War of the Beast - Battle of Ardamantua: During the middle centuries of the 32nd Millennium, the Imperium of Man was enjoying a period of relative peace and prosperity unheard of since before the Horus Heresy later known by Imperial historitors as the "Time of Rebirth." The Traitor Legions were still in exile within the Eye of Terror, licking their wounds and seething with rage for having failed to overthrow the Emperor and claim the Imperium as their own. The vast majority of xenos species had been relegated to the far-flung frontiers of Imperial space, and for the first time in over a Terran millennium, the worlds of Mankind enjoyed peace. The stagnation, superstition and religious zealotry that defined the Imperium of later millennia had not yet set in.With humanity having endured its greatest challenge, the Orks were no longer deemed a major threat. The Imperium believed they had been crushed by Horus' monumental victory over them during the Ullanor Crusade and had yet to recover. In truth, the Greenskins were severely underestimated by the Imperium's war savants and strategos. But with no major threats on the horizon, the vast majority of the Imperial Fleet had been dispatched to patrol the Imperium's borders far from Terra under the command of the powerful Lord High Admiral of the Navy Lansung.This underestimation of the Greenskin threat would ultimately prove disastrous. What would become known as the War of the Beast began on the world of Ardamantua in the Segmentum Solar during a routine action against another xenos species. The entire Shield Company of the Imperial Fists Chapter had been sent to Ardamantua, just six solar weeks Warp-travel from Terra, and charged with the extermination of the insectoid species known as the Chromes.It was a normal part of Imperial military operations in the centuries after the Heresy to eradicate such minor threats to the Imperial holdings near the Terran core worlds. Strategic surveys put the Chromes' numbers at something in the order of eighty-eight billion. More importantly, scans had indicated that the Chromes were in the midst of a great migration, as if they were fleeing something. Their path indicated that they would pass through the core worlds of the Segmentum Solar. This migration had to be stopped before the xenos became a threat to the Throneworld itself.Ardamantua was suddenly wracked by unexpected gravitational storms and geological disturbances as the Chromes made their final desperate assault upon the Imperial lines. The Imperial Fists contingent on the world was decimated, their fleet lost, and Chapter Master Cassus Mirhen himself was slain by the Chromes. The High Lords of Terra, realising that disaster now faced Terra itself if the insectoids continued their desperate flight, ordered the deployment of a rescue mission led by the Lord Commander Militant of the Astra Militarum Heth and the entire Imperial Fists Chapter to Ardamantua. This course was particularly endorsed by the Grand Master of Assassins, Drakan Vangorich.The source of the gravitational disturbances on Ardamantua soon became clear when a massive planetoid, an Ork Attack Moon, suddenly materialised in orbit above the world. It proceeded to attack the Imperial rescue fleet. Below, on the surface of Ardamantua, the entire Imperial Fist Chapter deployed under the command of First Captain Algerin, Second Captain Koorland and Captain Sauber, alongside a handful of Imperial Guardsmen. They soon waged a desperate fight for survival against the panicked Chromes and escalating gravitic anomalies. The anomalies were caused by the Greenskin planetoid, which continued to phase in and out of realspace as it drew closer to finally achieving full materialisation from an otherdimensional realm the Imperials would later dub "subspace."It was then that Ork troops of massive size began to make planetfall and slew the remaining Imperial forces and the panicked hordes of the Chromes. There were only four survivors of the entire Imperial Fists Chapter, three of whom died while under the ministrations of a team of Adeptus Mechanicus Tech-priests. Only one Imperial Fist remained in the galaxy, Second Captain Koorland of the Daylight Wall Company, who now found himself the de facto Chapter Master.Things were little better in orbit. After transmitting a final astropathic message to Terra that the Imperium faced a threat like none Mankind had known before, Lord Commander Militant Heth's fleet was destroyed by the Attack Moon. Imperial strategos determined that the Attack Moon's next likely target was Terra itself.