~Siege of San Leor~
~804. M30~
~Segmentum Ultima~
~San Leor~
~Roboute, High King of Albion, Crown Prince of Mankind~
San Leor was a planet in the southern galaxy that would go on to become incredibly important in a future that he returned from. The birthplace of the 'adepta sororitas', more commonly known as the Sisters of Battle, military branch of the Ministorum. Technically the adepta sororitas was wider than just their sisters militant, but this wasn't currently relevant.
The Orders Militant were one of the great armies in service of mankind against the forces of chaos, xenos, and traitors of various stripes. They were fanatical in this aim, and such fanaticism lent itself well to their efforts through unconscious shaping of the warp around them via great amounts of ambient belief. The greatest of these 'miracles' was found in the 'Living Saints', people who are filled with enough faith-flavored warp energy to be elevated into almost-daemons who appeared on battlefields where they were needed most and disappeared once the battle was done.
There was some more technical explanation involved, but Roboute cared little for it. Because he had been struck down soon before the War of the Beast, and placed into stasis for ten-thousand years. During that time the Imperium turned from an empire built on reason and clear focus to a crumbling, rotten, husk of what it once was. It turned from the Imperial Truth, that there was no need for institutions of superstition and cultish behavior, to the Imperial Faith, the most powerful and widespread cult humanity had ever known.
A cult based around the worship of the Emperor's undying corpse, set upon the Golden Throne, and spirit bound to his bones lest the forces of chaos wash into the materium in endless numbers.
Roboute had very mixed feelings about the Imperial Faith, most of which were negative, some of which begrudgingly accepting, and one of which was entirely positive. In that era, in which he was constantly forced to manage the manifold inefficiencies and wasted supplies on sheer stupidity, there were a few silver linings to having soldiers who would obey unquestioningly and against any odds he had need of them.
He had been expecting the Astartes to be such, and they were for the most part as he had been used to. He hadn't been expecting to see such unquestioning loyalty from other branches of the Imperial forces.
In the brief century that he commanded them, the utter fanatics and worshipful maniacs that made up the imperial forces, all branches of such, had continually surprised him with their less obvious virtues.
Morale breaking was an issue he was forced to handle during the Great Crusade whenever he had to use mortal troopers. It's why he preferred to simply rely on his Legion when possible, his Astartes who knew no fear. The rule of thumb was typically one-third losses resulting in morale being broken for a given regiment of mortals.
Morale breaking in the once-future was a statistical anomaly. He had believed the reports to be manufactured when he first laid eyes upon such and realized the numbers weren't as he was used to. It was only when he received enough evidence of such that he began to look closer at the mortals he was forced to rely on, in all their bickering and worshiping and cultish behavior, all their screams of heresy and superstitions. All their hate and fear.
When he commanded them to march, the mortals of the dark future marched until they died. Regiments slaughtered to a man to buy time elsewhere was not only expected of them, but anticipated. Morale in excess even of what he was used to his legions displaying during the Great Crusade, unflinchingly fighting and dying despite the shoddy condition of everything around him.
That unnatural morale was, in no small part, the result of the Imperial Faith.
He had no wish to replicate the Imperial Faith, with all its rotting grandeur and blazing superstitions, but a strong internal propaganda department to replicate even a portion of that unwavering morale would be a great boon to his armies. That morale with proper tactics and equipment would give him an incredible military core.
All of that, however, was for long-future concerns.
Currently, San Leor was simply another feudal world under attack by Orks.
Divided into five primary continental landmasses, San Leor was another Terra-like world of temperate climate, mild temperature, abundant water, flora, and fauna. At least, it should be, from the scans of the planet it was currently exiting a global warming period and going into an ice age, but that shouldn't matter for another tens of thousands of years. What was important was that San Leor was significantly more hot and dry than he remembered it being.
Currently, one of its major land masses was smoking, a slowly expanding tide of orks emerging from the crash-landing of one of their crude fleets of Asteroid-Ships. He had wanted to arrive before the Orks landed, but a Dark Eldar attempted raid in the webway forced them to change course to restock before arriving here.
His ships didn't quite have the standards he would want them to yet, all of them hastily-repaired salvage from the many derelict shipyards he remembered being found in the Great Crusade. They would be good enough for now, while the primary shipyard systems were being repaired and put back into service after a purgation of the various mutants and xenos that infested them prior.
A fleet of hundreds of ships hovered over the world, and Roboute decided this would be an excellent learning opportunity for Aurelia, the sister he was most hesitant to let beyond his watchful gaze. Lorgar had never been particularly suited for war, even if Aurelia seemed overall more intrigued by combat than he remembered his brother being, Roboute wanted to make sure she could handle herself before she reached her tenth year.
Arms crossed, looking down at the world from a tilted flagship-bridge, the High King of Albion spoke out. Row after row of his genesoldiers, his Astartes, stood in attendance slightly below, his second batch of personal-trainees listening to him tutoring his sister in the war-arts. The first batch was all already working on educating their own batches in the same manner he had educated them. This form of distributed training was required to get Albion off the ground in a reasonable timeframe. "Aurelia, what are the strategic and tactical considerations when facing Orks?"
His sister had remained mostly unchanged from the day he retrieved her, only growing slightly in scale and frame in the past few years. Currently she was perhaps a handful of inches short of nine feet, and he didn't expect her to exceed that benchmark by much, if at all. She was roughly eye-level with his sternum, on par with Petra and Kassandra. This lined up with how tall he remembered his corresponding brothers being, in rough estimate.
Aurelia, clad in her own powermail plated with wraithbone, studiously answered him. "Orks are a xeno-species that functions as an invasive ecosystem, with the eponymous Orks actually only serving as the end-point of their biological hierarchy. When any Orkoid dies, they release fungal spores that can grow in nine-tenths of all known environments that can support life. These spores in turn grow into the various orkoids, starting with Squigs, then Snots, then Grots, then Orks. These Orkoids contain all facets of an ecosystem in a self-contained system, and are ruinous to existing ecosystems. It is vital to ensure these spores are destroyed to prevent orkoids from simply rising again within a few decades or centuries, with complete exterminations difficult but not impossible."
"The primary consideration when facing Orks is the subtle but potent effects of their latent psykery, a field that is naturally generated by each ork and works in tandem with fields from other orks to passively aid them in their objectives. This 'Waagh' field attempts to warp local materium in their subconscious favor, machines functioning better than they should, incidents of chance going in their favor more often than not, a resistance to external warp-effects and enemy psykery, and so on. Understanding the common memetic beliefs of the orks will allow one to predict what these passive warp effects will entail."
"Orks are led by a Warboss, the largest and strongest ork in any present group. Warbosses are determined through constant in-group competition, and when a Warbosses is defeated orks will often collapse into in-group competition to determine the next warboss. This is because the Warboss serves as the lynchpin that any given Waagh field typically revolves around, and his death will significantly weaken the orks until a new warboss is determined."
Aurelia paused for a moment, considering it further. "There are several sub-types of orks that develop vital talents to aid in the function of the overall group. Medicae, Technician, and Active-Psyker are the most easily confirmed variants. It is not confirmed where these subtypes gain their specialist knowledge, but it is suspected to be biologically-ingrained. There are also several sub-groups and internal factions of ork, and determining which one you face will often aid in determining what tactics should be used against it."
"Indeed." He smiled and nodded. "Now, the Ork asteroid-vessel has just recently landed, knowing this and knowing what forces we have available, what would you do in order to destroy the orks?"
She looked at the planet, then down to the strategic display from planetary-scans, and started to evaluate the state of things. Her lips pushed together in thought as she took in the relevant information, he allowed her the silence and time to think. Much better a plan you had time to consider than a plan that was rushed, and this was her final test in this regard that he would be giving her.
"The Waagh greatly increases chances of survival when chance is a factor, this is well-known and observable. Ortillery, while normally effective with orbital superiority, almost always performs significantly worse against Orks while their Waagh is in full strength. In order to ensure the success of our orbital weapons, we must either cause undue damage to the world or break the strength of the Waagh by slaying the Warboss. Only the most durable orks survive the landing of their asteroid-ships, which would include the Warboss."
She leaned forwards, and pointed at the asteroid-ship impact zone. "First, I would petition our Eldar allies to quarantine the airspace around the impact site using their psykery to prevent any spores from spreading, with our own aircraft acting as support against potential ork fliers. While this is occurring, the civilian population of the impact site would be evacuated and decontaminated while ground-level quarantines and firing lines are set up to prevent expansion of the ork waagh. Once the Warboss is located, a decapitation strike-force would be launched to execute him, with the killing field pushing forwards to execute the orks as they fight amongst themselves."
"Are you confident in this answer?" He asked her neutrally, not letting his tone indicate whether he agreed with it or not. She went over the plan again mentally, before looking up and firmly declaring.
"Yes."
Roboute smiled.
"It is a good answer." He responded, to which Aurelia beamed up at him. He continued to speak. "There are technologies that can act to clear the environment of ork spores, but currently we don't have access to them. The pattern will have to be retrieved or reverse-engineered at some point. For now, the psykery of our Eldar allies is more than sufficient, they have grown quite practiced in the art of dealing with orks specifically."
Himself now leaning over the strategic display, he pointed down and questioned again. "Now, looking at the map, where would you order the quarantines to be established?"
Aurelia considered it for a moment more, before pointing. "The orks have landed in a rather dry region surrounded by mountains cutting off easy access to the rest of the planet, with two areas to leave from. A more narrow section to the north-east, and an open stretch of plains and grasslands to the south-west. I'd concentrate most of our artillery and aircraft in the…" She glanced over to the part of the display that measured distances. "Few thousand miles of open plains, while establishing bunkers and fortifications in the much more narrow north-east, with secondary line fortifications being established as a fall-back point across the second row of the encircling mountain range."
Roboute found it difficult to worry too much about Aurelia's future as a commander. He was rather confident in her. Smile firmly on his face at this point, he continued his testing of her tactical ability for a good half-hour. He had already given the order to get ready for surface-deployment, they would need time to get everything ready.
In the meantime, he could make sure his sister would do fine without him.
—
He planned on breaking this primary fleet apart once it was up to his standards. The current battlefleet, the First Albion Fleet (a name Asarnil had groaned at when he first named it) revolved around the twelve kilometer command carrier, 'The Star Dragon', found within shipyard-system Endragiga and quickly brought to repair to serve this purpose. He planned on dividing his military into more standard units, similar to the Chapter-system for Astartes that he first devised several hundred years ago, but… more general.
A thousand soldiers, even if they were Astartes, was far too few per group. He had underestimated how tumultuous the galaxy and Imperium would grow without he or his brothers there to lead them. Ten-thousand Astartes might make a more reasonable subset, but the chain of command with regular troopers will be muddied and lead to conflicts of command.
He had seen such happen to ruinous effect in the dark future, he was going to take steps to avoid that with a unified chain of command. A group of perhaps… one-hundred thousand? No, at least a million, soldiers and everything that they would need in an active crusading fleet. Internal logistics, armored vehicles, aircraft, voidcraft, and elsewise.
He was thinking of calling them 'General Operations Battlegroups', or GOBs for short.
…
He hadn't worked out all the details yet. The name was functional for theoreticals for now.
Currently, however, he had one primary fleet and several dozen worlds sworn to him being developed. If his schedule stayed consistent, the first 'GOBs' would be established within the next five years.
Frowning and pretending that his frown was directed at the Orks below, he decided that he really needed to work on his naming sense.
"Arik, Kytan." He called out, bringing the attention of the two men to him. One clad in bronze, the other in gold, and both in red.
Arik had recovered tremendously from his initial state, now free of any shakes or injuries, and clad in the best weapons Roboute could manage, as were all of the Thunder Warriors. Wraithbone painted bronze and chiseled in whatever symbols the venerable warriors wished to take up, they had eventually settled on a split-face banner. One bearing a bird of prey backed by four bolts of lightning, the other bearing a sun impaled by a sword. Thunder Warriors, Star Slayers, and his mightiest warriors.
They had doubled in number, the rookies drawn from various soldiers under his banners 'that had potential' and elevated into newfound biochemical power. Said rookies were not permitted to bear the bird of prey and its four lightning bolts, only the stabbed sun. Kytan, continuing his duty but not technically under Roboute's command, had taken it upon himself to act as custodian for Arik until the Emperor recalled him to his side once more.
"Aye Lord?" Arik replied, speaking in the same lax manner that he had first met Roboute with, now with the undercurrent of respect in his tone.
"It will take time to evacuate the cities, and my main forces will need time to deploy. I need you to lead the Ork front on a chase to tie them up while they work. You do not need to engage, simply keep them from advancing." He did not bother to ask if Arik would reject this order, or if he thought he and his fellows were capable of this.
It was quite obvious what the answers for both questions were already.
"Not fight? And miss out on making a nice green wall?" Arik commented with murderous humor, reaching up to scratch his chin as he looked upon the world from above. "About how many will there be again, and how many hours do ya need?"
"Assume endless and at least twelve."
"Hm." Arik grunted in consideration, before leaning forwards and pointing at a spot. "Send us down here first, and have one of them pointy-ear teams ready to send us across the front as we need. We don't have any of those fancy jetbikes yet."
"Anything else?"
"Have 'em ready to push ammo through when we ask too. We'll probably need that." Arik reached down to put on his helmet again, the seal hissing shut as the mask slid over his face. His helmet was elaborately designed, bearing the cast-metal form of a grinning, monstrous face and an elaborate plume of blood-red. "Drinks too, we'll get thirsty from all the hard work yer having us do."
Roboute smiled. "Any particular kind?"
"The cheapest and shittiest beer you got, the boys have been taking all my pay when we play dice, so I need to remind them who's in charge." Arik grumbled with good humor.
Kytan commented on this, smooth voice calling through his own powered helm and auramite armor. His gun-glaive hefted over his pauldron and other hand on his hip. "It wouldn't be an issue if you simply stopped going all-in every time."
Arik gave an exaggerated huff of frustration. "Not go all in, he says. This is why we call you stuffy, you know?"
"Malum Caedo doesn't call me stuffy." Kytan responded calmly.
"The big blue king doesn't count, he doesn't call anyone stuffy, even when he rightly should." Arik quipped back.
Roboute snorted in good humor and waved them off, letting the two men walk out of the bridge and ready themselves for another deployment.
Looking at yet another world being attacked by orks, Roboute inhaled and exhaled, before reaching down and taking up his helmet. The third in a mere decade, he was going through armor entirely too fast. The first lost to chaos-magic, granted, but the other two simply didn't fit his growing frame any longer. Fortunately, he had capped at his new and inconvenient height, and he hasn't needed to commission yet another set of armor since.
The overall design of the helm was similar to before. A skull-mask integrated into a sloped armored helm and bevor, decorated with a golden laurel wreath and bladed crest. The bevor was another feature he'd like to integrate into the standard power armor designs of his empire, it housed the force-field generator that acted similarly to the Iron Halos (but not quite as effectively, this was more of a mass-production pattern).
He had no particular reason to be staring at the skull-face for as long as he was. He raised the helm and donned it once more, his armor hissing as the voidsuit-layer sealed close again.
Roboute let a grim smile overtake his face. Time to convince feudal humans that they needed to evacuate their cities in an orderly fashion towards a wall of guns and away from invading xenos.
Again.
It was always more of a hassle than it really should be.