Introduction It is the 51st Millennium, and the war continues. There was no great conflagration or

464 Pages·2015·2.97 MB·English

by  Felix Geiger

Introduction

It is the 51st Millennium, and the war continues.
There was no great conflagration or calamitous final battle. Across the vastness of the galaxy,
the Imperium died. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. The galactic empire of humanity
crumbled, its enemies too many, too great and too terrible to imagine. The great conflict of
Octavius had no victory, a war without end. In the fiery chasm of strife, the locust and the
green holocaust fused, as beast looked upon barbarian and both saw the other as kin. The new
entity spread with a speed undreamt of by ork or tyranid. War and hunger melded into a
singular desire to ravage, rape and remake all in the image of the new devourer.
The Devourer’s hybrid nightmares were regenerative, and spore-born, combining into a grand
horror, which murdered the galaxy, leaving naught but fragments as it left.
Metallic sentinels of unflinching dread rose up on some worlds, leaving them safe from the
new devourer waaagh, but instead made them slaves to the silver sentinels, and fodder for
their glowing metal gods.
The Eldar who had held on to life for so long, slowly winked out of existence one craftworld
at a time. Eventually, even the rumbling hearts of the avatars fell silent. For a time... In the
dead craftworlds, something slithers through the infinity circuit to this day. Unfortunately, the
great god of the dead, Ynnead, is trapped within this infinity circuit, howling its mournful
song into the darkness, eternally hungry in its desire to wreak vengeance on She Who Thirsts.
The Tau, naïve in their hope of unity, expanded into a realm of corpses and ash. Every world
they came across was dead. The hard and unpleasant task of terraforming each world turned
the Tau into bitter, self-righteous beings. They were disgusted at the actions of their
predecessors, and vowed not understand their fellow races, but to purge them. Only the Tau
could be trusted with worlds. They decided that all others must be cast out. Watching, their
patron laughed his sardonic laugh as his puppets twisted into terrors.
The Golden Throne finally failed. No-one knew for certain what happened to the Emperor.
For once the throne fell, no vox or astropathic transmissions ever came from Terra again as
warp storms engulfed the planet. The shattered remains of humanity had neither the power nor
the will to return. All that is known is that the astronomicon died with the death of Terra,
spluttering to nothing over the course of five hundred years. Eventually, the Imperium,
coherency lost by the splitting of its forces against the new devourer, and the sudden surge in
warp storms, was shattered like glass. Chaotic cults stampeded through humanity, like
electrical surges in an ancient power grid.
The Inquisition with the death of the Emperor, finally lost its façade of unity, and most died,
killed by the more powerful within its once hallowed ranks. The greatest Inquisitor Lords
seized whole systems, becoming feudal Kings and Regents. Uniting scattered mobs of their
deadly follows around them in order to wrestle power from Local Governors.
The church also shattered, becoming nothing more than a series of minor sectarian cults. All
save Ophelia. The Sororitas withdrew from as many worlds as they could, and gathered
around Ophelia and nearby systems. Ophelia became a vile charnel house for the eccliesiarch,
who had been driven insane by all he had seen. He gathered his canonesses, abbesses and
witchhunters together and put billions to the torch. Any system within range of short warp
jumps (as navigators could no long take long jumps, due to the warp storms) of Ophelia were
terrorized by the Imperial Church, who searched desperately for someone to blame for this
nightmare.

It was said that in those days, a hundred thousand Petty Imperiums were created from the
carved up corpse of the Imperium of Man. Each claimed legitimacy and claiming to be led by
a leader chosen by the Emperor as he finally died.
Some even claimed to be the Emperor reborn. Humanity, so scared in their huddled masses,
believed this heresy without question, too afraid to imagine a universe without their father and
protector.
The space marines fared little better most chapters utterly disintegrated as their forces fighting
individual missions across the galaxy, found they could not return to their Chapter Masters. In
the darkness, alone, many marines chose the only path they knew: War. They became rogues
and near bandits, pillaging Imperial world ‘for the war effort’ as they would say in
justification for their actions. It was said White Scar war bands and Raven Guard war bands
were the worst, as they were so swift and ruthless in their pillaging.
The Black Templars retained the most of their original fervor, and merely continued their
crusades. They became full worshippers of the God-Emperor and High Marshall Dorstros
declared a new and great crusade: to destroy every human that did not submit to them, and
purging everything and everyone else. Their fervor blinded them to their own heresies, as
more and leaderless marines desperate for orders tagged alongside the Black Templars’
crusade. Millions of rag tag former guard and massive mobs of flagellating Imperial Cultists
quickly joined the crusades' march across the stars. Soon, their depleted numbers (depleted
during the wars with the new devourer) had nearly reached two thousand, representing the
second largest single group of Imperial marines still in existence (second only to Grand
Sicarium). Yet, no matter how large their crusade got, the Templars were naught but a band of
raving fanatics
Ultramar was renamed Grand Sicarium, under their new ruler, Cato Sicarius. His realm
became a holy site for the other Ultramarine successors. Their fractured remnants gathering
around Ultramar like a swarm of flies. Sicarius declared himself High Spess Murheen king,
decreeing that those under his protection should worship him as the god he was. Sicarius
became the ruler of his own little empire, his angelic marines and ordinary humans under his
decree became his worshippers. Upon Macragge itself, the fortress of obsidian was crafted;
the heads of Agemman and Calgar were stuck upon great steel pikes. A grim demonstration of
Sicarius’ desire to rule all. Ultramar became a darker place in those centuries.
Those forgeworlds still intact either fell to chaotic or Dragon-cult invasions. Some were
ransacked by rival warbands desperate for tech priest slaves to help them work their stolen
technologies. These slaves became bartered like currency amongst the various larger ‘Petty
Imperiums’ as they became known now. Some forge worlds simply sealed themselves off
from reality entirely, their Fabricators for once preferring ignorance over knowledge of what
lay beyond.
Chaos became a raging torrent in these dark millennia, rising to Strife-Era levels of
corruption. Worlds were dragged into the warp as whole planets were over-run by psykers,
madmen, and monstrous space marines. The chaos Legions became virtually indistinguishable
from rabid bands of former loyalists. Some groups slaughtered in the name of dark gods,
others just slaughtered.

Abaddon seized massive swathes of space around the eye, being careful to avoid the new
devourer, as it blundered around him. Dodging like a skilled swimmer giving a swarm of
predatory fish a wide berth, he avoided them. Abaddon and his 78th Crusade, plunged into the
solar system. It is there that legend tells of the war of two spheres. Here, Abaddon faced the
army of the Dragon transcendent, a vast army of fallen Mechanicus and those same silver
sentinels that already plagued thousands of worlds.
The confrontation was epic in scale. Warped spawned magic, and daemonic machinery and
weaponry, battled weapons of unimaginable power, and the vast serried ranks of necrons and
pariah, which covered nearly every solid Solar world like a silver carpet. In the end, Abaddon
was forced to merely surround the ort cloud. The Dragon had ensured the solar system was
his.
His, save for a single orb of diamond hard stubbornness: Titan. It stood, a stony fortress, its
doors sealed from the necrons by admantium and heavy cannons, its soul sealed from
Abaddon by the cold steel cage of faith encaging the hearts of the Grey Knights and
Custodian Guard still trapped upon the world. All other humans on the world had perished a
thousand years previously, yet the ancient warriors stood firm, a shadow of the Imperium’s
previous glory.
In the turbulent energies of the warp, the Chaos gods also suffered. For upon the end of the
Emperor, something else stirred. Birthed upon the death of Him on Terra, the Starchild
suckled upon the raged religious lunacy of the dying Imperium, consuming every soul
remaining upon terra in its birth pangs. This is what killed the astronomicon. Ophelia became
a focus for this dark zeal. At the dawn of the 50th millennium, the Starchild became the Star
Father, and the warp became a battleground. For a brief instance (or perhaps an eternity in the
warp, none can tell for sure) the Star Father became dominant over the chaos foes. Then, with
the sickening inevitability of the great game of chaos, the Star Father became one amongst the
five, an order god amongst chaos gods.

Where they spread chaos, He spread oppression. Where their daemons were feral nightmares
that rended souls, His daemons were faceless automata, enslaving the souls of humans into
servitude. Star Father daemon worlds sprung up in the eye and across the galaxy in the closing
thousand years of this dark age. They were balls of featureless gold, with golden faceless
daemons and billions of mindless, empty humans. The inhabitants of these worlds shuffled
across the surface for no particular reason until they simply died of starvation, or fatigue
It is the 51st Millennium and I cannot wake up from this nightmare! I cannot wake up!

The Age of Dusk

It is the 61st Millennium. The galaxy has been moving at a blistering rate. Ancient prophecies
are being fulfilled; grand engines are grinding into gradual and unstoppable motion, finally
free. All across the galaxy, forces and factions mobilize. Some are old beyond
comprehension, and others are so young that the dread of second strife are but troubling,
primordial dreams.

Little can they know that those dreams are all horrifyingly true, and those things that have
been thirsting and fasting for so long finally see their chance to inflict themselves once more
upon a generation of beings only just recovering from the trauma of a galaxy gone mad. For
the old legends were wrong; the tumbling of mankind into the pit was not the herald of the
end times. It was merely the beginning of a wider game.

On the world named after a site of apocalypse, Armageddon, one of the lost sons had
returned. Vulkan, the father of Salamanders and one of the primarchs of long forgotten myths,
appeared to the broken people of that world, and began to forge the empire of man anew, as a
smith might re-forge a blade, founding a new Imperium founded upon his humble and earnest
ideals. His Imperium has re-ignited a zealous crusade of re-unification across the stars, yet
progress is slow. Robbed of the astronomicon, and determined to ensure every world he takes
is a secure bastion of his new world order, Vulkan’s millennial advance has yet to expand his
realm to encompass more than a scant fraction of the worlds the former Imperium held
dominion over. His most important contribution, however, is not the realm he creates, but his
own genetic legacy. A new astartes founding has begun. The space marines rise again! A new
breed of space marine, to sweep away the corrupt and putrid space marine ‘free companies’ as
they bring Vulkan’s word to the galaxy.

Other bastions of man, over the endless centuries, also began to consolidate, as the hundreds
of petty imperiums began to swallow each other in colossal cannibalistic wars. The tallarn and
ophelian imperiums merged after hundreds of years of bitter conflict, forming a vast human
realm, founded upon unthinking obedience and religious mania, and with a unique form of
warp travel developed through mass witch incinerations; their death screams propelling fleets
further than normal non-navigated flights. They worship ‘The Emperor of the Wasteland’, a
bastardized belief based upon the Emperor they had never known. The twisted realm of grand
sicarium, after war after war, has been tempered into a diamond hard series of systems, each
world an impregnable fortress, populated with insane humans with near psychotic siege
mentality ingrained on their souls. Led by despicable remnants of the once noble astartes
founded before the fall of the Imperium, this realm is one of evil and oppression. Astartes are
worshipped as gods, and they in their hubris believed their idolaters. Sicarius, the ancient
villain on the throne, has looked upon the Vulkan Imperium, and deemed it a ruse, and has
begun to plan against this. The black-fleshed daemon is no primarch. It cannot be...

Both the Eastern Chaos Imperium, under the megalomaniac Huron Blackheart, and the
Western Chaos Imperium under the eternal traitor Abaddon the Despoiler, have been steadily
growing. Their influence grows, and more and more worlds fall to the worship of the
transcendent warp powers. Yet, chaos is as chaos does, and these realms are constantly in
flux. The two powers detest each other, and have engaged in constant blistering wars. Not
only this, but each Imperium also suffers internal conflicts at all times, as the inherently
individualist warlords of chaos vie to ensure their own dominance. Abbadon’s rule is
constantly opposed by the squabbling daemon-primarchs.
However, while he spreads his influence outwards, they remain contained within their own
hellish dreamlands, fighting like the brothers they are. Yet, more worrying reports have begun
to reach Abaddon upon his dark capital of Cadia: the ancient wulfen are abroad once more,
led by the largest and most fearsome of their breed yet to emerge. Some claim it is Russ
himself, returned to the realm of flesh for some coming conflict, so vast it is too large for
mortals to perceive as it comes into being. Not only this, but Abaddon has the further concern
regarding the foe he bound within the Solar System. The devices created to contain the
unnatural potency of the Void Dragon have finally begun to crumble. Even now, previously
orphaned Tomb Worlds and world engines are shuddering to life once more, hollow eyes
gazing upon the world of flesh with distain and hatred immeasurable.

Just as the force of dissipation and entropy grows in power, its opposite paradox builds in
influence. The Star Father, the dread Lord of Obedience and blind faith, is now a great
galactic titan. Every mortal, no matter how corrupt or defiant, has a niggling urge, buried in
their primal brains, to kneel before the forces of order. The angyllic hosts and their angyll-
worlds spring up everywhere. Yet, it is claimed the Star Father is searching for someone. A
being, an avatar capable of channeling a significant portion of his power. That way, he may
manifest upon the world of flesh, and hence dominate both the material and immaterial
dimensions. A fate no sane being should desire.

In the Eastern galaxy, the greater part of the Ultima Segmentum is now tau-space. The tau
terraformed on an unthinkable scale throughout the Fifty-first millennium, and the fruits of
their labors showed. The council of Tau’Va now could call upon untold billions of Tau,
gue’vesa and other vassal races. Yet, their rule is not the idealist paradise they once promised.
It is a rule of enforced Unity under the Tau, who some say are seeking to eliminate all thought
that does not conform to proscribed philosophies of the greater Good, and destroy the dissent
of freedom. Nor is the Tau Empire a peaceful one. Unseen by the western powers of the
galaxy, the Tau are grappling with something immense and ungodly. Garrison-septs to their
western flanks are being drawn away to reinforce the eastern septs. The tau and the bloated
Thexian Trade Empire have even signed truces in order to provide a united front against their
newest foe. Worlds are dying, suns splutter and dim, as the endless and eternal Silver Hordes
finally mobilize for full scale war, for the first time in millions of years.

The c’tan have dropped the facade. They hide no more. The War in Heaven is renewed. The
Golden skinned Jackal has not only the immortal machinery of the necron at his disposal, but
also his other unspeakable allies. The ophiliam Kiasoz is moving, and systems simply end
when it passes. The splinter entities of the trans-dimensional non-place are no longer bound
by their exile, and their temporal holocaust effects have chronologically crippled entire
planetoids at the behest of the Star God Deceiver. The Lord of Death is abroad also, a black
shadow that kills simply because it IS killing itself.

Even the greenskin, long presumed extinct and consigned to legends and cautionary childhood
fables, return inevitably for the great conflict to come. The tiny spore-morsels, left on worlds
the galaxy over, slowly spread and developed over the millennia. Gradually, feral ork tribes
began to spring up on even civilized worlds. Officials, dismissing these feral beings as mere
savage beasts, simply began to cull these ork nests with military force. Thus, the feral orks
grow and spread, fuelled by war once more. For the first time in twenty thousand years, the
galaxy rang to the sound of Waaagh once more. However, not all the orks returning were
feral. Some were anything but. A new breed of ork emerged.
Fully-armored in heavy armor of high quality, with potent weapons and flawless discipline,
these elite bands of Orks emerge from strange portals or from well-maintained warships,
taking and holding worlds with horrifying efficiency, turning a world into a fortress within
days.
These Orks are like no ork ever encountered. It is claimed that they were exiled orks who
found their brainboys. Others claim they are in thrall to a powerful warp being. Others claim a
being may have figured out how to ‘pilot’ the Ork Gods themselves, wielding the entire
orkoid race as a single vast weapon. Either way, the orks are amassing for some purpose, as
yet unseen.

Not only this, but the Eldar also gather, returning from their shadows with new insights. Some
intensify their spiteful wars against the galaxy, while others take the long view. The dead
craftworld of Malantai stirs. Something is building within its nexus. Something vengeful...

Fate is weaving these rising empires into a great and deadly embrace. As each grows, the
inevitability of the coming conflict is growing and building. We cannot escape it, nor can we
oppose it. We can only try and survive it, and hope against hope, that when the end comes, it
will drag suffering and pain into its fires as well.

It is the 61st Millennium, and the Age of Dusk is upon us. Let us hope dawn will break on a
new universe. For hope is all we have, screaming against the storm.
Additional Background Information 1: Armageddon Rising

The rise of the Armageddon Imperium is one of the most important events of the ten thousand
years following the Second Age of Strife, and is a truly inspiring tale. However, the story
begins within the darkest period of the troubled world of Armageddon’s history. As it had
always been, the polluted hive world had been a site of sporadic warfare during the collapse
of the Imperium. On the eve of M51, the world’s population found itself speared between
three dreadful and relentless foes. The Kazan Imperium, a culture of men driven to madness
and narcotic indulgences, filled the system with their narc-barges and gunships, pounding and
assaulting the worlds of the system relentlessly, pillaging the supplies of the beleaguered
realm in order to create more drugs to ship back to their crazed populace. The second foe was
the Rand, an Imperium of rebellious abhumans and mutant freaks, who wished to annex the
hive world and steal the world’s military manufacturing capabilities for their own ends. Wild
beastmen hordes and serf-ogryns were common amongst the armies of the Rand, who
butchered and performed the most cruel of acts upon the cowering people. Not only did these
imperiums relentlessly assault the planets, a far worse force was drawn to the scent of battle,
and the opportunity for sadism:

A warband of the Emperor’s Children, which dragged a dozen enslaved chaos warbands in
their wake as they burst from the warp to partake in the debauchery and torment such a war
offered the chaos-twisted superhumans. The Steel Legion and the Hiver Militias tried their
best to hold off these forces, but there was never any real hope. Slowly, over almost three
years of horrendous, murderous fire-fights and blood-drenched desperate struggles in the dirt
and rubble of Armageddon’s countless smashed hive spires and ruined homes. Bodies were
piled high in the streets. The pavements and pathways ran a dull black-red, the taint of
congealing blood filling every nostril.

The Emperor’s Children bestrode the battlefields like malevolent gods. Their noise marines
deafened and liquidized fleeing remnants of humanity, while other deranged elements of the
twisted monsters stalked men through the streets like animals, before putting them down with
fitful giggles, pulling out eyes while men flailed uselessly against them. Many dark legends
began to form amongst the despairing populace, some fair, some ill.
Across every world of the Armageddon system, one name was spoken with quivering, fearful
whispers. The eternal one, Lucius. Lucius the Eternal was a nightmare by this period, a
towering giant covered in the screaming faces of those slain by the Eternal beast’s blades, or
subverted by his blessing. He travelled from world to world, challenging and murdering the
greatest heroes and leaders of the near-broken defenders. Over the twenty thousand years of
his vile existence, Lucius’ body had stretched beyond his natural physique, his body
expanding to accommodate the hundreds upon thousands of agonized faces bound within his
accursed battle plate. His lash whipped about him like a viper, slaying men and women with
every venomous, languid stroke of its barbed tendrils, while his glittering blade cut down
warriors by the score, his skill beyond anything a mere mortal could hope to match.

Yet, there were other stories propagating through the misery. A giant, with eyes like the fires
of hell, was fighting across the system too. Where ever the resolve of the defending humans
seemed weakest, this hooded titan of obsidian flesh would appear; the hermit of glorious
myth, now made flesh. Where he appeared, the tide of battle turned.
His strength and power was unthinkable and wondrous; tanks were ripped apart, entire
brigades of narc-mad berserker men from Kazan slain by his fists and his flamers, even the
howling warriors of the Emperor’s children felt the brutal exactions of the hermit who killed
them like presumptuous bastard children.

Eventually, the last of the Defenders were pushed back to the blazing ruins of Hades hive.
Backlit by endless purple flames, the last of the Steel Legion formed up into a defensive ring,
using their Chimera as barricades, while their basilisks and Russes unleashed a constant
barrage of ordnance into the onrushing hordes of madness and despair. Lord Delorr, the last of
Armageddon’s ruling leaders, bedecked himself in the ancient Imperial guard navy of his
ancestors, his power saber flourishing as he rallied his defenders with an impassioned speech
where he called upon his people to put up such a fight, that they would be remembered
forever in infamy amongst their enemies, as the last true Imperial outpost. His men cheered
bitter cheers, as they shouldered their las rifles one last time.

Delorr was dragged from his lines as the hordes overran the Chimera blockade, by the brutal
lash of Lucius the Eternal, who chuckled with a sadistic arrogance which did not cow Delorr,
but drove him into a rage. Lucius dropped the mortal man into the dust at his feet. Both sides
paused, as Lucius demanded all to witness the death of hope on Armageddon. Delorr, unafraid
despite his broken arm and the many cuts ripped into his side by the vicious lash of torment.
He spat blood, and slowly raised his saber into a guard position. His arm was shaking with
pain, and the defending men, women, and war-haunted children of Armageddon looked on
with internal groans of anguish. Lucius towered over three meters above the frail, wounded
old man who vainly raised his blade to challenge his foe.

Lucius smiled a hideous smile, his overly scarred features splitting like the glaze on an old
piece of pottery, his fangs and serpentine tongue flicking around his jaws. Delorr attacked
with all the skill he could muster, and Lucius lazily blocked and deflected every single blow
without even effort. Each time, he would gift Delorr with another shallow cut, and the leader
would stumble to his knees, before slowly rising once more. Finally, Lucius split Delorr from
head to foot with a single stroke of his blade.
“And so, mankind falls to the eternal blade of the Emperor’s Children, never to rise!” Lucius
the eternal was recorded as cackling across the battlefield, his daemonic voice carrying across
the entire field easily.

“There is only one Emperor’s child upon this world, and you are not him. I have fought from
the shadows for too long. I decree that this shall continue NO MORE.”

The voice which replied was effortlessly powerful, and filled with a humble yet firm authority
which evaporated the effect of Lucius’ vile tirade. It is said every warrior on the field that day
was briefly knocked into silence for a few moments, as the hermit himself emerged from
behind the ranks of the Rand, tossing the abhumans aside as he burst into the forefront of the
battle, striding forwards to point at Lucius directly.

Lucius turned and cursed the presumption of the pathetic beast who thought to challenge him,
drawing his sword once more. His venomous words caught in his throat, as he realized who
removed the hooded cloak from around his shoulders, revealing a giant armored in dragon-
sculptured emerald and glittering green plate.
The primarch, the demi-god of War, Vulkan. Though Lucius still rose to a greater height than
Vulkan, the Primarch was powerful and filled with a presence the Eternal one couldn’t hope
to match. Vulkan raised his burning spear in one fist, aimed at the Chaos marine. Lucius
grinned in response.

“At last,” was all the monster said, before charging to engage Vulkan.

The swirling melee lasted for almost twelve hours, daemonic energies and light spilling from
the conflict in great boiling waves. The arena of conflict which sprang up between the
defenders and attackers was turned molten by the fury of the conflict. Vulkan’s spear was like
a living being in his grasp, darting and spinning to engage Lucius with ever more complex
assaults. The Eternal one, for the first time in millennia, was struggling to defend himself and
counterattack, simply trying to defend himself. He however, was simply weeping with joy. At
last a true challenge.

Yet, for all Lucius’ hateful abilities, Vulkan was the greater. He hacked off the legs of the
chaos marine, before slicing through his arms from his torso contemptuously. Lucius merely
giggled, spewing black blood from his mouth in a great torrent. He jeered at Vulkan, even as
the primarch stood over him.

“Go on, slay me Salamander prince! Just like we slew your Legion on Istvaan! Finish your
victory, take your bloody vengeance! Feel the pride and joy of avenging your fallen brothers,
your fallen Imperium, your broken father! Kill me, and learn of your folly!” Lucius pleaded,
with malevolent eyes.

Vulkan slammed his boot down onto Lucius’ head.

Except, he didn’t. His boot paused inches from the killing blow. The arrogance drained from
Lucius’ face, as Vulkan smiled humorlessly, and turned back to face the hordes of enemies
who were ready to murder every defender of Armageddon without mercy. He raised his spear,
twirled it in his hand, and plunged it six feet into the ground, before raising his arms up from
his sides. He declared his name, what he was and what he represented. He declared how he
would rebuild the old Imperium, and drive despair kicking and screaming from his new realm.
His speech resounded across the landscape, as his passionate voice reached the men who
stood poised to destroy the last remnants of resistance.

The Emperor’s children however, cared not. They advanced once more, weapons raised... and
were then assaulted by the Rand Imperial forces, who threw themselves into combat with the
superhuman butchers with rekindled zeal at the words of the Emperor’s true child. The
Emperor’s children, believing both of their allies had turned, attacked them with spiteful
vengeance. The Kazan, Rand and Emperor’s Children thus turned upon each other, and this
conflict expanded out into space and unto every planet in the system. Enemies divided,
Vulkan led, at last, a counter offensive. He battled in person where he could. The few
surviving Steel Legion desperately followed him, and as he engaged the enemies across the
system, he gathered more and more supporters from the local populace. Those soldiers and
people who had hidden from the onslaught of the astartes now rose up, buoyed by the arrival
of their new champion.

After a decade of further conflict, Armageddon was reclaimed, and those who opposed
Vulkan were forced to withdraw.