Badab War - Fall of the Palace of Thorns (913.M41): To the northeast of Hive Dominar lay the Palace of Thorns. Built into a mountainous volcanic plateau that rose high above the level of the hive city, it comprised a hulking, ornate citadel surrounded by wide, statue-lined plazas and minaret-capped gun towers studded with Defence Lasers and flak batteries. This was the heart of the Astral Claws' domain and the lair of the Tyrant of Badab.Above the palace complex's centre an actinic-bright lightning shield rippled and clashed in the air; a vast charged power-field that disintegrated anything it touched and shrugged off even the firepower of the warships above. The plazas and weapons batteries that spread out beyond the Palace were not so impervious however, and it was into them the Star Phantoms descended with unmatched precision and timing, their Drop Pods smashing down through the ornate sepulchres and toppling needle-thin auspex-masts as they descended.Despite the hail of fire that had greeted the Star Phantoms, over 500 battle-brothers out of the 700-strong force managed to survive to make planetfall, and now they set about besieging the heavily protected Palace of Thorns. The combat was fierce as the Star Phantoms encountered cunning death-traps and heavily defended gun positions. Brutal close-range engagements were fought against Astral Claws Assault Squads who counter-attacked from concealed sally-ports, making the Loyalists pay in blood for every advance.Land Raiders and Predators spilled forth from underground bunkers in defence of the citadel's shield wall. But they were matched by the equally devastating firepower of the Star Phantoms' Devastator Squads and Dreadnoughts firing from the shattered towers they had already stormed. The wide-open plazas that ringed the citadel became lethal killing grounds, grinding the siege down into a bloody meat-grinder of attrition, for they offered very little cover to both attackers and defenders alike.The bloody siege began to tip in the Loyalists' favour as the Inquisitorial Storm Troopers regiments made their way up the volcanic ridges and joined the fray allowing the Star Phantoms to press the attack. Loyalist Terminator Squads locked on the Star Phantoms' Teleport Homers and were soon despatched down to the surface.But despite the massive force brought to bear against it, the citadel still held. The Palace of Thorn's lightning field remained unbreached, and multiple Loyalist attacks were hurled away from the citadel as the Astral Claws rained down deadly fire from the high walls in murderous counterattacks. Even with the advent of the Reaver-class Titans of the Legio Crucius alongside the Sons of Medusa detachments, the Loyalists could not force the issue. The siege of the Palace of Thorns was at a lethal impasse.The fighting and killing reigned unabated as true night fell over Hive Dominar and the Palace of Thorns. Soon the fighting spread out to the planet's sub-hives and industrial zones. The pall of smoke from the burning cities thickened the night to an umbral black that fogged the auspexes of the warships in orbit. Titans stalked the ruined cityscapes, crushing any hint of resistance they encountered and systematically smashed the manufactoria and habitation blocks, driving refugees and routed Tyrant's Legion troopers before them in a disordered swarm.During this long night of destruction little can be said for certain of Lufgt Huron's actions. Some reports have the Tyrant of Badab sighted almost everywhere in the defence of the palace, hurling back the rent and shattered bodies of his enemies, roaring his defiance, while other tales place him alone and silent in the throne chamber, impassively watching the destruction of all he had wrought in the flickering light of his hole-sphere.Regardless of the truth, what can be accurately said is that no Astral Claw surrendered to their fate. Each fought to the end, whether at the Palace of Thorns, in the hive cities of Badab or in defence of the High Guard orbital station. The Astral Claws sold their lives in a blaze of fury and spite.At dawn of the second solar day of the assault, the Carcharodons took matters into their own hands to bring about the end. Assigned by Lord High Commander Carab Culln the task of attacking the planet's infrastructure and preventing an organised defence from taking root, they had devised their own plan for doing so, and set their own deadly measure to the extremes to which they would go. Having already ravaged the Tyrant's Legion forces defending the cities and setting the hives ablaze, they continued the final state of their plan and despatched strike teams deep into the hive's sub-surface.The Carcharodons sabotaged the ancient atomic and geo-thermal reactors which powered the world's hive cities and fed its hungry planetary defence batteries with energy. Across Badab Primaris power failed or suddenly spiked, adding to the chaos, and slowly, the hives began to quake and the towers of Badab toppled over.This resulted in a planetary tectonic upheaval, with entire hive city sectors collapsing into yawning chasms that opened up in the ground beneath them, replaced by seas of molten lava. Silently and in good order, the Carcharodons began to withdraw from the surface, the fatal blow struck, for the God-Emperor's judgement had been delivered on treacherous Badab.The sudden destabilisation of power offered the Loyalists a much-needed opening in which to strike. As the lightning field and the citadel's other defences flickered for a moment, allowing a Star Phantoms assault force to breach the lower level bunker network and catacombs before the citadel could draw power again from their own reactors. With Captain Zhrukal Androcles at the fore, his Assault Marines and Terminators forced their way into the citadel and the heart of the enemy.The Star Phantoms' assault was brutal and relentless, its passage blasted through by Thunder Hammer-rent bulkheads and charge-blown walls, while the Astral Claws that fought against them were the most fanatical and hate-filled of their breed -- their crimson-splattered armour devoid of any sign of their former service as defenders of the Imperium. Massive upheaval in the planet's sub-hive structures radiated out across the ancient geological fault lines, spewing molten magma and radioactive ash up from the earth. Badab Primaris began to die.At the Palace of Thorns, the bastion wall was finally breached, collapsing the lightning shield. The Star Phantoms stormed the rubble-strewn remnants of the citadel. As dark fate would have it, Androcles' own detachment encountered none other than Lufgt Huron and his elite bodyguard endeavouring to make their escape from their homeworld through these subterranean passages.It is likely Huron's party were attempting to flee to a concealed escape craft via the sub-surface. The battle that followed was swift and bloody, and the Star Phantoms' force was wiped out to an Astartes, but data recovered from the power armour of the slain Star Phantoms and Astral Claws in the combat's aftermath revealed that Captain Androcles was struck down by the Tyrant in the confrontation, who in his arrogance strode over the fallen hero believing him dead.As his life bled from him, with his dying strength the grimly determined Androcles managed to unleash a melta-blast at point blank range into the Tyrant of Badab, dealing him a mortal blow. The melta-blast struck the arcane Lightning Claw the Tyrant habitually wore, which catastrophically exploded and unleashed a baleful pulse of energy. This blast incinerated the Tyrant's arm and much of his right side, and the remnants of his burning armour collapsing to the ground was the last image recorded by the fallen Star Phantom captain's autosenses.Soon afterward, when a second Star Phantoms squad entered the vault, they found the bloody remains of the melee, along with shrapnel and organic detritus later identified by the Magos Biologis of the Consistorial Court as belonging to the Tyrant.The bulk of Lufgt Huron's body, however, was not found, nor were any remains that could be later identified as belonging to the Astral Claws Master of the Forge, Armenneus Valthex, who had also been present in the combat. Further investigation of the matter or deeper exploration of the lower levels of the Palace of Thorns proved impossible as the wider situation on Badab Primaris began to deteriorate rapidly.Beneath the hives of Badab Primaris, the cascading destruction of the reactor cores took its toll. The tectonic shocks and volcanic eruptions increased at an exponential rate, causing the campaign of purgation and conquest on Badab to quickly devolve into an anarchic retreat. Many were caught in the path of destruction. Vessels of any and all kinds were commandeered by both Loyalist and Secessionists alike in a desperate effort to flee.In the anarchy and ruin that followed the destruction of the hive cities, the majority of the planet's population was estimated to have been exterminated in a manner of solar days. As confusion reigned in the wreckage-strewn star system, several Loyalist transports were also shot down by the Loyalist blockade ships.It is believed that at least one small Warp-capable privateer vessel managed to escape the Badab System into the Immaterium. Later intelligence reports suggested that less than 200 Astral Claws were aboard, led by Armenneus Valthex and carrying their master's broken body. The Badab War was finally over.