Farport - Moonface's last gamble

By 0512.009M42, barely a week after the initial invasion, the Imperial counter attack had shattered the Chaos invasion plans. The Dark Eldar and the Claws of Lorek had abandoned the cause and it seemed the Orks, having looted Dirtside but told to leave by Moonface, were now losing interest in the venture. Only the Catechism and the Anticross and their summoned daemonhosts were still in a fit state to mount serious offensive operations, and even they had taken large casualties, especially amongst their legions of traitor guard. Some estimates put attrition rates at 70% for the untrained cultist forces.

The Imperium had also taken heavy casualties and General Gault’s Imperial Guard in particular had taken a battering. Casualty rates of up to 50% among front line elements meant that the Adeptus Astartes would have to lead the final charge to victory on Farport. This they were willing and able to do however, as the Dark Angels, Space Wolves, Ultramarines and Castaways were all in good fighting shape. Inquisitor Nikopolidis and his indentured forces, while having suffered heavy casualties, were still in serviceable form and willing to expunge the taint of Chaos from the Imperial world.

Moonface gambled on one final attack to regain the initiative, ordering attacks on Homestead, Stocksdale, Carsonville and McKinley, while moving his own elite forces into the heart of Central to defend against the inevitable showdown with the Dark Angels. If victorious in these attacks the planet of Farport may yet fall into Chaos hands.

The Imperium planned defensive strategies, digging in on all fronts while preparing a major counter attack to retake Dirtside, the capital of Farport. When he received the news of the disasterous fall of central El'Zaharial had immediately redeployed his forces back to Orrland to launch an attack to liberate the captial. The fighting was brutal, epic and closely matched but eventually the Catechism’s finest warriors were forced out of the city, but not before poisoning large number of civilians and PDF forces with biological weapons. Yet another atrocity to add to the list of crimes by the heretical being known as Moonface.

Meanwhile on 0712.009M42 the daemons of Shaidar Haran were encountered by the Space Wolves after two days of skirmishing. This time the forces of the Chaos were decisively beaten in the ruins of a mining settlement in Desolate Moor, as for once the daemonic entities were wiped out by determined Space Wolf attacks.

In the Down Plains the Castaways attacked the Alliance’s Ork allies but after a few initial skirmishes the Ork resistance melted away. Later it was found out that the Ork warlord, disgruntled at the loss of “his” city by the Catechism, and irritated by Moonface’s attitude, had teleported the majority of his forces onto a waiting Ork Kroozer and simply left, two days before the Imperial fleet, fresh from its victory in the outer reaches, reached the planet.

Inquisitor Nikopolidis was also successful, with his Daemonhunters, backed by fifteen Farport PDF divisions, severely mauled the Night Lord’s attack on the city, precipitating their withdrawal from the planet. The Ultramarines in the south defeated the Anticross with relative ease and by 1012.009M42 the game was up. The Chaos forces on the planet had been decisively beaten on the ground and the Imperial fleet arrived in orbit on 1112.009M42. Using the Chaos Device the forces of the Catechism retreated into the barren wilderness of Farport’s darkside, met up with the remnants of their allies and made good their escape. Despite Inquisitor Nikopolidis’s urgings, the Adeptus Astartes forces were in no mind to follow them into what could be a carefully laid trap, and fortunately for General Gault his battered Guard regiments were in no state to either. Moonface would have to be allowed to escape, again.