An Invitation in Ashes

Challenge Event: Backlines of Armageddon

'Hurry up and wait.' – a Leman Russ Vanquisher crewman, 2nd Tank Division, takes a rare break to enjoy the heat of the sun as he awaits orders.
@death_of_a_rubricist

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Pictured here are the results of the 'AshesInvite' challenge event, in which hobbyists were invited to  paint up a single model on the theme of ‘backlines of the Second War for Armageddon’, then post it up with the tags #ashesinvite and #ashesofarmageddon.

The results were fantastic – and I hope you enjoy the collected fruits of everyone's labours as much as I did. 

With the Second War for Armageddon heating up further, we'll soon see the deployment of some new forces – and this article might provide a few hints as to what's brewing.

If you missed out on this challenge event, don't worry. You can still get involved in the broader project, simply by using the #ashesofarmageddon tag.

Better still, there will be a new challenge event starting soon, this time themed around the personalities of the Second War for Armageddon – so we'll be looking for your take on figures like Ghazghkull and his Counsill of Clanbosses, Herman Von Strab and the Imperial court, a young(er) Dante, Calgar and Tu'Shan, Inquisitor Horst – or simply your own original character themed around the war.

In the meantime, enjoy – the creator's account is credited below each picture, so go check 'em all out!

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@orcus_dis

'L.Cpl Oleg Hannan, L Company, 33rd Pallidus Territorial Rangers, Seconded to the 7th Tank Division, Armageddon, 941.M41. Pictured navigating the Chem and Slag wastes of the Infernus Forges, delivering dispatches to Brigade HQ.'

@orcus_dis

Responsible for submitting and distributing reports both up and down the chain of command, Steel Legion Adjutants were vital liaisons between the front-line military and executive arms of Armageddon.

Hannan's role as adjutant was typically held by those of Captain rank or above – which demonstrates how thoroughly the rear lines had been stripped of experienced officers as the Army Groups were hurriedly assembled.

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@derek_harde

'A Hive Helsreach Sumpsweep, equipped with a trusty long-shafted sumpshift to dig out the harbour's constantly clogged waste pumps. Members of the Sumpsweeps' Guild often carried a variety of close quarters firearms to defend themselves from the variety of hive wildlife that feasted on the pumps. 

'When the defence of Helsreach began in earnest, the 'Sweeps formed scratch squads to help keep Ork infiltrators out of the Hive's waste disposal system and assisted in this capacity until the fall of their home.'

The populations of the Hives of Armageddon Secundus were richly varied, the forced isolation and inwards-looking politics of each of the mega-structures meaning that denizens often felt very much more affinity and loyalty towards their respective hive than the planet as a whole.

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@tangential_contrivances

"You reckon yous all important don't ya? Runnin' around hollerin' an' whoopin' with yer shootas an' choppas an stikkbombs. But 'oo makes 'em eh? Oo fixes what gets broke? Grots does, dats 'oo. Sum a dem humies sez an army marches on iz stomach. I dunno about all dat, but I do know dat dis Orkz army marches cos of us – an don't yous ferget it!" 

@tangential_contrivances

Imperial Stratego-ident designation 'Goff Horde 5' was rather more colourfully known to its members as Da Nekksnappas. It was noted by Imperial strategists that the horde was particularly well-served by their slave caste, who kept their vehicles moving and ammunition well-stocked. 

This was common for Goff forces, whose (relative) discipline and no-nonsense attitude tended to rub off on their runts. While gretchin are not regarded as 'proppa' members of their masters' clans, most exhibit at least a little less gleeful spite towards their patrons than they do other orks.

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@londonskroink

When you first start to learn about orkoids, there’s a small part of you (just a small one) that feels a bit sorry for the grots. They are kicked, beaten or even eaten by their bigger brethren for the simple crime of existing – and in return for this life of suffering the grot builds the ork warmachine and helps run the supply lines. They cook orks their food and brew them their grog. 

Then you see what they can do to a first aid station or refugee camp, and you realise that all that lurks behind those pleading little eyes is hatred and spite. Now I shoot them first. I actually enjoy killing grots more than orks. Orks think it’s all just a game. But a grot... a grot wants to hurt you – and keep hurting you, in the worst way possible – the moment your back is turned. 

...and that's why I love killing Grots. Anyway, pass the whisky.

–Sgt. Mathias Brooks, Steel Legion 3rd Company, 3rd Army Group.

@londonskroink

The ork military machine is wonderfully well-developed, for gretchin are inherently vicious, aggressive creatures, and in sufficient numbers are very capable of fighting even the Steel Legion to a standstill. Well it is said that greenskins have no backroom staff – their logistics and baggage train is integrated within  their great war-caravans.

Bad Moons, by dint of growing teeth faster than other clans, can afford to support more grots – and so many flock to Bad Moon banners, where they serve a variety of roles from manufacturing ammunition and clothing to (relatively) honoured positions as personal assistants to 'da boyz'.

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@voodoo_mojo

PDF Commissar Marek was assigned to the 173rd Tartarus Border Defence Force⚡️. A rag-tag regiment forming the first line of defence for Hive Tartarus.

Marek trained under Commissar Yarrick at the Officio Prefectus where he displayed an innate ability to interpret and translate Ork dialect. A talent which would see him transferred (at Yarrick's request) to Armageddon Secundus.

His primary role: Enforce discipline and raise morale amongst the disgruntled, second tier troops of the Tartarus Border Defence Force.

The Border Defence Force was broken and scattered – but such was its size that hundreds, if not thousands, of capable soldiers-at-arms are believed to have survived the initial defeat. 

While doubtless many were subsequently captured by the advancing orks – to suffer as slaves, or serve as victuals – the Commissariat made it a policy to retrieve former BDF members and offer them amnesty from charges of desertion, on condition that they enlisted formally.

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@6pluspainting

'Tech-Priest Enginseer Diometus, seconded to the 121st Volunteer Reserve Regiment, carries out the final rites and litanies of sacred machine lore on the outskirts of Hades Hive.

Within 24 hours, the bulk of 12th Army will head westwards to take over the Eumendies-Diablo line, a final barrier to the Greenskin forces poised to assault the hive city.'

As a principal manufacturing world, Armageddon had a substantial presence of the techpriesthood of the Adeptus Mechanicus, ranging from lowly and worldly Enginseers to Magi of sectorial note. In peacetime, the techpriesthood supervised the world's manufacturing – ensuring, amongst other duties that the omens were favourable for particular runs; that sacrifices were reliably supplied to the attending autosacerdotes; and that individual manufactora stuck closely within the rigid confines of their hard-won ancient (and frequently byzantine) licensing-doctrines.

The techpriests saw little distinction between their more practical and more numinous spiritual roles on Armageddon, and were thus able to perform an invaluable role as neutral intermediaries between the civilian and military spheres of the planet. In war, they were thus distributed amongst the individual Regiments of each Steel Legion Army Group – such as the 12th, pictured above – where they ministered to the junior Enginseers and tech-laity, and helped to keep the wheels of the Imperial war machine turning.

So numerous were the Techpriesthood that they were able to form a small but potent military force of their own – ominously known to Imperial strategists simply as 'Assault Group'. Rumours of an awakening giant named Auberum, or Oberon, were rife amongst the Steel Legion in the south-west.

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@johannusminiatures

'While the Squats of Golgotha are most famous as mercenaries, they are, at their core, still miners'

– Inquisitor Horst, Dispatches from Golgotha, 941.M41

@johannusminiatures

Squats – the near-universal local term for the abhumans who called themselves simply 'Kin' – were a familiar sight on Armageddon. Drawn to the planet with promises of wealth, work or freedom, ghettoes of these stoutly-built abhumans were present in all the Hives and many of the smaller settlements. Virtually all came from the League of Norgyr, as this group dominated the nearby world of Golgotha.

With technical abilities rivalling – or surpassing – those of the Techpriesthood, the Squats of Golgotha were valuable allies both in peace and war. The prospector here, pictured with power pick and blasting charge, wears earthy yellows, reds and greens – marking him as part of the Mjolnir Brotherhood, sometimes rendered in regional Low Gothic as Mjalnar, Mjolna or Migolan.

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@duckcalledsue

“Lugnug do dis, Lugnug do dat…Lugnug get me ‘at, Lugnug get me da gunz…work, work, work an’ no fun for Lugnug…but dey’ll zee…dat I iz meant for sumfink bigga dan luggin’ deze zoggin’ dakka-krates ‘round dis stinkin’ ‘umie world!”

–Lugnug, later to become the 36th Makari to Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka

@duckcalledsue

The slave-caste of gretchin picked up various scornful names from the Imperial opposition. Steel Legion Guardsmen knew of these diminutive creates as transliterations of the orks' own halting tongue: 'grots' and 'runts', as such terms were distributed in the Guardsman's Guide to Victory. Almost inevitably, they also came up with scores of regional or Regimental terms, such as scraggies, vettels, and grinners. 

Such variation – often bawdy or obscene – was tacitly tolerated amongst the ranks by the Commissariat, but at least one incident survives of a Steel Legion Major from the 9th Army Group being reduced to the ranks for inadvertently using the Regiment's term 'Bawbags' in an official report.

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@johnpaints

'Wing Commander Garado Ban-Terra of the 23rd Armageddon Air Corps. Shot down in the ash wastes during the early stages of the war whilst bringing crucial resources to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Given the sensitivity of the mission and his location behind enemy lines, 

Blood Angels retrieval force was assigned...'

The Armageddon Air Corps (AAC) was officially part of the Imperial Navy, but with local defence monitors blown out of the sky by the space hulk Wurld Killa, many aircraft found themselves orphaned. More than a hundred squadrons were assigned space in the wastelands west of Hive Acheron, from which sorties, bombing runs and reconnaissance missions could be organised by Steel Legion command; and to which the Manufactora-Major to the north could easily send fuel and armaments.

Refugee columns were also directed to the region, protected as it was by the Eumenides river to the east and river Hemlock to the south; and the numbers of displaced civilians led to to many from the local hive moving out to profit from their new neighbours. By the end of the war, this supposedly temporary staging area had developed into a semi-permanent settlement known as Devil-May-Care City – characterised by the population's peculiarly nonchalant attitude. 

While some attributed this to the influence of the dashing and rakish AAC officers (whose collective celebrity meant they formed a pseudo-aristocracy for the settlement), the feverish mania was undoubtedly mainly the result of collective trauma.

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@225thsteellegion

The Steel Legion's strength came from the men and women of the ranks, but it was directed by a rigid and highly efficient officer class. It is a mark of the Armageddon Imperial Guard's exemplary discipline that a continent-spanning invasion could be resisted at all – let alone with the fervour and effectiveness with which the orks of Waa-Ghazghkull were met.

@225thsteellegion

Equally key to the efficiency of the frontline soldiery were the quartermasters and underlings of the Logistics corps, a military wing of the Astra Militarum overseen and partly integrated with the Adeptus Munitorum. For every armed soldier in the Steel Legion, it is said that there were ten support staff and a hundred scribes.

@225thsteellegion

In stark contrast to the Imperium's division of labour, the orks were equally happy to throw gretchin in their tens of thousands to the frontlines of the war. This required wargear – but even the most exceptional gretchin, like Ghazghkull's own mascot-companion Makari, and the notorious 'Bossrunt' Slagskrag, could scarcely hope to command the influence (or more likely, retain the wandering attention of a decent Mekboy) to have their own kustom wargear made.

Many gretchin, like the individual pictured above, were therefore issued mass-produced autoguns and primitive protective gear created on Armageddon itself in great slave-factories in Armageddon Prime. These were churned out quickly in forced production lines, from poor – and often sabotaged – materials. 

Despite the dreadful quality of their wargear, most grots were inordinately proud to be 'fightin' alongside da boyz', and so over the course of the war, the Steel Legion and their allies became accustomed to the unsettling sight of ranks of weirdly uniform greenskins scampering into battle.

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@bolterjugend

Like all sons of Sanguinius, his features, even scarred by decades of battle, were delicate and beautiful. 

Still, they feared him.

After months of brutal conflict on the wasteland of Armageddon, the Imperial soldiers stationed at Remunition-bunker X-lf 451, ten kilometres behind the current front line, had begun to grow less wary of the super-human Astartes. His presence, in and of itself, no longer drew comment and whispers.

What unnerved them was the look that passed over Brother Mariel's face as he took a sip of the mug. With a grimace of utter disgust, he spat it out and muttered: 

“On Armageddon, even the coffee tastes like ash and dust…”

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@shotgun_miniatures

Straight from the forges of Armageddon, I present to you the unstoppable Ridgehauler 8x8 Armageddon Pattern Mk2. Designed for maximum efficiency in contaminated environments, it ensures the fastest deployment of materials and supplies of any transport around the Imperium *compared to a normal land transport - source: Adeptus Mechanicus*.
Thanks to its characteristics, it can be easily converted into a recovery vehicle or troop transport.
Among the main features:
- 8x8 all-wheel drive
- Armored cabin
- Fast Deployment System 'Palfinger'
- Compatible with Imperial Standard containers

–Munitorum Asset-docket accompanying delivery

@shotgun_miniatures

Ridgehaulers were familiar sights to all the armed forces of Armageddon. They were ubiquitous, being used for moving everything from water to heavy equipment. Such was the speed of Waa-Ghazghkull's advance that they were often caught up in active fighting, where their rugged construction made itself invaluable. 

In the early part of the war, they were often pressed into service as makeshift transports for fleeing civilians, as no other equipment could be spared from the desperate fighting at the front line. As the war settled into its middle stages, Ridgehaulers were amongst the most common vehicles running the supply routes, to the front lines protected by Sentinels, Chimeras and – on occasion – Salamanders Space Marines.

Every Regiment had its own pool of Ridgehaulers, and there were also entire fleets at the Army Group level. Almost inevitably, hundreds fell into the hands of the orks, who adapted them into sturdy armed vehicles and drove them back into the fray.

*Not strictly part of the event, @shotgun_miniatures has very kindly allowed me to showcase his Armageddon-themed work for the broader project, and I just couldn't resist showing off this stunning transport vehicle which fits the theme to a tee.

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@death_of_a_rubricist

'The men and women of the 2nd Tank Division were recalled some eight weeks after Ghazghkull invaded, when it became clear to all save Von Strab that this would be a extended conflict.

They would wait a further eight weeks before being deployed, as the Planetary Defence Command bickered about how to make the most of their capabilities. This would prove time ill-spent as Ghazghkull’s hordes advanced.'

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If you can't see your entry here, that's an oversight that I'd like to correct (Instagram doesn't make it the easiest to browse hashtags!). 

Let me know either by commenting here, on the Discord channel, or via message on Instagram (@death_of_a_rubricist), and I'll pop it up alongside the others.