Operation Hammerfall - The Hammer Falls: Ten solar days before the Feast of the Emperor's Ascension in 777.M41, Lord Militant Achilus gave the final, irrevocable order, and the countdown to the crusade began. The first warriors through the Warp Gate were the Space Marine strike forces assigned to Operation Hammerfall, and these were led in person by Lorgath Maclir, who had planned every aspect of the assault in person, in minute detail.The crusade's objective was to push the T'au out of the region and reclaim the worlds of the Jericho Reach for the Imperium of Man. It was Achilus' most cherished dream that the T'au would be so undermined by the crusade that they would fall back towards their own region of space and, in time, be destroyed utterly.But for now, Achilus and Maclir held the T'au capital in the Reach, Tsua'Malor, firmly in their sights, and nothing, or so they thought, could possibly distract them from their goal.Operation Hammerfall ranged ahead of the bulk of the crusade, smashing aside all enemy forces that dared stand before it. As hoped, the T'au were initially unprepared for the attack, coming as it did from an entirely unanticipated quarter.The Space Marines fought as angels of death, conducting planet-strikes, boarding actions, and massive frontal assaults in the manner of the battles of the Great Crusade. Despite the potential for destruction, Maclir ordered that those worlds occupied by Human populations be spared unnecessary suffering and allowed to rise up against the T'au and join the crusaders.Shockingly, the Human populations failed to welcome the crusade, let alone join it. Instead, their leaders declared the Imperium the enemy, rejecting all communications and asserting their independence.As world after world rejected the crusade, the forces of Operation Hammerfall were forced to divert around planets they had no immediate resources to suppress. Initial planning had assumed that the worlds coreward of the Well of Night would be usable as staging points for later stages of the operation.With the worlds rejecting the Imperium, the Space Marine strike fleets were forced to operate far from their rear echelons, and their lines of communication were becoming more stretched with every world they were forced to bypass.Despite these setbacks, Operation Hammerfall achieved countless glorious victories, overwhelming the T'au in battle after battle. At Spite, twenty T'au battle cadres were utterly wiped out, while the Battle of Kaggeran sent an entire Air Caste picket fleet burning through the skies to crater several thousand square kilometres of the surface.At Wrath, the T'au attempted to mount a rearguard action while they evacuated several hundred thousand of their worker caste. The Battle Barges of the Storm Wardens, Black Templars, and the Dark Sons Chapters annihilated them from orbit before seven entire Assault Companies made planetfall to destroy what little resistance remained.Perhaps the greatest battle honour won in those opening months was that earned by Maclir himself, when he held the line at Epiphany Rock against a massive T'au counterattack. The xenos fielded heavy battlesuits, whose weapons were capable of punching straight through Adeptus Astartes Power Armour and which accounted for dozens of casualties before Maclir took the initiative.The Storm Wardens Chapter Master led a teleport assault of the massed Terminator squads of a dozen Chapters, materialising in amongst the enemy formation and tearing it apart before the heavy battlesuits could re-deploy.With Epiphany Rock smashed wide open, Maclir scented blood and drove Operation Hammerfall on still further, pushing the T'au back along the Hyades Ebb Warp route and down the length of the Arethusa Flux all the way to the Death World of Ravacene.