M32: The Third Xhorik War - Background

 The War of the Beast

After the Horus Heresy and the Great Scouring, the fractured and ravaged Imperium went through a period of rebuilding, consolidation, and reconquest of lost systems known as the Time of Rebirth. It was during this time that Roboute Guilliman in his new capacity as Imperial Regent restructured the fighting forces of the Imperium, separating the Imperial Army into the Astra Militarum and the Navis Imperialis. He also divided the Loyalist Space Marine Legions into Chapters in the Second Founding. This era of relative peace and rebuilding came to an end with the most massive Ork wars of all time in 544-546.M32, known later as The War of the Beast. A multitude of simultaneous Ork attacks occurred across the galaxy, eclipsing even the gigantic WAAAGH! defeated by the Emperor and Horus in the Ullanor Crusade in 000.M30.

Despite countless wars with the Orks, there was very little formal study dedicated to the greenskin races prior to the War of the Beast. Only after the unprecedented destruction and near collapse of the Empire itself wrought by the War was the new Ordo Xenos established. Applying immense resources to the study of the interdependent Ork psychology, physiology and sociology, the Ordo Xenos learned that Ork activity resembled a field of random waves, each interacting with its neighbors. Mostly the waves cancelled each other out as rival warlords grew their armies and then fought each other. Sometimes the waves interacted in just the right way to stack their amplitudes, such as when one Ork warlord defeats another and subsumes his entire warband, growing in strength and reputation and attracting more Orks who are always drawn to strength and the promise of the biggest battles. Fighting causes the physical bodies of Orks to grow in response and also causes the size of their effective society to grow with a warlord's influence. This growth in turn leads to bigger battles and more growth. This simple wave stacking model can be used to help understand the origin of an Ork WAAAGH! However, given enough time and enough waves, sometimes multiple stacked waves combine to form a wave of such magnitude that it starts to drive the behavior of all of the rest of the waves, in effect reaching the equivalent of a resonant frequency. This is what happened during the War of the Beast, as nearly every Ork across the galaxy was drawn into a series of wars across all of known space. It was only by (unknowingly) disrupting this resonance that the Ork crescendo was brought down, breaking apart once again into countless individual warbands and scattered waves. One of the primary directives of the Ordo Xenos is to disrupt this momentum from ever again becoming a resonant wave of such destructive potential.

The Xhorik System and the Xhorik Wars

Situated along the intersection of two relatively stable channels of warp space, the Xhrorik system served as the lynchpin of the Laygus Sector, located in the far east of the Segmentum Obscuris, near the Gothic Sector. This strategic location has always defined the critical importance of Xhorik. When the Emperor's Great Crusade reached the Laygus sector, the Xhorik System acted as the capitol of a local empire of considerable size and reach that took the combined might of several Legions and Imperial Armies over two years to fully subdue (the First Xhorik War). During the Horus Heresy, the Xhorik system's location was once again shown to be of prime importance, located along the main warp current between Isstvan and Terra. This led to the bloody conflict between Traitor and Loyalist forces known as the Second Xhorik War. Although Imperial forces were under pressure across countless systems, the same strategic logic that led to such fierce wars to control the system once again dictated that Xhorik must be defended from the rampaging Ork warbands during the War of the Beast. The escalating conflict, centered around the planet Xhorik Prime, became known as the Third Xhorik War in the Imperial data-logs. 

In the centuries after the destructive battles of the Heresy, the planet of Xhorik Prime was terraformed by Imperial agriculturalists to transform some of the vast eastern deserts into temperate zones of woodland and fields, and the population of the planet grew significantly. The Imperium maintained control by the appointment of a hereditary governor, who could trace his ancestry to a distant second cousin of a High Lord of Terra. Day to day administration was carried out by the Planetary Council, consisting of representatives from the various regions. In addition to the former rival powers of the Stratocracy of Kozar and the Federation of Unimund, the terraforming of the eastern deserts to arable land resulted in the rapid ascension of the new planetary power of Bhorivor, upsetting the historical balance of power within planetary politics. The Xhorik System once again became a hub of commerce and industry for the Empire, providing vast Imperial tithes of men and resources. The planet was known for providing highly-specialized regiments of drop troopers from the Kozar region, mechanized regiments with stocks of chemical weapons from the Unimund region, and massed infantry regiments from the rising region of Bhorivor. But the era of peace and prosperity would not last. 

WAAAGH! Zuffskull and the Dark Hour

One of several simultaneous Ork invasions of the Imperium during the War of the Beast, WAAAGH! Zuffskull struck the periphery of the Gothic Sector and then attacked straight into the heart of the Laygus Sector. Although the largest battles took place on the hive planet of Occular where hundreds of millions of greenskins invaded, a large contingent under Warboss Woundwort was sent to the nearby prosperous Xhorik System to acquire materiel for the Ork war machine. 

The Laygus Sector includes Carthage, the home planet of the Red Brotherhood chapter of Space Marines, formed during the third founding from the genestock of the Imperial Fists. Tasked with defending their sector against all threats, the Red Brotherhood were heavily engaged in the campaigns for Occular and Xhorik. The chapter fought bravely against insurmountable odds and was nearly completely destroyed in a central episode of the chapter's lore that ever lives on as the The Dark Hour. In end, only a few understrength companies of the Red Brotherhood would survive to rebuild their chapter. 

It was during this desperate time, with the beleaguered Imperial forces facing both the unrelenting attacks of the Orks and a hitherto unknown Xenos species in apparently unending numbers, that a request for aid went out across the psychic channels guided by the Astronomican. With Imperial forces engaged on a thousand battlefronts, the chances of substantial reinforcements seemed slim. By the Emperor's divine mercy, the Blood Angels Strike Force Belarius, consisting of the 2nd battle company plus reserves elements from the 7th, 8th and 9th companies, was within range of the astral signal and available. They had just participated in the successful defense of Valhalla and were preparing to return to Baal to rearm when the urgent distress calls came in. Resupplying as best they could from the Imperial Guard armories of Valhalla, the strike force made the warp jump for the Xhorik System.