9th Guardsmen bits

-The Astra Militarum is the largest coherent force in the galaxy. The guard regiments are the mainstay armed forces of the Imperium. Many of the largest wars fought by the Imperium were fought by the guard alone.



-The Warp displaces much of Imperial travel and communication, which hinders the Imperium's effort to conduct unified strategies and maintain centralized command.



-The scale of the wars of the Imperium is dehumanizing to the extreme. The lives of billions of guardsmen are nothing but numbers on the data screens of Imperial commanders. They are akin to sand slipping through the hands of the privileged individuals ruling the Imperium. Yet, in truth, the life of every single Imperial guardsman that lifts their arms to defend their race is important, for, without the constant flow of recruits, the Astra Militarum would collapse.



-The bulk of the Imperial tithe is paid with the bodies of a world's sons and daughters.



-The founding of the Astra Militarum dates from the disbanding of the Imperial Army following the HH. By the treatise Tactica Imperium, the connections between Imperial armed forces were severed. Notably, the power of the Space Marines to command vast armies of humans was nullified. This was done so that individuals wouldn't have the power to muster enough combined forces to overturn entire sectors without the authority of Terra.



-Stories of Ollanius Pius, as well as almost certainly fictitious ones, are told across the Imperium to inspire the guardsmen.



-During the muster of the Indomitus Crusade, forces were stripped from systems that had barely survived the Noctis Aeterna. Hard-pressed Imperial commanders found their forces drained away even as they swore to hold the line. Despite the spark of hope of the Primarch's return, the dark times for the Imperial Guard were beginning.



-A splinter of Hivefleet Kraken invades the systems of the Vasta Nebula. On the planet of Orvaston Planus the Imperium achieves the greatest success in the fight back against the splinter. Thousands of Attilan Rough Riders continuously day and night launched repeated attacks on the Tyranid swarms. They hunted them to extinction, and by doing so, they delayed their adaptation and derailed the swarms' rapid onslaught. Soon after, the planet becomes the heart of a major fightback against the splinter in the nebula.



-Of the nearly one billion that stood in defense of Cadia, only three million escaped its fall. Creed and the Cadian 8th were not among them.



*Note: Keep this in mind. It will become important in future posts.



-The spirit of Cadia outlived its fall. The determination and hardiness of the Cadians against the overwhelming odds have imprinted on the consciousness of the Imperial Guard. The legend of Cadia continues to inspire the common soldiery, and the tactical and strategic theory of the Cadian commanders is taught in Imperial military academies. Settled Cadian regiments are spreading their culture to new societies. Other regiments have adopted Cadian doctrine, emulating the culture and discipline of Cadia.



-There is a dark underlining to this renewed resolve among the Cadians. Their hatred of the enemies of mankind crossed into uncompromising zeal. Many Cadians perceiving that the fall of their world was a personal failure, fight harder to restore their honor. Some resent the homeworlders that failed to protect Cadia or blame themselves for not being there. Others have developed scorn for the other Imperial regiments that they believed had failed to aid Cadia during its darkest hour. They refuse the reinforcing of their regiments by troops from other worlds. For them, the burden of loss is theirs and theirs alone.



-Creed's great coat mysteriously appeared in the sealed chambers of his daughter months after Cadia's fall. It smelled of the bloody final hours of Cadia. It sparked hope in his daughter that somewhere out there, her father yet lived.



-The Imperium did not respond to its wounding with the whimpers of a dying beast but the roar of a titan on the warpath. The manifestation of this wrath was the Indomitus Crusade. It was arguably greater than the mythical armies of the Great Crusade.



Lord Solar Leontus, outside of battle, is appalled by the atrocities the Imperium inflicted on its people. Many of such atrocities he had ordered himself. He ordered countless millions of guardsmen to fight in the most terrifying of conditions. With a heavy heart, Leontus realizes these orders are necessary evils to ensure the salvation of mankind. Something he knows he will not live to see though he is more than willing to pave the road for.



-True combined arms regiments are rare in the Imperium. For example, tank regiments field little to no infantry. Infantry regiments have little to no artillery. To wage an effective war, the different regiments have to become interdepended on each other. This is not seen as a weakness by the Imperials. It's a necessary precaution that prevents any regiment that turns traitor from having access to the tools required to wage a full-scale war.



-Due to living for generations near the Eye of Terror, Cadians receive careful monitoring and indoctrination against psychic and mutant taint. This proved to be a boon for the Imperial worlds suffering under the touch of the Great Rift. The Cadians assigned to protect them show grim acceptance when fighting horrors that would send lesser men screaming in terror.



-After generations of living on Catachan where everything is hostile to human life, the Catachans exhibit physical and mental fortitude above much of humanity. The muscle mass of Catachans is vastly increased, causing some to call them "baby ogryns".



-Easy and cheap to manufacture, extremely reliable, and so simple that the most savage and primitive of the Imperium's troops can use them, the lasguns are the near-universal weapons of the Imperial Guard. They fire concentrated beams of light at the target. The impact of the beam causes the surface of the target to vaporize in a small explosion. Range reduces the potency of the beam, and significant armor can shrug off las-shots.



-Lasguns lack the stopping power of weapons that use physical ammunition. However, their real power comes when they are used in great numbers. A focused storm of lasfire can bring down rampaging Orks and Tyranids. And with the blessing of the Emperor, a lucky shot can find a weak spot in a traitor marine's armor.



-The tanks of the Imperial Guard are constructed in accordance with ancient STC. Within dataslates that date back to humanity's deep past, many of the tanks that fought in those ancient times can be recognized as virtually identical to ones fighting in the wars of today.



-The super heavy tanks of the Imperium are remnants of the Dark Age of Technology. The technology that allows for their manufacture is becoming increasingly rare, causing whole regiments of them to be uncommon among the armies of the Imperium.



-Imperials reports that Yarrick is dead. No info on how and when. RIP



Warzone Catachan:



-The Catachan answered the call of the Indomitus Crusade. Colonel Straken oversaw the planet-wide muster. By the time refugee forces arrived to Catachan, a dozen Catachan regiments were founded. The Catachan disdain for outsiders made them refuse the refugee Imperial forces from landing, thinking they would not survive the planet's hostile nature. There was an exception. The infantry regiments of the Tuloschan Grey Companions were allowed to land. The tribal rulers of Catachan recognized the strength of these off-world regiments and assigned them to guard one of the planet's forts. What was unknown to the Catachans was that the Tuloschan Grey Companions were no refugees. They were secret worshippers of a dark deity that they called the Shadow Butcher. They had unleashed daemon hordes on their home world, and now they sought to do the same on Catachan.



-Tuloschan Gray Companions turned on the Catachan allies within the fort. The traitors used the loyalists' deaths in the brutal melees that ensued in a ritual that summoned the daemon hosts of Khorne. With the aid of the daemons, the loyalists defending the fort were slaughtered to the last man. The traitor and daemon forces then moved on to attack other settlements. Some of the daemon packs made time to hunt the deadly beasts of Catachan or hack and burn its jungles.



-What came next was a months-long battle. The Tuloschan Gray Companions lasted mere days. The hostile conditions of the world and the fury of the Catachans saw to their quick extinction. The daemons, however, fed on the deaths of their mortal allies and grew stronger. Manifestations of corruption plagued the Catachans. Downpours of blood, landslides of skulls, and corrupted lifeforms all were among the horrors the Catachan endured. As the resilient Catachan fought against the daemon hosts, they found that they weren't alone. The native life of their homeworld reacted against this invasion. Driven by instinct, all the predators of Catachan started to hunt the daemons and bleed them. Man and beast tore at the daemons until the last of the daemonspawn vanished. By the time the ships of the crusade arrived, the jungles of Catachan had purged themselves of every trace of
corruption.


Warzone Armageddon:

-Armageddon is an industrial powerhouse. It supplies many warzones in the Segmentum Solar. Should it fall, then Holy Terra would become more vulnerable than ever.



-The birth of the Great Rift ripped open a Warp Rift in the northern pole regions of Armageddon. It was a legacy of a previous apocalyptic war. It was a mere crack in reality that marked the banishment of the Daemon Primarch Angron. The Great Rift ripped it open and, from within, spewed the mortal and daemon legions of Chaos. The Warp Rift was named Red Angel's Gate.



-Across the planet, a tide of daemons and corruption beset the hives. Hive Thoraddis was among the first of the hives to come under attack by the servants of Chaos. A tide of cultists and mutants, somehow brought safely through the Warp Rift, advanced toward the hive. Behind them marched the traitor marines, armor, and titans.



-Ork Attacks on Hive Thoraddis were sparse. This caused a draining of its garrison's manpower and assets to aid other, more beleaguered hives. When it came under sudden attack by the forces of Chaos, it was obvious that the small garrison was not adequate to turn back the traitors without reinforcements. The commander of Hive Thoraddis, Colonel Berkant, a veteran of the Ork Wars, transmitted a call for reinforcements and made preparations to use whatever was at hand to make the traitors bleed.



-The cultists and mutant hordes suffered casualties to the toxic ashes before they even crossed into the range of the Imperial guns. The Imperial cannons and munitions hammered the hordes, yet they were so lost to madness that they were heedless of the bloody craters blasted into their ranks. The horde managed to swarm to the outer hive wall defenses, where they were met with massed lasfire.



-However, the mortal attack was a mere feint. The traitor marines flanked the Hive from the east, and the titans did so from the west. The traitor marines breached the hive, and they were confronted by firelines made of hundreds of guardsmen. The guardsmen managed to fell a handful of traitor marines before they were reduced to offal by chainaxes. Berkant redirected the artillery and heavy weapons to fire into the Hive itself, targeting the marines.



-The Hive fighting lasted for days. The sacrifice of the Imperial Guard saw the traitors bleed more and more. Each time the traitors closed in, Berkant withdrew his heavy weapons to a new position and hammered the traitors again.



-By the third day, the Chaos titans smashed their way into the Hive. Berkant knowing it was over for the hive, ordered his hidden reverse transports to flee the city. The formations of Chimeras sent fire into the heretic marines in the way, slicing some of them down. The sudden appearance of this force slowed down the traitor's advance. A half day later, when Berkant realized he bled the traitors as much as he and his men could, he ordered the tech-priests to overload the Hive's core. The resulting devastation destroyed one of the Chaos titans and crushed numerous traitor marines.



-Vengeful Imperial reinforcements from other hives raced toward the reeling traitors. For Hive Thoraddis and the selfless regiment that defended it, the traitors will pay in blood.