Diamond Watch

The Diamond Watch of Cystral, ca. 739-999M38

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The Diamond Watch is an unofficial loyalist space marine chapter, which met its end on the frozen planet of Cystral. The chapter consisted of Space Marines from a variety of loyalist legions, led by the veteran Captain Romero Whitefall, and numbered less than a hundred men on its operational peak. Any and all information regarding the chapter was obtained long after the events which took place on Cystral, and only by chance, when rogue traders picked up an official Imperium superluminal SOS transmission, the cotents of which was sold to the highest bidder.

The planet, located somewhere on the fringe of the North Eastern Sector, though the exact whereabouts are unknown, was described as little more than a dead rock of ice, with no strategic value to speak of. However, the events which took place there where inordinately more interesting than the planet itself.

Trickery of the Warp

According to the recovered transmission data, around the year 710-730M38, and Imperium records would confirm this (if they hadn't been stricken), large hosts of civilian transports, engineers, tech-priests, Space Marines and other military personnel had begun disappearing without a trace. The only thing they had in common was that they were returning to Luna. It was all attributed to warp trickery at first, though the number of missing ships far exceeded the expected value in that time period. In fact, all of these ships, and their passengers, suddenly found themselves mysteriously encased inside a giant mountain of ice. The total ship count exceeded at least 30, with the number of passengers numbering in the hundreds of thousands, mostly consisting of civilians and workers. The ships did not disappear at the same time either, and when someone new arrived, they would often find themselves atop the dead and frozen remains of those whom had come before them. It wasn't until Space Marines began disappearing individually from ships during warp travel that anyone really cared though.

Due to the strong, shifting magnetic field surrounding the planet Cystral, all attempts at off-planet communication was deemed impossible, and with most ship systems shutting down upon arrival, both conventional and warp engines utterly ruined, there was little else to do but dig and hope for a way out. Life in the mountain of ice was harsh and unforgiving, which is to say, it was a normal, though slightly cold experience, for any man, woman and child working for the Imperium. After about a decade of digging and mapping out the numerous frozen tunnels, and several thousand lost to starvation and hypothermia, the de facto society of survivors managed to breach the outer walls of the mountain. What greeted them was a field of snow, a frozen tundra with howling winds, and flickering, almost incorporeal mists wandering them.

Mists of Ice

At the sight of possibly hostile xenos, the few space marines whom found themselves on the planet took immediate command, and leadership eventually passed to the veteran Captain Romero Whitefall. Several expeditions were launched to assess the threat levels, with more than one nerve-wracked guardsmen firing off into the sky, but the misty natives of the planet seemed to be little more than part of the scenery. By chance, a few among the expedition members possessed the psychic gift, and it was determined the mists gave of a weak warp presence, an echo of an echo, but it was enough to conclude that they were at least partly alive, and possibly aware of their surroundings too. Following the advice of the psykers, Captain Whitefall ordered the tech-priests to establish communications with the mist-like creatures, in order to ascertain their own current whereabouts. A few months later, an ancient linguistical cogitator had been found from the many forgotten hulls of one of the ships. The machine was able to detect and decipher the spoken language of the mist creatures (which was beyond the hearing range of humans) but it mostly translated to gibberish and meaninglessness. However, just before the tech-priests were ready to abandon the project, the machine spirit prevailed, and messages started flooding in.

The cries of the mist creatures was madness incarnate, describing concepts and events which could only be attributed to the unholy mouth of the warp. Unspeakable acts of the flesh and purjery of the soul flooded from the vox units, low-pitched chants with the words uttered in reverse hailed the coming of the darkness, and the tendrils of chaos seemed but a hair's breadth away. (Un)fortunately, the exact details of what was said will never be known, as both the cogitator and the persons operating it were immediately executed for allowing such heresy to come forth, and the contents of the messages forbidden. Word of the taint spread however, and it became clear then, to most everyone, that whatever planet they were trapped on, it was not a good one, not by any measure. As such, further attempts at communicating with the mist shapes were promptly forbidden, in favor of exterminating them. Conventional weaponry caused the creatures no harm however, and while the psykers had moderate success, the warp backlash was deemed to great a risk for inflicting such measly damage. Bolter shells, laser beams, rays, radiation, plasma, even power weapons had little to no effect. Neither did the natives resist though, and what was initially planned to be a rather long military operation, ended within days. In the end, Cpt. Romero Whitefall ordered a ceasefire, to conserve resources, and instead chose to oversee the construction of defensive structures, with what little could be salvaged from this ships. It gave the people living in the mountain a familiar purpose, but an attack from the mist creatures never came, and as the years went by, the mandatory patrols became scarcer.

Beneath the snow

However, the real issues were nowhere closer to be solved. Although fresh water was made plenty, by melting and purifying the ice, food production was steadily declining, and the heat provided by the fuel cells of the ships was beginning to ebb out. Transmissions had been sent every day, but still no reply came, and there was no indication of the signals even piercing the atmosphere. Morale was dropping, and something had to be done. The situation declined steadily for decades, and the impromptu human society stagnated and fell almost into ruin. Isolated from the Imperium decree, it was only by the iron will of the Space Marines that the people did not revert into primality.