Editing Vraks (section)

== 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, 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. While 30 may seem a small number, Krieg regiments are stated to be able to lose 80,000 men in ''one battle'' from one account, so are likely very big units. 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 as apparently Vraks' defenses were planned with the idea that they only had to last long enough to get help from the Imperium. 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...]](consider this: orbital-bombardement-proofing a whole planet is expensive, so why bother if one fortress is sufficient to stall invaders for a couple years). 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, which would be small enough to be less resistant to a massed assault, and 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 the Imperial army got stalled again when the defenders of Vraks made a counterattack to the North that forced the Imperium to halt its advances in the west and south to get reserves to stop it. 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 in a duel with Arkos, only saved by the intervention of his Interrogator-Chaplain, 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-man's-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 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. They destroyed the Imperial Navy detachment over Vraks and dropped [[Khorne Berzerker]]s from the Skulltakers warband 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.

Following the seizure of power among the traitors by the Skulltakers' Chaos Lord Zhufor the Impaler (who had Cardinal Xaphan imprisoned when he outlived his usefulness), 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 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, fighting through enemy counter-mining efforts, and finally found and destroyed one of the foundation pylons for the Citadel's inner wall. This 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 upon receiving troubling omens from the Emperor's Tarot 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 surged up to take the gates. Tyborc, now a badass Colonel, led 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, Zhufor and his allies had set their Chaotic rituals in motion, and managed to summon [[An'ggrath]], one of [[Khorne]]'s mightiest [[Bloodthirster]]s. He wrecked most of 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. Zhufor took the opportunity to escape, but not before calling upon the Daemon Prince Uraka the Warfiend and his warband to strike at the Loyalists one last time. Though he was grievously injured in the process, Brother-Captain [[Arvann Stern]] was able to banish the Daemon Prince.

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 beaten and captured by the Interrogator-Chaplain who'd saved Azrael in his duel against Arkos (the Interrogator-Chaplain ordered him "[[Abaddon|disarmed]]").