Additional Background Section 31: Despoiler’s flight. Despoiler’s Fight
Abaddon the despoiler entered Vulkanite space in 145.M56 approximately. One cannot be sure precisely where he penetrated the Imperium, as there were no sensor monitors or major fleets to mark his presence within the realm and indeed, one does not measure interstellar territory in the same way one would mark a land border. The only reason we can be so precise on the year is because he happened to have entered the Vulkan Imperium at a time when it was only just recovering fromt he period of contraction; relief fleets and battle groups were only just being dispatched from Vulkanite strongholds in order to reconnect the isolated bastions of Armaggedon civilisation.
Thus, there were scarcely any forces to actively oppose the Despoiler’s fleet of rabid killers and battered relic-ships. However, some psyker-seers in the employ of the Commanderies had predicted Abaddon would attempt to enter Vulkan space ‘not as conqueror, but as vengeful refugee; pursued by a Cardinal of ever-darkness’. Thus, the battlefleets of the Mk II Astartes Legions were poised to converge upon any suspected sighting of Abaddon’s force.
Yet, once again the Despoiler’s cunning was overlooked. He had devised a way to pass undetected and unmolested through Vulkan space, whilst also plundering it for the resources his minions so desperately needed. Abaddon would enter a civilised system with his dread planet killer, and announce his presence openly on all vox channels. He also mad eit clear that if the planet alerted anyone outside the system of his arrival, he would destroy their world instantly. If they resisted his forces when they landed, he would kill their world. If the governments of the planet did not give his vessels all that he desired, their world would also die. Most worlds were cowed by this stark, uncompromising stance. He made sure to send small forces of Black legionnaires and Despoiled to the planets, so taht if the planet’s populace did resist, he would not lose too many of his men when and if he unleashed the Planet-Killer’s terrible power.
Using this tactic, his forces stole decades’ worh of war materiel and food supplies. They had unfair gladiatorial contests staged in the capitals of the worlds, where thousands were killed by Black Legion champions. Thousands upon thousands of children were taken as slaves; the strongest and most vicious boys were taken for geneseed implantation, while the rest were taken to toil in the bowels of hellish grand cruisers, or even within the Planet Killer’s inner workings themselves. He even had some worlds build him whole warships using their orbital docks.
Yet, despite all this misery, Abaddon did not unleash his war machines upon these worlds; his vessels did not pulverise cities, nor did his armies destroy any more than a few million people on the surface of each world. Once sated, his fleet hastily fled, warnig that his sorcerers would be able to tell if the world they had attacked had sent for help; he promised to return and destroy them all if they gave him up to his pursuers.
This perculiar method meant the Despoiler could milk a great swathe of worlds without arousing unwanted attention.
The reason for this secrecy was because he was being hunted. Kor Phaeron was heading for the Vulkan Imperial border, at the head of a grand armada of chaos warships from across the Western Chaos Imperium, along with all manner of daemons and traitors, all desperate to be the ones to earn the glory of finally killing off the Legendary Abaddon.
But Abaddon was building his forces too.
The toppled Chaos Emperor had changed much since his fall from diabolical grace. He sat upon a simple throne at the heart of the Planet Killer, consumed by constant hate. His hair was unkempt, the infamous topknot was undone and his great mane of black hair was allowed to spill across his shoulder pads and vast, armoured arms. His face was painted in sigils of blood and loathing. He bore the frustrated rage of Khorne, the despair of nurgle, tempered by the dark schemes he planned to topple Lorgar in tzeentch’s name, while he took great pleasure in imagining the horrible mutilation of Erebus and all his kin, a gift of Slannesh.
He brought the few surviving Word bearers he had captured to his throne room, and had them messily dispatched by ravening daemon-worms pressed into their eye sockets and allowed to wriggle through their bodies, slowly melting them from the inside. None of this torture, or the gory duels and heinous sculptures brought to entertain him so much as lifted his dark mood.
As their rampage continued, Abaddon picked up roving bands of Slanneshi marauders and even some Emperor’s Children; remnants of Fulgrim’s failed crusade long ago.
When his force had grown to a fleet of almost a hundred capital ships, and countless smaller escorts and hangers on, his Lieutenants and War Chiefs gathered to debate what was to be their next move. Where would he take his armies? Some argued he should head south to the Segmentum Obscura and demand a truce with the Sorcerer Ahriman. Most scorned this idea as folly, for they all knew Ahriman would use the rubric upon them and use them as pawns in his wars with the Vulkanites and the Tau Exile-Empire. Others suggested he could join his banners in alliance with the Blackheart, and cripple the entire northern rim. Many of the strongest voices in the dank, daemon-infested muster hall suggested they could cross the galaxy and take control of the Hadex Multitude; a disparate group of over a hundred chaotic territories focussed around the Hadex Anomaly and the ruins of the shattered Meta-Empire. All they need do was destroy that hundred-headed Daemon prince which held dominion over that rabble. Yet still, to travel the entire length of the galaxy would have depleted their resources intolerably; leaving them vulnerable to being themselves taken over once they reached the Hadex.
An Astartes named Vultiari (a traitor mark secundus Astartes from an indeterminate Commandery) spoke up then. He suggested that Abaddon’s growing armada did not need to join their banners with any other chaos power, or bend the knee to lesser. He praised him as being the ‘true son’ of Chaos; Abaddon’s fealty to the gods was pure.
“Then why was I not rewarded? Why do I fall, while ‘lesser whelps’ rise in power and prestige? Why should I choose to relinquish the glory of an Imperial dominion?” Abaddon responded, his face a mask of loathing and ancient evil.
Vultiari chose his next words carefully.
“For a chaos Imperium was not the will of the gods. The Glorious Four desire disorder and anarchy. You are their champion. You despoil, you need not build. You ravage, you need not cultivate. You are destined to destroy the Imperiums of chaos my Lord, for you are Abaddon the Despoiler, and you shall see the galaxy burn!”
Abaddon rose from his throne, and seized his Second in the talon of Horus. He pulled the Astartes close, and grinned at him with all the warmth of a shark’s soulless grimace. “That is the correct answer boy.”
Thus, Abaddon’s armada began to make plans to make war upon the Eastern Chaos Imperium; they reasoned that once Huron’s realm was ravaged, they would have enough resources to engage the Vulkan Imperium and smash that in turn.
However, even as their fleet dreamed of galactic war, they were themselves being hunted. Kor Phaeron crossed over into Vulkan space roughly two years after Abaddon. His fleet was a veritable behemoth, easily twice the size of the Despoiler’s own force, not including the vassal fleets that followed this huge armada like pilot fish. This meant that the fleet moved more slowly, as it had to continually wait for all elements of its fleet to assemble between warp translations. Yet, inexorable as the tide, Kor Phaeron’s behemoth was closing on Abaddon. His daemonic allies had the Despoiler’s scent and chase dhim remorselessly. Wishing to prevent Abaddon going to ground, Kor Phaeron mercilessly attacked and massacred the worlds Abaddon had previously taken supplies from. Kor Phaeron unleashed (almost literal) hell upon these worlds; turning their skies into warp-swathed nightmares, and turning their seas into oceans of acidic bile as his vessels destroyed cities and butchered billions. This plan however drew attention to the chaos invaders. Kor phaeron’s flagship was the stolen Vengeful Spirit. Thus, when reports from psyker-choirs began to report these attacks to the local Commandery Fortress Monasteries, the space marine commanders believed they had finally started to gain a rough location for the infamous Black Legionnaire.
Abaddon could not deny Kor Phaeron’s obvious challenge. Though Abaddon cared little for honour, if he fled from the Black Cardinal of the Word Bearers, he would lose the fearful obedience of his minions, and lose any hope of gathering further allies. Who would follow a cowering lord who fled from a Legion which had ocne bent the knee to him? Thus, Abaddon determined to meet Kor Phaeron’s fleet in battle. Abaddon was banking upon the Planet Killer’s primary armament being enough to swing the engagement in his favour. In the dead system of Qualtha, amidst the toppled ruins of a xenos empire snuffed out by soulless necron omnicide, the despoiler broke from the warp, and began to organise his forces. In the system of Qualtha, every planetary body had been pummelled into dust, small asteroids and charged ionic clouds of plasma and gas that drifted in lazy orbit around a dwarf star, alongside the remnants of a fleet mass-scattered by the Dragon’s necrons. The naval battle taht was to take place was forever known as ‘The Battle of Qualthan Dust’, one of the largest naval engagements int he entire history of mankind.
The first stage of the battle occurred before the cardinal’s fleet even translated into the system. Balefire and twisted monsters began to form inside the Planet Killer’s central weapon array. The gigantic warp cannon’s bonded daemons came under attack by rival daemons. The daemons of the soul forge had allied with Kor Phaeron, and were assaulting the very bonds taht held the Planet Killer’s weapon together. Vast soul grinders and obliterators began to emerge fromt he walls themselves, ripping apart ritual circles and devouring sorcerers and cultists whole in their ravenous daemonic hunger. Furiously, Abaddon ordered the ship purged of hostile daemons. His own witchs and shadowy daemonic patrons summoned their own daemons to battle the minions of Valchocht the Maker. Meanwhile, Grenthos of the Black Legion, an imposing Exalted Champion well on the way to becoming one of Khorne’s Princes, led a force of Possessed Marines intot he depths to clear out the rampaging enemy. The battle raged for almost a day, but by the battle’s end, the Maker’s creatures were banished and broken. Yet, the damage was done; the Planet Killer’s weapon was temporarily offline as his sorcerers had to remake the ritual stone circles and reconsecrate the hellish device with human blood and human misery. This would take time. Time Abaddon now lacked, as Kor Phaeron’s armada gradually emerged from the warp like a tidal surge of madness. Then, ponderously, the colossal fleet began to order themselves for battle.
Both fleets remained at maximum sensor range, while their allied daemons tentatively probed one another’s defences. Kor phaeron’s dameons were empowered and flushed with armoured scales of pride, while Abaddon’s burned with a desperate black hate that flared from their nostrils and fetid, unreal maws. Psychic duels flashed between the two fleets; invisible yet lethal. Psykers on both sides began to fall, flesh peeling or blood boiling whenever their enemies gained the upper hand.
Abaddon’s own rune-encrusted armour glared a startling white it was claimed, as it deflected repeated psychic attempts to crush his mind and flay his flesh. Even Kor phaeron’s withered features showed strain, as his sorcerous enchantments and learned techniques were stretched.
Abaddon’s fleet was the first to engage as their enemy closed upon them. Streamers of silent fire erupted between the massed fleets, ruby columns of lance fire joining the steady flaring of main batteries unleashing hellfire. Each fleet soon split up into different formations, millions of kilometres apart, attacking one another from every angle possible in the three dimensional arena of void space.
Truly, the real Battle of Qualthan Dust had finally begun.
One may imagine a naval battle to be a frantic, demented affair, where captains darted between their foes like sailing ships passing at sea, gutting each other with murderously close broadsides. In fact, a naval battle of the size and scale of the Qualthan Dust engagement was a tense yet well-ordered affair, where ships that could barely even make one another rout against the starry void would trade gigatons of ordnance and battery fire across unfathomably long distances; often, the only sign of victory being a slight flare in the light of the distant vessel, and a bleeping ‘ship kill’ confirmation from a cogitator or whisper-daemon. The most difficult and challenging aspect of a naval war was simply keeping track of the ships both you and your enemy had at any given moment, and where they were precisely in the colossal engagement volume, and what precise firing vectors they could conceivably achieve without striking one of their own vessels.
This said, there were a few instances when ships closed to within six thousand kilometres and closer; the ship ‘Death’s Tusk’, a World Eater cruiser, rammed through the starboard side of a Black legion vessel, the Artistry of Death. Though kost of the Berserkers were killed on impact, the survivors battled with the Legionnaires and their Despoiled ratings until both sides suffocated due to the lack of air, which had vented out during the crash.
As the capital ships traded long distance broadsides, the escorts rushed in between them like protective nursemaids, intercepting torpedoes and broadsides, while launching attacks of their own, as well as killing the vast swarms of Hell talons and other fighter craft, who in turn sought out the thousands upon thousands of bombers and assault boats that attempted to cripple unwary capital ships. Across the two fleets, hundreds of boarding actions involving whole armies clashing between the decks of ships raged, led respectively by Astartes and other, altogether less human beasts. These roving, miniature wars lasted for hours upon hours, as boarders and the security teams opposing them chased each other through the lightless bowels and gun decks of the ships, exchanging fire and blood in desperate struggles in the airless, sightless void.
Amidst the calmly ordered carnage of the capital ships, the two flagships, the vengeful Spirit and the Planet Killer, sought each other out across the light minutes of space between them. While the Planet Killer was by far the more massive of the two void-swimming leviathans, with its primary weapon system offline, the Vengeful Spirit outgunned the wallowing giant. Nevertheless, the Planet Killer was no helpless target, and the two vessels battered against the shields of their foe. Both ships moved through the void with the sloth borne of grandeur, sliding with dark majesty through space as they sought the optimal firing solutions that would grant them victory. Abaddon knew the vengeful spirit, and despite all the blows Kor Phaeron’s vessel inflicted upon him, he could hurt the Vengeful Spirit far more with less ordnance. It seemed as if the Planet Killer might take control of the duel.
Then, the cruisers Banefire and Caustik entered the fray like opportunistic wolves. They raked the rear of the Planet Killer with their dorsal batteries,a nd unleashed a storm of boarding torpedoes and dreadclaws, injecting elite strike teams into the flagship’s unprotected aft sections. Vultiari and the beast Grenthos eagerly took up arms and marshalled the frenzied Black Legion that still lived, and led them into battle with the Word Bearer boarders.
Grenthos gave but one order to his Legionnaires.
“Murder them!”
It is said that, while the battle raged, Abaddona nd Kor Phaeron spoke to one another, through either vox or some othe,r blasphemous means. They cursed and chided, mocked and prattled; two ancient veterans of a war of hate long forgotten. Kor Phaeron, ever the firebrand preacher, tried to convert Abaddon even then. He claimed that if Abaddon merely pretended to bend the knee, he could return to the Western Imperium, and together, they could topple Lorgar. Abaddon saw through Phaeron’s lies and created deceits and promises of his own. Three ships now pounded the Planet Killer from all sides, and soon its shields were battered down, and deck by deck, fires raged, and the enslaved innocents within burned, screaming as their meat was cooked.
But Abaddon was clever, and he had picked Qualtha to be his battlefield for a very specific reason. Before he had exited the warp, he had murdered his chief Seer, the blind serpent Alkazzar. He had strangled the sorcerer slowly, and let the man’s dying soul leech from his body into the warp like some foul beacon. Not only had it alerted Kor Phaeron to his location, but it had also alerted those other warriors who hunted him, and emblazoned his face on the dying mind of Alkazzar, so taht all who saw it knew who was killing him...
Soon, Kor Phaeron’s Captains reported that another fleet had entered the system. It was the fleet of the Dorn’s Revenant, led by their Lord Commander from the battle barge, Resplendent. He had brought with him elements from dozens of colony worlds taht Abaddon and Kor Phaeron had befouled; each ship’s captain hungry for vengeance. Now the Battle of Qualthan Dust entered its final, confused phase, as a three way duel erupted between the enemy fleets. The fleet action raged for two days, across half a light year of Qualthan space. The Planet Killer broke from the battle with the Vengeful Spirit and was harried by Banefire and Caustik as it made a close orbit of the Qualthan sun. Yet, when they finally closed upon the Planet Killer, its reply to their broadsides was terrifying. The doomsday cannon fired at them, with three percent of its total firepower. Caustik was struck first, and simply ceased to be. The beam of warpfire continued and struck Banefire amidships. It shattered like glass, before a secondary explosion rippled out from it like a newborn sibling for the Qualthan star. Both enemy fleets saw this display, and they scrambled to take down the Planet Killer. However, several of Kor Phaeron’s own allied vessels turned upon his fleet. They knew the tide was turning and wished to be on the winning side.
Soon, the Vengeful Spirit, mauled after a duel with the Resplendent, turned about to face the Planet Killer. It saught to bring it down before it could charge another shot. The weapon built in power, driving a thousand crew members utterly mad. Vengeful Spirit increased speed, accelerating towards the Planet Killer recklessly.
“You will not kill me,” Kor Phaeron explained, with the certainty of the eternal fanatic. “I cannot die. You shall see. The Gods shall pluck me from danger. I am too valuable. But if this ship is to die, it is fitting it takes you to the warp with it!”
“What makes you think you shall live?” Abaddon replied coldly to his enemy’s words.
“Faith,” purred Kor Phaeron ecstatically.
Abaddon had no fear. “Faith must always... be tested.”
The Planet Killer fired, striking the Vengeful Spirit seven seconds later. The blast was glorious, rendered oddly beautiful in its silence. For several minutes, the glare utterly blinded anyone who looked upon it, and baffled any sensors with the sheer level of output. Even daemon eyes recoiled from the warp-tainted blastwave.
Then, through the rolling banks of plasma, the Planet Killer emerged, like some legendary monster breaching the surface of the sea. Its prow was burning, but the ship seemed unharmed. The Dorn Revenants broke off their attack, and fled for the edge of the system; they could not face both enemy fleets now. Not when the Planet Killer was unopposed. They vowed to return with greater numbers, to finish Abaddon off once and for all.
The remainder of Phaeron’s Captains hastily voxed oaths of fealty to Abaddon then; those who refused were turned on by their capricious allies. The fleet was united under an uneasy truce, brokered by the nightmare power of the despoiler’s flagship.
If only they had known it was a bluff. Abaddon’s main weapon had been damaged by the vaporization of the Vengeful Spirit. Inside, the ship was in a terrible shape; half the crew were dead, most systems were at least partially damaged, and Abaddon himself was gravely wounded by the impact of the vengeful Spirit’s ruins upon his throne room. Nevertheless, Abaddon now had a fleet to truly be reckoned with. His next target was clear.
Huron Blackheart would fall, and his Imperium alongside him.