Editing Underworld War (section)

==Major Engagements==

The Word Bearers overran and captured several of the arcologies almost immediately, fortifying them against any counterattacks. Other groups of Word Bearers instead opted to prowl the tunnels and caves and wage guerrilla war against the Ultramarines. Others summoned daemons to bedevil and harass the Ultramarines, though the daemons were just as happy to kill the Word Bearers if they couldn't find anything else to get their teeth into. The Uranik arcology fell to Hol Beloth and the Graven Star chapter, who ritually sacrificed all the captured defenders to the Ruinous Powers. The deep shelter CV427/Praxor and two other arcologies were wiped out when Chaos cultists smuggled in some nukes and set them off, killing two million people in a single night.

One of the first major battles of the Underworld War took place in the Auroran arcology a few months after the beginning of the war. A group of Nurglite Word Bearers attacked the arcology and its defenders, the 547th Company of the Ultramarines. During the fighting, the Word Bearers were somehow able to corrupt Consul-Chaplain Ankarion, commanding officer of the defenders. Ankarion promptly turned on his former comrades and led the Word Bearers in massacring them and the two hundred thousand civilians who had taken shelter in the arcology. After this, the traitor forces built a shrine to Nurgle in the heart of the arcology, allowing his corruption to spread freely. When the 4th Destroyer Company of the [[Nemesis]] Chapter showed up to investigate the fragmentary distress call the 547th had sent, they found themselves fighting the Word Bearers and hordes of [[Awesome|zombified Smurfs]]. The Destroyers blasted their way through to the center of the arcology, where they saw Ankarion standing with the Word Bearers, already wearing crimson armor and with his helmet turning into a mutated mass of eyes, mouths, and horns. Enraged, the Ultramarines charged their fallen battle-brother and his new allies. Captain Valius Thesian dueled Ankarion himself, only for the corrupted Chaplain to skewer him on an obsidian spear. [[Awesome|Thesian promptly dragged himself down the spear, stabbed Ankarion in the neck, and triggered a melta bomb, killing them both]]. The Destroyers successfully purged the arcology, but their report would later lead the Legion command on the planet to sterilize the arcology with a nuke, since [[meme|it was the only way to be sure]]. 

Dark Apostle Maloq Kartho concocted a plan to ascend to daemonhood and kill Captain Ventanus at the same time. After stealing a virus bomb from the armories of CV427/Praxor, he ritually sacrificed Captain Foedral Fell and his troops to lure Ventanus and his Ultramarines out of their command center in Arcology X, which was one of the largest loyalist refuges on Calth and the nerve center of their resistance to the Word Bearers. Destroying it would cripple the Ultramarines and reap a great harvest of souls for the dark gods. Ventanus and his forces smashed Fell's fortifications, which were only lightly held by cult troops, and found Fell and his Word Bearers murdered within their own temple, their bodies transfixed with iron posts and arranged in a ritualistic pattern. Upon realizing that they'd been tricked, Ventanus ordered his men to evacuate, only for Fell and his Astartes to reanimate and attack them. As this was occurring, Kartho and Captain Hol Beloth, who was deteriorating into a daemonspawn, breached Arcology X and easily overran the defenders, who were mainly Imperial Army with only a few Ultramarines. Kartho armed the virus bomb and disabled its failsafes, then prepared to depart by using his athame to open a Warp rift. Ventanus arrived in the nick of time, having rushed back to the arcology in a Land Speeder. He killed Hol Beloth with his own athame, then used the Land Speeder to ram the virus bomb into the Warp rift, preventing it from detonating in the arcology. Impressively enough, Kartho neither died nor was turned into a [[Chaos Spawn|That-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named]], but was rewarded for all the slaughtering he'd already done with ascension to daemonhood, becoming the <s>daemon prince</s> eternal Grey Knights/Ultramarines punching bag known as [[M'kar]].