House Draconis - Return of the Prodigal Child: House Draconis' victory against Warlord Grogg's Goffs earned them only a short respite.As soon as the field was theirs, the Sacristans of House Draconis came forth, retrieving those Imperial Knights which had been damaged or brought low in hope of restoring them for a later stage of the coming siege. Some would never walk again, but for most their precious Throne Mechanicum could be retrieved.Great was High King Danial's sorrow, for one of the members of his Exalted Court was amongst the fallen: his master of faith, Sire Percivane Dar Draconis. Sire Percivane's Knight had been one of the unlucky few caught in the Gargant's strange energy beam.Whilst the man still barely clung to life, horribly burned, his Knight would probably never march again. He was one of the heroes of the Donatos War, brought low by the unexpected technological mastery of the Orks.With the Draconspire hurrying to ready its defences for Killfist's inevitable assault and Mount Imperius already besieged, no adept remarked upon the lone Imperial cruiser that translated from the Warp into the Majestis System at this time.Its name was the Unbroken and instead of fleeing the Ork armada or trying to make for the safety offered by the squadrons of the Bastion Fleet, it headed straight for Adrastapol with the intent of breaking through the Ork blockade.Evading the fire of several Kill Kroozerz, the Unbroken skimmed Adrastapol's atmosphere, releasing a string of drop-vessels and a single Drop-keep onto the planet's surface.Within rested a single lance of Freeblades led by the famous Knight of Ashes, the last loyal scion of the disgraced House Chimaeros returning to his homeworld in its time of need.While the Unbroken had successfully delivered them to the surface, the drop had not gone entirely according to plan. Instead of landing well within the borders of House Draconis' lands, the Knight of Ashes and his companions had landed closer to the mountainous realm of House Pegasson, near to one of its many border forts which had already been overrun by the Orks.Disturbing the stragglers as they were picking for salvage, Luk Kar Chimaeros was delighted to find that the fort's communication array still worked and that the Draconspire was within transmission range.Although it took him more than an a solar hour of increasingly frustrating conversations with orderlies and officers of the Planetary Defence Forces, Chimaeros succeeded in getting a direct link with High King Danial. With no time to spare for a long reunion, Danial quickly brought his friend up to speed -- a gargantuan Ork horde of an estimated 70,000 greenskin warriors had begun to besiege the Draconspire and were attacking its walls even as they spoke.While so far the Orks had failed to gain a foothold among the outer defences, their numbers were continuously growing as lesser warbands flocked to Warlord Killfist's banner. The Draconspire's Void Shields still held and while their ammunition stockpiles would last several solar weeks, all of their efforts so far had barely thinned the horde.The high king revealed to his friend that their only hope of victory was to slay Killfist and fracture the horde's leadership. Yet so far the enemy warlord had not shown himself and it would take the combined might of Houses Pegasson and Minotos to break the siege of the Draconspire and take the fight to him.Even as Danial tasked his friend to travel to the territories of the other houses and bring them to the Draconspire's aid, the vox-transmission was abruptly cut short.