Story:The Shape Of The Nightmare To Come 50k section01

(now, onto more specific stuff)

Section 01: Cadia, Abaddon and the Western Chaos Imperium

In those dark early decades of the ten thousand years of pain, before hope had completely died, the forces of the Despoiler made their move. As the whole galaxy convulsed in pain and terror, as the Imperium was gutted by the New Devourer's rampages, Abaddon and his 20th Crusade finally, irrevocably, defeated the Imperial blockade around the Eye of Terror. At last, Cadia fell to his forces. Beasts, daemons, madmen and monstrous Astartes swarmed over every world in the systems surrounding the tear in reality. Though pockets of resistance held out for far longer than expected, each Imperial bastion, Inquisitorial fortress and Space Marine Chapter were overcome in those centuries of woe.

The Imperium was finally overreaching itself, and Abaddon punished it for its laxity, carving out a domain spanning nearly an entire segmentum. Yet, of all the myriad worlds Abaddon conquered, none was more precious to him than the great bastion itself: Cadia.

Cadia was a symbol of his ultimate triumph over the High Lords of Terra and his defiance of their feeble attempts to contain him. Though initially the world burned in slaughter and barbarism, eventually Abaddon forged the planet into something else entirely. He repaired the ravaged Kasrs, their formidable fortifications admired by Abaddon. He had learned to grimly respect Cadia, as it had thwarted him again and again for millennia before, and remade Cadia into a dark and twisted reflection of its former glory. The Despoiler wished to show to all that while Chaos was a destroyer and unmaker of things, it could also represent glory and creation.

Vast banners and triumphal arches were built by countless toiling, broken slaves. Statues of great horned Daemon Princes and Chaos Space Marines lined boulevards and avenues. The Imperial Aquila remained in view everywhere, but each was carefully defaced with the sign of the eight-pointed star of Chaos in place of the twin heads of the eagle.

Though most Cadians had been murdered during the first weeks of the invasion, some had survived. Fallen Kasrkin and traitor guardsmen, numbering in the hundreds only, were kept alive by Abaddon. He promised them wondrous gifts and power, but demanded that they create him a force like the Cadian regiments of old; thus the twisted inhabitants of New Cadia were forcibly made to learn the way of war from the ancient remnants of the original Traitor Cadians. Within a century, Abaddon had crafted a new force within his empire. These new 'dark Cadians' named themselves simply 'The Despoiled'. They were elite, brutal, and utterly loyal to Abaddon, who they worshipped as the voice of the Chaos Gods themselves.

Inevitably, following the defeat of the Imperials, the chaotic alliance fractured, as each of the Legions and chaotic war bands fought amongst themselves, each Lord or Daemon Prince desiring dominance over the other equally arrogant and selfish rulers of their rival war bands. Abaddon was no different, and he joined in the fighting, seeking to consolidate his realm of chaotic madness into a new Dark Imperium. Many of his rivals, the Daemonic Primarchs Angron and Perturabo in particular, were disgusted that Abaddon wanted to bring order to the blessed chaos of their current situation. They forged an alliance, and declared war upon Abaddon's Dark Imperium. This declaration was a miscalculation on the two Primarchs' part. This forced other Chaos warbands to choose sides.

The Word Bearers, for the most part, joined Abaddon almost immediately, as their visions of a Dark Imperium fit with his to a certain extent. This brought a considerable number of Marines under Abaddon's control, and the Word Bearers also brought with them truly phenomenally huge hordes of slave-soldiers and cultists. The Black Legion of course sided with Abaddon, as they were to benefit the most from his ascendancy to rule of the Chaotic realm. The other Legions, utterly decentralized by thousands of years of distrust and civil war, were formed into warbands attached to no one ruler in particular. They shifted allegiance between the alliance of Angron and Perturabo and Abaddon's camp almost annually during the conflict, although the majority of warbands followed Abaddon at any given time. Also, where most of the human vassal forces controlled by the Angron and Perturabo alliance were simply rabbles of mutants and cultist scum militia, Abaddon had crafted the vast force of 'The Despoiled', whose numbers were swelled massively by more and more traitor Guardsmen recruits from either Cadia herself or other planets, desperate for some military discipline once more.

In naval terms the Primarch forces seemed outmatched again Abaddon's navy was one third larger than that of Perturabo and Angron, who were still reliant upon the Eye of Terror to sustain them. Abbadon was free to seize and command more of the fallen Imperial vessels beyond the Eye. In addition, the Despoiler still had the Planet Killer and the remaining Blackstone Fortresses under his control.

The war was a long and bloody one, like most wars Chaos fight. Abaddon's forces initially reeled from the violent assault of the two Primarch's furious forces. Attempting to mimick Horus' lightning swift assault upon Terra, Angron sent his forces directly for New Cadia, smashing aside blockades and ravaging worlds in his way. Abaddon, though, was no fool. He had helped Horus formulate this very strategy, and predicted that Angron would be foolish enough to try it. His navy was seemingly absent when Angron's forces made planetfall upon New Cadia; however, they had been waiting. His vast fleet struck at the berserker Primarch's supply vessels. Unaware of the sudden danger until it was too late, they were decimated. Stranded upon New Cadia, Angron nevertheless reaped a massive toll upon the planet, yet, weakened by the pylons and the waves upon waves of human blanks Abaddon forced to charge at the berserker, he eventually succumbed, defeated by a group of the Black Legions' highest ranked chosen combined perfectly with a well timed orbital strike which banished Angron from Cadia.

Angron's seemingly foolish charge into Abaddon's den, however, had been a mere distraction to give Perturabo time to complete his great work. With the aid of several Dark Mechanicus clans, and a sacrifice of a billion souls to the Soul Forge, the Daemon Primarch had completed the Goliath Engine. A vast construction of daemonic iron, coiling semi-organic machinery, cursed runes, injected Obliterator virus and other hateful devices and technologies combined perfectly in the titanic vessel. Supplanting even the Planet Killer in its scale, the daemonic machine soon thundered from Perturabo's forge docks at the head of the largest fleet the he could muster around him. Such was the dark powers crafted within the vessel that it allowed Perturabo to command his battle fleet personally, even beyond the Eye's nourishing anarchy. Over the ravaged Nurgle Daemon World of Thrashing Puxshar, the two vast forces, one serving anarchy and disintegration, the other merely Chaos, clashed for supremacy. Despite the size of Abaddon's fleet, Perturabo was a Primarch, and his naval skill was formidable. One of the Blackstone Fortresses succumbed to the Goliath Engine's massive weapons and crashed into the stagnant Daemon World beneath them.

Thousands of ships clashed together in the sprawling melee in the void. Daemonic gunships dueled with multi-tiered ex-Imperial vessels, and Legion cruisers smashed into other, equally chaotic vessels. Space inside the swirling madness of the Eye was further filled with the myriad exchanges of devastating firepower flung between the disparate fleets. At the height of the battle, the Planet Killer and the Goliath Engine clashed. Broadsides, torpedoes, daemonic fire, putrid tendrils of Warp-stuff; all were cast against the other in the brutal and blistering engagement. Abaddon's flagship even managed to fire its most deadly guns upon the Goliath Engine, but to no avail. In the Eye, the ship was immortal, the living machinery of the ship dragging itself together after each exchange.

Seemingly bested, the Planet Killer fled before the might of the Goliath Engine. Perturabo, eager for final crushing victory, roared off in pursuit. He caught the extremely damaged Planet Killer in the Illirax system. Confident of victory, the Primarch engaged the Planet Killer and the few escorts that had fled with Abaddon. However, when it seemed victory was finally certain, the tables turned once again. Exiting from the warp a month previously, the Terminus Est and attendant fleet of disgusting Nurglish vessels had lingered in the Illirax system on the request of Abaddon. Upon exiting the warp, the Goliath Engine soon came under attack from its eastern quadrant as an entire fleet descended upon it. Later known as the Battle of Bile and Iron, Perturabo's Goliath Engine was outmatched. Abaddon had skillfully drawn him away from the Eye's daemonic sustenance and weakened the vessel-- no longer was it invulnerable. However, it was still formidable, and Typhus lost many vessels in the resulting battle.

As the Engine burned and collapsed around him, Perturabo raged, determined to finish it once and for all. The death of Abaddon would end the war instantly. He ordered his surviving Iron Warriors to teleport with him onto the Planet Killer and engage Abaddon in single combat. However, unlike Horus, Abaddon was no fool. The teleport failed miserably as Abaddon's shields remained firmly up. Perturabo was flung back into the Goliath Engine in time to witness the Planet Killer fire its doomsday cannon. The warp cannon smashed through the crippled machine and detonated its daemonic heart. Screaming in impotent rage, Perturabo was banished back to the warp. Soon after the battle, Typhus withdrew to the Eye, taking his fleet with him. When inquired as to why Typhus had aided Abaddon, he cryptically responded:

"Flowers bloom, flowers rot. Rot is nothing without order to decay."

Deprived of both leaders, Perturabo and Angron's alliance soon collapsed, and the more unified forces of the Dark Imperium triumphed, driving their foes into the deepest depths of the Eye. Following this victory Abaddon expanded his Dark Imperium into an empire of hundreds upon hundreds of worlds around New Cadia. Oddly enough, many worlds submitted to his rule instantly-- even worlds who despised Chaos and still worshipped the Emperor. In a time of such horrendous anarchy, any order was craved by the civilized; ironically, the only thing resembling order in Segmentum Obscurus was Abaddon's Dark Imperium. Former Imperial Worlds hid their signs of worship to the Emperor and openly welcomed The Despoiled regiments, who swiftly took over the main PDF centres. Often, there was little to no opposition to this. This was not a religious matter, but intensely secular. Most governors knew that the only way to survive in the millennium of pain was to be part of something bigger.