Shadow Crusade - Opening Moves: During the opening days of the Horus Heresy, Lorgar had ordered his two most trusted advisors, First Chaplain Erebus and the Dark Apostle Kor Phaeron, to unleash their wrath against the Realm of Ultramar.This was done in retaliation for the humilation the XVIIth Legion had been forced to endure when they were made to kneel in disgrace before the Emperor of Mankind and Roboute Guilliman and his Ultramarines on the world of Khur by the XIIIth Legion at the Emperor's orders during the Great Crusade some 43 standard years before the start of the Horus Heresy.The Word Bearers had obtained knowledge that the pride of Guilliman's fleet, the ancient battleships built in the shipyards of distant Mars, were laying quiescent at anchor and at their most vulnerable, and the need to maintain the fiction that the entire Word Bearers Legion was arriving in the Veridia System, dictated the inclusion of the greatest portion of the Word Bearers fleet strength at Calth.Yet in order to fully cripple Ultramar and the XIIIth Legion, it would not have been enough for the Word Bearers and their allies to destroy Calth and those Legionaries and other military assets gathered there.They would also need to strike at the other strongholds scattered throughout the Five Hundred Worlds, to shatter both the capability of the remaining warriors of the Ultramarines to rebuild as well as their will to fight. To this end the great Traitor armada was split apart, dividing into at least half a dozen fleets.Simultaneously with the Word Bearers' assault on Calth, Lorgar and the more reliable Word Bearers under his command launched a second offensive, a joint so-called "Shadow Crusade" with his brother Angron's World Eaters Legion into the rest of the Realm of Ultramar.This large Traitor armada, comprising the fewest ships of the line, but including the world-killing firepower of the Trisagion and the Blessed Lady, as well as both the Fidelitas Lex and the Conqueror and the Primarchs who commanded them, set course for the War World of Armatura to burn the beating heart from the perfect empire of Guilliman.The Word Bearers captain Zadkiel, finally arriving at Ultramar with the Furious Abyss, began a futile assault on Macragge, while Erebus and Kor Phaeron took the main force of the Word Bearers fleet to Calth at the head of nearly seventy capital ships and numerous squadrons of escort craft.This fleet was led by Erebus' Destiny's Hand and the squat Battle Barge of Kor Phaeron, still broadcasting her old identity as the Raptorous Rex instead of her newer designation, the Infidus Imperator.The attack on Calth was to be the opening volley in Lorgar's campaign, a symbolic bloodying of the knife and cruel retort to the shame Guilliman and his warriors had wrought years before on Monarchia.The Word Bearers proceeded to achieve a monumental victory over their hated foes at the Battle of Calth which ensued. The Ultramarines Legion was badly crippled after this campaign and no longer presented a viable threat to Horus' plan to drive on Terra.Erebus had managed to complete his blasphemous ritual on Calth's surface, which summoned the beginnings of the Ruinstorm to the galaxy's Eastern Fringe -- a monstrous Warp Storm larger and more destructive than anything space-faring humanity had witnessed since the days of the Age of Strife.The remainder of the armada, the few fleet strike craft amongst the Word Bearers and the vast array of knife-fast cutters, grappling barques and interdiction cruisers of the World Eaters fleet, were dispatched across Ultramar to bleed the Ultramarines fleet away, forcing them to respond to a series of small-scale raids and lightning-fast assaults.These latter squadrons were tasked with causing the most bloodshed and destruction possible, and made no attempt to capture or hold territory. They did not strike only at those strategic targets an opponent might have expected them to take.Instead, it was lightly defended agri-colonies and the industrial spires of worlds such as Espandor and Latona that would feel the Traitors' wrath in the bleak days to come.This would be a crusade whose first and foremost aim was to spread terror and blood across the Five Hundred Worlds, to wring every last iota of suffering from the people of Ultramar, all to fuel the sorcerous schemes set in place by Lorgar himself and, where before he had restrained his blood-maddened brother, Angron was now to be unleashed.The Shadow Crusade laid waste to the Five Hundred Worlds with reckless abandon in order to ensure the success of the Ruinstorm, which would ultimately split the void asunder, dividing the galaxy in two and rendering vast tracts of the Imperium impassable for potentially centuries, effectively cutting Ultramar off from the rest of the Imperium.This prodigious Warp Storm was intended to deny needed reinforcements to the Loyalists as Horus drove on Terra in an attempt to overthrow the Emperor of Mankind. Nothing from Terra would get in to the region and nothing would get out. Not even an astropathic whisper would be able to pierce this storm of Warp energy bleeding into realspace.