Editing Story:Warhammer 60K: The Age of Dusk (section)

==Additional Background Section 26: A Time of Contraction: The Invasion of Drultevar Forge [Part Two]==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">
As iterated before, the forces of Vulkan engaged in multiple raids and limited assaults during the *Period of Contraction*. This part continues to relate the most prominent events of the century, culminating in that great event which changed the galaxy. The day man walked on the skin of a God.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

It is easy to forget, in reading these tales of war, heroism and gargantuan villainy, that there were real worlds behind these conflicts. Throughout the **Age of Dusk** I have spoken of so many wars that my heart threatens to break; but we must remember that war is not limited to those planets unfortunate enough to be warzones. Every war requires logistics, and for every planet engaged in combat, a dozen worlds exist to support their war effort with supplies, men, and staging points for further conflict.

There was a much more invisible yet all-pervading menace that afflicted these worlds. This menace had the names famine and poverty. The manufacturing worlds of the galaxy were worked for thousands of years, consuming generation upon generation of workers. These worlds were known as the *Exhausted Realms*, for the strain was too much. The *Second Strife* and the *Age of Dusk* had crippled them, but these broken worlds were forced to run on shattered limbs to keep their empires functioning on the brink of collapse. Had it continued longer, quadrillions of men and women would have perished, not through battle, but stress, hunger, and drudgery. 

Still there were some who had not forgotten the exhausted realms. The most famous of these figures was known as Iacob. It is rumored he gained a prominent place in the Promethian Government thanks to his own passion and oratory. He is said to have appeared in Darnal Taq’s estate. He was a nobody; a simple man, but a man with a desire to help, inspiring compassion into all who met him. He avoided being arrested by the Wyvern Scribe and actually became one of the politician’s aides. He rose slowly through the political ranks, giving speeches and talks to various august bureaucracies. But it was not this that made his name. 

He commissioned a great tour of the exhausted realms (sometimes called the worlds of fatigue), at the height of the contraction. When no oen else dared leave their worlds, he bravely took tot he stars in a tiny flotilla of barely warp-capable craft. He visited hundreds of planets, and he watched them. He noted down the problems of these worlds and he began to devise their solutions. When he eventually returned to Armaggedon, he threw himself into a grand project amongst the administrators and merciful factions of the Imperium. Unlike the other charities, who sought to spread creeds of ideologies alongside their aid, he genuinely wished to help. He used his political connections, and his sheer charisma, to gather a huge fleet. However, this was no war fleet. It was a fleet of re-purposed merchant vessels and tankers of supplies and emergency aid, alongside genetically modified syn-food crops and servitor parts. This was a fleet intended to create.

But this fleet was unsanctioned, and hence lacked all but the most rudimentary defenses. Hungry piratical eyes fell upon this ripe, nigh-defenseless prize. However, there were other forces at work here. Each privateer fleet or xenos raiding force were mysteriously attacked just before they launched their assaults. From the stories and reports I have gathered, it seemed that figures in grey, and dark knights in flaming armour appeared as if from nowhere, destroying each raiding force, before dragging the survivors off into the darkness. War and pain raged alla round them, but Iacob’s fleet of mercy managed to get through by the skin of their teeth, passing from world to world. Iacob’s crusade was highly lauded across the Imperium, and indeed the wider galaxy.

Iacob himself was depicted in most legends as ‘the Last Truly Good Man in the galaxy’. Alas for the Despoiler, his renegade fleet did not receive this information. The Despoiler would not learn that his prophecy was coming to fruition...

The sector on the border between Vulkan’s realm and the broken, lawless regions once known as the Theologian union, was a region of particular anarchy reminiscent of the worst days of the Second Strife. But there was an area peculiarly lacking in large scale warfare.

A reigon of space where there were no nearby stars, hostile xenos or traitorous brigands. There was, however, something present in this lonely area of space. There was a fleet; two battlecruisers, ten destroyers and a dozen frigates, stationed in an area of warp-dead space. They were scions of Vulkan’s military, sent to this region specifically. It had been incredibly difficult to reach, for a one hundred lightyear radius area of space was utterly warp-dead. They had come out of the warp in a neighbouring sector and had had to utilise their plasma drives to travel to this region.

Their crews had almost rebelled in indignant rage after supplies ran low after thirty years of inactivity. Strict recycling and forced-breeding programs had allowed the ships to survive for the next seventy years. Half-starved and dazed, they had reached the centre of this silent void.

A previous war against the old Union had uncovered this region on scanners by chance long before a mission had been sent. It was perplexing due to its sheer... absence. Empty space was actually perishingly rare in the galaxy (despite what some might assume); nebulous gas clouds, asteroids, interstellar orphan worlds and aborted brown dwarf stars populated the silence and the cold. But not here. There was nothing larger than celectial dust particles in this void region.

Nothing, save for the sphere. It was colossal. The explorer fleet was like a krill staring down a blue whale; no, a void whale. The difference in scale was that pronounced. It was utterly dark, except for the haze of an electromagnetic field rippling silently across its vast form. To the arriving fleet, the structure appeared to be a vast wall, spreading out 180 degrees both ‘left’ and ‘right’ (I am aware of the futility of using such terms in the void, but forgive this old chronicler its indulgences...) as far as they could see, and their sensors could scan. It was only about one lightyear out that one could truly take in its spherical nature. But they were too close.

Hull-mounted searchlights a hundred metres across stabbed their piercing white beams towards the vast structure. Oddly, its crust was pitted with marks. These were not the haphazard wounds caused by asteroids and impact craters. These were regular; geometric.

As the ships studied the structure over the next few weeks, strange things began to happen. Crew members began to lose their mind,s turning upon their fellow ratings in furious assaults, mouths foaming as they ranted about ‘She an’ all the rest!’
Things went missing from the storerooms, and the corridors running through the ships were re-written; no long leading to the same areas of the vessel they once had done.

They continued to send out logs of their studies into the void, but they became increasingly strange, as the men and women of the fleet succumbed to this all-consuming madness. But these messages would not be received by their superiors until they reached the telepathic relays located at the border of the dead space, one hundred years later, at the close of the Peirod of Contraction.

Elsewhere, before that point, the Brethren of the Willing remained active on a hundred fronts, searching out forbidden knowledge and dread lore. Imogen found numerous valuable artefacts and iconic weapons on her travels, including special stasis crypts on the Prison World of Goethe, a specialised form of warhead on the Glass-lands of Kivvidix, and the Great Burrowing Pahge device, amongst other things. But many of the most important devices were already taken. It was a great mystery, for it seemed as if there was another thief working against her, stealing things before she arrived. Artefacts were replaced by different items, with strange alien runic notes left alongside them. She knew not what this ‘Trayzn’ entity was (or if she did, she did not make a note of her thoughts on its nature in her accounts), but she became determined to outwit it. Some say this rivalry was enflamed when, returning to her headquarters, she found the Anathame missing, replaced by a dozen frozen catachans and a tesserarch Labyrinth. Her attempts to find the Kassarian dawnblade were equally fruitless due tot his strange phantasm of an enemy.

The borders of the Vulkan Imperium became increasingly terrifying places; the other empires of the galaxy were collapsing, beset by chaotic forces and eldritch horrors both warp-bound and otherwise. Most telepathic messages received were merely long-winded screams of unadulterated horror. The Two tau empires fought desperately on each side of the galaxy to maintain their empires, while the Kassar Enclaves disintegrated into further factionalism after the dawnblade was lost. C’tan, and monsters very similar to C’tan, began to devour planets and quash armies, while they duelled with each other and the legions of krork and Necrons who sought desperately to make each other extinct. Several worlds caught fire, and their flaming populations killed each other in mindless wars, as a titanic armored figure fought with a wailing spear against a shadowy reaper. And the Eye opened ever wider, swallowing sector after sector as the overlap between realspace and warp space became ever fainter.

Oddly, throughout the Contraction, Vulkan was absent for the most part; leaving his government in charge. In hindsight, it seems obvious where he and his selected Astartes retinue had vanished to. With a Realm of Fathers Patriarch in tow, the Primarch was on the hunt. He was hunting the most important prize of all; his brothers. Only the Patriarchs were powerful enough psykers to track the signature of a Primarch across intergalactic space. The Lion’s trace was faint, but it was still there. He had been moved (or was moving of his own accord). This meant he lived, or at least he was active somehow. This was enough for the coal-black Primarch.

Yet, the largest battle the vulkan Imperium fought in the Period of Contraction was a war they had never contemplated. Drultevar Forge. Drultevar had been a loyal, isolationist forge world since the very foundation of the original Imperium, so many millennia ago. They were a quiet sect of tech priests that believed knowledge and the ability to preserve the soul within machinery was all they required; they sought no outside interference. In exchange, they freely gave away their surplus weaponry and servitors to any who asked or demanded such things from them.

No one expected them to suddenly declare war upon their closest allies. Yet, they did so, on a truly bizarre scale. Their Ark-Mechanicus vessels quietly departed from their forge, laden with world-ending munitions. They struck at every world within reach of a short-scale warp jump, which happened to include several Realm of Fathers worlds as well as more mainstream Vulkan worlds. Their allies had expected no attack from them, and hadn’t raised their defenses sufficiently. Billions upon billions died in a few days, as macrocannon barrages ravaged continents and vaporized countless civilians and the armies that lay planet-side for their protection.

Why Drultevar performed this heinous act baffled scholars for years (but scholars did not possess my talents or resources...). The reason was that they had been talked into this by a silver-tongued devil; a titan clad in a cloak of midnight feathers (always the cloak! It is as if they want me to find them in the chronicles. Is it their signature? Are the twins facetous, or are they at war with themselves? I cannot tell). This giant lied to them; implying that Vulkan intended to pillage their vaults. The thought of Vulkan gaining access to their vaults terrified the otherwise impossibly stoic Tech Priests. The cloaked giant and his shadowy armoured minions suggested a preemptive strike. Ordinarily a suicidal action, but the Tech priests were desperate to hide their secrets by any means.

Their actions were unforgivable. A response was a decade in the making, but it eventually struck them with the force of a meteorite. The Iron hand Commandery, experts at Forge World combat, were organised to be the vanguard of the assault force. With them came a vast force of allied Mortal regiments from their tithed domains, armed to the teeth and enhanced with bionics to almost the level of Skitarii. For ten years, the Iron hands gathered armies from the closest worlds to the Drultevar Forge’s sector. Ryza, seeing the Drultevarans as malfunctioning pieces of the Imperial machine, sanctioned Marella harker to unleash her Plasma Commandoes upon their enemies. Not only that, but the Ryzans authorised the use of the full might of their Titan legion and its feudal Knight legions. The Realm of Fathers also added the weight of its Legion Trygonis and the might of the super heavy tank battalions.

Drultevar would be shattered utterly.

Yet, the forge was far from defenceless. It had survived for so many thousands of years by being a fortified as physically possible. It had its own Titans, and its own cybernetic killing machines, as well as the technological marvels hidden deep in their forbidden chambers.

The first phase of the war came in 889.M56, with the Iron Hands’ initial assault. They struck methodically with cold precision; no hate, no rage. It was a war of dismantling to them. They attacked the world’s shields first. Their entire fleet unleashed a bombardment of fantastic scale; many serfs onboard their flagship, the Industrious, were blinded by the catastrophic assault. Gigaton-level blasts rocked the planetary shield like a hurricane of nuclear fire, which rippled across the entire world’s surface. This entire orbital assault knocked the shields down for ten minutes.

It was enough. The Iron Hands’ Terminators teleported directly into the defence laser emplacements and planetary torpedo silos of Drultevar. Smashing through the Skitarii defences in this lightning raid, they rapidly took down the cannons trained to the heavens. However, the Iron hand fleet found the artificial moons of Drultevar to be a challenge, which kept their main fleet at bay. Only the Thunderhawks and Scryer Sweep-wings (a new type of combat shuttle craft) were swift and small enough to evade these big guns.

But the Iron hands were a force to be reckoned with, and soon carved out a landing zone in the midst of the Forge World’s vast factories and mining facilities. They held off the vast swathe sof murder servitors unleashed upon them in terrific waves. Their bolters glowed red hot as they unleashed hell upon the steel-clawed monstrosities. They were supported by strange hulking cyborgs, hefting heavy cannons on wide tracks, alongside automatons and Tech-Guard Regiments from across the world. Thunderfire cannons, conversion beamers and all manner of experimental technologies were unleashed by both sides.

But even Astartes had their limits. Soon, they were stretched, as millions of soldiers flooded to face them. Soon, the Titans of Drultevar had begun to walk. Astartes alone could not hope to best a fully-armed titan legion, even ones so venerable and skilled as the sons of Ferrus Manus.

But the Iron Hands were not alone. The artificial moons had been invaded by Plasma Commandoes simultaneaously. These fearsome cyborgs slowly purged the moons of defenders, allowing the greater body of the invasion force to descend. Realm of Fathers frigates flooded in, sheathing the capital ships of the primary force in a near impenetrable escort shield.

Drop pods the size of colossal towers descended fromt he digital skies of Drultevar, each bearing a god-machine and its attendant Skitarii defenders. Each pod screamed as retro thrusters scorched the air beneath them, arresting their terminal descent and allowing them to punch into the metallic ground with minimal force. Even as the blast doors fell away, the Titans began their assault.

Two armies of staggeringly huge engines clashed withint he forest of shielded towers and bastion-factories that covered the northern hemisphere of the Forge World like some colossal crown. Their ordnance turned the very air to poisonous vapour and churning plasma fire, while the bellow of war horns drowned out any possibility of verbal communication between mere mortals. The Superheavy tanks of the Hybrids followed the Ryzan Titans, alongside a veritable flood of half-breed warriors, silent and merciless as only the genestealers could be.

The Patriarch, bedecked in polish obsidian war plate, was a terror to behold; a towering genestealer purestrain that stood almost as tall as Vulkan himself. Its huge claws peeled open tanks with a gesture, and eviscerated whole squads of soldiers with every blow of its rending talons. But its real weapon was its mind. Great bolts of purple lightning flared form its eyes and slavering jaws, pulverizing flesh and bursting apart armor with pathetic ease. Its roars were like the howl of a daemon, easily the match for a Titan War Horn. Its retinue of purestrains killed anything which their master failed to, while the Legion Trygonis calmly moved between buildings with unnerving precision and order. They fell back and regrouped at exactly the right moment, flowing around strong points to attack where the Drultevarans were weakest.

Lord Morsan, Commander of the Iron Hands, likewise fought effectively in the shadow of the God-Machines. The press of combat was close in the confine s of the refineries, mining districts and claustrophobic manufactorums. In the shadows and amidst the sparking, whirring technology of the Drultevarans, combat was decided within the reach of blades and pistols, pistons and flamers. Each side seemed fearless; almost dispassionate. His axe crackled with fizzing blood and oily fluids, while his servo arms snapped like hungry serpents as they ripped away spines and crushed skulls.

The Drultevaran Tech Guard began to use increasingly bizarre weapons as the armies closed upon the Temple-Fort of the Deus Mechanicus, the void-shielded central bastion of the rebellious Tech Priests. Tractor beam weapons that pulled victims in half messily, before tossing them miles into the stratosphere, or weapons that turned enemy armor inside out, before rusting the technology beyond belief. Weapons that fired darts of metal, that struck the enemy before they were even fired; laser grids that diced Imperial troops by the thousands. Esoteric graviton guns which caused those struck bythe weapon to collapse into short-lived singularities; these implosions then dragged in everyone nearby before dissipating. Trans-dimensional energy weapons that bypassed all forms of armor. There were even sonic weapons that caused foes to vanish at the atomic level, simply due to the manipulation of their fundamental quantum structures. Morsan and his Iron Hands recognized some of these weapons. From the archives of old Medusa, their bionic minds could instantly recall the designs and plans for several weapons. Weapons Ferrus Manus himself had devised.

The fiends had stolen from Medusa! The Iron hands were spurred on by indignant outrage, pushing ever harder against the hardened bastions of the Tech Priests. The entire planet turned into a terrible metal meat-grinder; neither side was capable of retreating and neither force was willing to give up the battle for anything. The vast armies of cyborgs and hybrid freaks smashed each other with weapons of world-ending force. By the first week, the surface of the world looked as if it had been bombarded from orbit. However, this was simply the effects of prolonged Titan-on Titan warfare. The duelling Warlords and Imperators glassed the very ground itself as they battered against the void shields of each bastion and war machine on the surface. Squadrons of baneblades and stormlords exchanged fire with the hunched warhounds beneath this seething mass of plasma fire and solid munitions. Ammunition factories were raided by both sides in their eagerness ot resupply, only to throw themselves back into combat.

The Plasma Commandoes performed aerial raids on wounded enemy titans; as soon as their shields were battered down, their flying vehicles would swoop onto the crenelated shoulders of the god-machines, before storming the giants’ innards and planting demolition charges in their vulnerable hearts. However, for every titan they felled, Marella Harker lost thousands of her soldiers, and almost as many aircraft. She was herself a terrifically powerful warrior, felling enemy after enemy in quick succession with her forearm blades and twinned plasma blasters.

No building could be cleared without physically storming it and killing every Tech-Guard within. They always died to the last man, woman or androgynous synth-flesh servitor. Dawn was quenched on Drultevar, for the pollution thrown up by the conflict drowned the sky in toxic smog and stinging acidic rain. The oxygen of the world was being consumed at a frightful rate. Soon enough, all external atmosphere was unbreathable to those without rebreathers or advanced biological/mechanical lungs.

Yet, slowly but surely, the invaders claimed the city; block by block, bastion by bastion, factory by factory. They spread out form the landing site, until a tight defensive ring five miles in diameter around the Temple-Fort of Deus Mechanicus was all that remained of the surface defenders.

Morsan fought relentlessly to punch through this ring of adamantium, leading numerous daring assaults and raids into the enemy’s clutches, before breaking back out of these defences to attack again at a later date. 

The Legion Trygonis were the perfect support for these actions, for they flooded into the smashed gaps punched into the enemy lines, setting up intersecting arcs of fire and emplacements set up to maximise the damage done by these assaults. While the Iron hands were like a rapier-point, piercing the flesh of the beast, the hybrids were the hooks and pegs which forced open these stab-wounds, ripping them open until they were full, disembowelling lacerations. All the while, the titans pounded the Temple-Fort with their volcano cannons to prevent the mile-high fortress and its big guns, from supporting its beleaguered defenders in its shadow.

Finally, after a gruelling siege which claimed more lives than the administrators could tally accurately, the invaders reached the Temple-Fort itself, pounding through the main gates using a massed vindicator bombardment at close range. The Iron hands charged through the sundered gates at the head of a massive tank formation. Their predators and Land Raiders led the way, followed by ancient Russ designs of a wild variety, alongside Thunder Lizard model tanks, followed by the artillery and super-heavies of the Hybrids. The bastion as so vast that it could easily fit these tanks, for the Temple-Fort was a cathedral, with chambers that rose up hundreds of metres, with wide avenues and echoing hallways filled with construction equipment and killing machines in their hundreds of thousands. Only the Ryzan Titans were too large to fit inside the belly of this beast. But the Iron hands cared not, for they were performing a tactic which had proven effective ever sicne its invention in the dim, forgotten past: the Thunder-Run.

The defenders struggled to handle the speeding tank formations that gunned their engines furiously as they unleashed the full power of their munitions in the heart of the enemy fortress. The Drultevarans were resourceful however. Collossal cranes and construction vehicles turned their heavy scoops, dozer blades and clawed-winches against the invaders. Wrecking balls the size of land raiders flipped baneblades onto their sides, or pulverised mundane tanks into flattened ruins that leaked with oil and the blood of their former crews. Praetorian warrior servitors rolled up to defend key installations within the factory, but were swatted aside by the relentless pace of the charging tanks. Within a few hours, the ground level of the Temple-Fort was in the hands of the Vulkan Imperium. However, the Tanks could not break into the vaults, or scale the internal labyrinth of the upper galleries of the Fortress.

Harker and the Patriarch led their infantry forces upwards to take down the vast army of Tech-Guard holding out above their heads, while Morsan and his battered Iron Hands penetrated the underworld, deep below.

Marella was famous for her dislike of aliens, but she admirably bit back her revulsion as she organised the attack with the Patriarch and his Magi. She hadn’t the luxury of time to waste hating them. The Tech Guard had blown up all the lifts and stairwells leading upwards. But worse than this, they were attacking the superstructure of their own fortress; they meant to collapse their own Temple; thereby destroying the bulk of their enemies in one fell swoop and trapping the Iron Hands underground; forever entombing the cybernetic Mk II Astartes. The Tower had to be taken, and quickly. Eventually, the odd couple of Marella, a bulky cyborg woman, and the towering chitinous mass of the Patriarch, came to an agreement.

Meanwhile, outside, the Titans had finally battered the Temple’s cannons into submission. Yet, even as they did this, a new threat emerged from the churning, oily skies. The bulky shapes of monoliths descended in their thousands, alongside a swarm of scarabs and necron fighters. Sighing with resignation, Princeps Gorios of the lead imperator ‘Ryzan Dawn’, ordered his Legion to turn face and target the interlopers.

The Necrons shimmered into existence like a phantom from the mist. Gorios suddenly felt his Titan’s vox groan in pain, as an alien signal rippled through every vox in the Legion.

“Surrender and die. This world is now ours. The Host of the Stormlord have come. Perish in silence. You were foolish to believe you coul-“

Gorios emitted a vox signal to his Legion, as he neatly cut off the necrons in the midst of their ominous speech.

++ Enough of that nonsense. Gorios to all princeps; the enemy think they can let us lose engines to take this world and then take it for themselves, without sacrifice? I believe their logic is profoundly faulty. Let us educate them. Legio Tyberos; we walk. ++

As the Titans marched to war, the Iron hands penetrated ever deeper into the core of Drultevar. With melta and chainfist they literally carved their way through sealed portal after sealed portal, gunning down the crawling killing machines that sought to drag them into darkness. Stubby walking cannons spluttered with fire, while murder servitors dropped form the ceilings to slash at the Iron Hands and their serf soldiery that followed them into lightless shadow. Of course, neither side required visible light to see. The Drultevarans had destroyed all the lumen globes in the vaults to no avail. The only light in the vaults was the crackling energies of power weapons and storm shields or the chattering exchanges of gunfire. Robed priests brought forth experimental plasma flamers, huge weapons that spewed bouts of blinding blue energy in a destructive cone of scorching energy. Even power Armour was of no defense against these weapons. In the close confines of the tunnel, many Iron hands died. Eventually, the Assault Terminators formed a shield wall with their storm shields, protecting those behind them as they advanced on the flamers. Missiles flew over the heads of the tactical dreadnought Armour, as their allies supported them as best they could.

The deep places of Drultevar echoed with the shouting and static screeching of battle.

Meanwhile, the Plasma Commandoes and their allies had devised a way to reach the Tech Guard above. Purestrains led the charge, clambering up through the lift shafts and tunnels between floors. Each alien beast had climbing cords attached to their backs. These cords were secured to the walls of the fortress, and Harker’s men followed them up eagerly, clambering up the wires with the agility of tree-apes. They were followed by the Legion Trygonis, who also hauled up heavy weapons to aid in the room to room fighting which would certainly ensue above.

The battle within the tower was utterly chaotic, for friend and foe alike fought through increasingly narrow corridors and rooms. Frag grenades blasted through thin dividing walls, while storm bolters and heavy stubbers chewed through the rest. Hellguns cracked and hissed as they fired over and over again, until their power packs fused with the relentless heat. Plasma bolts burned whole squads of troops alive, or otherwise ripped holes through walls and Praetorians alike. The purestrains were a nightmare to face; a storm of clawed limbs that eviscerated anything which got within range with the space of seconds. They were so fast; the Skitarii could barely track them with their weapons before they were ripped asunder by alien monsters. Each gunfight was brief and brutal; either the Skitarii killed every squad within moments, or the invaders killed them just as quickly. There were frantic skirmishes occurring on every level of the fortress. Elevators became lethal chokepoints for gun emplacements and ambushes, while adamantium-coated work-desks became makeshift barricades, or simply cover from the relentless gunfire criss-crossing between each room.

The Patriarch led the way up, leaping between floors, smashing through ceilings to emerge through the floor of the level above. The Patriarch also bore a rope upon his back, to which Marella and a handful of the Trygonis command squad clung to. She would gun down anyone who attempted to target the clawed purestrain with ranged weapons. Rapidly, they ascended the tower. Soon, they would reach the last of the defenders, and could eliminate the Arch Magos of Drultevar once and for all.

The vaults had grown quiet. The Iron Hands had killed their way into the deepest of the underground bastions. However, their Techmarines grew concerned. Their auspex told them they had descended many hundreds of miles. They should have been hitting mantle, yet they were not. They moved down even deeper, down through the levels with ever greater rapidity. The Techmarines raised their concerns to Morsan himself, when they showed him their findings. They were now deeper than Drultevar was wide. They had entered the realm of the impossible. Morsan ordered them to explore the tunnels around them. The Astartes easily fought off the surviving Tech Guard ambushes. However, no matter what direction they traveled, the auspex told them they were going deeper.

But as they marched in darkness, they continued to find vaults and storage chambers filled with strange mechanical designs that the Astartes could only recall from Ferrus Manus’ notes. Yet, they could find no such notes. Eventually, the single-minded will of Chaplain Korbin allowed the Iron Hands to navigate the perplexing maze and find the one vault they had wished to locate above all others.

The Patriarch burst through the floor of the final floor, into a screaming null field. The giant monster toppled onto his back as soon as he emerged. Marella entered the chamber soon after, but as barely troubled by the field. The three Leigon Trygonis troopers staggered as they entered this field; their telepathy was cut off. They were forced to talk to Harker, requesting instruction as they rushed to their colossal father’s side. The Patriarch could not speak to them, but merely gestured for them to follow Harker. They nodded, before they helped their genestealer brood-father back down to the level below. Harker would get no aid from the Father.

Harker nevertheless fought her way through the Tech Guard with brutal skill. The hybrids fought effectively with their laser rifles, but had lost much of their unnerving coordination. The Arch-Magos was a giant, a robed beast set upon great steaming bionic legs, that gave him the appearance of a great spider wreathed in whirling metallic tendrils. The three emptied their weapons into the Priest, switching between magazines until their weapons were spent. As they fired, Harker leapt into close combat. Her blasters ripped a hole into his chest, which she opened up with her crackling blades. Each snapping claw and mechandendrite was blocked or dodged by the superhuman killing machine as she set about taking the Magos apart. But the ruler of Drultevar was not without his own defenses. Sonic weaponry drove Harker back and the Arch-Magos almost destroyed her there and then. But the hybrids intercepted the towering machine-prince. Tossing aside spent rifles, they all drew the swords from the scabbards on their backs.

They were skillful opponents; stronger and faster than any human, and even though they had lost the fearlessness which came with the collective, they fought on bravely. They slashed at vital systems; cutting cables and breaking pistons with their power swords. Slowly, the Magos was driven back, at the cost of their lives, which they gave gladly. This gave Marella a chance to line up a final devastating shot with her plasma weapons. The vast ball of energy burned a six foot hole through the Arch-Magos, killing him in seconds, before blasting the outer wall away with the force of the blast.

Through the hole, Harker noted the necrons battling with the Titans in the distance. Her words at this point were not recorded (but I suspect they were expletives...).

Morsan received word of the situation above ground. Yet, he could not care less for the surface at that moment. For, in the centre of the last vault, he saw a great body, sitting upon a throne in a stasis field. Robed Tech priests surrounded the figure, tapping at keys and scribbling with stylus upon dataslates. They turned at the sound of the Iron Hands, pleading for them to keep the field active. Morsan killed them all without a second thought, pulverising their corpses with manic fury.

The ordinary stoic Iron hands were all desperately holding back tears. Tears of great, abiding sorrow.

For upon the throne sat a headless giant. A giant with forearms bonded in flawless silver. Wires and cables sprouted form the stump where a head should have been, and fed into a hundred cogitator devices around the room.

This was Ferrus Manus, and he was dead. The Iron hands had always suspected his death, but to see his body, and know it had been desecrated, was almost too much to bear. Furiously, they destroyed the stasis field holding their Primarch. But as they did so, they watched in horror as he crumbled into dust before their eyes. His two metal-clad arms fell to the ground with a sonorous clang.

Despair seized Morsan then and he fell to his knees. The Astartes were broken by this revelation. Korbin, wailing in demented madness, unleashed his flamer upon the metal arms, screaming hopeless litanies. He cursed the name of the legendary silver Wyrm; the beast which Ferrus had killed. But in melting the metal, Korbin had done something unexpected. He had woken the metal up. The molten pool suddenly began to take shape. Within moments, the metal leaped at the chaplain, plunging through his armour as if it was not there. Korbin began to scream, light and metal roiling beneath his armour like a subterranean storm. The others furiously fought to restrain him, but he thrashed like a madman, flinging Astartes away from him. After a lengthy battle, Morsan eventually restrained the fiend. It spoke with many voices; an inhuman roar, like that of a great repitilian monster a scream of static and disassembled code, Korbin’s own demented ravings of the Emperor undying and of horrific visions of terror. Also, there was a final voice, a voice which they thought may have been Manus. It was as if the shard-entity could not remember which entity it was; was it a Primarch, a Marine or the God of knowledge? It squealed and wailed in confusion, detonating meltaguns with a thought and growing long talons that ripped chunks from the floor.

Playing upon the thing’s confusion, Morsan persuaded it to aid them. He told the entity of the Necrons, coming to claim it. Mention of the Necrons inspired loathing in the creature, deeper than any hate a mortal may know.

I would suggest that it was this entity which caused the famous ‘Drultevar incident’. Until now, we had no explanation how the entire Vulkan army assaulting Drultevar vanished from the planet and appeared inside the holds of their ship, allowing them t just barely escape Drultevar with their lives.

Drultevar itself was slowly turned into an Angylworld, for the Necrons of the Stormlord lost any interest in the planet once the C’tan shard was stolen.

At the close of the Period of Contraction, Vulkan felt lost; alone. He had returned from the hunt for the Lion without success. He had learned that Ferrus’ body was destroyed. The enemy were at the proverbial gates; Ahriman in the south, Baal’s Bloodknights in the south-west, the demented forces of Lorgar and the Blackhearted one closed in from the north and west, the rogue Despoiler somewhere within his own borders, maiming at random as he battled anyone in his way, while the Necrons threatened his worlds from every angle. Darnal Taq was dead; old age claiming him. He had refused artificial rejuvenation. We know from the sources that the Iron Hands’ capture of a C’tan shard would have given him a valuable intelligence source, but I...

... I feel his despair. In that moment, thought it was many decades ago, I FEEL his despair, as if it was happening right now. My mind... it...

I saw Vulkan upon his throne, in an empty council hall; the other rulers were planning various campaigns of expansion, to try and drive off the enclosing forces of madness. He knew the galaxy was coming apart. His imperium couldn’t last; not against such crushing numbers. It seemed like insanity was the default mindset of the universe. His realm of civilization and sanity was the last sane man, shouting into the wind. There was something just beyond his sight; some grand pattern. It was ethereal, lost to all without the sense to see it.

Then, he received a vox signal. It was re-directed from the southern border region and delivered to him personally by Imogen. Temestor braiva accompanied her; limping from an old war-wound. The message was from the fleet orbiting the sphere. It spoke of their plight and of their madness. It spoke of how some of the crew had stolen shuttles from the hangars. They had exited their shuttles without space suits. They had walked out across the surface of the sphere, chanting even as they suffocated. The sphere was called ‘God’ to the demented crewmen. They wished to walk upon a God’s skin...

Yet, thanks to the C’tan shard, Vulkan at last realised exactly what this ‘God’s Skin’ was.

He knew how he could save his people from the coming apocalypse. But Vulkan also knew that he could not join them. He could not leave his brothers to the predations of chaos. 

If anyone was to survive, Vulkan himself would have to fight. With his people safe, nothing would hold him back.
</div>
</div>