vizn3r/warhammer40k-lore huggingface dataset:
Isador Akios - Isador Akios: Isador Akios was a Librarian of the Blood Ravens Chapter of Space Marines. Much like his best friend Captain Gabriel Angelos, Akios was born and raised on the world of Cyrene in Sub-sector Aurelia. He became an Astartes of the Blood Ravens around the same time as Gabriel Angelos.Isador met Gabriel thirty standard years before the events on the world of Tartarus when Gabriel was still only a line Battle-Brother of the Chapter. Although his homeworld was destroyed by an Exterminatus ordered by Captain Angelos, Isador professed to not blame Gabriel for his decision. He agreed with Angelos that it had to be done. But in truth, Isador harbored a well-hidden animosity towards Angelos for destroying their homeworld and their kin.While the Blood Ravens 3rd Company was on the doomed planet of Tartarus, Isador slowly succumbed to the powers of Chaos, though he thought himself righteous in doing so. Isador was frequently taunted by the Chaos Sorcerer Sindri Myr of the Alpha Legion, who was also present on the planet and who dared the Librarian to solve the riddle of the Maledictum, an ancient Chaos artefact, and to battle Sindri himself.The urge for power to defeat the Traitors overcame Isador, and he betrayed his Space Marine brethren, even Gabriel, and fell to the corrupting influence of Chaos. When the Inquisitor Mordecai Toth arrived on Tartarus, he immediately detected a Chaos taint amongst the Blood Ravens and assumed that it originated with Gabriel, who had already fallen suspect due to his time upon Cyrene, a world known to have fallen to Chaos.Because of this error, the Inquisitor proved blind to Isador's corruption, and was unable to stop him before he finally seized the Maledictum and turned to Chaos. This act of betrayal brought Gabriel's trust in his old friend to an end. However, even after seizing the Maledictum, Isador was unable to master its power and could not defeat Sindri.Instead, Isador was forced by the Sorcerer to serve as yet another stalling device to prevent the Blood Ravens from disrupting the ceremony of ritual sacrifice Sindri needed to activate the Maledictum and ascend to become a Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided.Isador was killed in a duel with Gabriel Angelos during the Blood Ravens final assault upon the Alpha Legion's redoubt while Sindri pursued his apotheosis. Gabriel later used his friend's death as an example of the fate of all Space Marines who fell to Chaos believing that their damnation was actually necessary as a means to a righteous end.
Isador Akios - Wargear: Isador was armed with a Force Staff and Bolt Pistol. He later made use of a Plasma Pistol during the Tartarus campaign. Isador wore standard blue-coloured Librarian Power Armour, which incorporated a Psychic Hood.
Isador Akios - Trivia: Isador Akios is voiced by Mark Oliver.
Isaia Bendikt - Isaia Bendikt: Isaia Bendikt was a Cadian general of the Astra Militarum who commanded the regiments of the Cadian Shock Troops and survived the Fall of Cadia to take part in the Battle of Faith's Anchorage and to found a colony and sanctuary for Cadian survivors on the seventh world of the Agripinaa System he renamed "New Cadia."
Isha - Isha: Isha is the Aeldari goddess of the harvest, fertility, nature, life, healing and growth and the divine mother of the Aeldari species in Aeldari Mythology. She is the mate of Kurnous, the god of the hunt.The only truly benevolent member of the Aeldari pantheon, it is said that it was Isha who intervened and created all non-Aeldari life in the universe once Asuryan, the king of the Aeldari pantheon, no longer took interest in his creations and their solitude.It was also Isha who pleaded on behalf of the mortals when the Aeldari god of war, Kaela Mensha Khaine, attempted to slaughter the Aeldari. The war god had heard from Lileath, the goddess of dreams and fortune, that she had dreamed that the Aeldari, the mortal children of Isha and Kurnous, would one day cause his downfall.It was Isha, too, who secretly continued to guide the Aeldari when Asuryan, the Phoenix King, sought to blunt Khaine's rampage by forbidding any further direct contact between mortals and gods by separating the Immaterium from the Materium.After the Fall of the Aeldari, Isha was about to be devoured by Slaanesh like all of her divine brethren, but she was rescued by the forces of the Plague God Nurgle.Today, many Aeldari believe that Nurgle keeps Isha in a cage in his Plague Gardens in the Realm of Chaos, where he tests out every new disease and pestilence he creates to affect the mortal realm. But Isha still seeks to aid mortals by whispering the cures for each of Nurgle's plagues into the universe to be discovered when they are most needed.It was not just the Aeldari who came to believe this. Sanistasia Minst was a preeminent Human rejuvenat adept of the Talassar Sector, who, after successfully treating the skin rot of a Dothar aristocrat, began to have dreams of a maiden trapped in a cage and forced to suffer by eternally contracting and enduring a never-ending series of diseases. Eventually, Minst became obsessed with the idea of creating a panacea, a cure that could even heal a god. It was this fixation that caused Minst to neglect her normal duties, and eventually join the crew of the Elucidian Starstriders under the command of the Rogue Trader Elucia Vhane on her flagship New Dawn.It was said in Aeldari legend that wherever Isha walks, rose-like flowers would bloom in her wake, and such flowers offered protection to any mortals who could acquire them from the corruptive energies of Chaos.
Isha - Capture by Nurgle: Long Terran years later, much like the god of creativity and deception Cegorach who fled into the Labyrinth Dimension of the Webway, Isha was not destroyed outright and absorbed by Slaanesh like the rest of the Aeldari Pantheon after the Prince of Chaos' birth during the Fall of the Aeldari. Slaanesh vanquished her as it had all of the other Aeldari gods within the Warp, but only took her prisoner rather than absorbing her psychic energies outright.What fell purpose Slaanesh had in keeping Isha alive, none amongst the Aeldari now know, but the Prince of Pleasure was ultimately denied its spoils: for some reason, Nurgle, the Plague Lord, waged war against Slaanesh to "rescue" the Aeldari goddess. Why Grandfather Nurgle intervened is unclear, although some Aeldari savants believe that one of the oldest of the major Chaos Gods wanted to give the youngest amongst them a good lesson about his proper place in the order of things.What is known is that Nurgle's Daemonic forces proved victorious and he took the Aeldari goddess back to his domain in the Realm of Chaos. A goddess of rejuvenation and a god of decay seemed an odd pairing, but Nurgle came to adore his new companion like no other being in the universe.However, he shows his love in the only way a Chaos God knows how. Nurgle keeps Isha imprisoned in a rusted cage within his personal manse in the corner of his Plague Gardens. It is there that he keeps the cauldron where he mixes the elements that create all of his plagues and pestilences. Nurgle tests all of his new, virulent creations upon the body of his "companion."As the goddess of healing and the spiritual embodiment of health and growth, Isha can cure herself of these afflictions, but the Plague Lord gains an idea of their potency by watching how much power the Aeldari goddess must expend to cure herself. If he is pleased with how hard Isha must struggle to conquer the disease, Nurgle releases the new creation upon some unsuspecting world, but if not, he starts over, working at his cauldron until he has something new to give to his divine companion.Isha accepts her lot stoically and fights back against the Plague God's evil in the same way she once fought against Khaine, whispering the cures to these new diseases into the universe so that mortals might know them and resist the hideous designs of Grandfather Nurgle.
Isha - The Rose of Isha: In ca. 999.M41, Mortarion, the primarch of the Death Guard, used the Chaos relic known as the Hand of Darkness to unleash a variety of plagues on the Realm of Ultramar when he heard that his brother primarch Roboute Guilliman had been resurrected. Guilliman and Varro Tigurius, the Chief Librarian of the Ultramarines, told the Asuryani Farseer Eldrad Ulthran of Mortarion's use of the Hand of Darkness, prompting the Farseer to send Yvraine, the prophetess of Ynnead, the god of the dead and her Ynnari, Guilliman's allies, to retrieve it from the Whispering Tower on the Death Guard's Plague Planet in the Eye of Terror.To reach the Plague Planet without suffering through the potential exposure of Chaos corruption in the Eye of Terror, Yvraine and her accompanying Ynnari passed through trials of temptation by Slaanesh on the secret craftworld of the Black Library in the Webway. After successfully navigating the trials, Yvraine recovered a Rose of Isha, said to grow only where the goddess of nature walked, which allowed Yvraine to enter the Garden of Nurgle in the Realm of Chaos. Passing through the Garden, Yvraine was able to secretly reenter the material plane at the Whispering Tower on the Plague Planet and steal the Hand of Darkness so Mortarion could no longer use it to afflict the people of Ultramar.
Isha - A Pantheon Reborn: In the wake of the birth of the Great Rift at the start of the Era Indomitus the Nurglish Great Unclean One known as Rotigus rambles from one Maiden World to the next upon the Eastern Fringe. He brings with him the Deluge of Nurgle. The brackish waters and slimy effluvia of this unnatural storm rot the forests and raise gelid floodwaters todrown wildlife already stricken by a foul and mutating curse of fecundity. On each world so beset, the Harlequin Masque of the Frozen Stars appear. Fighting their way to the site of the planets' World Spirit shrines, they perform dances of such startling beauty that all who see them are moved to floods of tears.Even as the Aeldari weep, so the rains falling from the skies transform from diseased filth to cleansing waters that glow like moonlight. Wherever these purifying monsoons sweep over the landscape, the power of Nurgle is undone and the Nurglish corruption reversed.Rumour spreads through the Exodite tribes that the Masque of the Frozen Stars seeks more than just to defeat Rotigus' foul plans -- it is whispered that if enough Aeldari weep for the corruption of their Maiden Worlds by Chaos, their combined sorrow may somehow release the Aeldari goddess of nature Isha from her imprisonment within Nurgle's foetid manse in the Land of the Plaguelord.Whether such a thing is even possible, none can say, but with Cegorach's continued survival and the slow awakening of Ynnead, the god of the dead, still ongoing, some amongst the Aeldari dare to hope that they may know a true pantheon of their gods again before the Rhana Dandra ends.
Ishidur Ossuros - Ishidur Ossuros: Ishidur Ossuros was the first and only Legion Master of the IX Legion of Space Marines before it was reunited with its Primarch Sanguinius and renamed the Blood Angels.In truth, the real Ossuros died early on in the Great Crusade, but his identity and memories were taken by his successors though the abilities granted by their Legion's overactive Omophagea gene-seed implant. They allowed his legend to live on through them until their own deaths.The last incarnation of Ishidur Ossuros fell during the first battle of the newly-named Blood Angels with their Primarch, when he gave his life to save Sanguinius from being overrun and slain. Ossuros' body could not be found, so his persona could not be passed on to a new Astartes through the consumption of his flesh.
Ishidur Ossuros - History: The first and last master of the IX Legion, other than Sanguinius himself, was a warrior who fought under the name of Ishidur Ossuros. His is a legend that spans nearly 80 standard years of war, fighting in battles from the rad-wastes of Old Earth to the rocky heights of the world of Saiph, a legend of blood and death that charts a course across the most hazardous battlefields of the Great Crusade.He was the hero of the first assault on Kum-karta in Yndonesia during the Unification Wars, where he reaped such a toll of lives that his warriors emerged from the fortresses' sunken vaults painted in crimson from head to foot, and the champion of the Ghost Wars on Saiph.If the records of the Imperium's original Divisio Militaris are to be believed, Ishidur next fought in 317 separate major engagements -- and yet these same records also show his death on at least four verified occasions.Given the grim nature of the early IX Legion in the period before it was united with Sanguinius, and those few oral records from the warriors of the Legion itself that still exist, it is likely that the true and original Ishidur Ossuros fell in battle as early as 802.M30.His lieutenants then took his memories and his name through the use of their mutated Omophagea implants, and continued his legacy for the sake of the Legion. Each time Ishidur Ossuros fell, he rose again like a gore-soaked phoenix, once more to take the reins of the IX Legion.The last known reference to this warrior is during the Battle for Teghar Pentaurus, the first battle fought by the renamed Blood Angels under the command of their Primarch. There, the enemy's last gasp was a ferocious assault that threatened to overrun the Primarch and his Honour Guard. It was the final Ishidur and his warriors who would save the Great Angel, staging a suicidal counterassault into the teeth of the foe and holding them at bay for almost a solar hour as reinforcements rushed to Sanguinius' aid.Ishidur Ossuros perished one final time, his body never recovered, exchanging his long life for that of the Primarch in whom he had entrusted the future of the IX Legion.
Iskandar Khayon - Iskandar Khayon: Iskandar Khayon (pronounced Sek-HANDUR KAIN), also known as the "Kingbreaker" and "Khayon the Black," is a Heretic Astartes Chaos Sorcerer, originally of the Thousand Sons Legion, and later became for a time the Lord Vigilator of the Black Legion.In the 41st Millennium Khayon is one of Abaddon the Despoiler's most trusted and valued lieutenants and a member of the Ezekarion, the elite brotherhood of the Black Legion.He was named the "Kingbreaker" by the Black Legion for he is the only sorcerer ever to have brought the Daemon Primarch Magnus the Red to his knees.As of the late 41st Millennium, Khayon remains a prisoner of the Imperial Inquisition, to which he surrendered willingly, as a part of Abbadon's plans for the 13th Black Crusade.
Iskandar Khayon - Early Life: Khayon was born on Prospero and recruited by the Thousand Sons Legion at an early age. It was already apparent as a child that Khayon was a gifted psyker. During his youth, his sister Itzara Khayon fell victim to a Psychneuein attack, suffering irrecoverable damage to her brain.Unable to save her himself, Iskandar gave her to the Mechanicum for their Anamnesis project, which endeavored to create a gestalt artificial intelligence by merging a Human mind and a machine vessel's Machine Spirit (artificial intelligence) to avoid the Mechanicum's proscriptions against creating a Silica Animus.All previous attempts had ended in failure, but Itzara's fusion with the machine proved a success, and she would later serve as the Machine Spirit of Khayon's warship Tlaloc and eventually become known as Ultio, the Machine Spirit of the Black Legion's flagship Vengeful Spirit.
Iskandar Khayon - Great Crusade and Horus Heresy: During the Great Crusade, Khayon served with the 548th Expeditionary Fleet. He was nearly killed in battle while bringing a world called Varayah to Imperial Compliance, when his Drop Pod was shot down.Khayon was also present at the Battle of Prospero, where he defeated a Space Wolves warrior, Eyarik Born-of-Fire, and acquired his Power Axe, Saern, that would serve him well in the centuries to come. Being gravely injured in his fight with Eyarik, Khayon once again survived a near-death experience when a Fenrisian Wolf came close to tearing him apart.He was saved, however, by his familiar Gyre, which possessed the wolf, obliterating it and assumed its shape permanently. Khayon was not taken by Magnus the Red to Sortiarius at the end of the battle, and wandered the surface of Prospero until he was found by Lheorvine Ukris of the World Eaters.Khayon later made his way to Sortiarius to rejoin his Legion and stood against Ahriman as he was trying to cast his eponymous Rubric of Ahriman. Khayon failed to interrupt the spell, and the Rubric was cast nonetheless.Khayon departed from Sortiarius on the Thousand Sons warship Tlaloc with his brother Ashur-Kai Qezremah and the newly-turned Rubricae Mekhari and Djedhor. Together they formed the core of what became the Ka'Sherhan warband.Khayon was present with the Thousand Sons who fought at the Siege of Terra, and bore grave resentment towards the Emperor's Children for their flight from the battle, thus leaving the Thousand Sons without reinforcements.
Iskandar Khayon - The Grey Knights: During the fourth year of the 1st Black Crusade, Khayon was drawn to the Dead World of Palis II by a Thousand Sons distress signal. The world and the surrounding Palis System had been destroyed in an ancient battle during the Horus Heresy, in which hundreds of Thousand Sons Legionaries had been killed. Leaving his Rubricae behind, Khayon took only his Daemon familiar Nagual with him to investigate the mystery.The planet was empty and desolate, in the midst of a nuclear winter that had come about as a result of the planet's final moments. In the depths of the dead city of Tysak the trap was sprung when five Grey Knights dropped the psychic barrier hiding them, revealing the distress beacon to be false. The Grey Knights named Iskandar Khayon Diabolous Traitoris and sentenced him to death.However the five were no match for the sorcerer of the Black Legion, and Khayon killed all but one. After psychically draining the information he needed from the dying Knight, Khayon left him to die alone, having recovered knowledge about a new threat that had emerged against the Black Legion. The surviving Grey Knight was Abel Sarthas, who would go on to plague Khayon "with fire and fury" as Grand Master of the Grey Knights' Third Brotherhood centuries later.
Iskandar Khayon - The Ghost War: During the 7th Black Crusade in 811.M37, the full might of the Blood Angels Chapter fell upon a vast Black Legion warband on the world of Mackan. Although the conflict ultimately ended in the near-extinction of the Blood Angels at the hands of Abaddon the Despoiler and his primary lieutenants -- the Sorcerer Lord Iskandar Khayon and the swordmaster Telemachon Lyras -- the Blood Angels Reclusiarch Thalastian Jorus became one of the few Imperial heroes to ever land a blow against the Warmaster of Chaos.With his Chapter devastated, the Chaplain endured solar weeks of hardship in the wilderness and the constant trials of keeping his crazed warriors undetected on Mackan. When the time was right, Jorus led his Death Company in a lightning raid behind enemy lines, butchering the unprepared sworn warriors of the Despoiler's honour guard, and allowing the Reclusiarch to lock blades with Abaddon himself. It is said the Warmaster still bears the scars of that battle, even over three millennia later.Whatever the truth of the matter, it is known that the Despoiler honoured Jorus once the war was over -- perhaps in mockery, or perhaps with nothing but sincerity. After Mackan, thousands of Blood Angels corpses were desecrated, their gene-seed ruined beyond recovery. Of all the Chapter, only a handful of bodies were left undefiled: Reclusiarch Jorus and his Death Company, clad in their battered and broken black ceramite, seated in makeshift thrones made from the armour of those Black Legion warriors they had killed on that fateful night.
Iskandar Khayon - The Crimson Path: In the 41st Millennium, Khayon surrendered himself to the Inquisition to tell them his tale. Blinded, shackled, and deprived of his sixth sense, he was invited to confess his sins. He was intended to be the Herald of the Crimson Path, Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade, and he was confident that nothing he told the Inquisitors could ultimately change the Imperium of Man's fate in the conflict to come.
Iskandar Khayon - Wargear: Khayon was a psyker powerful enough to survive the Rubric of Ahriman and was capable of tearing holes in realspace using a Force Weapon which could also be used to teleport himself or others through the Warp.He carried a deck of leatherbound tarot cards containing bound Daemons, including the Ragged Knight.Artificer ArmourSaern (Force Axe) - Between the Battles of Prospero and Harmony Khayon carried Saern (meaning "truth" in several Fenrisian dialects), a Power Axe decorated with a golden wolf's head and runes telling the saga of Eyarik Born-of-Fire whom he slew on Prospero. Khayon transformed Saern into a Force Weapon by threading the haft with black, psychically-attuned crystals from a world found within the Eye of Terror.Sacrementum (Force Sword) - After Saern was shattered by Worldbreaker, the great Power Mace used by Horus' clone, Chariz Terenoch forged the Force Sword Sacramentum for Khayon.Augmetic arm - Khayon lost his left arm below the elbow in battle with an unnamed Iron Warriors champion, who was loyal to Daravek of the Death Guard. Later, during his surrender, this arm was known to have mutated through exposure to Chaos energies.
Isstvan III - Isstvan III: Isstvan IIIIstvaan IIIImperialCivilised WorldIsstvan SystemSegmentum ObscurusIts population was destroyed by a virus-bombing ordered by the Warmaster Horus during a major deployment of Space Marine Legion forces at the end of the Great Crusade in 005.M31 at the Battle of Isstvan III. This action had been ordered by Horus against his own Astartes troops deployed to the surface of Isstvan III.The internecine battle that followed between the Sons of Horus, Emperor's Children, World Eaters and Death Guard Traitor Legions and their own Loyalist elements within the ruins of the planetary capital Khry Vanak (translated as the "Choral City" into Imperial Low Gothic) was the first overt sign of Horus' turn to Chaos, and the first battle of the Horus Heresy in the early 31st Millennium.
Isstvan III - The Second Death of Isstvan III: Thousands of Terran years after the Isstvan III Atrocity, Isstvan III had been reduced to a broken, Dead World. Yet a single one of the Loyalist Astartes who had been betrayed by Horus was still alive in a collapsed hangar deep beneath the Precentor's Palace -- Ancient Rylanor, a Venerable Dreadnought and the Ancient of Rites of the Emperor's Children Legion. Badly wounded in the final days of the battle against his Traitor brethren, Rylanor had taken refuge in the collapsed hangar because there he had discovered an unexploded Virus Bomb.Driven mad by the passing centuries, the Dreadnought used the remains of the Traitor Emperor's Children Sonic Weapons to craft an interstellar beacon designed to lure his former Primarch, Fulgrim, back to Isstvan III in an attempt to slay him. While the beacon also drew a group of curious Thousand Sons Heretic Astartes from the Planet of the Sorcerers, it did succeed in ultimately drawing Fulgrim back to the long-dead world.But Fulgrim was no longer just a Primarch, he was a serpentine Daemon Prince of Slaanesh, a walking embodiment of malice and pride. Rylanor detonated the bomb when the overconfident Daemon Primarch ripped the remains of his organic form from his cybernetic sarcophagus. One of the Thousand Sons Astartes, a member of the Raptora Cult, used a potent kine shield to contain the blast, but another of the Sorcerers, Vistario, utterly disgusted by what Fulgrim had become, killed his companion and allowed the psychic shield to drop.Once more, all life burned on Isstvan III. It took much less time for the Life Eater virus to burn out on Isstvan III's second death. Yet, not long after, a shadow emerged from the undercity, a serpentine outline of cinders, held together by a web of daemonic energy.Not even the viral toxins wrought by ancient science could unmake that which the darkest powers of the Warp had raised up. The Phoenician's form was already weaving itself anew, but his soul was broken. For no pain, no hurt and no injury could wound such a being as much as the denial of its magnificence. That simple truth was Ancient Rylanor's final victory.
Isstvan III - Alternate Spelling: The star system and planet's name is alternatively spelled Isstvan in many Imperial sources.
Isstvan III - Sources: Codex: Chaos Space Marines (3rd Edition, Revised Codex), pg. 5Horus Heresy: Collected VisionsRealm of Chaos: Slaves to DarknessThe Horus Heresy Book One: Betrayal (Forge World Series) by Alan Bligh, pp. 38-59Galaxy In Flames (Novel) by Ben CounterFlight of the Eisenstein (Novel) by James SwallowFallen Angels (Novel) by Mike LeeSons of the Emperor (Anthology), "The Ancient Awaits" by Graham McNeill, pp. 133-149
Isstvan III Atrocity - Isstvan III Atrocity: The Isstvan III Atrocity, alternately spelled Istvaan III Atrocity in some sources, also known as the Battle of Isstvan III to Imperial scholars, was the treacherous military campaign conducted by the Chaos-corrupted Warmaster Horus on the rebellious Civilised World of Isstvan III against the Loyalist Astartes among his own Sons of Horus Legion and his three Traitor Legion allies.The battle fought on Isstvan III served both to amass those forces loyal to the Warmaster without suspicion from the Imperial authorities, and also cull those elements within the ranks of the Traitor Legions who Horus suspected of remaining loyal to the Emperor of Mankind.The destruction of Isstvan III by virus-bombing and the subsequent internecine battle that followed between the Sons of Horus, Death Guard, Emperor's Children and World Eaters Traitor Legions and their own Loyalist elements was the first overt sign of Horus' rebellion against the Emperor and turn to Chaos, and the first true battle of the Horus Heresy in the early 31st Millennium.
Isstvan III Atrocity - Isstvan System Compliance: An ancient Terran proverb once said that all wars, no matter how bloody or great, begin with but a single shot fired. For the great cataclysm known as the Horus Heresy that was to engulf the Imperium of Man and bring death and calamity to unnumbered billions, that proverbial shot was fired on the world of Isstvan III when brother turned against brother. It had only been fifteen standard years earlier that Isstvan III and the worlds within the surrounding star system were brought into Imperial Compliance by the 27th Expeditionary Fleet led by the Primarch Corax and his Raven Guard Legion. The military forces of the indigenous Isstvanians were professional soldiers who did not break easily, even when confronted with the superhuman might of Space Marines. There was some resistance, but the last elements of the aggressive faction opposed to Imperial Compliance were destroyed by the Raven Guard at the Redarth Valley on Isstvan III. An Isstvanian delegation formally surrendered before the Primarch Corax and the 800 companies of Raven Guard Space Marines that comprised his XIXth Legion. They kneeled as a defeated foe, but were welcomed into the fold as men of the Imperium. Though they had waged war against one another, the Imperial Truth had prevailed and the Isstvanians had sworn to accept its teachings. By proving themselves men of wisdom and civilisation, they were deemed fitting partners for the many other worlds of the nascent Imperium. The Remembrancer Order had not yet been foisted upon the Space Marine Legions by the Council of Terra at this time, but a substantial civilian contingent was left behind to begin the reeducation of the Isstvanian population with the Imperial Truth. This task was given to Vardus Praal, formerly a Major of the XI Lastran Rifles Regiment of the Imperial Army and later a career politician of the Ultima Segmentum Court. Given Praal's record both as a soldier and civil administrator, he was deemed worthy of being left behind as the world's Imperial Planetary Governor to command Isstvan III in the name of the Emperor of Mankind, to ensure continued Compliance and manage the dismantling of the traditional religious structures that defined the planet's autochthonous society but were in direct contravention of the ancient Imperium's official atheism and secular rationalism.
Isstvan III Atrocity - Insurrection on Isstvan III: Over time, matters quickly worsened on Isstvan III, as Governor Praal ordered the Imperial garrison to tear down temples and breach the sealed vaults of ancient religious sites in order to break the subtle but deep hold superstitious fears had over the Isstvanians and bring them into the rational light of the Imperial Truth, but of the success of this campaign nothing could be ascertained as Warp Storms that continued to block Isstvan from the Imperium's core worlds worsened and all communications ceased. Six Terran years after the last official Astropathic communique from Isstvan III was received by the Council of Terra, a Death Guard patrol ship on the outer edge of its Legion's fleet, near Neo-geddon on the very edge of explored Imperial space, picked up a faint echo of an Astropathic transmission from Isstvan III. Though it was garbled and incomplete, its central message was, however, clear: the people of Isstvan III had risen in religious rebellion against the Imperium and the Imperial planetary government had collapsed. Vardus Praal had become a turncoat and perhaps turned mutant or psyker. Praal was actually leading the revolt, and the streets of Isstvan III's planetary capital, Khry Vanak (the "Choral City," in Imperial translation) were running red with the blood of non-believers.The message was estimated to be at least two standard years old, possibly six, but it could not be ignored. For Isstvan III and its tens of millions to have rebelled from Compliance was a mar upon the Great Crusade that could not be tolerated, lest such sedition and malcontent spread, but that an anointed Imperial Commander who had received his office by the writ of the Emperor Himself led the revolt was a crime that demanded the swiftest and most resolute punishment possible. It fell to Horus, the Imperial Warmaster, to bring Vardus Praal and all of Isstvan III to judgement, and he publicly vowed to make a fearful, bloody example to all the worlds of the Imperium of the price of sedition. But what few knew or suspected at the time was that the Isstvan III rebellion had provided Horus with the perfect opportunity to strike the first blow of his own rebellion against the Emperor: a blow that would fall upon his own gene-sons.
Isstvan III Atrocity - The Traitors Gather: Fulgrim was delayed in coming to the Isstvan System, but the sizable task force of Emperor's Children Space Marines led by Lord Commander Eidolon made the rendezvous, and formed up with the rest of the Imperial fleet as it closed on Isstvan III. Horus' war host therefore consisted of the majority of his own Legion, plus significant portions of the Death Guard and their Primarch Mortarion, the World Eaters and their Primarch Angron, and Eidolon's smaller Emperor's Children task force. Along with three Primarchs in attendance, itself a rare event during the Great Crusade, this constituted one of the largest concentrations of Imperial military force seen since the battle for the Pargor Hith System against the Orks of Charhack almost a decade previously, comprising well over 200,000 Space Marines, although exact figures cannot be corroborated, alongside Titan support from the Legio Mortis, Legio Audax and Legio Vulpa and a number of auxiliary units.Though accounts of what occurred next remain a matter of conjecture, it seems apparent that as Isstvan III was surrounded by the Imperial warfleet, Horus met with the two Primarchs and Lord Commander Eidolon on his flagship, the Battle Barge Vengeful Spirit. This was ostensibly done to formulate a strategy for the coming campaign, but it also seems to have been the case that the face-to-face meeting was for Horus to gauge his allies' loyalty and prepare for the coming storm. It appears that as Horus had anticipated, Angron, Mortarion and Eidolon, speaking for his absent master, had identified elements of their Legions whose loyalty to the Emperor was unshakeable or who could not otherwise be trusted to follow the Warmaster's line once the rebellion began. These loyal Space Marines would pose a great threat to Horus' conspiracy if they were not dealt with immediately, and it appears that it was only at this moment that Horus revealed to his co-conspirators his shocking plan to rid their Legions of these dissident factions.Those sections of the four assembled Legions whose loyalty to Horus could not be guaranteed (approximately one-third of each Legion) were commanded to prepare for an assault on the planet beneath and would form its core. The Warmaster's plan called for a primary strike conducted almost entirely by Drop Pod with limited gunship and teleporter support, with only the Death Guard forces landing with any significant armoured vehicle contingents in the first wave. So separated, and with no means of escape off the planet, those Loyalists who did not die in the taking of Isstvan III would discover to their horror that Horus planned to make it their graveyard at all costs.
Isstvan III Atrocity - Onslaught: For the assault on the sprawling proto-hive city of Khry Vanak, Isstvan III's political and cultural capital (called the "Choral City" in translation into Low Gothic), four primary target zones had been identified which housed the seat of government, and presumably where the Traitor Vardus Praal might be located. This would be the focus of the Emperor's Children's attack. It was in the plazas which adjoined the palace and formed the principal arterial intersection of the city's transport network that resistance was likely to manifest quickly, and this was the target of the World Eaters to first seize and then spread beyond. The western fortification wall with its Imperial-built bastions and the bunker network they protected were to be the target of the Death Guard's assault, with the goal of either eradicating or boxing in the rebel garrison forces they contained.The final, and perhaps most difficult, target was located in the east of the city; a vast and ancient complex of tomb-spires, shrines and temples known by the indigenous peoples as the Siren Hold. Given the assumed religious forces animating the rebellion and the psyker-witches known as the Warsingers also encountered on Isstvan Extremis, the Siren Hold too was afforded the status of primary target and the Sons of Horus were assigned to the attack with orders to destroy everything and everyone they found within. A score of secondary targets to be hit in the first wave were also identified, including the Choral City starport and several prominent infrastructural complexes that numerous smaller Imperial splinter forces were assigned to take or destroy.
Isstvan III Atrocity - Legion of Death: When it came, the first assault wave showered Isstvan III with an iron rain of Drop Pods, which smashed into the Choral City like hammer blows, while strategic Lance-strikes from the orbital fleet hit ground targets across the surface of Isstvan III, ensuring total air superiority for the Space Marine Legions. Resistance was heavy, far heavier than the initial invasion had seen that had brought the world in initial Imperial Compliance, but against such a force as the Space Marines now unleashed against this world, it proved ultimately futile. Against the walls and trenchworks of the western fortification line the Death Guard implacably hammered home their attack against troops that had once been loyal to Terra but were now half-insane, self-mutilated devotees of Slaanesh. They were armed with Imperial weapons taken from the garrison stores, their trench lines anchored with mortar nests and emplaced Autocannons set up with interlocking fields of fire with all the lethality of Officio Militaris expertise. Although reeling from their initial assault, the Traitors met the Astartes with Basilisks and Malcador heavy tanks which rumbled up from concealed emplacements beneath the ground. But Mortarion's Legion was indefatigable and came down right within the cordon of fire so that the Isstvanians' artillery was left firing blind and overshooting the drop zones.With shells bursting around them, the Death Guard moved in relentlessly, Terminators and heavy support squads toppling guntowers and punching their way into bunkers, while Tactical Squads stormed trench after trench, sweeping them of life with methodical volleys of bolter fire. Gunships roared in and dropped Vindicator and Land Raider tanks to assail the bastions and high-walled revetments of slab-like granite that shielded the city from the plains to the west. The close barrage from both sides of the wall soon took its toll. Before long, the great bastions were left in smoking ruins, their fate sealed as a maniple of Titans from the Legio Mortis made earth-shaking groundfall to the west of the city and unleashed the awesome destructive force of their turboblasters and gatling cannon against the wall, pulverising battlements and causing granite to run like molten wax.
Isstvan III Atrocity - Battle for the Precentor's Palace: The battle for the Precentor's Palace and its environs was a chaotic slaughter. The World Eaters attacked en masse, via Drop Pod assault, striking first as they smashed into the open plazas like a meteor storm, leaving the vast stonework colonnades and terraces a shattered wasteland. As thousands of World Eaters poured forth, they killed everything in their path, overwhelming the disordered garrison troops in a tide of howling violence, cutting down hundreds in mere minutes as they spread out like a swarm of devouring insects. As the din of carnage engulfed the city centre, a disordered roar born of countless screams, battle-cries, thunderous Bolter shots and the growl of uncounted chainblades hacking into flesh, fresh golden-fire streaks slammed down into the planet's surface in tight order, aimed like a hunter's bolt at the Precentor's Palace. Rebuilt by Imperial military architects to be both an imposing symbol of Imperial authority and a last redoubt in case of civil insurrection, the Precentor's Palace stood as a tried and tested piece of military architecture designed to resist, if not defy, orbital bombardment.The cordon of defence for the Precentor's Palace was built as proof against direct ground assault. It was a defence the Emperor's Children's attack plan fully intended to circumvent. With a precision landing vector few Legions could have matched, the Emperor's Children's wave of Astartes landed directly on their target, clustering around its sprawling scatter of entranceways and admission halls. With speed and ruthless force bred during the intensive training and pre-planning the III Legion was famed for, the Emperor's Children, already on top of the inner defences, fought their way into the Precentor's Palace from a score of entry points against fierce resistance, whilst Dreadnought siege-claws and Legionary Melta Guns hacked and burned new ways in from the level of the domed roof above.
Isstvan III Atrocity - Flight of the Eisenstein: As this maelstrom of confusion and destruction was unfolding, Battle-Captain Garro knew he must somehow make good his escape and bring word of Horus' perfidy to the Emperor. But Garro knew his lightly armed Frigate was no match against the powerful capital ships of Horus’ blockading fleet. At the time, the Eisenstein was close to the rear edge of the fleet pattern. The ship’s captain took the liberty of informing the fleet master’s office that they were suffering a malfunction in one of their tertiary fusion generators. It was standard naval procedure for a warship under those circumstances to drop back from the main fleet formation, to prevent other vessels being damaged in case of a cascade failure and core implosion. But the Loyalists knew that the ruse would not last for long. For they would be undone the moment they fired their main engines.Realising something was amiss, Death Guard First-Captain Calas Typhon, in command of the massive Death Guard Battleship Terminus Est, moved to intercept the small Frigate when he had received no word from his usually boisterous subordinate Commander Ignatius Grulgor, who had been slain by the Loyalists aboard the Eisenstein. Typhon gave chase as the Eisenstein attempted to evade the guns of his formidable vessel. The Frigate sustained severe damage from the Terminus Est's massive guns batteries as it sped past. The crippled warship limped away from Isstvan III. It was severely damaged, and all of its Astropaths had perished in the firefight and the Loyalists' lone Navigator was mortally wounded. The ship was incapable of interstellar communication and had little chance of successfully navigating its way across the Immaterium to Terra, but Garro ordered the vessel to make a blind Warp-jump in order to save the lives of everyone aboard. The Eisenstein managed to break free of the Traitor fleet and escape at maximum thrust, managing an emergency translation to Warpspace that allowed it to flee the Isstvan System, its fate uncertain for its pursuers. This single act of heroic defiance was to alter the course of all that was to follow, but it would not be the only reversal of fortune the Traitors were to suffer.
Isstvan III Atrocity - Survival: As the firestorm far below guttered out, as it had been designed to do, surveyor-sweeps and Auspex beams were eagerly focused downwards from the orbiting fleets with the expectation of registering the charred remains of a dead and lifeless world, but quickly shock turned to rage for Horus. On the planet's surface had been nearly 100,000 Loyalist Space Marines drawn from the Sons of Horus, Emperor's Children, Death Guard and World Eaters Legions and they had taken Isstvan's Choral City with less than a tenth of their number as casualties. Although the full extent of their failure was not yet apparent to the Traitors, perhaps fully two-thirds of the first wave of Astartes had miraculously survived the bombardment, thanks to the warning messages they received from their loyal comrades in orbit. The Loyalists had found shelter in hastily resealed bunker complexes they had only hours before taken from the Isstvanian defenders, or found protection in the stormed bastions of the Precentor's Palace or in the kilometres of catacombs which threaded out from under the Siren Hold. Warned just in the barest of time, they had trusted to luck, to training, to wargear and the physiology of the Emperor's great design, and they had endured.As the great rainstorms which came after the firestorm abated, communication channels crackled to life and frantic signals rippled across the surface of Isstvan III and stabbed skywards demanding answers, screaming defiance and spitting curses against those the betrayed had once called brother. Never in the history of the Space Marine Legions had there been such a terrible act of treachery and malice and the Space Marines on Isstvan III were incensed beyond reason, some driven to the point of madness by the reality that their own Primarchs had betrayed them.
Isstvan III Atrocity - Decima: Five or perhaps six kilometres north of the ruins of the Imperial starport, under the shroud of the storm in the far reaches of the city, something else stirred beneath the drifts of ash and rubble. Unseen and undetected amid the howling winds and coruscating flashes of lightning, a great brazen orb slowly grinded and rotated itself free of the blackened earth. The upper structure of the orb finally came apart hours after it had first started to emerge, opening like a huge inverted clockwork flower with bladed bronze petals. The orb was revealed at last for what it was although there was no onlooker left alive nearby to recognise it, a Siege Crucible of the Ordo Reductor. Launched into the firestorm coruscating across the surface of Isstvan III during the dying moments of the Loyalist Mechanicum Galleass Xerses 9-7-7, the crucible's design and function was very much like that of the more advanced patterns of Space Marine Drop Pod, although it was both considerably larger and more heavily armoured. It was this durability alone that had allowed it to survive its plunging fall and bury itself like a bullet in the earth of Isstvan III rather than shatter to fragments on impact. Regardless, mere flesh, even that of Space Marines, could not likely have survived the projectile's impact, but its occupants were not mere flesh. They were the Magos Reductor Calleb Decima and his bodyguard cohort of cyborg Thallax, and to them the destruction of the Traitors would not be a matter of burning hatred, but cold, ruthless logic.
Isstvan III Atrocity - Extermination: Bloodied but unbowed, the Loyalists prepared to meet their deaths. Against them the Traitors massed in vast numbers and once the last assaults began the death of the Loyalists was certain. With the balance of power in their favour, the Traitor forces prosecuted their attack with renewed vigour, moving through the ruined city in a thrust towards the Precentor's Palace, relying on overwhelming force to overcome any pockets of defence they encountered on their way. Before them they sent in pave-way strikes from Avenger strike fighter wings and Thunderhawk gunships, showering areas judged to be likely strongholds with high explosives and raking cannon fire to try to pin the Loyalists in cover and prevent them from scattering or withdrawing ahead of the attack.Thousands of the Warmaster's Space Marines, Death Guard, World Eaters and Sons of Horus, were on the move, streaming through from the landing grounds beyond the broken city walls in a vast crescent formation supported by hundreds of Rhinos, Land Raiders, and Predator tanks. Jetbike Sky Hunter squadrons and Land Speeders screamed through the air, circling the Traitors' flanks, searching for targets and wary of ambush. And looming over all came the Titans of the Legio Mortis and the Legio Audax, two full battle maniples of Warlord and Reaver Battle Titans with a dozen Warhounds in support. At their head was the Dies Irae, an Imperator-class Battle Titan looming head and shoulders above its brother war engines, striding high above the tallest ruin in the city, its footfalls shaking the ground, splitting the tortured cityscape like thawing ice underfoot. Against such firepower, nothing could stand, and no sooner was a likely point of resistance encountered then the Titans unleashed their wrath upon it, detonating whole city-blocks in clouds of dust and flame, and melting the metal hulks of industrial plants to glowing pools of slag. Such was the awesome power of the Titans' unleashed weapons as the column advanced, that the vibrant flashes of their weapons fire were visible even through the cloud layer from orbit above.