Ryza - Notable Events: The Dead of Ashkhelon (ca. 900s.M30) - This particular campaign was one of the few documented during the Space Wolves Legion's involvement in the latter stages of the Great Crusade, which was a relatively brief but extremely brutal affair which took place on the world of Ashkhelon III in a star system of the same name in the Ultima Segmentum, close by what is known as the Golgothan Expanse. Discovered by an Imperial Expeditionary Fleet of the Great Crusade, the people of Ashkhelon gratefully welcomed the Imperial emissaries and were rapidly brought into Imperial Compliance. A coterie of Magi from the Forge World of Ryza were despatched to the newly Compliant world. Over several solar decades, the Mechanicum Tech-priests helped Ashkhelon to become a working cog in the vast machine of the ever-expanding Imperium. But tragedy soon struck, when the Magi inadvertently awakened a long forgotten evil from the bygone era of Old Night. Before disappearing, a secret Mechanicum astropathic missive had been sent into the æther, which contained only the memetic symbol-forms for two words, translated to the common Imperial Gothic tongue as "Heretek Omega." In the parlance of the Omnissiah, this was a dire warning of having encountered a sin of the Dark Age of Technology; a human-made horror which could not be allowed to continue to exist. In response, the entire 11th Great Company of Jarl Varald Helsdawn was sent by Leman Russ, alongside a Mechanicum war-barque despatched from Mars by the Fabricator-General himself. The two forces descended to the surface of the planet, where they quickly discovered that despite the obvious signs of violence, there were no bodies whatsoever. But soon, the Imperial forces were beset upon by creatures from beneath the surface of the planet that were revealed to be no mere beasts of flesh and blood, but a mechanism, things of false life, neither servitor nor automata as the Imperium reckoned them. They were creatures akin to them, grown and spliced into frames of hydraulics and gears, and pulsing with unnatural life. While the battle raged upon the surface, several of the Space Wolves, alongside their Mechanicum allies, made their way into the darkness below. Here at last they discovered the fate of the dead of Ashkhelon, where they were stacked neatly in red-weeping alcoves by the tens of thousands, in vault after vault with no rhyme or reason other than that they had been placed there carefully. It was as the Space Wolves breached a final chamber that they encountered the foul presence of the thing that controlled the lesser creatures still attacking their forces upon the surface -- it was a Silica Animus, the blasphemy of a true, thinking machine-mind. Through the combined efforts of Ryza's Sicarian Ruststalkers and the Space Wolves, the Silica Animus' corporeal form was destroyed. Its machine-creatures, mere extensions of a single false life and inhuman will, then also perished, just as the body of a serpent dies when the head is struck off. The dead of Ashkhelon had been avenged, and a nightmare of ages past had been destroyed. From orbit, the two flagships of both the 11th Great Company, the Void Wyrm and the Mechanicum war-barque Axiom of Trinity, levelled every standing structure and hammered the sub-surface vaults into collapse. Ashkhelon was deemed a forbidden and Dead World to which humanity must never return.WAAAGH! Grax and the Battle of Ryza (925.M41) - The brutal juggernaut of WAAAGH! Grax spilled through the star systems of Ryza in 925.M41. Legions of Skitarii counterattacked alongside Catachan Jungle Fighters and liberated Humans who were once slaves of the greenskins. Word of the intense fighting also attracts WAAAGH! Rarguts, which breaks through the Imperial Navy cordon to invade Ryza for the third time since the conflict began. The fate of a string of star systems hinges upon the Forge World at their heart. In truth the tech-priests of Ryza welcomed the opportunity to see their creations in action first-hand. Ryza's Skitarii, alongside "The Warmongers" of the Legio Crucius and the Astra Militarum's Catachan regiments, took righteous pleasure in turning Ryza's most devastating weapons upon the foe. The Orks of WAAAGH!s Grax and Rarguts, always on the lookout for more dakka, did much the same. Every vault and warecrypt was raided, every gun reliquary broken open in furtherance of the war effort. Transdimensional beamers lit up the night, gatling Macrocannons roaed their fury, and writhing lava hoses spewed hot death into the streets. To set foot upon Ryza was to see a vision of war unbound -- and the violent industry of the Adeptus Mechanicus unleashed on a worldwide scale. The Ork invasion of Ryza became a gruelling war of attrition that lasted almost forty standard years. The Orks eventually fell into disarray and were finally wiped out following the death of Warlord Grax at the hands of the Warlord-class Titan Pugnus Vindictae.Plague Wars (ca. 111.M42) - Following the fall of Cadia during the 13th Black Crusade, Warp Storms of a magnitude not seen since the Age of Strife wrack the galaxy. A great Warp rift tears the fabric of reality, forming from the Eye of Terror and stretching all the way to the Hadex Anomaly in the Eastern Fringe, effectively cutting the galaxy in two. Every Forge World is cut off from its Explorator fleets and, for a time, from each other. All suffer invasions and raids as emboldened xenos and Chaos forces test them, probing for weaknesses, eager to destroy the bastions of Mankind's empire. No fewer than seven Forge Worlds are destroyed altogether and several more remain missing, buried beneath fierce and impenetrable storms. At the urgent call of the newly awakened Ultramarines Primarch Roboute Guilliman, over a dozen Forge Worlds, including Mars, Ryza, Metalica, and Triplex Phall, send reinforcements to Ultramar. There they aid the Avenging Son's armies in defence and counterattack against Chaos Renegades and the Death Guard during the Plague Wars.