13th Black Crusade - In the Grip of War: For ten thousand standard years, the bleak nether-wastes of the Eye of Terror gnawed at the fabric of the galaxy, spewing their horrors into the Imperium of Man. And for every one of those ten thousand standard years, Cadiastood firm, an adamantium bastion given strength and purpose by the ﬂesh, blood and bone of the faithful. There are no records of how many valiant souls have fallen defending the Fortress Worlds of the Cadian Gate. But by their sacrifce, the tide of Traitors, Heretics and daemons is stemmed. By their example, a thousand worlds have known what little peace can be sought in this bleakest of epochs.But as the darkness grew ever darker, and the blaze of the Astronomican guttered like a wind-blown candle, the Eye of Terror pulsed, its baleful energies spiralling outwards. Abaddon the Despoiler, heir to thecursed mantle of the Archtraitor Horus, had at last unleashed the full might of his 13th Black Crusade. With a shriek that echoed through nightmares from Medusa to Ultramar, the Despoiler's ﬂeet slipped its moorings. Eternally vigilant Cadia, lynchpin of the Imperium’s defences, was the target.But Cadia stood ready. Abaddon's campaign had long been foreseen by mystics and strategists alike, and thefortresses of the Gate prepared for its coming. The leviathan warships of Imperial battleﬂeets prowled the icy currents of deep space. From the radiation-torn wastes of Prosan to the ice-ridged plains of Solar Mariatus, slab-sided Kasr-bastions were expanded. Their already-formidable garrisons of Cadian Shock Troopers were reinforced by forces from across the Imperium. The splendid colours of Knightly households ﬂew alongside the proud sigils of the Adeptus Astartes; the scuttling war engines of the Adeptus Mechanicus mustered alongside gleaming ranks of the Adepta Sororitas. And everywhere, the warriors of Cadia itself, drilled and trained for this moment, and this moment alone, awaited the battle that would define the galaxy for thousands of Terran years to come.Millions had perished in the opening assault, and millions more in the inexorable slaughter that followed. Worlds burned. Warriors uncounted bled their last for scraps of worthless, ravaged ground. Graveyards of twisted wreckage twitched in the solar winds, marking the demise of ﬂeets whose frepower could have unmade whole systems. There was no time for mourning, for despair. Cadia's defenders battled on until all strength left them, and then went again into the fight, for there was no respite from the onslaught.Had this been a simple contest of arms, the Imperium might have had confidence in Cadia's defences. But Abaddon's weapons were not limited to mortal means. The blessings of the Dark Gods were upon him, and their talents his to command. Plague devoured fortresses before a shot could be fired. Madness claimed the devout and the profane alike. And betrayal -- the false promises whispered by prophets of damnation -- this was the mightiest card in the Despoiler's hand. As heresy spread, brother fought brother. Regiments were torn apart from within, or purged with fire. Bastions, though secure from invaders, collapsed into infighting as the righteous vied with the corrupt.Yet it was from one such betrayal that hope blossomed anew. When a cataclysmic act of treachery saw the slaughter of the Cadian High Command at Tyrok Fields, Ursarkar E. Creed –- commander of the famed Cadian 8th Regiment -- took up the role of Lord Castellan of Cadia, and shouldered the burden of directing Cadia's embattled forces. Creed's rise altered the course of the conflict. His cold, calculating demeanour commanded the respect of common-born soldiers, the war-tempered brotherhoods of the Adeptus Astartes and even, it is said, of the xenos forces rumoured to have played some part in Cadia's defence.Through Creed's efforts, and through those of unsung heroes too numerous to tally, the Chaos incursion slowed and was finally repulsed. In its wake, it left a planetary system on the edge of collapse, and warriors too weary for celebration. Cadia's defenders had no way of contacting the system's outer worlds –- communication relays and Astropathic choir beacons had been shattered. Those Astropaths who risked setting their minds adrift on the tides of the Warp suffered seizures, or else were consumed by the ravenous entities lurking beyond reality's veil. As artificers laboured to restore the humbled Cadian defences, and sporadic battles raged with those invaders still present on Cadian soil, Creed contacted the remnant of the Imperial Navy still in orbit. At his request, those few vessels capable of moving under their own power departed to perform a reconnaissance of the outer system.In their absence, Creed grew ever more convinced that another assault was on its way. In all the long solar months of fighting, there had been no reports of Abaddon himself making planetfall. Would the Despoiler, mortal foe of everything the Imperium stood for, yield his conquest without so much as lifting a blade in its cause? Creed's instincts told him otherwise, and he was too old a soldier not to trust them.Creed knew there was nothing he could do to prevent the Despoiler's fleet from making passage through the Cadian Gate. What vessels of the Imperial Navy yet remained in orbit were little more than listing wrecks. The one exception was the Space Wolves' Battle Barge Firemane's Fang, coaxed from the brink of reactor overload by the ministrations of its Iron Priests. It alone could fight as a warship should. The others would roar like dragons should the foe come within range, but they could not pursue an enemy clawing hard for deep space.On the other hand, Creed suspected that pursuit would not be called for. Cadia was a symbol of the Imperium's resilience, and Abaddon's repeated failure. Pride would surely not let him bypass Cadia. Though they would perhaps perish in the process, the armies of Cadia could fulfil one last, vital function. Every solar day they endured -- every solar hour -- was time in which reinforcements could arrive and cast Abaddon's forces back into the Warp, this time for good. Thus Creed set his mind to issuing a challenge the Despoiler could not ignore.Only one of Cadia's chief fortresses had survived the invasion. Kasr Kraf lay on the edge of the Elysion Fields -- a great expanse on the continent of Cadia Secundus, dominated by the famously unfathomable Cadian Pylons. Creed withdrew his command behind Kasr Kraf's walls, and set about what preparations he could to ready the fortress for what he increasingly regarded as an inevitable battle. Under Creed's basilisk gaze, archeologists' tunnel networks and caverns were expanded and made ready for a last-ditch defence. Adepts of the Cult Mechanicus laboured night and day, stripping components from shattered bastions to coax new life into reparable aegis defences and weapons emplacements.All across Cadia Secundus, the tale was the same. Regiment upon regiment of Cadian Shock Troopers laboured to restore defences savaged by bombardment and invasion. They did not strive alone. Savaged Adeptus Astartes Battle Companies -- sometimes reduced to little more than a handful of squads –- took their place in the defences, their colours and heraldry bright against the drab Cadian fatigues. North of Kasr Kraf, Orven Highfell garrisoned his Battle-Brothers in the ruins of Kasr Jark. However, the Fenris-born Great Company of Space Wolves was seldom to be found within the walls, electing instead to scour the cratered plains for the daemons who had roamed there only solar days before. Though still haunted by the cost of recent campaigns, the Space Wolves were determined to bring honour to both their new Wolf Lord, and their old: the slain Egil Iron Wolf, whose icons and name the company still bore until the stain of his death could be washed away.Further north still, the Dark Angels' 4th Company reinforced the ruined superstructure of their own crashed Strike Cruiser, Sword of Defiance, enough of whose armaments had survived the crash to render the downed Battleship a formidable fortress in its own right. Guttural prayers echoed across the broken bastion-lines to the south of Kasr Kraf, each syllable in the thick sanctum-cant of the Black Templars. Even now, Marshal Marius Amalrich had little faith that the Cadian Guardsmen would hold, and had divided the warriors of his Cruxis Crusade amongst them to thicken their ardour.Across the valley from Creed's fortress, the Battle-Sisters of the Adepta Sororitas' Order of Our Martyred Lady garrisoned the sprawling shrine of Saint Morrican. Whenever the wind blew from the east, it carried gusts of incense across Kasr Kraf's walls. Creed was glad to see the determination the pungent fumes instilled in his troops, but felt little stirring in his own heart. He had long since placed his faith in the roar of bombardment and the fighting spirit of the Cadian soldier. To his mind, there was no sense wishing for miracles unless you were prepared to forge them yourself. And so he did.In the days that followed, Creed drilled his soldiers hard, leaving them so weary they had no energy for doubt, or even for fear. For the first time, the massed regiments of Cadia understood the harsh tutelage that had made Creed's own command, the Cadian 8th, the formidable instrument of war it had become. As for the 8th themselves, they took perverse pride in the hardships meted out onto their comrades. The veterans amongst their ranks knew exactly why Creed acted as he did -- they even welcomed his tirades, knowing they would temper others as they themselves had been tempered.But Creed's preparations were not restrained to the reforging of flesh and blood. He salvaged the remains of the Astropathic choir beacon from ruined Kasr Luten and had it installed in Kasr Kraf. The beacon's bonded Astropaths were long since dead, and so Creed requisitioned whatever psykers remained to him on Cadia, and ordered them inducted into the jury-rigged beacon. Very few were Astropaths -- most were Sanctioned Psykers of the Scholastica Psykana. But Creed gambled that their raw power would help the true Astropaths punch through the psychic turbulence that had severed Cadia from the wider Imperium, and bring him some badly-needed reinforcements.As the contraption was prepared, the metallic tang of oil and unguent rankled Creed's nostrils. Lights flickered fitfully on access panels. Data streams scuttled across monitor displays, their meaning as shrouded in mystery as as the as the robed figure who stood silent watch over them."Is it ready?"Magos Klarn broke his vigil to stare at Creed. He was more human than most of those the Lord Castellan had dealt with over the years -- at least, on the surface -- but still there was something arachnid about the jerky precision of his movements. A spider at the heart of his web."It will serve." Klarn's words had a metallic edge. "It is not without risk."Creed let his gaze fall across the ten-score capsules, arranged about the chamber in three concentric rings. Each held a psyker, wired body and soul into the mechanisms of the choral beacon. Bundled cables spiralled away between one capsule and the next, the strands of Klarn's web, binding its prey together. On the central dais, a lone Astropath hung suspended from a forest of cables and datalines. The beacon needed a focus -- one who would shapethe distress hymnal and give it purpose. And maybe, just maybe, punch through the roiling Warp tides that had enveloped Cadia. Creed approached the dais and stared up into the Astropath's empty eye sockets."You understand what is required?"Pallid ﬂesh twitched, the Astropath's rictus of pain giving way to a moment of stillness. "I do."Creed nodded. What more was there to say? Turning his back on the Astropath, he focussed his attention on the magos."Begin."The magos hunched over the console, Mechadendrites working in concert with gauntleted hands. Creed felt the psychic pressure wave build. Every nightmare he'd ever had -- every fear he'd ever admitted -- clawed at the back of his brain, called forth by a hundred wailing voices. Capsules sparked, their vis-plates cracking and falling dark. The Astropath threw back his head and issued a tremulous, pitiful scream. The pressure in Creed's mind burst. The Astropath slumped lifeless against the cables, black ﬂuid trickling from his empty eyes."Mortality rate at ninety-two percent," grated the magos. "Within anticipated projections."Creed swallowed, banishing his nightmares back to their cage. "Did it work?""Data is inconclusive." The magos offered a shrug, his Mechadendrites mimicking the hunching of his shoulders. "What next?""Next?" Creed snorted. Reinforcements would come, or they would not. Either way, the answer was the same. "We fight.Cadia stands."After the attempt was made, this strategy met with objections within Creed's own command. A few viewed it as the squandering of a finite resource, and most feared that untrained minds would draw Warp-born horrors directly onto Cadia itself. Creed had already resolved to press ahead when a defence monitor –- the sole survivor of the reconnaissance fleet –- limped into outer orbit.The Pyrax Orchades' starboard flank was a ruin of scored and seared metal. Two-thirds of its crew were dead, and the rest would perish from rad-poisoning before the day was out. The sole remaining officer gave a garbled account of what he'd seen, but the sensor readings allowed no ambiguity. Abaddon's Black Fleet was inbound for Cadia -- an angry swarm of warships, daemon vessels and Space Hulks so massive it eclipsed the stars. Worse, at its core sat the malevolent planet-killing bulk of a Blackstone Fortress.Creed's fears had come to pass. Abaddon's 13th Black Crusade hadn't ended. Indeed, it had barely begun.