THE STORY SO FAR...
The Pyrriah campaign started in 2015 and has been ongoing for several years now, intermittantly. For those new to the world, below is a quick history of the events so far.
Prologue
Located in the Ultima Segmentum, Pyrriah has been an Imperial world since the 30th Millennium. But long before it felt a human footstep, Pyrriah was an Aeldar Exodite world called Pyrios. The Exodite civilization Pyrios flourished for many millennia before its inhabitants suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. When Humanity reached Pyrios, it found a beautiful, but uninhabited, planet, with nothing but ruins to evidence the presence of a more ancient civilization. The Aeldari have not tried to retake Pyrios, although they have never forgotten their claim to their former world and blame the Imperium for the disappearance of their Exodite kin.
Pyrriah has long been held by the Black Templars as a recruiting world. The central stronghold of the Templars on Pyrriah is Chapter Keep Promethia in the high mountains of the Central Zone. From it, the Black Templars maintained firm, but remote, oversight of the planet, while day-to-day control was left in the hands of the planetary governor and Astra Militarum forces. Just before the start of the Pyrriah campaign, the Chapter Keep fell silent and all contact with the Black Templars on Pyrriah was lost.
Although the reason for the loss of contact was not known to the Imperium, the disappearance of the Templars was linked to the secret Webway portal hidden deep in crypts of the Chapter Keep. This portal was breached by a Drukhari raiding party that captured many of the Black Templar neophytes and brought them captive into the Webway. The remaining Templars were slain or disappeared pursuing the raiding party into the Webway, where they continue to seek to rescue their captive brethren. Fearing the loss of their forces on Pyrriah, a nearby Black Templar fleet declared a crusade - The Promethium Crusade - to avenge their lost brothers and retake the Chapter Keep.
The Beginning
Although the history of Pyrriah goes back millennia, the campaign begins in M.41with a deceit. The commander of an Imperial supply vessel in transit from Cadia, Nathaniel Garvus, goes mad hearing voices and succumbs to Chaos, taking the vessel and its crew into the Warp to Pyrriah. On the way, the vessel is attacked by a Khornate war band, called The Wrath, that slaughters the crew. The leader of the war band, Lord Khartax, goes mad hearing the same voices and continues on to Pyrriah. But it is a trick: the voice echoing in the heads of Garvus and Khartax belongs not to Khorne, but to a daemon prince of Tzeentch. The daemon has its own purposes in mind: to use Khartax to weaken the defenders of Pyrriah so that the servants of Tzeentch – most particularly Ahriman and the Thousand Sons – can seize the Chapter Keep of the Black Templars on Pyrriah and gain access to the Webway Portal concealed within.
In orbit above Pyrriah, Khartax's vessel is attacked by the Third Company of the Dark Angels, which has been tracking it through the Warp. The Dark Angels send a boarding expedition to seize back the stolen vessel, but it was a trap. Once the boarding party was aboard, Lord Khartax sent the vessel plummeting into the atmosphere, crashing the vessel into the wastes of the Southern Zone, between Chapter Keep Promethia and Caesara. The forces of Chaos and the Dark Angels survive, however, and soon the battle spills from the crashed vessels on to the surface of Pyrriah.
A savage ork warband called Da Hellrazors followed Lord Khartax to Pyrriah. Da Hellrazors have spent a long time in and out of the Warp, jumping from planet to planet wherever the fighting takes them. From their time in the Warp they have come to follow along with many of the Chaos Warbands near Cadia and the Eye of Terror, since the followers of Chaos almost always can be counted on for finding, or starting, a good scrap to join. So when Lord Khartax departed for Pyrriah, Badrukk da Blakk - the leader of Da’ Hellrazors – fired up the engines of his Rokk to follow. After his arrival on Pyrriah, Badrukk has caught the attention of many other ork warbands in the Ultima Segmentum, who have flocked to Pyrriah to get a piece of the action.
Witnessing the arrival of the forces of Chaos and the Imperium, the Aeldari join the battle on Pyrriah to aid the humans when necessary to thwart the ambitions of the Chaos Lords, and to fight the humans if it appears that they will gain the upper hand and seek to reclaim the Chapter Keep and perhaps develop an interest in the hidden Webway Portal.
Knowing their number is too few against both the forces of Chaos and the Imperium, an Aeldari Farseer was forced to take a drastic action: re-directing a tendril of a Tyranid hive fleet to Pyrriah. By letting lose the consuming flame of the Great Devourer, the Farseer hoped to bleed white both Chaos and Imperium armies. But the Aeldar must be careful to contain the fire that they have unleashed – the Great Devourer cannot be allowed to consume Pyrriah itself, since it is a prize that the Aeldari wish to reclaim.
War Erupts
As soon Lord Khartax's vessel crashed into the steppes outside of Caesara, hell erupted on Pyrriah. The butchers of The Wrath burst forth from the wreckage and began the slaughter of the inhabitants of Pyrriah. As the blood flowed, the emotional outpouring of the butchery drew forth daemons from the Warp into the realspace of Pyrriah. In a matter of days, a major demonic incursion by the followers of Khorne had spread from Caesara towards Kantara in the northwest and towards Cilicia to the far south.
In their midst, the orks of da Hellrazors got stuck in, fighting with gleeful abandon in the carnage of Pyrriah. They found a worthy foe, as the Black Templars and Dark Angels fought ferociously against the invaders. The strength of their bulwark made it impossible for the forces of Chaos and the Orks to seize the mountain passes north of Caesara that lead to the Chapter Keep Promethia, despite an onslaught of gargants and chaos knights in a massed battle at a place known as The Vale of Tears.
To the North, forces of Tzeentch began to appear in the windswept icefields outside Naxos. Their target is the former mechanicum forge facility known as Neversun. There they seek an unknown objective while they wait for the forces of Khorne and the Imperium to exterminate each other on the plains of Caesara. But the Mechanicum and their Space Wolves attendants also seek to claim the secrets of Neversun, and the race is on to see which faction will achieve the depths of Neversun first.
To the East, the main Tyranid Hivefleet descended into the sea, east of the Hive City of Ascalon. Soon the sea began to boil with myriad Tyranid beasts that swam their way toward the populated landmasses. Other assaults landed in the steppes between Chapter Keep Promethia and Naxos, and the jungles of the equator. Soon the planetary defense forces were overwhelmed by the assailants from all sides. As the sun set on the third day after the arrival of the Hivefleet, the planetary defenses ceased to operate as a unified force. Mass withdrawals were ordered, and only the bravery of the Astra Militarum and Adeptus Astartes allowed forward positions to be evacuated without a complete loss of life, most heroically at a forward base called Guard Base Alpha.
As the waves of Tyranids swarmed over Pyrriah, long dormant Genestealer cults appeared to welcome the arriving gods. A particularly savage arising occurred in the Eastern Zone when mining workers - sent to help excavate ruins of the jungles for alien archeotech - rose up to massacre the other workers and planetary guard forces sent with them. This led to a brutal fight with a Mechanicus force sent to scour the area together with a Space Wolves detachment, and drew the intervention of the Aeldari, who sent a large cadre of Wraithknights to defend their claim to the site. Cult uprisings also began to appear in the factories outside of the Hive City of Cilicia in the Southern Zone and in other Hive Cities throughout Pyrriah.
Meanwhile, the Aeldari appeared wherever they believed that they could influence the fighting to weaken all opponents. An initial attempt at parlay with the Black Templars was violently rebuffed, so any alliance between humans and Aeldar is situational at best. As the fighting intensifies, the Aeldari have have needed to commit more and more of their limited resources to the fray.
The Second Wave
After the Fall of Cadia and the opening of the great Warp rift across the galaxy, Pyrriah found itself even more isolated. Worse yet, the eruption of the Warp rift caused the barrier between realspace the Warp to thin. As a result, a black hole-like rift appeared near Pyrriah through which forces of Chaos, particularly of Nurgle and Slaanesh, began to appear in greater numbers throughout Pyrriah.
In the Eastern Zone, in and around the Jungle Temple City of Ascalon, Grey Knights and the retinue of an Inquisitor sought to prevent the Slaaneshi Lord Comus from conducting a dark ritual to summon more daemons to Pyrriah, but with only limited success..
In the Western Zone, Magos Dominos Zhokav of the Mechanicus of Ryza defended a manufactory on the outskirts of the Hive City of Kantara from looting bands of Deathskull orks led by Badrukk's chief mek, Moog da Mek, before redeploying to Caesara Hive Prime to repel the assault of the ork warlord Kragsmasha, who redirected his war band north after defeats trying to assault the Hive City of Cilicia to the south. Receiving orders that Pyrriah was lost, the brave forces of the 2nd Concordian Independent Super-Heavy Tank Armoured Regiment, led by Lord Marshal Katerina Malinenko, held off apocalyptic waves of ork attackers from the space port of Caesara to allow an orderly retreat from the surface of the planet. Their redeployment destination is unknown, even to the Lord Marshal.
In the Southern Zone, Genestealer Cults rose from the chemical manufactorums surrounding the Hive City of Cilicia, which also became the focus of an assault by both Deathguard traitor forces and Waaagh! Kragsmasha. Soon orks, heretics, and cult fanatics tore apart the zones surrounding the Hive City, while forces of the Imperium held them at bay from the Hive City itself.
In the Central Zone, Drukhari raiders and The Shrouded Screams war band of the Night Lords, led by Arvex Enshaden, The Shrouded Lord, launched intense hit and run raids against each other and the forces of the Imperium, including Grey Knights and Death Watch forces sent to Pyrriah to counter the rising Chaos and Xenos threat. Chaos turned against itself, as the Night Lords fell upon and slaughtered a convoy of Chaos Knights and landraiders sent by Lord Khartax to seize the Chapter Keep. Deep within the cavern tunnels carved into the Central Zones mountain range, Lord Enshaden found a cache of skeletons, apparently of vermin-like creatures the size of small men, still wearing armor and bladed weapons of a much earlier age. What they are, or how they came to Pyrriah, remains a mystery.
In the Northern Zone, several companies of the Space Wolves descended into the frozen wastes between the Hive Cities of Bet Shean and Naxos, in pursuit of their ancestral foe, The Thousand Sons, led by the mysterious Sorcerer Iotop, who possessed a particular intent to explore the abandoned Neversun complex to the far north of Naxos.
A Spent World
The current campaign begins after the initial forces that contested Pyrriah have been largely burned out. Lord Khartax lies slain and The Wrath are but few in number now. Likewise, Badrukk and Da Hellrazors were defeated and slaughtered, leaving only the Deathskulls Big Mek, Moog, to lead what is left of the initial ork invaders. But since then, many more orks have arrived and multiplied on the fields of battle.
The Third Company of the Dark Angels has suffered catastrophic losses, but remains on Pyrriah chiefly to hold back the ravaging horde of Tyranids in order to buy time for reinforcements from the Sword of Vengeance primaris successor Dark Angels chapter to arrive and lend aid. Space Wolves have suffered great losses as well, but like their Dark Angel brethren, they refuse to yield and hold on until reinforcements arrive. The Promethium Crusade, once almost blunted, appears to gain new strength as Primaris reinforcements appear to be close at hand to re-energize the campaign to retake Chapter Keep Promethia. Similarly the Grey Knights remain steadfast against Chaos, although their numbers have been greatly diminished.
Much of the surface of Pyrriah has been consumed by the Tyranids or has been befouled by Chaos, although of the two, the Tyranids are greater in number and hold the upper hand. Many have reached the conclusion that Pyrriah is a lost cause, and that nothing can stop it from being devoured by the endless Tyranid swarm.
The Aeldari fight, although they are few in number and have little hope of recovering Pyrriah unless aid from other Craftworlds arrives. The Drukhari appear in greater number and force, although what aims they have on Pyrriah are unknown.
Meanwhile, the Mechanicum has shown an ever increasing interest in Pyrriah, particularly its manufactorums - both in use and abandoned - throughout the planet, as well as older archeological sites hidden within the wastelands and jungles of the Eastern and Southern Zones. And, of course, Neversun remains a prize to be seized in the far north.
And still, more forces are drawn to Pyrriah, the nature and goals of which are yet to be seen....
Prologue
Located in the Ultima Segmentum, Pyrriah has been an Imperial world since the 30th Millennium. But long before it felt a human footstep, Pyrriah was an Aeldar Exodite world called Pyrios. The Exodite civilization Pyrios flourished for many millennia before its inhabitants suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. When Humanity reached Pyrios, it found a beautiful, but uninhabited, planet, with nothing but ruins to evidence the presence of a more ancient civilization. The Aeldari have not tried to retake Pyrios, although they have never forgotten their claim to their former world and blame the Imperium for the disappearance of their Exodite kin.
Pyrriah has long been held by the Black Templars as a recruiting world. The central stronghold of the Templars on Pyrriah is Chapter Keep Promethia in the high mountains of the Central Zone. From it, the Black Templars maintained firm, but remote, oversight of the planet, while day-to-day control was left in the hands of the planetary governor and Astra Militarum forces. Just before the start of the Pyrriah campaign, the Chapter Keep fell silent and all contact with the Black Templars on Pyrriah was lost.
Although the reason for the loss of contact was not known to the Imperium, the disappearance of the Templars was linked to the secret Webway portal hidden deep in crypts of the Chapter Keep. This portal was breached by a Drukhari raiding party that captured many of the Black Templar neophytes and brought them captive into the Webway. The remaining Templars were slain or disappeared pursuing the raiding party into the Webway, where they continue to seek to rescue their captive brethren. Fearing the loss of their forces on Pyrriah, a nearby Black Templar fleet declared a crusade - The Promethium Crusade - to avenge their lost brothers and retake the Chapter Keep.
The Beginning
Although the history of Pyrriah goes back millennia, the campaign begins in M.41with a deceit. The commander of an Imperial supply vessel in transit from Cadia, Nathaniel Garvus, goes mad hearing voices and succumbs to Chaos, taking the vessel and its crew into the Warp to Pyrriah. On the way, the vessel is attacked by a Khornate war band, called The Wrath, that slaughters the crew. The leader of the war band, Lord Khartax, goes mad hearing the same voices and continues on to Pyrriah. But it is a trick: the voice echoing in the heads of Garvus and Khartax belongs not to Khorne, but to a daemon prince of Tzeentch. The daemon has its own purposes in mind: to use Khartax to weaken the defenders of Pyrriah so that the servants of Tzeentch – most particularly Ahriman and the Thousand Sons – can seize the Chapter Keep of the Black Templars on Pyrriah and gain access to the Webway Portal concealed within.
In orbit above Pyrriah, Khartax's vessel is attacked by the Third Company of the Dark Angels, which has been tracking it through the Warp. The Dark Angels send a boarding expedition to seize back the stolen vessel, but it was a trap. Once the boarding party was aboard, Lord Khartax sent the vessel plummeting into the atmosphere, crashing the vessel into the wastes of the Southern Zone, between Chapter Keep Promethia and Caesara. The forces of Chaos and the Dark Angels survive, however, and soon the battle spills from the crashed vessels on to the surface of Pyrriah.
A savage ork warband called Da Hellrazors followed Lord Khartax to Pyrriah. Da Hellrazors have spent a long time in and out of the Warp, jumping from planet to planet wherever the fighting takes them. From their time in the Warp they have come to follow along with many of the Chaos Warbands near Cadia and the Eye of Terror, since the followers of Chaos almost always can be counted on for finding, or starting, a good scrap to join. So when Lord Khartax departed for Pyrriah, Badrukk da Blakk - the leader of Da’ Hellrazors – fired up the engines of his Rokk to follow. After his arrival on Pyrriah, Badrukk has caught the attention of many other ork warbands in the Ultima Segmentum, who have flocked to Pyrriah to get a piece of the action.
Witnessing the arrival of the forces of Chaos and the Imperium, the Aeldari join the battle on Pyrriah to aid the humans when necessary to thwart the ambitions of the Chaos Lords, and to fight the humans if it appears that they will gain the upper hand and seek to reclaim the Chapter Keep and perhaps develop an interest in the hidden Webway Portal.
Knowing their number is too few against both the forces of Chaos and the Imperium, an Aeldari Farseer was forced to take a drastic action: re-directing a tendril of a Tyranid hive fleet to Pyrriah. By letting lose the consuming flame of the Great Devourer, the Farseer hoped to bleed white both Chaos and Imperium armies. But the Aeldar must be careful to contain the fire that they have unleashed – the Great Devourer cannot be allowed to consume Pyrriah itself, since it is a prize that the Aeldari wish to reclaim.
War Erupts
As soon Lord Khartax's vessel crashed into the steppes outside of Caesara, hell erupted on Pyrriah. The butchers of The Wrath burst forth from the wreckage and began the slaughter of the inhabitants of Pyrriah. As the blood flowed, the emotional outpouring of the butchery drew forth daemons from the Warp into the realspace of Pyrriah. In a matter of days, a major demonic incursion by the followers of Khorne had spread from Caesara towards Kantara in the northwest and towards Cilicia to the far south.
In their midst, the orks of da Hellrazors got stuck in, fighting with gleeful abandon in the carnage of Pyrriah. They found a worthy foe, as the Black Templars and Dark Angels fought ferociously against the invaders. The strength of their bulwark made it impossible for the forces of Chaos and the Orks to seize the mountain passes north of Caesara that lead to the Chapter Keep Promethia, despite an onslaught of gargants and chaos knights in a massed battle at a place known as The Vale of Tears.
To the North, forces of Tzeentch began to appear in the windswept icefields outside Naxos. Their target is the former mechanicum forge facility known as Neversun. There they seek an unknown objective while they wait for the forces of Khorne and the Imperium to exterminate each other on the plains of Caesara. But the Mechanicum and their Space Wolves attendants also seek to claim the secrets of Neversun, and the race is on to see which faction will achieve the depths of Neversun first.
To the East, the main Tyranid Hivefleet descended into the sea, east of the Hive City of Ascalon. Soon the sea began to boil with myriad Tyranid beasts that swam their way toward the populated landmasses. Other assaults landed in the steppes between Chapter Keep Promethia and Naxos, and the jungles of the equator. Soon the planetary defense forces were overwhelmed by the assailants from all sides. As the sun set on the third day after the arrival of the Hivefleet, the planetary defenses ceased to operate as a unified force. Mass withdrawals were ordered, and only the bravery of the Astra Militarum and Adeptus Astartes allowed forward positions to be evacuated without a complete loss of life, most heroically at a forward base called Guard Base Alpha.
As the waves of Tyranids swarmed over Pyrriah, long dormant Genestealer cults appeared to welcome the arriving gods. A particularly savage arising occurred in the Eastern Zone when mining workers - sent to help excavate ruins of the jungles for alien archeotech - rose up to massacre the other workers and planetary guard forces sent with them. This led to a brutal fight with a Mechanicus force sent to scour the area together with a Space Wolves detachment, and drew the intervention of the Aeldari, who sent a large cadre of Wraithknights to defend their claim to the site. Cult uprisings also began to appear in the factories outside of the Hive City of Cilicia in the Southern Zone and in other Hive Cities throughout Pyrriah.
Meanwhile, the Aeldari appeared wherever they believed that they could influence the fighting to weaken all opponents. An initial attempt at parlay with the Black Templars was violently rebuffed, so any alliance between humans and Aeldar is situational at best. As the fighting intensifies, the Aeldari have have needed to commit more and more of their limited resources to the fray.
The Second Wave
After the Fall of Cadia and the opening of the great Warp rift across the galaxy, Pyrriah found itself even more isolated. Worse yet, the eruption of the Warp rift caused the barrier between realspace the Warp to thin. As a result, a black hole-like rift appeared near Pyrriah through which forces of Chaos, particularly of Nurgle and Slaanesh, began to appear in greater numbers throughout Pyrriah.
In the Eastern Zone, in and around the Jungle Temple City of Ascalon, Grey Knights and the retinue of an Inquisitor sought to prevent the Slaaneshi Lord Comus from conducting a dark ritual to summon more daemons to Pyrriah, but with only limited success..
In the Western Zone, Magos Dominos Zhokav of the Mechanicus of Ryza defended a manufactory on the outskirts of the Hive City of Kantara from looting bands of Deathskull orks led by Badrukk's chief mek, Moog da Mek, before redeploying to Caesara Hive Prime to repel the assault of the ork warlord Kragsmasha, who redirected his war band north after defeats trying to assault the Hive City of Cilicia to the south. Receiving orders that Pyrriah was lost, the brave forces of the 2nd Concordian Independent Super-Heavy Tank Armoured Regiment, led by Lord Marshal Katerina Malinenko, held off apocalyptic waves of ork attackers from the space port of Caesara to allow an orderly retreat from the surface of the planet. Their redeployment destination is unknown, even to the Lord Marshal.
In the Southern Zone, Genestealer Cults rose from the chemical manufactorums surrounding the Hive City of Cilicia, which also became the focus of an assault by both Deathguard traitor forces and Waaagh! Kragsmasha. Soon orks, heretics, and cult fanatics tore apart the zones surrounding the Hive City, while forces of the Imperium held them at bay from the Hive City itself.
In the Central Zone, Drukhari raiders and The Shrouded Screams war band of the Night Lords, led by Arvex Enshaden, The Shrouded Lord, launched intense hit and run raids against each other and the forces of the Imperium, including Grey Knights and Death Watch forces sent to Pyrriah to counter the rising Chaos and Xenos threat. Chaos turned against itself, as the Night Lords fell upon and slaughtered a convoy of Chaos Knights and landraiders sent by Lord Khartax to seize the Chapter Keep. Deep within the cavern tunnels carved into the Central Zones mountain range, Lord Enshaden found a cache of skeletons, apparently of vermin-like creatures the size of small men, still wearing armor and bladed weapons of a much earlier age. What they are, or how they came to Pyrriah, remains a mystery.
In the Northern Zone, several companies of the Space Wolves descended into the frozen wastes between the Hive Cities of Bet Shean and Naxos, in pursuit of their ancestral foe, The Thousand Sons, led by the mysterious Sorcerer Iotop, who possessed a particular intent to explore the abandoned Neversun complex to the far north of Naxos.
A Spent World
The current campaign begins after the initial forces that contested Pyrriah have been largely burned out. Lord Khartax lies slain and The Wrath are but few in number now. Likewise, Badrukk and Da Hellrazors were defeated and slaughtered, leaving only the Deathskulls Big Mek, Moog, to lead what is left of the initial ork invaders. But since then, many more orks have arrived and multiplied on the fields of battle.
The Third Company of the Dark Angels has suffered catastrophic losses, but remains on Pyrriah chiefly to hold back the ravaging horde of Tyranids in order to buy time for reinforcements from the Sword of Vengeance primaris successor Dark Angels chapter to arrive and lend aid. Space Wolves have suffered great losses as well, but like their Dark Angel brethren, they refuse to yield and hold on until reinforcements arrive. The Promethium Crusade, once almost blunted, appears to gain new strength as Primaris reinforcements appear to be close at hand to re-energize the campaign to retake Chapter Keep Promethia. Similarly the Grey Knights remain steadfast against Chaos, although their numbers have been greatly diminished.
Much of the surface of Pyrriah has been consumed by the Tyranids or has been befouled by Chaos, although of the two, the Tyranids are greater in number and hold the upper hand. Many have reached the conclusion that Pyrriah is a lost cause, and that nothing can stop it from being devoured by the endless Tyranid swarm.
The Aeldari fight, although they are few in number and have little hope of recovering Pyrriah unless aid from other Craftworlds arrives. The Drukhari appear in greater number and force, although what aims they have on Pyrriah are unknown.
Meanwhile, the Mechanicum has shown an ever increasing interest in Pyrriah, particularly its manufactorums - both in use and abandoned - throughout the planet, as well as older archeological sites hidden within the wastelands and jungles of the Eastern and Southern Zones. And, of course, Neversun remains a prize to be seized in the far north.
And still, more forces are drawn to Pyrriah, the nature and goals of which are yet to be seen....