Deathmongers - Orphean War of Faith: Two millennia later, the Deathmongers found themselves within the Orpheus Sector of the Segmentum Tempestus. In the latter years of the 39th Millennium, much of this sector had been bled by worsening strife and warfare. The majority of the Orphean ruling classes was set against each other in bloody internecine conflict, and the sector itself was balanced on the edge of the abyss. The unhallowed forces of the daemon and Chaos Space Marines drawn from the Deathmongers and the Traitor Alpha Legion and Night Lords were conclusively identified among the rebels.A ramshackle fleet arrived in the sector capital world of Amarah bringing with it unexpected aid -- an Imperial Crusade force of Imperial zealots, militia, Imperial Guardsmen and pilgrims driven into martial fervour by the preaching of the ecstatic visions of the Arch-Confessor Marduk of Helvamon. Marduk declared a War of Faith for the souls of the Orpheus Sector, claiming the God-Emperor Himself had warned him of a great and terrible threat to all Mankind.Further reinforcements in the form of the Angels Revenant Space Marine Chapter in its entirety, as well as the Adeptus Sororitas Order of the Valorous Heart and the Order of the Black Sepulchre, and a taskforce from the Ordo Malleus of the Inquisition strengthened the Imperial cause. The Imperial forces were also able to count upon countless volunteers from the citizenry of those worlds as yet untrammelled by war, who have been stirred up by Marduk's religious oratory. Thus began the Orphean War of Faith, a bitter conflict that lasted for nearly twenty standard years and saw a full fifth of the Orpheus Sector's population slain by its end, and countless more ruined, maimed and displaced.By 921.M39, despite a successful Imperial victory in the Orphean War of Faith, nearly all the major Traitor-held worlds were either reconquered or laid waste save one, the Chaos stronghold of Colkasth. This Hive World had been fortified and corrupted into a living hell, its population used as raw materials by the Warpsmiths of the Deathmongers to fashion flesh-weapons and mutilated and insane cannon-fodder to defend their prize. Despite continuous pressure by the forces of the Arch-Confessor Marduk, the Imperials were unable to reconquer the recalcitrant world.It is known from the last signals received from the warzone that Marduk's forces were making headway, matching the fury of the Warp-tainted defenders of Colkasth with faith and fire, and had succeeded in forcing multiple landing zones on the planet's surface, when astropathic communications with the besieging Imperial fleet abruptly ceased and the alarm was raised.The Angels Revenant Strike Cruiser Intercessor was the first to respond to the raised alarm. It was attacked and severely damaged on its arrival at the system's edge by two small but extremely powerful voidcraft of unknown (presumed xenos) origin, now recognised as of Necron manufacture. The Space Marine vessel was damaged before destroying one attacker and driving the other off. Those on the near-crippled Intercessor witnessed a great star battle erupting across the inner system on their long-range Auguries, but are themselves unable to intervene.By the time they limped to Colkasth, the unknown xenos attacking force had departed, leaving a twisted field of burning hulks drifting in orbit around the world, its fortresses and cities shattered and seething with unearthly radioactive fire below. There were, however, scattered knots of survivors amid the wreckage and fallout.Those that bore the stigmata of Chaos and treachery the Angels Revenant put to the sword, while those few survivors who fought for the Emperor, wounded and often catatonic with shock, were carried away to salvation before a final ash-black nuclear winter claimed the world.Colksath was forever afterwards named Saint Marduk's Bane, as the martyred Arch-Confessor himself was soon beatified as an Imperial Saint by the Holy Synod of the Ecclesiarchy.