Genestealer-infested vessel destroyed

An Imperial Navy destroyer was forced to destroy a merchant vessel after responding to a distress signal and discovering the civilian ship infested with a deadly xeno species known as Genestealers.

The merchant vessel, The Hesperus, dropped out of the Warp at the edge of the Gehenna System on 6  186 741.M41 and promptly broadcast a distress call. The Navy destroyer, Righteous Fury, responded, discovering the ship adrift and unresponsive to hails.

Taking a position off the vessel’s stern, the Righteous Fury dispatched a combat shuttle manned by a 20-man boarding party.

“The Hesperus was boarded, and naval personnel found its corridors empty and powered only by emergency lighting,” a Navy spokesman said. “The boarding party divided into two: one detachment going to the bridge; the other to the engine room.”

“Along the way, they encountered a xeno species that has been identified as Ymgarl Genestealers, a highly dangerous creature first encountered on the moon of Ymgarl several decades ago.. There were significant numbers of these xenos, and both boarding parties were forced to withdraw.”

In the end, only six sailors from one boarding party managed to return to the shuttle and escape. Declaring The Hesperus an unacceptable threat, the Righteous Fury withdrew 1,000 kilometers and turned its weapons battery on the infected vessel.

The ship—along with its deadly infestation of Genestealers—was completely destroyed.

Chthon PDF deploy new combat walker

The Planetary Defense Force (PDF) of Chthon has begun equipping its regiments with a new combat walker that has some officials in the Adeptus Mechanicus questioning whether it conforms to accepted designs of the Omnissiah.

Unlike the widely accepted two-legged Sentinel walker, the Cavalier-class walker is four-legged and vaguely similar to the domesticated equine known as the “horse.” The walker can carry one rider, travel at speeds of 70 kilometers per hour, and is armed with twin-linked heavy bolters or plasma guns.

Chthon military officials say that the walker’s design was uncovered in the data crypts of the forge world of Tigrus, so it must have been authorized for military use at some point in the Imperium’s past.

Some Mechanicus officials agree, but others argue that the data crypts may store designs that never completed the lengthy and exhaustive authorization process that permits manufacture.

Some scholars suggest it may take centuries for the Mechanicus to resolve the issue, but Chthon officials say they will proceed with their deployment of the Cavalier-class walkers until the matter is resolved.

Survivors form communities on Metaluna

Although it was predicted that the world of Metaluna would soon be lifeless, it appears that thousands of survivors are not only alive but managing to organize a primitive society on the ice-covered planet.

Three years ago, Metaluna collided with the Esskay Nebula, a thick cloud of interstellar gas that has blocked the solar radiation of its star and caused planet temperatures to plummet. Within months, the planet became an ice world, and 99.9 percent of its population was forced to evacuate or die.

Yet, some survivors prevailed against the odds. There are reports of a number of communities, ramshackle and brutally primitive, where the hardiest of citizens have banded together for mutual survival.

It is said that there were more communities a year ago. But those in close proximity to one another battled for the limited resources left on the planet, and the losers of these fights were enslaved or driven into the wastelands to die.

Those communities that won these small wars now find themselves living in enforced peace. With surrounding communities now ravaged and stripped of food and supplies, the surviving shanty towns are so geographically separated that they do not have the capability of attacking one another because of the harsh arctic environment.

Blood Wolves attack Volana mining facility

An underground mining facility on the twilight world of Volana has been attacked by a band of traitor Astartes that call themselves the “Blood Wolves.”

Mining and Refinery Manufactorum A-13 is located at the very edge of the narrow habitable zone of the tidal-locked planet. Surface conditions are extreme, with severely cold conditions and gale-like winds. For this reason, the facility was built in the tunnels and caverns bored out of the ground as mining was under way.

About a dozen Blood Wolves landed a gunship on a surface landing pad and stormed the facility’s entrance. The small guard detail of Skitarii were slaughtered, and the traitors spend the next few hours on a killing spree.

Planetary Defense Forces were alerted by a distress signal and rushed to the scene. Upon their arrival, however, they found the Blood Wolves gone, along with a number of skilled technicians, senior Mechanicus personnel, and a variety of supplies, cogitators, and high-tech equipment.

This is the second major raid by the Blood Wolves in just over a year, but the destruction of a number of isolated farms and automated industrial sites have sparked rumors that the traitors remain hidden on the planet.

Imperial authorities insist that an extensive search of the planet has found no evidence of a traitor base.

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The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K  blog documenting our gaming adventures in the fantastical sci-fi universe of Games Workshop.