Slaughter at Antiphone

**Slaughter at Antiphone**

The Sisters of battle on Planet Antiphone were faced with dismay and shock as a sudden and violent chaos invasion aligned with an unexpected civilian revolution and boiled into a burst of conflict across the planet. The System of Mammon was newly reunited with the impireum and its people were strangers to the yolk of empire and the protection of Him on earth, they resisted and the sisters of battle stood against them. The newly risen cathedrals, Convent Fortresses and admistratum barracks brought to Antiphone to cement imperial rule, burned. The Sisters expected salvation on this world, salvation of a world and the redemption of its people but slaughter is what the Order of the Azure Rose and Order of the Motive Force found on Antiphone. Slaughter and shame.

As their fortresses and holy places burned the sisters sallied out to break the rebellion and purge the chaos taint. Reports suggested a small and disorganized uprising but the freedom fighters weakness had been greatly exaggerated. Sister Palentine Veryidian of the order of the Motive Force was charged with ensuring the safe advance of her Azure Rose sisters into the traitor ranks. To that end the motive force contributed a great weight of armor to the battle to serve as fire support. The Order of the Azure Rose, under Saint Potentia Laverra, would press the field with close combat infantry and engage the traitors in close where they would lose the advantage of greater numbers. However Sister Veryidian of the Motive Force pulled her tanks out of formation and into open ground in a vain attempt to rescue a holy relic from the traitors clutches. The magnificent war engines of the sisterhood, alone and isolated, were swarmed by traitor abominations. Rear guard elements foolishly pushed into open ground were obliterated by traitor armor swinging around the western flank. With the superior main battle tanks of the heretics driving into the Sisters of the Motive Force and the unsupported infantry of the Azure Rose now attempting an unsupported charge without fire support, both forces were doomed.

While the 1st order of redemption found some solace in the destruction of a squad of heretic astartes, the rest of the Azure order fell to las gun fire and terminator claws, never managing to close distance. The Order of the Azure Rose found themselves beset by heretics before they could get their bearings. Chaos spawn of unimaginable fury ripped the Squad of the first to shreds before they could inform Saint Potentia Laverra of the sundered flank. Laverra ordered her sisters foward, her angels taking heavy fire from heretic bolter and freedom fighter las shots. They found some redemption in the death of a squad of the freedom fighters, the superior using the emperors miracles in a noble last stand. It was all for naught as the Sisters were quickly overwhelmed with not a single sister able to reach the front lines of the conflict.

Imperial magos-tactica of the adeptus militarum would examine battle-sphere data in the aftermath. They would find that had the combined sororitas force not collapsed, had sister Palentine Veryidian not broke formation, then the traitor uprising on Antiphon would almost certainly have been choked off and ended in the first days of the conflict. This possibility hangs over the sisterhood of the motive force as banner of shame to this day, a burden nearly as heavy as the loss of the relic to traitor hands.