Rays of early morning light spilled over the peaks of a nameless mountain range, visiting their wrath upon a sun-bleached landscape. Down below, parched badlands stretched away to the south, the rolling hills devoid of all but the hardiest of vegetation. In the flatlands beneath the mountains, a sprawling metropolis sprouted from the pale beige soil, stretching outward in a stippled crescent into the hilly expanse. Many of the buildings were a squat and ramshackle affair, all prefab arrangements augmented with battered industrial surplus. The innermost civic and economic center sported dark, sleek skyscrapers cast in a classic imperial gothic design, going to impressive lengths to display the superiority of their inhabitants. There was order here, a pleasing hierarchy of man-made peaks whose metallic trimmings gleamed in the breaking dawn. The outer districts, the majority of the city, plainly lacked the order of the center: streets ran in maddening configurations, looping back upon themselves or terminating abruptly in dilapidated hab blocks. As the city grew ever further past its center, the neighborhoods lost their claustrophobic air. At the outskirts, a citizen could breathe and take better stock of their surroundings.
Life had never been easy in the industrial metropolis and de facto capitol of Scillion's Reach. The bountiful ore and mineral deposits beneath the mountains drew industry and civilization to Walara VII, a resource-rich moon orbiting a turbulent gas giant of even greater value. Chief among the industrial sites were the towering, octagonal mass-conveyance tunnels that studded the rocky foothills. Tall enough to comfortably accommodate a scout Titan, they dominated the northern districts of Scillion's Reach, funneling the immense deposits of raw material bound for smelteries and manufactories within the city. The rewards had been endless for the brazen industry tycoons that first laid claims on these mountains and their subterranean wealth – all thanks to the explorators whose expeditions they had financially backed. The downtrodden millions that called Scillion's Reach home however, those who toiled away endlessly in the dark beneath the world's surface, saw little of the splendor aside from an increasingly aggressive expansion of industry.
Now, as with many dark corners of the Imperium, war had come to Walara VII. Rebellion, sedition, and horrific atrocities boiled up out of the ground itself, catching the nominal security forces utterly unprepared. The populace had gone from impoverished and reluctantly loyal citizens to slavering, murderous lunatics overnight, and their handiwork showed all across the moon's surface. The towering high-rises and skyscrapers of Scillion's Reach now belched black smoke from artillery bombardments and terroristic attacks, and the outermost districts had been pounded into rubble by brutal urban warfare. The Adeptus Arbites and industry-backed militias were overwhelmed by an enemy as nameless as the mountains that loomed over the city. The few survivors were driven out into the badlands, never to be seen or heard from again.
Once the local forces were routed, a line of demarcation was quickly erected at the edges of the city. In 50-meter intervals around the city limits, tall metal posts were hoisted into place, each bearing a cluster of loyalist corpses strung up by their feet and left to rot. The bodies were stripped bare, leaving the mutilated remains as food for carrion birds, which now swarmed at the corpse-posts and filled the air with incessant cawing. All around the war-torn city, the citizens raised the moldering banners of their dark masters: vile sigils that stung the eyes and turned the stomach, and carried the stench of rot and putrefaction on the breeze.
Even now, at this early hour, the sounds of pitched battle filled the streets, scattering the scavenging corvids in places as it grew too near for comfort. Bright flashes and deafening blasts reflected off the mountains, and gouts of dust and rubble that heaved themselves high into the air, the results of tightly coordinated artillery strikes. The crackle of small arms fire ripped through the rubble-heaped avenues and rail lines that laced the city, punctuated with the thumps of larger, armored combat. The taint of the Archenemy had infected Scillion's reach, and its faithful adherents turned their rapacious energies to exploiting the mineral riches below, after thoroughly butchering their competition. With the original masters of this world long-since gutted and picked clean by the carrion birds, the stout resistance that now gripped the city heralded a newcomer to this conflict:
The forces of the Imperial Guard.