Ark'alask Septimus

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Ark'alask Septimus
Kildrech Minor.png
Armoury World and Research Station

Segmentum:

Ultima Segmentum

Sector:

Australis Ultima

Subsector:

Hawcinus Sub-Sector

System:

Harkarialis System

Class:

Armoury and Research World

Type:

Minor

Barren Four Map.jpg
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Global Heresy

This location is the target of the Phase 2 Global Heresy campaign.

Be sure to listen to the Age of Darkness Podcasts for scenarios, challenges and updates!


Suggested Game Style

NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2015 - PHASE THREE - SEIZING THE VAULTS

The forces of the Warmaster put on a valiant defence of the curtain wall, repeatedly pushing back the Loyalist assaults and even mounting several local counterstrokes. However successful these actions were, there was no way to reverse the damage done by the debacle at the Outer Fortifications. Now the ruthless arithmetic of war began to take its toll on the Traitors, and soon the Loyalists broke through and forced the Warmaster's forces from the walls.

Warmsmith Krios, commanding the defence, had long ago anticipated the loss of the curtain wall and had prepared to fight the Loyalists within the confines of the Ferrumskrag. Tunnels were demolished to funnel attackers through prepared kill-zones and trenches were dug through the larger warehouses and other open spaces. As the Traitors knew the terrain and the Loyalists did not, all lighting was destroyed to force the attacker to fight in the dark through an unknown layout. Everything was done to make the Loyalist advance as costly as possible.

At the centre of the fortress lay the final objective, the alchem-weapon vaults within which the Mechanicum adepts had sealed themselves in. By now, the Dark Mechanicum attached to the defenders had almost succeeded in breaking in to get at the prize inside. News of this had reached the Loyalist command and underlined the absolute necessity of reaching the vaults before they were opened by the enemy.

In this phase of the campaign, the Loyalists are attacking Traitor forces within the sprawling compound of the Ferrumskrag. All games should use the Zone Mortalis expansion, at any points level. As the defenders have shut down all lighting, games played in this phase always have the Night Fighting special rule in effect, and this automatically and for the entirety of the game.

Results from this phase of the siege will determine who will succeed in breaking into the Ferrumskrag's vaults and seizing the esoteric alchem-weapon stocks contained therein. Should the Loyalists succeed, they could potentially wipe out the Traitors holed up inside and then bring these terrifying weapons to bear on the worlds loyal to the Warmaster in the Australis Ultima Sector. If the Traitors succeed in this phase they could use them to cripple the Loyalists at the very moment of their victory and escape the planet, delivering these weapons to the Warmaster's forces and potentially turn the tide of the war in this area of space.

Please contact ageofdarknesspodcast@gmail.com[1] if you have any questions or suggestions, and don't forget to listen to The Age of Darkness Podcast[2] for updates on the siege!

Geography

Ark'alask-Septimus is the seventh and last of Ark'alask's major ellipsoidal moons, although the gas giant is known to have more than two hundred moonlets of various small sizes in its orbit. It is a barren, rocky planetoid, with a thin atmosphere generally toxic to unaugmented humans. It is the furthest major body from the system's core, which is why it was chosen as the site of a Crusade armoury facility - ships could quickly translate out of the Warp, take in supplies, and be on their way without having to needlessly congest the busy Harkarialis-Primaris naval yard further in-system.

The moon's surface is a jagged jigsaw of mountain ranges and deep canyons, a testament to a more tumultuous age when it's core still burned. Now it is a dead world, although the infernal magma storms from the gas giant below keeps Ark'alask-Septimus warm enough to sustain life. This forbidding landscape is dominated by the eleven kilometer high peak of Karadon Indomitus. It is under this colossal mountain that the Imperium built its armoury.

Physics

Type Small iron/silicate

Mass 5.62 x 1024 kg

Density 5.83 g/cm3

Composition 45.6% iron, 28.8% oxygen, 11.3% titanium, 8.8% silicon, 2.0% other metals, 3.5% other elements

Gravimetry

Gravity 9.94 m/s2

Escape Velocity 11.04 km/s

Period 39.46 hours

Axis Tilt 6.35 °

Atmosphere

Type Thin toxic

Pressure 41.25 kPa

Composition 57.9% carbon dioxide, 22.0% sulfur dioxide, 20.1% oxygen, trace other gases

Population

By the outset of the Interlegionary War Ark'alask-Septimus' once large indentured workforce had been largely cut back from its Great Crusade high of approximately fifteen million labourers to somewhere around seven million. Of these, at least a third were augmented servants of the Mechanicum, while the rest were a mix of freepeople and slaves from both Uzun'kar and the Betalis System. As the Siege of Ark'alask-Septimus began to gain in ferocity, more and more of these men and women were conscripted into the armies of both the Throne and the Warmaster, where their lack of formal military training led to horrendous casualties among their expendable ranks. None of the antebellum population are known to have survived the siege.

History

Great Crusade Era

When the Harkarialis System was declared compliant, the Excertus Imperialis decided that its central coreward position made it an ideal candidate for a Crusade muster site. The task of evaluating the system's potential was given to General Alesky Kovaliev of the famed Volgan Assault Engineers. His report, delivered to Sector Command at Betalis in 962M29, detailed how Harkarialis was to be transformed to serve the needs of the Great Crusade as it pushed further into the Eastern Fringe. The only inhabited world, Uzun'kar, was to shift its industrial output from a mixed economy to the exclusive production of munitions. Kaska'irillis, already a major naval base, was to be significantly expanded to serve as the main Armada Imperialis staging yard in the area. Kovaliev decided that it would be unwise however to site the system's main armoury at either of these locations, preferring instead to build it on the seventh moon of the gas giant Ark'alask near the system's translation point. Once approved, the colossal engineering forces of the Great Crusade set upon bending the Harkarialis System to the nascent Imperium's will. Thanks to the aid of the Iron Warriors Legion, work was completed in record time.

Vast amounts of war matériel produced by the teeming hives of Betalis as well as the local world of Uzun'kar were stockpiled at the Ark'alask-Septimus Facility, and even though the Harkarialis System was generally considered a quiet area during the later Great Crusade period, significant fortifications were erected to defend the moon from predation. At the core of these defences was the Ferrumskrag, the Iron Keep, a redoubtable fortress built along the eastern face of the great peak of Karadon Indomitus. Protected by powerful void shields capable of deflecting any void bombardment and half-kilometre thick curtain walls, the Ferrumskrag was designed by the warrior-engineers of the IVth Legion to be an impregnable citadel securing a major link in the Great Crusade's logistical supply chain. Furthermore, a vast network of forts, redoubts, and trenches defended the approaches to the fortress along Karadon Plateau, all designed to make any attack as costly and futile to a potential enemy as possible.

Sometime in the 990sM29 the Ark'alask-Septimus Facility was expanded to encompass a major research facility looking into Alchem weapons for use against the Greenskin empires to the east. In particular the facility was known to contain massive stocks of the infamous Life Eater virus in its underground bunkers, as well as an unknown quantity of more esoteric but equally terrifying bio-agents and chem-munitions, all under the careful guard of the Magos Biologis of some of the more unsavoury sects of the Mechanicum. Although this was generally kept secret from the newly compliant citizenry of the sector, rumours of dark experiments were whispered by patrician and pleb alike, and when the neighbouring system was quarantined, many made the logical conclusion that the vile machinations of the Ark'alask Facility were to blame. They were not entirely wrong...

The Horus Heresy

As news of the outbreak of the Interlegionnary War began to be received in the year that followed the horrors of the Dropsite Massacre, the Harkarialis System was as unprepared for war as was possible for an area of space geared towards serving the needs of the Excertus Imperialis. As the Great Crusade pushed out into the Eastern Fringe, Ark'alask-Septimus had lost its place as a forwards supply base, and was generally considered to be a rear echelon area with a consequent scaling down of its defences. No longer garrisoned by a mighty host of Legiones Astartes and Solar Auxilia, its protection was now almost completely the responsibility of the Mechanicum and its attendant feudal levies. Although its stores of war matériel were significant, its distance from active war zones meant that the research conducted by the Mechanicum Biologis was of far greater importance.

Upon hearing the news of the Warmaster's rebellion, the Archmagos commanding the great Ferrumskrag correctly surmised that both sides would seek to claim the prize that was his fortress, and deciding to deny the weapons at his disposal to both sides, sealed himself and his attendant staff into the great vaults at the core of the Karadon Indomitus mountain. He was correct. Within weeks of the confirmation that Horus had indeed turned on the Throne, detachments loyal to both the Warmaster and the Emperor began to flood into the system and engage each other at every corner. On Ark'alask-Septimus the first to arrive was the 64th Grand Battalion of the IVth Legion, and although they were as yet unable to breach the vaults containing the prized weapons of the facility, they managed to secure most of the area in and around the Ferrumskrag. The victory was short-lived, however, as the 55th Stormwing of the First Legion arrived, caved in the left flank of the Iron Warriors defences, and dug-in for a lengthy battle. It was not long before reinforcements from both sides flooded into the warzone, and the Siege of Ark'alask-Septimus begun.

The Battles for the Outer Fortifications

It was only a matter of days after the forces loyal to the Warmaster seized the Ferrumskrag that loyalists arrived on the scene and launched an immediate counter-attack to prevent the traitors from consolidating their defences. What followed was several weeks of bitter fighting as both sides attempted to stabilize their front lines. This culminated into what has been called the Battles of the Outer Forts, a continuous phase of attack and counter attack against the fourteen major defensive fortification systems guarding the approaches to the Ferrumskrag. In the initial loyalist counter-stroke, the western seven of these were seized from the Warmaster's forces, although they managed to maintain control of the seven to the east. In these bitter battles both sides took horrendous casualties in their scramble to capture as many of these fortifications as possible, many of them changing hands multiple times during the campaign, and sometimes even in a single day.

The Battle of the Curtain Wall

After weeks of heavy fighting, the Loyalist offensive succeeded in forcing the Warmaster's forces from their positions in the outer fortification line. The Traitors were forced to fall back to their secondary lines and the primary defences of Ferrumskrag, the nigh impenetrable curtain wall. Judging that to allow the Traitors to consolidate their positions would make any further attacks excessively costly, the Loyalists immediately pushed their advantage and struck at the Traitors' defences. Of course, the units loyal to the Warmaster realised the same thing, and launched a series of furious counterattacks to disrupt the Loyalist plans.

Campaign Reports

Imperial Search....No Result

Battle Reports

Battle Name Date Planet Battle Outcome Battle Summary
Defense of the Ur'lan Catacombs 956.007.M31 Ark'alask Septimus Traitor

Master of Signal Bardiel Septus was still reeling from the sudden and brutal loss of his Praetor as he somberly organized what remained of the company's heavy infantry down into the underdark of the ..→

Liberation at Camp Delta 239 882.007.M31 Ark'alask Septimus Loyalist

The Raven Guard’s 8th Company tracked Death Guard captors to their hastily constructed P.O.W. camp, where they conducted a night raid in attempt to rescue Sarbes Noxus.

The Death Guard host ..→

The Assault on Redoubt Tetra-225 682.007.M31 Ark'alask Septimus Loyalist

By the first week of the Loyalist offensive against the Warmaster's forces manning the outer fortifications of Ark'alask-Septimus the front line was a confused mess. It would be a simplification to ..→

The Battle of Perimetre Fort Tetra-Echo 693.007.M31 Ark'alask Septimus Loyalist

After the defeat of the 64th Battalion's assault on Redoubt Tetra-225, the Loyalist command decided to push the advantage and ordered an immediate counterstroke to seize the primary IVth Legion ..→

The Defence of the Southern Approaches 797.007.M31 Ark'alask Septimus Traitor

After series of counter-stokes which culminated in the inconclusive First Battle of the Stredha Yards, Warsmith Krios Dracontites 64th Grand Battalion was quickly withdrawn from offensive operations ..→

The Defense at Widower's Teeth 723.007.M31 Ark'alask Septimus Loyalist

Sarbes Noxus and his Raven Guard remnants of 8th Company valiantly defend Fort Charlie Gamma a.k.a. The Widower's Teeth from an abrupt and brutal Death Guard assault led by Macabran Graves

As ..→

The First Battle of the Sredha Yards 759.007.M31 Ark'alask Septimus Inconclusive

When the Outer Fortifications were breached and then captured by the Loyalists, Warsmith Krios Dracontites, commanding the forces loyal to the Warmaster on Ark'alask-Septimus, decided to embark on a ..→

The Onslaught at Gamlin Pass 808.007.M31 Ark'alask Septimus Traitor

Delegatus Xander Levinius surveyed the desolate pass from atop the highest floor of the imperial bastion, considering how best to utilize what men and machines were left at his disposal. He had been ..→

The battle for Perimeter Fort Delta Foxtrot 682.007.M31 Ark'alask Septimus Loyalist

The sound of Volkite and Bolters fire could be heard in the distance as Captain Jericho Mayanor of the Imperial Fists 4th Company readied his men for the attack on the traitors still holding out ..→

Skirmish Reports

  • L-IV-2336 defeated L-XIV-2424 a Loyalist gain.
  • L-VII-2969 defeated L-XII-5545 a Loyalist gain.
  • L-XII-5545 defeated L-IV-2336 a Traitor gain.
  • Elements of the Death Guard Legion defeated L-I-3952 a Traitor gain.
  • defeated a Loyalist gain.