Sholen Skara - Escape and Death: Unfortunately, fate had other plans in store. The Magister was aware that the fleet he was a prisoner on would require supplies and resources prior to warping away from the Sabbat Worlds to an Inquisition Fortress on Khulan, and calculated that they would be forced to halt in the Valens system for resupply.Just before the escort fleet entered the Valens System, Skara was reported to have suffered a seizure, with a life-threating number of symptoms making themselves manifest. The fleet subsequently requested medical aid from Valens 160. Unbeknownst to the Imperium, the Hive World of Valens 160 already had an infiltration unit of the Magister's vile Kith, and the arrival of the fleet transporting the Magister was their signal to strike.The fleet and the prison barge Excommunicado were overrun and the Magister escaped to the planet. Encouraged and inflamed by Skara, the Kith either converted or slaughtered nearly the entire Hive World's population, and the system went silent. The distress call from the fleet and the system was not processed until a few years later due to bureaucratic inertia, when the lack of an astropathic signal from the system came to the attention of the Sabbat Worlds Administratum Offices sometime around 778.M41.Upon realising the nature of the problem, the Sabbat World's Crusade Command assigned the duty to either recover, or kill Sholen Skara, to the Iron Snakes chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. When the Iron Snakes detachment (Squad Orpheon) on the frigate Serpentra entered the Valens system, most of the details mentioned above were confirmed by their investigation of the remains of the fleet carrying the Magister.The Iron Snakes subsequently landed Squad Orpheon into the capital of Valens 160, a Hive named Plethorapolites, to find that the city was decorated with the corpses of the Hive World's population in a ghastly display. Their appearance was noted by Magister Skara, who sent waves upon waves of his Kith cultists in an attempt to drown the Astartes behind a sea of bodies and end them in such a way. When this failed, the Magister attempted to bury them under a wave of bodies of his maddened cultists.In spite of such terrible odds, the Iron Snakes suffered no losses, though they were grievously wounded during the action fought. Finding themselves unable to secure Skara without being overrun, Brother Captain Porphyrion of the Iron Snakes (the commander of the detachment) took the decision to eliminate the Magister. The kill was made by the Brother Captain, who hurled his Power Spear at the Magister, which resulted in him being impaled and killed as the structure he was in (a service shuttle) disintegrated with the force of the throw.Despite the victory of the Iron Snakes, it was won at a great price. While no Astartes had died, it was clear that the Hive World of Valens 160 was completely dead, most of its industries and infrastructure badly damaged, perhaps to the point of beyond recovery. It remains a sobering lesson of the loss of another world due to the depredations of Chaos, and this was made quite clear in the astropathic messages sent to Warmaster Macaroth of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, and the Inquisition.