Allies of Armageddon – The Norgyr League of Golgotha

Allies of Armageddon: The Squats of Golgotha

Veterans of the Stronheim conflict, Betalis IV campaign, the Squats tagged to the First Grand Army proved staunch and reliable allies to the defenders of Armageddon Prime.

'Some may dismiss the Kin as mere abhuman mercenaries, but theirs is a fierce and indomitable culture, whose surface we have barely scratched. Jealously guarded within their Holds, and buried deep within the inaccessible heart of the Galactic Core, there are secrets from the Dark Age of Technology that could spell our salvation – or our doom. Do not dismiss them, for I tell you this much – without them Armageddon would have been lost.'

–Inquisitor Horst, at the Conclave of Thrax, 945.M41

The war-world of Armageddon has been the site of three great wars, the last still smouldering. While the planet's wracked history has made it famous across the Segmentum as a symbol of Imperial resistance and defiance, much of that history has been deliberately obscured, twisted or redacted.

Indeed, that the conflict with Ghazghkull was simply known as 'the Battle for Armageddon' shows how thoroughly the First War was hidden. Likewise a number of non-canonical histories of the planet mention Hive Anthrand, or Hive Blackfire – areas that are now little more than wastelands, virtually devoid of life.

The Imperium is inflexible, narrow-minded and uncompromising. Such large-scale censorship is uncommon owing chiefly to practicalities, but smaller legacies and the contributions of allies to the Imperium's victories is far more frequently written out or underplayed in official histories. Such was the fate of the contribution of the Leagues of Votann to Dante's eventual victory on Armageddon...

A Kâhl from Hâr Drohn enacts a measure of revenge during the liberation of Tempestora.
@squats40k

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• Post your models with #ashesofarmageddon tag on Instagram.Further information on how to get involved with the Ashes of Armageddon project can be found in the overview here.
• This is the perfect time to get involved with the latest Challenge Event #Foryarrick #WaaGhazghkull, running until 31st January 2024. Details are

here. 

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The Golgotha Sub-Sector

Dalekcheese/@m34.field.tunic

The Golgotha Sub-Sector lies directly to the galactic east of Armageddon, and its worlds are unusually rich in natural resources. It is only natural then that the Imperium should have sought to harvest them – though they were not the first.

Orks have long ruled over many of the star systems in this sub-sector, and wars have long simmered between (and amongst) the Imperial and Ork-held worlds. By and large, however, the disparate hordes of greenskins remained stuck in their endless cycle of internal conflict for centuries, as individual Warbosses vied for power and prestige. It was only the coming of Ghazghkull Thraka that unified them into a sector-wide scourge, which swept through the systems in a vast ramshackle fleet and brought them into full-scale conflict with the other inhabitants of the sub-sector — the Kin.

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The League of Norgyr

Typical Kinsman of the Second Grand Clan Army, tagged to the Eorldom of Skalf, Hâr Drohn Hold
@death_of_a_rubricist

The Kin of the Golgothan Sub-Sector belong to a Prospect of the League of Norgyr, one of the first Leagues to have remade contact with Humanity during the early stages of the Great Crusade, and certainly the League with the greatest contact with the Imperium. Originating from the Homeworld of Valskalf deep in the Galactic Core, the League of Norgyr are not primarily traders, but mercenaries. 

The Mjolnir Kindred, transliterated into Low Gothic as Mholna Brotherhood, Mjalnr Hearth-Collective or any number of other similar variations, is perhaps the most famous of all Squat Mercenary forces. This branch of the broader League hails from the Stronghold of Mjolna on Valstaff itself, and their red and yellow livery was once a relatively common sight fighting alongside – and sometimes against – Imperial Forces in the Golgotha Sector and beyond.

In fact, prior to the broader group's recent resurgence due to the opening of the Great Rift in later years, it was from the League of Norgyr that the Imperium drew most of its limited knowledge regarding the Leagues of Votann more generally. This indicates quite how widespread, distinctive and – critically – sympathetic to the Imperium were the Mercenary forces of the League of Norgyr.

Norgyr mercenaries fighting alongside Imperial Guard of the Arcadian 5th Regiment
@johannusminiatures

During actions on the surface of Armageddon, the Warriors of the League of Norgyr were less frequently seen wearing the full Void Armour of their deep space Kin, instead typically donning a pragmatic uniform of flak-and-mesh bibs, coveralls and helmets with photovisors. These were almost always in a variety of reds, green and yellows, the precise combination being a matter of personal choice for the individual Kin. The hammer was a common totem of the League, and was displayed both prominently on wargear and banners as well as more subtly. In various forms, the hammer appeared in diverse places, from personal jewellery to subtly-inlaid bionic circuitry.

This preference for lighter atmospheric gear was not unique to the Armageddon campaign, for the mercenary kin of Golgotha were more accustomed to long and isolated operations on the surface of planets in the region than in the freezing vacuum of space. Comfort, practicality and ease of repair was critical to many of their operations – and the additional protection offered by the void suits was often outweighed by the increased requirement for resupply. 

Close-in fighting amongst the ruins and tunnels of the Hives played to the Kin's advantage, and here void armour often made the difference between life and death. Pictured here is a Mjolnir Kill Team fighting within Tempestora.

Benefitting from regular trade with the Imperials of the region and the nearby Armageddon Sector, the  warriors of the Norgyr League tended to use weaponry and materiel that was familiar to Imperial authorities, including lasguns and autoguns. Indeed, much of this material came directly or indirectly from the Warworld Armageddon – a fact that made mutual resupply practical. 

Whether this heavy use of Imperial equipment during the Armageddon War was a deliberate policy on the part of the League in order to prevent the Imperium or other factions from acquiring their technology, an attempt to obfuscate their true identity, or simply a practical policy to allow for easier rearmament by Imperial allies, is a question that only the Norgyr’s mysterious Votann could truly answer, though the Grimnyr have far more pressing queries for it.

The Squats of Norgyr were wealthy and influential, and as such had ready access to, and made extensive use of, STC vehicles such as the Rhino armoured transport.
@johannusminiatures

So familiar were the Mjolnir Kindred to the Imperials of Golgotha, that they were almost universally known by the slightly pejorative nomenclature 'Squats' by the Imperium – in return referring to baseline humans as 'Shanks', 'Fïbls' or 'Stilties'. 

The Ancestor-head of Dâhr Lakh is the personal symbol of Golgotha's rulers. The rich, opulent gold-orange was a mark of the world's monarchy, and distinct to the personal forces and Hearthguard of the Hy-Cyng of Golgotha.

It was from the Squats of Golgotha that Armageddon would receive aid in one of their darkest hours, thanks in no small part to the unconventional Inquisitor Horst.

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Golgotha

A world of mountains, sandy plains and rocky outcrops, Golgotha sports a thick atmosphere and a slightly higher than Terran-standard gravity, around 1.12G. Viewed from space, the planet looks like a stirred-up mixture of reds, yellows and browns. Thick cloud-cover reduces visibility, interferes with vox-communication and, owing to high levels of sulphur in the atmosphere, smells distressingly of rotten eggs. 

The constantly shifting and storm-whipped sands, or fines, of the planet are so small in particulate form that they can enter the bodies of humans through skin pores, resulting in a wide variety of medical complaints, many serious. The only known indigenous lifeforms discovered on the world are small creatures referred to as 'dannih'; essentially insectoid leeches, that bore through flesh with relative ease.

Squat Prospectors, Acheron – sometime prior to M41.989.
@johannusminiatures

The hardy Kin of the Leagues are ideally adapted to this kind of hostile environment, and in the millennia since the first Prospectors identified the material wealth of Golgotha, half a dozen Holds were constructed around the planet near key ore deposits. The oldest was the ancient subterranean Stronghold of Dâhr Lakh (Low Gothic: Dar Laq), a whole city built into and completely through a peak in the Ishawar Mountains. There was the fortress of Hâr Drohn (Low Gothic: Hadron), built on a 4-kilometre wide, flat-topped, sheer-sided basalt outcrop situated near the equator, which provided a formidable defensible position. The majority of the area around the Hâr Drohn Plateau was desert, one that retained the furnace-like heat of the day, owing to Golgotha's oppressive and ever-present cloud cover.

Beyond these principal settlements, other outposts, such as Tyrellis and Balkar, stood in the wastes, securing supply routes through the Garrando and Hadar Deserts. These Holds were the linchpins of the Norgyr mining operations, and represented central hubs from which their great Land Train convoys set out on years-long harvesting missions across the planet’s barren, forbidding surface.

Smaller outposts, while proudly semi-independent, contributed significant forces to the Grand Armies of Golgotha. Pictured here are a bunker-clearing Kill Team tentatively identified as belonging to the Ulf-Hadar Stronghold.
@wolvesofsibbe

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Denizens of Golgotha

As noted, the proximity to Armageddon meant that the Kin of Golgotha had regular contact with the Imperium, both for the trading of resources and as part of joint military operations. Even beyond this, however, the Kindred had an interest in Armageddon. Several semi-independent Mining and Manufacturing Clans had long been established on Armageddon prior to the war, and traded their mineral gains or technical expertise with the Imperium directly rather than through the mediaries of the League of Norgyr. While political strain had caused occasional conflicts in the past, the Von Strab dynasty had an official policy of toleration since at least the time of Herman Von Strab's great-grandsire. 

The Squat settlers long pre-dated this political settlement, however – details of their own records supposedly shared with Inquisitor Horst tantalisingly suggest the Kindred had established colonies on pre-Imperial Armageddon sometime in late M32.

Hearthguard and War-Eorl tagged to the First Grand Clan Army – note the extensive ancestor-totems. The pseudo-archaic appearance of their equipment belied its power and reliability.
@johannus_miniatures

Over the millennia it seems that the structure of the Kindreds on Golgotha deviated slightly from the other Leagues. Lacking an Ancestor Core of their own, ancestor worship and iconography became a way of maintaining a spiritual connection with the Homeworlds. Stylised bearded faces became a common motif, and the Hearthguard of the Strongholds’ Lords adopted increasingly archaic armour and weaponry as time went on.

Nor was this cultural drift restricted to the technological. It has been noted that the Kindred of Golgotha showed notably physical variation. Whether this is due to some quirk of their environment, or a deliberate adaptation of their cloneskeins, is again unknown, unquestioned by the characteristically pragmatic Kin who simply accept it as fact. 

Comparative physiology – Kindred phenotypes were varied, and the Squats that fought during the Armageddon war varied both in height – from a hair over four foot to roughly five foot four.
@johannusminiatures

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The Guild of Engineers

The forces of Golgotha demonstrated another significant difference between the local region and the Leagues more generally. A curious subculture of the widespread Engineers Guild had emerged that saw a significant proportion of its members reject the magna-coil based grav-vehicles of their Kin and adopt a cruder form of transportation – and these Guild bikes were so prominent a feature of the Golgothan Grand Armies and Norgyr Mercenaries that it entirely coloured the Imperium's view of the Leagues of Votann within the Segmentum Solar, and beyond.

Known in the Golgothan tongue as ûtlagir or skügarmaor – terms that the Kin seem reluctant to translate –entire bands of Guild bikes and trikes were a common sight on Armageddon, tearing up great dust clouds across the arid plains and wastelands, and proving a valuable interdiction force to combat the Snakebites' beast-riders and Blood Axe cavalry-tank columns. 

Guild Biker Squad of the Third Grand Clan Army, led by Engineer with Grimnyr in sidecar. Note that while their vehicles nod to the colours of the Mjolnir Kindred, the peculiar 'uniform' of the Guild Bikers takes precedence for these highly-individualistic warriors. It consisted of well-worn leathers, bandanas, mirror shades and goggles.
@johannusminiatures

One marked difference between the Guild of Engineers on Golgotha and most of their kind is their relationship with the Adeptus Mechanicus. Most Kin regard the Adepts as superstitious tech-shamans, whose acquisitive yet deliberate ignorance about the true nature of science and technology makes them extremely dangerous – especially where the Kin’s use of machine intelligences is concerned – and who are to be swiftly eliminated where they cannot be avoided. 

So closely entwined was the Golgotha branch of the Norgyr League with the Imperium, however, that they deliberately fostered strong bonds with the Adeptus Mechanicus. While wary of sharing all their secrets – the nature of the Ironkin being a point of particular secrecy – the Golgothan Kin were known to have shared a great deal of technical expertise. Indeed, it was the League of Norgyr that finalised the trade of a number of STC technologies which have subsequently become widespread through the Imperium. 

These ranged from numerous minor scripts all the way up to technologies of Segmentum-wide or even galactic import. Of the latter, the most notable are the humble Thudd gun, and a number of elements critical to the creation and operation of the Kin's Leviathan super-heavy tank – elements which were further refined with Kin cooperation to become the Imperium's bespoke Capitol Imperialis.

Golgothan quad launcher – its distinctive firing sound led to the Steel Legion dubbing it 'the thudd gun'.
@johannusminiatures

Some of their number were even inducted into the Adeptus, although the true motive of both parties was likely to gain intelligence about the other’s technical knowledge. In any event, the conservative attitudes of the Mechanicus were vindicated when their neoplasma reactor experiments based on Squat warp-cores tacitly 'adapted' from Norgyr technology went disastrously wrong, resulting in the infamous Contagion of Ganymede.

Squat Adeptus Mechanicus with servitor-Grot – a tech-heresy so outrageous that it is near-certainly intended to antagonise non-Mechanicus forces.
@johannusminiatures

Wars with the Orks

Members of the 'Steelbeard Brotherhood' of Ulf-Hadar Hold marched to battle clad in a form of power armour. This was as important as a demonstration of Ulf-Hadar's wealth and influence as it was a practical concern for safety.
@wolvesofsibbe

The plight of Armageddon would doubtless have elicited sympathy from Golgotha, but it was by no means certain that the Norgyr Kin would send aid. It was, at the last, the nature of Waa-Ghazghkull that prompted the League's intervention in such strength, for the squats of the Golgothan sector had fought the orks in extensive and bitter wars for long before the Imperium had colonised the region. 

Since the world's earliest history, the endemic orks of the region had always proved too great in number for the Norgyr to hope to eradicate. Instead, they kept a watchful eye on their hated foes, establishing a region of planets and satellites collectively known as the Beacon Worlds, or Ancestor's Eyes. Guided by information drawn from these autonomous void-dwelling Ironkin, the Kindreds adopted a strategy of launching preemptive strikes against key ork personalities who proved to be organising themselves into a potential threat. Over long centuries, the Orks became collectively aware of the 'Stunties' on Golgotha. 

Squat Veterans of the First Grand Clan Army repel an assault by the Evil Sunz of Galagaz Gitz

The strategy of culling might have worked against another force, but against the greenskins the presence of an external threat focused and united them, and as a result, ork raiding parties became a regular feature, gradually escalating over the millennia until the two great powers of the region were caught in an eternal cold war that flared up with grim regularity. The limited resources of the hard worlds on which the orks lived meant that few warbands presented a true threat to the heavily-defended Principal Holds (although that did not stop several warbosses from trying), but the scattered groups of Prospectors on Golgotha and beyond were at considerable and ever-present risk. One result of this was that their Land Trains were heavily armed and armoured, perhaps more than any other mining colony's, and that the blasted skies of Golgotha were constantly patrolled by airships and gyrocopters.

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The Armageddon War

As a result of this ancestral grudge, the Strongholds of the region held naught but emnity for all greenskins – and despite depleting their own defences to do so, they saw the wisdom in relieving their Imperial allies on Armageddon when they received an official request. In fact, the long centuries of guerrilla warfare against a much more numerous enemy were the primary reason that Inquisitor Horst was serendipitously sent to Golgotha just prior to the Second War of Armageddon. 

He was thus present as elements of Waa-Ghazghkull – Ulthrak's Stikkboyz, Ugulmak's Red Skull Tramplas and – the notorious Neksnappas were rampaging across Golgotha itself. After the damage wrought on Golgotha by the warbands as Ghazghkull Thraka’s Waaa-Ork made its destructive way through the Sector, Horst was able to convince the Hearthspakes of the planet that they should lend aid to the defenders of Armageddon against the hated Orks.

As the Warpstorm lifted, the defenders of Armageddon were greeted thus not only by promises of aid from the Sectorial Navy and the Adeptus Astartes, but also by a missive from Horst and his Kindred allies. Six great armies, each many thousands strong, made up the Golgothan Expeditionary Host – a substantial and much-needed relief force that High Command requested make landfall on Armageddon Prime. 

Armageddon Prime was the western inhabited continent, swiftly conquered by Waa-Ghazghkull prior to the invasion of Armageddon Secundus.

In terms of military capabilities the four Grand Clan Armies were much alike, but as with the Steel Legion's Army Groups, there were differences both subtle and marked in their composition and markings – which we hope to expound upon further in this record. 

Warlord of Dâhr Lakh accompanied by his Hearthguard, including Grimnyr Living Ancestor, Brewmaster and Grudgebearer.
@johannusminiatures

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Contributing to the Ashes of Armageddon

If this article – largely written by the ever-talented @johannusminiatures with contributions from @squats40k and myself – has caught your interest and you want to paint up a model or write some lore for the Second War for Armageddon, then please tag your model on Instagram with #ashesofarmageddon – exactly as you would for any other contribution.

Imperial Stratego-ikons assigned to the Golgothan Expeditionary Host

If Squats are your bag, there are four Grand Clan Armies involved, and – just like the Ork Hordes of Waa-Ghazghkull or Steel Legion Army Groups – they are sufficiently diverse for almost any model you might like to get involved.  Each of these armies is thousands strong, so there’s no problem with having (say) a Land Train in a Clan Army – the names of the counters merely reflect the emphasis, not the exclusive content.

We've aimed to blend the older material with the new, so whether you've got models with the modern League of Votann or classic Squat aesthetic – or something entirely different – your contribution is more than welcome. Note that the project is not exclusive to 40k scale. Small Epic-scale models or large-scale busts are equally at home – the key is to theme them around the Second Battle for Aramgeddon in some way, even if that's simply taking a photograph of them on desert or wasteland terrain. 

If you can't decide, then here are some starting points – or you could join the Discord chat to discuss. As always, creativity is king, so have fun!

• First Grand Clan Army  Primarily made up of Kindred from the Dâhr Lakh Hold – this army is a good place for classic 2nd edition Squat aesthetic.
• Led by the Hy-Cyng
• Second Grand Clan Army  The host of Hâr Drohn Hold, which is the main link to greater League of Norgyr. This is ideal for models with a more modern Votann style look.
•  Led by Magnus Ulthang
• Third Grand Clan Army  Mercenary Kindred from minor holds such as Ulf-Hadar or Gruben – Mjolnir style, but with more freedom in terms of kit and colours. 
• Led by Hargir, Son of Brond, Gruben Stronghold
• Fourth Grand Clan Army  A core of professional Mjolnir mercenary warriors, this army includes more non-formal elements, such as Reavers (Squats who have taken up a life of professional piracy) local Armageddon Prospector-militia and similar adventurers. A great place for Necromunda Ironhead models, early RT-themed models, or other unusual figures.
• Led by Warmaster Gorun and Ragnan Mograk
• Hearthguard – A gathering point for elite Squat fighters, the Hearthguard army is a great place for non-standard models and particularly ambitious one-off conversions as the various Hearthguard vie to demonstrate their wealth, power and martial skill.
• Squat Land Train – Not limited to Land Trains specifically, this is essentially shorthand for the Squat Titan-class War Engines. It is equivalent to the Titans of the Iron Skulls (Legio Metalica) or the orks' Gargant Bigmobs. An ideal place for vehicles and super-heavy models from the eponymous Land Trains to specialist items like the Cyclops, Leviathan or Goliath mega-cannon.

Elite warriors from the consolidated Hearthguard Grand Army, made up of the cream of the Golgothan military and aristocratic elite. (Left) Hâr Drohn Hearthguard in Void Armour, (Right) Dâhr Lakh Hearthguard in Exo-armour.
@johannusminiatures