Xana Incursion - Vengeance of the Fallen: At the orbital transfer ports of the greatest of Xana II's forge-fanes: Tephra, Escorial and Setna, the Warmaster Horus' gifts stood waiting; several hundred cargo containers divided between them, sealed and inert, ranging in size from metre-square STC pattern handling modules of a kind found in their billions across the Imperium, to megaton-capacity armoured void transit carriers intended to survive the rigours of interstellar travel intact.They had been thoroughly scanned by auspexes on their arrival and no sign of life or active power sources had been found within. Furthermore, echo scans had revealed mass and resonance readings, indicating the presence of just what had been promised; the broken bodies of the Legiones Astartes and their machineries of war. With this being the case, true to the diplomatic bargain that had been struck, not a single container had yet been breached or opened.What was to happen next remains a matter of contention by those who have looked back on this incident, and must be reassembled only by fragments of ancillary data, scattered pict-and vox-capture data from seized enemy archives and hearsay well after the fact, the truth perhaps dying with so many other truths in the losses incurred during the Siege of Terra where so much else was also lost. But by all available evidence, the dead walked on Xana II.Almost as one the cargo containers were broken and blasted open from within, ceramite-clad fists smashing through to grasp the air as if called forth by some unheard summons. Darkly armoured figures came forth in grim and silent advance, bearing the livery of the fallen Loyalists, of the Raven Guard and Salamanders Legions, even of the Imperial Fists and White Scars, but most bore the scorched and rent livery of the Iron Hands, of clan companies slaughtered wholesale on the black sands of Isstvan V, and more sinisterly also of clan companies that had fallen long before, during the darkest days of the Great Crusade.Of this army of the dead, there was no leader to be discerned, no command signals or command vox transmissions were recorded, only an oscillating electro-spectral field of unknown origin which seemed to pulse relentlessly from tomb-containers from which they came. With them followed scores of Dreadnoughts from the larger cargo units, their shells as damaged and abused as the armour and bodies alongside which they walked, but they were no less functional for it, and behind them rumbled forth half-wrecked tanks and rapier weapons platforms, humming with power and the rattle of loading shells.Those nearby automata and tech-thralls that met this sudden onslaught were overwhelmed in moments and the silent army quickly fanned out, ramshackle and here and there stumbling on broken limbs and reeling as it went, but still with deadly speed and murderous purpose.Soon alarms sounded and the defenders of Xana II, their unceasing vigilance set skyward, turned to make swift counter-attack to the invaders in their midst and found themselves facing a foe of singular, suicidal ferocity.Adsecularis techguard clades and servo-thralls barracked near the starports were the first troops to respond, but quickly proved no match for the grim tide of death pouring from the cargo containers, their bodies broken by unwavering volleys of bolter fire or simply ripped apart in hand-to-hand combat too one-sided to deserve the name. Taghmata Castellax maniples and Tech-priest-commanded heavy weapons detachments soon reached the fray but found themselves dealing with Legiones Astartes who fought and died with cold, unyielding fury which seemed to transcend injury and death even more than the fame of the Legiones Astartes proclaimed.Dark-armoured bodies shorn of limbs or severed in half by mauler cannon still dragged themselves onward to the attack, while tanks which should have been rendered inoperable thrice over by damage hauled themselves on as burning wrecks, their weapons still firing even as their own munition stores began to cook and detonate.The Xanite battle-automata were set upon by crawling phosphex and enervated by rad missiles, weakened prey before the marauding talons of Dreadnoughts which tore them limb from limb or pounded them into ruin.The vengeful fallen pressed on, there was no attempt made to secure the port facilities or to consolidate a line of battle, the army's imperative was simply to destroy, to kill and keep on killing, until they themselves were slain. By the time the ruling magi of the Vodian Consistory, reeling from this fresh assault, realised the true danger of what was happening, it was too late. The breakout was underway and the invaders could not be contained.Slowly but inexorably, the invading Legiones Astartes spread through the upper reaches of the forge-fanes, massacre and mayhem their only strategic goal. Savants and soldiers, servo-thrall and battle-automata, Tech-priest and slave; all were left slaughtered.In their wake fires burned beyond control, crawling phosphex seeped through ventilation shafts and ate hungrily at anything it touched, power transition systems were blasted and sabotaged, fuel lines set to blaze and vox towers toppled. The surface levels of the great forge-fanes of Xana II began to burn.