Orks raid Aornis

As if the Iron Warriors didn't have enough problems with the Tyranid invasion, then in late 011.M42 the orks arrived. Loyal to warboss Thrugnik a large raiding party of greenskins crash landed in shallow seas near Gorton Cove, but despite taking moderate casualties wasted no time in launching assaults on two of Aornis's main settlements. The orks transported themselves by air, boat and tellyporta, far faster than the forces of Chaos thought possible. 

At Walpole, an out of the way settlement but none the less rich in industrial resources, the forces of Thrugnik easily brushed aside the Death Guard defenders and systematically looted the area, plundering the many factoriums and mines which surrounded the city. While the orks made profit here, loading their kroozers in orbit with as much precious cargo as possible, the raid on Baldwin went less well. Here the Iron Warriors had built up the city's defences and Stahl's men were there in person.

The Iron Warriors went about their business of defence with their usual alacrity. The traitor marines were aable to concentrate the ork attacks into well prepared lines of fire, and after several hours of bloody fighting the orks gave up their assault, having seen their vanguard forces annihilated by the guns of the city's defenders. Thrugnik's boyz then left Aornis, satisfied at a moderately successful venture into the Rim Worlds once again, the Iron Warriors unable to pursue them out of orbit with their inferior numbers in space. In ork circles Thrugnik was becoming the warboss on the rise, his waagh! becoming large enough to challenge the rule of Uzfang, while Warsmith Stahl remained unquestionably Master of Chaos, but a master of an ever shrinking and embattled domain.