Orphean War - The Valour of the Death Korps: In the days that followed the initial Necron assault, Amarah Prime was laid to waste and blasted into burning ruins. The Maynarkh Dynasty had concentrated their efforts on wreaking a blood toll amongst the civilian population, concentrating their assaults on the planet's hive cities and other settlements which were soon all under enemy control. The Necrons gave the fleeing civilians no quarter, nor did they take prisoners.This left the outer reaches of the hives -- where many of Amarah's defenders had been stationed in expectation of a traditional ground assault -- relatively intact. While the settlements themselves burned, Imperial resistance on Amarah was far from spent. In those stretches of Amarah's urban landscape spared either by accident or design from the orbital and aerial bombardments, ad hoc units of survivors established rallying points, with the most important formation commanded by Marshal Karis Venner of the Death Korps of Krieg.Given the Death Korps' reputation and the adverse effect the proximity of the bleak men of Krieg had on other Imperial units, especially on the local forces of Amarah's Planetary Defence Forces and the Orphean Guard, the Death Korps had been stationed far away from local barracks in an out-hive area of New Vassburg City called the Karalsa Industrial Plains. Having arrived late to the great muster of Imperial forces, the 17th and 60th Line Korps found their intended quarters, a hundred square kilometres of warehouses and manufactoria, wholly inadequate.The buildings were deemed not secure, and so the Kriegsmen set out to transform their dwellings according to their doctrines of siege-warfare. Where possible, buildings were reinforced, trenches dug and bunkers improvised, but most of all, the Death Korps Engineers made use of the underground network of utility tunnels that criss-crossed the area. They expanded the network where deemed practical to store ammunition, fuel, arms, tanks and men. Safely billeted underground, this foresight would allow the Death Korps to emerge almost unscathed from the initial Necron assault.Determined to drive the enemy invaders back, the Death Korps emerged in their thousands, establishing a security perimeter around their own defensive positions before dispersing into the ruins of the Karalsa Plains, conducting methodical sweeps of the area. Where they encountered the enemy, they fought, and where they encountered other Imperial units, they linked up with them whilst the experienced Death Korps Quartermasters would explore abandoned positions and strip them of arms, ammunition and fuel.Overall tactical command resided with the Death Korps' own commander, Marshal Karis Venner, who ordered the summary execution of several senior officers of the Orphean Guard that he considered to have failed in their duties to the Emperor when they retreated before the enemy. To the surviving officers he offered a simple choice: share their superior's fate or continue to fight and gain glorious martyrdom against the enemies of the Emperor.Nearly two hundred Guardsmen rallied to Venner's banner, including a dozen squadrons of Imperial fighters and attack aircraft reconstituted from survivors of decimated formations. Venner dispersed these aircraft into smaller groups, ordering his engineers to clear portions of the Hive World's great macro-crawler highways to use as airstrips.The fighting with the Necrons proved fierce, but the Death Korps were veterans of the most terrible battlefields of the galaxy and experts in fighting on such a broken landscape. Every ruin was turned into a strongpoint, every half-crumbled wall hid a lookout and the Death Korps were not beyond hiding snipers within the ruins. Yet the Necrons proved particularly resilient to the weapons of the Guardmen, their metallic Necrodermis almost impervious to laser fire and their strange war-constructs capable of shrugging off most conventional heavy weapons fire.But the Death Korps were more than willing to match the implacable Necrons with relentless determination, to even the odds no matter the cost in lives. Learning to fear the Necrons' firepower, the Death Korps soon shifted tactics, combining long range, indirect artillery fire with extreme close quarter assaults, overwhelming the Necron phalanxes through sheer numbers.It quickly became evident that the cost of this new method could not be borne indefinitely, even without the Necrons' ability to self-repair. Underground the war also continued, as the Death Korps Engineers, experts in tunnel-fighting, used seismic detectors to warn them of enemy assaults from Canoptek Scarabs. The Engineers kept them at bay with Flamer and Meltasquads standing at the ready around the clock.Marshal Venner knew that the gains he had made were at best transitory. With no reinforcements to be expected, cut-off from other Imperial units and with much of Amarah's surface controlled by the Necrons, it was only a matter of time before the 17th and 60th Line Korps were surrounded and eradicated. Before he would let this happen, Venner decided to strike out and pursue martyrdom in the destruction of the Emperor's enemies rather than let his forces be bled dry to no effect. All he needed was a target for his wrath.Despite the numbers of the Death Korps, they were not the most potent defenders still on the ground, as some elements of the Minotaurs Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes had become trapped on Amarah as well. Having engaged the enemy in what remained of the New Vassburg hive, the Minotaurs had been able to identify an enemy stronghold in the ruins of the former arcology. Where previously there had been only tons of ruins and wreckage, a strange and sinister pyramid now rose, its walls coming together at strange angles and apparently made from green-black stone that contained arks of emerald energy that would manifest like veins in a block of marble. The sinister pyramids rose high in the sky, drawing lightning bolt after lightning bolt to its apex, feeding on the energy of the elements, for as each bolt struck, the entire pyramid blazed with brilliant ghost fire.Around the main edifice, several lesser structures made of the same bleak stone appeared, their strange battlements studded with arcane weapon emplacements. These outlying buildings where connected to the main structure by angular trenches filled with a glowing fog. The enemy patrolled the pyramid complex heavily, and the Minotaurs had observed a multitude of corpses and pieces of wreckage being carried into the pyramid as if the dark mountain was swallowing the detritus of war like a living thing. It was against this target that Marshal Karis Venner decided to unleash the fury of the Death Korps.As the Death Korps' troops mustered in the cover of the ruins, forward observers reported that a portal of green energy had opened in Amarah's tormented skies, showing distant and unknown star constellations. It was from this portal that the energy struck the pyramid at regular intervals. Silently, the assault brigades formed up, kneeling in the dust and ashes to better avoid discovery, waiting for the silent signal to go over the top and attack the Necrons. The men of the Death Korps knew from the beginning that it would be a costly affair, for between their forward positions and the Necron defences lay a strip of nearly one kilometer that had been cleared of debris, turning it into a perfect killzone. Yet when the signal finally came, the Death Korps did not flinch and attacked as one.Almost immediately, Necron Sentry Pylons materialised on the battlements of the Necron citadel, training their strange guns at the Imperials. Howling beams of emerald energy blasted the Death Korps, obliterating great swathes of men from existence, while Tesla Cannons incinerated everything their lightning-like blasts touched. Hundreds of Guardsmen died within the first moments of the battle, reduced into their constituent atoms by Gauss Weaponry or left as cinders mingling with the dust of the ground.But these fatalities did not stop the Imperial advance, as undeterred, observers and Quartermasters noted the coordinates of the Necron gun-emplacements and transmitted them to their rear lines where the Imperial artillery waited to spring into action. Venner had ordered every gun and every shell to be mustered: there would be no reserves, nothing to fall back to. With diligence, the Death Korps had prepared their Basilisks, their Medusas, Colossi and Praetors. These powerful artillery pieces answered the Necron heavy weapons with a furious bombardment, hurling tonnes and tonnes of shells at the Necron fortifications.Almost instantly, the Necron pyramid and its sub-citadels were wreathed in a mantle of flame as hundreds of shells burst against the alien structure. Great chunks of green-black stone were torn free, and one of the outlying pylons was destroyed under the relentless bombardment. After the pylon's destruction, the pyramid flickered for a moment, as if vanishing from this reality, only to become solid once more. Faced with this tremendous firepower, the Necrons redirected their own weapon fire upwards, lashing out at the onrushing Imperial shells and missiles, causing them to explode while still airborne. The twin bombardements cancelled each other out, and the Death Korps used this respite to press their advantage, rushing the outer defences while their tank companies -- held in reserve until now -- joined the fray.When the forward elements were roughly a hundred meters from the nearest sub-citadel, the ground burst open under the feet of the Guardsmen, disgorging a swarm of murderous Canoptek constructs directly into the onrushing Death Korps. The big Tomb Stalkers rose on their articulated bodies, tearing through the forward platoons, while the smaller Canoptek Scarabs dragged men down, stripping the flesh from their bones. They were met with bayonet and Lasgun, Flamer and Frag Grenade. The Imperial Guardsmen did not falter, and like the incoming tide, the men of the Death Korps rushed past their foe in great waves. Behind the Canoptek constructs, Necron Warriors were mustering, streaming from the citadels, but soon became the target of the advancing Imperial tanks, throwing shells from their Battle Cannons into the ranks of the Necrons.On the left flank of the Imperial advance, a squadron of Macharius Omega super-heavy tanks unleashed the fury of their Plasma Blastguns, each of them firing away with the power of a miniature sun, heedless of the overheating cannons such was their determination to rid their comrades of the threat posed by the Necron Sentry Pylons. On the opposite flank, Centaurs sped forwards, their Quad Launchers in tow, trying to deploy them as close to the enemy as possible. Scores of them were destroyed by Gauss fire, but the remaining crews continued undeterred.Thousands of men were dying and many tanks erupted into fire but Marshal Venner's plan was working: with the destruction of the first Sentry Pylons, ever more shells were landing on the pyramid, whose smooth surface began to crack, lightning playing sickly across its splintering surface and smoke billowing out from its interiors. Far to the rear, the infantry companies left behind to defend the firing positions of the Kriegsmen's big guns were suddenly assailed by claw-handed foes emerging from the shadows.They soon faced a desperate battle for survival. Necron Attack Craft shrieked from the skies, conducting strafing runs on the Krieg artillery, but were intercepted by squadrons of Lightning-fighters and the heavier Avenger. Weapons blazing in the night sky, each human pilot commended his soul to the Emperor before diving bravely into the heart of the enemy Night Scythe formations.But now the die was cast and there would be no going back. Tens of thousands had already died, but true to his oath, Marshal Venner ordered the second wave to storm into the path of the first. To show his commitment to this task, the Marshal himself raised his sword and personally led the charge. Another tide of men in greatcoats surged forwards across the blasted battlefield, toppling and crushing the remaining Tomb Stalkers in a wave of flesh. Trampling the Scarabs beneath their boots, human soldiers swarmed over the Necron fortifications as if they were ants.By now the bombardment was slowing down as the Imperial guns were destroyed or their ammunition stocks were entirely spent, but the damage had been done and the Death Korps had successfully invested the pyramid complex. The Necron Warriors were surrounded and eliminated in murderous crossfires, pressing the skeletal figures back. This was bloody business, but for every man of Krieg the Necrons slew, a dozen took his place.Having reached the pyramid proper, the Death Korps carefully placed Demolition Charges on the structure, slamming Meltabombs into those cracks opened previously by the bombardment or those energy conduits unearthed by the fighting. The violent explosion that ravaged the black pyramid blinded onlookers from five kilometers away, carving an ash-white crater into the soil of Amarah, a crater visible even from space.Although the Death Korps were not the only Imperial defenders that succeeded in holding off and even repelling the invaders, these hard-fought victories were unable to deny the reality that the Necron invasion had been murderously effective: Amarah's three major hive-cities all lay in ruins, the sector's rulers, Governor-General Calibron Laan and Lord Inquisitor Hiram Ntshona, were presumably slain, Duneradt Starport was in enemy hands and Amarah's key defensive facilities had been reduced to rubble. For the Imperial forces, strategic victory could now only be gained by one last gambit--a decapitation strike.