Third War for Armageddon - Ground Assault: In the final few solar weeks before the Ork forces landed on Armageddon proper, the planet was in a frenzy of activity. Imperial Titans powered up their ancient Plasma Reactors and took up defensive positions around the hive cities, Imperial Guard regiments were mustered and dug in, Space Marines from over twenty Chapters moved into the mountains and wastelands, to prepare to face the Greenskins. Imperial merchant vessels were commandeered and used daily to run supplies and reinforcements to the planet through the besieging Ork fleet, despite the risk. The very last transport to touch down carried a legend to the people of the world, the "Old Man" himself, Imperial Commissar Yarrick. The population cheered as, for the first time in twenty years, Yarrick stepped foot on Armageddon.The commissar met with the military council that governed Armageddon that night and advised them on Ghazghkull's most recent tactics and strategies, and warned against underestimating the powerful Ork Warlord's abilities. General Kurov had always been renowned for his judgment of men in battle and he was deeply impressed by Yarrick's drive and intelligence. He requested that Yarrick take over the leadership of the military council for the duration of the crisis and to general relief, the Commissar agreed.Six weeks after entering the Armageddon System, the vast Ork armada went into battle with the Imperial space stations and weapons platforms in high orbit above the world. Those who had hoped that the powerful orbital defences of Armageddon would keep the Orks at bay were soon proved to be hopelessly in error. The orbital battle raged for three full days and two terrible nights, but by the dawn of the third day, the skies of Armageddon were filled with the trails of Ork landing pods and the incandescent streaks of their attack craft carving runnels through the clouds. Hive Hades, still a ruin following the previous conflict, was the first to fall. In an act of vengeance, Ghazghkull chose not to fight again at Hades. Instead, the entire hive city and its inhabitants were smashed asunder by the colossal impact of giant asteroids dropped from the Orks orbiting Space Hulks. This act of wanton destruction was but a premonition of the monstrous bloodshed that was to come.As the fires of Hades' destruction lit the eastern horizon, the first Ork drop legions clashed with Imperial defenders near Volcanus, Acheron and Death Mire. Ground-based defence lasers and missile silos took a terrible toll on the Orks as they landed, but the hulking survivors regrouped and assaulted the defences with such ferocity that soon more and more of the greenskin horde was reaching the planet's surface unharmed. Feral Orks swept down from the Pallidus Mountains and out of the world's Equatorial Jungles to join the growing numbers of their more technologically-inclined brethren. Where the Imperial defences proved too strong to be taken by frontal assaults, huge mobs of Orks and their war machines were teleported directly into battle from the Space Hulks waiting above. As the ground defences fell silent on the third day of the Ork landings, Yarrick ordered every remaining aircraft on Armageddon to be thrown into the battle in a desperate attempt to destroy as much of Ghazghkull's ground troops as possible before they reached the surface.The sodden yellow skies over volcanic Armageddon became interwoven with the twisting trails of thousands of Ork fighta-bommerz and Imperial Thunderbolts and Furies as massive dogfights proceeded with maniacal fury. The Imperial aircraft had the advantage in that they could return to their armoured airbases to refuel and rearm, whereas the Orks had to reserve enough fuel to climb back up to their starships and Space Hulks in orbit. Yet, the Orks soon secured ground bases and the air battle turned against the brave Imperial pilots as the sheer number of Ork aircraft was brought fully to bear upon them.As the aerial battles reached their climax five days after the Ork landings, Hive Acheron fell to the Orks without warning, captured by treachery from within. Reports spoke of the hive city's power grid being sabotaged and the Orks boiling up from secret access tunnels at the very heart of the great arcology. The instigator of these terrible crimes was revealed to be none other than the infamous war-criminal and former Armageddon Planetary Governor Herman von Strab. He took over the conquered hive city as its new Overlord, announcing that it was his divine right to rule over Armageddon. Ork brute squads stood ready to silence any dissenters who doubted von Strab's new right to rule. Shockingly, much of the old nobility in Acheron welcomed back von Strab as their long-lost prince, choosing to ignore the fact that he had thrown in his lot with some of the most violent xenos known to the Imperium.At Hive Volcanus, on the same day that Acheron fell to betrayal, massed Ork infantry surged over the twenty square miles of defenses atop Volcanus Mount just beyond the hive city's outer suburbs. Seventeen garrison regiments of Armageddon hive militia were routed and the Orks captured many weapons and Imperial fortifications fully intact. Volcanus itself soon found itself besieged, surrounded by a ring of Orkish power and relentless pounded by captured Imperial macro cannons and barrage bombs.Outside Death Mire, the defence went better. The Titans of Legios Tempestor and Victorum with their supporting regiments of the Mechanicus' cybernetic Skitarii virtually exterminated the Orks' Blackfire Tribe in a three-day battle across the Plain of Anthrand. But the Ork landers fell from the skies like an endless storm and the fighting spread across Armageddon like a wild fire until every hive city and factory complex was involved. In many places, Ork attacks were beaten off by the bravery and ferocity of Imperial defenders, but again and again the Orks regrouped and attacked once more, stretching the defenders to the limits of their endurance -- and beyond.As Yarrick had predicted, Ghazghkull's strategies proved effective. The Orks kept an iron grip on Armageddon's airspace, orbital bombardments and fighta-bommerz pounded Imperial forces wherever they tried to form a coherent battleline, pinning them in place while further Ork infantry landings were made to surround them. Where the Orks found themselves outnumbered, they fought with guerilla tactics, striking at their human foes and then withdrawing into the world's harsh ash wastelands before retribution could arrive.Ghazghkull had learned the lessons of Chigon 17 very well and deliberately prepared so that the fighting was scattered and chaotic; precisely the conditions in which Ork warbands thrived and Imperial regiments were denied the support and coordination that humans depended upon to defend effectively. The only Imperial force which consistently defeated the Orks were the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes. The Space Marines scoured the hinterlands of Armageddon on search and destroy missions to eliminate concentrations of the savage greenskins at every opportunity.