Battle of Calth - Calth Besieged: Few records can accurately define when the killing began on the surface of Calth. Most historians assume that the Word Bearers acted as one, on the signal of the Campanile's death throes in orbit, yet information gleaned from necro-cortical probes and the few survivors of the fighting indicate that it was not so. Whether driven by bloodlust, the burning desire for revenge or simple miscommunication, many of the Word Bearers units began the slaughter long before ships began to rain down from the skies of that world. The most remote of the muster camps, established in the few remaining wilds of Calth, played host to a series of coldly executed massacres as the small contingents of Ultramarines, intended to act as hosts and emissaries of goodwill, were put to the knife by their erstwhile brothers. All along the northern coast, at the edge of the Satric Wastes, the Word Bearers built grotesque monuments to their treachery from the bones of their unsuspecting allies. Such actions cannot be truly considered any form of sane warfare as these isolated camps served only as assembly points that would spare Calth's cities any disruption due to the large numbers of the Legiones Astartes drilling nearby, and were mainly reserved for the use of the Word Bearers' late-arriving formations and thus served little strategic purpose. Much debate has been made of the reasons for these attacks, some attributing them to simple bloodlust or madness, while others see a malign pattern to these actions, ascribing them to some unfathomable Colchisian dogmatic practise.In more populous areas, especially those nearest the great cities and space ports of Calth, such wholesale butchery was absent. Instead, the careful scholar will uncover a number of forgotten reports which indicate that certain XIIIth Legion commanders and their entourages were eliminated some hours prior to the beginning of open fighting on Calth, no doubt falling victim to Word Bearers assassination cadres which had infiltrated Ultramarines staging areas under the guise of friendship. Such cadres rarely survived their murderous attacks. Even confused and shocked, the Ultramarines responded to violent attack with immediate and deadly retribution, but by then the damage had already been done and the rigid chain of command that formed the backbone of the XIIIth Legion was shattered.The savagery and perfidy of the Word Bearers' initial orbital assault left the Ultramarines and their allies reeling in shock. Their fleet had been decimated and was scattered across the Veridian System. Entire worlds within the system had been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of Chaos Cultists infiltrated onto Calth by the Word Bearers in the months before the battle began as part of the build-up for the assault on the Orks of Ghalaskh attacked their former Loyalist allies in the Imperial Army, attempting to destroy them in the name of the Chaos Gods. The forces of the Word Bearers involved in the invasion of Calth numbered over 100,000 Astartes and included the traitorous elements of the Dark Mechanicus and fearsome Traitor Titans. Across the planet a brutal ground war soon erupted. The savagery of the Word Bearers’ assault threatened to overwhelm the beleaguered defenders within only a matter of hours. However, Kor Phaeron had underestimated the tenacity and resolve of the Ultramarines.On the verdant fields of Komesh the Ultramarines 9th Chapter died, its half-assembled ranks overrun by a tide of scarlet warriors and armoured vehicles under the command of Foedral Fell. Small islands of cobalt blue shone sporadically across the plains as individual companies and small detachments made brave, but futile stands with whatever weapons and munitions that were at hand. The fighting at Komesh was to be some of the bloodiest of the entire engagement, with upwards of 15,000 Ultramarines slain; the survivors, barely 5,000 strong, would later fight their way free under the command of Tetrarch Tauro Nicodemus in a running battle that would last almost twenty long hours. Further north at the muster camps of Erud, within sight of Numinus City, engines of the Titan Legio Suturvora scattered and blasted elements of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Chapters of the Ultramarines Legion.In the face of these angry metal gods, even Space Marines were as helpless as children, and hundreds died to each salvo the Titans loosed. Only determined resistance from armoured companies of the 1st Chapter forestalled the Ultramarines' complete destruction; Shadowsword and Falchion super-heavy tanks ambushing Titans as they strode unopposed through the retreating warriors of the XIIIth Legion. Though several Titans were grievously wounded by these attacks, only two Shadowsword tanks and a single damaged Falchion escaped the chaos within the muster zone, part of a column under Captain Sydance which fought its way clear of the massacre.On the far side of Calth, where night currently reigned, in the sprawling munitions plants of Dainhold, the Word Bearers drove screaming swarms of ragged auxiliaries against the warriors of the XIIIth Legion that had barricaded themselves within the fortified manufactorum buildings. Only when the Ultramarines' guns had run dry and the corridors of the manufactoria were strewn with the blasted corpses of the fallen, did Nur Asoktan lead the Cataphractii-armoured elite of the Flayed Hand forwards to hunt down the surviving Ultramarines. Outmatched and cornered, the warriors of Ultramar fought on with combat blades and improvised explosive devices, severing power to several facilities so as to use the darkness to their advantage.All across Calth, from the Satric wilds to the cities of Ourosene, the same brutally one-sided battles played out, the Ultramarines assaulted and overwhelmed by those they had expected to stand alongside them, their blood spilt and bodies raised as grotesque trophies. The orbital defence systems of Calth, hundreds of space borne weapons stations bristling with cannon intended to cripple the void craft of any attacker, were turned upon the planet by the Word Bearers, searing terrible wounds into the world and utterly annihilating any force of Ultramarines that had gathered in the open and leaving entire cities ablaze, their inhabitants nothing more than charred husks. Yet not all of the battles fought in the first few hours of the fighting on Calth were to the Word Bearers' advantage: whether by luck or some quirk of organisation, a few Loyalist units were not caught unprepared by the Word Bearers' treachery.The Word Bearers' assault into the coastal bunker network of Sylator Province was halted by a cohort of battle-automata from Legio Cybernetica Magenim. Severed from the direct control of their Mechanicum overseer by the dumpshock that afflicted many magos in the wake of the orbital grid's destruction, the battle-automata of the cohort fell back on the core-logic of their cybernetica cortex and responded to any potential threat, no matter how inconceivable, with deadly force. In the wake of the battle-automata's rampage, a regiment of Solar Auxilia, the 14th Garnide Heavy Infantry, secured the bunker complex and dug in.In the far north, along the icy shores of Thrascias, close to the remote location chosen by Erebus for the locus of his Ruinstorm ritual, a large force of Gal Vorbak butchered their way through the isolated towns of the region. The fate of those Calth natives captured during these raids is uncertain, but may be linked to the bizarre rituals undertaken by Erebus and other members of the Word Bearers command echelons. This obsession amongst the XVIIth Legion for the pursuit of seemingly meaningless religious rites over more practical concerns led to a number of setbacks during the fighting on Calth.In the Thrascian wilderness, their obsession with rituals appears to have contributed to the Word Bearers' failure to engage the two thousand Destroyers of the Ultramarines 2nnd Chapter mustering in the bleak region, or perhaps they believed that such a small force was no threat to their operations. Unlike other Legiones Astartes units, many of whom reacted with shock and some dismay at the appearance of the Gal Vorbak, an effect these shock troops delighted in exploiting, the veterans of the 22nd Chapter were long inured to confronting the most hideous and malignant xenos encountered by the expanding Imperium. Log excerpts recovered from the battlefields of Calth long after the fighting indicate that the officer cadre of the 22nd Chapter contingent, having no ability to confer with their fellow Ultramarines, made the assumption that the Word Bearers, either in part or as a whole, had been overtaken by some form of xenos contamination. Facing a threat they assumed was capable of suborning the potent physical form of a Legiones Astartes, the warriors of the 22nd swiftly deployed the most potent weaponry at their disposal and the fighting in Thrascias swiftly became a hell of phosphex and rad storms as Destroyers and Gal Vorbak clashed in bitter, unremitting combat.At Barrtor, two Ultramarines captains of the 111th and 112th Companies decided to consolidate their commands with the forces of the Imperial Army and the Mechanicus in their region of the planet and pull back eastwards into the Sharud Province, since if they did nothing, they would be killed by the heavy debris falling from orbit following the Word Bearers' destruction of the orbital installations. Captain Phrastorex of the 112th decided that he would meet the Word Bearers' vanguard to determine what terrible accident had occurred in orbit while Captain Ekritus of the 111th would lead both Ultramarines companies into Sharud. Taking only a detachment of hisHonour Guard with him, Phastorex walked down the slope to the flood plain where the local forces of the XVIIth Legion had finally arrived on-planet. Phastorex observed to his surprise that the Traitors already had their tanks and their Astartes formed up as if to begin an assault. As Phrastorex raised his hand in greeting to his fellow Astartes, the Word Bearers opened fire. Phastorex and his men were massacred by the Word Bearers before they could even comprehend such an act of base treachery. Captain Ekritus witnessed the massacre, and was eager to visit his vengeance upon the Traitors, but was restrained from rushing to his doom by his Battle-Brothers. Then, again without warning, the Word Bearers' Traitor Titans began to open fire on their position.The shattered remnants of the 111th and 112th Companies retreated into the burning woods of the forest located east of the Boros to escape the Traitors' assault. The Word Bearers had coloured their Power Armour and their vehicles in the new crimson Legion colour scheme chosen in place of the XVIIth Legion's old steel-grey colours to herald their change of allegiance. It would not be long before the Ultramarines took to calling this new colour scheme "Traitor's Red," a moniker the Word Bearers relished. They had also adorned themselves with the abominable iconography of their new faith in Chaos, which their Loyalist counterparts saw as only further evidence of their corruption. The Word Bearers' Achilles and Proteus Pattern Land Raiders led their attack upon the Loyalist forces retreating before them. Captain Ekritus managed to find a position above the treeline from where he could see the vast hosts of the Word Bearers and their auxiliaries assaulting the Calthian towns along the river and the port of Boros. There were tens of thousands of Chaos Cultist soldiers, Battle Groups of Chaos Titans and endless phalanxes of crimson-armoured Chaos Space Marines. Ekritus watched in horror as the treacherous XVIIth Legion’s assault swept aside everything in its path.There were bodies everywhere as the Word Bearers advanced without remorse against their unsuspecting victims; civilians, troops of the Imperial Army, and far too many Ultramarines. Men lay dead with their weapons still sheathed or covered, cut down without the opportunity to face their deaths. Heaps of cobalt-blue Power Armour that contained limp Astartes corpses lined the roadways and arterials. Some had been stacked against fences and walls like firewood whilst others had been cut open and emptied. A few had been nailed to posts, or against the sides of buildings. Some appeared to have been butchered or even…eaten. This was not just war, but desecration. It defied and shamed the codes and precepts of all the Legiones Astartes, traditions that had been set down by the Emperor Himself. The Word Bearers had perverted not only the laws and traditions of the Imperium, but the basic moral code of Mankind.