2d4chan - User contributions [en]

Beastmen (40k)

2020-04-27T02:50:18Z

2600:1700:D5A0:A7D0:85A0:CC42:D2F6:FF0: /* Overview */

{{heresy}}
[[File:Beastspehhs.jpg|200px|thumb|left|[[Meme|Beastmen can into space]]]]
[[File:BeastmenBF.jpg|300px|right|thumb|When the [[Emprah]] dreamt of goat girls, this was <u>NOT</u> what he envisioned.]]
Yes, once upon a time, [[Beastmen]] were playable in Warhammer 40,000. And then they disappeared. But now they have reappeared, with a mention in the core rulebook and a presence in the Heretics & Renegades army list printed by [[Forge World]]!

Back in 2nd edition, [[Beastmen]] and other [[mutant]]s were the byproduct of [[Genestealer|Genestealer Cults]], which were a specific type of [[Genestealer]] infiltration, formerly called a Genestealer Clan, that started worshiping Chaos and the Ruinous Powers, thus becoming a Genestealer CULT. The army allowed for use of Genestealers, Beastmen, mutants and Demons. Later, the term Genestealer Cult was used for a general Genestealer infection, and the beastmen were shuffled off to the side in favour of a Genestealer Cult list having nothing to do with them, but that's fine as they then turned up in a playable mini-army in the Witch Hunters rulebook as an example of what the Witch Hunters fight against (called mutants in this case), and they also showed up again in the Eye of Terror codex, in the Witch Hunters case it's because mutations like that happen naturally in 40K, they're just usually killed when they're born and the army in question didn't follow the Imperium's teachings, and in the second case it was directly due to Chaos making a lot of mutants.

Until recently, they existed mainly in the fluff as a barely-tolerated strain of [[abhuman]] whose main use in the [[Imperial Guard]] [[Penal legion|is to act as meatshields]] [[Grimdark|so they can atone for being mutants]]. However, they've made a comeback as of late, with Tzaangors being a major part of the Thousand Sons' army list and more generic Beastmen showing up in the board game [[Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress]]. Fingers crossed some Guard beastmen show up at some point (so we can use them instead of the fugly Cadian and Catachan models).

==Overview==
[[File:6acce81ce316aa009e15bf2d9ae0484f.jpg|250px|right|thumb|These should be the guys 'braying,' [[CS Goto|Goto!]] [[Bullshit|Not Tyranids or Necrons!]]]]
In terms of temperaments and looks, Beastmen look and behave....exactly like their [[Beastmen|fantasy counterparts]] except in 40k there are actually some on the side of the good guys worshiping the [[Emprah]], though most still worship [[Chaos]] and make up a sizable portion of the population on Chaos-controlled planets. Beastmen, out of all the [[Abhuman|abhumans]], are the most variable and unstable, only avoiding the term [[Mutant|mutants]] because they all kept consistently looking like goats, minotaurs, satyrs, or any form of bipedal ungulates. Of course, as mentioned, they are a hair's width from being completely labeled as mutants now because of how inhuman they look and behave. Seriously, they possess a reputation for crudeness, aggression, and bad discipline, and trying to lecture one is like trying to lecture a stubborn donkey. Back in 30k, the Imperium was much more forgiving to the Beastmen, as they were often recruited into the ranks of the Imperial Army as part of the massive galactic expansion of the burgeoning Imperium of Man during the [[Great Crusade]]. Beastmen in the Imperial Army were regarded as useful, if highly undisciplined, warriors, and were ideal for suicidal assaults where brawn rather than tactical intellect was required. Other Imperial troops disliked them intently as they were quite rowdy, unsanitary, and generally unpleasant for baseline humans to deal with.

Of course, now with the idiots running the [[Inquisition]], the Beastmen are now viewed with scorn due to looking like an aborted lovechild of some intense [[furry|furry-on-furry-on-space wolf]] [[Heresy|yiffing]]. Consequently, it has led some Beastmen to start worshiping [[Chaos]]. [[Fail|Gee, how counterproductive, eh?]]

However, there are several signs that the Inquisition is not ''entirely'' wrong in their assessment. Besides the fact that Beastmen that turn to Chaos take to it like a fish to water, the extreme and apparently random variation of Beastmen, combined with their tendency to start spontaneously appearing on Chaos-held worlds (the Tzaangors of the Planet of Sorcerers are heavily implied to be descended from what was left of Prospero's human population) indicates that Beastmen in general are indeed a breed originating from Chaos, just not in thrall to it by nature. This technically ''does'' make them mutants, as the Imperium's hatred of mutants stems from hunting down those twisted by Chaos as an internal threat to humanity.

Due to the wide variations of Beastmen, there are several breeds and sub-breeds that have popped out of the Imperium (AKA if you're familiar with Beastmen in Fantasy or are a Beastmen player, then you would be familiar with all of these). These are:

====Gors====
The most common type of Beastmen are called Gors, who can be readily distinguished from more lowly breeds by their horns. The number of horns is not important, although it is preferable that they should be on the creature's head. Gors take great pride in their horns and often polish, paint or decorate them to enhance their natural lustre or shape. Lowly breeds look to the Gors for guidance and leadership, praising them endlessly in victory, and grumbling behind their backs when things are not going so well. Most Beastmen battle-leaders and the top warriors will be Gors. Gors are further divided into two main sub-breeds and a less common third sub-breed. The two main types are the goat-horned Caprigors and the bull-horned Bovigors. The third variety is known as the Ungor, a Beastman phrase which means something akin to, "not quite right Gors" or "no-horns".
*'''Caprigors:''' The most common type of Gor. They have curling or straight horns on their head like a goat or sheep. A Caprigor may have the entire head of a goat and often has goat's legs as well. A Beastman with these mutations but no others is called a Truegor. This title is also shared by some other kinds of Gor. A Caprigor Truegor is said to be bigger, braver and even more clever than other Caprigors.
*'''Bovigors:''' Not quite as numerous as Caprigors, a Bovigor bears cattle horns on his head and may have the entire head of a bull or an ox (Turning them into mini-Minotaurs). If he has a bull's head and either human or goat legs he is a Truegor. Bovigors are very competitive and like to think they are superior to other Gors. Most Bovigors believe that brawn is better than brains, and many possess a great deal of the former and very little of the latter.
*'''Ungors:''' Ungors are not as strong or robust of frame as the Gors, but they more than make up for it [[Just as Planned|in sheer malevolence.]] They are physically smaller than other Beastmen and their horns, if they have any at all, are less impressive and less numerous. While Gors may have long and spectacular horns as deadly as any sword, Ungors usually have short prongs or horn buds sprouting from their skulls, not recognisable as those of a goat or any other type acknowledged by the Gors. As a result they are not considered to be "proper" Beastmen by other Gors. They look the most like Humans out of all the Beastmen (Saved for Turnskins).

====Brays====
The majority of Beastmen who are not Gors are called Bray. The name refers to the braying, whinnying, whooping cacophony that Beastmen make when they band together to fight or feast. Apart from lacking horns, there is very little consistency in appearance that distinguishes a Bray from a Gor. A very brave, cunning, and unusually lucky Bray can rise to become a leader, but this is not very common and it must usually require for the Bray to have a horn of sorts. Gors do not like Brays giving them orders, and a Bray who fails to show a Gor the proper respect is asking for trouble.

Essentially speaking, they are the [[Grots]] of the Beastmen hierarchy.

====Turnskins====
[[Werewolf|Weregoats]] AHOOOOOOOYYYYY!

A Turnskin is a Beastman who was born human. The continual rate of mutation amongst the human population throughout the galaxy often results in hideous mutations. Human mutants are not tolerated in their own societies, and most of them are killed when their mutations manifest themselves, or are driven from their homes to die lonely deaths. The toughest and most cunning manage to survive their physical and psychological rejection and come to join up with bands of Beastmen. Regardless of their physical appearance, a Turnskin is always a Turnskin rather than a "pure" Beastman, which means he is the lowest of the low as far as the Beastmen are concerned. If a Turnskin has horns, they are sawed off before he can be accepted by other Beastmen, otherwise he could be mistaken for a Gor. AKA these guys get the worst short end of the stick. Understandable, given had the Turnskin not become one he would have happily hunted down and slaughtered the other Beastmen.

====Shamans====
Shamans are a very special kind of Beastmen because they possess psychic powers. However, this fact alone is only a part of what makes them special. Shamans are the intermediaries between the Beastmen and the Realm of Chaos itself. They can spirit-walk in the Empyrean and talk with the very daemons of the Chaos Gods. Shamans never lead other Beastmen, but the Beastmen's strongest leaders rely on them for all kinds of advice as well as sorcerous aid in battle.

Similar to their fantasy counterparts, Shamans distort reality around them that better suits their needs. Usually this means a lot of illusionairy tricks, but they also cast down traditional psychic attacks but at the expense of finesse with unrivaled ferocity. Because of their spiritual importance, Shamans are often second in command of the Beastmen hierarchy and are held with admiration and fear.

====Minotaurs====
As their name would give you any hints, Minotaurs are an unusually large and aggressive strain of giant Beastman, Minotaurs are comparable in physical size and strength to an [[Ogryn]]. These creatures are massive, bull-headed monstrosities that constantly hunger for hot blood and red meat. Often growing to twice the height of a man and far greater in muscular bulk, their thick-skulled heads are broad and ugly, and their horns can eviscerate with a single thrust. Minotaurs are possessed of a terrible hunger for flesh, particularly the flesh of Mankind. Yet it is not the gnawing hunger a mortal feels when deprived of sustenance, but a deep thirst for the unholy exhilaration the Minotaurs experience when they consume the flesh of their enemies. Of all the Beastmen, they are the most likely to join [[Khorne]].
<gallery>
File:Gors.jpg|Your typical Gor, lean, mean and all hair.
Image:Caprigor.jpg|Caprigor.
Image:Bovigors.jpg|Bovigor.
Image:BeastmenUngorHerd2_445x319.jpg|Ungor.
File:Bray.jpg|Brays AKA diet Beastmen.
File:Turnskin.jpg|They are basically a ungulate version of a werewolf.
File:Beastmen_Shaman.png|It really makes you think on the [[Extra Heresy|similar connections]] with ''another'' [[Space Wolves|group of]] [[Rune Priest|shamanistic wildmen]] [[Wulfen|that turns into beasts, eh?]]
File:Minotaur.jpg|I WILL RIP OUT YOUR HEAD AND SHIT DOWN YOUR NECK!
</gallery>

==Chaos Beastmen==
Thanks to the raging retards in the Imperium who just want to further dig a deeper hole in their own graves, some Beastmen, fed up of being chased out by the wider Imperium, decide to go all edgy and rebellious like a teenage kid in his mom's basement by joining the four ruinous powers. In certain cases, as with the Planet of the Sorcerers, the native population of a planet may mutate into Beastmen when it becomes a daemon world. These Chaos Beastmen are:

[[File:Khorngors.jpg|200px|left|thumb|BRAY FOR THE BRAY GOD! HAY FOR THE HAY STACK!]]
===[[Khorngor|Khorngors, Beastmen of Khorne]]===
Beastmen who serve the Blood God [[Khorne]] are known as Khorngors. The signature of Khorne is writ clearly upon the form of the Blood God's Beastmen. They have canine heads or faces, fierce snapping jaws, and teeth which drip with rank saliva. Their skin or fur is usually red and their eyes are all white with red pupils. Khorngor Champions often have fur which is especially impressive, either bright red, black with red flecks, or a strange metallic brassy colour. If the Beastmen has horns these may be twisted into the shape of the skull-like rune known as the Mark of Khorne. The same rune is often painted or burned onto their skin or fur, and can be tattooed onto their exposed foreheads. Beastmen of Khorne always fight in their own units, although they can be led by a Beastmen Champion so long as he does not follow any other Chaos God. Beastmen of Khorne hate enemies who are mortal followers of Slaanesh, including Beastmen who follow that patron. They also hate all enemy Chaos Sorcerers. They do not hate enemy Shamans who also follow Khorne, as they cannot cast sorcerous spells but have the power to nullify psychic abilities. Their hatred only applies to enemy troops, never to allies, even if they are followers of another Ruinous Power.
{{clear}}
[[File:Pestigor_unittt.gif|200px|left|thumb|Nurgle loves <u>ALL</u> his children.]]
===[[Pestigor|Pestigors, Beastmen of Nurgle]]===
The Pestigors, the Beastmen of [[Nurgle]], have blistered and broken skins, often red with cracked flesh and sores which have been given to them by a generous master. Their fur is matted and coarse, and their bodies are riddled with all kinds of disease. Yet they retain the morbid vigour that characterises their master so their afflictions in no way mar their battle-worthiness. The Mark of Nurgle is carved into their armour, daubed upon their clothes, and sometimes etched onto their skin by the path of disfiguring disease. Many Beastmen of Nurgle carry Nurgle's Rot, although thanks to their loyalty to Grandfather Nurgle, that terrible arcane disease will not affect them.
{{clear}}
[[File:Slaangor.jpg|200px|left|thumb|The aborted lovechild between a [[Keeper of Secrets]] and a Beastmen. Kinky.]]
===[[Slaangor|Slaangors, Beastmen of Slaanesh]]===
Beastmen of the Chaos God [[Slaanesh]], known as Slaangors, have white or near white fur and pale or pastel skins. Their eyes are green and are sometimes saucer-like in a similar way to those of the Daemonettes. The Mark of Slaanesh appears somewhere on them, painted onto their hides or carved into their armour, a bracelet, or neck collar. Many of Slaanesh's Beastmen have the head or horns of a bull (known as Bovigors) just like the Greater Daemon of their patron god. And they all have huge dongers, titties, or both. Exotic piercings and tattoos are also not uncommon.
{{clear}}
[[File:99120102068_ThousandSonsTzangors02.jpg|200px|left|thumb|Your average denizen in [[Sortiarius]].]]

===[[Tzaangor|Tzaangors, Beastmen of Tzeentch]]===
True to the Changer of the Ways, Beastmen of [[Tzeentch]], known as Tzaangors, are spectacularly variable. They always have at least one outstanding feature, either brightly coloured or exotically patterned fur, or very impressively coloured or shaped horns. Their mouths are also more beaklike than goatlike, as befitting their association with Tzeentch. Other mutations are commonplace amongst Tzaangors. Where other Beastmen often have no mutations (beyond their already altered phenotype), Beastmen of Tzeentch always have at least one. Tzaangors so far are the only known breed of Beastmen that can also fight in a [[Chaos Space Marine]] army (specifically, the [[Thousand Sons]]), and not just in the Lost and the Damned. It is unknown if this is exclusive to Tzaangors from Sortiarius, but Tzaangors tend to be more intelligent and disciplined than other breeds (and according to Abaddon they make some of Chaos's best ships), making them useful auxiliaries to a legion that is composed mostly of mummies and sorcerers. Currently the only 40k Beastmen (that are aligned with a Chaos God) with models and rules.
{{clear}}

{{Lost-and-Damned}}
{{Chaos Space Marines}}
{{Death Guard}}
{{Thousand Sons}}
{{Emperor's Children}}

==Tabletop==
[[File:Aht_2263.png|200px|left|thumb|A young Beastmen girl trying to tempt a noble [[Human]] into committing acts of [[Extra Heresy|extra heretical]] [[Yiff|yiffing!]] [[Blam|Shun it!]]]]
[[File:Tumblr_nfknuhJmQk1rdqn69o1_500.png|200px|right|thumb|A Beastmen lady. If this abomination turns you on, please report to your nearest [[Commissar]]iat. <s>Yeah I will hit that and let her bray with my 'longhorn'</s> {{Blam|BLAM! showing interest to this is [[Extra Heresy|''EXTRA HERETICAL!'']] AND A SEVERE CASE OF [[Furry|''FUR-HERESY!'']] BLAM! BLAM!}}]]
After the momentous shift to 3rd edition, the idiosyncratic or sillier armies were largely removed from the game, so things like Zoats, Squats and Genestealer Cults would disappear. For their part, Beastmen have had a varied history on the tabletop battlefield, popping in and out of the editions at the whimsy of the [[Games Workshop|upper management]]. Within [[Chapter Approved]], Imperial Guard could take ''Homo Sapiens Variatus'', by paying 30 points to upgrade a Conscript squad. Boosting their WS to three and granting them ''Furious Charge''. Later, under [[Eye of Terror]] and Siege of Vraks part 1, though not referenced directly, you could make units of Mutants and call them Beastmen. It was only really when [[Imperial Armour]] Volume 6: Siege of Vraks part 2 came along that Beastmen really came back to the game as we know it in an "official" manner: '''Bloodgor Beastmen Packs''' could be taken by a renegades army aligned to Khorne, costing 6 points for a WS3, T4 Conscript equivalent with Furious Charge, two close combat weapons and the ability to rally when below half strength. Lasguns, Pistols or Grenades had to be bought for extra.

...Then they disappeared again, and didn't resurface directly. Until recently, but more on that in a bit.

Imperial Armour 13 and the collected reprint of Siege of Vraks both give current 7e rules for Mutant Rabbles, who are genuine Conscript equivalents who have a 33% chance of being horned/clawed, the rest of the time they are either [[Scavvies|ugly, smelly mofos]] or of the [[Nightsider|overly heightened senses variety]], making it difficult to model them appropriately unless you speak nicely to your opponent beforehand. The beauty of the Mutant Rabble is the ability to buy a covenant of chaos for the squad champion, aligning them to whichever got you choose, and granting you the ability to distinguish between Tzaangors and Slaangors and so on.

Beyond 40k, if you look to the Imperial Militia and Warp Cults list for 30k, you do not just merely have the ability to field one single type of unit of Beastmen, but an entire army of them, manning your artillery or driving your tanks and are not automatically associated with traitors or the forces of chaos. By taking the right Provenances in your army you can have a whole army of T4 Abhumans Helots and call them "Variatus" or straight up take ''Fear'' causing, ''Feel No Pain, Rending'' mutants and call them "Beastmen", or mix and match Provenances to suit [[Your Dudes]].

Then along came Warzone Fenris and Wrath of Magnus. While this gave the Thousand Sons a much-needed facelift, it also came with an unexpected update; Tzaangors now not only had models, but fight alongside the Thousand Sons! Could this mean more Beastmen models are on the way? The Emperor (and by Emperor we mean Sigmar, since the tzaangors are AoS sprues with chainswords/pistols thrown in as an afterthought) only knows...

And it appears yes more Beastman are appearing. Forgeworld is releasing a Beastman bounty hunter character for use in Necromunda Underhive. He appears to be a Imperial sanctioned mutant that may have survived since the days of Rogue Trader (the game). Since then, the Tzaangor Shaman and Tzaangor Enlightened were ported over from Age of Sigmar. Then late in 2018, GW released a standalone Blackstone Fortress game that included Beastmen as adversaries along with rogue psykers, traitor guardsmen and a CSM warband. Heavy breathing intensified, though GW can still fuck this one up.

==Gallery==
{{Monstergirls}}
<gallery>
Image:Beastmens.png
Image:D5c8acaaf038f5f0e804df7ed8c69e67.jpg|Alright <s>Mutants</s> most loyal servants of the Emprah. Please clear this mindfield with your bodies!
Image:359981_sm-40k_Beastmen,_40k_minotaur.jpg|[[Awesome|Yes. That is a Beastmen with a [[Juggernaut]] for his head.
Image:E296c43b72d7f742f537f84e51babf22.png|This image has often been used by the Imperium as an effective way of identifying any Guardsmen with heretical and lewd thoughts.
Image:Beastmen_imperial_small_by_sylvant-d6c7eue.jpg|No Gerry, just because your heretical cousins on Sortiarius got models doesn't mean you will too.
Image:432872_sm-Armor,_Bestigors,.jpg|The days of Beastmen in awesome power armor are now a thing of imagination.
Image:Beastmen_in_SPEHSS.jpg
Image:Beastgirl.jpg|[[/d/|Copulation with a Beastgirl]] has often caused [[Skub|debates]] on whether this counts as [[Yiff|bestiality]] or [[Slaanesh]] [[NSFW|worshiping.]] Either way, its [[Extra Heresy|HERESY!]]
Image:1390326966584.jpg|[[HHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhnnnnnnngggggg-|HHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhnnnnnnngggggg...]]I. Must. Resist. Filthy. Turnskin.
Image:Sheepgirl.jpg
Image:Chieftain.jpg
</gallery>

{{Imperium}}

[[Category:Beastmen]]

Siege of Terra

2020-04-27T02:30:40Z

2600:1700:D5A0:A7D0:85A0:CC42:D2F6:FF0: /* Duel of the Emperor and Horus */

{{Stub}}
{{Infobox 40k Campaign
|title=Siege of Terra
|image=[[File:The-Siege-Of-Terra Angron.jpg|400px]]
|attacker= Traitor Legions
|defender= [[Imperium of Man]]
|commander1= [[Horus]], [[Angron]], [[Mortarion]], [[Angron]], [[Fulgrim]], [[Perturabo]], [[Magnus the Red]], Zardu Layak, Kelbor Hal
|commander2= The [[Emperor]], [[Sanguinius]], [[Rogal Dorn]], [[Jaghatai Khan]], [[Vulkan]], [[Malcador the Sigillite]], Constantine Valdor
|date=0014.M31
|scale=Planetary
|theatre=[[Horus Heresy]]
|strength1= [[Sons of Horus]], [[Death Guard]], [[World Eaters]], [[Emperor's Children]], [[Thousand Sons]], [[Iron Warriors]], 5000 [[Word Bearers]], [[Night Lords]], Traitor Army forces, [[Dark Mechanicum]], Traitor Titan legions, daemons
|strength2= [[Imperial Fists]], [[Blood Angels]], [[White Scars]], [[Adeptus Custodes]], [[Sisters of Silence]], [[Knights-Errant]], Imperial Army, three Titan Legions
|casualties1= Massive Heretic Astartes casualties, massive Traitor Army losses, massive Traitor Titan losses, massive Dark Mechanicum losses. Horus slain.
|casualties2= Massive military and civilian losses. Malcador the Sigillite slain. Sanguinius slain. Emperor mortally wounded and interred into Golden Throne.
|status= Pyrrhic Loyalist Victory
|outcome= Traitors driven from Terra and into the Eye of Terror. Death of Horus and crippling of the Emperor. Great Scouring Begins
}}

{{topquote|[[Horus|He]] waits no longer. It begins now.|[[Sanguinius]] on the 13th of Secundus, 014.M31}}
The '''Siege of Terra''' was the end of the [[Horus Heresy]] in [[Warhammer 40,000]]. If the Horus Heresy can be considered the most important series of events in the 40k universe, then the Siege of Terra itself could be considered the single most important event. It is also possibly the most fucking awesome event; Brother fighting brother, the mighty guns of Titans blowing fortifications to shreds, Imperial Army soldiers leading charges against the traitorous forces even though they know it's suicide and [[Ollanius Pius]]

It was [[Horus]]'s big attempt to off his daddy and so be the true Emperor of the galaxy (for [[Chaos]] of course!). He brought a load of his traitor legions, millions of corrupt Imperial army personnel and mutants, the part of the Mechanicus that had gone over to his side and a whole load of daemons to boot. On his side the [[Emperor]] had three legions, his custodians and the loyal imperial army regiments of Terra and you know what? The Emperor went and won anyway (granted it was because the Emperor offed Horus before his legions could crack the Imperial palace but still, victory for the home team!).

==The Solar War==

Dorn began fortifying Terra immediately after getting word of the Heresy, knowing that it would always be Horus's eventual goal. Despite being removed from the larger battles of the Heresy, the Solar System was touched by the conflict, with Mars rebelling and numerous sleeper agents and cults trying to destablise the Throne World. Despite this, Dorn managed to do the best he could, turning Terra into the most heavily fortified system in the Imperium. He even managed to blunt part of the traitor advance at the Beta Garmon cluster before getting ready for the final rumble they had known was coming.

Terra was unique in that it that it had two artificial mandeville points inside the the Solar system itself, created during the Dark Age of technology. Dorn fortified the likely approaches from the outer edge of the system and built up huge defences around the two internal jump points. Infiltrators and covert operatives sabotaged loyalist assets across the system. The Iron Warriors were the first Astartes into the breach, sending huge up-armoured Space Hulks as fireships to wear down the defenses, before sending their main fleet through to engage the combined Fists and Scars fleets. The inner system conflict went on for a bit, with the loyalists managing to hold out enough to slow down the advance, at least for a little while.

However, under Magnus's direction, the traitors turned the Shrine of Unity comet into a vast warp gate that allowed Horus, Angron, and Fulgrim's fleets to jump right past most of the rings of defense Dorn had come up with. On the Phalanx, Dorn was preoccupied with a daemon incursion and could do little to stop the huge fleets that were now mobbing for Terra. The Martian traitors, free from the blockade that had hemmed them in for years, joined up with Horus. The Solar War had been lost barely after it had begun. The rest of the Loyalist fleets, knowing they could never hope to fight even a fraction of the vast traitor armada, regrouped on the edge of the system, along with the Phalanx, waiting for the moment they could make an effective strike against Horus. There were early plans for the Emperor to be evacuated to the Phalanx and escape Terra, but these were made by people unaware of what Big E was doing in the basement of the palace.

==The Siege Begins==
[[File:Siege_of_Terra1.jpg|thumb|middle|500px|Just 0.000001% of 0.000001% of the Siege of Terra.]]
{{topquote|'''Father! I have come for you!'''|[[Angron]] upon making planetfall, 15 of Quartus, 014.M31}}

With orbit uncontested, most of the armada held in orbit above the palace and began bombarding the Aegis, the vast shield network protecting the entire palace. Unlike regular void shields, the Aegis consisted of multiple overlapping layers of shields that individually regenerated as fast as they could be depleted by bombardment. On the ground, the palace was protected by colossal networks of walls and bastions, static defences, and vast numbers of Imperial Army units bolstered by hordes of press-ganged conscripts. Unknown to almost everyone, the Inner Palace was also protected by a psychic ward generated by the Emperor that would royally fuck up any daemon that set foot near it, daemon primarchs included.

The rest of Terra wasn't so lucky. Barring a few isolated holdouts, the rest of Terra was virtually defenceless. It should be noted that if the goal was to destroy Terra wholesale, it could have been easily accomplished by Exterminatus level weaponry. Perturabo, as the only non Chaos-ifed primarch, grew increasingly angry at what he saw as an irrational and wasteful goal. But Horus was insistent that the Emperor had to be slain in person. So the Palace had to be destroyed the old fashioned way. The Daemon Primarchs were kept in orbit, safe from the Emperor's wards, although this meant that Angron had to be imprisoned in an almost impenetrable maze to stop him from Leeroy Jenkinsing the whole thing.

Hordes of mutants, beastmen, cultists, and traitor army units were thrown at the conventional defenses. Entire wings of aircraft dueled above the Palace. Precision bombardments gradually weakened minute sections of the Aegis long enough for bombers to get through and destroy the projectors. The Dark Mechanicum landed siege camps at 8 points around the palace - partly to surround the palace but also to act as the focus for a ritual that would enable the warp to take a foothold on the surface of the Throneworld. The Astartes were held in reserve on both sides whilst their more conventional forces softened each other up. The Death Guard were the first traitor Astartes to land on Terra, with the Khan and the White Scars riding forth on jetbikes and aircraft to meet them and wreck the Dark Mechanicum's siege camps. The Night Lords were the first Astartes to breach the walls of the Palace, albeit in small numbers; this attack also cost them their ''de facto'' commander, Gendor Skraivok. Sanguinius himself descended to help the mortal forces, acting as both force multiplier, decoy, and morale booster.

==Battle for the Lion's Gate==

While the Death Guard, Emperor's Children, and World Eaters each hammered away at a different section of the Palace walls, the traitors' first major effort at cracking the Palace itself was aimed at the Lion's Gate spaceport, the largest and tallest spaceport on Terra. It reached so high into the atmosphere that voidcraft could dock at its upper levels, meaning that the Traitor forces could more easily shuttle in reinforcements and materiel if they captured it. Horus tasked the Iron Warriors with taking the Gate, and in turn Perturabo assigned Warsmith Kroeger to lead the assault, under the logic that Dorn would be expecting Pert to command such an important offensive personally and wouldn't be expecting whatever plans Kroeger came up with. Dorn, meanwhile, assigned Seneschal Fafnir Rann to lead the defense of the spaceport, rather than First Captain Sigismund, since he was still angry with Sigismund for listening to Euphrati Keeler instead of obeying his orders. Kroeger went straight for the throat, as it were, launching a massive combined-arms assault directly on the port with backup from the World Eaters and Emperor's Children, though the latter quickly got bored and left after taking a bunch of prisoners for [[Rape|unspecified purposes]]. Though the Imperial Fists held off the initial attack, Warsmith Forrix and a thousand Iron Warriors managed to infiltrate the Gate by using renegade Imperial Army units as literal meatshields. To aid the attack, the Dark Mechanicum inserted a technophagic virus into the spaceport's systems, and Zardu Layak, Abaddon, and Typhus performed a Nurglite ritual to infiltrate the Great Unclean One Cor'bax Utterblight behind the Emperor's psychic wards.

The Fists drove back several consecutive assaults from the Iron Warriors and World Eaters, but the technophage was screwing their sensors and comms all to hell and gone, seriously complicating efforts to coordinate the defense, and Forrix and his infiltrators were tying up troops that were desperately needed elsewhere. Rann finally called Dorn for backup, and Dorn scraped up an additional three thousand Fists, which were literally all the troops he could spare at that point. Eventually, despite Rann's best efforts, the balance inevitably tipped in the traitors' favor, and Dorn arrived on scene just in time to order a general withdrawal from the spaceport to the inner defenses, though not before he killed Zardu Layak after a brief duel. With the Gate firmly in traitor hands, Perturabo started unloading Titans and consolidating his position.

Meanwhile, Euphrati Keeler and the Custodian Amon Tauromachian had been tapped by Malcador to investigate strange apparitions occurring behind the Palace walls. They eventually deduced that this was a daemon exploiting the faith of Imperial cultists to manifest itself inside the Emperor's psychic defenses, and focused on a cult called the Lightbearers, which turned out to have been deceived into worshipping Nurgle instead of the Emperor. After Cor'bax had used the Lightbearers to physically manifest himself, Amon, Euphrati, and Malcador teamed up to slay the daemon. When Amon suggested that they should purge the rest of the Emperor's worshippers to prevent another such incident, Malcador answered that he would continue to let them exist until the Emperor himself said otherwise, in the hopes that he could weaponize their faith against the Chaos gods.

==Saturnine==

So, remember Sindermann? Well, the book opens with a suicidal Sindermann coming across Dorn in (one of the few remaining) Palace gardens, causing him to ask If he is afraid. Dorn says he doesn't know. They talk, Dorn says he had many fears, but then asks Sindermann not to tell Guilliman. Dorn adds that he Does Not think a 1000 meter fall would kill a Primarch. He is also sorry for censoring Keller. The palace and its crest have shifted 8cm west since siege began. Sanguinius believes that Abaddon is the greatest First Captain out of the Legions, better than Raldoron, Sigismund and all the rest. Arguing he was the finest warrior of all the Legions.

Meanwhile, Abaddon thinks his mind might be the equal of Perturabo. While he respects how Pert is orchestrating the Siege, he has distain for how detached he is. He argued that the Siege would be one with a blade, the way the Crusade had been, not with a button that belonged solely to Pert or Horus. Showing that Abaddon can be nostalgic. Pert says he is as happy as a "grox in shit," so happy.

Sanguinius fights off three Warhound titans, while single handily killing the Warlord they were escorting with his Blade Encarmine and the Spear of Telesto. As the three smaller titans lock weapons on him, he challenges them, like a total badass, "Try if you lie. Shall we continue?" They then ran away. Some then say the Titans ran from a titan-killer weapon they had detected. But everyone who had seen it knew that it was the work of the Great Angel who sent them running. Dorn then discovers a crack in the Saturnine Wall. A crack Pert will use, send a stick up his ass. If Saturnine falls, then the way into the Inner Palace is open. To re-secure the wall, a ruse-show-sacrifice must be employed. Don only has forces to defend three key areas out of the four options, so he sacrifices the Eternity Wall space port. The Emps refuses to leave Terra, making it the best option. But losing it will reduce the holdout period by four months. Allowing further traitor forces to land. Furthermore, any defenders of the Port will die. Amongst the defenders of he port are Cambra Diaz of the Imperial Fists, Vigil Commander Jenetia Krole of the Sisters of Silence and Shiban Khan of the White Scars. Krole had been used as the null-guard of the High Council, now she will use her Blank-Null powers to protect the port from Daemons. Dorn then has Sindermann set up a proto Inquisition of former Remberancers. Giving them the ability to interrogate people, that way they can record the events of the Siege proper. Though some of this information will be buried/heresy.

Abaddon then convinces Pert that Saturnine should be their target, appealing to a clean victory instead of one tainted by the use of Daemons. A proper Marine and Primarch vs Marine and Primarch fight. Cause Fulgrim and the ENTIRE Emperor's Children Legion will be taking part in this. So he basically strokes Perturabo's ego. But Perturabo does beat up Abaddon, who then brushes it off. Ahriman is also taunting the now daemon-primarch Mortarion. Ahriman starts summoning Daemons when Magnus arrives to comfort Mortarion. Wait what?

One reason why Loken refused to become a Grey Knight was because he was afraid of having psyker powers. He fears what it will cost him. Abaddon also doesn't tell Horus about the Saturnine operation, not trusting him. Also, Horus starts calling his new Equerry, Argonis, Maloghurst. Argonis then tells Abaddon about this. Keeler then becomes a member of the proto-Inquisition. Accompanied by the Custodian Amon, she interviews a sudo tech-priest wh has lived for 5000 years, due t science. Who has devised the idea of a Primarch/SM killer-poison. Also, Sangunius is afraid of Pert, claiming him to be the greatest enemy during the Siege. Only comforted by the fact he has Dorn on his side. He wuld also be more comfortable fighting Horus on the Vengeful Spirit than fighting Pert at range. Zephon, from Master of Mankind, saves a mortal remeberancers, taking an artillery shell to save her. He may be dead, or just in status, he was given to Arkhan Land. Arkhan is the one working on Saturnine Wall.

The Khan is defending the Colossi Gate. When fighting Death Guard, 8 warhound-sized daemons appeared, sending fear through him. John Grammaticus appears, meeting a women named Erda. (She needs her own article to deal with her so we can ignore her for now). Later on, Oll Piers, not Oll Pius, is being interved by a proto-Inquisitor. In short, he dies defending a flag with Big E's face on it from Angron, starting the legends of Ollanius Pius.

At the Eternity Wall port, Angron offers the defenders a chance to surrender. In kind, they answer him by shooting him with every cannon, bolter, las-gun and brick they had available. Turning him into a red pulp. But as Khorne wills, he is reborn, Moving on, White Scar Stormseers try to counter Thousand Sons daemon-summoning. This then makes Ahriman and Magus depart. Noted that Custodes such as Valor can cause real harm to daemons. Abaddon and rest of the Mournival and rest of his strike force arrive at Saturnine. Tybalt Marr, who killed Shadrak Meduson, is the first to arrive. His unit is also the first to be ambushed by loyalist kill-teams. Getting shot up badly, Loken puts his bolter in Marr's mouth before pulling the trigger. Garro beheads Falkus Kibre. Lev Goshen's drill gets stuck, meaning he and his men will die a long drawn out death. Garro, a Blood Angel terminator Host Captain and Haar, the Riven Hound, almost kill Abaddon. BA dies first, Haar almost kills Abaddon with his power fist. But seven mortal-wounds end the Riven Hound. Weighed down by Haar's body, Abaddon can not defend against Garro. Almost dying, he thanks Perturabo for the glorious fight. But just as Garro is about to kil; him, he is teleported away. Crying, Abaddon demands the Tech-Priest send him back to the fight.

Loken duelled Tormaggedon. The possessed body proving to be a challenge. He bet it with a stab to the heart with Rubio's gladius. The daemon is either dead or banished. Loken goes on to impale Little Horus Aximand on his chainsword. He tortures little Horus, his last few minutes being a drawn out scream. With him dead, Loken kicks him off of his weapon. Fulgrim starts taunting a wounded Imperial Fist, then, suddenly, Sigismund arrived. Sigismund barrelled into him before hacking him, actually causing pain and wounds against the daemon-primarch. After being kicked away, he then plunged his power sword his Fulgrims's thigh, eliciting a shrike from Fulgrim, who then tried to choke Sigismund to death. Using his wrist and pommel chains, The Templar pulls his power sword out of Fulgrim's thigh. He then cuts his face. As he is about to die, Dorn appears to rescue him, giving out a cool one liner as he does so. Fulgrim then pussies out, leaving the two to a bunch of Champions, including Eidolon who proves challenging to Dorn.

At the Eternity Wall Space Port, as she goes to meet her end, Krole remembers her achievements. She remembers the sacrifice of her Custodian companion Tsutomu. She is eventually killed by Kharn. Meanwhile, Cambra Diaz's sword breaks, but he still fights on, until he finally dies defending a bridge, never taking a step back. Shiban Khan, who had grown close to an Imperial Army captain, tries to evacuate his comrades, as they are over run by World Eaters. Trying to use a shuttle to help them escape, he finds the pilot and his friend-captain dead by bolt fire, killing him in a shuttle-crash.

With this, Saturnine, Gorgon Bar and Collosi are safe, while the Eternity Wall port has been taken by the forces of chaos Save Abaddon, the Mournival is destroyed. The Emperor's Children have been devastated, Pert then changes his target from the Imperial Palace to the Imperial Fists (then still standing) Fortress-Monastery. At the very end, Corswain of the Dark Angels approaches the Phalanx, swearing to fight the traitors.

==Duel of the Emperor and Horus==
[[file:Horus and his Daddy.jpeg|thumb|middle|400px|If you haven't seen this image yet, you must be new. Like, really fucking new.]]
Like with any truly epic event, the siege only ended with the most motherfuckingest duel in the entire 40k fluff; the Emperor of Mankind against Horus, most favoured of the Primarchs and the living avatar of the Chaos Gods. If the Horus Heresy was the most important of a series of events, if the siege was the single most epic event, then the duel is the defining moment of the fluff and affected everything else that came after it.

During the duel, Horus had managed to mortally wound the Emperor, and would have finished him off, if not for the intervention of one [[Ollanius Pius|Guardsman]]/Astartes/Custodes. He jumped in front of Horus as he was about to strike the final blow, and was killed. (duh.) The Emperor, seeing how far his most favored son had fallen, decided "Fuck this", and OBLITERATED HORUS'S SOUL!

Although the Emperor managed to win and kill Horus, he was so badly wounded in the end he needed to be on 24/7 life support just to survive. So really when you come down to it,it was a draw; Chaos had been stopped then but only at an unthinkable cost to the Imperium.

==/tg/ Connection==
What, besides the fact that '''''it's the most important event in the 40k universe?''''' Fine.

The Siege of Terra is also the theme for the [[Horus Heresy#The Board Game|Horus Heresy board game]], in which you reenact the Siege itself. There. Happy?

Not really.

===The fa/tg/uy's explanation of the Siege Of Terra (for Dummies and BL Editors)===
[[File:Loyalists vs. Traitors.jpg|thumb|middle|700px|Some serious Daddy problems.]]
The main rule of warfare. As the number of combatants increases, the resemblance to complete uncontrolled insanity approaches infinity. And then you have to take into account the terrain...

Basically you start with a planet that's been nuked, polluted, and generally lived-in for a few hundred thousand years too long. And everyone on it is fighting everyone else, constantly. Your basic unit of land is the Bunker, Vault 101 style. There isn't any natural plant life left, of course, so all the oxygen is made in vats with the food. ""Luckily"" this means you can build anywhere that isn't intensely radioactive, and hence fight over those areas. Get Mega-City-One, nuke it and rebuild it a few times, and then you start to understand.

Then the Emperor comes along, and manages against all odds to conquer the place. Suddenly everyone isn't killing and dying all the time, and a population boom happens. So Emps organised the largest set of public-works since the first colony ships. He rebuilds huge areas of the planet, and creates the Imperial Palace, the Astronomican, and a buttload more of cool shit besides. And what he gets is effectively one giant city, the second largest (after Commorragh) in the universe. "Huge" just doesn't do it justice as a description. Neither does "Labyrinthine", "Over Populated", or "Gothic Nightmare". And this New Terra was mostly just thrown over the original foundations of whatever was there, like a pile of gold-bricks onto a rat maze. There are bunkers and emplacements still around that date back to the War Against The Men of Iron and even before.

Then the Heresy came, and the Emperor says to Dorn "Fortify this fucking madhouse". So now everything that didn't have a gun emplacement before does now, everywhere. And he walled in half the doors and windows, put hundreds of AA batteries on every roof, filled entire rooms with concrete just for a bit of reinforcement, and generally panicked because if they would only ever be necessary if the space defenses (the best in the galaxy bar none) have failed.

Then Horus arrives in orbit. He's punched through the space-defenses at massive cost, but the war in space is far from won, and the Palace is just a flat no-fly zone, so he can't just pick and choose landing areas. So he bombards everything his ships can reach, fills the sky with Drop Pods, and tries to march on it.

Which is when Rule #1 kicks in and everything immediately gets Mega-Fucked, for both sides. Ruined streets and bunkers make navigating a nightmare, communications are somewhere between impossible and actively detrimental, Drop Pods land off target, plans and back-up plans fall apart in seconds, demons run amok. And the Primarchs are either constantly trying to out Tactical Genius each other or are too in the thick of it to relay any commands, so no-one has a fucking clue what's actually going on in the big picture. It's Stalingrad writ large, but without even the merest hint of sanity, and a thousand space marines charging into every breach. The inclusion of cackling daemons, rampaging renegade guardsman, and bellowing daemon engines doesn't help the situation.

So it takes roughly 10 minutes of this menial bullshit for a load of the Chaos forces to get bored and just decide "Fuck It, Let's Just Wreck The Place". So now everything makes even less sense, entire companies ignoring sensible objectives to go on the Chaos Marine equivalent of a bender. The Emperor's Children and Night Lords rape, murder, and pillage the civilians of Terra so hard that even 10,000 years later they still live in fear at the memory, while the World Eaters hack and slash at anything they think might bleed. Only the Iron Warriors, the Death Guard, and the Sons of Horus are whole-heartedly tearing at the palace, dedicated to rubbing it in Dorn's face like a bitch no matter what. And to the horror of the loyalists, they're succeeding. Brick by brick the greatest military stronghold in the galaxy is falling.

Which sounds great for Chaos, were it not for the simple fact it wasn't falling quickly enough. It was taking days to advance inches at massive cost, and Guilliman was en-route with reinforcements, with Russ and the Lion and the remains of their Legions right behind him. If the siege wasn't ended before they got there, the traitors would likely lose. So Horus put all his cards on the table and lowered his battle barge's shields, goading the Emperor (who didn't know about the reinforcements) on-board to hopefully kill him and force the defenders to rout. Everything else is history.

The short story "The Board is Set" seemed to indicate that the Emperor and Malcador knew about the reinforcing loyalists from at least the beginning of the siege. It also seemed to imply that Horus lowering his shield may have been so he could teleport down and attack the Emperor, not realising it was Malcador on the throne. Possibly the most epic level of Just As Planned.
{{clear}}
{{Template:40k-Timeline}}

[[Category: Warhammer 40,000 Battles]]

Siege of Terra

2020-04-27T02:25:25Z

2600:1700:D5A0:A7D0:85A0:CC42:D2F6:FF0: Added Malcador to casualties list

{{Stub}}
{{Infobox 40k Campaign
|title=Siege of Terra
|image=[[File:The-Siege-Of-Terra Angron.jpg|400px]]
|attacker= Traitor Legions
|defender= [[Imperium of Man]]
|commander1= [[Horus]], [[Angron]], [[Mortarion]], [[Angron]], [[Fulgrim]], [[Perturabo]], [[Magnus the Red]], Zardu Layak, Kelbor Hal
|commander2= The [[Emperor]], [[Sanguinius]], [[Rogal Dorn]], [[Jaghatai Khan]], [[Vulkan]], [[Malcador the Sigillite]], Constantine Valdor
|date=0014.M31
|scale=Planetary
|theatre=[[Horus Heresy]]
|strength1= [[Sons of Horus]], [[Death Guard]], [[World Eaters]], [[Emperor's Children]], [[Thousand Sons]], [[Iron Warriors]], 5000 [[Word Bearers]], [[Night Lords]], Traitor Army forces, [[Dark Mechanicum]], Traitor Titan legions, daemons
|strength2= [[Imperial Fists]], [[Blood Angels]], [[White Scars]], [[Adeptus Custodes]], [[Sisters of Silence]], [[Knights-Errant]], Imperial Army, three Titan Legions
|casualties1= Massive Heretic Astartes casualties, massive Traitor Army losses, massive Traitor Titan losses, massive Dark Mechanicum losses. Horus slain.
|casualties2= Massive military and civilian losses. Malcador the Sigillite slain. Sanguinius slain. Emperor mortally wounded and interred into Golden Throne.
|status= Pyrrhic Loyalist Victory
|outcome= Traitors driven from Terra and into the Eye of Terror. Death of Horus and crippling of the Emperor. Great Scouring Begins
}}

{{topquote|[[Horus|He]] waits no longer. It begins now.|[[Sanguinius]] on the 13th of Secundus, 014.M31}}
The '''Siege of Terra''' was the end of the [[Horus Heresy]] in [[Warhammer 40,000]]. If the Horus Heresy can be considered the most important series of events in the 40k universe, then the Siege of Terra itself could be considered the single most important event. It is also possibly the most fucking awesome event; Brother fighting brother, the mighty guns of Titans blowing fortifications to shreds, Imperial Army soldiers leading charges against the traitorous forces even though they know it's suicide and [[Ollanius Pius]]

It was [[Horus]]'s big attempt to off his daddy and so be the true Emperor of the galaxy (for [[Chaos]] of course!). He brought a load of his traitor legions, millions of corrupt Imperial army personnel and mutants, the part of the Mechanicus that had gone over to his side and a whole load of daemons to boot. On his side the [[Emperor]] had three legions, his custodians and the loyal imperial army regiments of Terra and you know what? The Emperor went and won anyway (granted it was because the Emperor offed Horus before his legions could crack the Imperial palace but still, victory for the home team!).

==The Solar War==

Dorn began fortifying Terra immediately after getting word of the Heresy, knowing that it would always be Horus's eventual goal. Despite being removed from the larger battles of the Heresy, the Solar System was touched by the conflict, with Mars rebelling and numerous sleeper agents and cults trying to destablise the Throne World. Despite this, Dorn managed to do the best he could, turning Terra into the most heavily fortified system in the Imperium. He even managed to blunt part of the traitor advance at the Beta Garmon cluster before getting ready for the final rumble they had known was coming.

Terra was unique in that it that it had two artificial mandeville points inside the the Solar system itself, created during the Dark Age of technology. Dorn fortified the likely approaches from the outer edge of the system and built up huge defences around the two internal jump points. Infiltrators and covert operatives sabotaged loyalist assets across the system. The Iron Warriors were the first Astartes into the breach, sending huge up-armoured Space Hulks as fireships to wear down the defenses, before sending their main fleet through to engage the combined Fists and Scars fleets. The inner system conflict went on for a bit, with the loyalists managing to hold out enough to slow down the advance, at least for a little while.

However, under Magnus's direction, the traitors turned the Shrine of Unity comet into a vast warp gate that allowed Horus, Angron, and Fulgrim's fleets to jump right past most of the rings of defense Dorn had come up with. On the Phalanx, Dorn was preoccupied with a daemon incursion and could do little to stop the huge fleets that were now mobbing for Terra. The Martian traitors, free from the blockade that had hemmed them in for years, joined up with Horus. The Solar War had been lost barely after it had begun. The rest of the Loyalist fleets, knowing they could never hope to fight even a fraction of the vast traitor armada, regrouped on the edge of the system, along with the Phalanx, waiting for the moment they could make an effective strike against Horus. There were early plans for the Emperor to be evacuated to the Phalanx and escape Terra, but these were made by people unaware of what Big E was doing in the basement of the palace.

==The Siege Begins==
[[File:Siege_of_Terra1.jpg|thumb|middle|500px|Just 0.000001% of 0.000001% of the Siege of Terra.]]
{{topquote|'''Father! I have come for you!'''|[[Angron]] upon making planetfall, 15 of Quartus, 014.M31}}

With orbit uncontested, most of the armada held in orbit above the palace and began bombarding the Aegis, the vast shield network protecting the entire palace. Unlike regular void shields, the Aegis consisted of multiple overlapping layers of shields that individually regenerated as fast as they could be depleted by bombardment. On the ground, the palace was protected by colossal networks of walls and bastions, static defences, and vast numbers of Imperial Army units bolstered by hordes of press-ganged conscripts. Unknown to almost everyone, the Inner Palace was also protected by a psychic ward generated by the Emperor that would royally fuck up any daemon that set foot near it, daemon primarchs included.

The rest of Terra wasn't so lucky. Barring a few isolated holdouts, the rest of Terra was virtually defenceless. It should be noted that if the goal was to destroy Terra wholesale, it could have been easily accomplished by Exterminatus level weaponry. Perturabo, as the only non Chaos-ifed primarch, grew increasingly angry at what he saw as an irrational and wasteful goal. But Horus was insistent that the Emperor had to be slain in person. So the Palace had to be destroyed the old fashioned way. The Daemon Primarchs were kept in orbit, safe from the Emperor's wards, although this meant that Angron had to be imprisoned in an almost impenetrable maze to stop him from Leeroy Jenkinsing the whole thing.

Hordes of mutants, beastmen, cultists, and traitor army units were thrown at the conventional defenses. Entire wings of aircraft dueled above the Palace. Precision bombardments gradually weakened minute sections of the Aegis long enough for bombers to get through and destroy the projectors. The Dark Mechanicum landed siege camps at 8 points around the palace - partly to surround the palace but also to act as the focus for a ritual that would enable the warp to take a foothold on the surface of the Throneworld. The Astartes were held in reserve on both sides whilst their more conventional forces softened each other up. The Death Guard were the first traitor Astartes to land on Terra, with the Khan and the White Scars riding forth on jetbikes and aircraft to meet them and wreck the Dark Mechanicum's siege camps. The Night Lords were the first Astartes to breach the walls of the Palace, albeit in small numbers; this attack also cost them their ''de facto'' commander, Gendor Skraivok. Sanguinius himself descended to help the mortal forces, acting as both force multiplier, decoy, and morale booster.

==Battle for the Lion's Gate==

While the Death Guard, Emperor's Children, and World Eaters each hammered away at a different section of the Palace walls, the traitors' first major effort at cracking the Palace itself was aimed at the Lion's Gate spaceport, the largest and tallest spaceport on Terra. It reached so high into the atmosphere that voidcraft could dock at its upper levels, meaning that the Traitor forces could more easily shuttle in reinforcements and materiel if they captured it. Horus tasked the Iron Warriors with taking the Gate, and in turn Perturabo assigned Warsmith Kroeger to lead the assault, under the logic that Dorn would be expecting Pert to command such an important offensive personally and wouldn't be expecting whatever plans Kroeger came up with. Dorn, meanwhile, assigned Seneschal Fafnir Rann to lead the defense of the spaceport, rather than First Captain Sigismund, since he was still angry with Sigismund for listening to Euphrati Keeler instead of obeying his orders. Kroeger went straight for the throat, as it were, launching a massive combined-arms assault directly on the port with backup from the World Eaters and Emperor's Children, though the latter quickly got bored and left after taking a bunch of prisoners for [[Rape|unspecified purposes]]. Though the Imperial Fists held off the initial attack, Warsmith Forrix and a thousand Iron Warriors managed to infiltrate the Gate by using renegade Imperial Army units as literal meatshields. To aid the attack, the Dark Mechanicum inserted a technophagic virus into the spaceport's systems, and Zardu Layak, Abaddon, and Typhus performed a Nurglite ritual to infiltrate the Great Unclean One Cor'bax Utterblight behind the Emperor's psychic wards.

The Fists drove back several consecutive assaults from the Iron Warriors and World Eaters, but the technophage was screwing their sensors and comms all to hell and gone, seriously complicating efforts to coordinate the defense, and Forrix and his infiltrators were tying up troops that were desperately needed elsewhere. Rann finally called Dorn for backup, and Dorn scraped up an additional three thousand Fists, which were literally all the troops he could spare at that point. Eventually, despite Rann's best efforts, the balance inevitably tipped in the traitors' favor, and Dorn arrived on scene just in time to order a general withdrawal from the spaceport to the inner defenses, though not before he killed Zardu Layak after a brief duel. With the Gate firmly in traitor hands, Perturabo started unloading Titans and consolidating his position.

Meanwhile, Euphrati Keeler and the Custodian Amon Tauromachian had been tapped by Malcador to investigate strange apparitions occurring behind the Palace walls. They eventually deduced that this was a daemon exploiting the faith of Imperial cultists to manifest itself inside the Emperor's psychic defenses, and focused on a cult called the Lightbearers, which turned out to have been deceived into worshipping Nurgle instead of the Emperor. After Cor'bax had used the Lightbearers to physically manifest himself, Amon, Euphrati, and Malcador teamed up to slay the daemon. When Amon suggested that they should purge the rest of the Emperor's worshippers to prevent another such incident, Malcador answered that he would continue to let them exist until the Emperor himself said otherwise, in the hopes that he could weaponize their faith against the Chaos gods.

==Saturnine==

So, remember Sindermann? Well, the book opens with a suicidal Sindermann coming across Dorn in (one of the few remaining) Palace gardens, causing him to ask If he is afraid. Dorn says he doesn't know. They talk, Dorn says he had many fears, but then asks Sindermann not to tell Guilliman. Dorn adds that he Does Not think a 1000 meter fall would kill a Primarch. He is also sorry for censoring Keller. The palace and its crest have shifted 8cm west since siege began. Sanguinius believes that Abaddon is the greatest First Captain out of the Legions, better than Raldoron, Sigismund and all the rest. Arguing he was the finest warrior of all the Legions.

Meanwhile, Abaddon thinks his mind might be the equal of Perturabo. While he respects how Pert is orchestrating the Siege, he has distain for how detached he is. He argued that the Siege would be one with a blade, the way the Crusade had been, not with a button that belonged solely to Pert or Horus. Showing that Abaddon can be nostalgic. Pert says he is as happy as a "grox in shit," so happy.

Sanguinius fights off three Warhound titans, while single handily killing the Warlord they were escorting with his Blade Encarmine and the Spear of Telesto. As the three smaller titans lock weapons on him, he challenges them, like a total badass, "Try if you lie. Shall we continue?" They then ran away. Some then say the Titans ran from a titan-killer weapon they had detected. But everyone who had seen it knew that it was the work of the Great Angel who sent them running. Dorn then discovers a crack in the Saturnine Wall. A crack Pert will use, send a stick up his ass. If Saturnine falls, then the way into the Inner Palace is open. To re-secure the wall, a ruse-show-sacrifice must be employed. Don only has forces to defend three key areas out of the four options, so he sacrifices the Eternity Wall space port. The Emps refuses to leave Terra, making it the best option. But losing it will reduce the holdout period by four months. Allowing further traitor forces to land. Furthermore, any defenders of the Port will die. Amongst the defenders of he port are Cambra Diaz of the Imperial Fists, Vigil Commander Jenetia Krole of the Sisters of Silence and Shiban Khan of the White Scars. Krole had been used as the null-guard of the High Council, now she will use her Blank-Null powers to protect the port from Daemons. Dorn then has Sindermann set up a proto Inquisition of former Remberancers. Giving them the ability to interrogate people, that way they can record the events of the Siege proper. Though some of this information will be buried/heresy.

Abaddon then convinces Pert that Saturnine should be their target, appealing to a clean victory instead of one tainted by the use of Daemons. A proper Marine and Primarch vs Marine and Primarch fight. Cause Fulgrim and the ENTIRE Emperor's Children Legion will be taking part in this. So he basically strokes Perturabo's ego. But Perturabo does beat up Abaddon, who then brushes it off. Ahriman is also taunting the now daemon-primarch Mortarion. Ahriman starts summoning Daemons when Magnus arrives to comfort Mortarion. Wait what?

One reason why Loken refused to become a Grey Knight was because he was afraid of having psyker powers. He fears what it will cost him. Abaddon also doesn't tell Horus about the Saturnine operation, not trusting him. Also, Horus starts calling his new Equerry, Argonis, Maloghurst. Argonis then tells Abaddon about this. Keeler then becomes a member of the proto-Inquisition. Accompanied by the Custodian Amon, she interviews a sudo tech-priest wh has lived for 5000 years, due t science. Who has devised the idea of a Primarch/SM killer-poison. Also, Sangunius is afraid of Pert, claiming him to be the greatest enemy during the Siege. Only comforted by the fact he has Dorn on his side. He wuld also be more comfortable fighting Horus on the Vengeful Spirit than fighting Pert at range. Zephon, from Master of Mankind, saves a mortal remeberancers, taking an artillery shell to save her. He may be dead, or just in status, he was given to Arkhan Land. Arkhan is the one working on Saturnine Wall.

The Khan is defending the Colossi Gate. When fighting Death Guard, 8 warhound-sized daemons appeared, sending fear through him. John Grammaticus appears, meeting a women named Erda. (She needs her own article to deal with her so we can ignore her for now). Later on, Oll Piers, not Oll Pius, is being interved by a proto-Inquisitor. In short, he dies defending a flag with Big E's face on it from Angron, starting the legends of Ollanius Pius.

At the Eternity Wall port, Angron offers the defenders a chance to surrender. In kind, they answer him by shooting him with every cannon, bolter, las-gun and brick they had available. Turning him into a red pulp. But as Khorne wills, he is reborn, Moving on, White Scar Stormseers try to counter Thousand Sons daemon-summoning. This then makes Ahriman and Magus depart. Noted that Custodes such as Valor can cause real harm to daemons. Abaddon and rest of the Mournival and rest of his strike force arrive at Saturnine. Tybalt Marr, who killed Shadrak Meduson, is the first to arrive. His unit is also the first to be ambushed by loyalist kill-teams. Getting shot up badly, Loken puts his bolter in Marr's mouth before pulling the trigger. Garro beheads Falkus Kibre. Lev Goshen's drill gets stuck, meaning he and his men will die a long drawn out death. Garro, a Blood Angel terminator Host Captain and Haar, the Riven Hound, almost kill Abaddon. BA dies first, Haar almost kills Abaddon with his power fist. But seven mortal-wounds end the Riven Hound. Weighed down by Haar's body, Abaddon can not defend against Garro. Almost dying, he thanks Perturabo for the glorious fight. But just as Garro is about to kil; him, he is teleported away. Crying, Abaddon demands the Tech-Priest send him back to the fight.

Loken duelled Tormaggedon. The possessed body proving to be a challenge. He bet it with a stab to the heart with Rubio's gladius. The daemon is either dead or banished. Loken goes on to impale Little Horus Aximand on his chainsword. He tortures little Horus, his last few minutes being a drawn out scream. With him dead, Loken kicks him off of his weapon. Fulgrim starts taunting a wounded Imperial Fist, then, suddenly, Sigismund arrived. Sigismund barrelled into him before hacking him, actually causing pain and wounds against the daemon-primarch. After being kicked away, he then plunged his power sword his Fulgrims's thigh, eliciting a shrike from Fulgrim, who then tried to choke Sigismund to death. Using his wrist and pommel chains, The Templar pulls his power sword out of Fulgrim's thigh. He then cuts his face. As he is about to die, Dorn appears to rescue him, giving out a cool one liner as he does so. Fulgrim then pussies out, leaving the two to a bunch of Champions, including Eidolon who proves challenging to Dorn.

At the Eternity Wall Space Port, as she goes to meet her end, Krole remembers her achievements. She remembers the sacrifice of her Custodian companion Tsutomu. She is eventually killed by Kharn. Meanwhile, Cambra Diaz's sword breaks, but he still fights on, until he finally dies defending a bridge, never taking a step back. Shiban Khan, who had grown close to an Imperial Army captain, tries to evacuate his comrades, as they are over run by World Eaters. Trying to use a shuttle to help them escape, he finds the pilot and his friend-captain dead by bolt fire, killing him in a shuttle-crash.

With this, Saturnine, Gorgon Bar and Collosi are safe, while the Eternity Wall port has been taken by the forces of chaos Save Abaddon, the Mournival is destroyed. The Emperor's Children have been devastated, Pert then changes his target from the Imperial Palace to the Imperial Fists (then still standing) Fortress-Monastery. At the very end, Corswain of the Dark Angels approaches the Phalanx, swearing to fight the traitors.

==Duel of the Emperor and Horus==
[[file:Horus and his Daddy.jpeg|thumb|middle|400px|If you haven't seen this image yet, you must be new. Like, really fucking new.]]
Like with any truly epic event, the siege only ended with the most motherfuckingest duel in the entire 40k fluff; the Emperor of Mankind against Horus, most favoured of the Primarchs and the living avatar of the Chaos Gods. If the Horus Heresy was the most important of a series of events, if the siege was the single most epic event, then the duel is the defining moment of the fluff and affected everything else that came after it.

During the duel, Horus had managed to mortally wound the Emperor, and would have finished him off, if not for the intervention of one Guardsman/Astartes/Custodes. He jumped in front of Horus as he was about to strike the final blow, and was killed. (duh.) The Emperor, seeing how far his most favored son had fallen, decided "Fuck this", and OBLITERATED HORUS'S SOUL!

Although the Emperor managed to win and kill Horus, he was so badly wounded in the end he needed to be on 24/7 life support just to survive. So really when you come down to it,it was a draw; Chaos had been stopped then but only at an unthinkable cost to the Imperium.

==/tg/ Connection==
What, besides the fact that '''''it's the most important event in the 40k universe?''''' Fine.

The Siege of Terra is also the theme for the [[Horus Heresy#The Board Game|Horus Heresy board game]], in which you reenact the Siege itself. There. Happy?

Not really.

===The fa/tg/uy's explanation of the Siege Of Terra (for Dummies and BL Editors)===
[[File:Loyalists vs. Traitors.jpg|thumb|middle|700px|Some serious Daddy problems.]]
The main rule of warfare. As the number of combatants increases, the resemblance to complete uncontrolled insanity approaches infinity. And then you have to take into account the terrain...

Basically you start with a planet that's been nuked, polluted, and generally lived-in for a few hundred thousand years too long. And everyone on it is fighting everyone else, constantly. Your basic unit of land is the Bunker, Vault 101 style. There isn't any natural plant life left, of course, so all the oxygen is made in vats with the food. ""Luckily"" this means you can build anywhere that isn't intensely radioactive, and hence fight over those areas. Get Mega-City-One, nuke it and rebuild it a few times, and then you start to understand.

Then the Emperor comes along, and manages against all odds to conquer the place. Suddenly everyone isn't killing and dying all the time, and a population boom happens. So Emps organised the largest set of public-works since the first colony ships. He rebuilds huge areas of the planet, and creates the Imperial Palace, the Astronomican, and a buttload more of cool shit besides. And what he gets is effectively one giant city, the second largest (after Commorragh) in the universe. "Huge" just doesn't do it justice as a description. Neither does "Labyrinthine", "Over Populated", or "Gothic Nightmare". And this New Terra was mostly just thrown over the original foundations of whatever was there, like a pile of gold-bricks onto a rat maze. There are bunkers and emplacements still around that date back to the War Against The Men of Iron and even before.

Then the Heresy came, and the Emperor says to Dorn "Fortify this fucking madhouse". So now everything that didn't have a gun emplacement before does now, everywhere. And he walled in half the doors and windows, put hundreds of AA batteries on every roof, filled entire rooms with concrete just for a bit of reinforcement, and generally panicked because if they would only ever be necessary if the space defenses (the best in the galaxy bar none) have failed.

Then Horus arrives in orbit. He's punched through the space-defenses at massive cost, but the war in space is far from won, and the Palace is just a flat no-fly zone, so he can't just pick and choose landing areas. So he bombards everything his ships can reach, fills the sky with Drop Pods, and tries to march on it.

Which is when Rule #1 kicks in and everything immediately gets Mega-Fucked, for both sides. Ruined streets and bunkers make navigating a nightmare, communications are somewhere between impossible and actively detrimental, Drop Pods land off target, plans and back-up plans fall apart in seconds, demons run amok. And the Primarchs are either constantly trying to out Tactical Genius each other or are too in the thick of it to relay any commands, so no-one has a fucking clue what's actually going on in the big picture. It's Stalingrad writ large, but without even the merest hint of sanity, and a thousand space marines charging into every breach. The inclusion of cackling daemons, rampaging renegade guardsman, and bellowing daemon engines doesn't help the situation.

So it takes roughly 10 minutes of this menial bullshit for a load of the Chaos forces to get bored and just decide "Fuck It, Let's Just Wreck The Place". So now everything makes even less sense, entire companies ignoring sensible objectives to go on the Chaos Marine equivalent of a bender. The Emperor's Children and Night Lords rape, murder, and pillage the civilians of Terra so hard that even 10,000 years later they still live in fear at the memory, while the World Eaters hack and slash at anything they think might bleed. Only the Iron Warriors, the Death Guard, and the Sons of Horus are whole-heartedly tearing at the palace, dedicated to rubbing it in Dorn's face like a bitch no matter what. And to the horror of the loyalists, they're succeeding. Brick by brick the greatest military stronghold in the galaxy is falling.

Which sounds great for Chaos, were it not for the simple fact it wasn't falling quickly enough. It was taking days to advance inches at massive cost, and Guilliman was en-route with reinforcements, with Russ and the Lion and the remains of their Legions right behind him. If the siege wasn't ended before they got there, the traitors would likely lose. So Horus put all his cards on the table and lowered his battle barge's shields, goading the Emperor (who didn't know about the reinforcements) on-board to hopefully kill him and force the defenders to rout. Everything else is history.

The short story "The Board is Set" seemed to indicate that the Emperor and Malcador knew about the reinforcing loyalists from at least the beginning of the siege. It also seemed to imply that Horus lowering his shield may have been so he could teleport down and attack the Emperor, not realising it was Malcador on the throne. Possibly the most epic level of Just As Planned.
{{clear}}
{{Template:40k-Timeline}}

[[Category: Warhammer 40,000 Battles]]

Siege of Terra

2020-04-27T02:24:20Z

2600:1700:D5A0:A7D0:85A0:CC42:D2F6:FF0: /* Duel of the Emperor and Horus */

{{Stub}}
{{Infobox 40k Campaign
|title=Siege of Terra
|image=[[File:The-Siege-Of-Terra Angron.jpg|400px]]
|attacker= Traitor Legions
|defender= [[Imperium of Man]]
|commander1= [[Horus]], [[Angron]], [[Mortarion]], [[Angron]], [[Fulgrim]], [[Perturabo]], [[Magnus the Red]], Zardu Layak, Kelbor Hal
|commander2= The [[Emperor]], [[Sanguinius]], [[Rogal Dorn]], [[Jaghatai Khan]], [[Vulkan]], [[Malcador the Sigillite]], Constantine Valdor
|date=0014.M31
|scale=Planetary
|theatre=[[Horus Heresy]]
|strength1= [[Sons of Horus]], [[Death Guard]], [[World Eaters]], [[Emperor's Children]], [[Thousand Sons]], [[Iron Warriors]], 5000 [[Word Bearers]], [[Night Lords]], Traitor Army forces, [[Dark Mechanicum]], Traitor Titan legions, daemons
|strength2= [[Imperial Fists]], [[Blood Angels]], [[White Scars]], [[Adeptus Custodes]], [[Sisters of Silence]], [[Knights-Errant]], Imperial Army, three Titan Legions
|casualties1= Massive Heretic Astartes casualties, massive Traitor Army losses, massive Traitor Titan losses, massive Dark Mechanicum losses. Horus slain.
|casualties2= Massive military and civilian losses. Sanguinius slain. Emperor mortally wounded and interred into Golden Throne.
|status= Pyrrhic Loyalist Victory
|outcome= Traitors driven from Terra and into the Eye of Terror. Death of Horus and crippling of the Emperor. Great Scouring Begins
}}

{{topquote|[[Horus|He]] waits no longer. It begins now.|[[Sanguinius]] on the 13th of Secundus, 014.M31}}
The '''Siege of Terra''' was the end of the [[Horus Heresy]] in [[Warhammer 40,000]]. If the Horus Heresy can be considered the most important series of events in the 40k universe, then the Siege of Terra itself could be considered the single most important event. It is also possibly the most fucking awesome event; Brother fighting brother, the mighty guns of Titans blowing fortifications to shreds, Imperial Army soldiers leading charges against the traitorous forces even though they know it's suicide and [[Ollanius Pius]]

It was [[Horus]]'s big attempt to off his daddy and so be the true Emperor of the galaxy (for [[Chaos]] of course!). He brought a load of his traitor legions, millions of corrupt Imperial army personnel and mutants, the part of the Mechanicus that had gone over to his side and a whole load of daemons to boot. On his side the [[Emperor]] had three legions, his custodians and the loyal imperial army regiments of Terra and you know what? The Emperor went and won anyway (granted it was because the Emperor offed Horus before his legions could crack the Imperial palace but still, victory for the home team!).

==The Solar War==

Dorn began fortifying Terra immediately after getting word of the Heresy, knowing that it would always be Horus's eventual goal. Despite being removed from the larger battles of the Heresy, the Solar System was touched by the conflict, with Mars rebelling and numerous sleeper agents and cults trying to destablise the Throne World. Despite this, Dorn managed to do the best he could, turning Terra into the most heavily fortified system in the Imperium. He even managed to blunt part of the traitor advance at the Beta Garmon cluster before getting ready for the final rumble they had known was coming.

Terra was unique in that it that it had two artificial mandeville points inside the the Solar system itself, created during the Dark Age of technology. Dorn fortified the likely approaches from the outer edge of the system and built up huge defences around the two internal jump points. Infiltrators and covert operatives sabotaged loyalist assets across the system. The Iron Warriors were the first Astartes into the breach, sending huge up-armoured Space Hulks as fireships to wear down the defenses, before sending their main fleet through to engage the combined Fists and Scars fleets. The inner system conflict went on for a bit, with the loyalists managing to hold out enough to slow down the advance, at least for a little while.

However, under Magnus's direction, the traitors turned the Shrine of Unity comet into a vast warp gate that allowed Horus, Angron, and Fulgrim's fleets to jump right past most of the rings of defense Dorn had come up with. On the Phalanx, Dorn was preoccupied with a daemon incursion and could do little to stop the huge fleets that were now mobbing for Terra. The Martian traitors, free from the blockade that had hemmed them in for years, joined up with Horus. The Solar War had been lost barely after it had begun. The rest of the Loyalist fleets, knowing they could never hope to fight even a fraction of the vast traitor armada, regrouped on the edge of the system, along with the Phalanx, waiting for the moment they could make an effective strike against Horus. There were early plans for the Emperor to be evacuated to the Phalanx and escape Terra, but these were made by people unaware of what Big E was doing in the basement of the palace.

==The Siege Begins==
[[File:Siege_of_Terra1.jpg|thumb|middle|500px|Just 0.000001% of 0.000001% of the Siege of Terra.]]
{{topquote|'''Father! I have come for you!'''|[[Angron]] upon making planetfall, 15 of Quartus, 014.M31}}

With orbit uncontested, most of the armada held in orbit above the palace and began bombarding the Aegis, the vast shield network protecting the entire palace. Unlike regular void shields, the Aegis consisted of multiple overlapping layers of shields that individually regenerated as fast as they could be depleted by bombardment. On the ground, the palace was protected by colossal networks of walls and bastions, static defences, and vast numbers of Imperial Army units bolstered by hordes of press-ganged conscripts. Unknown to almost everyone, the Inner Palace was also protected by a psychic ward generated by the Emperor that would royally fuck up any daemon that set foot near it, daemon primarchs included.

The rest of Terra wasn't so lucky. Barring a few isolated holdouts, the rest of Terra was virtually defenceless. It should be noted that if the goal was to destroy Terra wholesale, it could have been easily accomplished by Exterminatus level weaponry. Perturabo, as the only non Chaos-ifed primarch, grew increasingly angry at what he saw as an irrational and wasteful goal. But Horus was insistent that the Emperor had to be slain in person. So the Palace had to be destroyed the old fashioned way. The Daemon Primarchs were kept in orbit, safe from the Emperor's wards, although this meant that Angron had to be imprisoned in an almost impenetrable maze to stop him from Leeroy Jenkinsing the whole thing.

Hordes of mutants, beastmen, cultists, and traitor army units were thrown at the conventional defenses. Entire wings of aircraft dueled above the Palace. Precision bombardments gradually weakened minute sections of the Aegis long enough for bombers to get through and destroy the projectors. The Dark Mechanicum landed siege camps at 8 points around the palace - partly to surround the palace but also to act as the focus for a ritual that would enable the warp to take a foothold on the surface of the Throneworld. The Astartes were held in reserve on both sides whilst their more conventional forces softened each other up. The Death Guard were the first traitor Astartes to land on Terra, with the Khan and the White Scars riding forth on jetbikes and aircraft to meet them and wreck the Dark Mechanicum's siege camps. The Night Lords were the first Astartes to breach the walls of the Palace, albeit in small numbers; this attack also cost them their ''de facto'' commander, Gendor Skraivok. Sanguinius himself descended to help the mortal forces, acting as both force multiplier, decoy, and morale booster.

==Battle for the Lion's Gate==

While the Death Guard, Emperor's Children, and World Eaters each hammered away at a different section of the Palace walls, the traitors' first major effort at cracking the Palace itself was aimed at the Lion's Gate spaceport, the largest and tallest spaceport on Terra. It reached so high into the atmosphere that voidcraft could dock at its upper levels, meaning that the Traitor forces could more easily shuttle in reinforcements and materiel if they captured it. Horus tasked the Iron Warriors with taking the Gate, and in turn Perturabo assigned Warsmith Kroeger to lead the assault, under the logic that Dorn would be expecting Pert to command such an important offensive personally and wouldn't be expecting whatever plans Kroeger came up with. Dorn, meanwhile, assigned Seneschal Fafnir Rann to lead the defense of the spaceport, rather than First Captain Sigismund, since he was still angry with Sigismund for listening to Euphrati Keeler instead of obeying his orders. Kroeger went straight for the throat, as it were, launching a massive combined-arms assault directly on the port with backup from the World Eaters and Emperor's Children, though the latter quickly got bored and left after taking a bunch of prisoners for [[Rape|unspecified purposes]]. Though the Imperial Fists held off the initial attack, Warsmith Forrix and a thousand Iron Warriors managed to infiltrate the Gate by using renegade Imperial Army units as literal meatshields. To aid the attack, the Dark Mechanicum inserted a technophagic virus into the spaceport's systems, and Zardu Layak, Abaddon, and Typhus performed a Nurglite ritual to infiltrate the Great Unclean One Cor'bax Utterblight behind the Emperor's psychic wards.

The Fists drove back several consecutive assaults from the Iron Warriors and World Eaters, but the technophage was screwing their sensors and comms all to hell and gone, seriously complicating efforts to coordinate the defense, and Forrix and his infiltrators were tying up troops that were desperately needed elsewhere. Rann finally called Dorn for backup, and Dorn scraped up an additional three thousand Fists, which were literally all the troops he could spare at that point. Eventually, despite Rann's best efforts, the balance inevitably tipped in the traitors' favor, and Dorn arrived on scene just in time to order a general withdrawal from the spaceport to the inner defenses, though not before he killed Zardu Layak after a brief duel. With the Gate firmly in traitor hands, Perturabo started unloading Titans and consolidating his position.

Meanwhile, Euphrati Keeler and the Custodian Amon Tauromachian had been tapped by Malcador to investigate strange apparitions occurring behind the Palace walls. They eventually deduced that this was a daemon exploiting the faith of Imperial cultists to manifest itself inside the Emperor's psychic defenses, and focused on a cult called the Lightbearers, which turned out to have been deceived into worshipping Nurgle instead of the Emperor. After Cor'bax had used the Lightbearers to physically manifest himself, Amon, Euphrati, and Malcador teamed up to slay the daemon. When Amon suggested that they should purge the rest of the Emperor's worshippers to prevent another such incident, Malcador answered that he would continue to let them exist until the Emperor himself said otherwise, in the hopes that he could weaponize their faith against the Chaos gods.

==Saturnine==

So, remember Sindermann? Well, the book opens with a suicidal Sindermann coming across Dorn in (one of the few remaining) Palace gardens, causing him to ask If he is afraid. Dorn says he doesn't know. They talk, Dorn says he had many fears, but then asks Sindermann not to tell Guilliman. Dorn adds that he Does Not think a 1000 meter fall would kill a Primarch. He is also sorry for censoring Keller. The palace and its crest have shifted 8cm west since siege began. Sanguinius believes that Abaddon is the greatest First Captain out of the Legions, better than Raldoron, Sigismund and all the rest. Arguing he was the finest warrior of all the Legions.

Meanwhile, Abaddon thinks his mind might be the equal of Perturabo. While he respects how Pert is orchestrating the Siege, he has distain for how detached he is. He argued that the Siege would be one with a blade, the way the Crusade had been, not with a button that belonged solely to Pert or Horus. Showing that Abaddon can be nostalgic. Pert says he is as happy as a "grox in shit," so happy.

Sanguinius fights off three Warhound titans, while single handily killing the Warlord they were escorting with his Blade Encarmine and the Spear of Telesto. As the three smaller titans lock weapons on him, he challenges them, like a total badass, "Try if you lie. Shall we continue?" They then ran away. Some then say the Titans ran from a titan-killer weapon they had detected. But everyone who had seen it knew that it was the work of the Great Angel who sent them running. Dorn then discovers a crack in the Saturnine Wall. A crack Pert will use, send a stick up his ass. If Saturnine falls, then the way into the Inner Palace is open. To re-secure the wall, a ruse-show-sacrifice must be employed. Don only has forces to defend three key areas out of the four options, so he sacrifices the Eternity Wall space port. The Emps refuses to leave Terra, making it the best option. But losing it will reduce the holdout period by four months. Allowing further traitor forces to land. Furthermore, any defenders of the Port will die. Amongst the defenders of he port are Cambra Diaz of the Imperial Fists, Vigil Commander Jenetia Krole of the Sisters of Silence and Shiban Khan of the White Scars. Krole had been used as the null-guard of the High Council, now she will use her Blank-Null powers to protect the port from Daemons. Dorn then has Sindermann set up a proto Inquisition of former Remberancers. Giving them the ability to interrogate people, that way they can record the events of the Siege proper. Though some of this information will be buried/heresy.

Abaddon then convinces Pert that Saturnine should be their target, appealing to a clean victory instead of one tainted by the use of Daemons. A proper Marine and Primarch vs Marine and Primarch fight. Cause Fulgrim and the ENTIRE Emperor's Children Legion will be taking part in this. So he basically strokes Perturabo's ego. But Perturabo does beat up Abaddon, who then brushes it off. Ahriman is also taunting the now daemon-primarch Mortarion. Ahriman starts summoning Daemons when Magnus arrives to comfort Mortarion. Wait what?

One reason why Loken refused to become a Grey Knight was because he was afraid of having psyker powers. He fears what it will cost him. Abaddon also doesn't tell Horus about the Saturnine operation, not trusting him. Also, Horus starts calling his new Equerry, Argonis, Maloghurst. Argonis then tells Abaddon about this. Keeler then becomes a member of the proto-Inquisition. Accompanied by the Custodian Amon, she interviews a sudo tech-priest wh has lived for 5000 years, due t science. Who has devised the idea of a Primarch/SM killer-poison. Also, Sangunius is afraid of Pert, claiming him to be the greatest enemy during the Siege. Only comforted by the fact he has Dorn on his side. He wuld also be more comfortable fighting Horus on the Vengeful Spirit than fighting Pert at range. Zephon, from Master of Mankind, saves a mortal remeberancers, taking an artillery shell to save her. He may be dead, or just in status, he was given to Arkhan Land. Arkhan is the one working on Saturnine Wall.

The Khan is defending the Colossi Gate. When fighting Death Guard, 8 warhound-sized daemons appeared, sending fear through him. John Grammaticus appears, meeting a women named Erda. (She needs her own article to deal with her so we can ignore her for now). Later on, Oll Piers, not Oll Pius, is being interved by a proto-Inquisitor. In short, he dies defending a flag with Big E's face on it from Angron, starting the legends of Ollanius Pius.

At the Eternity Wall port, Angron offers the defenders a chance to surrender. In kind, they answer him by shooting him with every cannon, bolter, las-gun and brick they had available. Turning him into a red pulp. But as Khorne wills, he is reborn, Moving on, White Scar Stormseers try to counter Thousand Sons daemon-summoning. This then makes Ahriman and Magus depart. Noted that Custodes such as Valor can cause real harm to daemons. Abaddon and rest of the Mournival and rest of his strike force arrive at Saturnine. Tybalt Marr, who killed Shadrak Meduson, is the first to arrive. His unit is also the first to be ambushed by loyalist kill-teams. Getting shot up badly, Loken puts his bolter in Marr's mouth before pulling the trigger. Garro beheads Falkus Kibre. Lev Goshen's drill gets stuck, meaning he and his men will die a long drawn out death. Garro, a Blood Angel terminator Host Captain and Haar, the Riven Hound, almost kill Abaddon. BA dies first, Haar almost kills Abaddon with his power fist. But seven mortal-wounds end the Riven Hound. Weighed down by Haar's body, Abaddon can not defend against Garro. Almost dying, he thanks Perturabo for the glorious fight. But just as Garro is about to kil; him, he is teleported away. Crying, Abaddon demands the Tech-Priest send him back to the fight.

Loken duelled Tormaggedon. The possessed body proving to be a challenge. He bet it with a stab to the heart with Rubio's gladius. The daemon is either dead or banished. Loken goes on to impale Little Horus Aximand on his chainsword. He tortures little Horus, his last few minutes being a drawn out scream. With him dead, Loken kicks him off of his weapon. Fulgrim starts taunting a wounded Imperial Fist, then, suddenly, Sigismund arrived. Sigismund barrelled into him before hacking him, actually causing pain and wounds against the daemon-primarch. After being kicked away, he then plunged his power sword his Fulgrims's thigh, eliciting a shrike from Fulgrim, who then tried to choke Sigismund to death. Using his wrist and pommel chains, The Templar pulls his power sword out of Fulgrim's thigh. He then cuts his face. As he is about to die, Dorn appears to rescue him, giving out a cool one liner as he does so. Fulgrim then pussies out, leaving the two to a bunch of Champions, including Eidolon who proves challenging to Dorn.

At the Eternity Wall Space Port, as she goes to meet her end, Krole remembers her achievements. She remembers the sacrifice of her Custodian companion Tsutomu. She is eventually killed by Kharn. Meanwhile, Cambra Diaz's sword breaks, but he still fights on, until he finally dies defending a bridge, never taking a step back. Shiban Khan, who had grown close to an Imperial Army captain, tries to evacuate his comrades, as they are over run by World Eaters. Trying to use a shuttle to help them escape, he finds the pilot and his friend-captain dead by bolt fire, killing him in a shuttle-crash.

With this, Saturnine, Gorgon Bar and Collosi are safe, while the Eternity Wall port has been taken by the forces of chaos Save Abaddon, the Mournival is destroyed. The Emperor's Children have been devastated, Pert then changes his target from the Imperial Palace to the Imperial Fists (then still standing) Fortress-Monastery. At the very end, Corswain of the Dark Angels approaches the Phalanx, swearing to fight the traitors.

==Duel of the Emperor and Horus==
[[file:Horus and his Daddy.jpeg|thumb|middle|400px|If you haven't seen this image yet, you must be new. Like, really fucking new.]]
Like with any truly epic event, the siege only ended with the most motherfuckingest duel in the entire 40k fluff; the Emperor of Mankind against Horus, most favoured of the Primarchs and the living avatar of the Chaos Gods. If the Horus Heresy was the most important of a series of events, if the siege was the single most epic event, then the duel is the defining moment of the fluff and affected everything else that came after it.

During the duel, Horus had managed to mortally wound the Emperor, and would have finished him off, if not for the intervention of one Guardsman/Astartes/Custodes. He jumped in front of Horus as he was about to strike the final blow, and was killed. (duh.) The Emperor, seeing how far his most favored son had fallen, decided "Fuck this", and OBLITERATED HORUS'S SOUL!

Although the Emperor managed to win and kill Horus, he was so badly wounded in the end he needed to be on 24/7 life support just to survive. So really when you come down to it,it was a draw; Chaos had been stopped then but only at an unthinkable cost to the Imperium.

==/tg/ Connection==
What, besides the fact that '''''it's the most important event in the 40k universe?''''' Fine.

The Siege of Terra is also the theme for the [[Horus Heresy#The Board Game|Horus Heresy board game]], in which you reenact the Siege itself. There. Happy?

Not really.

===The fa/tg/uy's explanation of the Siege Of Terra (for Dummies and BL Editors)===
[[File:Loyalists vs. Traitors.jpg|thumb|middle|700px|Some serious Daddy problems.]]
The main rule of warfare. As the number of combatants increases, the resemblance to complete uncontrolled insanity approaches infinity. And then you have to take into account the terrain...

Basically you start with a planet that's been nuked, polluted, and generally lived-in for a few hundred thousand years too long. And everyone on it is fighting everyone else, constantly. Your basic unit of land is the Bunker, Vault 101 style. There isn't any natural plant life left, of course, so all the oxygen is made in vats with the food. ""Luckily"" this means you can build anywhere that isn't intensely radioactive, and hence fight over those areas. Get Mega-City-One, nuke it and rebuild it a few times, and then you start to understand.

Then the Emperor comes along, and manages against all odds to conquer the place. Suddenly everyone isn't killing and dying all the time, and a population boom happens. So Emps organised the largest set of public-works since the first colony ships. He rebuilds huge areas of the planet, and creates the Imperial Palace, the Astronomican, and a buttload more of cool shit besides. And what he gets is effectively one giant city, the second largest (after Commorragh) in the universe. "Huge" just doesn't do it justice as a description. Neither does "Labyrinthine", "Over Populated", or "Gothic Nightmare". And this New Terra was mostly just thrown over the original foundations of whatever was there, like a pile of gold-bricks onto a rat maze. There are bunkers and emplacements still around that date back to the War Against The Men of Iron and even before.

Then the Heresy came, and the Emperor says to Dorn "Fortify this fucking madhouse". So now everything that didn't have a gun emplacement before does now, everywhere. And he walled in half the doors and windows, put hundreds of AA batteries on every roof, filled entire rooms with concrete just for a bit of reinforcement, and generally panicked because if they would only ever be necessary if the space defenses (the best in the galaxy bar none) have failed.

Then Horus arrives in orbit. He's punched through the space-defenses at massive cost, but the war in space is far from won, and the Palace is just a flat no-fly zone, so he can't just pick and choose landing areas. So he bombards everything his ships can reach, fills the sky with Drop Pods, and tries to march on it.

Which is when Rule #1 kicks in and everything immediately gets Mega-Fucked, for both sides. Ruined streets and bunkers make navigating a nightmare, communications are somewhere between impossible and actively detrimental, Drop Pods land off target, plans and back-up plans fall apart in seconds, demons run amok. And the Primarchs are either constantly trying to out Tactical Genius each other or are too in the thick of it to relay any commands, so no-one has a fucking clue what's actually going on in the big picture. It's Stalingrad writ large, but without even the merest hint of sanity, and a thousand space marines charging into every breach. The inclusion of cackling daemons, rampaging renegade guardsman, and bellowing daemon engines doesn't help the situation.

So it takes roughly 10 minutes of this menial bullshit for a load of the Chaos forces to get bored and just decide "Fuck It, Let's Just Wreck The Place". So now everything makes even less sense, entire companies ignoring sensible objectives to go on the Chaos Marine equivalent of a bender. The Emperor's Children and Night Lords rape, murder, and pillage the civilians of Terra so hard that even 10,000 years later they still live in fear at the memory, while the World Eaters hack and slash at anything they think might bleed. Only the Iron Warriors, the Death Guard, and the Sons of Horus are whole-heartedly tearing at the palace, dedicated to rubbing it in Dorn's face like a bitch no matter what. And to the horror of the loyalists, they're succeeding. Brick by brick the greatest military stronghold in the galaxy is falling.

Which sounds great for Chaos, were it not for the simple fact it wasn't falling quickly enough. It was taking days to advance inches at massive cost, and Guilliman was en-route with reinforcements, with Russ and the Lion and the remains of their Legions right behind him. If the siege wasn't ended before they got there, the traitors would likely lose. So Horus put all his cards on the table and lowered his battle barge's shields, goading the Emperor (who didn't know about the reinforcements) on-board to hopefully kill him and force the defenders to rout. Everything else is history.

The short story "The Board is Set" seemed to indicate that the Emperor and Malcador knew about the reinforcing loyalists from at least the beginning of the siege. It also seemed to imply that Horus lowering his shield may have been so he could teleport down and attack the Emperor, not realising it was Malcador on the throne. Possibly the most epic level of Just As Planned.
{{clear}}
{{Template:40k-Timeline}}

[[Category: Warhammer 40,000 Battles]]