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Vraks

2021-03-09T18:30:58Z

2601:585:8301:76D0:B894:1B4A:1872:FDE0: /* Aftermath */

[[File:Vraks_titans.png|right|400px|thumb|right|Your average Monday morning on Vraks Prime.]]
[[File:Vraks_Prime_Image.jpg|300px|left|thumb|Vraks Prime. Not to be confused with [[Krieg]].]]
'''Vraks''' is a system in the [[Imperium of Man]], near the [[Eye of Terror]]. It is (or was) part of the defenses centered on [[Cadia]]; in particular, its main planet, Vraks Prime, is an armory world, an entire planet used by the [[Departmento Munitorum]] to stockpile weapons and ammunition. The justification is that, if the tithe fleets bringing weapons directly to Cadia from further out in the Imperium get delayed, they can withdraw supplies from Vraks until contact is restored.

As far as the environment goes, it used to be an intensely volcanic world, so there's sulfur everywhere, the weather is stormy and cloudy, and the entire ground is either desert or ocean. The only things living there were algae, and then the [[Administratum]] moved in and brought a bunch of humans with them to set up the armory. It eventually got a basilica, to commemorate some martyr or another, and a big fortress to protect the armory (that many tanks and guns in one place proved a tempting target for pirates), designed to be all but invulnerable to orbital attack, and for ten thousand years, Vraks Prime never fell to pirates, [[Chaos]], [[Xenos]], or worker rebellions.

Unfortunately, this state of affairs was not to last, because the Vraks system was created by [[Forge World]] for a trilogy of [[Imperial Armour]] books; Vraks Prime was soon to be the site of a mighty siege, starring loyalists and traitors. In an unfortunate twist, it was the loyalist Imperials who were on the [[FAIL|outside]] of the defenses.

== Fall of Vraks ==
[[File:Krieg_soldier.jpg|250px|right|thumb|Kriegers about to embark on a 17 year vacation.]]
It was not pirates or [[xenos]] that eventually brought Vraks low, but a rogue member of the [[Ecclesiarchy]], one Cardinal Xaphan. Having recently been promoted into the post of Cardinal-Astral of the entire Scarus Sector (if the name is familiar to you, that's because it's where the [[Gregor Eisenhorn|Eisenhorn]] and [[Gideon Ravenor|Ravenor]] trilogies took place, plus it's next door to the Calixis Sector, where [[Dark Heresy]] is set. It was named after a Great Crusade era Word Bearer's Captain going missing there ; Captain Scarus - Lorgar, eventually arch-priest of ALL HERESY, bitched out salty tears about this and renamed the sector), Xaphan decided to take a tour of his domain. He found that he enjoyed rousing armies of the faithful, and decided (with some prodding by his number-one oh-so-trustworthy assistant Deacon Mamon) that he could do more good leading an army than working a desk job. The only problem was that pesky Decree Passive preventing him from raising men under arms, so to keep his plans hidden, he went to Vraks, where there were plenty of soldiers and weapons to make an army, as well as a basilica to give him an excuse to stick around.

The [[Inquisition]] found out anyway, and sent a [[Vindicare]] assassin after him, but the assassin failed; seeing that covertness was no longer an option, Xaphan moved the workers of Vraks to open rebellion. The Imperial presences on the planet, namely the [[Administratum]], [[Adeptus Arbites]], and the [[Adepta Sororitas]] (who had been his bodyguards until this point), were either killed or imprisoned, which should have been a clue that he was making a bad move, but Mamon assured him that he was in the right, and that his enemies were merely deluded fools who would see the light once he actually got started on his crusade.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tl;dr: Imperium throws millions of guardsmen into a decades long meat grinder and got little to show for it, in fact it would have been more cost effective to exterminatus the damned planet from the begining seeing how the place ended up turning into a dead world anyway.

{{40k-Planets}}

[[Category:Imperial]]

An'ggrath

2021-03-09T18:25:16Z

2601:585:8301:76D0:B894:1B4A:1872:FDE0:

{{Heresy}}
[[File:Anggrath.jpg|350px|right|thumb|Overflowing with piss and vinegar.]]
'''An'ggrath the Unbound''', the Guardian of the Throne of Skulls, <s>Most Favoured of khorne</s> (Though [[Khorne]] just calls him that to keep his morale up. he is nowhere near as favored is he thinks), Lord of [[Bloodthirster]]s and the Deathbringer, is the third most powerful of Khorne's greater daemons, only behind [[Skarbrand]] (who is technically renegade), and a “[[Doom|secret weapon]]” Khorne keeps under his skull throne, and should by rights be a hard-ass bastard who would reduce [[neckbeards]] to manly tears and gnashing teeth of jealously at his bad-assness.

Instead, in a hilarious example of [[fail]], he suffers from a severe case of [[Khaine|Avatar of Khaine]] syndrome: almost every time he has been mentioned in fluff, he has been soundly beaten and sent running back to his master with his tail between his legs. Perhaps he represents the concept of loss in war? No idea, but it would go a long way to explain why he sucks at winning. Though at least it’s not as bad as [[M’kar]]

During the [[Horus Heresy]], [[Lorgar]], weakest of the [[Primarch]]s ([[Alpharius|maybe]]), had to face An'ggrath, in a duel to prove his loyalty to the [[Chaos Gods]]. You'd expect Lorgar, who got kicked about by his brothers, to be well and truly curb stomped here but no, he gave An'ggrath a well resounding butt kicking instead. Did my cup of tea just fall from my hand in surprise? I think it bloody well did. Clearly the [[Plot armor|plot armour]] here is strong.

The next time he was summoned into the material plane was on the hive world of Ashur where Khornate cults were being purged by the '''[[Metamarines]]''' chapter. In desperation they invoked An'ggrath's name and summoned him, where he proceeded to [[RIP AND TEAR|BUTCHER EVERY LIVING THING ON THE PLANET]]. It took him 7 years to do so, which some would think is too long for such an [[Rage|angry]] winged tower of strength and savagery with an axe and whip, but consider that that he has to chop his way through entire [[Hive|hive cities']] worth of Guardsmen and gangers, as well as an entire chapter of Space Marines (its actually pretty fast, as it would take 50 kills per second on average to deal with 10 billion people in 7 years) Add in that he has to fly from hive to hive, and it could very well take him those 7 years, after which he just disappears. Therefore he was not defeated and banished back into the warp, but simply ran out of things to chop apart.

The third time he was summoned was during the [[Vraks|Siege of Vraks]]. Towards the end of the conflict, An'ggrath finally decided to show his face, perhaps hoping to steal some of the glory while no-one was watching. Unfortunately for him, the [[Inquisition]] got a whiff he was creeping around and [[Hector Rex|one of their]] [[Inquisitor]]s, armed with a potent toothpick, promptly pricked An'ggrath and sent him yelping back to Khorne's throne (although to be fair, the toothpick was made specifically to kill ultra-daemons, so that helped Inquisitor [[Hector Rex]] cut off An'ggraths knackers).

The last time he was summoned, he fought [[Marneus Calgar]] in combat. Given how the previous people who beat him were a fucking [[Primarch]] and a highly augmented psyker Inquisitor - who was armed with a sword specifically meant to kill super-daemons like him, who had a shield meant for dealing with attacks like his, who had actually had an audience with the Emperor (enough so that it apparently gave him some sort of aura) and who knew An'ggrath's true name - you'd think a Space Marine who had nothing the other two did would fare no better than the Metamarines or the Grey Knights he'd ripped apart like they were nothing. Of course, this being Marneus Calgar, he just clapped his hands together on An'ggrath's head and the daemon's head exploded, immediately killing the super-fuckup. Fucking serious, turns out it was that fucking easy all this time.

The Blood God did sigh and put his head in his hands, shaking it with despair. What is an evil god to do when the one of best he had is something that cannot even take out one, <s>unaugmented</s> HIGHLY AUGMENTED, unsupported Inquisitor?

Well, call [[Forge World]] of course! Thus they made a model (though good ol' GW has made a cooler one) and rules for him. To be honest, he just looks like a normal Bloodthirster pumped full of steroids. Don't do drugs kids! You'll end up all red, veiny and unable to do anything but RAAAGGGEEEEEEE.

Canon is shifty on whether [[Ka'bandha]] or An'ggrath is in fact the most powerful Bloodthirster, as multiple conflicting sources and titles each state that one or the other is in fact more full of RIP AND TEAR. [[Matt Ward]] favoured the former, <s> a clear sign you should favour the latter (win/loss ratio notwithstanding)</s>. He may just be going along with the crowd at this point though probably save his own ass

==On the Tabletop==

At a point value of 888, this model is incredibly difficult to kill, with T8, 24 wounds and a 2+/4++, not to mention that he can Deny two psychic powers and gets +3 to any Deny rolls he makes. He's a pure beatstick, with his only aura simply allowing Khorne units within 9" to use his leadership of 10. However, he is one hell of a murder machine, striking at S16 AP-4 on the charge with d6 damage and 11 attacks, though his attacks, strength, and movement go down as he takes damage (although it's pretty hard to damage him in the first place). Any units he charges into combat with take d3 mortal wounds on a 2+. On a 4+, any enemy units within d6" when he dies (IF he dies) take d6 mortal wounds. As icing on the cake, he has an assault 2d6 Bloodlash (plasma pistol profile with 2 damage) which can be fired into and out of combat. Literally nothing in the game can stand up to him for long.

With the introduction of the Daemons codex, a detachment with him alone means he now can re-roll his charge distance and take a FNP warlord trait, maxing out his survivability and damage potential. This is further exacerbated by liberal uses of the Warp Surge stratagem to give him a 3++, Frenetic Bloodlust to fight again, and Locus of Wrath if you absolutely have to kill whatever you are fighting. Your only limit is the amount of CP you can scrounge together with the rest of your army.

Like all the uber-daemons, he can be summoned with an "arch-daemonic ritual", where the summoner rolls nine dice to try to reach his power level. Doubles inflict mortal wounds on the summoning character, while triples kill them outright (but the ritual can still succeed).

Interestingly enough, back when he was first released An'ggrath can and would get his shit kicked in by Hector Rex, just like in the lore. Unlike in the lore however, the reason was because Hector could allocate all of the wounds dealt to him to his acolytes, which he could have 10 of - 9 of which could be carrying Storm Shields. Hector's gear knocking An'ggrath's stats down, him using an anointed force weapon (always wounding An'ggrath on a 4+), as well as being able to re-roll all misses and failed rolls to wound don't help big red either. Thanks to this, it takes An'ggrath 10 rounds of combat to actually kill Rex, whereas it only takes Rex 5 rounds to kill An'ggrath.

{{Daemons-Characters}}