3/054/942.M41 – Invasion of Armageddon Secundus

Invasion!

The Snakebites (pictured) and Blood Axes clans spearheaded the assault on Armageddon Prime, but the main strength of Ghazghkull's invasion force moved south...
@ork.bot

Timeline: 3/054/942.M41

Three Ork tribes smash into Armageddon Secundus' border defences, catching the unprepared defenders completely by surprise. Ork armoured formations penetrate deep into Imperial territory. Two tribes go east of the Diablo mountains, while the third goes west. Ill-conceived and poorly co-ordinated counterattacks, ordered by Overlord Stab, are crushed. Shattered Imperial forces fall back to the Diabolus and Stygies rivers, and attempt to form a new defensive line, but are stretched very thin indeed. The warp storms continue.

Battle for Armageddon

The orks arrive – and crash into the ill-prepared Palidus line, west of the Chaeron and Styx rivers. The sheer number of greenskins was far beyond what even the most pessimistic of the Armageddon High Council had feared.

 ***

None so blind

In the scant weeks between invasion and the fall of Armageddon Prime, the High Council of Armageddon was critically divided. At the heart of the government sat the Planetary Governor: the newly-appointed Imperial Commander Overlord Herman Von Strab, who had ascended the throne only recently following the death of his father – an unexpected loss widely whispered to have been brought on by the loss of Herman's two elder brothers.

While not inherently incompetent, Herman Von Strab was megalomaniacal, vindictive and overly-stubborn. Narcissistically sure of his own decisions, he was as dismissive of the orks as he was defiant of his advisors. His actions – and those of the lackeys who had risen alongside him – delayed and undermined what little defensive preparation was made in Armageddon Secundus.

Styx Tertiary: Border Defence forces debark at from a local Cargo-8 variant – vehicles in particular were in short supply.
@helleslager

***

Had we but raised our eyes from the ground, we might better have known what horror approached.

– Hive Governor Osirus of Heslreach

Reports from Armageddon Prime were limited. Alarm over this was widely-spread in private amongst the High Council, but no-one was willing to raise his head over the parapet and defy Von Strab. None were under the illusion that acting directly against the new Planetary Governor's wishes would lead to anything except swift replacement – or worse.

The military arm of government was thus pinned. Fortunately for the Imperium, this did little to inhibit their independent political wing, the Commissariat – and notably an experienced but little-known Commissar by the name of Sebastian Yarrick. In the days prior to his political exile to Hades Hive, Yarrick repeatedly and vociferously petitioned the High Council to begin preparations for an invasion still larger than that faced in Armageddon Prime, winning himself a number of unspoken allies.

If any of the principal Hive Governors – some of whom had reports through private channels that Death Mire, in Armageddon Prime, had fallen – had misgivings with the PDF's decisions, they were apparently reassured by Von Strab's eventual decision to allow General Marlen to mobilise the Ash Waste reservists and establish border defences.

1st Platoon 2nd Company 132nd Ash Waste Reservists; Border Guard at the ill-fated Chaeron Primary.
@johnpaints

***

The Palidus Line

'Late is better than too late.'

General Marius Marlen

Ultimately, the High Council fell in favour of keeping their forces pristine for the approaching Tithe than they were in sending their hard-gathered troops to defend against a foe that might never materialise. 

In truth, the full blame for Armageddon Secundus' lack of preparedness cannot be laid at Von Strab's feet – and nor can it be considered absolute. It is undeniable that many of the High Council were wilfully ignorant in insisting the troubling lack of news from Armageddon Prime as reassuring: a sign of the orks' advance being halted, or simply a result of hampered communications resulting from the increased electromagnetic interference that always foreshadowed the approaching Season of Storms – but it is equally true that there were men and women amongst the Council who were convinced of the danger, and were doing their best to marshal defences. 

General Marlen pictured in his later role as Officer Commanding, 4th Army.
@valhallan.guard/@valhallanguard

While the Steel Legion proper sat idle in these early weeks, General Marlen – an ally of Yarrick and well aware of the greenskins' capacity to surprise – flew from his station in Helsreach to muster a defence line. This would become known as The Palidus Line, as Marlen envisioned defences stemming from the Palidus mountains to either coast. 

Marlen was an ideal candidate for this fortification – ruthless and possibly delusional, he had long suspected that the hive-governors of Armageddon Prime were conspiring to invade their richer neighbour, and for years had planned the defences of his home with obsession driven by paranoia. 

With little but scattered townships, isolated prospector-dens and isolationist Ministorum missions east of the Palidus, Marlen elected to treat the regions eastwards of the the Styx and Chaeron rivers as borderland, creating a dead zone between the jungles and his intended defences. From here, two fronts would be established, running along each of the major rivers south to the Tempest Ocean and north to the Boiling Sea. 

Map of the Palidus Line, oriented to the magnetic pole – in short, with true east at the top. 

The dotted areas on the map above indicate those Marlen would abandon to their own defence, while the lands behind the Styx and Chaeron would be fortified with great bastions and layers of curtain walls and emplacements. These were, history records, never built.

***

Marlen's Men – Border Defence and the Ash Waste Reservists

Stratego-ikons of the Border Defence – and the Hive Defence forces that were assembled under the same template.

With permission to finally enact his dream, but with no wherewithal to conscript the engineering prowess of the Steel Legion and their Mechanicus allies, Marlen was forced to instead draw up the Reservists. These proved a scattered and varied group, ranging from those like the professional mercenaries that mirrored or aped the better-supplied Steel Legion, to mobs of poorly-organised and equipped militia that were little more than press-ganged refugees.

Knowing that the Season of Storms would see the Palidus range erupt dangerously, and become impassable, Marlen elected to divide his forces into six principal Armies; three north of Palidus – Chaeron Primary nearest the mountains, Chaeron Secondary in the centre and Chaeron Tertiary near the coast of the Boiling Sea – and the three Styx garrisons south of the Palidus range, likewise named Primary, Secondary and Tertiary as they neared the coast of the Tempest Ocean. Each of these armies consisted of some 30–50,000 men – a not inconsequential number, but near-meaningless in the face of the orks.

Long-range recon vid:capture
@johnpaints

***

Lacking engineering support and often poorly-trained or simply unmotivated, the grand redoubts and the envisioned grandiose 'wall from sea to sea' were never realised by the Border Forces, who instead laid patchy minefields and cut into the chem-polluted ground to create rudimentary earthworks and bunkers. Some few STC-approved Aegis defence lines were thrown up, but these were scattered and poorly integrated with one another.

Racing against time, Marlen also deputised officers to visit the principal hives and provide structure, advice and support in raising Hive Defence Forces after the same flexible model.

Hastily-dug trenches were often all the defenders could rely upon – trenches and luck. 
@voodoo_mojo

Whatever the claims of his mental balance, Marlen was a careful planner and excellent defensive strategist, and made a good hand of the mediocre cards that Von Strab had dealt him. Time, alas, was against him. Given the strength and impetus of Waa-Ghazghkull, it is unlikely that any static defence could have held for long, let alone turn back what proved to be the single largest gathering of orks in the history of the region, but it is testament to this flawed man's obsession that the orks were – in place – given pause by these ill-equipped, ill-prepared but sometimes surprisingly resourceful defenders.

Lacking armour, private transports like this locally-produced Golem were modified by the resourceful Border Guard to provide mobile heavy weapon support.
@voodoo_mojo

A cry for help – and partial mobilisation

What little news had filtered through from Armageddon Prime since the creation of Marlen's Palidus Line had been authorised painted a fractured picture – a picture incomplete in detail, but absolute in terms of the disaster facing Armageddon Secundus. 

Von Strab arrived from Armageddon Prime in a hastily-commandeered ship, declaring that he was 'relocating his headquarters to Tartarus Hive'. Having jealously blocked communications to the forces of the south, it was with mounting horror that the Military Command patched together the information his lackeys brought to reveal that rumours of lost armies or captured hives were not merely accurate, but understated. Far from isolated losses, all three principal Hives of Armageddon Prime had been captured and every single Regiment sent against their attackers scattered. Von Strab had vaingloriously squandered the armies of the north – even while the armies of Armageddon Secundus sat awaiting general mobilisation.

Just weeks ahead of the invasion, events at the High Council came to a head. Unwilling to stomach more of Von Strab's incompetence, Yarrick issued a distress call using the High Council's own astropathic choir in the hope of piercing the warp storms that still held the Armageddon system hidden in their grasp. For this, he was exiled to Hades hive for the remainder of the war.

'Watch now; let it be seen! I have told you that the orks will never make it across the equatorial jungle; and after thousands perish in the attempt, they will be forced to crawl back – at the height of the Season of Storms! – to huddle in the wastelands of Armageddon Prime. There – there! – I say, will I lead our masterfully marshalled forces to victory! 

Von Strab's Proclamation.3/036/942.M41

General Vladimer Nikita Kurov, Commander of Armageddon, was at last granted leave to order general mobilisation of the Steel Legion. Even at this point, the Hive Governors, fearing disruption to their production, opposed Von Strab's apparent change of heart.

Swiftly mustering his available forces, Kurov assigned General Marlen to the 4th Army – giving him operational command of the Chaeron line in the north; and placing the southern Styx line under the aegis of Generals Pyrol and Arman of the 6th (later to be in command of the Defence of Tartarus).

Regarding the rest of Kurov's force, suffice to say that the famed mobility of the Steel Legions was put to the test as they raced to the Palidus Line

Secundus stood alone 

***