Badab War - Breaking of the Storm (904.M41): At the direct request of the Karthago Sector's ruling satrap, elements of the Fire Hawks Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes were sent to investigate the disappearance of Karthan shipping in the areas to the galactic south of the Golgothan Wastes, which bordered the northern reaches of the Maelstrom Zone.In the past, the Fire Hawks Chapter had used the vast orbital dockyards of the Karthan capital world of Sidon Ultra for resupply. The volatile and bellicose nature of the Fire Hawks Chapter was widely known, and it is likely that this also figured in the Karthan satrap's reasoning in making her request. This monumental arrogance and folly would soon prove disastrous.Conducting search and destroy operations in the Golgothan Wastes, Knight-Commander Stibor Lazaerek acquiesced to dispatching several starships into the northern Maelstrom Zone. One such vessel, the Red Harbinger, entered the Endymion Cluster in 904.M41. This ancient region of space was under the stewardship of the Mantis Warriors Chapter, one of the Astartes Chapters that belonged to the alliance of the Maelstrom Warders.When the Red Harbinger entered the Galen System, they were intercepted and surrounded by Mantis Warriors vessels. Ever fierce and proud, they were goaded by the Fire Hawks' refusal to allow them to board and threats of reprisal and opened fire, crippling the lone cruiser.With this single act, the full-scale conflict between Space Marine Chapters that was to follow was ignited. The Mantis Warriors boarded and captured the Red Harbinger, but the engagement was brutal to the extreme as both sides took heavy casualties. Less than 20 Fire Hawks were captured alive, and none surrendered, but their struggles brought time for an astropathic message to be dispatched to their Chapter warning of their fate and who they had fought.Upon learning of the fate of the Red Harbinger, Chapter Master Lazaerek and his entire Fire Hawks Chapter became incensed and withdrew their forces from the operations already under way. The entire Chapter fleet deployed with the utmost haste to the Maelstrom Zone.Soon matters escalated upon the arrival of the Fire Hawks as they were met at Galen by a taskforce consisting of both Mantis Warriors and Astral Claws warships. In a tense standoff, the captives were eventually returned and both sides traded threats. The Fire Hawks finally withdrew to await the arrival of their full forces, and especially their massive mobile star-fortress, the Raptorus Rex.The Fire Hawks Chapter fleet rendezvoused in the Sagan System, and aided by their Karthan allies, soon launched a series of probing attacks and reconnaissance missions towards the Badab Sector and the Endymion Cluster, but by doing so, escalated tensions to the point that the situation was rapidly proving untenable. Having prepared for war for many standard years, the Tyrant of Badab and his allies were battle-hardened and had the advantage of being intimately familiar with the territory of the Maelstrom Zone.The Mantis Warriors proved to be impossible to pin down due to the superlative guerrilla tactics that they employed. Using the Karthans to distract the Astral Claws forces in the Badab Sector, the Fire Hawks struck the Agri-world of Iblis at the edge of the Endymion Cluster, attacking civilian targets and burning great swathes of crops and land in order to antagonise the Mantis Warriors into fighting them in open battle.Unfortunately, this type of attack had been anticipated and planned for by the Secessionists. As the Mantis Warriors pinned the Fire Hawks in place on Iblis with their hit-and-run tactics, the Secessionist fleet was able to draw their forces away from Sagan. A combined force of the Astral Claws and Lamenters Chapters soon descended upon the Sagan System and decisively overwhelmed the Planetary Defence Forces and Karthan troops.Badly mauled, the stranded Fire Hawks and Karthan mortal troops found themselves cut off from supply and behind enemy lines. This forced the Fire Hawks to withdraw from the Iblis System, as they raked the surface of the planet one final time and successfully punched through the Secessionist blockade that was attempting to pin them in. The Fire Hawks' Raptorus Rex claimed the life of the Secessionist Maelstrom Squadron's only Mars-class Battlecruiser, Sacred Tetrarch, in the process when the warship's mighty Nova Cannon proved unable to prevail against the formidable star-fortress.A lull descended upon the region following these tumultuous events as the Secessionists consolidated their gains and the Karthans retreated in disarray. Soon the Fire Hawks, heavily outnumbered and outgunned, were forced into a long period of retreat to the Maelstrom Zone's fringes which lasted until late 904.M41, when the Marines Errant Chapter answered the call of the Fire Hawks for reinforcement.This Chapter diverted a sizable force of six companies and a fleet of support vessels in order to aid their brother Astartes, although their precise motivations for doing so remain obscured. But soon the star-faring Chapter quickly became bogged down protecting Imperial shipping along the Pale Stars region and the outlying Maelstrom Zone's colonies as the Secessionists renewed their offensive. The Marines Errant split their forces in an effort to guard the convoys in transit from the increasingly frequent Secessionist raids and attacks.Matters soon became more complicated when the Marines Errant were caught between the Fire Hawks' desire to destroy Lufgt Huron's forces at any cost, and the growing need to protect Imperial shipping and the outlying Karthago Sector's colonies from the marauding Secessionist forces.This difficulty was further complicated by a conflict of interest due to the ancient ties of loyalty and blood the Marines Errant had forged with the Lamenters Chapter, which they had fought beside as recently as the Corinth Crusade, but now faced as enemies. This led to incidents where the Marines Errant failed to try to do more than drive off the Lamenters' forces during raids, and in which both parties gave quarter to the other, raising the mutual ire of their respective allies.Towards the year's end, matters worsened as an ever greater number of star systems were drawn into the rapidly escalating war. The Fire Hawks and their Karthan allies continued to suffer heavy losses in battle. Soon a dozen worlds had fallen in short order to Secessionist control, succumbing to direct Secessionist assault or by diplomatic submission to prevent a slaughter of civilians.By the end of 904.M41, worse developments for the Karthans and their allies appeared in the form of the notoriously grim and independent Executioners Chapter. News had reached the Marines Errant that the Executioners had announced their intention to support the Secessionist cause, in payment of an ancient blood oath given by their Chapter to the Astral Claws. The Executioners sent their mighty warship Night Hag with a full augmented company of Astartes to aid the Secessionists.Desperate, Karthan Satrap Tanit Koenig was forced to take drastic action as her own tithes and supplications to the procurator-generals of the Adeptus Terra were long overdue. Nearly bankrupted by their sector's losses in the war, and with their fleet anchorage at Sagan III now in the hands of the Secessionists, the Karthan Imperial Commanders mounted a final attempt to harvest the resources needed to meet their own Imperial Tithes from the nearby worlds of Vyaniah and Khymara before the Secessionists could claim these worlds as their own.Unfortunately the Secessionists' intelligence network had already ascertained every detail of this supposedly secret convoy, and laid a carefully prepared trap, allowing the Karthan convoy to take on the vast amount of wealth awaiting them at Vyaniah before they were attacked as they were preparing to transit into the Warp. The Secessionist forces, comprised mainly of elements from both the Astral Claws and Lamenters Chapter fleets, were led by Lufgt Huron himself.The Karthan convoy was encircled and then taken one vessel at a time in a series of ferocious ship-to-ship boarding actions. Over two dozen vessels were taken as Secessionist prizes for almost no losses sustained by the attacking forces. Only through the brilliant leadership of Lieutenant Commander Anton Narvaez was the Marines Errant capital ship Star Jackal able to escape the Tyrant of Badab's cunning trap, fighting its way clear whilst sustaining heavy damage.By a twist of fate, the damage sustained in this battle caused the Star Jackal and its brilliant commander to fall behind in the Marines Errant's pursuit of the Mantis Warriors to the world of Bellerophon's Fall. It would be there that many of the Chapter's commanders and senior officers were to die.The Astral Claws fought the Fire Hawks back to the edge of the Golgothan Wastes, focusing all their attentions on eliminating the Chapter altogether. The Astral Claws succeeded in inflicting further serious casualties on the Chapter, which could no longer be considered an effective fighting force. To make matters worse for the Imperial Loyalists, the Marines Errant Chapter was drawn towards the industrial moon of Bellerophon's Fall by the Mantis Warriors.The two Chapters engaged in fierce combat, but the Mantis Warriors managed to isolate and entrap the Marines Errant 1st and 3rd Companies in the Rust Zones, destroying much of their command structure in a series of murderous surgical strikes. The Marines Errant were decimated and forced to retreat in disarray. After the deadly battle, it fell to Lieutenant Commander Narvaez to mount a rescue mission, in which he succeeded in saving the besieged survivors in a daring counter-raid.In the aftermath of this tragedy, it would also fall to Narvaez to take the reins of leadership as the Marines Errant Chapter's last surviving senior officer in the war. Anton Narvaez would later somehow manage to reform the Marines Errant contingent into an effective fighting force once more, although they returned as a mere shadow of their former strength. Facing bitter recrimination in light of this tragedy, the alliance between the Fire Hawks and the Marines Errant all but collapsed.The Secessionist forces would continue to make major advances throughout the rest of the year almost unopposed. The Maelstrom Zone now belonged almost wholly to Lufgt Huron, the Tyrant of Badab.