The Fall of Orpheus - Part Three: The Doom of the Orpheus Sector (Warhammer 40,000 Lore)

In the wake of the Mainarch Dynasty's proclamation came a fear as infectious and fastm moving as the technological plague the Nekrons had already unleashed. The shroud that had fallen upon imperial communication was wrenched back, revealing the horror that had already been committed. The thousand basilicas of Athra, the fortress of the angel's revenant had been reduced to a field of lava. The very crust of the world split and weeping under whatever planetkilling weapons had been targeted upon it. Apolon, at bastion of the Inquisition, had likewise been shattered. The Nekrons had caused its moon, Elohim Mortua, to crash into the world, ejecting whole continents into the void. The news spread like wildfire, the very communication nets it was carried upon continuing to swirl [music] with the sinister glyphs of these mysterious invaders. Amrifell and Midwinter saw the outbreak of massive riots, lurching them towards the brink of total civic collapse as imperial authorities attempted to suppress them. The hope of inbound reinforcements from the Uraichi sector did not to stem the tide of terror. The first wave of the invasion had already riven the sector with hundreds of millions of human lives being snuffed out in total blackness. What hope could yet there be? On the morning of 4917991 M41, the sun failed to rise on Drusilla Majorus, capital world of the Drusilla subsector. The 6 billion humans of the hive world, gripped now within a night that may never end, could only watch as a dreadful cold descended upon their planet. All Vox traffic with ships in the nearby volume was abruptly cut off. And out in the ash wastess of the hive hinterlands, Eldrich monuments of black, impenetrable stone began to rise from the polluted sands. edififices revealing themselves to the terrified onlookers. Elsewhere, guarding the orbital shipyards of Midwinter, the Ramilies class star Fortress Taurus, received panicked distress calls, claiming to be under attack from unknown vessels and boarding parties of figures, quote, fashioned as specters of death. Despite even the major worlds of his sector appearing to be toppling like timber, Governor Lon refused any order of aggressive action, retreating to a fortified bunker beneath the gubernatorial palace on Amara, while the tens of millions of mustard soldiers and hundreds of warships remained on station high above. One by one, the systems surrounding the capital shrieked for aid before falling silent. Their deaths marked by blazing corpusant pulses of celestial fire. A stamp placed upon the realms once held by humanity but now deathly silent. Amara alone stood to beg the Imperium for aid. In every other respect, the Orpheus sector had been cut in half. The fall of over 50% of the Orpheus sector to the Manarch dynasty has entered into the annals of imperial history as the bloody hund so-called because it took less than 100 Terran days standard. To accomplish the seizure of such a volume in such a time as less than 3 months was not without precedent per se, but the chaos and panic in its wake are entirely understandable. Billions of lives had been lost, and the enemy had barely been cited and decidedly [clears throat] not yet confirmed. This was no orc war, the presence of which could scarcely be any more explicit, or an archeneemy campaign, replete with grand displays of debased religiosity. The main arc invasion was implacable, silent, and supremely deadly, turning Imperial retreats into panicked, formless routes, snuffing out worlds with near warning nor word. Victory after victory, they claimed, seizing a staggering volume of space during the bloody hundred before, once again halting in place. On 3964992 M41, Governor Lan ordered the general retreat of every single surviving Imperial military element to Amara, hoping to use the reprieve to gather whatever scattered forces he could. As the days wore on, Lon's paranoia and mental instability, both of which had been growing since the beginning of the bloody hundred, appeared to become significantly worse. interfering with the strategic planning of Amara's defense. Relief began to appear in the form of outof sector reinforcements, trickling in from the systems Mandavville point. Yet more sector local units from the Arcantis cluster far behind the line drawn between the main arc crown worlds and Amara that marked the invader's advance thus far. Likewise redirected to Amara, depriving them wholesale of any military protection. This significantly damaged imperial morale and planetary political stability within the Arcantis [music] cluster with terrified populuses and ruling classes both now well aware of the advancing doom that was taking place across the sector leading to outright mutiny on several occasions only to be bloodily suppressed at the hands of prefectus commisarats and the adeptus arbites. The halt in the Nekron advance granted the Imperial forces almost 3 months to muster. And this was far from wasted. The army's array at Amara had grown to formidable proportions. Over 19 million Astromilitarum Guardsmen with almost 10 times that number in militia raised under emergency edict and armed and equipped along the Munatorum's Cadian pattern. One of the last contingents to arrive in system and perhaps the most storied of all outof sector militarum reinforcements were 2 million soldiery of the death corps of led by the veteran 17th line corps under the command of marshal caris venner. It was however not only the militarum that answered Orpheus's plea for aid. The call to arms had been heeded by several chapters of the Adeptus Estartis, most notably what appeared to be the entirety of the Minotaur's chapter, entering the northern reaches of the sector with brutal haste alongside a company from the Marauders chapter. Elements from the Red Seraphs and the Nemesis chapter had likewise delivered astropathic missives to Amara, notifying it of their imminent arrival. The battle barges of these chapters, now numbering in four, added their might to the Armada orbiting the capital, several hundred escort class vessels, and more than 60 rated cruisers and capital ships of the Imperial Navy. It was a staggering force of arms arrayed for the defense of a single world, even a sector capital, at least by modern imperial standards, especially when even the barest hint of the enemy's nature still remained wholly unknown. Belligerent calls for more immediate action became more common as the weeks proceeded, but L and his advisers remained resolute in their strategy of patient unyielding defense. The idea of a counterattack into the lost regions of Orphan space was simply not countenanced. But likewise, Alain forbid even the conducting of reconnaissance in force to establish even the most remote facts about enemy movements, strength, or nature. For all the world, it appeared the governor and his council simply dared not disturbed the dark veil that had been thrown over the lost worlds of Orpheus. In a report laterally compiled by Inquisitor Scarman Havas of the Ordo Xenos following the fall of Orpheus, Inquisitor Hyram Nithona, high-ranking survivor of the sector's inquisitorial conclave and a close adviser to the governor following the beginning of the bloody hundred was ruled postmortem to have had his conduct in this period found wanting. Nitona had been an esteemed and rightly lorded demon hunter of the Ordo Melius for some two centuries and his record was genuinely unimpeachable. The unavoidable conclusion of Inquisitor Havas however was that in this final trial of the emperor's service, the venerable Nitona had allowed his own fears and paranoia to become his undoing from the beginning. As one has noted in this record thus far, Nitona was adamant that the calamitous invasion was a ploy in the schemes of the dark gods of primordial annihilation whose abilities to invoke maleific stellar phenomenon on a large scale is undeniably based in fact. Nitona viewed the progress of events as merely a preamble to a greater threat to come. Even as the situation worsened and no extent proof of demonic incursions provided itself in the least. Owing to this it was laterally concluded by the Inquisition that vital intelligence was not given full scrutiny or indeed was passed on by Nitona to the servants of the Ordo Xenos where Inquisitor Havas noted with no small amount of prideful shity actual value may have been gleaned. Havasa's report points to Inquisitor Nitona's close association with Governor Lan and his inability to properly deal with the governor's clearly degrading mental functionality as proof of his lapse of judgment. To quote the report, "Following the beginning of what the Imperium now knows to be the Nekron assault on the sector, Lan became plagued with a series of increasingly vivid nightmares in which he found himself seated at a great feasting table surrounded by terrifying deathly figures. Lan himself describes as being quote masked in bone and gilded steel, clad in the golden and darkly jeweled reignment of barbarous alien kings and princes. Set before them were platters and dishes on which lay alternately gray dust, glowing cinders, and raw bloody meat. At the head of the table is a vast enthroned figure, quote, more terrible than the rest, so fearful I knew my heart would fail if I looked directly upon them. In this dread company, Lon found himself trapped and bidden to eat the strange meal while the deathly court looked on. All watching him in malignant silence, save one, draped in raw skins that ravened at the unholy banquet, smearing bloody chunks of flesh onto its twisted mask, even though it could not eat, drenching itself with flaggins of steaming blood even though it could not drink. When in the dream, Lon could not stand any more of this horror and cried to be let go, a hooded and shrouded figure appeared at his back and whispered to him, quote, "These are the worlds that were once ours. The worlds that you trespassed upon and are now ours again. The worlds on which we have risen have already been cleansed. The worlds where we once walked, we shall now walk again." As the rights demand, you are given a cycle [music] of the pale stars to prepare yourself for extermination. Manarch comes and the banquet shall be served again. Inquisitor Nitona being of demon hunter stock clearly interpreted these recurrent dreams as the work of the warp. Demonic emanations of the vilest source insinuating themselves into Lan's sleeping mind, tormenting the governor with treacherous prophecy designed only to deceive Lan into surrendering intelligence on troop movements to their foul masters in the material world. Ironically, in hindsight, based on significant Ordo Xenos encounters with and study of the rising threat of the Nekron dynasties in the era Indomitus, it is quite likely that everything within these dreams was the stark literal truth. In cross-referencing LN's case with those reported elsewhere by inquisitors Boas, Straker, and Valyria, it is likely that Lan, despite being an Imperial commander and surrounded by the protections such as the office brings, was abducted covertly with the Manarch nobility daining to treat him as the head of the forces opposing the Nekrons in the region. In this, the dynasty was extending to him the ancient courtesies and honors their culture had demanded of foes prior to the great sleep. Even as a member of the species, the Nekrons themselves consider utterly beneath them in every capacity. The experience was so clearly so unearly, traumatic, and malign that it irrevocably damaged the mind of Governor Lon in such a fashion that caused his surface consciousness to block it out. It remains a terrible irony that once again the signs of what was to come were very readily available, drawn in a string of crumbs across history and rising to greater prominence. Yet the Imperium's dogmatic and hidebound nature rendered it wholly unable to see them. [music] On 3 970992 M41, the Battle of Amara began as suddenly as the initial Mainarch invasion had, without preamble, preface, or prelude. No astropathic shock wave announced to the Nekron attack. No deep system or sweeps detected them. At 1534202 local time scale, a massive gravitational flux sprang into being near the Armara star. Its shock waves causing the sun to violently eject plasma and radiation into space in a series of massive solar flares. Such was the fury of these flares that the systems innermost planet Oric was flash incinerated on its dayside in a single instant. Vox, Sensorium, and Augur networks across the system failed immediately, drowned in a cascade of stellar radiation, rendering much of the Imperial defenses blind and deaf. Many unshielded technologies, not hardened against E-mag shocks, were likewise disabled. The confusion and chaos was so total that it wasn't until the Sentinel 4 battle station in deep orbit suddenly detonated that the cause became monstrously clear. The enemy had finally come for the Imperium. At Leighton, third planet in the system, the Imperial battle fleet had been arrayed for months in a solid defensive picket, blockading what was, by any conventional wisdom, the shest route to the capital planet from the systems Mandeville point of warp translation. Such wisdom, of course, did not apply against the Nekrons. As backup auguries and visual suites came online, the commanders of the fleet saw with horror that an armada of black ships hung in the near space of the dead battle station, accelerating still at speeds barely registerable. Calculus Loi stated they would be in Amara's orbit in [music] mere minutes. The battle fleet had been utterly bypassed. To use a simplistic analogy, the enemy was within the walls. The orbital minefields and weapons batteries of Amara's near space were the next target. The invading fleets swept through them with a clinical precision. Carefully constructed defenses of decades, impeding them not one bit. The remaining Sentinel battle stations, each with the proportional firepower of an entire cruiser squadron, were systematically obliterated. All while the Imperial battle fleet was still firing up their engines, beating to quarters, and desperately trying to plot the fastest intercept course available. There was simply no time to interdict. Planet Fall was happening with the inevitability of a bullet already fired. Unnatural storms boiled across the capital world skies, sliced through by cracks of vivid lightning. It seemed that for all the world, the enemy rode in upon the lightning. First contact between invaders and defenders is believed to have occurred in the wide ceremonial plazas of Koshin Hive, where a veritable army of humanoid forms in black iron materialized in advance with no pause of fanfare, committing themselves immediately to the base slaughter of the terrified populace that fled before them. At Duranad Starport, swarms of insecttoid constructs emerged from subterranean access tunnels, tearing apart the shuttles and gunships on the runways around them like a plague of ancient caththeric mythic tracts. New Vasburg, one of the planet's largest hives, was targeted by crescent-shaped enemy flyers, identified laterally as Doomcythe and Night Shroud class aircraft by the Ordo Xenos. The latter, in particular, launched pinpoint barges of antimatter bombs, shredding structural supports until the hive simply imploded in a collapse that killed countless millions. While the cities were clearly the primary targets of the Nekron attack, they soon began to target military installations. Foremost amongst them, the Bastian Militaris, located at the planet's northern pole. Against this, the Nekron set fearsome siege constructs, hovering soundlessly above the ice flows, but unleashing apocalyptic barges from their energy weapons and seismic obliterators, shredding and cracking the walls of the Imperial Fortress. Elsewhere, the barrack blocks of Marovven Peninsula, built to house nearly a million guardsmen, were simply annihilated from orbit, leaving nothing but ash and fused silica glass, where once an entire army had been billeted. Despite these already punishing losses and the ability of the enemy to simply appear within their midst, the Imperial defenders mounted what counterattacks they could muster. At Koshin Hive, the tanks of the Techarn 234th Armored Battalion learned the hard way that they were quite susceptible to even the small arms fire of the Nekrons, whose Gaus flares could strip the plating of a tank with ease. An open battle was death, forcing the Tarn commanders to concentrate their forces on open plazas and thoroughares to grant them the advantage of long range wherever possible. Engaged by rank after rank of Nekron warriors, the numbers of the invaders seemed barely to be dented, and those yet damaged by Imperial shellfire began before the eyes of the defenders to reassemble their mechanical bodies. The Techarn did not relent in their barrage and kept firing until their cannon barrels began to glow dull red with heat. A stalemate of sorts had been struck, but one the Techarn officers knew they could not sustain. and indeed did not. Death struck them from below and above simultaneously. According to survivor testimony, the Nekrons deployed their Achenth Koptic constructs. Believed to be some of the first Imperial forces to encounter such blasphemous automatons. Unlike the koptic rates who bear a similar form, achenthrites are capable of atmospheric flight and their thermal beams function akin to Imperial meltas. Plunging from the skies upon the column, the constructs reaped a fearsome toll of Imperial war machines. Slaughter only added to by a pinser attack from below. As Koptek tomb sentinels, horrific burrowing anthropodlike machines burst forth, massacring what remained. Within days, Amara Prime was in ruins. Every single main hive had fallen to the main arc dynasty. No quarter or mercy was offered. No demands had been made. No reprieve was granted in the implacable xenocide. Yet Loai of Imperial defenses remained intact and functioning. The death core of under Marshall Venner had been deployed in Carala industrial district far from the main hive connorations. Upon the outbreak of hostilities, they immediately set about fortifying their position with trench imp placements connecting command stations, dugouts, and ammunition dumps with the region's pre-existing utility tunnel network. Such foresight allowed them to weather the first wave of attacks relatively unscathed, the enemy seeming to avoid their fortifications in favor of weaker Imperial targets and civilian population centers. When the counterattack was launched, it came in force and was aimed specifically at incorporating surviving Imperial forces into itself. Marshall Venner personally executed many senior commanders of surviving bands for dereliction of duty, permitting the surviving guardsmen opportunities as martyr redemptors upon the line core front lines. The Marshall's forces swelled to over 200,000 Astromeitarum within days, as well as nearly a dozen cobbled together squadrons of aeronautica Imperialis aircraft. The Death Corps's renowned skills in operating in annihilated environments such as the ruins of Amara was highly valuable at this stage of the campaign. The core shifted their tactics based upon several first engagements with the Nekrons, applying overwhelming artillery fire to deny the Nekrons long-ranged fire at every opportunity. The relentless advance of Nekron warriors was stalled by similarly implacable guardsmen, fanatical in their devotion to the Imperial cause, making great success in comparison to other militarum forces, but at a horrific toll in lives. Marshall Venner was of course aware of the dire nature of his situation. What victories he was winning were temporary at best and the enemy were seemingly in total control of the planet already. In perhaps archetypal mentality, he settled upon glorious martyrdom in the emperor's name as the only route worthy of consideration. But he would not do so without a target. This he was provided thanks to reconnaissance undertaken by the Minotaur's chapter who had established that within the ruins of New Vasber, a step pyramid of green black stone, the angles of which hurt the eyes of all those who beheld it had risen from the rubble, appearing to pull bolt after bolt of lightning from the boiling skies above onto its apex. Several other lesser citadels made of that same malignant stonework rose around it, connected to each other by a web of angular alien trenchwork. Necron forces in great number patrolled this complex and could be observed dragging human corpses into the great hungering mo of the pyramid. Venner's attack on the Nekron Citadel was horrendously bloody. The sentry pylons of the fortress reaped hundreds of advancing cre and other guardsmen within minutes and the opening Imperial artillery bombardment was deflected by advanced energy shields of the pyramids. Committing everything to the attack, Marshall Venner was met with similar commitment by the Nekrons who unleashed a horde of warriors and koptic constructs in the defense of their imp placements. As probing attacks against Imperial artillery began to deprecate their effectiveness, the nevertheless managed a breakthrough upon the battlefield, reaching the outlying alien citadels at the cost of thousands of their own, surrounding Nekrons and bracketing them within murderous crossfire. Engineers, experts in breaching fortified structures, were hurriedly deployed, cracking open each citadel in turn and rushing within. Despite the utterly unknown workings of the Xenos technology they beheld, they were nevertheless cre with explosives and judiciously applied the emperor's destruction to whatever power conduits or energy outputs they could determine would be effective. One by one, the Nekron pyramids were destroyed, often at the cost of the soldiers that brought them down. As the death toll on Amara climbed into the billions, the Nekron fleet turned its attention to the Imperial ships within the system. If Imperial commanders had believed the relatively tiny amount of Xenos ships would flee before such a vast human armada, they were sorely mistaken. With an ease that one senior officer described as almost contemptuous, the Nekron ships smoothly came about and arrayed themselves against the incoming Orphan fleet and began to accelerate to speeds that almost defied sensor readings. The main arc fleet held by Imperial readings less than a quarter of their number and by logistic standards far less tonnage with their ships being thin or small in comparison to Imperial Navy behemoths. The exception to these were two mighty tomb ships 15 km in span with sinister pyramids crusting their surfaces. These were codified by Imperial Strategos as the Sunkiller and Dead Hand for identification purposes and marked as targets of extreme priority given their size. Having now identified the invaders as Necrons, the senior navy officers noted that the concentration of power before them, however small in comparison to their own navy, still represented one of, if not the largest deployment of Nekron starships on Imperial record. Previous encounters were extremely rare, but had gone very poorly for the Navy, and the Mechanicus Magi aboard were frantically hailing bridge officers regarding unknowable energy readings concentrated around the largest enemy ships. On the bridge of the Apocalypse class battleship Araka Dominus, Grand Admiral George Caro, Knight Commander of Battlefleet Orpheus, conferred with the helmeted form of Ayion Molo, chapter master of the Minotaurs via Holith. Moolok himself aboard the relic battle barge Dalos Crater and commanding a dozen Estarti strike cruisers besides declared that he would take a secondary echelon behind the Imperial forward battle volume preparing to strike at a potential weak point in the Nekron vanguard or to deal with any ships that attempted a breakthrough. This was not a move poised for discussion. Moolok simply did as he saw fit, daining to inform Admiral Caru out of basic politeness. The admiral acceeded, ordering his fleet to advance and engage only as ordered under pain of death. Not that the Imperials would have any much opportunity to slip their leashes, as the Nekron ships entered extreme weapons range even before the line of battle had been fully formed. Ranging fire was immediately ordered, through which the Nekron ships passed completely undeterred. Even as a swarm of torpedoes was launched, the Xenos made no move to correct their course or take evasive maneuvers. Now entering terminal range, scores of the torpedoes simply ceased to function. They sped off in entirely new directions or exploded harmlessly on the hulls of the Nekron vessels. Hoving now into lance range, the invaders finally discharged their weaponry to ruinous effect. Massive gravitational distortions were registered as Imperial ships detected incoming weapons fire approaching at nearly the speed of light. Afteraction reports logged by the pitiful few survivors that made it out of this confluuration later claimed that what sensor readings could track the projectiles labeled them as fragments of dead stars. The battle cruiser Rickenbach, a vessel whose service record dated from the beginnings of the Great Crusade, was hit amid ships and simply detonated. It was merely the first. Admiral Karu ordered the entire battle fleet to come about and affect broadside fire at will, clearly seeing the futility in attempting the usual careful coordinated dance of ships that typically defined void warfare. The Nekron ships sliced through the Imperial fleet amidst a hail of lance fire and macro cannon shells, discharging their own fearsome batteries in return. Both armaders rad each other without pause or mercy. But as they parted, fully a quarter of the Imperial ships present had been destroyed or crippled beyond rescue, with barely any damage having been registered [music] upon the Nekrons. The Xenos, having passed to the rear of the Imperial fleet, were expected to begin a slow arc back, hopefully granting Karu some time to ready up another storm in response. But to the horror of all observers, the alien ship simply stopped. Their momentum was utterly, impossibly arrested, and then they simply turned. With impossible ease, the ships came about and began returning on the path they had come, straight into the exposed rear of the Imperial Fleet. The second attack, perhaps predictably, was supremely more devastating than the first. Blinded by their own drive flares, the Imperial ships could barely detect the positioning of the alien vessels as they came within killing range. They were the easiest of prey. Admiral Caru bellowed disengage orders into his Vox, but it was still too late. The retributioncl class battleship talisman of grace was caught before the suniller and sheared in half by its Gaus arrays. While the heavy cruiser Mendicatus was pulled apart mercilessly by a pack of Nekron raiders alongside dozens more craft burning and breaking in the silent void. What line of battle had remained was quickly sundered, with Imperial starships plunging in whatever direction they could, lashing out at any targets of opportunity. The Arcia Dominus, against the odds, claimed the life of a Nekron harvest ship, only to be targeted in return by a trio of Nekron raiders, who gutted its starboard batteries and set fire to her main engineerium. Out of control, the flagship tumbled away into the void. The horrified senior command watching on flickering hollowospheres as the xenos ships danced amongst the dead and soon to die like carrying beasts reing in slaughter. Asterion Mollik of the Minotaurs having observed the debacle knew even his Astartis ships would likely be wholly outclassed by the firepower, durability, and maneuverability of the Xenos. The Dower Chapter Master instead ordered an immediate attack upon a single target. The tombship labeled dead hand. Adopting an attack formation in the shape of a bull's head with the datalos crater forming the protected skull and the chapter's three battle barges the jaws. Its eight strike cruisers the horns. The Minotaur's fleet smashed into the heart of battle. Engines at full burn. The strike cost them the daughter of Tempests. a battle barge taken as a prize in the Badab war alongside the Fidelitas Lambda and a trio of strike cruisers. It did however bring the Minotaurs into the boarding range they sought. The boarding torpedoes that delivered the chapter into the heart of the dead hand brought the brazen estarties into a charal house of a wholly alien sort. one whose constructs and warriors reacted to the invading marines as a body reacts to a virus. Losses were extreme. Within a half hour, only Terminator squad Xthalon survived, having fought its way into the heart of the ship's central chamber. Within that massive area, a kilometer wide, arose a great deis upon which stood the overlord of the fleet, clad in a cloak of raw darkness. It would be the last sight the warriors of Squad Exthalion would see as Lichgard stepped from within the seemingly living darkness to butcher these human transgressors. They survived long enough to send a signal to the Dalos crater, one the battle barge used to target the chamber and fire every weapon battery they could upon the location. Curiously for Nekron vessels, the Manarch tombship was recorded as having an atmosphere. Likely an aspect of the flare curse that befell the dynasty, for no neckron had any reason or need to [music] breathe. The fact was exploited by the Minotaurs. Central Chamber was breached by the targeted bombardment with explosive decompression, bucking the tomb ship off course. One great arm of its crescent sweep caught the datalos crater in a dancing blow, sending the relic battle barge spinning in space, where aboard Asterion Mollock alongside his chapters in terminator elite and several Hecaton contempted dreadnots crashed through the veil of reality in an audacious teleport assault. Against the sinister fleet lord did Malo range himself in a clash of silent, wordless fury. Their singular combat, an honor perhaps dained by the Nekron lord, was not abided by Malik, who sought only to kill. The Hecaton dreadnots of the chapter aided their master. But such was the skill of the Xenos overlord that ruin was brought upon their ancient chassis. But triumph Mulliko did impaling the sinister figure upon the black spear of the minotaurs before a catastrophic impact dislodged the two combatants and swept Malik and the surviving Aardis back out into the void. The dead hand tombship turned slowly pivoting away from the burning hulk of the battleb barge Fidelas Lambda. The Minotaur's ship had rammed the Xenos vessel at full speed, but this dying act had forced the tomb ship to affect a retreat. With their flagship on the move, the Xenos fleet likewise disengaged. Driven off at best, not defeated, leaving within their wake utter devastation. The Sunkiller and a dozen escorting raiders unexpectedly split from the body of the fleet and made landing on the night side of Oric, whose face was soon consumed by dark storms and pulses of unnatural radiance. The remainder and the wounded dead hand simply vanished without a trace whatsoever. It is possible that they affected an acceleration so fast that Imperial augers were unable to track them. Or perhaps some altogether more unknowable technological means covered their retreat. Either way, they were gone. But the victory could hardly have been any more pirick. Less than 10% of the Imperial ships remained operational, and even these survivors bore deep, painful scars. Amara Prime, although now liberated from its primary invasion force, was a graveyard of billions. Whatever recompense the Imperium had claimed there had been bought at the most terrible price. The surviving forces were evacuated as quickly as possible from the ruins, pulled back to the outer worlds of Laymon and Calama to regroup. [music] of the remnants of the civilian population, those unlucky enough to remain alive in the dark charal destruction, the Imperium abandoned them to whatever fate awaited. The battle of Amara, was over. By the dawning of 995 M41, the Orphan War, such as it remained, had reached a bloody punitive stalemate. But scattered forces did not retreat from the destruction of Amara or Hydrogast were wholly cut off from the Imperium, left to wither or sell their lives. Attrition rates along the front line reached some 60% with no Imperial gains or advances being made. The line held, but at a staggering cost. Worst still, fresh conflicts broke out in the Chimarium system as planets fell to the hands of the arch enemy who had launched opportunistic invasions with the Imperium reeling from the Nekron assault. Admire and Amrifell, Xenos probing attacks were increasing with Imperial Strategos rating the possibility of a full invasion occurring as quite high. This combined with the difficulty of immediate resupply and the utter devastation of battle fleet Orpheus during the initial invasion led the Sinnod Militaris of Sigmentum Tempestus to conclude that the Orpheus sector could not be saved without the deployment of a crusade level military force which by munatorium calculations accounting for the already in progress segmentum conflicts and the vagaries of future ones occurring would not be at the Imperium's disposal. for approximately 3 to 5 decades. This report worked its way through the upper layers of the munatorum and administratum before being delivered to the eyes of the high lords of terror for a conclusive vote. It is apparent from historical records of senatorum proceedings that the Ordo Xenos had a very heavy hand in the progress of this report. The emergence of the Mayanarch dynasty in such force had at the time been one of the largest and most aggressive awakenings of the Nekrons yet encountered by the Imperium. And the scale of the devastation it had unleashed had forced major cinnids of the Ordo to urgently re-examine their writings, protocols, and policies concerning Imperial engagement with the species. In consultation with the death watch chapter of the adeptus estates, the Ordo Xenos was in the process of launching exploratory and research expeditions into what remained of the Orpheus sector and clearly wanted to ensure little could impede their efforts. The chamber Morai in recommendation to the Senate and championed by Inquisitorial representative Cleopatra Arcs advanced and passed the Orphan decree, an edict Imperialis that formally disccorporated the sector. As of 026699 M41, Orpheus was no more. It did not exist. Its tithes were enulled, its authority stripped, its history sealed, and committed to the deepest vaults to be unremembered. A cordon of fortress worlds, primarily based in the neighboring Uradici sector, were ordered constructed and a military cordon enforced. To deny the Nekrons any resources they could claim from planets still controlled by the Imperium, the Minotaurs were ordered to commit Exterminatus, pending their refitting and rearmament following their losses. Thus did Orpheus fall in cold fire. Thus did a region of Imperial space collapse. Millennia of history snuffed out in scarcely a year by a foe who had dwelled beneath its surface all along. Its fate remains as we leave it. A blackened husk of space, a testament to the blinkered ignorance of the Imperium, a loss of staggering scale, and one rendered into relative obscurity only for the immense losses and calamities the Imperium was to endure in the waning months of 999 M41. the fall of Cadia, the Nocta Satna, the opening of the Kikatrix Maladictum. Even for the Manarch Dynasty, their current disposition and fate remains unclear to imperial scholarship. The return of the silent king and the unfolding of the pariah nexus has cast new fears that the bloody-handed warriors of Zun Bakier may throw themselves a new at the Imperial Cordon that has yet to keep them in check, affecting a breakout from their dynastic heartlands in an effort to rejoin the lord of their species. This remains to be seen. As for the Minotaurs, one cannot independently confirm if their proposed Exterminatus campaign was ever carried out. Their presence upon Terra during the Hexarchy crisis casts doubt upon this, but given the extreme chronological disruption to the galaxy following the Noctis Eterna and the curious nature of the chapter themselves, we will likely never know. For now, the Orphan War has been as totally buried as the population that once dwelt there. A shameful chapter of history that the Imperium would rather forget. A imperator. Gloria and Excelsus Terra. This video and this channel were made possible thanks to the very kind donations and support from my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com/oculousimperia. If you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos, you can contact me or follow me on Twitter @ Oculusmperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching. teach [music] Glorious. [music] [music] >> [music] [singing] [music] >> Hallelujah. [music] We are [music] Praise [music] God. >> [music] >> She >> [music] >> We