Cyclops Cluster - Enemies at the Gates: As a frontier realm of the Imperium, the worlds of the Cyclops Cluster were used to a prolonged and heightened state of alert, as xenos raids and other calamities -- were fairly common. However, as the highest alert level was ordered throughout the Gothic Sector, few were deemed trustworthy enough to be privy to the true reasons why this heightened state of alert was ordered: the Warmaster Horus' rebellion against his father the Emperor. So it was that the worlds of the Cyclops Cluster and their billions of inhabitants turned ever inward in blissful ignorance of the dire events happening on Istvaan V. While security codes and targetting matrices had been changed swiftly as a matter of precaution, these measures would ultimately prove futile.War came to the Cyclops Cluster in 006.M31. This was no massed assault by one of the Traitor Legions -- not yet -- nor even its allies amongst the Imperial Army, but a series of raids led by the forerunners of Horus' host. These attacks mainly focused on Imperial worlds isolated from immediate and major support, or left vulnerable by the growing turmoil of the galactic civil war. It is generally believed that Horus intended this both as a fully-fledged military campaign to weaken the Imperium and establish a power base from which to advance, as well as spreading fear and terror to further destabilise the wider Coronid Deeps, an action which Traitor infiltrators had already actively begun.One of the most dreaded of these forerunners would soon prove to be the Ikon, an Eclipse-class Battlecruiser of the Sons of Horus Traitor Legion. The Ikon was responsible for the enforcement of the first Dark Compliance on the world of Gethsamaine Colonus. The Ikon penetrated the Gethsamaine System shortly after a Loyalist Emperor's Children frigate, the Malin Dawn, which was being investigated by Gethsamaine's two defence monitors. Emerging from the Warp alongside the 507th Attack Squadron of the Armada Imperialis, the Ikon quickly vanquished the monitors before destroying the planets astropathic relay and orbital defences, thus leaving the planet without major defences. As a thriving Civilised World, Gethsamaine was far from helpless and its sizeable Planetary Defence Forces and orbital batteries were soon ready to repel enemies, yet the Sons of Horus never did set foot on Gethsamaine, nor did they blast the world's cities to rubble from orbit. As soon as its work of destruction was completed, the Ikon made way for the system's jump point, but before she left, her captain left a message, a dark ultimatum which would be repeated across the Cyclops Cluster and in a hundred other star systems in the years to come.With the destruction of Gethsamaine's astropathic relay, all pursuit was hopeless, the Ikon having long since departed until such time that Imperial naval command at Lascal or Dominica Minor could be informed. Soon isolated voidships and even entire convoys travelling through the northern regions of the Cluster began to declared first overdue and then were considered lost, no doubt destroyed or waylaid by Traitor marauders such as the Ikon. It was when attempting to warn the worlds of these regions that it was discovered that several frontier outposts could not be raised. The tale of Gethsamaine's fate was soon amplified and retold amongst those merchantmen, void-travellers and even Armada Imperialis-ships set to hunt down the Ikon and her companions. The seed of fear had been sown.