On Dozaria, the city of Mygor burns as Death Guard artillery seek to level the strategically valuable industrial center.

Continued from Page 1 . . .

Death Guard pressure Dozaria’s defenses

The year began with one of the most dangerous developments in Dozaria’s seven-year war against the Death Guard. On  6 045 744.M41, the sorcerer Necrosius initiated a ritual to open a portal to the Immaterium.

A contingent of warriors from the Knights of Altair Space Marine Chapter, led by Veteran Sergeant Betran Goyon, attacked in an effort to stop the ritual, but the Space Marines were repulsed.

Before the Astartes retreated, they witnessed the ritual’s completion—and the arrival of a daemon prince in the shape of a Leviathan Siege Dreadnought. This blasphemy has since been involved in a number of military actions on the planet, and its presence has been indispensable to the traitors winning several battlefield victories.

One of the most active battlefronts on Dozaria has been the Death Guard’s efforts to seize the industrial city of Mygor. Numerous assaults of the Imperial defenses led to massive Imperial casualties and allowed the Death Guard to advance close enough to the city to begin a devastating artillery bombardment that has reduced much of the city to ruin.

A successful ritual by a Death Guard sorcerer summoned a massive daemon prince to Dozaria’s battlefield.

This region also suffered a devastating loss of a Stormlord-class, super-heavy battle tank known as the Pride of Cadia.

Damaged in battle, it broke down on the road as it retreated and was captured after a fierce fight between Mechanicus Skatarii and Death Guard warriors. For the Mechanicus, this was an incalculable loss of a revered and honorable machine of war.

In an incident that was classified after the fact, Inquisitor Gideon Locke of the Ordo Hereticus suffered a rare defeat during a fight with the Death Guard at Refinery X-151 in the same region. No detailed information about the incident has been released.

At the end of the year, the Battle Barge Emperor’s Fury intercepted a mysterious ship in the outer region  of the Dozarian System. Identified as a vessel of the pirate band known as Balar Slavers, a contingent of Astartes boarded the vessel but were forced to withdraw in the face of powerful resistance. The slave ship ultimately was destroyed by the battle barge’s weapons batteries.

Orks cross “no man’s land” outside Hegira’s Susa City in a bid to storm its walls. Heavy artillery fire ensured that none of the xenos came close to the city’s fortifications.

Orks continue to plague Hegira

After a lull in fighting against Hegira’s Imperial defenders, during which ork warlords fought amongst themselves, the greenskin invaders once again turned their energies to destroying the last human strongholds on the desert moon.

More than half a million orks gathered at the xeno-held Barad Mine early in the year, a clear sign of a major greenskin offensive, and Imperial authorities launched a “preemptive strike” of 1,000 Imperial aircraft. As many as 100,000 orks were killed, and the greenskin air force was nearly obliterated—a decisive victory that authorities say weakened the ork’s offensive abilities for the rest of the year.

That’s not to say the orks stood idle. Several attacks were directed at the moon’s capital, Susa City, but its extensive fortifications proved too much for the xenos.

In one instance, an ork attack column was the target of Vothite artillery, mostly in the form of mechanized Basilisks, that used their Earthshaker Cannons on the advancing greenskins. When their barrage ended, the battlefield looked like a moonscape littered by tens of thousands of corpses.

Smaller battle fronts also challenged Imperial defenders. On 3 197 744.M41, two ork submersibles appeared offshore of Port Hinga and bombarded the city’s main docks.

“The unanticipated attack by the xenos threw the civilian populace into a panic,” one Imperial voxcast reported.

A mechanized patrol attacks what it thinks is a grot formation, but a second wave of ork warriors resulted in a major fight in the Sea of Dust.

This was the first time port has been attacked, other than occasional ork aerial bombardments, and city authorities have begun to strengthen the city’s defenses after rumors spread the greenskins were planning an amphibious attack.

A fight also broke out in the infamous Sea of Dust, where a warlord calling himself “Gradzod Steelgutz,” led a 65,000-ork warband in an attack on Redoubt #13-A, a fortified position that anchored the western edge of the Imperial defense line in the Sea of Dust.

After 13 hours of fighting, the redoubt fell, and over the next two days, the orks advanced 70 kilometers up the coast. The advance ultimately was stopped by Imperial reinforcements.

Weeks later, the orks attacked again—striking at a weak point in the Imperial defenses, allowing Steelgutz to capture a second redoubt, roll up part of the Imperial defenses, and widen the xeno salient.

As Imperial defenses were strengthened, Steelgutz’s orks have engaged in a series of reconnaissance missions seeking a weakness in the human lines. For example, 1,000 orks slipped through a gap in the Imperial lines and managed to infiltrate some kilometers before they ran into a patrol of the 5th Mechanized Company of the 7th Battalion of the 728th Cadian Regiment.

The subsequent fighting was bloody, as they two forces were approximately equal, and the Cadians originally thought they were facing an all-grot force and were caught by surprise when a wave of orks appeared over a nearby sand dune. Still, the Cadians won the day, driving the orks south and closing the temporary gap in Imperial lines.

To bolster morale, the Commissariat recently highlighted the exploits of a squad of the 728th Cadian Regiment in its Militarum Gazette, a propaganda sheet distributed to Imperial troopers.

A squad known as “Mal’s Miscontents” clashed with an ork patrol in a deserted village in Hegira’s treacherous Sea of Dust. It was a routine squad-on-squad firefight, with the Cadians winning the day, but Imperial propagandists embellished the battle into a major military victory.

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