Editing Quest:The Long Night:Sparks at Midnight (section)

==The Grand Incursion==

The area you are assigned is a thousand kilometers north to south, and five hundred west to east. Some of the fortifications protect Geomantic Web nodes and such, but most of your fortifications are concentrated in a massive Deathwall on the northern edge, meaning the enemy will need some major trump card to get through quickly. On the other hand, you are vulnerable to flanking. The wall has everything; technology, wards, mountain ranges raised by the planet, space twisted to give you a range bonus...

Tranth and some other officials have left for the Moons to wait out the invasion. That means the Orichalcum Armours are yet to be completed; hopefully, you'll manage to get them to Avernus through all the expected mayhem... somehow

Finally, Six Hundred and Thirty-Eight Years since the Founding of Avernus, the polar rifts open. The enemies rush through. In a few weeks, they push away the Guardians. To their surprise, it's not just the Penguins there. An older Guardian race is, too; the Apes.

The Apes were created to combat the early Chaos, when Khorne was the only Great God. That meant they were overspecialized, and so were destroyed once other Gods arose and started contributing their styles. At least, that's what the World wanted everyone to believe. Turns out he stashed a seed population away in pocket dimensions, where they spent millions of years training and having the bugs worked out.

Still, whatever the case, the initial defence lines are pushed back within weeks, and the enemy starts advancing.

The planet, by now, is looking like anything ''except'' for a planet. It is a twisted maze of barely connected regions, with the enemy only aware of the general direction to Itza.

You use the time until the attack reaches you to upgrade the defences as much as possible. A year passes before they get to your borders, a year more for them to start giving you real problems. Enough for your PDF to finish familiarizing themselves with the provided Eldar gear. Tamia finishes work on a new ritual, one designed to pin an enemy down. It's expected to only last moments against an Exalted, but with fighters of that level, moments make a lot of difference.

Meanwhile, you get two brilliant ideas. The first one, confuse the enemy scouts. A good part of your patrol and force deployment is determined... by kindergarten kids. The enemy is fooled alright, suspecting some kind of supertwisted ploy and simply marching through after failing to make sense of it.

The second idea concerns Lorgar. Who, incidentally, is in charge of the forces assaulting your region.

Lorgar is obsessed with the Primordial Sea. The eternal realm of superchaos from which all existence arose, a realm so twisted Chaos fears it. Saint Lin considered touching it, but dared not. The Slann touched it and were wiped out, staining the Sea of Souls into the current Warp. Kairos went to the only access point, the Well of Eternity, and it's known what became of him. Lorgar worships it. The Sea is his God. He tried touching the Well of Eternity, and came out with a few droplets of that primordial ink on his fingers, with which he gave his Exalted subordinates some face painting, to great effect.

So, you consider; how about leaking out to him the data about that huge sword-shaped inkpot you carry around... and set a trap once he makes a grab?

Two years in, Sor Amphion, the Daemon Prince in charge of your immediate vicinity, launches an attack on you. Properly muddled from the kindergartner ploy, his force simply bulldozes ahead at the Deathwall, five Honoured leading the attack. With the help of the new pinning Ritual, all five are taken down. Jane kills hers permanently, the rest are banished. Your military losses are acceptable. Some local damage to the wall, but it's holding. Two heroes are lost. The first is a member of the Companions of Varen, an elite Caver team. The second is General Mineyev, who had finally succeeded in finding his end after centuries of failure.

On the rest of the planet, matters are going about as well as expected. Slogoth Poxbelly has been cast into the Warp early on, courtesy of two Krork teams and Tomeno Mai, an ace warrior from the local [[Kitsune]] race (these gals grow more tails as they gain levels, Tomeno is the only one with ten). A few more Exalted are banished at the cost of two Avatars (no permanent losses so far), among them [[N'Kari]], whom Vect left to cover his retreat to the rear once matters started looking bad for him. Russ and Khan are on the planet, helping however they can, with Russ having avoided a narrow call thanks to Ridcully.

In the wider galaxy, two main events are going on that concern you. First, Krork and Eldar teams are hunting Ahriman. Why now, you might ask? Well, the Lord of Change really doesn't want the guy to die, so he stacks the deck in his favor something crazy. And that means the guys on Avernus are getting all the critfails.

Second, Abaddon is getting annoyed with his bosses much like Be'lakor had (accounting for the difference in the time he had to get annoyed). For nearly two centuries now, his Imperium has been devoting most of its resources to containing the Dragon... and now he learns that the Five are attacking some remote world with enough forces to beat that C'tan back. Plus, none of his vassals can be trusted right now. In fact, the Eldar seem to be the most trustworthy; at least he can be sure they want him to remain in power for now. And they are also busy elsewhere a lot.

Plus, there is the fact that the Five constantly demand he sends a Black Crusade against the Trust. Of all the... okay. "Hey, you, dregs of an ally's ally! I, Abaddon the Despoiler, officially call you bunch a Black Crusade and send you to go and fight the Imperial Trust! See, Gods? Just as you ordered!"

Next year, it turns out despite stacking Ahriman's deck, Tzeentch did save a few cards for Avernus. Three heroes' evasion of the enemy was turned into bare success with severe injuries. Tomeno Mai, Areatha and He-Who-Walks-Obliquely are all out of commission until Isha is available to heal them. At least the lion managed to Truekill the Exalted who injured him.

And in other news, it seems the Green Twins have finally decided to join the action. A sizable splinter of the Eternal Conflagration arrives at the system, led by a half-finished Attack Moon. The World Serpent blasts the Planetary out of the skies, but the rest of the fleet is rampaging. This time, your old broadcast inviting the Orks to Avernus doesn't work fully, and quite a few ships go for the moon settlements and infrastructure. Most, however, go to join action on the planet, and you can only hope they land on enemy territory as much as possible.

Sor Amphion starts now massing his forces for a much bigger assault.

He hits with a double attack, both from the ground and the air. The ground part goes well. Two Honoured are banished (one of them by Mittens) and one is badly wounded, while Jane Truekills Sor. Xavier and Jacob are badly wounded, but nothing permanent. The air attack is more of a problem, unfortunately. For one thing, Sor's deputy took over, and he's more capable as a general, for another, it seems Ahriman had recently slipped his pursuers, so Chaos's deck is no longer short of trump cards.

In short, you are forced to abandon a large section of your defences. The enemy is bled as you pull back, but digs in and starts preparing a ritual to blast through your walls... in a year or so. Sounds bad, but actually kind of pointless; by then, the allies on your flanks will fall anyway. Meanwhile, you bombard the enemy from distance, and concentrate on dealing with cults.

These turn out to be a bigger problem. It appears the late Sor Amphion had a specialty of cult-building, and the effect still lingers.

You expect that once the enemy blasts through, you will be redeployed to the region further back.

While this happens, Be'lakor sees that matters are growing worse for him, so he prepares a massive ritual away from the frontlines. Without him, it grows even worse for Chaos. One Exalted is banished by the Ancient One, one by the World Serpent, and one by the Krork armies. The Ork Overlord, to your delight, takes out Mortarion. The losses of Avernus are considerable as well, including Strength, the Primal god of the planet, but still matters seem better than for the enemy.

And then Be'lakor completes the ritual.

Using the lifeblood of all five Gods, a net is drawn around the planet, dragging it into the Warp. While the defences are strong enough to prevent outright corruption, the daemons receive a massive power boost. Plus, instead of the poles, the Five can now rain their minions all over the planet. Matters look bleak.

Except there is one spot on the planet, where it rains daemons from both Tzeentch and Slaanesh.

Normally, the two are considered allies, but, apparently, not enough to stay off each other's backs in favor of focusing on the incursion's objectives. In short order, the other three gods join the ensuing clusterfuck. While she would have loved to watch the brawl up close, the Planet Mind decides it's far more important to take the opportunity and slip back to the Materium. Thus, in a magnificent display of the nature of Chaos, the Grand Incursion of Doom is effectively over.

Oh, did I mention the ritual required each god to sacrifice an Exalted?

Not that we can relax just yet. There is a good chance the Silent King will also want to interrupt the revival. Or the Void Dragon. For the moment, however, they don't seem to be in the area, so at the very least we have time to lick our wounds.

As for Lorgar, the bad news is he didn't have time to spring our trap yet. The good news is, he did divert from his path to search for the Sword, so his masters will likely have a few choice words for him once they get untangled from the free-for-all.