Cyclops Cluster - The Blockade of Mezoa: Mezoa's refusal was the first major setback for Horus, as the star system itself was not only nigh-impregnable, but the Forge World also commanded a number of valuable resource extraction plants and powerful allies such as the Imperial Knights of House Hermetika. This news could not become widely known less it became a rallying call for other Loyalist systems. So it was that Mezoa's denial was not widely broadcast but the system was almost immediately cordoned off by the Traitors.M'Pandex, Mezoa's long-time rival, had covertly been building up its military strength: its production capacities had been considerably geared up to feed the ever-growing hunger of Horus' armies and Loyalist and merchant voidships passing through its space were seized and impounded. Few of these ships had real military value, but their cargo holds held valuable resources to fuel M'Pandex's build-up of its own Taghmata. In this regard, the merchant vessels carried an even more valuable asset: its own crew and passenger. These were captured and forcibly converted into adsecularis slaves, to add to the M'Pandex Taghmata or to toil in whatever mine or forge needed reinforcing. Soon these captured ships were recrewed with men and Servitors loyal to M'Pandex and operated under a false flag to infiltrate and attack Mezoa's supply-lines, an action which also required the involvement of M'Pandex warships. In addition to this already sizable fleet, more shadowed and in some case unidentified forces -- obviously loyal to Horus -- began to invade the various star systems supplying Mezoa as to cut off the reluctant Forge World from its primary resources.Wherever tactically sound and possible, the Mechancium of Mezoa resisted actively; although it steadfastly refused to marshal its full force and to leave the security of its own homeworld. The attacks on its far-flung outposts and mines were justly regarded as bait by the ruling Pentarchy of Archimandrites. Instead, Mezoa's garrison forces and outposts were ordered to resist until destruction. On far-flung mining stations and on the decks of mass transporter vessels, the forces of the two Forge Worlds -- always rivals but never before enemies -- clashed in mortal combat. Mercy was not to be found in either sides' circuit-augmented hearts and where the adsecularis cohorts of M'Pandex marched against the numerically fewer but more lethal centuries of Mezoa's Thallaxi. It is noteworthy that to outsiders this clash seemed to be a civil conflict between Mechanicum factions rather than the opening move in a wider game. On Jujya and Gunnar's Rock refinery stations burned, while on New Providance thousands of fleeing vapour-mill workers were caught between the advancing lines of Krios tanks and slaughtered needlessly in the withering crossfire of blazing energy weapons as both sides utterly ignored them. Believing this to be an internecine conflict between two rival Mechanicum factions, doubts and confusion stayed the Armada Imperialis' hand until it was too late. The conquered worlds and the valuable resources they harboured were mostly seized by M'Pandex to further aid their own expansion.By the end of 006.M31, Mezoa had been almost entirely cut off from its colonies with the notable exception of Juiya. By now the system's outer edges were teeming with warships, like sharks having smelled blood in the water. Yet the enemy stayed its hand: Mezoa was still dangerous and too powerful and fortified to be taken, even by a force as large as a fully marshalled Expeditionary Fleet, but once effectively cut off from aid and from giving aid to others, the threat had been effectively neutralised. Time now played in favour of Horus and the Traitors as the blockade would continously weaken the Forge World's defences until such time as sufficient forces could be gathered as to definitely silence Mezoa. Mezoa's blockade would soon be noticed on other worlds, especially those depending on Mezoa's production capabilities. On Port Maw, the powerful Port Majoris of the Armada Imperialis situated in the neighbouring sub-sector, matters had steadily worsened -- without the supplies imported from Mezoa, Port Maw's stock of macro-ordinance shells was becoming dangerously low. Fleet command had begun formulating a plan of attack to break the Traitor blockade and address these matters, but events took a turn for the worse. Dire news reached Port Maw through garbled astropathic messages originating from Lascal in the Grail Abyss. Previously, a number of reports of worlds "going dark" had come out of this region and the stars bordering it, but to the authorities on Port Maw and Dominica Minor the Abyss' strategic value had been too small, too unimportant to squander its finite resource in warships while the proverbial wolf was already at their own door.Now such parochial thinking had born dark consequences, and without warning, a massive fleet tore out of the Empyrean at the edge of the Lascal System, and there would be no time to rally reinforcements to meet it. Much of the strategic detail of what was to be Lascal's last broadcast had been lost to the soul-static of the Warp, but what images remained were clear enough: bleak warship after bleak warship, slab-grey and bone-white, stained and pitted with the scars of ancient battles and their recent acts of infamy. Alongside these were Warp-carried images of the death's head and the black sunburst, the scythe of the reaper. The Death Guard Legion had come for the Cyclops Cluster.