Ashen Claws - At Empire's End: Many Imperial scholars scoured the archives of Terra over the course of many standard years and several expeditions to the lowest vaults seeking answers to the riddle of the Nostramo Sector.Little more would be uncovered for some years as forces within the battered Imperium moved to secure their power and those who were seen as relics of a time now past were pushed aside.The next piece of the puzzle would emerge in 011.M31, coming from the distant halls of Ultramar, passed into the hands of a noted Imperial scholar by a loyal acolyte whose travels had led him down distant trails, including the battles fought by those fragments of the Ultramarines that were separated from their brethren by the advance of the Word Bearers, left isolated after the fall of Honourum.In the final days of 011.M31, under the command of Arceas Odenathus of the 10th Chapter, the Ultramarines moved to assault the world of Desperation, on the coreward edge of the Nostramo Sector, seeking to establish a zone of Loyalist control in the Dominion of Storms.While the result of the battle is of little consequence, the circumstances that brought its conclusion have much import on the answer to the question of what happened to the Ashen Claws.Though the initial assault on the Night Lords holdfast succeeded, the Loyalist ground assault forces soon fell prey to cunningly wrought ambushes and sabotage.The Loyalist fleet were also subjected to near-continuous raids by small squadrons of Night Lords spacecraft in orbit, targeting isolated voidcraft and lumbering transport barges.The Loyalists were hard-pressed to fully suppress these raids while bound to protect those troops they had landed on the surface, placing them in an invidious position of their own success in the initial stages of the assault.However, the intercession of a fleet of unmarked warships of Imperial pattern was to shift the balance in the Loyalists' favour. Emerging some distance from Desperation, this unknown fleet, comprised of six capital-class vessels, older Hoplon Pattern Assault Cruisers of Jovian design, moved to engage the Night Lords starships.Caught between the Loyalist vessels and the ebon-hulled craft, the Night Lords cruisers fell victim to a withering crossfire that left them in ruins.Now in control of the orbital space above Desperation, the Ultramarines attempted to make contact with the craft that had come to their aid. The battle-scarred starships had disabled their ident broadcast signals, and did not display any sign of Legion heraldry on their hulls, yet their actions would have the Loyalists suppose them enemies of the Traitor Warmaster.Their attempts to communicate, intending to secure their co-operation in the reduction of the Night Lords' positions on the surface in the Emperor's name, met with curt rebuff. The acting commander identified himself as Kirine, and soon the craft under his command approached the planet and began to launch their own landing craft.Once they landed upon Desperation's surface the landing craft disgorged a host of Legiones Astartes clad in worn battle-plate bearing a heraldry of black and red. Organised into small and fast-moving units, these Astartes engaged in brutal assaults against Night Lords in the area.With their surviving squads falling back to sound defensive positions, the former Raven Guard were able to occupy the armourium, bringing up their landing craft with the apparent intent of looting the store of arms and munitions kept within.Augmented by fresh Ultramarines from the 10th and 22nd Chapters, the cast-off Raven Guard Blackshields fought ferociously on the planet's surface, focusing their efforts upon the site of a vast armourium, fending off probing attacks from Night Lords Terror Squads.A stream of Raven Guard shuttle craft emptied the armourium under the watchful eye of squadrons of Fire Raptor gunships attempting to force the enemy out of geo-synchronous orbit of the armourium.A breakthrough in the defences thrown up around the armourium was forced by the Destroyers of the 22nd Chapter, their Leviathan Pattern Siege Dreadnoughts battering down the hastily erected barricades under heavy fire. With a hole punched into their fortifications, the Raven Guard were forced into a fighting retreat, evacuating as many of their units as possible as the noose was closed.The last of their units, a squad of Cataphractii Terminators, sealed the doors of the armourium behind them, having most likely teleported to the waiting cruiser above.In the wake of the Raven Guard's evacuation, Night Lords units began a hive-wide counterattack, surging forwards into the exhausted Ultramarines units across the city. In defence of their own troops, the Loyalists were forced to evacuate those forces on the ground, suffering heavy casualties in the process.By necessity this left them unable to oppose the retreat of the Raven Guard cruisers, which left orbit in possession of a sizable store of munitions, but having paid for them in the blood of their fallen brethren.