Legion Dominus defeats Tau at Dnatha

The discovery of Vanir in the Hadron Expanse gave Admiral Barham's expedition pause for breath. The loyalist forces now had a base of operations in the Expanse, and the arrival of Admiral Enkvist strengthened the imperial position further. The Crusade on Arawath and Hussaria showed no aggressive tendencies towards the loyalists, as it was clear that whatever Barham's exploration force was doing, it didn't run contrary to the aims and intentions of Inquisitor Vorushko. In the Hadron Expanse, the Inquisition War no longer really applied.

The Imperium recieved further aid in early 07.018M42 as the imperial battlegroups had a chance meeting with a force travelling in the other direction. A legio explorator fleet was encountered crossing the northern expanse having been seeking contact with the Imperium proper since the coming of the Interdictum. On board the massive adeptus mechanicus fleets was half a titan legion and the entirety of the Knight Household of House Corvus.

Admiral Barham and General Chuikov were delighted at the arrival, and a meeting was convened to discuss whether Legio Dominus and its attendant Knights would join the Hadron expedition. Happy to have made contact with the rest of the Imperium the Mechanicus agreed, and analysis of the situation soon determined that to bolster the imperial presence in the region, more bases would be needed. The tau appeared to be the weakest faction, hemmed in on all sides by the forces of chaos and vulnerable to attack.

Drawing up the new (and possibly first!) coordinated Hadron assault plan, the loyalists were splut into two battlegroups. Admiral Enkvist escorted Legion Dominus to Dnatha in the Echo Cluster, while the bulk of Barham's fleet moved massive imperial guard assets to the chaos held Palantir system.

The invasion of Dnatha went extremely well. Finding that the tau had begun to colonise the outer worlds, the imperial battlegroup bombarded the smaller bases from space, utterly destroying them. At the world of Dnatha itself the imperium found a much stronger force of tau and began a concerted invasion by land. The tau, commanded by one of Skyfall's devotees, were well equipped with Riptides and giant Storm Surge battlesuits. These the tau placed carefully around their primary base, where they felt their firepower would be more than enough to repel any imperial attack.

Initially the Tau faced the Knights of House Corvus, and the tau scored an early success bringing down a Knight Errant as the imperial army moved in range of the massive tau firepower. The tau were unaware however that Legio Dominus had sent a Warhound titan to aid the invasion, and the arrival of the scout war engine caused dismay in the tau ranks, who had been unaware of how fast such an imperial war engine could be. Very soon the Warhound Titan "Warspite" was amongst the tau forces, using its apocalyptic weaponry to simply obliterate its foes. A storm surge was simply vapourised in one shot by the titan's Quad Turbo-lasers.

Alarmed by the giant war engine, the tau called in their reinforcements, concentrating their entire firepower against the imperial war machine. This paid dividends, as the Warspite's void shields were quickly overloaded and the massed firepower blasted against the scout titan's armour. Within minutes this punishment resulted in an ominous glow from the Warhound's engine housing, then in the middle of the battle, Warspite's reactor detonated in a runaway reaction that was visible for hundreds of miles. The damage from the explosion was severe. Although the tau base itself survived, many tau were killed or wounded and several battlesuits took heavy damage.

The concentration of firepower on the warhound allowed House Corvus and its support forces, notably a baneblade supplied by the Imperial Guard, to close on the tau lines. Kroot infantry were massacred and although several Knights were toppled, the tau based was overrun. Lacking in numbers to reclaim the installation, the remaining stealth suits and tau infantry disappeared as best they could amongst the rivers and swamps of the nearby oasis, hoping to evacuate by piranha during the hours of darkness. Some managed this, as the Knights were unable to easily prevent nocturnal small unit movements in the wilderness. The tau base however had been taken, allowing the Imperium to land guardsmen and members of the administratum on all the planets of the Dnartha system. The tau attempt to dominate the Echo Cluster was now under threat from the Imperium as well as the traitor forces.