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THERE IS ONLY WAR

CONFLICTS OF THE 41 ST MILLENIUM

“WHATEVER HAPPENS , , YOU WILL NOT BE MISSED”

THE THIRD ARMAGEDDON WAR

941.M41 - THE THIRD ARMAGEDDON WAR

The Third Armageddon War is nothing less than the greatest Ork menace ever known. Ghazghkull had

failed to invade that accursed world once before, and returned with a new plan and new determination to

avoid repeating his mistakes. A terrible time was about to begin...

THE LEGACY OF WAR

The Second Armageddon War, Ghazghkull’s first

invasion of that ill-fated planet, had cost the

Imperium dearly. As the Imperium finally

repelled the Ork invaders, their forces pushed

outwards to reclaim worlds and systems which

had been cut off for years, finding most of them

to be little more than smouldering wrecks.

Rebuilding even a tiny portion of the carnage

wreaked by the Orks would stretch the

Imperium’s resources to the limit. More

pressingly, ensuring a sturdy defence during this

time, to guard against further opportunistic

attacks, would be a tall order with the depleted,

dilapidated and demoralised forces now

available to the Imperium. The Apocalypse class

battleship, Triumph, was brought into

Battlefleet Armageddon in 951.M41 and,

between the wars, served as the flagship of the

defence fleet under Captain Honyaeger. The

Triumph proved to be the bane of many pirate

fleets keen to take advantage of any weakness in

the Imperial Navy. Amassing an impressive roll

of honour, the Triumph became the symbol of

the Emperor’s Will within the sub-sector.

A generation later, when further Ork attacks on

systems surrounding Armageddon started to

drastically cut the amount of merchant shipping

voyaging to the main system, the Triumph and

other ships of the Imperial Navy found

themselves stretched to breaking point. There

were simply too few ships to cover so much

space and it was the merchant transports that

were feeling the effect. An appeal for

reinforcements was met by the arrival of Admiral

Parol on board His Will, accompanied by three

first line cruiser squadrons. Acknowledging the

Admiral’s seniority and greater experience,

Captain Honyaeger transferred command of the

fleet to Parol and, for a short time, the

depredations of the Ork pirates abated.

This all changed, almost overnight, as the

piratical raids turned into full blown planetary

assaults of several minor systems.

THE GREEN TIDE

APPROACHES

The Third Armageddon War began in earnest

when the Ork fleet re-entered normal space at

the very fringes of the Armageddon system,

converging immediately on Monitor Station

Dante, one of three stations specially designed

to guard against just such an attack. Dante

survived barely long enough to open a

communications channel, let alone broadcast a

distress signal, but for the defenders of

Armageddon, already convinced that attack was

inevitable, the breakdown in such

communications was all the proof they needed

that Ghazghkull had returned.

While the ground forces in Armageddon and its

neighbouring systems were placed on high

alert, preparations were made for deep space

conflict. Admiral Parol, commanding the fleet

from his flagship His Will, led seven cruiser

groups against the invading Ork fleet,

intercepting them close to the high-gravity

world of Pelucidar.

THE BATTLE OF

PELUCIDAR

For Parol, perhaps feeling the pressure as the

first line of defence against this greatest of

threats, Pelucidar presented a quandary. The

Orks’ inevitable goal would be to land on

Chosin, Armageddon and the host of other

populated planets in the system. Here, amidst

the far less appealing gas giants and barren

super-planets of the outer reaches might well be

the only chance the Imperium would get to fully

engage the Ork fleet. On the other hand, even

the few garbled messages received from Dante

station were enough to tell him that victory

would not come against such a numerous

enemy. Regardless, perhaps feeling the burden

of hope placed upon him, Parol felt forced to

commit his entire fleet to an action staged

around Pelucidar.

Within five days of leaving St. Jowen’s Dock, the

Imperial fleet had encountered leading

elements of the Ork fleet, decoying enemy

escorts with the battleships as the faster moving

Imperial cruisers used Pelucidar’s gravity well

to swing around the Orks’ flanks.

The Triumph and His Will worked in concert,

combining their fearsome lance armament to

create a lethal web of firepower that no Ork

vessel could survive for long. Over sixty enemy

escorts were blasted apart for no loss on the

Imperial side. As more and more Ork ships

joined battle though, combat degenerated into

a chaotic brawl of the sort Orks excel in. As the

bulk of the alien fleet moved further into the

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Armageddon system, the Imperial ships suffered

greatly as the Orks’ combined numbers and

suicidal rushes threatened to overwhelm the

Naval line. The battlecruiser, Thunderchild, was

the first to fall, its Captain bravely deciding to

fight on whilst crippled rather than disengage, in

order that the rest of his squadron could rally

around the battleship His Will.

As more and more cruiser squadrons started to

suffer losses, Admiral Parol ordered the Triumph

to keep station so that the Imperial fleet had a

stable rallying point. The Admiral took His Will

forward to join the engagement of the first Ork

hulk to enter the pitched battle. Almost

immediately, an oversized squadron of kroozers

took advantage of the break in the Imperial line

and surged forward, taking little damage from

His Will’s long ranged broadside fire, before

bracketing the Triumph and bombarding her

with massed fire. Triumph’s shields failed within

seconds and its ancient hull was soon battered

by crude but heavy Ork weaponry. As the

kroozers moved closer to the battleship, a series

of boarding attempts by attack craft and

teleporters took the battle into the very heart of

the Triumph, where its crewmen fought valiantly

hand-to-hand against the Orks. As crew were

diverted from their main duties to fight the

boarders, the kroozers in the void outside found

it easier to continue their bombardment of the

increasingly sluggish Triumph, heedless of the

lives of the Orks they had already sent to board

the battleship.

Captain Honyaeger was pained by the onslaught

his ship had suffered and reluctantly gave the

order to disengage from combat, a feat he barely

managed in his crippled vessel. The fighting to

clear the Ork boarders from his vessel

reportedly took another four days to complete.

With the Triumph out of action and three more

Ork fleets detected entering the Armageddon

system, Admiral Parol was forced to disengage

the remainder of his ships and regroup them to

slow the Ork advance through Imperial space by

any means he could.

In the event, the Orks seemed to care little for

the Imperial fleet, obviously viewing a fleeing

enemy as good as a destroyed one and instead

sped forward as fast as they could towards the

glittering jewel of Armageddon itself. Parol and

his captains watched on, helpless as their

system was overrun.

A WORLD SHUDDERS

First to feel the wrath of the Ork fleets was the

sector naval facility of St. Jowen’s Dock, as

facility commander, Captain Starrkos, recorded

in a transmission to Admiral Parol in the days

after Pelucidar:

“I must now report on our own situation here

on St. Jowen’s Dock. As the Ork fleet swept past

your line, we prepared for multiple boarding

actions but, incredibly, the Orks opted for

simple bombardment. Few enemy vessels

attempted orbit of our dock, preferring instead

to simply unload ammunition into our hull as

they continued their headlong rush towards

Armageddon itself. I feel that we were in no way

a target for them – St. Jowen’s Dock was just in

their way.

Over ninety percent of our surface defences

were destroyed in the first seven hours of the

attack, negating our ability to strike back at the

invaders. Soon after, enemy assault boats were

launched. There was nothing co-ordinated in

their assault and many of my bridge officers

have formed the opinion that the many

boarding craft that left the launch bays of

passing Terror Ships were the result of poor

discipline amongst the aliens. Simply put, we

believe we were finally boarded by Orks that

could not wait long enough to reach

Armageddon before engaging in battle.

With our defences all but nullified, we were

powerless to stop them entering the Dock itself,

but I organised combat teams to repel their

assault with all haste. We suffered heavy losses

as the Orks fought with literally inhuman

ferocity and the fighting that took place as the

aliens pushed towards the main reactors was

intense. I was forced to divert many teams to aid

in the defence of the reactors for fear that the

Dock could be lost altogether if they succeeded

in their attack, though this allowed many of

their number to sweep unopposed through to

some of our upper decks. We now have the

Orks somewhat under control, but we have lost

almost all contact with the lower decks and

must consider them enemy held territory. We

have the manpower to halt any further advance

now that the fleets have moved passed us and

begun their main assault, but we will never be

able to clear the infestation unaided“.

Although at first report Parol was mildly

relieved to hear the fate of St. Jowen’s Dock,

escaping, as it had, complete destruction at the

hands of the Orks, he quickly realised that their

dismissal of the stations importance was in fact

an even more damning blow to the Imperium’s

efforts. If the Orks had no intention of

spreading their green curse across the entire

system, the sheer scale of invasion which was

Armageddon was about to face must be even

larger than previously feared, Parol reasoned.

Still, ever the calm strategist, even amidst these

hopeless opening defeats of the war, this chain

of events nurtured some hope in Parol. If the

Orks, apparently under direct instruction to do

nothing more than bombard St. Jowen’s Dock,

could still not resist their barbaric urge to close

and tussle with the enemy, perhaps their actions

could be as much of his making as their

master’s. A strategy of divide and conquer was

rapidly becoming the Imperium’s last hope.

TO RECLAIM THE STARS...

While Parol remained distant from the conflict,

regrouping and re-evaluating the Navy’s effort

in the wake of Pelucidar, matters on

Armageddon itself became ever more urgent.

Fearing that the encroaching Ork fleet would

come upon Armageddon before a coordinated

defence could be mounted, many of those

Space Marine Chapters now massing on the

planet took to their battlebarges and strike

cruisers and returned to space. As the Ork fleet

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THE THIRD ARMAGEDDON WAR

approached the assembled fleet, under the

command of Black Templars High Marshall

Helbrecht, they gambled on a single, short

lasting volley of fire against the Orks. Almost in

unison, more than a dozen battlebarges and

several dozen strike cruisers pummelled

Ghazghkull’s fleet with torpedoes and

bombardment cannon, virtually demolishing the

first wave of escorts and crippling the hulk,

Rumbledeth. Even so, Helbrecht quickly realised

that the stars could not belong to the Space

Marines that day, and dispatched most of the

assembled forces back to the planet, leaving the

fleet to retire and join Parol’s own navy vessels in

solemnly allowing the Orks to push on to

Armageddon virtually untouched.

LOGISTICS

Following Pelucidar, as final preparations for a

ground war were undertaken, very serious

consideration had to be given to the role the

Imperial Navy could play in the coming war. In

the Imperium’s long history, combined actions

where Imperial Navy elements acted principally

as transports for the lumbering Imperial Guard

armies, or as reserves guarding supply chains and

patrol routes were common, as were the many

space-bound wars which the Navy had become

accustomed to fighting. Likewise, the Chapters of

the Adeptus Astartes excelled in swift and bloody

fleet actions designed to hammer a way through

to contested planets where their particular

penchant for planetary assaults would lend them

the upper hand. Armageddon, however, proved

to be something quite different.

Simply using the Navy to defeat the Orks in space

had proved impossible, since Ghazghkull had no

reason to allow any portion of his fleet to be

drawn into combat where superior Imperial

discipline would probably overwhelm Ork

brutality. Likewise, relying on the speedy

deployment of ground forces to counter the Orks

as they landed was ineffective. The Ork horde

was simply too great in numbers to be

conclusively beaten in a solely planetside

conflict, but likewise too vast, and what’s more

too reticent to be properly engaged in space.

Instead a new strategy had to be devised – one

allowing the Imperial Navy to operate effectively

in deep space, despite being overwhelmingly

outnumbered, whilst maintaining enough of a

transport capacity to ensure that no single

enclave of the system became overlooked or cut

off from the Imperial effort. For virtually the first

time since the Heresy, a system wide war had

broken out which required the complete

integration of ground and fleet actions.

These problems, initially at least, were not easily

overcome. Unusually, the majority of the Imperial

fleet was made up of Space Marine vessels, and

their role in this mixed campaign was initially

unclear. Commitments on the ground led to an

undermanned Space Marine fleet, and one

further stymied by the need to remain close to

their attendant ground forces should the need for

sudden movements arise. Any determined

attempt to muster a Space Marine fleet for deep

space combat invariably compromised other

areas of the campaign.

MARSHALLING THE FORCES

After several horrifying defeats in the early part of

the war, the Space Marines quickly came to

realise, however, that the almost unstoppable

numbers in which the Orks were arriving on

Armageddon itself was only being exacerbated by

their failure to deal with the threat effectively in

space. Angry at his counterpart’s arrogant

dismissal of the Imperial Navy, High Marshall

Helbrecht of the Black Templars restructured

firstly his own men, then gradually all Imperial

forces, to better fight the war system wide.

Helbrecht, like many descendants of Dorn, had

always prided himself on his willingness to

cooperate with other elements of the monolithic

Imperial institutions, and his skill at negotiation

and delegation proved pivotal. Helbrecht himself

assumed joint command of the fleet, taking

responsibility for organised movement and

transport affairs whilst Parol was freed to dedicate

his time solely to the actual matter of fighting one

of the Imperium’s largest ever space conflicts.

Helbrecht quickly realised that the inevitable

casualties on the ground were themselves

making the size of the Space Marine fleet a

problem. Indeed, the Salamanders, one of the

Chapters hardest hit in the early stages of the

conflict, reluctantly reported to Helbrecht that

two of their much needed battlebarges would be

unable to attend as they had been left in a state

of near abandonment for several weeks

following an overzealous commitment of their

crews to the fighting around Acheron Hive. To

Helbrecht, the Master of a Chapter whose entire

existence is spent aboard their Crusade Fleets,

such problems were easily remedied. The typical

Space Marine tactic of boarding had to be stayed

– such close quarters fighting would be reserved

for the bloodied soil of Armageddon. Helbrecht

also overcame the initial reluctance of his fellow

commanders to withdraw a greater proportion

of their men from the ground to place them

aboard the fleet with the insistence that the

extra mobility such increased manpower would

lend the fleet would make those same Space

Marines infinitely better able to return speedily

to the surface should the need present itself.

TO TRADE

VICTORY FOR DEFEAT

Even with such masterfully crafted reforms, the

initial Ork assault had already pummelled large

parts of Armageddon into a bleeding, smoking

mass of rubble and corpses. That battle,

Helbrecht and Parol agreed, was already lost.

Instead, both the Marine and Navy vessels

withdrew from the immediate space around

Armageddon to concentrate instead on a

blockade of the system to prevent Ork

reinforcements. From this strategy born of

earlier failure, an unexpected boon was gained

by the Imperium.

Allowing such vast numbers of Ork vessels

through pandered to the Ork psyche (as Parol

had already presciently noted after St. Jowen’s

Dock) and they began a frantic planetary assault

in their millions. Orks from the lowliest Grot to

the most ancient and bloated of Warbosses

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THE THIRD ARMAGEDDON WAR

boarded landing craft and plunged violently

and insanely towards the planet’s surface,

leaving their fleet a muddled and disorganised

mass. As well as this, the Ork landing diverted

the vast majority of their available fighta-

bommas, leaving the Ork fleet largely without

attack craft for the remainder of the campaign –

a fact which would cost Ghazghkull dearly.

HELBRECHT’S REVENGE

Capitalising on this, Helbrecht began the first

stage of the war to return space to Imperial

control. At the battle later dubbed ‘Helbrecht’s’

Revenge, a Space Marine fleet acting in wedge

formation (a tactic allowing powerful forward

bombardment whilst retaining as many

defensive attributes as possible) closed upon

the Ork hulk, Rokdroppa.

The encounter proved to be something new for

many of the Space Marine vessels present – a

battle in which the firepower superiority of

their ships was to be utilised almost to the

exclusion of their favoured boarding and assault

tactics. Amongst the fleet, members of the Black

Templars and Black Dragons Chapters, already

experienced naval chapters, excelled beyond all

others, and in their absolute supremacy acted as

a fine example to the rest of the fleet of how the

war must henceforth be fought. Against the

wedge of vessels, Rokdroppa was unable to

move itself into a good firing position without

leaving itself vulnerable, even with the sizeable

armada of escorts, kroozers and roks which

accompanied it. No matter which way it turned,

Rokdroppa found itself pummelled by

bombardment cannons. The Orks, unable to

resist the urge to close with the enemy, only

brought themselves closer to the hungry guns

of the Space Marine fleet.

At the loss of two thirds of its escorting vessels

and the apparent death of its Warboss,

Rokdroppa finally turned to disengage, though

it was too late and its hurried flight served only

to bring it into the sights of Ebon Flame, a Black

Dragons battlebarge operating in the honour

position of the left hand flank of the wedge.

Mere moments after it came into range, the

Rokdroppa was torn clean in two, even its

wreckage pummelled by the astute Helbrecht

for fear such a large chunk of a hulk might fall

planetward if left simply to float through the

ether.

A CIRCLE OF IRON

Even with such a victory under its belt, the

Space Marine fleet still remained a lone

lighthouse in a sea of green, and at great risk of

encirclement. At this point, Parol enacted the

first stage of his counterpart plan to slowly

widen a blockade around the entire

Armageddon system. Parol and his fleet

emerged alongside the victorious Space Marine

fleet just in time to repel a further opportunistic

attack from a second Ork fleet. Parol deployed a

cordon of battleships and cruisers to the rear of

the Space Marines while determined packs of

Imperial escorts saw off the already intimidated

Orks. Parol’s manoeuvre allowed the Space

Marines the time needed to disengage from

their highly effective, but woefully immobile,

wedge formation in safety.

Having at last bought themselves a little

breathing space, the fleet dispersed into a series

of more effective, smaller battlegroups, moving

cautiously at first to guard one another’s backs,

but nonetheless slowly widening the area of

space over which they could exert control.

Helbrecht willingly took a back seat to Parol

during this stage of the campaign, whose

unequalled tactical skill allowed the Imperial

fleet to rapidly expand its blockade for only

minimal loss.

Parol was keenly aware that his only advantage

lay in the Orks’ predictable pattern of invasion,

doing, as they did, little more than head for

whichever planets they hadn’t already overrun.

Parol clustered his battlegroups around the

planets in question, though always taking care

to remain some distance away from any

planetary assaults already underway. Instead

clever manoeuvring, so Parol hoped, would

allow his fleets to retain the cover of those

planets, moons and phenomena for as long as

they could, before intercepting the Ork fleets as

they approached. The remnants of the Chosin

line, a woefully inadequate perimeter of

planetary defences installed in the system after

the Second Armageddon War, finally proved to

be of some, albeit minor, use in this strategy.

By these means, Parol overcame his lack of

numbers, since he could afford to leave gaps in

the blockade in deep space areas, from where

the Orks would inevitably head planetward and

run in to the Imperial forces later on, anyway.

SILENT RUNNING

Insurgencies beyond the blockade were still

frequent however, and when they did occur,

Parol carefully monitored the movement of the

Ork hulks in question, waiting for them to

approach within precise ranges of other key

points of the blockade. At meticulously timed

opportunities, battlebarges would make a single

speedy movement towards a rendezvous point

before disabling their own systems and gliding

coldly and silently on a straight collision course

with the invading hulk. Several hulks and the

battleship Gorbag’s Revenge were lost to this

new ‘silent running’ tactic, where battlebarges

would suddenly engage their systems and

appear to emerge from nowhere to quickly

cripple their unsuspecting prey. Ever the

masters of hit-and-run warfare, silent running

quickly became a favourite tactic of the White

Scars elements of the Imperial fleet, keenly

rejoicing in the unexpected ability to fight by

their own favoured means, even in the cold

blackness of space. The White Scars’ battlebarge

Plainsmaster was even renamed The Silent

Horseman in honour of this newly adopted

mode of attack.

Such a blockade would never be strong enough

to repel the Ork attack completely, indeed both

Parol and Helbrecht would have considered any

attempt to do so foolish in the light of earlier

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