Accatran

40k's Coruscant.

Accatran is a Forge World located in the Segmentum Ultima.

Overview and History

Accatran is located on the edge of the Ork Empire of Charadon. It is home to the Titan Legio Destructor, also known as the Beasts of Steel. The planet is most well-known for its production of own-pattern lasguns, shotguns, flamers, and missile launchers. These weapons are much lighter than their standard-issue counterparts, so are favored by drop infantry regiments such as the Elysian Drop Troops. Like most other Forge Worlds, its atmosphere is completely inhospitable to anyone who isn't a Space Marine or doesn't have mechanical lungs.

The planet was settled sometime during the Dark Age of Technology by explorators aligned with the Cult Mechanicus. When the Eldar screwed the galaxy by screwing so hard they unleashed Slaanesh, Accatran was one of the uncounted worlds cut off from the rest of humanity. It endured thanks to the efforts of Magos Xerxes Importalus, whose thousand-year reign sustained the planet through the worst of the Age of Strife. Accatran's military forces took the name of Taghmata Xerxes in his honor. They were incorporated into the Imperium sometime during the Great Crusade. When Horus ordered Roboute Guilliman to start mustering his Legion at Calth to go and wipe out some Orks, Guilliman sent the call for reinforcements to the worlds that owed Ultramar allegiance, including Accatran. They dispatched the Taghmata Xerxes in response, including the elite Third Quinternary Division. Because of its size and veteran status, the Taghmata was made a priority target for the traitor forces at Calth, with the traitor-aligned Ordo Reductor Covenant of Mormoth-Null assigned specifically to destroy them.

Despite being caught off guard by the Word Bearers' backstab, Xerxes fought savagely for the city of Ithraca, inflicting heavy casualties on the XVII Legion and its cultist and Mechanicum allies with the aid of the Knights of House Vornherr. Eventually, however, they were driven back by sheer weight of numbers and penned into one of Ithraca's largest manufactories. Having concluded that they weren't going to survive anyway, the magi of the Taghmata decided that they might as well die as hard and awesomely as possible. They reconfigured the manufactorum's plasma reactor into a bomb, then launched a counterattack with all their remaining Castellaxes to buy time while three Thanatars dragged the bomb into the middle of the enemy forces. The leader of the Covenant Mormoth-Null realized what was about to happen and tried to order a retreat, but the Xerxes magi beat him to the punch and set off the bomb, instantly incinerating everything within half a kilometer and completely trashing twenty-three city blocks. Accatran had lost its entire fighting force, but their sacrifice wasn't in vain.

Accatran hasn't had much mention in the 41st Millennium aside from being the Drop Troops' favorite armory, though they did pull a boneheaded move by losing a battle report sent to them from another Mechanicus planet that had successfully fended off a Tyranid invasion by filling one of the strata of its atmosphere with promethium and igniting it, incinerating all the spores that attempted to pass through the flames.