Battle 10: the Atonement of Angels

- Location: the desert city of Tartarus, Cerberus XIII.
- Imperial Forces: Dark Angels, 3:rd company
- Chaos Forces: Chaos, the Unhallowed 11:th
- Points value: 900 points on each side 

[Author: Jocke B]

Defeat. The green tide had swallowed Company Master Demetrious´s force. Now it was time for retreat and regrouping back at loyalist lines, eagerly followed and harried by ork forces. The wounded Demtrious was evacuated by the only thunderhawk that had managed to brave the fighters and anti aircraft guns of the traitor forces. The same thunderhawk also disgorged squad Anderfeld and Interrogator Chaplain Isiah Wrath who took command of the breakout, since only the wounded could ride out in the ship.

A group of the scattered Dark Angels, which made up the reconnoiter force that had departed the base some days before, gathered under the Interrogator´s command and formed the spearhead of the remaining forces. Those able to fight formed new squads and were placed on the flanks to cover the breakout. The surviving dreadnought Brother Anvilus and the predator tank Ignis Lux were put in the front of the force.

As the force began its move, all was calm, the gunfire from the greenskins slowly faded, artillery fire from the other fronts was barely registered. Several kilometers were traversed before something bothered the keen senses of the vanguard. Something was very wrong.
Then it came into sight. The sickly green rhino of a traitor legion and other signs of the ruinous powers: gibbering demons, a small group of traitor terminators and a group bristling with heavy weapons hiding in a high building.

Interrogator Wrath ordered the attack. They were too close to the loyalist lines to turn back and take another route, besides, the old chaplain recognized their foe: the Unhallowed 11th. Sons of Horus himself. There were no options.
Combat squads of marines took positions among the ruined buildings on both sides of the road while their brethren rode the rhinos in advance.

Fire erupted between the two forces and the chaos troops moved shouting praises to their fell gods, as the Dark Angels advanced in grim silence, letting their guns sing the praises of the Emperor.
Fierce fighting took place between traitor and loyalist among the ruins of Tartarus and many fell. Dark powers of the warp concealed a great beast of lava and metal as it appeard and tore Ignis Lux into a wreck but was then destroyed by Brother Anvilus in turn. Chaos legionnaries mowed down silent Angels with fire, bolts and boobytraps but was avenged by Isiah Wrath and Codicier Percival. The horde of pink and purple The horde of pink and purple demons was held at bay by squad Anderfeld as well as Anvilus.
The climax of the battle came when the Lord of the Sons became visible outside the ruin where Wrath and Percival was regrouping, the floors and halls full of dead from both sides. Losing no time, the two charged out to face the Lord and his terminator henchman, to finally break the chaos warband.

With a storm of blows from his devastating mace, Interrogator Wrath laid low both opponents in a matter of seconds. Shrieks came from the pack of demons as they was torn back to the warp and the surviving few of the traitors faded back into the ruined landscape. The path to Emperor hallowed ground lay clear!

Dark Angel victory 16-5

Battle 9: The Long War rages on

New battle fought on the Eastern Fringe, new post on Uppsala Grimdark. The Wordbearers prescensce on Cerberus XIII is holding, despite several Imperial armies trying to force a decisive battle. Will a scouting force of the Dark Angels 4:th manage to corner the traitorous legionnaires?

 - Location: the desert city of Tartarus, Cerberus XIII.
- Imperial Forces: Dark Angels 4:th company
- Chaos Forces: The Wordbearers
- Points value: 600 points on each side

[Author: Jon]

With a cut of his force-blade Marchosias cleaved the Dark Angel from his bike, only to be shot by the loyalist's comrade. He felt his armor fracture, and bright pain shot from his shoulder.

Around him the remainder of his squad had fallen, and only one of the False God's slaves remained. But he knew that there were more of them near, a speeder and a walker, at least. It was high time to retreat, so he spun a lie of warp threads and sent it towards his foe, making him see Marchosias' death. Only, later, there would be no corpse.

He stumbled away from the battle site, hidden from the minds of his pursuers. It would not be a pretty report to give to his Lord. Initially, all had went well. He had shredded the minds of their first attackers, a whole squad reduced to mindless husks with his power, and the leader of the Dark Angels, a chaplain of the Corpse God, had likewise fallen. Then, the fates had turned against them.

Their mortal allies had not fared well against the mechanized units opposing them. The Speeder had mowed them down, and a unit of scouts had killed them from afar. Marchosias had called to acolyte Agares and his unit for help, but they had been too far away to matter for the battle. Wisely they had deemed the situation lost, and retreated.

Of acolyte Marax' unit, that on this occasion had been his personal retinue, none followed him now. He hoped that some of them managed to escape in the inevitable confusion after a battle. For their allies he had little hope, and to be truthful he no longer thought of them. Their souls had gone to the warp, little sparks in a sea of souls.

Their task was done with their time in this world. His task was still ahead of him. The Long War would rage a long time still.

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Additional images courtesy of the Dark Angels memorial archive. Unauthorized viewing considered Heresy.

Battle 8: Connection Lost

Still on vacation battling mosquitoes instead of the opressive Imperium, so no retouched images.

The Dark Angels are on Cerberus XIII battling Chaos that has fallen back into the deep culverts below Tartarus. They are recently being hard pressed by the greenskins, which have launched attacks from several Rust Ships. But before the greenskin attack, the Dark Angels ran into another enigmatic enemy.


- Location: the desert city of Tartarus, Cerberus XIII.
- Imperial Forces: Dark Angels
- Chaos Forces: Harlequins
- Points value: 600 points on each side 

[Author: Jocke B]

Dark Angels vs. Harlequins 600pts Connection Lost
Brother captain Demetrious stepped out of his command rhino onto the silent, eerie streets of Tartarus. Something was wrong. All comms had stopped working just a minute before and showed no sign of returning to working order. With hand signals he despatched battlesquads Ashkalon and Galdor into the buildings on either side of the street while he slowly advanced with squads Absalom and Lasius on foot, rhinos following close behind.

Ancient brother Hulud moved off to the right, heading for a relay, hoping to reestablish commuications with base.
"Movement ahead, brother captain" his echoing voice boomed from a vox on his sarcofagus. Demitrious took position at a corner and surveyed the area ahead. Movement alright. Colourful holofields, smoke and the occasional shadow. With surprise the captain whispered in the group channel "Harlequins ahead, hundred meters and closing, take firing positions sectors beta and delta".

His troops moved as one in facing the threat, taking what cover was to be found behind rhinos and rubble, squad Absalom unwittingly moved into a minefield placed around a fusebox shooting sparks.
A pair of jetbikes zoomed into view, their cannons opening up on brother Hulud who staggered from repeated hits from emp charged ammunition. Demetrious gave the order and no fewer than twenty weapons opened fire on the jetbikes in response. Squad Absalom´s plasmagunner suffered a misfire and fell screaming but the jetbikes spiraled out of control, spilling mortally wounded harlequins and fire as they blew up. A sinister shape in a window from across the street opened fire on squad Ashkalon, killing a marine with his huge shuriken cannon. Squad Ashkelon, however, stood fast under the stern gaze of their captain.

What followed was a running firefight between a recently popped up vyper jetbike, brother Hulud, the deathjester and the combat squads of marines. That is, until a troupe of harlequins jumped out of a ruined window to pounce and dance in among squad Absolom and slaying them to a man. Counterfire detroyed the troupe, leaving only a slightly stunned lord of the eldar performers to the tender mercies of captain Demetrious, who slew him with his chainsword.
At this moment a horned harlequin appeared out of nowhere close to ancient brother Hulud and in a flurry of blows and thrusts, laid the reamins of the old marine open to the air of Tartarus. Hulud roared a final time in his impotent rage and went offline.

Demetrious shook the blood off his blade and looked around

with cold determination. He saw a harlequin with a mirrored face - a blank mask that reflected nothing. At that instant the captain felt his mind invaded by slivers of glass and mirrors but he shook his heaad, clearing it, and swore over the witch. His fast movements took him straight to the psyker and slew it.
Shaking the blood from the chainswordblade again he slowly turned to the sound of battle slackening as squad Lasius fire stopped. As he turned around to see what was amiss, he felt a stinging pain in his abdomen and he looked down to see a blade protruding from his sternum. The biodata in his helmet declared that one of his hearts was pierced, together with a lung and several other organs. Demetrious blacked out.

As Demetrious came to, what must have been hours later, a tech adept was kneeling before him.One of the drivers of the rhinos. From what the marine had to tell him, it showed that he battle was pretty much over by the time Demtrious was struck down by the horned harlequin. Of the imperials, only the rhinos remained on the battlefield, gathering the wounded and the slain. They had seen two harleqins,one was the horned one and the other wore a grinning skull mask. They had let the imperials regroup and gather for a retreat. Why? Demetrious could not say, it was typical of the eldar, mysterious and sanctimonious. First cutting the communications, ambushing the dark angels and then just leaving without a reason. They can impossibly win a war, Demetrious thought. Next time...

Battle result: 10-9 for the harlequins

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Additional images courtesy of the ECBE (Esteemed Conclave for Battle Evaluation), Astra Militarum. 

Battle 7: Chaos Purge on standby - Green intermission.

The Green Tide has overrun the forge world Incatalion and are now striking deep within the sector, ravaging the Chaos-purge on Cerberus XIII.

No retouched images today, sorry for that. I have a vacation and is sitting in a cabin in the middle of the woods while my gaming buddies are playing games at our local shop. They seem to play a game every frickin’ day, while I am stuck drinking beer in hammocks, visit country garage sales and take lakeside swims with the kids. Lucky bastards.

- Location: the desert city of Tartarus, Cerberus XIII.
- Imperial Forces: Dark Angels.
- Invasion forces: Orcs
- Point value: 900 pts
- Result: Orc/Dark Angels 14/4

[Author: Joakim B]

In the dark before the dawn they came. The orks the Blood Angels had warned about. But now on Cerberus, in Tartarus itself. Master Demetrious had gathered what he could of his company and rushed toward the ork landing site but he was too late - the orks had infiltrated the city in great numbers. His actual mission was to find a way into the undercity of Tartarus but he could not ignore the ork presence.
Well placed marines traded fire with ork boyz and artillery but few casualties were inflicted.
The ork advance continued unimpeded until light, when Dark Angel armour and assault squads punished the careless ork vehicles that had advanced ahead of the horde. The smoke stung in the eyes of the boyz who only became hungrier for the fight ahead, the light of bloodlust shining in their beady eyes.

Master Demetrious held a calming eye on his marines as they desperately tried to thin the mobs before them before the inevitable assault.
Then the cry went out: WAAAAAAAGH!! And the orks poured in, through vicious fire and scalding promethium, into arms reach of the outnumbered marines. Slaughter followed when the bestial xenos tore down the stalwart marines with unbridled savagery and sheer weight of numbers. Only Demetrious remained on his feet after the first onslaught when Brother Balduin roared into the combat, his vox screaming out hymns to the God Emperor as he slew half a dozen orks in a few seconds.

To no avail. Demetrious was torn down and struck down by a huge brute with a power klaw and an even bigger brute smashed the weapon from the mount of brother Balduin right arm and then the lid of his most sacred sarcophagus.

In other places the battle still hung in the balance. Ork bikes had been twice repelled; many boyz cut down and several kans and buggies stood burning on the field. Assault squad Athelstane was rampaging through vehicles and a building shielding ork troops when they found the entrance to the undercity. The gretchins had been sitting on it all the while but not realizing what they protected.

Athelstane screamed out his despair and frustration when the order came to retreat. All imperial armour on site had been destroyed and Master Demetrious shattered body had just been recovered by the beleaguered squad Enshkal. Numerically the marines had not lost too many but the situation was unsustainable, the orks were just too numerous.

The Dark Angel foray into Tartarus had not had an auspicious beginning but Interrogator Chaplain Isiah Wrath had his hopes up. Now they knew two of their many enemies on Cerberus and they would not fall so easily next time.

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Additional images found in an ork "Peepa-Shoota" forgotten on the battlefield.
Courtesy the ECBE (Esteemed Conclave for Battle Evaluation), Astra Militarum.

Battle 2a. Intro: Hell's Courtyard

Death Korps of Krieg Intro
[Author: Mattias] 

- Location: the desert city of Tarterus, Cerberus XIII. Southern defenses.
 
Silence had descended with the chill desert night. Unter-Kommissar-General Hilda von Stroheim peered into the darkness through the bunker’s slits. The soldiers were nervous, almost terrified. She put her hand on one soldier's shoulder, nodded grimly to another, where she went her round to ensure that the troops kept their morale. Kommissar-General Ilse had persuaded the regimental command that they must hold the defence facing the Emperor's chosen. There was information that could save the Empire from destruction, if not treason within the Adeptus Astartes managed to eliminate the leak first.


Hilda put her head down to get out of the bunker, and stepped out into something taken from a nightmare hallucination. Bonfires burned on top of newly erected monuments and columns everywhere in the city. Huge legionnaires in grotesque armor prepared for battle without even acknowledging the human defenders with a glance. Untrained locals had been massed together in flocks of cackling militia, giggling as they fingered their new laser guns, while others indulged in self-mortification at altars set up everywhere. Only inside the perimeter she and her men had erected, was something like sobriety and order. And her soldiers hardly dared to leave their bunkers.

The buzzing of flies was almost deafening.

Lieutenant Hozenhollern saluted: "Unter-Kommissar-General, we have new heat signatures in the south. They are approaching fast. Reports of a second force approaching at the northern route, from the oasis. " Hilda sat down behind the fortified defence turrets. She put her eye to the image intensifier. Several vehicles - troop transports and light tanks.
"Keep the wall at any cost, Lieutenant. That's all."

This was the Rubicon.

Battle 1. Power Station.

- Location: Abandoned power station, Cerberus XIII
- Imperial Forces: Flesh Tearers, Crimson Fists, Dark Angels
- Renegade Forces: Wordbearers and Renegade Deth Korps of Krieg.
- Wildcard: Harlequins (allied with renegades)
- Point value: 300 points per faction, for a total of 900 points per side.
- Combat objectives include a radio transmitter and a landing pad.

Death Korps of Krieg: Battle One
[Author: Mattias]

"Visual contact"
Ilse watched combat cameras flash in the gas mask HUD.
Adeptus Astartes Crimson Fists and Adeptus Astartes Fleshtearers, two light recon forces.

The plan was to hold the bunker until she managed to retrieve a data cube lost on the landing pad - it couldn’t fall into enemy hands, but must be secured. Or destroyed.

"Wolf pack alpha, stand down and take the tower and the landing pad, Beta, hold the bunker and protects the retreat next to HQ. Centurion 2 prepares to retrieve the package.


She saw a blue Rhino advance through the worn industrial landscape. As soon as it came within range, the earth exploded with mole torpedoes and the dry desert wind became ionized with silent laser shots. Unharmed the rhino spewed out an entire squadron of armored giants and her protective bunker was torn up by a storm of explosive bullets. Her soldiers fell around her while more torpedoes detonated in the sand without hitting their target.

The vox channel was filled with confused messages from the wolf pack alpha and the Centurion transport. Deformed Astartes, who slaughtered a flanking squad of Dark Angels on motorcycles. A report of an unknown sniper which rained death and fear on the Astartes from the Flesh Tearers chapter. She looked up at the tower as she ran towards shelter. The image magnifier showed a glimpse of a skull mask in silver. Ilse cursed. "Extra aces in the deck" Though not the kind of aces she normally wanted to play with.

She gave orders to the last soldier to dash for the radiotransmitter in the bunker, sending her collected information to home base. It has to be done. Rather the possibility that the data was intercepted, than completely lost. In the vox she heard someone scream incoherently of a demon in a mirror mask. Fuck that. She rushed toward a shrubbery of thorny desert bushes as she watched her field generator light up when bullets hit home. A couple went through. And a couple more. She lay on the ground. On the side. The inside of the gas mask was hot and sticky.
"Whipping up a storm” she mumbled to herself.

Dark Angels: Battle One
[Author: Anders W]
There was already an intense firefight at the bunker helipad. Units from the planetary defense forces had entrenched themselves behind armoured wall segments and bravely returned a murderous fire from several squadrons of Astartes from the Flesh Tearers and the Crimson Fists. From its high altitude Brother Asherai identified a secondary target and swooped down to the center of the helipad. The surprised defenders were shot to pieces by explosive bullets.

Only two were left when the smoke lifted. Uzariel led a troika of combat bikes into the enemy's flanks, where they attacked a living blasphemy: a pack of legionnaires from the Word Bearers. Space around them twisted back and forth, and not even Uzariel could manifest his mighty will through their defenses. Plasma, melta and bolter fire brought down three of the red enemies, but howling they turned their fearsome guises and rained back death and destruction in return. Uzariel suddenly found himself alone, his brothers lay fallen around him, but his sword gleamed in the weak red rays of the sun, as he prepared to plunge into the enemy
crowd.
He glimpsed something in the corner of his
 eye - a slender figure fell upon him. It was almost invisible, but its movements induced a horror he had not previously experienced. Harlequin! ...
Its sword slashed dozens of holes in his armor, and he saw its mask hover above him as his second heart also gave up. His mind ranged, unfettered for a moment, to give a warning to whoever could hear. "Harlequin ..."

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Extra images courtesy of the ECBE (Esteemed Conclave for Battle Evaluation), Astra Militarum:

A squad of Flesh Tearers and a squad of Crimson Fists, hanging in the back.

Harlequin

Crimson Fists rhino.

Death Korps of Krieg Centaur

Local militia holding the helipad