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Yo so this is just something I started coming up for for the army I'm building. Let me know if you like any of it. Planning on finishing it off soon. I realise this is probably terrible. I churned it out pretty quickly but just wanted to get something written

The Khaonii Crusade:



Arch-Heretic Marzbān Skaar is a name uttered in fear across the Eastern Fringe. Skaar's origins are largely unknown, he to rose to prominence among the Ironclad renegades when he appeared upon their homeworld of Haishu Prime. A stern, upright figure, swathed in mantle of heavy furs and cloaks, who marched from the parched desert into the war camp, dismantling all who stood in his path. Skaar stalked into the central square of the squalid settlement, tearing the arms and legs from the lead Eltber and declaring himself the Ironclad's new ruler. Skaar took command of the heretical pirates, moulding them into an effective force. He and his warband swept across the planet, subjugating all those who stood against him, slowly uniting the scattered tribes under his banner. The once factious and weak Ironclad now marched as great Legions. Capitalising on such a surplus of manpower, Skaar constructed a void great fleet utilising Haishu's rich and untapped resources of metals. For himself a monstrous king ship: The Cathedral of Hate, part altar, part warship, a ribbed juggernaut of steel and black iron, bristling with heavy guns and sliding through the inky void like a shark.

Skaar and his renamed "Khaonii" Ironclad waged war on the remaining renegade forces in the system, offering them a choice: join or die. The martial and religious discipline instilled by the warlord among his troops bordered on the fanatical and could not be matched by those who opposed them. Soon the warlords eyes turned to a prettier Bauble, the Bastion Stars: the gateway to the wider imperium. At first the Ironclad struck in uncoordinated waves, like hounds snapping at the Imperial bear. Hastily equipped and trained raiders were slaughtered wholesale as they faced the disciplined ranks of the Imperial Guard. On the moon of Koros, Skaar's forces fought the mechanised might of the Koran Warhawks 113th tank regiments while the larger Imperial fleet tore apart the Ironclad's flotilla in orbit, among the glassy red sand dunes the renegades faltered. Poorly supported infantry were torn apart by massed artillery and ordinance before being ground to pulp beneath the treads of a vicious pincer of Leman Russ punisher battle tanks. Skaar himself took to the desert sands, leading a vicious counter attack at the head of his Kataphraktoi bodyguard, tearing deep into the Imperial lines and personally slaying the commander of the Imperial advance Inquisitor Phaeor Gurion. Ultimately the renegades were beaten back from the moon, their infantry core in tatters and the wreckage of their fleet floating silent in the void above. Skaar's kingship broke free of the blockade, reaping a vicious tally of Imperial vessels before fleeing back into the depths of the Khaonii empire. Skaar swore an oath of vengeance against the Imperials, promising to personally flense the Eastern Fringe's Lord General and vowing to rebuild his forces.

For many years the Ironclad lapsed back into piratical warbands, hijacking Imperial trade vessels and isolated ships that strayed too close to the Khaonii region. Fifty years had passed and there was not a word of Marzbān Skaar or his Legions of soldiers. Imperial military presence in the region diminished, barracks and Garrisons were torn down in favour of industry, hardware rusted and decayed with negligence and planetary defence forces disintegrated as the citizens of the Imperium learned to forget. The attack came without warning, boiling out like a fanatical black tide, the Khaonii twisted with hatred and 7 million strong lanced into the heart of Imperial space. Striking first at the Sangnus Cluster, the heretics reaved through the unprepared defenders, butchering the thirty three million populace and piling their corpses up into great pyres that chocked the skies with their smoke. Lord-General Fydore Hemmler, a relatively young man of nervous disposition and commander of the Eastern Fringe summoned the war council on the distant world of Lorxa III, drawing together the scattered remnants of the imperial military into a semblance of a counter offensive. Before the convocation was finished, word reached the council that Skaar had once again invaded Koros, striking with phenomenal speed.

The Koran Warhawks, the once formidable defenders of the Koros system were helpless against the might of the arch-heretic and his Khaonii, this time Skaar was prepared, his flotilla tearing through the Astro-stations and Koros defence fleet before bombarding the desert moon where the defenders had again amassed. When the Ironclad made planetfall they did so in disciplined waves of howling, shrieking barbarians, swamping the mechanised units all the while hammering the Imperials with artillery and heavy shelling. So too had the Ironclad themselves changed, no longer disparate and divided but unified under an unknown black faith. Skaar himself had learned well from his mistakes and soon the last of the defenders were being dragged screaming and bloody to be crucified upon the chassis' of the Khanoii super-heavies. As before the corpses of the slain were piled into pyres to be burned and sacrificed, Skaar's forces would repeat this process again and again on each world they took.

In the beginning of the year 845.999 M41, the Ironclad speartip hammered into the forge world of Xerxasus, finding a heavily entrenched mechanicum force ready to defend it. The magos unleashed powerful, arcane technologies, ravaging the invaders, deploying titans, skitarii and ancient, hulking mermidons to cleanse the planet of the attackers. Skaar's heretek's searched frantically for a way to break the deadlock, for the warlord could ill afford such a delay. Their salvation came in the discovery of a winding system of catacombs, alien in design, a great tomb uncovered by the fierce war on the surface. The man that emerged would change the course of the invasion. Ironclad scouts found the maddened tyrant- Meganus-Hal deep within the tunnels. An ancient, corrupted Magos who plunged the planet into darkness before he was eventually overthrown. Down in the dark, infused with the power of the xeno's ancient technology and sealed away from the world for crimes committed long ago the monster had endured. The Heretek agreed to assist the attackers, and in exchange he would be reinstated as the regent of Xerxasus. Meganus-Hal swiftly directed Skaar's forces to the vaults containing Xerxasus' stores of forbidden bio-weaponry. The mechanicum defenders were confronted by aggressive malware attacks as well as crippling viral strikes that tore swathes from their ranks. The planet swiftly fell and soon became the Khaonii's primary daemon-forge.



With the true Ironclad threat recognised, Imperial Command scrambled to combat their advance. Lord General Hemmler proved himself a weak man, mismanaging the forces under his command and feeding elements of the Astral Militarium piecemeal into the path of the renegades. At every turn Skaar confounded the Imperials, turning their own tactics against them, severing supply lines and spreading their resistance across a broad front. Supported by the dark forges of Xerxasus, the churning tide of darkness overran sector after sector, inexorably advancing towards the desperate Imperial command base on the Throne World of Lorxa III.

The Arch-heretic drew to himself every dark force he could muster, warping their minds to his black creed and binding his forces to share his own fanatical beliefs. Skaar's patron was an unknown entity, a heretical God in the warp. From the frenzied howls of the Khaonii when they attacked, the Imperium listed the diety only as "Legion". Like a moth to a candle the traitor marines of the Howling Coven were drawn to Skaar's banner. The Howling Coven were a warped band of heretics and murderers, little was known by the Imperium of their origin or their intentions, faceless and nameless, they left those worlds unlucky enough to fall into the path of their hungry gaze as charnel houses. Ash drenched ruins of the most vile atrocities and black ceremonies. The warband was bound to Chaos undivided under their lord and master Aralag The Conqueror. Realising the threat this warrior posed to his rule, Skaar tasked his arch-witch and trusted adviser, a psyker of immense power-Amāta Scoria with corrupting Aralag's second in command, Jormanjuer and swaying him to their cause. Although lord Jormanjuer's mind was as hard as steel, Scoria was a mighty sorceress, bombarding his mind with visions of fire and mutilation, sapping at the monsters resolve. When Jormanjuer was at his weakest, the primordial dirty that Skaar so revered poured into his tattered mind, promising the Astarte glory and command of the Howling Coven should he serve in his name.

Against the mind of a god, no mortal's will could triumph, Jormanjuer challenged Aralag for leadership of the Howling Coven, disembowelling the chaos lord and defiling his flesh in his new patrons name. As was their custom, command of the warband now fell to the victorious. Jormanjuer led his soldiers willingly into the zealous worship of Legion, brutally exterminating any who rebelled against their new master, remoulding their armour and livery in praise of their deity. Skaar quickly allied with corrupted Astartes, requesting that they strike out at the nearby forge world of Hael. The battle was swift and decisive, the traitor marines massacred the tech-priests, raising the great forges to the ground and stringing their corpses from the spires of the hive cities.



By 891.999.M41 the renegades had slaughtered their way into the Lorxa system-the base of Imperial operations in the Eastern Fringe, striking simultaneously with the Howling Coven, the Ironclad butchered their way across the three planets. Thirty-three million Ironclad soldiers charged the Imperial palace on the world. Meganus-Hal's triumph, an imperator war titan, annihilated the great adamantium portal of the palace with a single shot of its hellstorm cannon as the attackers flooded in. Brass scorpions stalked the Palace grounds hunting down the defenders while berserk Astartes rampaged through the corridors carving down the pleading officials and officers. Skaar fulfilled his own oath, personally skinning the shrieking Hemmler and adorning the hull of his command tank with the Lord Commanders hide.

Few Imperial ships were able to escape the blockade, the response to the atrocities on the Eastern Fringe was slow and ponderous. Still fewer among the Imperial high Militarium realised the extent of the threat they faced. Eventually ten million imperial troops were diverted to bolster the defenders of the Eastern gate: the system of Erzmas and final defence before the Segmentum Ultima. The Imperial command had once again woefully underestimated the Ironclad, Skaar's forces had swelled to over 40 million troops , fully supported by heavy armour, along with a full titan legion, 1000 traitor marines, 500,000 renegade skitarii of the Dark Mechanicus and an unknown contingent of warp-spawned horrors summoned by Mistress Scoria and her cabal of warlocks and witches. The Imperial defenders turtles their outnumbered forces on the arid world of Erzmas III, arriving only weeks before the chaos forces struck. The planets 6 major hive cities were heavily reinforced, starship grade weaponry bristled from the bunker networks, wide plains of empty ground were churned with land mines, automated anti-infantry turrets and forests of razor wire. The Imperial command realising its desperate situation put out a call to arms, to the nearby home world of the Lambent Blades chapter and to the ecclesiarchal convent of the Order of the Obsidian Rose.



As the Imperial reinforcements converged on the beleaguered system, a roiling warp storm boiled into life, making warp transit dangerous and unpredictable. Chapter Master Sevarin Orpheus of the Lambent blades responded to the call, personally leading the 1st and 3rd company to Erzmas, while the remainder of the chapter followed in their wake attempting to negotiate the turbulent currents. Similarly, Cannoness Selim Aurelian made planetfall with four hundred of her sisters. As the defenders mobilised, the Ironclad forces slaughtered their way across the two planets of Erzmas, abandoned by the Imperium the twelve billion civilians or the two planets were butchered to the last, their bodies piled high in smoking pyres over one-hundred meters high. Now, Arch-Heretic Marzbān Skaar, herald of Legion and Scourge of the Eastern Fringe revealed his true designs. The power of Legion was as never before, swelled with energy and strength from the stolen vitality of twelve billion innocents. Skaar ordered his witches to perform a black ritual of immense power, utilising the psychic resonance of the pyres on every world his forces has conquered as conduits. Drawn to the feast like a shark to blood, the primeval warp god known only as "Legion" had come. The Arch-Witch's ritual had punched a hole through the fragile skin of reality and through this gaping wound a dark force poured into the system.

The tides of the warp churned and lashed, the great warp storm boiled and twisted around the Erzmas system, effectively cutting it off from the wider Imperium, the Lambent Blades reinforcement companies were thrown into disarray. The imperial vessels remaining in the vicinity were assailed by massive daemonic incursions as snarling void predators clawed through shields and chewed through the hulls to feast on the crew within. The dead of Erzmas, heaped in great pyres, smoking and festering in the solar glare of the system's four suns suddenly twitched with unholy animation. A ruinous light gleamed in raw, empty eye sockets, a dark power flowed hungrily through the decaying meat of rent flesh and slack, bloody jaws twitched. With a blasphemous scream that wiped out all communications across the sector, a tainted, orgasmic birth shriek the dead of Erzmas were hurled into the frozen vacuum of space. The corpses converging on a single point, coalescing with dull, wet smacks into a solid sphere. A lunar orb of dead, decaying and writhing flesh. Legion was born and a fourth planet hung in the Erzmas system, a planet of patchwork meat, limps, writhing faces and charred bodies.

The presence of the colossal daemonic god was immediately felt on the surface world. The Astropathic Choir's of Erzmas III died instantly, screaming and choking on their own blood. So large was the daemon's form that it began to exert a significant gravitational force on the surrounding worlds, stripping them of much of their atmosphere's, instantly killing billions of organisms across the three planets and exposing the Imperial forces to the true force of the warp. Like a heretical star the daemon's sudden arrival elicited Terror amid the stationed guardsmen, many went mad, driven berserk by visiting horrors, now exposed to the dark spirits of the empyrean. There were widespread calls to surrender to Skaar's forces even amongst the Imperial command, with a full 3rd of officers supporting the decision. The subsequent purge of command did nothing to improve morale, indeed many guardsmen were corrupted, turning to heretical worships, revering the monster in the sky as a god. On the eve before the Skaar's speartip struck, Legion shed millions of corpses into the sky's above the Imperial lines, the guardsman endured this bombardment watching as the citizens they were sworn to protect rained down in a deluge of sloughing matter. Amidst this turmoil the Ironclad, who whooped and screamed praises till their throats ran with blood, attacked.

The presence of the renegades god greatly empowered them, the black sorceries of Skaar's witches became elemental, tearing down whole hab blocks with a flick of the wrist, sheering open the planets crust with a gesture and burning mechanised columns with a gaze. The monstrosity hanging in the void began to summon its greatest minions, the dead hurled down into the Imperial lines the night before began to reform, the flesh twisting and warping into a form more pleasing to its master. As the Ironclad assaulted, horrifying daemons-amalgamations of warped, torn, charred flesh charged with them, goring through the Imperial forces and pushing them back step by step. Exalted daemons formed of roiling blacked human skin, grasping limbs and fused bone took to the apocalyptic sky on pinions of greasy human fat, their fanged mouths hanging open in bestial joy.

Only where the Lambent Blades fought did the line hold, the guardsman retreating back leaving their dead strewn in carpets of mangled flesh behind them. Chapter Master Orpheus held his terminator company together, a wedge of grey-green adamantium standing against a tide of daemons and heretic. On the West flank of the battlefront, Captain Jago Amaira of the 3rd blasted apart the hordes of slavering meat puppets that were drowning his position. That is when Lord Jormanjuer committed himself to battle, the traitor marines bored through the loyalist defence, gunning down and carving apart the 3rd. Jormanjuer, now known as "The Reaper of Hael" personally beheaded Captain Amaira atop the battlements before all contact with the Western Front was lost.

Chapter Master Orpheus, who had assumed overall command of the Imperial forces voxed a general retreat, the Imperial forces fell back along the bridges to secondary positions across the canal that bordered the hive city. Legion commanded Skaar's forces to massacre the Imperials, the renegades committing fully to the assault, seeking the tear the heart out of the defenders while they retreated. In turn the blasphemous god redoubled the strength of its daemons, driving them forwards with a tainted light billowing from their eyes. As the last Imperial defenders cleared the bridges the Ironclad forces charged across in a filthy tide, unknown to Skaar, Orpheus had ordered demo charges be places along the length of the bridges to deny the foe use of them. As one the demo charges across the frontline were triggered, collapsing the bridges and leaving the Ironclad who had crossed isolated and unsupported, the imperial forces struck tearing apart thousands of of heretics in moments however the assault was far from halted, only delayed.

To be continued...

Added spoilers for more in depth info on each specific character