Imperial make gains on Tarlius II

Martin Bessas, commander of Imperial forces in the Foramen Interdictum was keen to continue recent advances in the Tarlius system. Avoiding the difficult task of unloading entire Imperial Guard armies and risking a chaos fleet intervention, Bessas relied on his elite forces to crush the chaos forces on the barren wastelands of Tarlius II, a world that had seen unimaginable horrors already in the previous years of fighting in the Foramen. The Iron Warriors had still not shown their hand, but rather than assault their fortress directly, Bessas agreed with his council of war that the other chaos forces should be dealt with first, in order to isolate Stahl's men in their citadel.

To this end the knights of House Corvus began the sweep west from the astartes bridgeheads, crossing the plains of Tarlius and hunting out areas of resistance. One industrial area, of the few that were scattered across the otherwise worthless planet, was clearly of strategic importance, and the knights were charged with capturing vital supply caches which would cripple the ability of the traitor forces to conduct effective coordinated operations against the imperium.

The knights did not know the exact location of the supply dumps, but began their move on the industrial area confident that their firepower would overwhelm their enemy. As the Death Guard appeared, along with a large number of heretical daemon engines, the mighty Castellan war engine opened fire. Unfortunately, its targeting systems seemed to malfunction, as the impact of the knight's initial volley was next to negligible, although one rocket did manage to land a damaging salvo on one of the enemy war engines.

In response, the Death Guard advanced, but they too suffered a number of equipment malfunctions, as their blight grenades appeared ineffective against even the smaller knights fielded by the Imperium. The Imperium however had the crucial stroke of luck which meant the engagement would end with victory for House Corvus. Their attack had - completely by chance - attacked from the direction of the main chaos supply caches, and the devotees of nurgle had hardly been able to react to the attack before finding that their supplies had been captured by the enemy. Facing the might of three helverins and a fully functional Castellan, it was always going to be unlikely that the chaos force would be able to recapture the cache without being obliterated by the Dominus class knight.

Eventually House Corvus made good their malfunctioning ordnance, and the Death Guard took horrendous casualties as they tried in vain to dislodge the enemy war engines. After hours of hard fighting the remaining traitor forces quietly withdrew, allowing the Knights to secure a haul of promethium and ammunition which crippled the traitor forces' ability to defend the eastern plains of Tarlius II.

The Knights reported their engagement to Bessas and the war council, but on finding that House Corvus had not annihilated the nurgle force and it was now retreating across the western hemisphere along with daemon engines, the Grey Knights took matters into their own hands. Dropping to the west of the retreating enemy host, the expert daemon hunters ambushed the nurgle force and utterly destroyed it, punching a giant hole in the already stretched chaos defences. The remaining chaos forces on Tarlius II retreated to settlements and low hills in the west, where Arch Heretik Cybixx had prepared a defence line, or tried to get to the protection of the Iron Warriors' citadel which dominated the flat plains in the equatorial region. The remaining stragglers were mopped up by astartes patrols. The war on Tarlius had certainly now swung in favour of the Imperium.