The Great Sowing

This article is about a battle in the /tg/ Heresy project, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40k universe.

The Great Sowing
Date	M31
Scale	Subsector
Theatre	Durnovarian Subsector
Status	Decisive Chaos victory
Belligerents
Galen's Warhost	Durnovarian Subsector
Commanders and Leaders
Nikephoros Galen Tribulus Bercilak The Eyedrinker Mahmud Rubin Velzevul Quint	Governor-General Methuselah Cleveland General Raphael de Rais Matthew Henker Cunedagius Tremayne Waclaw Kula
Strength
Green Men Ghastly Talons The Ifrits The Myrmidons	Durnovarian Subsector self-defence forces Ciban Chasseurs, 88th Regiment Imperial Hangmen Tin Fists Silver Cataphracts
Losses
The Ifrits heavily damaged The Myrmidons heavily damaged	Ciban Chasseuers regiment wiped out Imperial Hangmen wiped out Tin Fists crippled
Outcome
Durnovarian Subsector lost Nikephoros Galen ascended to Daemonhood

When the Ruinous Powers demanded from Galen to prove his worth to them, it wasn't long before he came up with a grandiose plan. He endeavoured to turn Durnovarian subsector, an infamously polluted major industrial hub in Segmentum Obscurus, into a verdant paradise, which in his lexicon meant a collection of noxious Death Worlds. To these ends, he mobilised the entirety of his forces, as well as two thrall warbands loyal to him - the Ghastly Talons, a coven of the Black Augurs, and the Ifrits, a splinter of the Sons of Fire. Feeling that even this wasn't enough, he enlisted the assistance of the Myrmidons, a mercenary warband comprised of lobotomised Space Marines controlled through microchips implanted into their brains. Satisfied with the composition of his host, he left the Eye of Terror and headed for the doomed Durnovarian subsector.

The doom that came to Kohlenpott

The Industrial World Kohlenpott was the first one to fall to the Green Men. Once a feudal world controlled by petty landowners called Junkers, it had long since been turned into an industrial powerhouse to support the forces of the Great Crusade with equipment. The once green planet had gradually been transformed by industrial pollution into a soot-encrusted lifeless orb basking in oceans of smog. Only possessing a skeleton planetary defence force, Kohlenpott was definitely not prepared for an invasion of an entire Space Marine warband. Within days all of its major cities fell to the invaders with barely any resistance at all. The Junkers tried to bargain with the Green Men, offering to swear fealty to the Ruinous Powers and start producing equipment for the Traitor Legions. But, to their woe, Galen wan't interested in anything these pathetic humans had to offer. At his orders, the entire population of the planet was corralled to the biggest cities and exterminated with toxic gas. Their corpses were left to rot for some time, then collected by the Green Men's transports and spread over the planet's lifeless soil to be used as a fertiliser. It was in the top soil created by these rotting corpses that Galen planted the first seeds of Kohlenpott's future forests. With the assistance of Alraun's sorcery, the trees grew with an unnatural speed, and just a week after the invasion, the planet was entirely covered in jungles.

On receiving the news of the Green Men resurfacing near the Eye of Terror, the Void Angels expressed a strong desire to face them again and finish what they had started on Rai. Unfortunately, at the moment they were too occupied fighting WAAAGH! The Beast, and couldn't divert any of their attention to this new threat. The 88th regiment of Ciban Chasseurs, the Montagnards, departed to Duronovaria to avenge the death of Antonelle in their stead. Understanding the gravity of the threat posed by Galen's warhost, Administratum saw fit to dispatch two Space Marine chapters to aid the Imperial Guard in the defence of the subsector. After a brief analysis of the situation, Imperial Hangmen and Tin Fists were selected for the task, successors of the Entombed and the Thunder Kings respectively.

The pieces were all in place, and the game was ready to start.

Green Men vs Ciban Chasseurs

"I see Diallo sent his lapdogs to fight his battles for him! The coward is clearly too scared to face me again. Very well, my children, let us show him that his fears were not ungrounded."

-Nikephoros Galen, after landing on Walsall.

Ciban Chasseurs were the first of the Imperial forces to arrive in Durnovarian subsector. After some deliberation, they chose the Forge World Walsall, also known as the Black Globe, as their arena for facing off against the Green Men. Nobody was quite sure was how this world got its nickname: some said it was because of the dark skin colour of its inhabitants, some would argue the black robes of local techpriests were the cause. Most, however, would agree that it referred to the endless night the planet was shrouded in, all because the light of its sun had long since been unable to penetrate the thick layer of exhaust fumes Walsall's troposphere turned into. The Montagnards, however, cared little for the semantics. They quickly evacuated the world's entire population and started preparing for battle with their hated foe. Unfortunately, they didn't get much time for preparations, as the Green Men arrived almost as soon as the last shuttle carrying refugees left the planet.

Initially, the Green Men didn't take their opponents seriously. However, first skirmishes showed them that the Ciban Chasseurs were not an opponent to be underestimated. With their constant manoeuvring and change of tactics, they often left their opponents befuddled, trying to figure out where the enemy fire came from. General Raphael de Rais, commander of the 88th Regiment, understood perfectly well that Space Marines were not an enemy his men could go toe-to-toe with. To get the most out of his advantage in mobility, he employed hit-and-run tactics that allowed his men to pick the enemy soldiers out one by one. To his credit, it wasn't long before Bercilak figured out the enemy strategy and asked Alraun to counteract it by turning the battlefield into difficult terrain. The warband's druids quickly assembled a stone circle and performed a ritual that made thickets of cacti sprout all across the great wasteland where the principal battle took place. This sudden development slowed the Montagnards down enough for the Green Men to be able to catch up with them and destroy most of their small mobile squads.

Seeing the spectacular failure of his strategy, de Rais ordered retreat. A number of smaller battles between the two forces took place on Walsall, in each one of which the general tried out a new strategy against the Green Men, yet none of them proved very effective. Eventually, he decided to pit his regiment's priceless Baneblade superheavy tank against the enemy in a last ditch effort to turn the tables on them. Initially, his decision paid out, with the tank slaughtering scores of Space Marines who had nothing to counter its awesome power with. It took Bercilak's personal interference to lure the tank onto a cleverly placed seed mine. The tank's tracks cracked open the compartment containing several extremely valuable turboseeds, which on their contact with the soil took root and grew to full-sized trees with startling speed right under the Baneblade, flipping it over in process. With their nemesis weapon neutralised, general de Rais attempted to retreat once again and evacuate his forces from the planet, yet this time he was too slow. The Green Men managed to encircle the Guardsmen and slaughtered them to a man. The general, feeling personal responsibility for this crushing defeat, put a bullet through his head before the vile plantmen got to him.

Ghastly Talons vs Imperial Hangmen

Although they personally took care of Ciban Chasseurs, the Green Men had no intention of wasting their precious time on the Successor Chapters sent after them. Instead, they sent their thrall warbands to take care of this minor distraction while they were busy healing the scarred industrial worlds of Durnovarian Subsector. The Ghastly Talons were less than enthusiastic about this order. Their warlocks were seriously discussing the possibility of escaping the sector altogether while their masters were too occupied with their crazy plans. Yet before they could come to an agreement, the Imperial forces made the decision for them by cutting off their route of escape. Cursing the cruel destiny, the Ghastly Talons made a landing on the closest inhabited planet, getting ready to punish the Loyalists for snatching their long-awaited freedom from under their noses.

Their escape was intercepted by a Second Founding Chapter by the name of Imperial Hangmen. These successors of the Entombed saw themselves less as soldiers and more as executioners, sent by the Emperor to judge his enemies, sentence them and carry the sentences out. Unsettlingly merciless and cruel to the point of sadism, they always made a point of exterminating their enemies to a man, even if that meant taking some innocent lives. Then again, innocence was an oxymoron to them, for they saw no man as free of guilt, not even themselves. Therefore, they were always fully prepared to die for their sins in a battle with the Emperor's foes, and always wore nooses around their necks to signify their resignation to impending death. Chainaxes that they wielded in place of chainswords and their habit of suspending gibbets with hanged prisoners from their heavy vehicles only added to their morbid image.

Planet Nephelokokkygia, upon which they were to face the Ghost Talons, was a Feral World, which meant a lack of pollution so typical of Durnovarian Subsector. Nevertheless, it was hardly more pleasant than its toxic Industrial Worlds. Due to a heavy concentration of volcanic gases in the planet's lowlands, its only regions that could sustain life were the peaks of its spire-like mountains, towering above the wreathing clouds of toxic smoke. Millennia ago the human colonists of the Dark Age of Technology connected these peaks with colossal viaducts wide as rivers; unfortunately, most of those fell into a state of dire disrepair during the Age of Strife, and it was these rickety bridges that the fighting between the Imperial Hangmen and the Ghastly Talons was to take place atop.

When the Imperial Hangmen made a landing on Nephelokokkygia, they found themselves across a crumbling viaduct from the foe. Wasting no time on preparations, they immediately started advancing towards the enemy positions, carefully avoiding the holes in the ancient construction. Ghastly Talons showered the enemy with a hail of bolts from their redoubts at the other end of the viaduct, but the skilful usage of combat shields by the Imperial Hangmen ensured that they managed to advance under enemy fire with minimal casualties. When the Loyalists began to close on their positions, the Traitors sent a squad of close combat specialists to slow them down. This was a miscalculation on their part, as the Imperial Hangmen made short work of their assailants, killing most of them and incapacitating the rest. Nevertheless, this gave the Ghastly Talons enough time to quickly cross another bridge in their Rhinos and avoid direct confrontation with their pursuers for the time being.

The viaduct that separated the two forces now was far more decrepit than the one Imperial Hangmen had just crossed, as it swayed visibly in the planet's stormy wind. The Chapter's commanders recognised that its pylons could probably be destroyed by the concentrated fire of Ghastly Talons' heavy weapon squads, and so they avoided advancing across it. Instead, they decided to provoke the enemy into advancing first. Using the beams and ropes that they always carried with them for such cases, they built massive gallows visible the other side of the bridge. Then, they stripped their prisoners naked, injected them in the necks with muscle relaxants and executed them by short drop hanging. As they were writhing at the ends of the ropes, the Chapter's Chaplain disembowelled each one of them with a butcher knife. As if this wasn't enough, the Imperial Hangmen amplified the agonised cries of their victims via vox equipment, making sure that the Traitors on the other side of the bridge hear every scream of their dying brethren.

This was quite enough for the Ghastly Talons. Seemingly abandoning their trademark caution bordering with cowardice, they started advancing across the rickety viaduct. With grim contentment, the Imperial Hangmen grabbed their chainaxes and headed towards them. They crossed their weapons in the middle of the bridge and a bloody skirmish broke out. It was then that the Eyedrinker, leader of the Ghastly Talons, revealed his hand. At the sign of his slight grin, the warband's warlocks broke the spell shrouding the battle brothers fighting on the bridge in an illusion. The backpacks on their backs turned into puffs of smoke, revealing a shocking twist: it turned out that they were Warp Talons equipped with jump packs all along. With malevolent cackling they activated their jump devices, flying back to their positions on the solid ground and leaving the Imperial Hangmen alone in the middle of the decrepit viaduct. The very moment the Warp Talons made their landing, the Havocs who had been waiting at the sides of the bridge the whole time, opened concentrated fire at the bridges's pylons. It only took a couple of volleys to make them crumble and send the entire structure with the Space Marines trapped upon it into the scorching clouds below.

But the worst was yet to come. The Eyedrinker used the simultaneous deaths of tens of Imperial Hangmen as a sacrifice to the Ruinous Powers to summon a powerful Warp entity into the material world. Instead of infusing it into a single host, he instead spread its essence evenly across hundreds of hosts - the birds of Nephelokokkygia. An immense flock of birds began gathering in the skies over the collapsed bridge, covering the sun with their mass of bodies. Then this flock started taking on a vaguely humanoid shape, which grew less and less vague until a colossus made of birds floated in the air where the bridge once was. At the Eyedrinker's nod, the creature let out a nightmarish shout composed of hundreds of brids screeches, and brought down its fist upon the remaining Imperial Hangmen.

The majority of the Chapter was brutally slain on this dark day. The Ghastly Talons expected them to retreat from the plant at any moment, but the grim Space Marines decided to stay, feeling that this was the time for them to pay for the crimes they committed in service to the Emperor. And so, they refused to flee even as the Traitors were slowly but steadily slaughtering what little remained of their Chapter. Their last wish was to be remembered as unyielding warriors. The Eyedrinker remembered them as the stupidest men he has ever met.

The Myrmidons vs Tin Fists

Unlike the Ghastly Talons, the Myrmidons had no problems with drawing enemy attention away from the Green Men - after all, this was what they were paid to do. Another reason for their apparent recklessness was that their warband was essentially comprised of less than twenty members, all of whom were Techmarines and Apothecaries and hardly ever personally took to the battlefield. Instead, they used throngs of lobotomised Space Marines controlled via brain implants as their cannon fodder. They were always eager to test their mettle against fellow superhumans, for every battle brought them reinforcements instead of losses. Instead of killing their foes, they preferred to incapacitate them via sleeping gas and infrasound emitters in order to capture them and perform brain surgery on them later.

As soon as the Tin Fists arrived in Durnovarian Subsector, the Myrmidons greedily set their eyes on them. Indeed, their formidable stature made them a coveted bounty for the Cerebriurges of this insidious warband. Hailing from the misty Island World of Cornubia, the Tin Fists were colloquially known as the Giants due to a favourable mutation of their geneseed that made them grow well beyond the usual Space Marine size. Their Chapter Master, Cunedagius Tremayne, even rivalled the mighty Custodes with the breadth of his build. Although their giant size was in many ways a blessing, especially for the close combat specialists, it was also a curse, as it meant that almost all of their standard issue equipment had to be altered by their Techmarines before they could use it. By Adeptus Terra's permission, they fielded not one, but three full Companies of Terminators, armed almost exclusively with Thunder Hammers. All of these factors ensured that the Tin Fists would not be an easy prey for the scalpels of the Cerebriurges.

The two forces met on the great plains of Kuzbass, a typical Durnovarian Forge World with the sky choking with exhaust fumes and shallow creeks gagging with dross. Wishing to test the enemy's weak points, the Cerebriurges unleashed ranks upon ranks of their drooling automatons against them. Pelted by swarms of bolts, Tin Fists found it difficult to advance, especially since the open nature of the battlefield provided them with little to no cover. Eventually, the Chapter's numerous Terminators got close enough to the enemy positions to teleport right into their midst, mercilessly slaughtering the foe. It was then that the Cerebriurges activated their most diabolical inventions, the hypnoprojectors. Powerful infrasonic emitters tuned to resonate with the neurons of human brain, they jumbled the thoughts of their victims, caused intensive hallucinations and splitting headache. Devoid of real intelligence, the Myrmidons were completely impervious to these effects, and, although they still felt the excruciating migraine caused by the infrasound, they could not respond to it since they had no control over their bodies. The Terminators, however, felt the full brunt of its powers. Slowly losing their wits and dragged into a world of nightmarish hallucinations, the mighty warriors were easily overpowered by the Myrmidons and dragged to the laboratories of their sadistic masters.

Although the losses sustained by the Myrmidons were significant, the Cerebriurges still considered them acceptable as long as they could trade their broken war toys for the mighty giants of Cornubia. The Tin Fists, on the contrary, were devastated by the loss of several Terminator squads in the very first battle. After a meticulous study of the battle report, Cunedagius Tremayne came to the conclusion that further combat operations were pointless until they found a way to neutralise the hypnoprojectors. Unfortunately, the Techmarines of his Chapter made it clear that they could not possibly develop a countermeasure until they had a full understanding of how the diabolical machine works. To these ends, they needed a working hypnoprojector, which brought Tremayne back to where he started. After a long meditation, the Chapter Master finally found a solution, crude though it was. Before putting on his power armour, he stuck a knife into his hip, so that he could concentrate on the constant pain caused by it to fight the effects of the hypnoprojectors. The battle brothers who went with him followed his example.

The ensuing battle proved Tremayne's calculations correct. Although many Tin Fists succumbed to the mind-flaying broadcasts anyway, most Space Marines could keep their thoughts clear by focusing on the pain, although their fighting capabilities were vastly diminished nonetheless. Suffering heavy losses, they engaged the enemy in close combat, all the while searching for the infrasonic emitters. Eventually, Tremayne's command squad managed to cut their way to one of the enemy Rhinos on which the hypnoprojectors were mounted, capture it and drive it all the way back to their encampment, dodging fierce enemy fire on the way. But relentless enemy assaults were hardly their principle problem, as they were forced to endure the baneful transmissions of the infrasonic emitter for the whole duration of their ride back. Some of them had their brains squashed to a pulp and squeezed from their eyes and ears like minced meat from a grinder. Some succumbed to murderous madness and attacked their comrades, mistaking them for nightmarish monsters. When the Rhino arrived at the Tin Fists' encampment, only Tremayne emerged from it, and even he collapsed from exhaustion after making just a few steps.

The Cerebriurges were furious. They could never allow the hounds of the Corpse Emperor to lay their dirty hands on their marvels of engineering, for that would inevitably mean eventual development of countermeasures. And so, amassing all of the forces at their disposal, they undertook a full-scale assault on the enemy positions. Tremayne understood that victory was not necessarily his goal: his forces just needed to buy the Techmarines enough time to reverse-engineer the hypnoprojector and find a way to neutralise its transmissions. Under his supervision, the Tin Fists fortified their camp with numerous trenches and redoubts, getting ready for a siege. They managed to successfully repel the first few waves of Myrmidons the Cerebriurges sent against them, and their Techmarines got within reach of cracking the enigma of hypnoprojectors. But the tables turned quickly when the Cerebriurges decided to change tactics and send their own brainwashed battle brothers against the Tin Fists. The sight of their close friends and comrades marching against them with glassy, lifeless eyes, gaping mouths and slobber dripping from their tongues had a devastating effect on the Giants of Cornubia. Seizing this advantage, the Myrmidons managed to breach the enemy fortifications. The Tin Fists' Techmarines were already finishing the device that would neutralise the infrasound transmissions when they were approached from behind and mercilessly slaughtered by the Myrmidons.

Seeing the battle as hopelessly lost, Tremayne ordered a hasty evacuation from the planet. And although their retreat was fairly successful, the Tin Fists never managed to recover from the crippling losses they sustained on Kuzbass. It wasn't long before their Chapter was disbanded altogether by the Imperial authorities.

The Ifrits vs Silver Cataphracts

"ARRRRRGHBURGLEMURGLEBURGLEMURGLE!!!"

-Ali Busman, on entering the Land Raider

The spectacular failure of an Imperial Guard regiment and two Space Marine chapters forced Administratum to reassess the threat the Green Men posed to the Imperium. Although Durnovarian Subsector was already as good as lost, many lords feared that Galen wouldn't stop at conquering it. They needed a way to put an end to his campaign of terror for good, and to these ends they chose a Chapter with a reputation for getting things done: the Silver Cataphracts. With their characteristic grumbling about Administratum incompetents pitting them against a mere warband, the sons of Alexandri set course for Durnovaria.

Their first clash with the enemy forces in the subsector was bound to be spectacular, for it was the Ifrits they were facing off against. While Silver Cataphracts had a well-deserved reputation for stopping the enemy whatever the cost, the Ifrits were infamous for being completely unstoppable, no matter the circumstances. On several documented occasions, their Berzerkers kept fighting for several minutes with their heads severed, and it was a popular joke amongst the Ghastly Talons that even if you vaporised an Ifrit's body with a meltagun, his head would still keep rolling at you with a chainaxe clenched in its teeth. Although they were numerically inferior to the Silver Cataphracts and possessed virtually no vehicles due to their tendency to smash the controls in random bouts of rage, they were still eager to face this challenge, even if it were to be their last.

Although the sons of Rosskar initially considered this foe a minor obstacle on their way to the Green Men, their first confrontation on the glacier world of Digranes taught them not to underestimate these reckless warriors. Employing their usual tactics, they sent a throng of tanks against the Ifrits in a bid to quickly vanquish the enemy and move on with the subsector's cleansing. The tank drivers laughed as they saw a disorganised horde of Traitor marines running at them, swinging their chainaxes and shouting incomprehensible insults about their mothers.

Although the vast majority of the Ifrits were slain on their way to the tanks, by some inexplicable luck a lone Chaos Marine by the name of Ali Busman somehow managed to get to a Land Raider, completely unnoticed in the clouds of smoke caused by all the explosions across the battlefield. Seeing Space Marines cower in a metal box like a bunch of cowards drove him to a raving fury, and so he started methodically chipping at the armoured goliath with his chainaxe. Understandably, the poor weapon broke fairly soon, but this did little to diminish Ali's anger as he started pounding the tank with his fists. Eventually the strange sounds coming from the outside picked the curiosity of the tank's crew, and so they sent one of their number outside to check what was going on. As soon as he opened the hatch, Busman leaped at him, choked him to death and bit his nose off for a good measure. When their lookout man failed to return, the tank's commander sent another one, already starting to worry about the situation. This one was similarly choked by the Ifrit. Instead of waiting for his enemies to come out one by one, Ali picked the chainsword of one of his victims, jumped into the hatch and quickly slaughtered the rest of the crew.

He was now out of things to kill and his murderlust was far from being satisfied, so he started smashing the interiors of the command deck. Eventually, the damage he had caused made the Machine Spirit go insane. The tank suddenly started driving in circles and shooting in all directions, running over countless Silver Cataphracts and Ifrits as well as randomly destroying two Predators employed by the Loyalists. It took the Silver Cataphracts a bit of time to figure out what the hell was going on, but once they established what exactly had happened, they ordered all of their forces in the vicinity to bring the rogue Land Raider down at any cost. After losing several more lives to its madness, they finally managed to explode the insane tank. Miraculously, Ali Busman was almost completely unharmed by the explosion. Thrown no less than ten metres away by the shockwave, he immediately got back on his feet, picked up an abandoned chainsword and got back in the fray.

Even though this battle was an unexpected success for the Ifrits, they were still pretty much doomed against the far superior Silver Cataphracts. Having seen how powerless vehicles are against the logic-defying Ifrits, the Chapter's force commander decided to field mostly troops against them in their second major confrontation. The warband's leader Mahmud Rubin was delighted by this turn of events and decided to try out a thing he had long been thinking about. At his command, his remaining warriors drenched themselves in prometium and set themselves on fire before charging at the enemy. Impressed by the recklessness of this feat, Khorne temporarily made the Ifrits impervious to the fire that danced on their power armour, making them virtually unstoppable in close combat. Guided by blind fury alone, Rubin and his closest followers somehow managed to cut their way through the enemy ranks right into their rear area, where they found the Thunderhawks used by the Silver Cataphracts for transportation. After a brief discussion, the Ifrits decided that Silver Cataphracts were far too amusing of an opponent to slaughter them entirely on that day. Therefore, they spontaneously decided to flee the planet and give their enemies an opportunity to get their act together before they meet again. They then hijacked the Thunderhawks and rapidly skedaddled, leaving the Silver Cataphracts completely befuddled, not to mention stuck in a frozen desert with no transports.

Although the bizarre showdown with the Ifrits left a bad taste in the mouth of the sons of Alexandri, they were at the very least satisfied that they were now free to move on to their primary objective, the Green Men. Alas, it was too late: considering his mission done, Galen ordered his warhost to withdraw from Durnovarian Subsector and return to the Eye of Terror. But even though the campaign was a disaster for the Imperium, the analysis of the data obtained during it prepared Humanity for much greater incursions that were to soon follow.