Editing Amaris Civil War (section)

=== The Coup ===
Unbeknownst to all, [[Erebus|Stefan]] [[Horus|Amaris]] himself was the puppet master who encouraged the Taurians to revolt. With the bulk of the SLDF out of the way, the Republic Military executed a brutal coup d'état. Most SLDF garrisons were killed in their barracks without the ability to defend themselves. Those who resisted instead of going underground were either killed in combat or coerced into surrender with the threat of executing House Cameron under apparent house arrest; only to be forced to literally dig their own graves and be executed. 

Meanwhile, Stefan himself murdered all known members of House Cameron secretly on Terra and sealed the capital building's antechamber with their corpses inside. However, Amaris underestimated the security measures put in place, which had picked up the laser blast inside of the audience chamber and immediately alerted the palace guards, as well as the most hardcore regiment ever to exist, the Royal Black Watch. Despite the palace guards getting cut down by hidden lasers in their attempt to get into the chamber and the Black Watch suffering heavy losses due to Amaris dropping nukes on their base, the coup was on the brink of failure as a platoon of guards with jump-packs managed to get on the roof of the chamber and nearly killed Amaris himself before reinforcements arrived. 

As that was going on, two Black Watch lances managed to escape the trap and engaged Amaris's elite 4th Amaris Dragoons in an epic last stand that would inflict heavy losses on Amaris's forces all while they refused to die. Eventually, Amaris said 'Fuck it!' and ordered his forces pin the Black Watch down long enough for him to nuke them a second time, losing even more of his troops in the process, and even then five members of the Black Watch still managed to survive and would carry out a guerrilla war against Amaris for the remainder of the civil war. (You heard that right, these guys were so hardcore, [[Awesome|that not even NUKES can stop them]]). 

Stefan then pronounced the Amaris Empire as successor to the Terran Hegemony and claimed leadership of the Star League after portraying his coup as a takeover from a decadent Cameron Dynasty. He also gave orders to Kerensky to acknowledge his title as the new head of the Star League and to finish off all the Periphery Rebels after swearing allegiance to him. Meanwhile, the populace was apprehensively ambivalent in public to the regime change besides underground resistance movements (no thanks to the brutal martial law enforced at gunpoint by the Republic's troops). The Great Houses and the Periphery waited with hushed breath. 

Upon learning of the coup, Kerensky immediately denounced it, formed a ceasefire with the Taurians (who had realized both they and the SLDF had been tricked), and then launched an invasion to retake the Terran Hegemony after taking over the Rim Worlds Republic.