Orphean War - Maynarkh Comes: As suddenly as it had fallen, the ominous silence was abruptly shattered on 3806.991.M41. Where before there had only been darkness, there was now a savage blaze of light, the mass of information streaming from the lost worlds of the sector now so important that it blinded the superluminal auguries of several watchposts. Scores of astropaths reeled and even died under the stress of having to process the incoming communication, the channels filled by an overlapping cacophony of distress calls and the death screams of the dying, distorted and folded in overlapping time.It was as if the astropathic message had been suddenly unleashed after being frozen in the Warp for several solar months. Scanners and empirical detection devices showed strange energy spikes on the borders of the Veiled Region, whose strange radiations and particle storms travelled along the Sector's Warp routes. The communication invaded even secure Vox channels and communication webs, a cacophony of gibberish eclipsed by the fading echoes of agonised screams and a single phrase, repeated over and over: "Maynarkh comes".Wherever the malign signal gained entrance, communication systems and machinery suddenly failed, the electromagnetic contagion causing it to shut down entirely or to malfunction. Cogitators froze or fell into terminal loops, while Servitors were driven mad or went on a homicidal rampage. Any normal safeguard against malefic machine intrusion used to prevent this sort of affliction soon proved useless. The menials, Adepts and Tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus increasingly resolved to use galvanic purges to free their machines and instruments from this influence.This action created a firewall which stopped the signal from causing serious damage to the Orpheus Sector's most sensitive cogitator and communications networks, but Imperial communications took many solar weeks to recover from the assault. On some planets like Amraphel and Midwinter, the signal lingered long in the public Vox network. It bombarded fearful Imperial citizens with strange flickering symbols and cries of pain, leading to mass hysteria, rioting and brushfire insurrections that the local forces of law enforcement and Imperial rule had to fight with great brutality.With the veil having finally parted, the true extent of the catastrophe could be ascertained for the first time. On Apollyon, the former fortress of the Ordo Malleus, every trace of Imperial life had been obliterated. The planet had been shattered, the broken debris of its continents now circling the orb as a new asteroid chain after its own moon, Elohiem Mortua, had struck the world like the fist of a wrathful god.Sector Command's worse fears were soon confirmed, as scans indicated that on Libethra, where once hundreds of basilicas had been raised to honour the blessed dead, there was now only a fiery ball of cooling lava and ash deserts. The Angels Revenant's mighty fortress-monastery had been broken and apparently overcome by the planet's fiery lifeblood.The sector's most powerful defenders were no more. As this news spread across the sector, panic flared and several worlds were brought to the brink of total anarchy. Fortunately for Sector Governor Laan, the first troop transports and a detachment of warships from the neighbouring Eurydice Sector were already inbound and put to good use. Yet these meagre reinforcements could not hope to change the course of the oncoming war.The next Necron blow landed on Drucilla Majoris, one of the principal worlds of the entire Orpheus Sector and capital of its own sub-sector. On the day of the attack, the sun failed to rise on the doomed planet. All Vox-contact with the world and with those elements of the fleet despatched to it abruptly ceased, a lone astropathic message breaking through the blackout on 4917.991.M41.This last broadcast spoke of a chilling cold settling over the planet, as if Drucilla Majoris had been plunged into an unexpected and unheralded nuclear winter, surface temperatures steadily declining to critical levels for the world's population. Elsewhere on the planet, strange structures like basalt obelisks and outlandish pyramids of black metal erupted from the bowels of the earth, sinister necropoli emerging from the dying planet's crust.Shortly after this new calamity, the space between the Drucillan Sub-Sector and the sector capital world at Amarah was filled with new distress signals and calls for aid, voidship traffic coming under attack from unknown foes. This helped Imperial strategists to pinpoint the enemy's location: he was heading to the stellar West, towards Amarah.With the enemy on the way, Amarah's calls for assistance became more frantic, especially when its direct neighbours came under attack. Fortress Tarris, a Ramilies-class Starfort protecting Battlefleet Orpheus' orbital shipyards orbiting Midwinter was powerless to repel a massive enemy incursion, led by strange voidships before being boarded by metallic figures "fashioned as spectres of death."The foe manifested itself within the very decks and vaults of the fortress before the entire star system fell silent. Yet still, Calibron Laan refused to take offensive action. He cowered within the emergency bunkers built in times past beneath his palace, impotently watching as one by one the star systems surrounding Amarah fell to the enemy, millions of fighting men and women and hundreds of warships standing by but taking no action. Ultimately, only Amarah remained, cut off from its former domain and still sending out pleas for help. With the "Bloody Hundred" over and the Orpheus Sector cut in half, the stage was set for the Battle of Amarah.