The Death of Sovriddar~Cataclysm

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Battle Details

Type: Battle
Date: 915.009.M31
Sub-Sector:Golloch Cluster
System: Sovriddar System
Planet: Sovriddar
Victor: Loyalist
Draw:
Influence: 5

Forces:

Loyalists Involved In The Conflict Army:L-XV-2623

Traitors Involved In The Conflict Army:A-MECH-0582

Battle Summary

While the events of Sovriddar were technically a victory for the Loyalist forces, an honest Historitor-Investigatus would have to admit that the entire battle was unnecessary, and the planet would likely have been ignored by both sides in the conflict, if not for certain unfortunate twists of fate. Certainly, the humble inhabitants of the planet did nothing to deserve their doom, and both Loyalists and Traitors no doubt regretted the loss of the forces drawn to and lost in the subsequent disaster.

What is clear is that members of the Fifteenth Legion were on the planet at the end. But despite their presence at the epicenter of the Sovriddar Cataclysm, and their takeover of the minimal Planetary Defense installations on the planet, it appears they were arrayed AGAINST the forces of the Maldraco Manufactorum, and especially against the Emperor-class Titan the hereteks had landed on the planet. As a number of Historitors have noted, the fact that a god-machine was deployed to Sovriddar at all was greeted with general incredulity. Certainly such a warmachine should already have been sent on to support the Warmaster's push towards Terra, and it must have an act of pure spite and megalomania from the Maldraco Magi to ignore such an order, and instead unleash the Imperator Deus ex Machina against a backwater agri-world.

What is known or suspected from the fragmentary vox and pict records captured during the chaotic void battle over Sovriddar (records made on the surface being in short supply for reasons that will become obvious) -

• The Thousand Sons warship Pythagorean was an early arrival at Sovriddar, but avoided engagement with any of the Rogue Trader vessels already in orbit, and any Loyalist or Traitor vessels that arrived thereafter.

• The Mechanicum forces of the Maldraco Manufactorum, already responsible for massive destruction on Paradisum Mundi and Sterith Prime, make the unprecedented move of deploying the Deus ex Machina on Sovriddar. This made no military or economic sense, since it would have been more use in practically any other theatre. In sheer tonnage alone it probably outweighed all vehicles deployed on the planet, by both sides.

• The defense forces of the Magistrate, already overstretched by the civil uprising, and completely outmatched by the Legion and Auxilia forces that arrived soon after, reported a significant Thousand Sons force approaching the missile silos and redoubts on the Denachine Peninsula. This installation, functional but still incomplete at the time of the Cataclysm, possessed the only surface-to-orbit weaponry on Sovriddar, and the Loyalist defenders assumed the worst when the the installation fell silent.

• Astartes jetbikes and a Caestus Assault Ram were detected inbound towards the Denachine Peninsula. It was unknown at the time whether their target was the fortifications or the titan, but vox traffic decoded later revealed that the Thousand Sons were directing their attack against the Deus Ex Machina, either to board it and disable it from within, or weaken its void shields enough that the peninsula missile batteries and planetary defense guns could destroy it completely.

• Multiple vortex detonations and causality violations were detected in the immediate vicinity of the Titan and the fortifications, and the catastrophic reactor breach that destroyed the Deus ex Machina was clearly visible from orbit, but it is unknown exactly which triggered the final disaster. It is known that the Maldraco Archmagos was in possession of Phase-walker archeotech, discovered on Paradisum Mundi during the battles there. Loyalist Magi studying the disaster speculate that he activated the archeotech to escape the arrival of one of the Vortex warheads, and it was that, combined with an unknown number of warp vortices, the death of an unknown number of powerful Legion psykers, and the apocalyptic detonation of the Deus Ex Machina, that created the warp rift that consumed so much of the planet's surface.

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