Hemlet Subsector.
Circa: 5035905.M41
Circa 5254945.M41
The Galanden Core Chaos Occupation
The Fate of Blakkoz, Mah-Haret Subsector.
5916924.M41: The Augury Empyrean of Blakkoz central hive, Sulphrus, detects an unscheduled warp egress at the far outside of the system. Local ships are put on alert and the Strike Cruiser Glory of Tithan moves out to scan the area for intruders.
5939924.M41: The Strike Cruiser Armenthes, acting on the suggestion of the ship's navigator, scans a troubling patch of space 0.9 AU from Blakkoz Prime. To their surprise the scan turns up a Pestilaan class light cruiser, later determined to be the Gift of Putrescence . As both ships scramble to battlestations the Armenthes instructs Blakkoz Prime to make a general alert call. The battle between the two heavily armored ships is long, vicious, and in the end all but futile. Neither ship proves capable of dealing enough damage to the other to count as even a minor victory before the Pestilaan reaches the nearby gas giant Blakkoz III and disengages.
Concern about the what the Nurgle vessel was doing running silent, and drifting directly away from Blakkoz Prime in a straight line from the previously detected warp egress worries the local chapter enough for them to send an Astropathic call for aid to Founders.
5954924.M41: A black Styx class heavy cruiser, sporting Inquisitional livery and ident codes, arrives in Blakkoz through the systems #3 la-grange pirate point, and makes all speed to Blakkoz Prime. After terse and hurried communications it is determined that this is the ship of a noted, but unnamed Lord Inquisitor from the Spiral Court on the sector capital Nova Sea, returning from a trip up the Last Path with a high value cargo on board. Instead of asking for help, however, the Inquisitor offers it or, more in keeping with how it happened, just dumps it in their lap and leaves.
The intense aether scanning arrays aboard the Styx pinpoint eleven specific locations on three of the northern hives with worrying concentrations of warp contamination. Three companies of Inquisitorial Storm troopers, led by a team of Acolytes each, are landed without remit to permission and begin immediate and obtrusive investigation of those hives. With them they bring dozens of data files on the many worst case scenarios their Lord is concerned with. Among those, the Allanic Infection, Mudrone's Rot, and both the Widower and Fydae zombie plague strains.
5971924.M41: The Nurgle infestation in the northern Hives is identified as the Widower Strain Zombie Plague. This insidious infection, implanted in the dark heart of a poor unsuspecting man, infects every woman and child that man comes across while he remains unaffected. In the week the Inquisition had been investigating and tracking, the infection spread, causing sickness and general malaise in its intended victims, but not fully breaking out or killing anyone. Many millions of women and children become instead victims of unthinking fear as they are all quarantined within deep vaults and warehouses of the hives.
5989924.M41: The disease, as deadly as it is known to be, fizzles stillborn in the quarantined zones. A huge percentage of the women and children of the hives are no longer ill, as if by a miracle. Suspicious, the Acolytes urge the Hive nobility to maintain the quarantine, just to be safe.
5992924.M41: With a full day behind them and still no sign of the disease, the men and especially husbands of the quarantined women grow restless. Many work shifts are lost as men begin to crowd around the quarantine zones, arguing pointedly but peacefully that their loved ones should be released. The response from the local arbites, enforcers and storm troopers, unnerving silence. The local marines, unable to raise the rest of their chapter due to the residual psychic static, position a few elements widely across all the hives. It becomes apparent they may soon use their presence to still any unrest, though it is seen as unlikely that any such trouble will occur.
5999924.M41: Much of the male population of the hives now crowds around the quarantine zones. Three full days with no sign of symptoms, many more for some of the most resilient, yet no lifting of quarantine, not even for food supplies, or water, has left the men at their breaking point. It is unknown where the first unrest starts, yet when it does, it is sweeping and brutal. Local enforcers, many of whom are in the same straights as those they hold back, turn against the arbites and break the quarantine. Only in places high in the hives where the storm troopers reign does the blockade hold. Rage spills over into the streets. Law breaks after only a few weeks of holding loved ones apart. Opportunistic rioting and looting spreads as many go after their perceived oppressors in the hive spires. Women and men mix freely and children are covered by protective parents as they race for safety.
5001925:M41: The Inquisition strike cruiser Ordos Infinitas breaks from the warp from la-grange 3, broadcasting a warning from the Ordo Malleus. It is lost in the press by all but the marines who begin to storm from their fastness en-mass. Across the world, in all the hives, cases of sickness break out and suddenly women and children are coughing up blood. In the northern hives the rescued all but decompose in seconds before their loved ones eyes. The demonic infection had, instead of corrupting the body of the diseased immediately, turned in on the souls of the infected. Without soul or will to resist the bodies of all the infected burst, bloody, rotting, fly spouting, and fall to the ground, dead. A wail of horror, desperation and terror breaks across Blakkoz Prime like a wave. Now men, many of them with their souls scoured by the sights before them and the insidious weeks of chaos seeping into their midst, keel over dead on the spot. Losses in the first moments of the true outbreak are estimated at between four to nine billion.
5003925.M41: Billions of plague zombies ravage the unprepared and scattered defenders of the northern hives. Only the valiant efforts of the few PDF troopers who remained at their posts keep the most vital systems and defenses of the hives functional. Kill teams of marines storm through all the hives, stopping outbreaks of the zombie plague with deadly force, brooking no dissent from anyone. The numbers, however, are badly against them. PDF forces from Sulphrus, the least infected hive, cordon off areas of their own hive and begin the move to others as a travel ban takes full effect.
5012925.M41: Bombardment cannons from the Ordos Infinitas , supported by the marine strike cruiser Talon of Blakkoz, immolate hordes of zombies trying to cross the plains from the eastern hives. Heavy fighting rages across all the hives. Only heroic sacrifice and bloody determination keeps all the planets seven active hives still in the fight and not overrun by waves of the dead.
5013925.M41: Reports come in from the nearby New Setti system of chaos invasion. All available ships are called off for a massive naval engagement. The Talon remains on station as the Armenthes and the fourth strike cruiser Adamo's Gift are recalled to Bakkoz Prime. With the Glory of Tithan remaining on patrol the system defenses are horribly stretched.
5015925.M41: Preparing to translate out from realspace to the warp at la-grange 3, the Ordos is forced to peel away, and is almost batted aside as the la-grange point surges from the force of an inordinate number of warp engines breaking through. The strike cruiser is tossed like a leaf on the wind as the enormous form of the Foe- Reaper breaks from the warp, followed closely by the Steel Fang and Excessive, all Chaos vessels of cruiser class or better. Before the shocked eyes of the planetary defenders the warp breach expands, rippling outward and expanding into dangerous areas past the la-grange point as the Styx class chaos heavy cruiser Beast of Infamy emerges, surrounded by twelve Hellbringer planetary assault ships.
And yet the warp breach remains open, something else, even larger, lurks out there, in the warp. Hidden by the chaotic field around the warp rift the Ordos Infinitas goes silent as it slowly comes around, unseen, behind the chaos vessels and begins its hunt.
