Mordecai Secundus: East Front collapse

Having broken the back of the chaos defences on the East Front, and taking the Teleor mines, the Imperium knew it had to continue the pressure and not give the forces of the enemy any time to regroup. The rush across the Howl and the taking of the mines had been such a spectacular success, but by 1605.023M42 the Librian armoured regiments were in no position to continue the push, there were no astartes on hand, and the Novgorod Guard were fully committed against the elite forces of the Emerald Serpent on the Central, Southern and Northern sectors. General Kutuzov conducted many meetings looking for any available force, and eventually managed to persuade the Adeptus Mechanicus to force a passage to Malnath, and down the broken coast into the Jurukai mines.

As the Adeptus Mechanicus force deployed directly to the Teleor mines area from orbit, without any threat of aerial interdiction, intelligence came in that nurgle forces were reinforcing the tzeentch forces around Malnath. The Mechanicum responded by diverting a significant force in the shape of a Mechanicum Knights Household to Malnath to cover their other forces who moved south with little opposition into the Jurukai mines.

The main fighting erupted around the city itself, with tzeentch and nurgle daemons attempting to defend the city from the Mechanicum knights. Early success by the beasts of nurgle wiping out a Helverin was soon reversed, as an explosive chain reaction laid low a Soul Grinder, a Lord of Change and a Warglaive around the centre of the main fighting, allowing a Questoris Knight Styrix known as "Dreadnought" to break the chaos lines, banishing a horde of flamers of tzeentch and slaying a Great Unclean One in single combat.

With their main daemon leaders slain, the remaining lesser daemons became unstable and vanished from the area, leaving the battlefield, and the city of Malnath in the hands of the Imperium, the Knight Crusader named "Warspite" marching triumphantly into the city on 1705_023M42. With the East Front now completely in disarray, only the city Talo'Khar remained in chaos hands, and the chaos forces on the other fronts now found themselves almost completely out of supply. If Talo'khar fell, the war on Mordecai Secundus would be over.