Event · M41

Siege of Vraks

The Siege of Vraks was a seventeen-year Imperial campaign (813–830.M41) to reclaim the armoury world of Vraks Prime from rebel and Chaos forces. Fought in the Vraks system of the Scarus Sector, the siege pitted the Astra Militarum’s 88th Siege Army and its Space Marine allies against the followers of the apostate Cardinal Xaphan and, in its later years, warbands of Chaos that rallied to his cause. Vraks Prime’s previous Cardinal-Astra died in 804.M41, and his successor, Xaphan, undertook a pilgrimage across the Scarus Sector that won him a following among the sector’s poor and downtrodden. Concerned that his growing popularity threatened Imperial order, the Ordo Hereticus sent a Vindicare Assassin of the Officio Assassinorum to kill him; the attempt failed, and when word of the plot against their ‘saviour’ reached the citizens of Vraks, they rose in open revolt. The Cardinal’s Frateris Militia and labour-soldiers overran the planet’s Adeptus Arbites and Adepta Sororitas garrison, killed the Administratum’s Master-Prefect, and seized the world’s Citadel. To retake the planet, the Departmento Munitorum raised the 88th Siege Army from more than thirty regiments of the Death Korps of Krieg, placing it under the command of Lord Commander Zuehlke. Landing in 813.M41, the Krieg regiments spent years grinding through the fortified trench lines of the Van Meersland Wastes and Fort A-453 in a campaign of attrition, offensive and counter-offensive that cost both sides millions of lives. Around 820.M41 the Alpha Legion warlord Arkos brought his warband to Xaphan’s aid, prompting the Dark Angels, led by Supreme Grand Master Azrael, to commit half their Chapter to the siege. The Grey Knights and Red Hunters reinforced the Imperial assault alongside Legio Astorum’s Titans, while the Ordo Malleus, under Lord Inquisitor Hector Rex, hunted the taint of Chaos corruption among the defenders; among the renegade commanders who rose to prominence on Vraks was Zhufor the Impaler. By the campaign’s end in 830.M41, Imperial forces had reclaimed Vraks Prime, but at a cost recorded as some fourteen million Imperial Guardsmen, hundreds of Space Marines, several Inquisitors, and numerous Titans. Vraks Prime’s population was destroyed in the fighting or consumed by Chaos corruption, leaving the world a ruin; the Ordo Malleus declared Vraks Prime and its system Perdita, sealing it away under Imperial interdiction as a warning against heresy in the Scarus Sector. Among the Space Marine contingents committed to the later stages of the siege were the Red Scorpions. In 826.M41 a strike force under Commander Ainea of the Third Company arrived aboard the strike cruiser Arx Fidelis; Veteran Sergeant Carab Culln of an Eighth Company Assault squad led the Vanguard that carried the teleport homer used by Ainea’s Terminators to seize and hold a breach in the curtain wall of the Fortress of Vraks through which the 88th Siege Army poured. In 830.M41 the Chapter returned in greater strength under Lord High Commander Verant Ortys aboard the battle barge Sword of Ordon, again with Culln among the veterans, and took part in the retaking of the fortress, including the fighting at Saint Leonis’ Gate.

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