Chaos lose ground on Calliden

Following the initial invasion of Calliden the Necrons wasted little time in consolidating their bridgehead and taking the fight to the enemy. Between 2804.012M42 and 0205.012M42 the Necrons advanced more than two hundred miles along the northern shore or Tarsh, destroying settlements and installations and enslaving the population in order to accelerate their war effort. The populace was also fleeing ahead of the Necron invasion, flooding into the city of Bellatrix where they received little sympathy. The defenders of Calliden were completely unable to meet the disciplined military forces of the Necrons on equal terms and the refugees merely made a coherent defence even more problematic.

For centuries Calliden had been a world gone over to the Powers of the Warp. All the Chaos gods were worshipped and the entire society was chaotic, decentralised and anarchic. The Catechism had been able to stiffen resistance somewhat, but even the followers of Moonface found it difficult to exert any control over the petty warbands which passed for the defence force. These were prone to fight each other as much as the enemy.

Eventually the four leaders of Bellatrix, known as the Paragons of the Four, one for each major chaos god, hatched a plan to thwart the Necrons. A huge counter attack was arranged, led by the daemonic hosts of their other worldly patrons. For such a host to be summoned a huge sacrifice of human life was needed, but this solved the refugee problem at a stroke, so to the Paragons the plan had no drawbacks.

The daemonic host fell upon the Necrons on 0205.012M42, breifly giving the invaders pause for thought, but the implacable advance could not be held up. Ancient weaponry and organised military might easily overcame the slavering monsters sent against them, and by 0405.012M42 the gates of Bellatrix itself had been reached.

The war on Calliden had by then become even more complex. Unknown to all but themselves, the Eldar were also watching Calliden. Their plans called for the invasion of that world and the removal of Chaos forces, at least at some point, but the Necron invasion ensured that Calliden moved to the top of the Eldar priority list. They simply could not allow the world to fall into the hands of their most hated enemy. On 0305.012M42 a large force of Eldar troops, in the same livery as those encountered on Sentinel, appeared out of the webway in the lowland region known as the Neck. The eldar objectives were clearly the cities of Hextrac, Durin and Velorur, as by taking these Calliden would be bisected, and the Eldar would lay across the path of the Necron advance.

The Eldar took the forces of Chaos by surprise, but the Iron Warriors soon arrived and slowed the Eldar advance. In a spate of bitter and bloody battles the Eldar slowly gained the upper hand against their enemy, expanding their bridgehead but unable to reach the eastern shore of the the sea of Tarsh. The Iron Warriors' strength was sorely sapped however, and unless the diverse and often hostile forces on Calliden could be brought together by a charismatic leader, the ancient races would soon be left fighting each other over a the ruins of Calliden's chaotic civilisation.