Mark of Calth: 25 (The Horus Heresy)

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At around Mark -16.44.00, Magos Uhl Kehal Hesst noticed a foreign scrapcode infesting the cogitators controlling Calth's orbital defence network. The source of this scrapcode was a Chaos ritual being conducted in secret at the camp of the Word Bearers' auxiliaries, The Brotherhood of the Knife. [2d]. This ritually-produced scrapcode, known as the Octed, was finally implanted at Mark -7.55.09. [2e]

Deployed to Calth after seeing heavy combat in the Eastern Fringe, all at a nominal strength of at least 6,000 Legionaries and slated for full resupply at the munitions plants of Dainhold before loading for transport outsystem: An instant later, the entire bridge erupted in an explosion of phantasmagoric viscera, blowing out its armoured viewing dome and blasting its occupants into the void. At a stroke, the Ultramarines were bereft of their beloved Primarch and their beleaguered fleet had lost its flagship. What occurred next had no known precedent in the annals of the Great Crusade, for while the scions of the great Navigator Houses of Terra had some inkling of what lurked beyond, such knowledge was denied to all others, even the Legiones Astartes. The thing that had manifested on the bridge had exploded in a fountain of gore and the force of the detonation had breached the hull. The Primarch, who had been standing at the very eye of the storm, had been blown upwards and outwards through the breach in an instant, the writhing remains of the monster into which Lorgar's lithic avatar had transformed snaring his mighty form in a thrashing mass of spiralling pseudopods and motile shadow. Now, as the planet is scoured by solar flares from the wounded Veridian star, the survivors must take the fight to the remaining Word Bearers and their foul allies in the Underworld War, or face damnation in the gloomy arcology shelters beneath the planet's surface.Every post will be filled with Spoilers from the novel so if you haven't read this week's book then proceed with caution. Horus Heresy Saga: Mark of Calth

Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar • Leman Russ: The Great Wolf • Magnus the Red: Master of Prospero • Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia • Lorgar: Bearer of the Word • Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix • Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa • Grandfather's Gift • Perturabo: Stone and Iron • Malcador: First Lord of the Imperium • Konrad Curze: A Lesson in Darkness • Jaghatai Khan: Warhawk of Chogoris • Vulkan: Lord of Drakes • Sons of the Emperor • Corax: Lord of Shadows • Angron: Slave of Nuceria • Scions of the Emperor • Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter • Ghost of Nuceria • The Passing of Angels • The Abyssal Edge • Mercy of the Dragon • Lion El'Jonson: Lord of the First • Illyrium • The Revelation of the Word • Morningstar • Will of the Legion • Embers of Extinction • Alpharius: Head of the Hydra • Blood of the Emperor • Loyal Sons • Mortarion: The Pale King • Rogal Dorn: The Emperor's Crusader • Sanguinius: The Great Angel • Heirs of The Emperor

As the battle spilled ever deeper into the guts of the defence platforms, the passageways and chambers were transformed into charnel houses. In places, the defenders' resolve was sorely tested when confronted with the unfamiliar combat doctrines certain Word Bearers Legionaries employed. Some chanted mournful plainsong as they advanced, an atonal dirge filling the hearts of all who heard it with dread. Others halted after every kill, pausing to enact grisly mutilation upon the recently fallen. In still more cases, the Word Bearers refrained from slaying cornered or overrun foe, instead handing them off to following mortal units to clap in irons and drag off as prisoners. The fate of these unfortunates can only be guessed at, for the last that was seen of most does not bear recounting. The Ruinstorm would also isolate and trap those Loyalist forces caught behind it like the Ultramarines, preventing them from coordinating their efforts and supporting one another as the Traitor Legions moved towards Terra. It would even prevent them from warning each other, for a time, of the Warmaster's betrayal and the civil war that had begun to consume the Imperium. The Ruinstorm would leave Terra alone in the void, infinitely vulnerable to the approaching shadow of Horus.

High above Calth, in the master control room of the Zetsun Verid Fleet Yard, Roboute Guilliman confronted Kor Phaeron. Instead of fighting the Primarch in honourable combat, the Word Bearers' First Captain resorted to using the sorcerous abilities granted him by the Chaos Gods, slamming the Primarch of the XIII th Legion against the chamber wall with a column of wretched, living darkness that burst forth from the palm of his right hand. Mountains and deserts dominated the dry land of Colchis and civilisation clustered along coastlines, relying on water and air travel between settlements. Its capital city-state was Vharadesh, the City of Grey Flowers. [2] Yet, the Ultramarines and Imperial Army forces remained untouched, though some eardrums had burst and many Imperial Army troops suffered radiation burns to any exposed skin. Hot ash plastered the rain-soaked Power Armour of the Space Marines, spattering them with the remnants of their enemies. Ironically, the Ultramarines' ash-covered armour soon appeared a gun-metal grey, the old livery of the Loyalist XVII th Legion.

It reduced Traitor Titans, armoured vehicles, Chaos Cult auxiliary and Word Bearers infantry formations to so much ash within only seconds. However, the weapon strike occurred less than half a kilometre from where the Loyalists had taken shelter from the coming impact.

Unusually, the book is written almost entirely in the present tense, purporting to be the official Imperial action report on the events of the battle, interlineated with the personal notes of Primarch Roboute Guilliman. Just as the Word Bearers' First Chaplain Erebus had turned the Warmaster to the service of the Dark Gods on Davin's moon, so too, would Kor Phaeron achieve the impossible and bring another Primarch over to the service of Chaos. One cut of the Chaos-corrupted blade would damage Guilliman's sanity whilst Kor Phaeron took advantage of his weakened state, and slowly sliced away the inhibitions that kept him loyal to the False Emperor. It would be a fitting revenge for the Ultramarines' actions on Khur, to return to the court of Lorgar and Horus with Roboute Guilliman as a willing and pliant ally in their Great Betrayal. Magos Tawren next redeployed the defence grid elements available to her, hitting other surface targets. Simultaneously, she re-tasked the orbital platforms and began to systematically exact punishment upon the Word Bearers' fleet. It was now the crimson-hulled warships of the XVII th Legion that were annihilated one by one. The dynamic of the entire battle had finally shifted in the Ultramarines' favour. United States? claimed Horus. We are however the devices of his will definitely to obtain prestige of the galaxy before his climbing. When the fights more than, we will definitely be discarded, for we are flawed manufacturings, made from the huge womb of uncreated night. Also before our births, the Emperor cast us apart when he may have conserved us. You bear in mind the problem of Chemos, the marsh it was when you was up to its exploded hinterlands? The pain you experienced there, the discomfort most of us sustained in the worlds where we expanded to participant? All of that might have been stopped. He can have quit all of it, nonetheless he cared so little for us that he just relent. I saw it happen, my brother, I saw it all. The Ultramarines learned another hard lesson at Calth. The Calth Atrocity represented the Loyalist Astartes' first sustained experience with fighting the Warp entities later known as daemons in realspace. The Ultramarines realised that their decision to accept the anti- psyker dictates of the Council of Nikaea had led to their voluntary surrender of the one weapon that might have proved most potent against the horrors of the Warp.Erebus had managed to complete his blasphemous ritual on Calth's surface, which summoned a Ruinstorm to the galaxy's Eastern Fringe -- a monstrous Warp Storm larger and more destructive than anything space-faring humanity had witnessed since the days of the Age of Strife. It would split the void asunder, dividing the galaxy in two and rendering vast tracts of the Imperium impassable for centuries. Full deployment at Calth, all at a nominal strength of 10,000 Legionaries. These Chapters were concentrated around Calth's primary spaceport at Numinus City in western Erud: It was almost as if the Traitors had known what was coming, and had orchestrated events so that the Imperium would voluntarily cast aside the only practical weapon it possessed against the sorceries of the Empyrean just before it was needed most. After the Ultramarines' experience at Calth, Roboute Guilliman sought to petition the Emperor for the revocation of the Edicts of Nikaea and the reinstatement of the corps of Librarians within all of the Loyalist Space Marine Legions. The arcology systems offered sufficient protection for the remaining inhabitants of Calth and their defenders to survive the wave of solar death that was about to engulf their world. This message successfully reached many millions of people who successfully took shelter within Calth's underground warrens, which had originally been built to free up more land for agricultural cultivation.