Hecatoncheires
un jour je serai de retour près de toi
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In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.
On the edge of the Calixis Sector, within the frontier of the Periphery, conflict rages. The secessionist forces of the Severan Dominate, led by their traitor Duke Severus XIII, wage a desperate defence against the onslaught of an Ork war-host led by Warlord Ghenghiz Grimtoof. Dark Eldar raid human settlements and drag prisoners screaming into their labyrinthine sub-reality, unchecked and unconstrained by those who should be fighting against them. Agents of the Ruinous Powers move freely through this desolate region of space, carrying out insidious missions in the name of their eldritch Gods.
This is the Spinward Front.
And into this fray steps the forces of the Emperor.
Drawn from a seemingly-infinite number of planets across known space, the soldiers of the Imperial Guard are the backbone of the Emperor's might. Against the varied and powerful enemies of the Imperium, many of which are often far stronger than an ordinary human soldier, they fight with combined tactics and overwhelming military firepower. They are the first and final line of defence, the spearhead of Imperial power, ever the first to be sent into combat and ever ready to fight to the last.
You are one soldier in this gargantuan military structure, a Guardsman of the 232nd Elysian Drop Troops Regiment hailing from the verdant world of Elysia. Trained and drilled in the art of entering battle from the skies, you and your comrades specialise in surprise attacks and unconventional missions performed behind enemy lines. Once in the field, little support from command can be offered: your survival rests entirely upon skill, luck and the cohesion of your squad.
And soon these skills will be put to the test as a new front on the battle for the devastated War World of Kulth opens up. Together with your squadmates, you shall take the fight to the enemies of the Emperor.
"The enemy commanders think themselves safe from the Emperor's wrath behind kilometres of fortifications and legions of warriors. They did not account for us. Make your peace with the Emperor, men - we drop in two minutes."
- Colonel Johanna van Meer, Elysian 13th 'Helldivers' Drop Troops
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Elysia is an isolated but civilised Imperial World out on the edges of a colonised spur of territory within the Segmentum Sector. As it is on the fringes of Imperium-controlled territory the untamed worlds, asteroid fields and barren moons that make up the nearby region are a notorious haven for pirates, rogues and slavers. It falls to the planetary defence forces of Elysia to police these dangerous elements lest they overrun the sector.
As such, the soldiers of this planet are well-versed in ship-to-ship boarding, orbital assaults and other unconventional methods of warfare, as these are often the only effective methods of combating the foes they regularly face at home. Such skills mark them as invaluable assets for Imperial Guard generals across the galaxy, and the renowned 'Drop Troops' of Elysia are in high demand.
The 232nd Regiment is a recently inaugurated force of volunteers that has only just arrived at the Spinward Front from their homeworld; though all have experience serving as part of their planetary defence force, none have yet seen combat as part of the Imperial Guard. Each of them has received intense training in grav-chute drops from high-orbit (or from Valykrie assault carriers) as well as in survival skills, and all of them are practised marksmen who know how to make full use of the Accatran Pattern Mark IV Lasgun (bullpup-style Lasgun with an integrated lamp pack) they are armed with in the field.
Their ranks have been bolstered by veterans from a few of the other Elysian regiments operating in the Periphery. These veterans can be found acting as sergeants, officers and other leading figures.
Though their reputation as one of the famed regiments from Elysia precedes them, the guardsmen of the 232nd have rather cold relations with regiments who do not hail from their home world. Drop troops are generally viewed by "ordinary" guardsmen as unorthodox at best or outright lunatics at worst; who the hell is willing to leap out of a perfectly good Valkyrie, after all?
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The Severan Dominate is a secessionist Human empire under the personal control of Severus XIII, it was originally part of the Imperium and consisting of worlds Severus acquired in the Periphery Sub-Sector of the Calixis Sector. When the region began to plunge into chaos during the Spinward Front wars, Severus announced his annexation of the worlds under his influence into a private fiefdom, popularizing the move as a revolution against Imperial tyranny.
Beset on all sides by enemies, the Severan Dominate somehow continues to withstand them all if only tenuously. Thanks to Severus' many agents and orators, its populations still rally to the cause of their despotic master and willingly renounce the rule of the Imperium. Militarily, the Dominate maintains a small but capable army of mainly PDF troops and mercenaries.
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WAAAGH! Grimtoof is the Ork WAAAGH! under the control of the Ork Warlord Ghenghiz Grimtoof which slammed into the Periphery Sub-sector of the Segmentum Obscurus' Calixis Sector in 814.M41. The massive Ork assault forced the Sub-sector Governor Duke Severus XIII to request aid from the Sector Governor Marius Hax, who mobilised the Calixis Sector's military reserves to meet the Greenskin invasion. Even as the forces of the Imperial Guard poured into what the Departmento Munitorum soon designated as the Spinward Front, Severus XIII used the chaos caused by the invasion to secede from the Imperium, creating the independent pocket empire in the Periphery known as the Severan Dominate. At present, a three-way war is under way in the Spinward Front between the forces of the Imperium, the Severan Dominate and the Ork WAAAGH!
Several of those worlds the Warlord's forces have captured have not been razed to ashes, nor their populations slaughtered for food or for sport. Rather, they have been taken largely intact and their populations have been enslaved in sprawling, forced labour camps and slave-foundries, forced at gunpoint to manufacture the crude arms and ammunition used by the barbarous Orks. This turn of events signals a failure on the part of the Imperium, for it means the Orks have been allowed to consolidate their gains to such an extent that their migration is becoming an occupation. Previous experience teaches that if the Orks are allowed to establish a new stellar empire, their inexorable pattern of strife and migration will make a new invasion inevitable.
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Imperial Command has not officially confirmed the presence of the piratical and murderous Dark Eldar within the Spinward Front, but that has not stopped the troops from talking. Dark rumours persist about the methods that Duke Severus XIII resorted to in order to consolidate control of his would-be empire. Rumours of deals cut with an outcast faction of the Eldar's twisted cousins, known as the Children of Thorns.
These stories have been given further credence by refugees and prisoners of the Severan Dominate, who speak of realspace raids conducted by a Dark Eldar Haemonculus Tevriel Vektesh, in particular out on the fringes of the Periphery. It is not known how many unfortunate people caught up in the war have been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the dark recesses of the Eldar Webway, but one thing is clear; if there is truth to these stories, it is only a matter of time before the armies of the Imperium clash with the Dark Eldar.
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Once upon a time, this planet was the lush seat of a would-be kingdom.
Now it is a blasted, broken and desolate place, ripped apart by multiple invasions and bitter warfare.
Though arguably the seat of power of the Severan Dominate, Kulth is now a hotly-contested War World beset by both Imperial Forces and the Ork hosts of the WAAAGH! Grimtoof. Dominate armies are heavily entrenched within their remaining territory, and reports by Imperium spies hidden amongst them shows an increase in activity there.
The Severan Dominate has begun a mass-excavation by order of Duke Severus XIII himself. For what purpose, it is unclear, but its location in the mountains means it is difficult to hit with ranged artillery as well as heavily defended by existing rebel forces. The commanders of the Imperial Guard occupying Kulth have clearly deemed it serious enough to open up a new front aimed at piercing into Dominate territory in order to stop it.
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NAME: Jeremia Kores
