exist, it would be Extra Treasonous and would '''never''' be allowed to register its mutant power! Treason is punishable by Death.

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]

Cadia

2020-01-23T20:04:29Z

2600:1006:B11C:C15A:7C16:E412:E60C:4906: /* Cadia and you */

{{Awesome}}
[[File:Cadian Cmdr female.jpg|400px|thumbnail|right|Even their officers serve in the frontlines.]]
{{Topquote|Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane — Strong for the red rage of battle; sane for I harry them sore; Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core.|The Law of the Yukon: by Robert W. Service }}
{{Topquote|The Guard dies and does not surrender!|Pierre Cambronne, general of the First French Empire}}
{{Topquote|Cadia is the end and the beginning.|White Dwarf, January 2017}}

'''Cadia''' is, or rather ''was'' an Imperial Guard fortress world located right beside the [[Eye of Terror]]. Due to being proximate to the only safe warp-passage into and out of the Eye, as well as large Xenos mobilization throughout the sector, it had become a [[fortress world]] and a strategic gem for the [[Imperium of Man]].

==The Planet Itself==
Fortress. That's the one word that can sum up the planet of Cadia. Since it was close neighbors with [[Chaos Space Marines|those nice boys]] from [[Eye of Terror|across the street]], Cadia always needed to be on active defense. All the time one had their [[Lasgun]] shouldered and was twitching from a combination of going 47 hours without sleep and being raised to be paranoid as fuck. Of course, living basically inside the Eye of Terror, it isn't truly paranoia at all, just common sense.

As far as geography goes, Cadia held a temperate climate not unlike the Holy [[Hiveworld]] of [[Terra]]. 70 percent of its surface was covered in bodies of water, and its landmasses were [[Grimdark|covered with bodies of guardsmen]].

If it weren't for the anti-warp pylons holding back the expansions of the Eye of Terror, it would have been subjected to [[Exterminatus]] long before [[Abaddon]] crashed his wrecked [[Blackstone Fortress]] into it. The place was a hellhole even before its destruction. It ''might'' have been a good vacation spot if you '''LIKE''' trenches filled with bodies and tracer fire lighting up your hotel room... on second thought... fuck that shit!

By the way, when we say fortress, we mean fortress. Literally, the entire planet was designed from the ground up to be impossible to invade. First, you have miles of trenches, machine gun bunkers, pillboxes, field guns, and howitzers to dig through. That's the preliminary defensive elements. After that, you have the oh so casual heavy artillery stationed on the enormous walls, with plenty of snipers, riflemen, and angry grandmas throwing anything from macro weapons fire and grenades to rocks and dung buckets at you as you attempt to invade. Once, after losing several million men, you manage to siege the walls and get inside, you enter a labyrinth of streets and corridors, each designed to maximize the defensive advantage of the defending soldiers, meaning that the only way to advance up the street safely is to essentially breach and clear every building, which is also built to function as a small pillbox. Per room. Assuming you clear the ground floor with less than 110% casualties, you then repeat all day long, for weeks on end, until you realize: you took a wrong turn, and have now been cornered by Leman Russes that had a map. While trying to delay your doom, more snipers are on top of the castle tower like roofs shooting down at you, until finally you turn around the corner, and are cut down by a group of kids who decided to kill you as a recreational activity for the Imperial Guard scouts.

Did we mention that all of this just describes the slum district of a minor city? Chaos gods help you if you are attacking a large city, which will likely have all of the above, but multiplied by 12.

==Cadia and you==
First, let me start with saying that it [[Khorne|sucked to live on Cadia]]. Oh, you think where you live sucks? Live in a crime infested ghetto or something similar? A couple drive by shootings and a stolen TV are ''nothing'' compared to how much it sucked to live on Cadia. Why does it suck you ask? Oh, not much of a reason at all. Just the fact that it's like, six feet away from the fucking [[Eye of Terror]] (It also sucks to live ''there'', but for many reasons other than Cadia).

It just sucks to live on Cadia, period. Yes, there are several manly, redeeming qualities (see below) about the planet, but if you live on Cadia you're too busy replacing the power pack in your [[Lasgun|flashlight]] after throwing back Monday's Chaos invasion to notice. A short list includes, but is not limited to:

*Being drafted before you can walk, learning to shoot before you can count, and getting thrown in the meat-grinder (mostly figuratively, sometimes literally) by the age of 16.
*Learning how to shoot so young that when you're toilet-trained you're told to aim your dick like it's a lasgun.
*Marauding bands of [[Chaos Space Marines]] and assorted [[Heresy|heretics]] trying to kill you.
*Random WAAAGH!!!s of [[Orks|greenskins]] trying to kill you.
*Stealthy platoons of [[Eldar|Space Elves]] trying to kill you.
*Your own [[Commissar|superior officers]] trying to ki-{{BLAM|'''*BLAM!*'''}}
*No privacy whatsoever for your entire life.
*Constant fear of death before you reach puberty.
*Constant fear of death during puberty.
*Constant fear of death after puberty, but chances are you'll die before this, have your soul sold to/claimed by a chaos deity and for their lolz spend your death in constant fear of puberty.
*Superior officers barking orders down your neck for all the years that you're alive.
*<s>No time to screw around,</s> you're always on duty. Sometimes said duty is to help train new recruits for their inevitable deaths.
*The top fashions in Cadia are camo patterns and body armor.
*[[Heresy|Heretical]] cults springing up by the dozen every week.
*[[Chaos|Voices]] keep telling you to ditch the duty and [[Slaanesh|relax]], [[Khorne|let loose]], call in [[Nurgle|sick]], or try something [[Tzeentch|different]].
*The fact that the planet's <s>main</s> '''only''' export is Soldiers should clue you in.
*[[Mutant]]s springing up everywhere wanting to try out the new pincer claw they just got on your neck.
*[[Grimdark|Even after you die, Cadia doesn't stop being shitty to you, because once the engraving on your tombstone is illegible, it means you've been dead for so long nobody alive cares about you anymore, so your corpse is dug up and thrown into an incinerator while a fresh corpse is thrown into your hole. And then ''they'' will be dug up and thrown away as well.]]
*Cadia is now destroyed and consumed by the Eye of Terror. If you're still living there, you're either a heretic, a warp entity, fighting a heroic last stand, or really ''really'' unlucky. Scratch that, due to Chaos forces largely moving on, the Imperial Guard forces who made it to secure fortifications rallied and retook the planet AFTER IT WAS DESTROYED. The Guard truly are the manliest men to ever manly.

Seriously, it just sucks to live there, just take my word for it. Avoid prolonged stays on Cadia at all costs.

==Redeeming Qualities==
[[File:Cadian 8th Regiment-small.jpg|500px|thumb|right|Fuckers so hardcore, they take on fieldtrips on other hellhole planets when their own hellhole planet gets too stale.]]
Yes it sucked to live on Cadia, sucks beyond all Hell, but there are several reasons why it was one of the most [[awesome]] places in the Imperium.

===Cadian Shock Troopers===
First and foremost, the finest (and perhaps most numerous) breed of the [[Imperial Guard]] were born, trained, and lived on Cadia. You see the Cadian as the common model for your generic, garden variety guardsmen figurine, and as such they are the most easily recognized. They fight tenaciously for the [[Empra]] and die with the same degree of vigor. Manliness is never in short order here on Cadia, making it one of the most awesome planets around.

Their [[Stormtrooper|elite troops]] are the '''Kasrkin''', basically the elite of the elite of the Guard. That are separate from the [[Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Militarum Tempestus(7E)|Scions]] as they aren't trained in cozy little Scholas watched over by Commissars, but are trained right there on Cadia, combining all the battle conditioning and tactics learned by the Cadia Shock Troopers over the course of KILLING EVERYTHING IN THE GALAXY for the last several thousand years. Only [[Space Marines|SPESS MEHREENS]] are better. But the Kasrkin are probably scarier than the Spess Mehreens anyway, because they do about the same on the battlefield, without wearing a concrete wall on every inch of their body and not having [[Bolter|mini-rocket launcher guns]], no, they're just humans with balls of adamantium, both of which have their own pair of balls of adamantium (and that's the women). They don't wear carapace armor, either. Full-bodied flack-armor for these motherfuckers. To be fair though, they get shit done while wearing cardboard instead of the Guardsman's t-shirts, and they still use the older but far more advanced [[Hellgun|Hellguns]] over the Scion's Hot-shot lasguns, they shoot a lot more light than the Guardsman's flashlight. For example, [[Awesome|a Kasrkin Sergeant literally jumps on the back of a rampaging Daemonhost (which has already incapacitated the majority of an Inquisitorial retinue) and stabs it with a regular ol' combat knife to save the life of an Inquisitor.]] Balls. Of. Adamantium. Before the battle even began that [[Eisenhorn|Inquisitor]] admitted to being scared of them, and this is an Inquisitor who has fought alongside Deathwatch Marines against traitor Legionaries of The [[Emperor's Children]] in a warp corrupted landscape, 100 years ago, and has seen and battled Emperor knows what since then. Let that sink in. Now, ''the Kasrkin scared him'', [[Awesome|bad-fucking-ass]].

In conclusion, Cadians are the best troopers, and Kasrkin are the best of the best, well at least when it comes to conventional warfare, other regiments have them beat in specialized roles (Siege and attrition warfare? Send forth the [[Death Korps of Krieg|Death Korps]]. Guerrilla warfare and sabotage? Sneak some [[Catachan Jungle Fighters|Catachans]] or [[Tallarn Desert Raiders|Desert Raiders]] in depending on the environment. Rapid insertion and maneuvering? Drop the [[Elysian Drop Troops|Elysians]] on 'em). But when you aren't sure what you'll be up against or are expecting a prolonged encounter with rapidly changing tactical situations then you can't go wrong with the Cadian Shock Troopers. When you need a certain [[Abbadon|failure]] to run away for awhile, catapult a Kasrkin at him.

Also confirmed to be so fucking hardcore that their planet broke before they did. In spite of their homeworld's destruction, they've managed to keep going as strong as ever and now fight even harder to avenge its loss. Even better, with the scattered regiments settling on multiple other worlds, those worlds are probably soon going to be pumping out incredibly skilled regiments of their own. Chaos fucked itself. I mean, more than usual and not in ''[[Slaanesh|that way]]''.

'''CADIA STANDS!'''

===Defended===
Despite what is said about how much of a hellhole Cadia was due to the constant warfare, because of that selfsame constant warfare Cadia was one of the most well-defended planets in the Imperium. In fact, it was the 2nd most heavily defended world in the Imperium of Man, only Sol System is better defended than Cadia (And maaaaaybe [[Fenris]], with Catachan being a close third if you count batshit insane wildlife as a defensive element). So, probably more heavily defended than ''Mars''. All cities are arranged in interlocking blocks that require roads to snake around buildings with blind corners and are defended by rockcrete and adamantium walls, all to favor the defenders in urban combat. Massive shield generators keep the cities safe from all but the heaviest bombardment, forcing enemies to pay for them meter by bloody meter. All "civilians" are technically Cadian military reservists, and have been through the same life-long military training that all Cadians are subject to. As dangerous as Cadia is, the locals have learned to handle that danger and weather it as well as possible. Given its strategic importance, the Imperium is more than willing to commit substantial other resources to the planet's defense, which means lots of ships patrolling the system and lots of depots stationed in nearby systems to quickly reinforce Cadia at a moment's notice.

===Creed===
[[Creed|CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED!!!!!!!!]]
This article has infiltrated your computer. You just got tactical geniused.

===Reproduction===
Birth rate and recruitment rate are synonymous. And if you see [[Grimdark|how many men and women die on the battlefield every day]]... better start doing your part for the Imperium. On Cadia, you were encouraged to fuck around wildly and have your partner push out the kid in a barracks to increase efficiency in recruiting. Interestingly, military service is not actually required on Cadia, it’s simply their cultural expectation. They also don’t use the Vitae Womb (even though they probably need it). No word on fertility supplements to maximize number of children per batch or methods to shorten pregnancies, though.

===Colonizers===
Cadia's, as you noticed, only real export was soldiers. The thing is, Cadia pumps out so many that they usually form the core cadre of amalgamated units that get clumped into entirely new Imperial Guard armies, and sent to wage campaigns against taken or occupied planets. These armies are never getting sent back home, and are intended, when they win, to form a new government and society, and settle down (as seen in Dawn of War WA and Dark Crusade). As the core is usually Cadian, a lot of the army doctrines and style end up being Cadian, at least for a millennia or so. Hell, they colonize empty planets this way even, especially if it's a dangerous sector of space. Even now, who knows how many planets that are distinct and vital started this way? [[neckbeard|Your DNA could be spread far and wide across the galaxy and you wouldn't even know]].

This is of course to justify why everyone looks like Cadians, aka GW doesn't want to make a dozen different types of guards.

===Violet Eyes===
Ever fancied having more eye color than is standard for man? Move to Cadia and your kids will likely get glowing purple/violet eyes, may explain how purple-eyed animu characters tend to be awesome, they must be Cadians. Have fun explaining (with a bayonet...and a few thousand friends) to mobs of angry locals on other planets that you're not a mutant before they crucify you and burn you alive. Most likely the locals automatically assume their eyes are glowing with the Emperor’s divine light or something. It seems to be a result of living close to the Eye, as the original human settlers were completely culled by the Word Bearer's during the crusade and the trait popped up after the planet was resetteled.

===The Place of Lorgar's Enlightenment===
While the Imperium would consider this quality the highest order of [[heresy]], perhaps the greatest reason for Cadia's importance is that it is, in many ways, the birthplace of the [[Horus Heresy]]. It was on Cadia the forces of the [[Word Bearers]] met with Ingethel the Chosen and were inducted into the service of the Ruinous Powers. As such, Cadia holds tremendous ideological importance and sentimental value for the Champions of Chaos.

==The Fall of Cadia==
{{Template:Spoilers}}
{{Topquote|You are standing in the eye of the storm. Move an inch, and you'll be dead! You are standing underneath the towers of the teeth, [[Eye of Terror| And the eye blazes red!]] |The Towers of the Teeth}}
===Business As Usual===

When Abaddon finally launched his [[13th Black Crusade]], Cadia stood ready. Millions perished in the initial attack, but there were still enough Imperial forces to first blunt, then repulse the Chaos incursion. In its wake however was a system on the edge of collapse, its surviving defenders too weary to even try to celebrate. What was worse, Cadia was effectively isolated, with most of its Astropathic choirs either dead or driven insane.

Ursarkar Creed, now Lord Castellan, was worried. Throughout the fighting on-world, there was not even a single report of Abaddon being spotted. As a result he was sure that another assault was on the way, and what was worse it was likely that the Despoiler's own fleet would pass through the system. Unfortunately there was little left of the Imperial Navy present to put up more than a token defense, barring the [[Space Wolves]] battle barge ''Firemane's Fang'', and none of the ships there would be able to chase down Abaddon's ships once they made for deep space.

Preparing for the inevitable, Creed dug in, and set his forces to fortifying Kasr Kraf, which included Marshall Amalrich's [[Black Templars]]. Similar scenes repeated themselves throughout Cadia, with surviving Shock Troops and Astartes companies setting up defenses where they can. The Space Wolves set themselves up in Kasr Jark, while further north the [[Dark Angels]] 4th Company reinforced their own grounded Strike Cruiser ''Sword of Defiance''. In the days that followed the defenders drilled and trained, waiting for the inevitable to come.

===Eye of Terror 2: Electric Boogaloo===

And come it did, because Abaddon was not done with Cadia. Not by a long shot. His Black Fleet was inbound, an angry swarm of Traitor Legion warships, Daemon vessels, and space hulks, with the Blackstone Fortress ''Will of Eternity'' at its core. The remnants of Battlefleets Corona and Scarus, bloodied by the first wave of the Black Crusade, sought to stall the Black Fleet's advance, and paid for their defiance with their lives. Still the Chaos fleet swept on.

News that a Blackstone Fortress was incoming sent Creed's forces' already fevered preparations into a frenzy. Every Tech-adept that could be spared set about restoring Cadia's damaged null-array, which was damaged at the start of the Black Crusade. Even then it would not be enough, because time had finally run out for Cadia.

The Space Wolves however, disagreed. Sven Bloodhowl volunteered to lead his Great Company in boarding the ''Will of Eternity'', and do what they can to slow its advance. Along with them came two hundred other battle-brothers from the various Chapter forces devastated at the start of the Black Crusade, survivors of the Cadian 13th, and a full maniple of [[Skitarii]]. It was the last throw of the dice, but Creed had very few options left.

They failed. Abaddon's vanguard arrived on schedule a day later, soon followed by the Blackstone Fortress. Cheers erupted among the defenders however when its devastation beam dispersed harmlessly across the upper atmosphere. The null array worked! Eeeeeeeexcept it seems that the projection grid now featured xenos tech that wasn't there a day ago...

The cheers were a little short-lived however, as the skies of Cadia Secundus blacked with Traitor drop-ships. Round two had begun, and Abaddon had all the advantages.

The defenders put up a withering amount of fire, but it was not enough. Traitor Legionnaires made landfall, and daemonic reinforcements were summoned. Defense positions were soon overrun, and Creed made the decision to recall defenders back to the curtain walls of Kasr Kraf. The defenders made their fighting retreats, barring Marshall Amalrich's Black Templars, who stubbornly decided to stand their ground, and the Sisters of Battle that had made their defense at the Shrine of Saint Morrican.

Hours passed, then days. Orven Highfell's Ironwolves had counter-attacked the Iron Warriors force threatening Kasr Jark, while the Dark Angels defending the ''Sword of Defiance'' threw off three separate World Eater attacks. Slowly though the defenders were losing ground, and Creed once again ordered a withdrawal to the second curtain wall. The Novamarines 2nd Company sold their lives to stop Possessed from breaching one gate, but the West gate was lost, and with it so too was the 2nd curtain wall lost. Redoubt after redoubt fell, overwhelmed, with even the Dark Angels forced to abandon their grounded strike cruiser and join up with the surviving Space Wolves in their own withdrawal.

Kasr Kraf could not hold forever. An assault by the traitor Legio Vulcanum nearly made its defenses buckle, but the final straw was the assault of the Hounds of Abaddon. Led by newly-ascended Daemon Prince Urkanthos, the Hounds broke through the Kriegan Gates, slaughtering the Kasrkin regiments Creed had sent there to stem the tide. It took Creed himself, leading the Cadian 8th, that finally became the wall that the tide of traitors broke against. The remaining Astartes did what they could, but it was the intervention of the remnants of Marshall Amalrich's Cruxis Crusade ([[Fail|who had finally admitted that he was an idiot in trying to defend AWAY from Kasr Kraf]]) that seemed to give the remaining defenders a chance at more than a final show of defiance.

Urkanthos would not be denied however. His mission from Abaddon was clear: destroy the null array, and Cadia would fall. This was done with contemptuous ease. With its defenders dead and its ancient machinery reduced to cinders, nothing would stop the Blackstone Fortress from scouring the world clean.

===The Living Saint Cometh===

It was then [[Saint Celestine]] arrived, wreathed in the Emperor's own holy fire. Flagging faith was renewed, and strength was once brought to wearied limbs. Aside from this she brought with her reinforcements: five companies of the Order of Our Martyred Lady, long lost in the Warp, and the [[Imperial Fists]] that had been on-board the Phalanx during its emergency warp transition.

While Celestine lent aid to those on the ground, [[THe Phalanx|the Phalanx]] thundered into the heart of the Black Fleet, straight at the Blackstone Fortress. Dorn's fist was to be its executioner. With a little help from what remained of Bloodhowl's force ([[Awesome|who had somehow survived to board the fortress, and had been fighting a running battle within for days]]), the Phalanx's planet-busting forward guns fired into a suddenly un-shielded flank (unprotected thanks to Bloodhowl's force sacrificing itself to take out the generators there). The ''Will of Eternity'' broke apart from the bombardment, its death throes throwing a third of gathered Traitor fleet there back into the Immaterium, and scattered the rest, while its broken husk hung in orbit.

The ground war fared better as the defenders threw off Urkanthos' Hounds from the walls, with the Daemon Prince's own corpse being added to the pile. Despite this, the Despoiler's forces still held air superiority, and scattered warbands gathered for yet another assault. This was no victory, but Cadia held off its doom for another day.

Even more surprises, as some last-minute reinforcements were still streaming in: the 5th Company of the [[Crimson Fists]] led by Ruis Tracinto, elements of the Cadian 14th, tanks of the Armoured 51st, Knights of House Taranis. The last but most significant of these latecomers was a Mechanicus Explorator fleet led by one [[Belisarius Cawl]]. It is Cawl that revealed to the gathered defenders the importance of ''not'' abandoning Cadia, and just how deep the Destroyer's plans were.

The last defenders withdrew to the Elysion Pylon fields, where the [[Legion of the Damned]] had manifested to keep watch over, to make their stand. Beyond the atmosphere the Phalanx moved to cover the field with its bombardment cannons, while far below the fields, Cawl and his adepts worked tirelessly to try and get the pylons to ''work'', but nothing he tried made the pylons react even a little. Close to throwing the towel in frustration, it was then that [[Trazyn the Infinite]] decide to make his presence known. The [[Necron]] proposed a truce, and promised to aid Cawl for its own inscrutable reasons.

===The Battle of Elysion Fields===

By this time the Battle of the Elysion Fields began to heat up, as Abaddon's forces slowly strangled the Imperial defenders. Days passed in desperate combat, with the Imperials hanging on just by the slimmest of margins, but that all changed once Abaddon himself teleported in to crush Cadia's last resistance himself. Accompanied by the Bringers of Despair, they assaulted Creed's command directly, and it was only due to the sacrifice of Creed's friend Kell that the Lord Castellan was able to live and fight another day. He, alongside the remnants of the Cadian 8th, made a fighting retreat into the catacombs beneath the Elysion pylons, before being finally pushed back into the deeper chambers that Cawl was still doing his work.

Curious at seeing the end result of Cawl's labors, Trazyn deigned to release some of his "collection" to delay the Despoiler: Heresy-era Ultramarines, Vostroyans, Tanith, Salamanders, an odd Custodian... All joined the battle against Abaddon's forces. All except [[Ordo Hereticus]] Inquisitor Katarinya Greyfax and her bodyguard, that is. Wulfren bearing the sigil of the Ironwolves soon joined the fray, followed by Highfell himself fighting with a near-feral wildness.

It was then that Cawl coaxed the pylons to life. For those battling in the catacombs the effects were immediate, as Daemons were banished back to the Warp, and Possessed roared as their warp-spawned halves returned to the Immaterium. UNFORTUNATELY this also affected the [[Legion of the Damned]], and reduced Celestine's power to a mere Battle-Sister with a power weapon. Whoops.

This proved to be a BIG problem for Celestine, as she had been dueling Abaddon at that point. Creed had to personally intervene, as he saw immediately that if the Living Saint fell, so would the remaining morale of the defenders there. Even Greyfax, for all her distate for the "false idol", acted, and turned her psychic might at keeping the Despoiler at bay. In a moment of arrogance, Abaddon held off the deathblow to Celestine long enough to gloat over his impending success only to take a hit himself. Even depowered, Celestine had inflicted a wound upon the Despoiler which he had not felt the likes of since the Horus Heresy.

High above the effects of the pylons intensified. Against all expectation whatever was being transmitted from Cadia was actually ''causing the Eye of Terror to shrink'', and soon anything remotely warp-based began to waver or outright fail, including the void shields of the warships still glaring at each other beyond the atmosphere. Even teleporting out would eventually be impossible. It was at this point the Despoiler ordered his forces to withdraw, much to the shock and confusion of his ravaged foes. Even the forces on the surface were withdrawing en-masse, falling back to their Thunderhawks and drop-ships, and speeding back to the safety of the Black Fleet.

Something was up, and there was only one thing for sure: the compost was about to hit the rotary impeller, and SOON.

===Ragequit, Despoiler-style===

Once safely back upon the bridge of the ''Vengeful Spirit'', Abaddon set his "Plan B" in motion: if he couldn't have Cadia, '''nobody would'''. As soon as the last of the Traitor forces were retrieved, the Black Fleet pulled away from the planet, post-haste. At that point hidden plasma drives flared into life on the ruins of the ''Will of Eternity'', and slowly the moon-sized mass started to fall in the direction of Cadia. The batteries of the wounded ''Phalanx'' opened up in desperation, but nothing could stop its fall once the Blackstone Fortress was captured by Cadia's gravity well. Like the fist of an angry god, the fortress struck the planet hard, and the world burned.

From his command throne, Abaddon opened up a bottle of vintage wine, raised a cup (made from the skull of the [[Horus]] clone he had killed in the [[Battle of Harmony]]) in toast of an old foe, and laughed. Guffawhaw! Kekeke! Huehuehue! Teeheehee!

===Death of a World===

Millions died in the aftermath of the impact, but the worst was yet to come. As mountains crumbled and seas vanished into steam, the ancient Pylons scattered on the planet toppled as well. The ancient network sputtered and died, at which the Eye of Terror roared back into being, stronger and MUCH larger now that its ancient prison was sundered. With the echoing laughter of gods long-denied their prize, the maelstrom finally engulfed Cadia.

Daemons previously banished by the awakening of the pylons once more fell upon the ravaged world. Those who survived the initial inferno now found themselves fighting for their lives. But in that darkest hour, hope also returned. With the destruction of the pylons, Saint Celestine's strength returned, and burning bright with the light of the Emperor, the Living Saint led the survivors out of the catacombs, to witness a world much changed.

===The Exodus of Cadia===

At the sight of all the ruin and destruction, Creed finally despaired. Before his despondence could spread to his men, Greyfax took the initiative, and ordered the planetary evacuation of all surviving Imperial forces. Countless troop transports and landing craft roared upwards to the relative safety of the ''Phalanx'', though many more were lost amidst the burning atmosphere and the winged daemonspawn now infesting the skies.

Back at the Elysion Fields, the evacuation was turning desperate, as the waves of daemons pushed back the defensive lines. Soon there wouldn't be anywhere safe to land, and the evacuation zone would become a death trap.

Something had to be done. The Lord Castellan roused himself from his grief, and announced that the Cadian 8th would buy everyone the time they needed to escape. To their credit, none of the Castellan's Own blanched at the order, despite knowing full well what it meant. They owed Creed their lives anyway, and now was as good a time as any to pay the Castellan back the debt.

The last transports boosted away to safety, with the final one taking within the Knights of House Taranis, Marshall Amalrich's Black Templars, Saint Celestine's Sisters, and Grayfax. As they left that blighted battlefield behind, a clear and proud cry could be heard, over the howling winds and the cannon roar. It was a shout of defiance, bowed but unbroken: '''"CADIA STANDS!"'''

===The Fate of Creed===

Creed, wounded, weary, and about to bleed out, is confronted not by a Daemon, but by [[Trazyn|a metal giant wearing a scaled cloak]]. After that, a promise of eternity before darkness engulfs him, the giant's laughter ringing in his ears.

[[File:Cadiain8th.png|300px|thumbnail|center|...wait, how the fuck did she take off her trousers whilst still wearing her boots? Did she take off her boots, take off her trousers, then put her boots back on? <s>Or was she just wearing shorts?</s> "Battle Shorts" are not standard Kasrkin uniform, and thus she would be executed by a [[Commissar]] (and rightfully so) for being stupid enough to wear them to the final fucking battle of Cadia.]]

==We're Not Through Yet, Motherfuckers!==

According to the 7e Astra Militarum codex, every single Cadian regiment was recalled back to Cadia by Creed to defend it. Given that there were only 4 million Imperial survivors out of the original 850 million Imperials initially present, the vast majority of Cadian regiments were likely annihilated. Of course, it's unknown just how many Cadian regiments actually managed to get to Cadia in time before the shit hit the fan, but it's safe to say that certain [https://regimental-standard.com/2017/01/18/cadia-another-imperial-victory/ Imperium reports] that 90% of Cadia's Guard forces were off-world at the time and thus have survived the Fall of Cadia are either complete grox manure, or there were just THAT many Cadia guard regiments exported over the centuries. Given how long the Imperium has been around and the staggering size of the Guard, the latter may actually be more likely.

You thought the Fall of Cadia was the end? Well guess what, 8th Edition says otherwise! Curiously the closure of the Cadian Gate hadn't affected Chaos fleets in the slightest, as they've poured out the Eye everywhere across its borders with seemingly no effort while it expanded, no longer contained by the pylon network. This has actually worked out sort of okayish for the Imperium as well. With Cadia dealt with, a lot of warbands have decided to stop listening to the [[Abaddon|armless failure]] and go do their own thing to find things that are easier to kill than Cadia. This presents a bit of a problem for Chaos as Geedubs themselves have said there's still a fucking ton of defenders in the Cadian system and that the Chaos forces are starting to wear thin on the now-worthless planet.

On top of that, Cadia took so fucking long to go down that the Imperium is entrenched deep into neighboring planets waiting for a second coordinated wave of Chaos attackers that is increasingly unlikely to show up. Needless to say, there are more than a few commanders that think having all these forces sitting around essentially doing nothing was a massive waste, when they could instead be bringing the fight to the Great Enemy...

More worryingly, a detachment of the [[Adeptus Custodes]] has been sent there by order of the Captain-General. Specifically, the Custodes in charge of ensuring the Age of Strife-era horrors contained in the Imperial Palace's prisons (the mere knowledge of which could wreck the Imperium should they ever be known about) stay there. Seeing that several of said horrors were scattered across the galaxy by Chaos after the Great Rift opened, odds are that whatever the golden bananas were sent there for is ''very bad news''.

Moral of the Story: [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|Humans are incredibly good at creating superweapons.]]

==New Cadia==

In the wake of the Exodus from Cadia, several surviving regiments found themselves in the Agripinaa System. Those lucky enough not to be "volunteered" by into servitor-dom by the neighboring forge-world of Agripinaa (which was unlikely to mess with a ton of the best army around and one so famous and beloved by the Imperium and important that screwing with them could get Agripinaa blown up) still had to fight off pursuing Chaos forces, which included renegade Astartes warbands from the [[Sons of Malice]] and the [[Crimson Slaughter]]. One of these forces, led by General Gruber, made it's last stand on ice moon of Faith's Anchorage. Although they were eventually overwhelmed, the Cadians went down fighting, with General Gruber himself -- an old man noted in-universe to neither be particularly brave ''or'' inspirational -- spitting defiance at his slayers, and doing one final banzai charge with his power sword.

So focused were the Chaos forces on annihilating Gruber's forces that they didn't notice the ''other'' parts of the Cadian Exodus that had translated into the outer system -- which included elements of the battered but unbowed Battlefleet Cadia. Eager for vengeance, the Cadians fell upon the Chaos Fleet, but even with their numbers it was a close thing, due to the damage the Imperial Fleet had already received prior. Then out of nowhere, the Space Wolf [[Strike Cruiser]] ''Stiklestad'' entered the fray, and soon the odds were tipped in the Imperials' favor.

Very quickly, the forces that had destroyed General Gruber's forces found themselves stranded on Faith's Anchorage as the Stiklestad's crew demonstrated what happens when you face Astartes boarders to their ships. With nowhere to go, the Heretics soon found themselves facing regiment upon regiment of very VERY angry Cadian Shock Troopers. It took two weeks to comprehensively clear Hope's Anchorage of Heretic filth.

The Cadians were ''very'' thorough.

In the wake of this, the highest commanding officer of the Cadian military, General Benedikt of the 101st, consolidated his weary and battered forces on Chaeros, the 7th world of the Agripinaa system. It was soon renamed '''New Cadia''', a place to lick wounds and mourn lost comrades, a new place to call home, and a place to strike back from when the time finally came.

As for the other Cadian regiments, it says something that even after the destruction of their homeworld, Cadian regiments are still making up the bulk of the Guard forces in the Vigilus campaign. Even the Cadian 8th is active in the campaign, though they've renamed themselves '''Creed's Legacy'''. New troopers are made up of descendants of original regiment men and survivor colonists.

{{40k-Imperial-Regiments}}

{{40k-Planets}}

[[Category:Imperial]]

Vraks

2020-01-23T18:51:28Z

2600:1006:B11C:C15A:7C16:E412:E60C:4906: /* Aftermath */

[[File:Vraks_titans.png|right|400px|thumb|]]
'''Vraks''' is a system in the [[Imperium of Man]], near the [[Eye of Terror]]. It is (or was) part of the defenses centered on [[Cadia]]; in particular, its main planet, Vraks Prime, is an armory world, an entire planet used by the [[Departmento Munitorum]] to stockpile weapons and ammunition. The justification is that, if the tithe fleets bringing weapons directly to Cadia from further out in the Imperium get delayed, they can withdraw supplies from Vraks until contact is restored.

As far as the environment goes, it used to be an intensely volcanic world, so there's sulfur everywhere, the weather is stormy and cloudy, and the entire ground is either desert or ocean. The only things living there were algae, and then the [[Administratum]] moved in and brought a bunch of humans with them to set up the armory. It eventually got a basilica, to commemorate some martyr or another, and a big fortress to protect the armory (that many tanks and guns in one place proved a tempting target for pirates), designed to be all but invulnerable to orbital attack, and for ten thousand years, Vraks Prime never fell to pirates, [[Chaos]], [[Xenos]], or worker rebellions. Unfortunately, this state of affairs was not to last, because the Vraks system was created by [[Forge World]] for a trilogy of [[Imperial Armour]] books; Vraks Prime was soon to be the site of a mighty siege, starring loyalists and traitors. In an unfortunate twist, it was the loyalist Imperials who were on the [[FAIL|outside]] of the defenses.

== Fall of Vraks ==
[[File:Krieg_soldier.jpg|250px|right|thumb|]]
It was not pirates or [[xenos]] that eventually brought Vraks low, but a rogue member of the [[Ecclesiarchy]], one Cardinal Xaphan. Having recently been promoted into the post of Cardinal-Astral of the entire Scarus Sector (if the name is familiar to you, that's because it's where the [[Gregor Eisenhorn|Eisenhorn]] and [[Gideon Ravenor|Ravenor]] trilogies took place, plus it's next door to the Calixis Sector, where [[Dark Heresy]] is set. It was named after a Great Crusade era Word Bearer's Captain going missing there ; Captain Scarus - Lorgar, eventually arch-priest of ALL HERESY, bitched out salty tears about this and renamed the sector), Xaphan decided to take a tour of his domain. He found that he enjoyed rousing armies of the faithful, and decided (with some prodding by his number-one oh-so-trustworthy assistant Deacon Mamon) that he could do more good leading an army than working a desk job. The only problem was that pesky Decree Passive preventing him from raising men under arms, so to keep his plans hidden, he went to Vraks, where there were plenty of soldiers and weapons to make an army, as well as a basilica to give him an excuse to stick around. This was extra stupid because if he wanted to raise armies he could just tell the faithful to join the Guard.

The [[Inquisition]] found out anyway, and sent a [[Vindicare]] assassin after him, but the assassin magically failed so as to force Grimdark like always; seeing that covertness was no longer an option, Xaphan moved the workers of Vraks to open rebellion, which also makes no sense as his success in raising armies doubtless came from getting people high on fighting the Emperor’s enemies, so raising an army in this way against the Imperium wouldn’t work as being told to fight the Imperial Guard instead of joining it would cause his followers to burn him. Or a sexy leather transforming assassin sneaking in and killing him. The Imperial presences on the planet, namely the [[Administratum]], [[Adeptus Arbites]], and the [[Adepta Sororitas]] (who had been his bodyguards until this point), were either killed or imprisoned, which should have been a clue that he was making a bad move, but Mamon assured him that he was in the right, and that his enemies were merely deluded fools who would see the light once he actually got started on his crusade.

== Siege of Vraks ==
The [[Departmento Munitorum]] wasn't going to sit back and let Vraks turn traitor -- not because of the eight million workers living there, but because it was a giant armory (which could not be allowed to fall into traitor hands, or be kept from the [[Imperial Guard Regiment|regiments]] who needed them), and because, if word got out, other worlds could fall into rebellion, and use Vraks' supplies for themselves (ironically the Vraks traitors considered themselves loyalists and so probably would have gone apeshit on “real” rebels). Therefore, the world would have to be taken, and quickly. The Citadel of Vraks was all but invulnerable to orbital attack, so it could not be assaulted directly (ruling out the [[Space Marines]] and [[Imperial Navy]]), and the world's massive stores meant that a blockade-and-raid strategy would take five centuries to complete. The only way to take Vraks back in under a century was to put the Citadel under siege and take it by force, so they took some thirty regiments of the [[Death Korps of Krieg]] and put them into an army (<s>30 regiments is not that many men, traditional GW oversight. Unless these Regiments had HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF MEN EACH! The Imperium doesn't have a standard size for regiments</s> Krieg Siege Armies (a siege regiment) has about three hundred thousand soldiers, thirty of them were sent to Vraks, so at least nine million soldiers against eight million highly entrenched defenders, which means the Imperials should have sent about ninety Siege Armies). They were given twelve years to take Vraks back.

=== Phase One: Landing and Siege ===
[[File:Krieg_night_fight.jpg|right|thumb|300px|]]
Year 813.M41. The Citadel was the only thing really worth defending on Vraks, so the planet had no anti-air or anti-orbital defenses on the opposite side of the fortress (which is stupid, there's no excuse to not have anti-orbital defenses across the world, but this is the Imperium of Man so...). The army used the far side of the planet as a landing zone, and over several months, they landed all of the troops, vehicles, and supplies they would need (one could reasonably wonder why [[Tyranids|other]] [[Eldar|races]] [[Orks|wouldn't]] [[Chaos|do]] [[Dark Mechanicus|the]] [[Dark Eldar|same...]] though to cut them some slack: Vraks' defenses were planned with the idea that they only had to last long enough to get help from the Imperium). Meanwhile, they also built a bunch of rail lines around the planet to carry said army to within a hundred miles of the Citadel's outer defensive lines. Once there, the Kriegers built their own trench and gun network to encircle the fortress. They anticipated that, because the outer defense line was so long, a single massed assault on a particular zone would be flanked and repulsed by the neighbors of their target (a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog_defence Hedgehog defense]), so the plan was to pound the whole thing at once until it folded. They would then surround the second defense line; said line would be small enough to be less resistant to a massed assault, so they would attack a single point to crack the line wide open. Then, they would surround the Citadel itself, and finally be close enough to bombard it directly with their heavy guns and pound it to the ground.

After all of this planning and logistical work, the Death Korps finally began the attack on the outer defense line about a year after first arriving at Vraks, but of course things didn't go as planned. The enemy had substantially reinforced the defenses since the last Imperial survey, and so the "weak point" that the Kriegers tried to attack as a first blow wasn't so weak after all. Matters stalemated for two years, until Captain Tyborc managed to take a bunker whose artillery piece had been destroyed. The guy was a badass even among Kriegers: he took wounds in every part of his body except his left arm, and only eight men of his entire company survived to see reinforcements arrive, but the Imperium had found its breakthrough.

The outer defenses fell pretty quickly, but as the Imperial army got stalled again when the defenders of Vraks made a counter-attack to the North that forced the Imperium to halt its advances in the west and south to get reserves to stop the counter-attack. In the end, the stalemate resumed, just a little tighter around the fortress.

=== Phase Two: The Noose Tightens ===
Seven years after the invasion, the Imperial army was still stalled at the second defense line, when reports of renegade Space Marines assisting the defenders started filtering in. It eventually emerged that Mamon was an [[Alpha Legion]] spy and had called for backup. Cardinal Xaphan was probably no longer even pretending to serve the Emperor when he signed them up for his crusade (which doesn’t explain why the workers following him kept following after he was clearly traitor, although it does explain how the workers got training for war). Anyway, two years later, the Imperial army got some more line korps, and to everyone's surprise [[Azrael]] showed up with half the [[Dark Angels]] in tow as well. His goals were to smash the heretics' star port (pun intended), to stop them from getting more reinforcements, and to capture Arkos the Faithless, the Alpha Legion's commander on Vraks. They successfully captured and destroyed the star port, but Arkos got away and Azrael was severely wounded, not to mention pissed. 200 Dark Angels died on that battle. Despite one of the most famous Chapters fighting against them, the stupidity of the Vraks rebels caused them to still not realize that they themselves are the bad guys.

The success and the new reinforcements led the Imperial commanders to attempt another massed assault. It stalled (again), until Colonel Attas hatched a plan to have his artillery and infantry make a synchronized assault -- blast the enemy while his troops crawled up through no-mans-land, and then move the bombardment when the infantry was within charging distance, in other words original WW1 Stormtrooper tactics combined with a creeping barrage. Not quite as badass a feat as Tyborc's, but it worked. The second defense line cracked and fell, and the Imperial army was within sight of the Citadel. Weird. I wouldn’t have moved the barrage and had my men charge into it to limit the enemy’s ability to counter the charge. Puh, Attas was a bleeding heart pussy.

Xaphan, having jumped headfirst into heresy by this point, rubbed his hands and cackled with glee, because he knew that the slaughter was only beginning -- he had some more friends on the way.

=== Phase Three: Chaos Joins the Fray ===
[[File:Vraksian_enforcer.jpg|200px|thumb|right|]]
Captain Fodor managed to put a dent in the inner defense line when he led his company to take a vital bunker. He continued Tyborc's tradition of making footholds with risky, badass feats; among other things, he had a member of his squad torch a trench with a [[flamer]], and then he led the charge into the trench ''while it was still on fire''. Unfortunately, his success was not to last, because Arkos had called in a full [[Chaos]] fleet. (At this point, Xaphan had been imprisoned in his own fortress, as he had outlived his usefulness.) They destroyed the Imperial Navy detachment over Vraks and dropped [[Khorne Berzerker]]s right onto the inner defense line (Fodor's skull was taken, by the way). Then another ship rolled in and dropped a traitor [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|Titan]] legion and a bunch of fliers on them. And then some [[Plague Marines]] showed up, seized some nasty poison gas stored on Vraks, and gassed a whole regiment.

It was decided that siege tactics were no longer viable. The commander was dismissed (though not executed - nobody blamed him or {{blam|BLAMMED}} him for not knowing in advance that so many reinforcements would arrive), and his replacement got some Titans of their own as well as a larger Imperial Navy division to turn the tide back and regain air superiority. They were successful in this, although the enemies didn't break and run this time; instead, they dug in. For those counting, this is twelve years after the siege began.

=== Phase Four: Breaching the Citadel ===
Fortunately for the Imperium, the Death Korps of Krieg could fight underground as well as over it. Their miners and engineers worked tirelessly, fought through enemy counter-mining efforts, and finally found and destroyed one of the foundation pylons for the Citadel's inner wall. They destroyed it and brought down a huge chunk of the wall, exposing the squishy insides for the rest of the army to pile through.

The infantry regiments advanced on the breach, first in [[Gorgon (tank)|Gorgon]]s, and then on foot when they reached the remnants of the wall itself (the crater left by the blast was impassable for vehicles). The first attack failed when enemy troops from surrounding wall sections piled into the breach to stem the tide, so a few weeks later, they tried again, with a bigger assault plus a few suppressing attacks on the neighboring wall sections. That failed, too. They tried making more breaches, but while they got pretty good at knocking holes in the walls, they were never able to take them. Fourteen years after the start of the siege (two years longer than planned), the Departmento Munitorum decided that it had worn on long enough, and started to draw Krieg regiments originally destined for Vraks to more successful and more important warzones elsewhere, telling the command staff that they had five years to wrap everything up.

Fortunately (inevitably, for those familiar with Warhammer 40,000 fiction), the [[Space Marines]] were on hand to save the day. In particular, the [[Red Scorpions]] donated a hundred Marines (from various companies) to the cause. With their [[Terminator]]s seizing the breach, the remaining Titans gathered up to keep the enemy Titans at bay, and a mixed Marine and Death Korps force following up to hold the ground and drive the enemy away, the Citadel's curtain wall finally fell, and there was only the fortress itself left to take.

=== Phase Five: Wrapping Up ===
By this time -- eighteen years after the start of the siege -- word of the extensive involvement of Chaos had reached the ears of the [[Inquisition]], and so Inquisitor Lord [[Hector Rex]] brought some [[Grey Knights]] and [[Red Hunters]] to take control of the situation and get things wrapped up before the Death Korps found itself in over its head. Though the Death Korps was still being drawn down, Rex managed to keep enough soldiers to contain the heretics while he made arrangements to bring a final end to the conflict. First, the remaining artillery brought their combined firepower to bear on the fortress's void shield to overload them. Then, infantry would surge up to take the gates. Tyborc, now a badass Colonel, would lead the charge. The attack stalled, so the [[Red Hunters]] made their drop, but the traitors responded with a [[Reaver Battle Titan]] and some [[Alpha Legion]]naires, which wiped out the first wave. Finally, a wave of [[Marauder Bomber]]s cracked the gates and permitted the assault to proceed.

However, Arkos and company had set their Chaotic rituals in motion, and managed to summon [[An'ggrath]], one of [[Khorne]]'s mightiest [[Bloodthirster]]s. He wrecked the entire company of Grey Knights who went into the fortress to stop him, and Inquisitor Rex only barely managed to defeat him. Once he was gone, though, the fight was basically over, and the only remaining task was to clear the catacombs under the fortress.

Some [[Red Scorpions]] and the [[Angels of Absolution]] turned up to participate in the final attack, to regain the honor of their brothers who had gone before them and snatch up some Alpha Legionnaires for the interrogators, respectively. Arkos killed the Company Master of the Angels of Absolution detachment, but was finally captured (the Interrogator-Chaplain who apprehended him ordered him "[[Abaddon|disarmed]]").

== Aftermath ==
[[File:Krieg_quagmire.jpg|300px|right|thumb|]]
The war to retake Vraks took eighteen years instead of twelve, and didn't so much "retake" Vraks as deny it the enemy, since the ammunitions piles and supplies stockpiles on Vraks were completely consumed (yes, we know consuming the stockpile of material meant to supply all of Cadia for years is impossible for a mere eight million people, but the writers are stupid) and those were the primary reason for the siege in the first place. In the end, the primary result was lots of death. The Imperium destroyed fourteen traitor Titans (for the cost of nine Titans of their own), the [[Dark Angels]] got a bunch of prisoners from the [[Alpha Legion]] to interrogate (in retrospect, their interest may have been due to a possible link between Arkos and the [[Fallen Angels]]), and the weapons of Vraks were kept on-planet and not allowed to be taken off-planet by other traitor warbands. On the other hand, Vraks and its defenses were thoroughly ruined by the war, and the contents of its vaults were either used up or so tainted by Chaos that they had to be destroyed. A Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one, the only thing the Imperium gained was being that this world could not be used by the enemy. The prisoners rescued from the cells in the fortress, six Sisters of Battle and Cardinal Xaphan himself (who had long since been turned into a [[Chaos Spawn|you-know-what]]), were so destroyed by their experiences that they were barely people anymore. The Sisters ended up in Inquisitorial custody, and thanks to their "care" in Chaos custody, [[/d/|were so experimented on and broken by the time they were freed]] that they were eventually given the Emperor's Peace (read: bolt round to the skull), while the thing that used to be Cardinal Xaphan was summarily executed by the Grey Knights who found him.

Meanwhile, Deacon Mamon, the jerk who started the whole thing, escaped justice entirely. In fact, [[Nurgle]] was so pleased with how he turned Vraks into a scene of death and decay that he made Mamon a [[Daemon Prince]]. Such is life in the [[grimdark|grim, dark]] future.

{{40k-Planets}}

[[Category:Imperial]]

Vraks

2020-01-23T18:34:54Z

2600:1006:B11C:C15A:7C16:E412:E60C:4906: /* Phase Two: The Noose Tightens */

[[File:Vraks_titans.png|right|400px|thumb|]]
'''Vraks''' is a system in the [[Imperium of Man]], near the [[Eye of Terror]]. It is (or was) part of the defenses centered on [[Cadia]]; in particular, its main planet, Vraks Prime, is an armory world, an entire planet used by the [[Departmento Munitorum]] to stockpile weapons and ammunition. The justification is that, if the tithe fleets bringing weapons directly to Cadia from further out in the Imperium get delayed, they can withdraw supplies from Vraks until contact is restored.

As far as the environment goes, it used to be an intensely volcanic world, so there's sulfur everywhere, the weather is stormy and cloudy, and the entire ground is either desert or ocean. The only things living there were algae, and then the [[Administratum]] moved in and brought a bunch of humans with them to set up the armory. It eventually got a basilica, to commemorate some martyr or another, and a big fortress to protect the armory (that many tanks and guns in one place proved a tempting target for pirates), designed to be all but invulnerable to orbital attack, and for ten thousand years, Vraks Prime never fell to pirates, [[Chaos]], [[Xenos]], or worker rebellions. Unfortunately, this state of affairs was not to last, because the Vraks system was created by [[Forge World]] for a trilogy of [[Imperial Armour]] books; Vraks Prime was soon to be the site of a mighty siege, starring loyalists and traitors. In an unfortunate twist, it was the loyalist Imperials who were on the [[FAIL|outside]] of the defenses.

== Fall of Vraks ==
[[File:Krieg_soldier.jpg|250px|right|thumb|]]
It was not pirates or [[xenos]] that eventually brought Vraks low, but a rogue member of the [[Ecclesiarchy]], one Cardinal Xaphan. Having recently been promoted into the post of Cardinal-Astral of the entire Scarus Sector (if the name is familiar to you, that's because it's where the [[Gregor Eisenhorn|Eisenhorn]] and [[Gideon Ravenor|Ravenor]] trilogies took place, plus it's next door to the Calixis Sector, where [[Dark Heresy]] is set. It was named after a Great Crusade era Word Bearer's Captain going missing there ; Captain Scarus - Lorgar, eventually arch-priest of ALL HERESY, bitched out salty tears about this and renamed the sector), Xaphan decided to take a tour of his domain. He found that he enjoyed rousing armies of the faithful, and decided (with some prodding by his number-one oh-so-trustworthy assistant Deacon Mamon) that he could do more good leading an army than working a desk job. The only problem was that pesky Decree Passive preventing him from raising men under arms, so to keep his plans hidden, he went to Vraks, where there were plenty of soldiers and weapons to make an army, as well as a basilica to give him an excuse to stick around. This was extra stupid because if he wanted to raise armies he could just tell the faithful to join the Guard.

The [[Inquisition]] found out anyway, and sent a [[Vindicare]] assassin after him, but the assassin magically failed so as to force Grimdark like always; seeing that covertness was no longer an option, Xaphan moved the workers of Vraks to open rebellion, which also makes no sense as his success in raising armies doubtless came from getting people high on fighting the Emperor’s enemies, so raising an army in this way against the Imperium wouldn’t work as being told to fight the Imperial Guard instead of joining it would cause his followers to burn him. Or a sexy leather transforming assassin sneaking in and killing him. The Imperial presences on the planet, namely the [[Administratum]], [[Adeptus Arbites]], and the [[Adepta Sororitas]] (who had been his bodyguards until this point), were either killed or imprisoned, which should have been a clue that he was making a bad move, but Mamon assured him that he was in the right, and that his enemies were merely deluded fools who would see the light once he actually got started on his crusade.

== Siege of Vraks ==
The [[Departmento Munitorum]] wasn't going to sit back and let Vraks turn traitor -- not because of the eight million workers living there, but because it was a giant armory (which could not be allowed to fall into traitor hands, or be kept from the [[Imperial Guard Regiment|regiments]] who needed them), and because, if word got out, other worlds could fall into rebellion, and use Vraks' supplies for themselves (ironically the Vraks traitors considered themselves loyalists and so probably would have gone apeshit on “real” rebels). Therefore, the world would have to be taken, and quickly. The Citadel of Vraks was all but invulnerable to orbital attack, so it could not be assaulted directly (ruling out the [[Space Marines]] and [[Imperial Navy]]), and the world's massive stores meant that a blockade-and-raid strategy would take five centuries to complete. The only way to take Vraks back in under a century was to put the Citadel under siege and take it by force, so they took some thirty regiments of the [[Death Korps of Krieg]] and put them into an army (<s>30 regiments is not that many men, traditional GW oversight. Unless these Regiments had HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF MEN EACH! The Imperium doesn't have a standard size for regiments</s> Krieg Siege Armies (a siege regiment) has about three hundred thousand soldiers, thirty of them were sent to Vraks, so at least nine million soldiers against eight million highly entrenched defenders, which means the Imperials should have sent about ninety Siege Armies). They were given twelve years to take Vraks back.

=== Phase One: Landing and Siege ===
[[File:Krieg_night_fight.jpg|right|thumb|300px|]]
Year 813.M41. The Citadel was the only thing really worth defending on Vraks, so the planet had no anti-air or anti-orbital defenses on the opposite side of the fortress (which is stupid, there's no excuse to not have anti-orbital defenses across the world, but this is the Imperium of Man so...). The army used the far side of the planet as a landing zone, and over several months, they landed all of the troops, vehicles, and supplies they would need (one could reasonably wonder why [[Tyranids|other]] [[Eldar|races]] [[Orks|wouldn't]] [[Chaos|do]] [[Dark Mechanicus|the]] [[Dark Eldar|same...]] though to cut them some slack: Vraks' defenses were planned with the idea that they only had to last long enough to get help from the Imperium). Meanwhile, they also built a bunch of rail lines around the planet to carry said army to within a hundred miles of the Citadel's outer defensive lines. Once there, the Kriegers built their own trench and gun network to encircle the fortress. They anticipated that, because the outer defense line was so long, a single massed assault on a particular zone would be flanked and repulsed by the neighbors of their target (a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog_defence Hedgehog defense]), so the plan was to pound the whole thing at once until it folded. They would then surround the second defense line; said line would be small enough to be less resistant to a massed assault, so they would attack a single point to crack the line wide open. Then, they would surround the Citadel itself, and finally be close enough to bombard it directly with their heavy guns and pound it to the ground.

After all of this planning and logistical work, the Death Korps finally began the attack on the outer defense line about a year after first arriving at Vraks, but of course things didn't go as planned. The enemy had substantially reinforced the defenses since the last Imperial survey, and so the "weak point" that the Kriegers tried to attack as a first blow wasn't so weak after all. Matters stalemated for two years, until Captain Tyborc managed to take a bunker whose artillery piece had been destroyed. The guy was a badass even among Kriegers: he took wounds in every part of his body except his left arm, and only eight men of his entire company survived to see reinforcements arrive, but the Imperium had found its breakthrough.

The outer defenses fell pretty quickly, but as the Imperial army got stalled again when the defenders of Vraks made a counter-attack to the North that forced the Imperium to halt its advances in the west and south to get reserves to stop the counter-attack. In the end, the stalemate resumed, just a little tighter around the fortress.

=== Phase Two: The Noose Tightens ===
Seven years after the invasion, the Imperial army was still stalled at the second defense line, when reports of renegade Space Marines assisting the defenders started filtering in. It eventually emerged that Mamon was an [[Alpha Legion]] spy and had called for backup. Cardinal Xaphan was probably no longer even pretending to serve the Emperor when he signed them up for his crusade (which doesn’t explain why the workers following him kept following after he was clearly traitor, although it does explain how the workers got training for war). Anyway, two years later, the Imperial army got some more line korps, and to everyone's surprise [[Azrael]] showed up with half the [[Dark Angels]] in tow as well. His goals were to smash the heretics' star port (pun intended), to stop them from getting more reinforcements, and to capture Arkos the Faithless, the Alpha Legion's commander on Vraks. They successfully captured and destroyed the star port, but Arkos got away and Azrael was severely wounded, not to mention pissed. 200 Dark Angels died on that battle. Despite one of the most famous Chapters fighting against them, the stupidity of the Vraks rebels caused them to still not realize that they themselves are the bad guys.

The success and the new reinforcements led the Imperial commanders to attempt another massed assault. It stalled (again), until Colonel Attas hatched a plan to have his artillery and infantry make a synchronized assault -- blast the enemy while his troops crawled up through no-mans-land, and then move the bombardment when the infantry was within charging distance, in other words original WW1 Stormtrooper tactics combined with a creeping barrage. Not quite as badass a feat as Tyborc's, but it worked. The second defense line cracked and fell, and the Imperial army was within sight of the Citadel. Weird. I wouldn’t have moved the barrage and had my men charge into it to limit the enemy’s ability to counter the charge. Puh, Attas was a bleeding heart pussy.

Xaphan, having jumped headfirst into heresy by this point, rubbed his hands and cackled with glee, because he knew that the slaughter was only beginning -- he had some more friends on the way.

=== Phase Three: Chaos Joins the Fray ===
[[File:Vraksian_enforcer.jpg|200px|thumb|right|]]
Captain Fodor managed to put a dent in the inner defense line when he led his company to take a vital bunker. He continued Tyborc's tradition of making footholds with risky, badass feats; among other things, he had a member of his squad torch a trench with a [[flamer]], and then he led the charge into the trench ''while it was still on fire''. Unfortunately, his success was not to last, because Arkos had called in a full [[Chaos]] fleet. (At this point, Xaphan had been imprisoned in his own fortress, as he had outlived his usefulness.) They destroyed the Imperial Navy detachment over Vraks and dropped [[Khorne Berzerker]]s right onto the inner defense line (Fodor's skull was taken, by the way). Then another ship rolled in and dropped a traitor [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|Titan]] legion and a bunch of fliers on them. And then some [[Plague Marines]] showed up, seized some nasty poison gas stored on Vraks, and gassed a whole regiment.

It was decided that siege tactics were no longer viable. The commander was dismissed (though not executed - nobody blamed him or {{blam|BLAMMED}} him for not knowing in advance that so many reinforcements would arrive), and his replacement got some Titans of their own as well as a larger Imperial Navy division to turn the tide back and regain air superiority. They were successful in this, although the enemies didn't break and run this time; instead, they dug in. For those counting, this is twelve years after the siege began.

=== Phase Four: Breaching the Citadel ===
Fortunately for the Imperium, the Death Korps of Krieg could fight underground as well as over it. Their miners and engineers worked tirelessly, fought through enemy counter-mining efforts, and finally found and destroyed one of the foundation pylons for the Citadel's inner wall. They destroyed it and brought down a huge chunk of the wall, exposing the squishy insides for the rest of the army to pile through.

The infantry regiments advanced on the breach, first in [[Gorgon (tank)|Gorgon]]s, and then on foot when they reached the remnants of the wall itself (the crater left by the blast was impassable for vehicles). The first attack failed when enemy troops from surrounding wall sections piled into the breach to stem the tide, so a few weeks later, they tried again, with a bigger assault plus a few suppressing attacks on the neighboring wall sections. That failed, too. They tried making more breaches, but while they got pretty good at knocking holes in the walls, they were never able to take them. Fourteen years after the start of the siege (two years longer than planned), the Departmento Munitorum decided that it had worn on long enough, and started to draw Krieg regiments originally destined for Vraks to more successful and more important warzones elsewhere, telling the command staff that they had five years to wrap everything up.

Fortunately (inevitably, for those familiar with Warhammer 40,000 fiction), the [[Space Marines]] were on hand to save the day. In particular, the [[Red Scorpions]] donated a hundred Marines (from various companies) to the cause. With their [[Terminator]]s seizing the breach, the remaining Titans gathered up to keep the enemy Titans at bay, and a mixed Marine and Death Korps force following up to hold the ground and drive the enemy away, the Citadel's curtain wall finally fell, and there was only the fortress itself left to take.

=== Phase Five: Wrapping Up ===
By this time -- eighteen years after the start of the siege -- word of the extensive involvement of Chaos had reached the ears of the [[Inquisition]], and so Inquisitor Lord [[Hector Rex]] brought some [[Grey Knights]] and [[Red Hunters]] to take control of the situation and get things wrapped up before the Death Korps found itself in over its head. Though the Death Korps was still being drawn down, Rex managed to keep enough soldiers to contain the heretics while he made arrangements to bring a final end to the conflict. First, the remaining artillery brought their combined firepower to bear on the fortress's void shield to overload them. Then, infantry would surge up to take the gates. Tyborc, now a badass Colonel, would lead the charge. The attack stalled, so the [[Red Hunters]] made their drop, but the traitors responded with a [[Reaver Battle Titan]] and some [[Alpha Legion]]naires, which wiped out the first wave. Finally, a wave of [[Marauder Bomber]]s cracked the gates and permitted the assault to proceed.

However, Arkos and company had set their Chaotic rituals in motion, and managed to summon [[An'ggrath]], one of [[Khorne]]'s mightiest [[Bloodthirster]]s. He wrecked the entire company of Grey Knights who went into the fortress to stop him, and Inquisitor Rex only barely managed to defeat him. Once he was gone, though, the fight was basically over, and the only remaining task was to clear the catacombs under the fortress.

Some [[Red Scorpions]] and the [[Angels of Absolution]] turned up to participate in the final attack, to regain the honor of their brothers who had gone before them and snatch up some Alpha Legionnaires for the interrogators, respectively. Arkos killed the Company Master of the Angels of Absolution detachment, but was finally captured (the Interrogator-Chaplain who apprehended him ordered him "[[Abaddon|disarmed]]").

== Aftermath ==
[[File:Krieg_quagmire.jpg|300px|right|thumb|]]
The war to retake Vraks took eighteen years instead of twelve, and didn't so much "retake" Vraks as deny it the enemy, since the ammunitions piles and supplies stockpiles on Vraks were completely consumed and those were the primary reason for the siege in the first place. In the end, the primary result was lots of death. The Imperium destroyed fourteen traitor Titans (for the cost of nine Titans of their own), the [[Dark Angels]] got a bunch of prisoners from the [[Alpha Legion]] to interrogate (in retrospect, their interest may have been due to a possible link between Arkos and the [[Fallen Angels]]), and the weapons of Vraks were kept on-planet and not allowed to be taken off-planet by other traitor warbands. On the other hand, Vraks and its defenses were thoroughly ruined by the war, and the contents of its vaults were either used up or so tainted by Chaos that they had to be destroyed. A Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one, the only thing the Imperium gained was being that this world could not be used by the enemy. The prisoners rescued from the cells in the fortress, six Sisters of Battle and Cardinal Xaphan himself (who had long since been turned into a [[Chaos Spawn|you-know-what]]), were so destroyed by their experiences that they were barely people anymore. The Sisters ended up in Inquisitorial custody, and thanks to their "care" in Chaos custody, [[/d/|were so experimented on and broken by the time they were freed]] that they were eventually given the Emperor's Peace (read: bolt round to the skull), while the thing that used to be Cardinal Xaphan was summarily executed by the Grey Knights who found him.

Meanwhile, Deacon Mamon, the jerk who started the whole thing, escaped justice entirely. In fact, [[Nurgle]] was so pleased with how he turned Vraks into a scene of death and decay that he made Mamon a [[Daemon Prince]]. Such is life in the [[grimdark|grim, dark]] future.

{{40k-Planets}}

[[Category:Imperial]]

Vraks

2020-01-23T18:27:17Z

2600:1006:B11C:C15A:7C16:E412:E60C:4906: /* Siege of Vraks */

[[File:Vraks_titans.png|right|400px|thumb|]]
'''Vraks''' is a system in the [[Imperium of Man]], near the [[Eye of Terror]]. It is (or was) part of the defenses centered on [[Cadia]]; in particular, its main planet, Vraks Prime, is an armory world, an entire planet used by the [[Departmento Munitorum]] to stockpile weapons and ammunition. The justification is that, if the tithe fleets bringing weapons directly to Cadia from further out in the Imperium get delayed, they can withdraw supplies from Vraks until contact is restored.

As far as the environment goes, it used to be an intensely volcanic world, so there's sulfur everywhere, the weather is stormy and cloudy, and the entire ground is either desert or ocean. The only things living there were algae, and then the [[Administratum]] moved in and brought a bunch of humans with them to set up the armory. It eventually got a basilica, to commemorate some martyr or another, and a big fortress to protect the armory (that many tanks and guns in one place proved a tempting target for pirates), designed to be all but invulnerable to orbital attack, and for ten thousand years, Vraks Prime never fell to pirates, [[Chaos]], [[Xenos]], or worker rebellions. Unfortunately, this state of affairs was not to last, because the Vraks system was created by [[Forge World]] for a trilogy of [[Imperial Armour]] books; Vraks Prime was soon to be the site of a mighty siege, starring loyalists and traitors. In an unfortunate twist, it was the loyalist Imperials who were on the [[FAIL|outside]] of the defenses.

== Fall of Vraks ==
[[File:Krieg_soldier.jpg|250px|right|thumb|]]
It was not pirates or [[xenos]] that eventually brought Vraks low, but a rogue member of the [[Ecclesiarchy]], one Cardinal Xaphan. Having recently been promoted into the post of Cardinal-Astral of the entire Scarus Sector (if the name is familiar to you, that's because it's where the [[Gregor Eisenhorn|Eisenhorn]] and [[Gideon Ravenor|Ravenor]] trilogies took place, plus it's next door to the Calixis Sector, where [[Dark Heresy]] is set. It was named after a Great Crusade era Word Bearer's Captain going missing there ; Captain Scarus - Lorgar, eventually arch-priest of ALL HERESY, bitched out salty tears about this and renamed the sector), Xaphan decided to take a tour of his domain. He found that he enjoyed rousing armies of the faithful, and decided (with some prodding by his number-one oh-so-trustworthy assistant Deacon Mamon) that he could do more good leading an army than working a desk job. The only problem was that pesky Decree Passive preventing him from raising men under arms, so to keep his plans hidden, he went to Vraks, where there were plenty of soldiers and weapons to make an army, as well as a basilica to give him an excuse to stick around. This was extra stupid because if he wanted to raise armies he could just tell the faithful to join the Guard.

The [[Inquisition]] found out anyway, and sent a [[Vindicare]] assassin after him, but the assassin magically failed so as to force Grimdark like always; seeing that covertness was no longer an option, Xaphan moved the workers of Vraks to open rebellion, which also makes no sense as his success in raising armies doubtless came from getting people high on fighting the Emperor’s enemies, so raising an army in this way against the Imperium wouldn’t work as being told to fight the Imperial Guard instead of joining it would cause his followers to burn him. Or a sexy leather transforming assassin sneaking in and killing him. The Imperial presences on the planet, namely the [[Administratum]], [[Adeptus Arbites]], and the [[Adepta Sororitas]] (who had been his bodyguards until this point), were either killed or imprisoned, which should have been a clue that he was making a bad move, but Mamon assured him that he was in the right, and that his enemies were merely deluded fools who would see the light once he actually got started on his crusade.

== Siege of Vraks ==
The [[Departmento Munitorum]] wasn't going to sit back and let Vraks turn traitor -- not because of the eight million workers living there, but because it was a giant armory (which could not be allowed to fall into traitor hands, or be kept from the [[Imperial Guard Regiment|regiments]] who needed them), and because, if word got out, other worlds could fall into rebellion, and use Vraks' supplies for themselves (ironically the Vraks traitors considered themselves loyalists and so probably would have gone apeshit on “real” rebels). Therefore, the world would have to be taken, and quickly. The Citadel of Vraks was all but invulnerable to orbital attack, so it could not be assaulted directly (ruling out the [[Space Marines]] and [[Imperial Navy]]), and the world's massive stores meant that a blockade-and-raid strategy would take five centuries to complete. The only way to take Vraks back in under a century was to put the Citadel under siege and take it by force, so they took some thirty regiments of the [[Death Korps of Krieg]] and put them into an army (<s>30 regiments is not that many men, traditional GW oversight. Unless these Regiments had HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF MEN EACH! The Imperium doesn't have a standard size for regiments</s> Krieg Siege Armies (a siege regiment) has about three hundred thousand soldiers, thirty of them were sent to Vraks, so at least nine million soldiers against eight million highly entrenched defenders, which means the Imperials should have sent about ninety Siege Armies). They were given twelve years to take Vraks back.

=== Phase One: Landing and Siege ===
[[File:Krieg_night_fight.jpg|right|thumb|300px|]]
Year 813.M41. The Citadel was the only thing really worth defending on Vraks, so the planet had no anti-air or anti-orbital defenses on the opposite side of the fortress (which is stupid, there's no excuse to not have anti-orbital defenses across the world, but this is the Imperium of Man so...). The army used the far side of the planet as a landing zone, and over several months, they landed all of the troops, vehicles, and supplies they would need (one could reasonably wonder why [[Tyranids|other]] [[Eldar|races]] [[Orks|wouldn't]] [[Chaos|do]] [[Dark Mechanicus|the]] [[Dark Eldar|same...]] though to cut them some slack: Vraks' defenses were planned with the idea that they only had to last long enough to get help from the Imperium). Meanwhile, they also built a bunch of rail lines around the planet to carry said army to within a hundred miles of the Citadel's outer defensive lines. Once there, the Kriegers built their own trench and gun network to encircle the fortress. They anticipated that, because the outer defense line was so long, a single massed assault on a particular zone would be flanked and repulsed by the neighbors of their target (a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog_defence Hedgehog defense]), so the plan was to pound the whole thing at once until it folded. They would then surround the second defense line; said line would be small enough to be less resistant to a massed assault, so they would attack a single point to crack the line wide open. Then, they would surround the Citadel itself, and finally be close enough to bombard it directly with their heavy guns and pound it to the ground.

After all of this planning and logistical work, the Death Korps finally began the attack on the outer defense line about a year after first arriving at Vraks, but of course things didn't go as planned. The enemy had substantially reinforced the defenses since the last Imperial survey, and so the "weak point" that the Kriegers tried to attack as a first blow wasn't so weak after all. Matters stalemated for two years, until Captain Tyborc managed to take a bunker whose artillery piece had been destroyed. The guy was a badass even among Kriegers: he took wounds in every part of his body except his left arm, and only eight men of his entire company survived to see reinforcements arrive, but the Imperium had found its breakthrough.

The outer defenses fell pretty quickly, but as the Imperial army got stalled again when the defenders of Vraks made a counter-attack to the North that forced the Imperium to halt its advances in the west and south to get reserves to stop the counter-attack. In the end, the stalemate resumed, just a little tighter around the fortress.

=== Phase Two: The Noose Tightens ===
Seven years after the invasion, the Imperial army was still stalled at the second defense line, when reports of renegade Space Marines assisting the defenders started filtering in. It eventually emerged that Mamon was an [[Alpha Legion]] spy and had called for backup. Cardinal Xaphan was probably no longer even pretending to serve the Emperor when he signed them up for his crusade. Anyway, two years later, the Imperial army got some more line korps, and to everyone's surprise [[Azrael]] showed up with half the [[Dark Angels]] in tow as well. His goals were to smash the heretics' star port (pun intended), to stop them from getting more reinforcements, and to capture Arkos the Faithless, the Alpha Legion's commander on Vraks. They successfully captured and destroyed the star port, but Arkos got away and Azrael was severely wounded, not to mention pissed. 200 Dark Angels died on that battle.

The success and the new reinforcements led the Imperial commanders to attempt another massed assault. It stalled (again), until Colonel Attas hatched a plan to have his artillery and infantry make a synchronized assault -- blast the enemy while his troops crawled up through no-mans-land, and then move the bombardment when the infantry was within charging distance, in other words original WW1 Stormtrooper tactics combined with a creeping barrage. Not quite as badass a feat as Tyborc's, but it worked. The second defense line cracked and fell, and the Imperial army was within sight of the Citadel.

Xaphan, having jumped headfirst into heresy by this point, rubbed his hands and cackled with glee, because he knew that the slaughter was only beginning -- he had some more friends on the way.

=== Phase Three: Chaos Joins the Fray ===
[[File:Vraksian_enforcer.jpg|200px|thumb|right|]]
Captain Fodor managed to put a dent in the inner defense line when he led his company to take a vital bunker. He continued Tyborc's tradition of making footholds with risky, badass feats; among other things, he had a member of his squad torch a trench with a [[flamer]], and then he led the charge into the trench ''while it was still on fire''. Unfortunately, his success was not to last, because Arkos had called in a full [[Chaos]] fleet. (At this point, Xaphan had been imprisoned in his own fortress, as he had outlived his usefulness.) They destroyed the Imperial Navy detachment over Vraks and dropped [[Khorne Berzerker]]s right onto the inner defense line (Fodor's skull was taken, by the way). Then another ship rolled in and dropped a traitor [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|Titan]] legion and a bunch of fliers on them. And then some [[Plague Marines]] showed up, seized some nasty poison gas stored on Vraks, and gassed a whole regiment.

It was decided that siege tactics were no longer viable. The commander was dismissed (though not executed - nobody blamed him or {{blam|BLAMMED}} him for not knowing in advance that so many reinforcements would arrive), and his replacement got some Titans of their own as well as a larger Imperial Navy division to turn the tide back and regain air superiority. They were successful in this, although the enemies didn't break and run this time; instead, they dug in. For those counting, this is twelve years after the siege began.

=== Phase Four: Breaching the Citadel ===
Fortunately for the Imperium, the Death Korps of Krieg could fight underground as well as over it. Their miners and engineers worked tirelessly, fought through enemy counter-mining efforts, and finally found and destroyed one of the foundation pylons for the Citadel's inner wall. They destroyed it and brought down a huge chunk of the wall, exposing the squishy insides for the rest of the army to pile through.

The infantry regiments advanced on the breach, first in [[Gorgon (tank)|Gorgon]]s, and then on foot when they reached the remnants of the wall itself (the crater left by the blast was impassable for vehicles). The first attack failed when enemy troops from surrounding wall sections piled into the breach to stem the tide, so a few weeks later, they tried again, with a bigger assault plus a few suppressing attacks on the neighboring wall sections. That failed, too. They tried making more breaches, but while they got pretty good at knocking holes in the walls, they were never able to take them. Fourteen years after the start of the siege (two years longer than planned), the Departmento Munitorum decided that it had worn on long enough, and started to draw Krieg regiments originally destined for Vraks to more successful and more important warzones elsewhere, telling the command staff that they had five years to wrap everything up.

Fortunately (inevitably, for those familiar with Warhammer 40,000 fiction), the [[Space Marines]] were on hand to save the day. In particular, the [[Red Scorpions]] donated a hundred Marines (from various companies) to the cause. With their [[Terminator]]s seizing the breach, the remaining Titans gathered up to keep the enemy Titans at bay, and a mixed Marine and Death Korps force following up to hold the ground and drive the enemy away, the Citadel's curtain wall finally fell, and there was only the fortress itself left to take.

=== Phase Five: Wrapping Up ===
By this time -- eighteen years after the start of the siege -- word of the extensive involvement of Chaos had reached the ears of the [[Inquisition]], and so Inquisitor Lord [[Hector Rex]] brought some [[Grey Knights]] and [[Red Hunters]] to take control of the situation and get things wrapped up before the Death Korps found itself in over its head. Though the Death Korps was still being drawn down, Rex managed to keep enough soldiers to contain the heretics while he made arrangements to bring a final end to the conflict. First, the remaining artillery brought their combined firepower to bear on the fortress's void shield to overload them. Then, infantry would surge up to take the gates. Tyborc, now a badass Colonel, would lead the charge. The attack stalled, so the [[Red Hunters]] made their drop, but the traitors responded with a [[Reaver Battle Titan]] and some [[Alpha Legion]]naires, which wiped out the first wave. Finally, a wave of [[Marauder Bomber]]s cracked the gates and permitted the assault to proceed.

However, Arkos and company had set their Chaotic rituals in motion, and managed to summon [[An'ggrath]], one of [[Khorne]]'s mightiest [[Bloodthirster]]s. He wrecked the entire company of Grey Knights who went into the fortress to stop him, and Inquisitor Rex only barely managed to defeat him. Once he was gone, though, the fight was basically over, and the only remaining task was to clear the catacombs under the fortress.

Some [[Red Scorpions]] and the [[Angels of Absolution]] turned up to participate in the final attack, to regain the honor of their brothers who had gone before them and snatch up some Alpha Legionnaires for the interrogators, respectively. Arkos killed the Company Master of the Angels of Absolution detachment, but was finally captured (the Interrogator-Chaplain who apprehended him ordered him "[[Abaddon|disarmed]]").

== Aftermath ==
[[File:Krieg_quagmire.jpg|300px|right|thumb|]]
The war to retake Vraks took eighteen years instead of twelve, and didn't so much "retake" Vraks as deny it the enemy, since the ammunitions piles and supplies stockpiles on Vraks were completely consumed and those were the primary reason for the siege in the first place. In the end, the primary result was lots of death. The Imperium destroyed fourteen traitor Titans (for the cost of nine Titans of their own), the [[Dark Angels]] got a bunch of prisoners from the [[Alpha Legion]] to interrogate (in retrospect, their interest may have been due to a possible link between Arkos and the [[Fallen Angels]]), and the weapons of Vraks were kept on-planet and not allowed to be taken off-planet by other traitor warbands. On the other hand, Vraks and its defenses were thoroughly ruined by the war, and the contents of its vaults were either used up or so tainted by Chaos that they had to be destroyed. A Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one, the only thing the Imperium gained was being that this world could not be used by the enemy. The prisoners rescued from the cells in the fortress, six Sisters of Battle and Cardinal Xaphan himself (who had long since been turned into a [[Chaos Spawn|you-know-what]]), were so destroyed by their experiences that they were barely people anymore. The Sisters ended up in Inquisitorial custody, and thanks to their "care" in Chaos custody, [[/d/|were so experimented on and broken by the time they were freed]] that they were eventually given the Emperor's Peace (read: bolt round to the skull), while the thing that used to be Cardinal Xaphan was summarily executed by the Grey Knights who found him.

Meanwhile, Deacon Mamon, the jerk who started the whole thing, escaped justice entirely. In fact, [[Nurgle]] was so pleased with how he turned Vraks into a scene of death and decay that he made Mamon a [[Daemon Prince]]. Such is life in the [[grimdark|grim, dark]] future.

{{40k-Planets}}

[[Category:Imperial]]

Vraks

2020-01-23T18:19:01Z

2600:1006:B11C:C15A:7C16:E412:E60C:4906: /* Siege of Vraks */

[[File:Vraks_titans.png|right|400px|thumb|]]
'''Vraks''' is a system in the [[Imperium of Man]], near the [[Eye of Terror]]. It is (or was) part of the defenses centered on [[Cadia]]; in particular, its main planet, Vraks Prime, is an armory world, an entire planet used by the [[Departmento Munitorum]] to stockpile weapons and ammunition. The justification is that, if the tithe fleets bringing weapons directly to Cadia from further out in the Imperium get delayed, they can withdraw supplies from Vraks until contact is restored.

As far as the environment goes, it used to be an intensely volcanic world, so there's sulfur everywhere, the weather is stormy and cloudy, and the entire ground is either desert or ocean. The only things living there were algae, and then the [[Administratum]] moved in and brought a bunch of humans with them to set up the armory. It eventually got a basilica, to commemorate some martyr or another, and a big fortress to protect the armory (that many tanks and guns in one place proved a tempting target for pirates), designed to be all but invulnerable to orbital attack, and for ten thousand years, Vraks Prime never fell to pirates, [[Chaos]], [[Xenos]], or worker rebellions. Unfortunately, this state of affairs was not to last, because the Vraks system was created by [[Forge World]] for a trilogy of [[Imperial Armour]] books; Vraks Prime was soon to be the site of a mighty siege, starring loyalists and traitors. In an unfortunate twist, it was the loyalist Imperials who were on the [[FAIL|outside]] of the defenses.

== Fall of Vraks ==
[[File:Krieg_soldier.jpg|250px|right|thumb|]]
It was not pirates or [[xenos]] that eventually brought Vraks low, but a rogue member of the [[Ecclesiarchy]], one Cardinal Xaphan. Having recently been promoted into the post of Cardinal-Astral of the entire Scarus Sector (if the name is familiar to you, that's because it's where the [[Gregor Eisenhorn|Eisenhorn]] and [[Gideon Ravenor|Ravenor]] trilogies took place, plus it's next door to the Calixis Sector, where [[Dark Heresy]] is set. It was named after a Great Crusade era Word Bearer's Captain going missing there ; Captain Scarus - Lorgar, eventually arch-priest of ALL HERESY, bitched out salty tears about this and renamed the sector), Xaphan decided to take a tour of his domain. He found that he enjoyed rousing armies of the faithful, and decided (with some prodding by his number-one oh-so-trustworthy assistant Deacon Mamon) that he could do more good leading an army than working a desk job. The only problem was that pesky Decree Passive preventing him from raising men under arms, so to keep his plans hidden, he went to Vraks, where there were plenty of soldiers and weapons to make an army, as well as a basilica to give him an excuse to stick around. This was extra stupid because if he wanted to raise armies he could just tell the faithful to join the Guard.

The [[Inquisition]] found out anyway, and sent a [[Vindicare]] assassin after him, but the assassin magically failed so as to force Grimdark like always; seeing that covertness was no longer an option, Xaphan moved the workers of Vraks to open rebellion, which also makes no sense as his success in raising armies doubtless came from getting people high on fighting the Emperor’s enemies, so raising an army in this way against the Imperium wouldn’t work as being told to fight the Imperial Guard instead of joining it would cause his followers to burn him. Or a sexy leather transforming assassin sneaking in and killing him. The Imperial presences on the planet, namely the [[Administratum]], [[Adeptus Arbites]], and the [[Adepta Sororitas]] (who had been his bodyguards until this point), were either killed or imprisoned, which should have been a clue that he was making a bad move, but Mamon assured him that he was in the right, and that his enemies were merely deluded fools who would see the light once he actually got started on his crusade.

== Siege of Vraks ==
The [[Departmento Munitorum]] wasn't going to sit back and let Vraks turn traitor -- not because of the eight million workers living there, but because it was a giant armory (which could not be allowed to fall into traitor hands, or be kept from the [[Imperial Guard Regiment|regiments]] who needed them), and because, if word got out, other worlds could fall into rebellion, and use Vraks' supplies for themselves (ironically the Vraks traitors considered themselves loyalists and so probably would have gone apeshit on “real” rebels). Therefore, the world would have to be taken, and quickly. The Citadel of Vraks was all but invulnerable to orbital attack, so it could not be assaulted directly (ruling out the [[Space Marines]] and [[Imperial Navy]]), and the world's massive stores meant that a blockade-and-raid strategy would take five centuries to complete. The only way to take Vraks back in under a century was to put the Citadel under siege and take it by force, so they took some thirty regiments of the [[Death Korps of Krieg]] and put them into an army (30 regiments is not that many men, traditional GW oversight. Unless these Regiments had HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF MEN EACH! The Imperium doesn't have a standard size for regiments). They were given twelve years to take Vraks back.

=== Phase One: Landing and Siege ===
[[File:Krieg_night_fight.jpg|right|thumb|300px|]]
Year 813.M41. The Citadel was the only thing really worth defending on Vraks, so the planet had no anti-air or anti-orbital defenses on the opposite side of the fortress (which is stupid, there's no excuse to not have anti-orbital defenses across the world, but this is the Imperium of Man so...). The army used the far side of the planet as a landing zone, and over several months, they landed all of the troops, vehicles, and supplies they would need (one could reasonably wonder why [[Tyranids|other]] [[Eldar|races]] [[Orks|wouldn't]] [[Chaos|do]] [[Dark Mechanicus|the]] [[Dark Eldar|same...]] though to cut them some slack: Vraks' defenses were planned with the idea that they only had to last long enough to get help from the Imperium). Meanwhile, they also built a bunch of rail lines around the planet to carry said army to within a hundred miles of the Citadel's outer defensive lines. Once there, the Kriegers built their own trench and gun network to encircle the fortress. They anticipated that, because the outer defense line was so long, a single massed assault on a particular zone would be flanked and repulsed by the neighbors of their target (a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog_defence Hedgehog defense]), so the plan was to pound the whole thing at once until it folded. They would then surround the second defense line; said line would be small enough to be less resistant to a massed assault, so they would attack a single point to crack the line wide open. Then, they would surround the Citadel itself, and finally be close enough to bombard it directly with their heavy guns and pound it to the ground.

After all of this planning and logistical work, the Death Korps finally began the attack on the outer defense line about a year after first arriving at Vraks, but of course things didn't go as planned. The enemy had substantially reinforced the defenses since the last Imperial survey, and so the "weak point" that the Kriegers tried to attack as a first blow wasn't so weak after all. Matters stalemated for two years, until Captain Tyborc managed to take a bunker whose artillery piece had been destroyed. The guy was a badass even among Kriegers: he took wounds in every part of his body except his left arm, and only eight men of his entire company survived to see reinforcements arrive, but the Imperium had found its breakthrough.

The outer defenses fell pretty quickly, but as the Imperial army got stalled again when the defenders of Vraks made a counter-attack to the North that forced the Imperium to halt its advances in the west and south to get reserves to stop the counter-attack. In the end, the stalemate resumed, just a little tighter around the fortress.

=== Phase Two: The Noose Tightens ===
Seven years after the invasion, the Imperial army was still stalled at the second defense line, when reports of renegade Space Marines assisting the defenders started filtering in. It eventually emerged that Mamon was an [[Alpha Legion]] spy and had called for backup. Cardinal Xaphan was probably no longer even pretending to serve the Emperor when he signed them up for his crusade. Anyway, two years later, the Imperial army got some more line korps, and to everyone's surprise [[Azrael]] showed up with half the [[Dark Angels]] in tow as well. His goals were to smash the heretics' star port (pun intended), to stop them from getting more reinforcements, and to capture Arkos the Faithless, the Alpha Legion's commander on Vraks. They successfully captured and destroyed the star port, but Arkos got away and Azrael was severely wounded, not to mention pissed. 200 Dark Angels died on that battle.

The success and the new reinforcements led the Imperial commanders to attempt another massed assault. It stalled (again), until Colonel Attas hatched a plan to have his artillery and infantry make a synchronized assault -- blast the enemy while his troops crawled up through no-mans-land, and then move the bombardment when the infantry was within charging distance, in other words original WW1 Stormtrooper tactics combined with a creeping barrage. Not quite as badass a feat as Tyborc's, but it worked. The second defense line cracked and fell, and the Imperial army was within sight of the Citadel.

Xaphan, having jumped headfirst into heresy by this point, rubbed his hands and cackled with glee, because he knew that the slaughter was only beginning -- he had some more friends on the way.

=== Phase Three: Chaos Joins the Fray ===
[[File:Vraksian_enforcer.jpg|200px|thumb|right|]]
Captain Fodor managed to put a dent in the inner defense line when he led his company to take a vital bunker. He continued Tyborc's tradition of making footholds with risky, badass feats; among other things, he had a member of his squad torch a trench with a [[flamer]], and then he led the charge into the trench ''while it was still on fire''. Unfortunately, his success was not to last, because Arkos had called in a full [[Chaos]] fleet. (At this point, Xaphan had been imprisoned in his own fortress, as he had outlived his usefulness.) They destroyed the Imperial Navy detachment over Vraks and dropped [[Khorne Berzerker]]s right onto the inner defense line (Fodor's skull was taken, by the way). Then another ship rolled in and dropped a traitor [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|Titan]] legion and a bunch of fliers on them. And then some [[Plague Marines]] showed up, seized some nasty poison gas stored on Vraks, and gassed a whole regiment.

It was decided that siege tactics were no longer viable. The commander was dismissed (though not executed - nobody blamed him or {{blam|BLAMMED}} him for not knowing in advance that so many reinforcements would arrive), and his replacement got some Titans of their own as well as a larger Imperial Navy division to turn the tide back and regain air superiority. They were successful in this, although the enemies didn't break and run this time; instead, they dug in. For those counting, this is twelve years after the siege began.

=== Phase Four: Breaching the Citadel ===
Fortunately for the Imperium, the Death Korps of Krieg could fight underground as well as over it. Their miners and engineers worked tirelessly, fought through enemy counter-mining efforts, and finally found and destroyed one of the foundation pylons for the Citadel's inner wall. They destroyed it and brought down a huge chunk of the wall, exposing the squishy insides for the rest of the army to pile through.

The infantry regiments advanced on the breach, first in [[Gorgon (tank)|Gorgon]]s, and then on foot when they reached the remnants of the wall itself (the crater left by the blast was impassable for vehicles). The first attack failed when enemy troops from surrounding wall sections piled into the breach to stem the tide, so a few weeks later, they tried again, with a bigger assault plus a few suppressing attacks on the neighboring wall sections. That failed, too. They tried making more breaches, but while they got pretty good at knocking holes in the walls, they were never able to take them. Fourteen years after the start of the siege (two years longer than planned), the Departmento Munitorum decided that it had worn on long enough, and started to draw Krieg regiments originally destined for Vraks to more successful and more important warzones elsewhere, telling the command staff that they had five years to wrap everything up.

Fortunately (inevitably, for those familiar with Warhammer 40,000 fiction), the [[Space Marines]] were on hand to save the day. In particular, the [[Red Scorpions]] donated a hundred Marines (from various companies) to the cause. With their [[Terminator]]s seizing the breach, the remaining Titans gathered up to keep the enemy Titans at bay, and a mixed Marine and Death Korps force following up to hold the ground and drive the enemy away, the Citadel's curtain wall finally fell, and there was only the fortress itself left to take.

=== Phase Five: Wrapping Up ===
By this time -- eighteen years after the start of the siege -- word of the extensive involvement of Chaos had reached the ears of the [[Inquisition]], and so Inquisitor Lord [[Hector Rex]] brought some [[Grey Knights]] and [[Red Hunters]] to take control of the situation and get things wrapped up before the Death Korps found itself in over its head. Though the Death Korps was still being drawn down, Rex managed to keep enough soldiers to contain the heretics while he made arrangements to bring a final end to the conflict. First, the remaining artillery brought their combined firepower to bear on the fortress's void shield to overload them. Then, infantry would surge up to take the gates. Tyborc, now a badass Colonel, would lead the charge. The attack stalled, so the [[Red Hunters]] made their drop, but the traitors responded with a [[Reaver Battle Titan]] and some [[Alpha Legion]]naires, which wiped out the first wave. Finally, a wave of [[Marauder Bomber]]s cracked the gates and permitted the assault to proceed.

However, Arkos and company had set their Chaotic rituals in motion, and managed to summon [[An'ggrath]], one of [[Khorne]]'s mightiest [[Bloodthirster]]s. He wrecked the entire company of Grey Knights who went into the fortress to stop him, and Inquisitor Rex only barely managed to defeat him. Once he was gone, though, the fight was basically over, and the only remaining task was to clear the catacombs under the fortress.

Some [[Red Scorpions]] and the [[Angels of Absolution]] turned up to participate in the final attack, to regain the honor of their brothers who had gone before them and snatch up some Alpha Legionnaires for the interrogators, respectively. Arkos killed the Company Master of the Angels of Absolution detachment, but was finally captured (the Interrogator-Chaplain who apprehended him ordered him "[[Abaddon|disarmed]]").

== Aftermath ==
[[File:Krieg_quagmire.jpg|300px|right|thumb|]]
The war to retake Vraks took eighteen years instead of twelve, and didn't so much "retake" Vraks as deny it the enemy, since the ammunitions piles and supplies stockpiles on Vraks were completely consumed and those were the primary reason for the siege in the first place. In the end, the primary result was lots of death. The Imperium destroyed fourteen traitor Titans (for the cost of nine Titans of their own), the [[Dark Angels]] got a bunch of prisoners from the [[Alpha Legion]] to interrogate (in retrospect, their interest may have been due to a possible link between Arkos and the [[Fallen Angels]]), and the weapons of Vraks were kept on-planet and not allowed to be taken off-planet by other traitor warbands. On the other hand, Vraks and its defenses were thoroughly ruined by the war, and the contents of its vaults were either used up or so tainted by Chaos that they had to be destroyed. A Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one, the only thing the Imperium gained was being that this world could not be used by the enemy. The prisoners rescued from the cells in the fortress, six Sisters of Battle and Cardinal Xaphan himself (who had long since been turned into a [[Chaos Spawn|you-know-what]]), were so destroyed by their experiences that they were barely people anymore. The Sisters ended up in Inquisitorial custody, and thanks to their "care" in Chaos custody, [[/d/|were so experimented on and broken by the time they were freed]] that they were eventually given the Emperor's Peace (read: bolt round to the skull), while the thing that used to be Cardinal Xaphan was summarily executed by the Grey Knights who found him.

Meanwhile, Deacon Mamon, the jerk who started the whole thing, escaped justice entirely. In fact, [[Nurgle]] was so pleased with how he turned Vraks into a scene of death and decay that he made Mamon a [[Daemon Prince]]. Such is life in the [[grimdark|grim, dark]] future.

{{40k-Planets}}

[[Category:Imperial]]

Vraks

2020-01-23T18:16:13Z

2600:1006:B11C:C15A:7C16:E412:E60C:4906: /* Fall of Vraks */

[[File:Vraks_titans.png|right|400px|thumb|]]
'''Vraks''' is a system in the [[Imperium of Man]], near the [[Eye of Terror]]. It is (or was) part of the defenses centered on [[Cadia]]; in particular, its main planet, Vraks Prime, is an armory world, an entire planet used by the [[Departmento Munitorum]] to stockpile weapons and ammunition. The justification is that, if the tithe fleets bringing weapons directly to Cadia from further out in the Imperium get delayed, they can withdraw supplies from Vraks until contact is restored.

As far as the environment goes, it used to be an intensely volcanic world, so there's sulfur everywhere, the weather is stormy and cloudy, and the entire ground is either desert or ocean. The only things living there were algae, and then the [[Administratum]] moved in and brought a bunch of humans with them to set up the armory. It eventually got a basilica, to commemorate some martyr or another, and a big fortress to protect the armory (that many tanks and guns in one place proved a tempting target for pirates), designed to be all but invulnerable to orbital attack, and for ten thousand years, Vraks Prime never fell to pirates, [[Chaos]], [[Xenos]], or worker rebellions. Unfortunately, this state of affairs was not to last, because the Vraks system was created by [[Forge World]] for a trilogy of [[Imperial Armour]] books; Vraks Prime was soon to be the site of a mighty siege, starring loyalists and traitors. In an unfortunate twist, it was the loyalist Imperials who were on the [[FAIL|outside]] of the defenses.

== Fall of Vraks ==
[[File:Krieg_soldier.jpg|250px|right|thumb|]]
It was not pirates or [[xenos]] that eventually brought Vraks low, but a rogue member of the [[Ecclesiarchy]], one Cardinal Xaphan. Having recently been promoted into the post of Cardinal-Astral of the entire Scarus Sector (if the name is familiar to you, that's because it's where the [[Gregor Eisenhorn|Eisenhorn]] and [[Gideon Ravenor|Ravenor]] trilogies took place, plus it's next door to the Calixis Sector, where [[Dark Heresy]] is set. It was named after a Great Crusade era Word Bearer's Captain going missing there ; Captain Scarus - Lorgar, eventually arch-priest of ALL HERESY, bitched out salty tears about this and renamed the sector), Xaphan decided to take a tour of his domain. He found that he enjoyed rousing armies of the faithful, and decided (with some prodding by his number-one oh-so-trustworthy assistant Deacon Mamon) that he could do more good leading an army than working a desk job. The only problem was that pesky Decree Passive preventing him from raising men under arms, so to keep his plans hidden, he went to Vraks, where there were plenty of soldiers and weapons to make an army, as well as a basilica to give him an excuse to stick around. This was extra stupid because if he wanted to raise armies he could just tell the faithful to join the Guard.

The [[Inquisition]] found out anyway, and sent a [[Vindicare]] assassin after him, but the assassin magically failed so as to force Grimdark like always; seeing that covertness was no longer an option, Xaphan moved the workers of Vraks to open rebellion, which also makes no sense as his success in raising armies doubtless came from getting people high on fighting the Emperor’s enemies, so raising an army in this way against the Imperium wouldn’t work as being told to fight the Imperial Guard instead of joining it would cause his followers to burn him. Or a sexy leather transforming assassin sneaking in and killing him. The Imperial presences on the planet, namely the [[Administratum]], [[Adeptus Arbites]], and the [[Adepta Sororitas]] (who had been his bodyguards until this point), were either killed or imprisoned, which should have been a clue that he was making a bad move, but Mamon assured him that he was in the right, and that his enemies were merely deluded fools who would see the light once he actually got started on his crusade.

== Siege of Vraks ==
The [[Departmento Munitorum]] wasn't going to sit back and let Vraks turn traitor -- not because of the eight million workers living there, but because it was a giant armory (which could not be allowed to fall into traitor hands, or be kept from the [[Imperial Guard Regiment|regiments]] who needed them), and because, if word got out, other worlds could fall into rebellion, and use Vraks' supplies for themselves. Therefore, the world would have to be taken, and quickly. The Citadel of Vraks was all but invulnerable to orbital attack, so it could not be assaulted directly (ruling out the [[Space Marines]] and [[Imperial Navy]]), and the world's massive stores meant that a blockade-and-raid strategy would take five centuries to complete. The only way to take Vraks back in under a century was to put the Citadel under siege and take it by force, so they took some thirty regiments of the [[Death Korps of Krieg]] and put them into an army (30 regiments is not that many men, traditional GW oversight. Unless these Regiments had HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF MEN EACH! The Imperium doesn't have a standard size for regiments). They were given twelve years to take Vraks back.

=== Phase One: Landing and Siege ===
[[File:Krieg_night_fight.jpg|right|thumb|300px|]]
Year 813.M41. The Citadel was the only thing really worth defending on Vraks, so the planet had no anti-air or anti-orbital defenses on the opposite side of the fortress (which is stupid, there's no excuse to not have anti-orbital defenses across the world, but this is the Imperium of Man so...). The army used the far side of the planet as a landing zone, and over several months, they landed all of the troops, vehicles, and supplies they would need (one could reasonably wonder why [[Tyranids|other]] [[Eldar|races]] [[Orks|wouldn't]] [[Chaos|do]] [[Dark Mechanicus|the]] [[Dark Eldar|same...]] though to cut them some slack: Vraks' defenses were planned with the idea that they only had to last long enough to get help from the Imperium). Meanwhile, they also built a bunch of rail lines around the planet to carry said army to within a hundred miles of the Citadel's outer defensive lines. Once there, the Kriegers built their own trench and gun network to encircle the fortress. They anticipated that, because the outer defense line was so long, a single massed assault on a particular zone would be flanked and repulsed by the neighbors of their target (a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog_defence Hedgehog defense]), so the plan was to pound the whole thing at once until it folded. They would then surround the second defense line; said line would be small enough to be less resistant to a massed assault, so they would attack a single point to crack the line wide open. Then, they would surround the Citadel itself, and finally be close enough to bombard it directly with their heavy guns and pound it to the ground.

After all of this planning and logistical work, the Death Korps finally began the attack on the outer defense line about a year after first arriving at Vraks, but of course things didn't go as planned. The enemy had substantially reinforced the defenses since the last Imperial survey, and so the "weak point" that the Kriegers tried to attack as a first blow wasn't so weak after all. Matters stalemated for two years, until Captain Tyborc managed to take a bunker whose artillery piece had been destroyed. The guy was a badass even among Kriegers: he took wounds in every part of his body except his left arm, and only eight men of his entire company survived to see reinforcements arrive, but the Imperium had found its breakthrough.

The outer defenses fell pretty quickly, but as the Imperial army got stalled again when the defenders of Vraks made a counter-attack to the North that forced the Imperium to halt its advances in the west and south to get reserves to stop the counter-attack. In the end, the stalemate resumed, just a little tighter around the fortress.

=== Phase Two: The Noose Tightens ===
Seven years after the invasion, the Imperial army was still stalled at the second defense line, when reports of renegade Space Marines assisting the defenders started filtering in. It eventually emerged that Mamon was an [[Alpha Legion]] spy and had called for backup. Cardinal Xaphan was probably no longer even pretending to serve the Emperor when he signed them up for his crusade. Anyway, two years later, the Imperial army got some more line korps, and to everyone's surprise [[Azrael]] showed up with half the [[Dark Angels]] in tow as well. His goals were to smash the heretics' star port (pun intended), to stop them from getting more reinforcements, and to capture Arkos the Faithless, the Alpha Legion's commander on Vraks. They successfully captured and destroyed the star port, but Arkos got away and Azrael was severely wounded, not to mention pissed. 200 Dark Angels died on that battle.

The success and the new reinforcements led the Imperial commanders to attempt another massed assault. It stalled (again), until Colonel Attas hatched a plan to have his artillery and infantry make a synchronized assault -- blast the enemy while his troops crawled up through no-mans-land, and then move the bombardment when the infantry was within charging distance, in other words original WW1 Stormtrooper tactics combined with a creeping barrage. Not quite as badass a feat as Tyborc's, but it worked. The second defense line cracked and fell, and the Imperial army was within sight of the Citadel.

Xaphan, having jumped headfirst into heresy by this point, rubbed his hands and cackled with glee, because he knew that the slaughter was only beginning -- he had some more friends on the way.

=== Phase Three: Chaos Joins the Fray ===
[[File:Vraksian_enforcer.jpg|200px|thumb|right|]]
Captain Fodor managed to put a dent in the inner defense line when he led his company to take a vital bunker. He continued Tyborc's tradition of making footholds with risky, badass feats; among other things, he had a member of his squad torch a trench with a [[flamer]], and then he led the charge into the trench ''while it was still on fire''. Unfortunately, his success was not to last, because Arkos had called in a full [[Chaos]] fleet. (At this point, Xaphan had been imprisoned in his own fortress, as he had outlived his usefulness.) They destroyed the Imperial Navy detachment over Vraks and dropped [[Khorne Berzerker]]s right onto the inner defense line (Fodor's skull was taken, by the way). Then another ship rolled in and dropped a traitor [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|Titan]] legion and a bunch of fliers on them. And then some [[Plague Marines]] showed up, seized some nasty poison gas stored on Vraks, and gassed a whole regiment.

It was decided that siege tactics were no longer viable. The commander was dismissed (though not executed - nobody blamed him or {{blam|BLAMMED}} him for not knowing in advance that so many reinforcements would arrive), and his replacement got some Titans of their own as well as a larger Imperial Navy division to turn the tide back and regain air superiority. They were successful in this, although the enemies didn't break and run this time; instead, they dug in. For those counting, this is twelve years after the siege began.

=== Phase Four: Breaching the Citadel ===
Fortunately for the Imperium, the Death Korps of Krieg could fight underground as well as over it. Their miners and engineers worked tirelessly, fought through enemy counter-mining efforts, and finally found and destroyed one of the foundation pylons for the Citadel's inner wall. They destroyed it and brought down a huge chunk of the wall, exposing the squishy insides for the rest of the army to pile through.

The infantry regiments advanced on the breach, first in [[Gorgon (tank)|Gorgon]]s, and then on foot when they reached the remnants of the wall itself (the crater left by the blast was impassable for vehicles). The first attack failed when enemy troops from surrounding wall sections piled into the breach to stem the tide, so a few weeks later, they tried again, with a bigger assault plus a few suppressing attacks on the neighboring wall sections. That failed, too. They tried making more breaches, but while they got pretty good at knocking holes in the walls, they were never able to take them. Fourteen years after the start of the siege (two years longer than planned), the Departmento Munitorum decided that it had worn on long enough, and started to draw Krieg regiments originally destined for Vraks to more successful and more important warzones elsewhere, telling the command staff that they had five years to wrap everything up.

Fortunately (inevitably, for those familiar with Warhammer 40,000 fiction), the [[Space Marines]] were on hand to save the day. In particular, the [[Red Scorpions]] donated a hundred Marines (from various companies) to the cause. With their [[Terminator]]s seizing the breach, the remaining Titans gathered up to keep the enemy Titans at bay, and a mixed Marine and Death Korps force following up to hold the ground and drive the enemy away, the Citadel's curtain wall finally fell, and there was only the fortress itself left to take.

=== Phase Five: Wrapping Up ===
By this time -- eighteen years after the start of the siege -- word of the extensive involvement of Chaos had reached the ears of the [[Inquisition]], and so Inquisitor Lord [[Hector Rex]] brought some [[Grey Knights]] and [[Red Hunters]] to take control of the situation and get things wrapped up before the Death Korps found itself in over its head. Though the Death Korps was still being drawn down, Rex managed to keep enough soldiers to contain the heretics while he made arrangements to bring a final end to the conflict. First, the remaining artillery brought their combined firepower to bear on the fortress's void shield to overload them. Then, infantry would surge up to take the gates. Tyborc, now a badass Colonel, would lead the charge. The attack stalled, so the [[Red Hunters]] made their drop, but the traitors responded with a [[Reaver Battle Titan]] and some [[Alpha Legion]]naires, which wiped out the first wave. Finally, a wave of [[Marauder Bomber]]s cracked the gates and permitted the assault to proceed.

However, Arkos and company had set their Chaotic rituals in motion, and managed to summon [[An'ggrath]], one of [[Khorne]]'s mightiest [[Bloodthirster]]s. He wrecked the entire company of Grey Knights who went into the fortress to stop him, and Inquisitor Rex only barely managed to defeat him. Once he was gone, though, the fight was basically over, and the only remaining task was to clear the catacombs under the fortress.

Some [[Red Scorpions]] and the [[Angels of Absolution]] turned up to participate in the final attack, to regain the honor of their brothers who had gone before them and snatch up some Alpha Legionnaires for the interrogators, respectively. Arkos killed the Company Master of the Angels of Absolution detachment, but was finally captured (the Interrogator-Chaplain who apprehended him ordered him "[[Abaddon|disarmed]]").

== Aftermath ==
[[File:Krieg_quagmire.jpg|300px|right|thumb|]]
The war to retake Vraks took eighteen years instead of twelve, and didn't so much "retake" Vraks as deny it the enemy, since the ammunitions piles and supplies stockpiles on Vraks were completely consumed and those were the primary reason for the siege in the first place. In the end, the primary result was lots of death. The Imperium destroyed fourteen traitor Titans (for the cost of nine Titans of their own), the [[Dark Angels]] got a bunch of prisoners from the [[Alpha Legion]] to interrogate (in retrospect, their interest may have been due to a possible link between Arkos and the [[Fallen Angels]]), and the weapons of Vraks were kept on-planet and not allowed to be taken off-planet by other traitor warbands. On the other hand, Vraks and its defenses were thoroughly ruined by the war, and the contents of its vaults were either used up or so tainted by Chaos that they had to be destroyed. A Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one, the only thing the Imperium gained was being that this world could not be used by the enemy. The prisoners rescued from the cells in the fortress, six Sisters of Battle and Cardinal Xaphan himself (who had long since been turned into a [[Chaos Spawn|you-know-what]]), were so destroyed by their experiences that they were barely people anymore. The Sisters ended up in Inquisitorial custody, and thanks to their "care" in Chaos custody, [[/d/|were so experimented on and broken by the time they were freed]] that they were eventually given the Emperor's Peace (read: bolt round to the skull), while the thing that used to be Cardinal Xaphan was summarily executed by the Grey Knights who found him.

Meanwhile, Deacon Mamon, the jerk who started the whole thing, escaped justice entirely. In fact, [[Nurgle]] was so pleased with how he turned Vraks into a scene of death and decay that he made Mamon a [[Daemon Prince]]. Such is life in the [[grimdark|grim, dark]] future.

{{40k-Planets}}

[[Category:Imperial]]