Death Guard active in Hadron Expanse

During 03.021M42 the Mordecai theatre was not the only active area of operations for the forces of chaos. While the Emerald Serpent led the affairs of the legions of chaos in the Perseus Deeps, the Death Guard, while active in the Mordecai System, had their own sights on domination of the Hadron Expanse. With limited strategic resources their operations were slow, but the devotees of nurgle used that to their advantage. A slow but inexorable rise to power was built into their ethos, and was unlikely to result in an overwhelming response from their enemies, especially the Imperium, until it was too late.

Orbiting around the Hexis star, in the Lysis system, few had paid attention to the second planet of the system, simply labelled "Hexis II" or even, inaccurately, "Hexis moon". By 03.021M42 this was already a major chaos base, but the Imperium and Tau empires had failed to detect how much the base was turning into a much more powerful daemon facility named "Fecus Major" by the Death Guard.

Much of this work had been done by utilising the local resources, but now the sons of Mortarion needed resources the barren world did not have. Rather than risk an obvious supply column, the Death Guard instead launched a series of raids against General Konev's forces on the major world of Hexis. Here the Imperial Guard were still grimly holding on to the now useless territory gained in the pursuit of the neron device, but the Adeptus Mechanicus in particular valued the archeotech of the remaining ruins, so abandoning their positions was out of the question.

Within the Imperial facility the Mechanicum had assets needed by the Death Guard, so while the traitor astartes launched their raids, amongst the destruction small teams of cultists and hereteks worked to retrieve these valuable items, following the Death Guard on their expeditions. In order to disguise their intent, the astartes launched a significant assault on Konev's main defensive lines with the now lawless and uncommanded "chaos sector", appearing to be a new offensive in the ground war. the Imperial Guard were ground down in the attack, and one regiment was all but wiped out. The Death Guard however, did not take any territory, as this was not their intent. Instead, having won the battle, the traitor forces simply left, baffling Imperial command. Only months later would they realise that during the fighting, several precious resources had not only been destroyed, but purposefully removed. Meanwhile, the power of Fecus Major continued to increase.