With the Iron Warriors largely dug in and and on the defensive on Zadoc and the Arch Cleric now leading the chaos forces, both sides decided that the cease fire was no longer desirable, and both sides drew up plans to ensure they controlled the Zoggot system going forward. For the orks there was less strategy at work. There were no critivcal supply lines running through the area, but the orks were certainly bored, and had lots of new war toys to play with...
The battle of Zoggot which developed was therefore out of all proportion, in terms of forces committed, to the actual worth of Zoggot. For the Arch Cleric the Emperor's Children committed almost half their strength, including a mysterious yet powerful figure rumoured to be the Primarch Fulgrim. The Arch Cleric himself deployed several armies of cultists, supplemented by a large daemonic outbreak, chiefly of large and particularly violent greater daemons and daemon princes. The Iron Warriors even supplemented this force with daemonic war engines.
The chaos forces were attempting to bring to bear overwhelming force, but the orks had been building up their forces simply because it was in their nature. When the Arch Cleric attacked in 09_014M42, he found a host of orks ready and willing to do battle, supported by Stompa war machines and hordes of boyz. Several warbands from Waagh! Kogh and Waagh! Na'Porkleon had also joined in for some fun, as the chaos build up had soon got round the local ork forces, and greenskins began flocking to the system in anticipation of a "good fight". The chaos forces even picked up on this, choosing to launch their offensive several days early and before they had reached their full strength.
The result was an evenly balanced pitch battle along a very long front. Violence raged for days along a three hundred mile line delineating the ork and chaos held sections of Zoggot. But this wasn't about territory, this was a brawl to the death.
At the start the forces of chaos made the most gains, destroying ork vehicles and massacring boyz at a rate which seemed to suggest a quick victory, but after the initial successes, withering fire from lootas and Stompaz checked the chaos advance. Of particular note was the Mekboy Stompa, which employed a rarely encountered "Lifta-Droppa", accounting for the loss of the elite chaos forces in their land raiders and spartans. Soon the battle became a series of hand to hand melees, with chaos marines and greenskins slugging it out while Maulerfiends clashed with Stompas and mega-armoured nobz.
Along the length of the front the orks began to gain ground on the forces of chaos, who after a few days of fighting found themselves in a perilous state. The Emperor's children had lost nearly half their strength, more perhaps, and their leader had finally been cut down in no-mans-land having defeated the ork warboss in single combat. On the right flank the orks had managed to turn the chaos line, while on the left they shold have, but the Stompas on this flank were too slow and lacadaisical to press home the obviously growing advantage.
Fortunately for the traitor forces, the orks' morale gave out first. The greenskins too had lost significant numbers and on 2909_014M42 most decided Zoggot wasn't worth fighting for anymore and started to leave. The ork assault fizzled and by early 10_014M42 the orks were in full retreat, leaving the battered survivors of the Arch Cleric and Emperor's Children to mop up stragglers and claim the world in the name of chaos.
The price had been extremely high, but at least now the chaos supply lines had been secured for the ongoing campaigns in the Zadoc subsector. For the orks the material loss was insignificant, but the defeat ensured the greenskins lost interest in an immediate conquest of the Enceladus subsector and instead fixed their eyes hubward, towards the possessions of the Imperium and Tau empires.
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