Praetorian's Bakka Hornet Mk3

The Bakka Hornet Mk3 was a Praetorian turbojet fighter-bomber aircraft. Originating as an early proposal for a "day fighter", the Mk1 first flew in DATE. Although it entered service one year later, the Hornet was plagued by so many structural and engine problems that an early Imperial review declared it unable to execute any aspect of its intended mission and considered canceling the program. The aircraft was not considered fully operational until the Mk3 model and the design matured only with the definitive Mk7 introduced later in the Yaisdrian war.





The Hornet became the Praetorian Air Corp primary strike aircraft during the Yaisdrian War, flying 86,408 sorties and destroying 60% of all ground targets Praetorian forces engaged in the war as well as eight Tau Tigershark Fighter-Bombers. Over half of the 7,524 Hornets produced served with Imperial Forces, and it was the first aircraft to fly with the newly formed Praetorian Air Corp after the Massacre at Big Toof River.

Brimlock Dragoon's Tornado Mk X

The Brimlock Tornado is a Yaisdra Campaign-era Imperial Guard turbojet-engine fighter aircraft. Developed for the Brimlock Dragoon Air Corp, the Tornado had distinctive twin booms and a central nacelle containing the cockpit and armament. Clustering all the armament in the nose was unusual and new in Brimlock Aircraft, which typically used wing-mounted guns with trajectories set up to crisscross at one or more points in a convergence zone. Nose-mounted guns did not suffer from having their useful ranges limited by pattern convergence, meaning that good pilots could shoot much farther. A Tornado could reliably hit targets at any range up to 1,000 yd (910 m), whereas the wing guns of other fighters were optimized for a specific range. The Tornado was used for interception, dive bombing, level bombing, ground attack, night fighting, photo reconnaissance radar and visual path-finding for bombers and evacuation missions, and extensively as a long-range-escort fighter when equipped with drop tanks under its wings.

Imperial Victory on Loebos!

In a desperate, near suicidal assault upon the onrushing planet of Loebos, the armies of the Imperium have averted the obliteration of the Konor System.

There was no sense in the Imperium of Man withholding forces from the assault upon Loebos, for if the corrupted death world remained on its relentless course, there would be little of the Konor System remaining to save. As the planet soared through space, trailing warp energies in its wake, the Imperial Navy launched every transport ship, cargo hulk and battle cruiser available, each vessel packed with soldiers and vehicles. This makeshift fleet made for low orbit, even as the vast Chaos armada escorting the death world blasted thousands out of the skies in an eruption of coruscating fireballs.

Though the first wave of the planetary assault was almost entirely obliterated by ground fire or torn part by circling clouds of Plague Drones, the second and third made landfall. Even as the loyalist troops rushed forth to pre-designated positions, the forests of Loebos came alive around them; barbed vines snatched screaming troopers away into the shadows, crystal-bladed trees impaled tanks and walkers, and pools of sizzling acid devoured landing ships whole. Yet, led onwards by the fearless champions of the Adeptus Astartes, the Imperial advance pushed through the lethal wilds, through vicious enemy fire and the worst that the maddened death world could throw at them. Soon, the great Death Guard fortresses of the Trifectum Putris were crumbling under a relentless firestorm of super-heavy tank shells.

At the Circle of Mehnauris, the raging centre of the world spirit’s agonised torment, a shimmering portal emerged and disgorged ranks of agile, graceful warriors and speeding grav-tanks. The Aeldari had returned to their shattered world, and they brought with them the righteous fury of vengeance. With sword and shuriken cannon they struck at the contamination that had so corrupted Loebos, shattering the foul icons of Chaos that littered its surface, and slaughtering any worshippers of the Dark Gods they laid eyes upon. Some craftworld warhosts, fueled by grief and horror at the fate of Loebos, took the opportunity to enact their revenge against the Imperium’s warriors, who had so long ago savaged this once pristine world. Yet the majority of their wrath was spared for the servants of the Dark Gods, from whom they enacted a bloody toll before vanishing back into the webway.

Meanwhile, strike teams of elite warriors breached the Chaos perimeter at the Decay of Hope, the largest of the deconstructed space hulks powering the death world’s unnatural momentum. They ventured deep into the warp-touched halls of that dread vessel, encountering mind-shattering nightmares and slavering, flyblown horrors with every step forward. At unthinkable cost, they advanced as far as the fusion core of the great engine array, where they manually detonated a cyclonic warhead. The resultant cataclysmic explosion enveloped the entire southern continent in a coruscating firestorm, setting off a series of chain reactions that ruptured the planetary core. As the remnant of the Imperial forces desperately fell back to evacuation points and made for high orbit upon the remaining transport ships, the tortured world of Loebos began to come apart. In an eruption of white light, the death world detonated. Huge chunks of the planet were sent rocketing through space, shredding Imperial and Chaos vessels alike, yet no neighbouring world was touched by the devastation. With the death of Loebos, the Konor System had been saved from utter ruin.

Aeldari Exodite world; Loebos

Loebos was once an Aeldari Exodite world, until an Imperial invasion slaughtered the populace and rendered its world spirit violently insane.

As the war in the Konor System reaches its crescendo, dire vox reports filter in from the far edge of the region. The death world of Loebos hurtles across space like an enormous wrecking ball, trailing a vast cloud of spore-ridden asteroids and noxious gases. This is Mortarion’s final gambit for the conquest of Konor – a world weaponised, powered by continent-sized engines and the fell power of the warp. If Loebos’ furious momentum is not stopped, the system-wide war still raging will be rendered irrelevant. The death world will barrel through the system like a plague comet, trailing corruption and death in its wake, infecting world after world with Nurgle’s pestilential gifts.

Long-range scans of the onrushing world have revealed the source of its momentum. Gargantuan warp-engine arrays cover Loebos’ southern continent, flaring with the power of a supernova. These are engines that once powered a number of the Death Guard’s vast space hulks, grotesque vessels from which Nurgle’s chosen launch their raids into Imperial space. Through some form of dread warpcraft, these enormous devices have been transferred to the surface of the death world, and their colossal power has wrenched Loebos out of its circumsolar orbit and sent it speeding towards the heart of Ultramar.

The only option left to Imperial high command is to order an all-out assault upon the world, in the hope of sabotaging the warp engines or destroying the planet itself with a well-placed cyclonic charge. Such a task will not be easy. The Death Guard have established towering fortresses across the only viable landing sites on Loebos, and holo-picts indicate that Chaos forces are stationed across the equatorial belt in unthinkable numbers.

Such a fearsome garrison would be terrible enough, but the planet of Loebos itself is perhaps the gravest threat to any who set foot upon its surface. Long ago the Imperium attempted to settle Loebos, only to discover that it was in fact an Aeldari world, populated by Exodite tribes. The fighting that followed was brutal, and the Aeldari population was massacred by regiments of heavy tanks and campaigns of intense firebombing. This wholesale slaughter sent Loebos’ tormented world spirit mad with grief and rage, and it lashed out at the invading humans with every weapon at its disposal. Loebos’ flora and fauna fell upon the Imperial forces. Regiments of infantry were torn apart by razor-thorn vines, and tanks were dragged into bubbling acidic swamps. Only a fraction of the Imperial invasion force escaped Loebos alive.

The corruption of Nurgle has only exacerbated the world’s vengeful insanity. Moats of foul corpse-water ridden with every toxin imaginable keep the Chaos defenders safe within their fortifications, but any troops fighting in the wilderness will have no such protection. Every available force must be directed towards Loebos immediately, for time runs short. The coming battle will be like nothing the Konor System has ever experienced, a nightmare of apocalyptic proportions. Thousands of vehicles and millions of warriors will be ground up in a murderous meat grinder, and the environment itself will seek to slaughter and devour the combatants, no matter their allegiance. Yet the Imperium must destroy Loebos, by whatever means and no matter the cost, lest the war for Konor ends in system-wide devastation.

TKS Exodite Showcase

Chaos Victory on Drenthal

Drenthal has been claimed in the name of the Ruinous Powers. Oceans turn blood-red as butchered corpses bob and float upon the surging tide, while Daemon-forged drakes whirl and screech overhead.

Smoking wreckage fell across Drenthal’s endless oceans like a meteor shower as the armies of Mankind sought to scour the legions of Chaos from the face of the planet. The enormous seasteads were aflame, ignited by daemonic fire and hammered relentlessly by traitor artillery. The virulent plagues of the Death Guard spread with horrifying speed amongst the remaining civilians. Imperial High Command swiftly came to a grim realisation – Drenthal could not be saved. Instead, it must be denied to Chaos. By overcharging the titanic fusion drill housed at Terebral Station Sigma, the Imperials would unleash a tectonic catastrophe upon their hated foes.

As the brutal fighting escalated in the cramped alleyways of floating hive cities, warriors splashed though tides of bilge water and spilt blood, past bloated corpses and shimmering promethium slicks. The sense of havoc and confusion was only exacerbated by the actions of a hidden cult of xenos-worshipping traitors that had long lain dormant amidst the vore-whale tanneries and promethium refineries of Drenthal. Forced to the surface by the war erupting all about them, these mutant killers slipped from sewer access hatches and bilge tunnels to fall upon any intruders, striking with swift and deadly force before retreating to their hidden lairs with purloined weapons and ammunition. Rumour spread of even worse horrors that crawled out of dark hiding holes to snatch away unsuspecting soldiers, dragging them screaming into the pitch blackness of the underwarrens.

The battle also raged across Drenthal’s scattered island archipelagos. Bikes and speeders roared across treacherous coral-dunes, the air echoing to the ceaseless chatter of pintle-mounted bolters. As vicious as the ground war had become, the battle in the air was just as deadly. The full might of the Aeronautica Imperialis was unleashed upon the Chaos invaders, and vast wings of Stormravens and Valkyries met with flying Daemon Engines in a murderous storm of flak-bursts and blossoming explosions.

At Terebral Station Sigma, the forces of Chaos launched furious assaults against the Imperial occupiers, while enginseers tried in vain to enact the machine-rituals necessary to sabotage the fusion drill, chanting desperate prayers to the Omnissiah as they worked. It was too late even for such desperate measures. A cabal of Chaos Sorcerers channelled the aura of savagery and carnage rippling across Drenthal, and tore open a wound in reality, spilling Daemons into the cavernous drill chamber. In an orgy of bloodshed, the enginseer work crews were slaughtered, and the destruction of Drenthal averted. The ocean world would make a fine staging point for the ongoing assault upon Ultramar.

Pethapus

Pethapus

An Aeronautica Campaign Expansion

Pethapus is an aquatic planet located just beyond Yaisdra IX and the system's triple suns, It was inhabited by the Pethapuians a race of short, engineering type beings who were regarded as an abhuman species that tended to keep to themselves.

Pethapus an Aquatic world is mostly water or swamp land, which makes it ideal for aquatic life. Unfortunately, for most races this makes it a planet that does not easily sustain life forms. Because of this it is one of the extreme planets in the Yasidra system which require additional technologies or racial abilities to be able to survive in this environment. Due to this most of the cities remain high in the skies above Pethapus, while many of its primary mining facilities are situated on or even below the ocean.

Pethapus is rich in one or more of the raw strategic materials required by the Imperium's manufactoria and Forge Worlds. The people of this mining world report to the offices of the Adeptus Arbites; Pethapuians live out their lives mining and transporting massive quantities of metallic ore, rock, minerals, frozen gases or some other useful, strategic or precious substance.

The Battle for Drenthal

A seemingly endless ocean covers Drenthal, dotted by island archipelagos and vast floating habitations. It is home to a number of large Aeronautica Imperialis training academies.

Situated near to the forge world of Konor, Drenthal is a vast blue orb ringed by burning orbital stations and warring battleships. The remnants of the Konor Defence Fleet are trapped in orbit around the planet, encircled by a Chaos armada that vomits more landing ships into the Drenthal’s upper atmosphere with every passing minute. The ocean world’s close proximity to Konor has made it an invaluable target for both Chaos and Imperial forces, as it is perfectly placed to stage counter-attacks and naval bombardments of that vital war zone. The planet’s orbital shipyards and gun platforms have already been atomized by macro-cannon fire and hull breaching missiles, but Drenthal’s planetside defences have not yet been overrun.

Due to its stable atmospherics, Drenthal has long been used as a training center by the Aeronautica Imperialis. Oceans cover almost ninety-five per cent of the planet’s surface, so the flight academies of the Imperial navy are contained upon colossal carriers, each as large as a small city and covered with landing strips, hangars and barracks. The rest of the world’s population exists upon floating metropolises known as seasteads, or else make their home upon scattered archipelagos of bleached shard-coral. Most of these seaborne habitations are now aflame, set alight by incendiary rockets and bombs unleashed by Chaos flyers.

In those seasteads that still stand, and across the island archipelagos, Imperial defenders fight savagely for every scrap of land, fending off massed aerial assaults and naval invasions. Imperial drop troops and Space Marine Inceptor Squads fearlessly hurl themselves into the fray, hurtling down from low orbit to smash into the enemy ranks. Bikes and speeders roar across banks of treacherous shard-coral, knifing into the flanks of advancing columns with bolters blazing. The ground battle is ferocious, but Drenthal’s terrain is ill-suited to massed formations of armour and infantry, and so the fiercest battles rage in the skies above. Hell-forged drakes screech and whirl above the devastation, snatching Imperial transports out of the sky, or swooping low to incinerate terrified soldiers and civilians. Every Aeronautica Imperialis aircraft available is in the air, launching endless sorties against these Daemon-forged monsters, supported by the Stormraven Gunships of the Adeptus Astartes.

Burning wreckage falls like rain across Drenthal. The Imperium, dreading the prospect of a Chaos victory, begins to prepare a doomsday strategy to deny the heretics their prize. Should all appear lost, Drenthal’s fusion-powered drill platforms, which mine vital fuel-crystals from beneath the planet’s crust, will be set to overcharge. The resultant geothermal trauma will tear Drenthal apart in a last act of spiteful defiance.