Orphean War - Planetfall: Virtually unopposed, the legions of the Maynarkh Dynasty landed on Amarah. Ground-based orbital defence batteries and great missile silos concealed under Amarah's grey seas opened fire, raking the skies with their power. But the strange half-moon and spear-shaped spacecraft of the invaders easily eluded them. The first sign of enemy invasion were unnatural storms that darkened the skies, while strange, eerie flashes of light and pale radiances randomly illuminated the great spires of the hive cities. Still affected by the electromagnetic interference caused by the solar flares, communications proved difficult. Amarah's unprotected tactical Vox-networks, long befouled by static, suddenly came back to life, filled with panicked reports of simultaneous and multiple attacks.A spectral army of black skeletons composed of living metal suddenly manifested on the great ceremonial plaza of Callowsheen Hive, opening fire on the civilians gathered there and wreaking a fearsome death toll. Slaughtering all before them, the enemy began to spread into the city's streets. At Duneradt Starport, Amarah's main orbital transit facility, a ravenous swarm of metallic beetles unearthed themselves, erupting from Amarah's soil to attack troop shuttles and gunships stationed on their slipways. The defenders of the starport were swarmed by these machine constructs, later identified as Canoptek Scarabs.Elsewhere, in New Vassburg City, the largest of Amarah Prime's arcologies, the enemy descended from the skies, the sleek shapes of Doom Scythes and Night Shrouds attacking the defenders from the storm-wracked skies, eliminating artillery positions and armoured redoubts to pave the way for the Necron phalanxes. The Night Shrouds' antimatter bombs delivered their targets into oblivion, tearing great wounds in the arcology's spires and infrastructure until the towering structure began to topple, burying thousands beneath the rubble.Only a powerful and determined counterstrike led by the Space Marines of the Minotaurs Chapter would keep New Vassburg from falling entirely into enemy hands. The oceanic, half-submerged Tritonus Hive was similarly overrun, the Necrons emerging from the black waters on great, funeral barques. Having no need to breathe and stalking the darkness in search of their prey, the Necrons even benefited from the flooded, labyrinthine streets and sub-levels that formed Tritonus Hive’s principal defences.In many cases, the Necrons bypassed the defenders' barricades and attacked from the rear or from other unexpected quarters. Flayed Ones stalked the darkness, emerging from the shadows and mercilessly slaughtering every inhabitant. After the great massacre was complete, Tritonus' air-domes and coral-shaped heights collapsed, further trapping the survivors inside the hive. Its watery streets echoed with the screams of the dying.The Maynarkh concentrated their first attack on Amarah's hive cities. With the notable exception of the Duneradt Starport, military targets were attacked only in the second wave. The foremost of these Imperial military outposts on Amarah was the polar base of the Bastion Militaris, the true lynchpin of Amarah's planetary defences. The Bastion Militaris was the first to be besieged, as strange hulking war machines silently floated over the ice flow to strike the installation. The Necron phalanxes proved unstoppable, ignoring the large rents torn in their formation by the base's plasma cannons as they closed in on the Bastion Militaris.The base's curtain wall, composed of solid granite, was destroyed by flashing blasts of energy and strange waves of seismic force, crumbling as if they were made of sand. On the Marcovan Peninsula, where prefabricated barrack-blocks had been erected to house nearly a million Guardsmen, the mustering armies were simply annihilated from orbit by a blazing lambent shaft of light. It transformed the peninsula into a plain of fused silica glass and the Guardsmen into smoldering ash.With the enemy materialising out of thin air and attacking everywhere at once, the defenders of Amarah were hard-pressed. At Callowsheen Hive, the rampaging Necrons were met by the tanks of the Tekarn 234th Armoured Battalion. Unfortunately for the counterattacking Tekarns, they realised that the Gauss Flayers of the Necron Warriors they faced could harm even their heaviest armour at close range. Not wanting to let themselves be hemmed in by the streets of the hive city, the battalion retreated to the city's wide concourse where their superior range could be brought to bear.Choking the streets with their Leman Russ tanks, Manticores and Basilisks, the Tekarn drew their line on the wide avenues and unleashed everything they had at the Necrons as soon as their foe emerged from the buildings. The unrelenting barrage of shellfire would have annihilated a lesser foe, but the Necrons were made of sterner material.Even as rank upon rank of Necrons were blasted into fragments, more took their place even as others dragged themselves up from where they had fallen and began to re-assemble. The Tekarn watched in horror as their fury did little more than hold back the metallic tide that threatened to overwhelm them, yet they could not relent. With greater haste, shells were slammed into breaches and the Tekarn's guns soon began to glow dull red with the heat of the shells flying at the Necrons. The result was stalemate, but it was a stalemate the Tekarn officers knew they could not sustain for long.The valiant Tekarn would however never have the chance to see how long their defiance would last as their doom already approached. According to the testimony of Trooper Yeon Bak, sole survivor of the entire 234th Battalion, the enemy struck from both above and below. At first, the din caused by the Tekarns' own guns obfuscated the Necron attack. It was only when the new foe fired their weapon systems that the true threat became apparent.Trooper Bak reported that the first sign that the enemy was near was when the trooper directly in front of him was instantly incinerated by a focused beam of heat. This same beam also cut through the leg of a Sentinel Power-lifter, causing the walker to tumble and break into flames. Bak further described the unknown weapon's effect as reminding him of the Meltagun technology employed by the Imperium, though the beam seemed more focused and to last for a longer duration.Fortunately for Bak, he and his comrades were just returning from the frontline, otherwise the searing heat of the beam would surely have ignited the ammunition they supplied for the line troops. Bak himself attributed his survival to pure luck. He threw himself into cover at the first sign of danger and so was able to see the shape of this new enemy: huge black robotic insects, crawling along the habspires on their multi-segmented legs. Some of them flew over him, producing a notorious buzzing sound. As tall as a man, this swarm fell upon the Tekarns' rear, trapping the tanks of the 234th Armoured Battalion between the Necron phalanxes and themselves, their cutting beams slicing even the heaviest armour apart before hacking the crews within with their bladed limbs or energy-wreathed stingers.Trapped so close to each other and unable to move and bring their weapons to bear on these new assailants without hitting their own troops, the Tekarns were quickly slaughtered. Tekarn Command valiantly tried a counterattack with its infantry platoons, hoping that concentrated fire from Hellguns and portable Plasma Weapons would overcome the enemy, but the counterattack was quickly defeated by further Necron reinforcements. These included rapidly moving arthropod-like constructs that erupted from the ground and assaulted the Tekarns with metallic claws.Fast and able to move through solid matter, these unknown killing machines swiftly completed the massacre of the Tekarns. The entire 234th Armoured Battalion was eradicated in less than twenty solar minutes. Trooper Bak himself survived, crawling into a sewer duct where he was carried away by the flow of human faeces and spoiled water. His testimony constituted the first account of what the logisters of the Ordo Xenos have since categorized as Canoptek Acanthrites and Tomb Stalkers. After recovery and debriefing, Trooper Yeon Bak was duly executed for cowardice in the face of the enemy.