The Devouring of Calthingum – 03.025M42

By 03.025M42, the Tyranid menace in the Rifts of Hecate showed no sign of slowing. World after world had fallen to the merciless onslaught of Hive Fleet Poseidon, its tendrils sweeping through the region unchecked, leaving desolation and stripped planets in its wake. Though Imperial systems continued to hold out—thanks in part to hastily organised defences and renewed efforts by General Maximus—the war was far from favouring the Imperium.

One of the greatest demonstrations of Tyranid power came with their return to Calthingum, a world already reeling from prior xenos raids and internal strife. This time, the swarm descended in full force.

The Fall of Chaos on Calthingum

The planet, tenuously held by Chaos, saw its defenders—primarily the debased remnants of the World Eaters—utterly swept aside. A Daemon Prince, believed by some warp-scholars to be a manifestation or echo of Angron himself, led a frenzied defence. Accounts suggest the Khornate monstrosity managed to destroy a mere nine hormagaunts before being annihilated in spectacular fashion by the focused firepower of a Tyrannofex and Exocrine.

Despite manifesting once more during the battle, the daemon was again unable to engage the swarm meaningfully, vanishing back into the Immaterium, outpaced and overwhelmed by the biomass tide.

Necron Intervention

As the Tyranids scoured the landscape, their advance disturbed a previously unknown Necron tomb complex deep beneath Calthingum's surface. The ancient warriors rose in defence of their holdings, even unleashing a C’tan shard, whose malevolent power momentarily turned the tide. But the psychic might of the Hive Mind proved dominant. Zoanthropes, crackling with synaptic energy, obliterated the C’tan’s physical form and scattered its essence.

Faced with a foe beyond even their ancient reckoning, the Necrons withdrew, leaving behind only shattered constructs and desecrated tombs.

The Devouring Approaches Completion

By the end of the month, Chaos resistance had been completely annihilated, their strongholds reduced to mulch and ichor, and even the ancient Necron lords had abandoned their holdings. Only one force remained to resist the hive fleet: a band of Orks, seemingly drawn by the scale of the conflict and the chance for endless fighting.

Yet even they now stood alone against a force that had toppled gods, devoured kings, and now hungered for the world entire. The fate of Calthingum was all but sealed. Though Fecus Major, the Daemon World in orbit, still writhed with warp energies, it could not prevent the world below from being turned into raw biomass. The Tyranids had proven once again that no force—not daemon, not xenos, not machine—was immune to their hunger.

Calthingum would fall. It was only a matter of time.

The Setback at Vincennes: Dark Angels Ambushed on New Cerberex

For much of early 025M42, the Dark Angels had appeared an unstoppable force on New Cerberex. Launching raids and assaults from their fortified stronghold atop Mount Bone, the First Legion's operations had transitioned from guerrilla strikes to an all-out campaign of planetary reconquest. With only a single Astartes company, the Dark Angels had wrought devastation upon Tau installations, taking settlements such as Vincennes and dividing the xenos occupation zones.

The Tau Empire, still stretched thin across multiple fronts from Zadoc to the Hadron Expanse, had been unable to effectively respond. However, in late 03.025M42, the xenos struck back with unexpected precision and speed.

Utilising stealth technology, local Federacy intelligence assets, and mobile Hunter Cadre units, the Tau launched a coordinated counteroffensive against the Dark Angels' garrison at Vincennes. The attack, executed with uncharacteristic cunning, saw the Astartes force encircled and cut off from reinforcement or retreat. By the time the Dark Angels became aware of the trap, the noose had already closed.

The ensuing battle was fierce and unforgiving. Though the Dark Angels fought with grim resolve and inflicted heavy casualties upon their attackers, the xenos had the advantage in numbers, position, and tactical preparation. The entirety of the Vincennes garrison was eventually overrun, the city retaken by the Tau, and the Imperium’s momentum on New Cerberex abruptly halted.

This marked the first significant Imperial defeat on New Cerberex since the Dark Angels' campaign began, and raised serious questions within the Imperial command hierarchy. The notion that a single company of even the Emperor’s finest could single-handedly reconquer an entire world from the Tau-Federal occupation now seemed overly ambitious. Though Mount Bone remained inviolate, and the Dark Angels still possessed the capacity for future strikes, the days of unchecked advance had ended.

The Tau, emboldened by their success, began reinforcing positions in the central continent, wary now of further Imperial action. For the Imperium, and General Van Dorn, this reversal was a sobering reminder that while Astartes were the sword of the Emperor, even they could bleed and falter when outmatched by planning, subterfuge, and sheer attrition. The war for New Cerberex was far from over—and it would no longer be won by boldness alone.

The Battle for Zadoc: Chaos Strikes Back – 03.025M42

Following the strategic breakthrough by Commander Malkaor on Zadoc in 02.025M42, the Tau Empire appeared poised to push Chaos forces from the region entirely. Malkaor's lightning assault had shattered cultist defences and driven a wedge deep into enemy lines, allowing Tau forces to capture the cities of Antolovi and Guion, pressing southwards from their bridgehead near Chettalo. However, such success could not go unanswered.

By 03.025M42, the fractured forces of Chaos had regrouped, and launched a savage two-pronged counter-offensive, exploiting the fact that Malkaor's elite cadres were too few in number to consolidate all gains simultaneously.

To the south, the Death Guard, infamous for their relentless and attritional warfare, spearheaded an assault on the vital city of Chettalo. Their corrupted war engines and plague-ridden infantry surged into the streets, turning every thoroughfare into a fetid meat grinder. Though the Tau Fire Caste resisted with characteristic discipline and advanced technology, the xenos forces were worn down, suffering grievous casualties in the grinding urban conflict.

Meanwhile, to the north, across the open plains between the city belt and the Pera Sea, Chaos cultists enacted vile rituals to summon a horde of daemons dedicated to Khorne. The blood-maddened warp-spawn erupted from the immaterium in a tide of rage and brass, carving a path of destruction across Tau forward positions. The Tau hunter cadres, swift to respond, were ultimately able to eliminate the daemon incursion, but not before entire units were slaughtered, and much of their territory in the northern plains was lost.

By the end of 03.025M42, the northern continent of Zadoc had once again become a battleground of shifting fronts. Though the cities of Antolovi and Guion remained under Tau control, much of the surrounding terrain—particularly the plains north of Chettalo and the approaches to the Pera Sea—had fallen back into the hands of Chaos cults and daemonic forces.

Malkaor’s strategic brilliance had granted the Tau a moment of ascendancy, but the realities of the war in the Zadoc Subsector had reasserted themselves. The forces of Chaos, unpredictable and malign, remained a persistent blight, and now the Tau-Federal alliance would have to pay dearly to hold what they had claimed. The war for Zadoc was far from over, and every gain would have to be fought for again—in blood, fire, and suffering.

The Haven Campaign: Ork Counter-Offensive Reverses Imperial Gains

The long and grinding war for Haven, a battle-scarred world on the edge of the Rifts of Hecate, persisted into early 025M42 with no decisive resolution in sight. Locked in a brutal war of attrition between the Orks and the Imperium, the fighting across the planet’s single supercontinent had devolved into a nightmare of scattered trench lines, cratered battlefields, and perpetual offensives that rarely resulted in strategic breakthroughs.

Despite making modest gains in late 024M42, the forces under Crusade General Maximus remained chronically under-resourced. Compared to the major theatres of war in the Perseus Deeps, the Hadron Expanse continued to be treated by the Imperial High Command as a secondary front, a relative backwater even as the Tyranid threat steadily increased in the region.

Nevertheless, Maximus had managed to maintain a tenuous grip on two key bastions of Imperial presence in the region—Ergura’s Fall in the Hecate Gap, and the fortified zones on Haven itself. While Ergura’s Fall remained securely under Imperial control, the frontlines on Haven had long since settled into a grinding stalemate, with Imperial forces and Ork warbands locked in a seemingly endless cycle of attack and counter-attack.

In 03.025M42, the precarious balance on Haven was shattered when the Orks launched a massive offensive, throwing their full might against the Imperial trench networks and fortified positions. The Imperial Knights, long the backbone of Maximus’ defensive doctrine, were deployed in force to blunt the xenos onslaught. In the ensuing battle, many of these noble war machines were destroyed in brutal close-quarters fighting, as the Orks overwhelmed their positions with brute strength and sheer numbers.

With the Knights eliminated and reinforcements lacking, the Imperial lines collapsed, and the Orks were able to reclaim the hard-won territory lost in 024M42, undoing months of bloody campaigning in a matter of days. By the end of the offensive, the situation had largely reverted to the stagnant frontlines that had characterised the earlier years of the campaign.

The war on Haven had returned to a tense, static stalemate, with both sides heavily entrenched and exhausted from ceaseless combat. Though the Imperial crusade under General Maximus continued, it remained starved of resources, its efforts overshadowed by grander battles elsewhere in the sector. Yet Haven remained strategically vital, a foothold in the Rifts of Hecate, and a bastion that the Imperium could ill afford to lose.

For now, the world teetered on a knife edge, with neither side able to deliver a final blow. As 025M42 progressed, the question remained: would Haven remain a war of inches, or would some new force—be it Tyranid, Ork, or Imperial—shift the balance at last?