Chaos forces had taken Vanitor!

Vanitor writhes with corruption, and the roiling warp storms that ravage its surface bring vast hosts of Daemons into reality. The Imperium’s vital astropathic relay now acts as a beacon to the creatures of the warp.

Chaos forces had taken Vanitor early in the war for the Konor System, slaughtering its unprepared Imperial defenders with ease. By maintaining the furious momentum of their planetary assaults, the followers of the Dark Gods had managed to keep their foe staggered and confused, and unaware of the potential cataclysm that was brewing upon the isolated wilderness world. Yet the growing psychic disruption caused by its tormented choir of astropaths could not be masked for long. Finally freed from the apocalyptic wasteland of fire-ravaged Nethamus, Imperial fleets made for Vanitor at top speed.

Having been unsuccessful in their attempts to starve the Konor System into submission by destroying Nethamus’ food production capability, it was vital for the Chaos forces to maintain control of Vanitor and its twisted psychic beacon. Vast armies of Heretic Astartes, mortal cultists and corrupted war machines flocked to the planet, establishing a fearsome network of fortifications and killing zones. Led by the Daemon hunters of the Grey Knights, the Imperial armies crashed into these defences, blasting them apart with ceaseless barrages of bunker-breaking artillery, and relentless assaults by infantry and towering war machines. The loyalists were buoyed by their victory upon Nethamus, and were reinforced and well supplied. The sheer sledgehammer might of the Astra Militarum’s tank regiments ground millions of cultist defenders to bloody paste beneath their relentless advance, and even the elite Heretic Astartes were sorely pressed by the sheer ferocity of the attack. It was only the endless seeping of daemonic entities into reality, drawn like sharks to blood by the power of Vanitor’s psychic emanations, that sealed the doom of the Imperial forces.

Slowly, inevitably, the momentum of the Imperial assault was reversed, until its armies were in full retreat. Trapped between the murderous mountain forts and tides of Daemons sweeping in from warp breaches across the plains of Vanitor, the Imperials were soon surrounded. The subsequent carnage was appalling, as the hungry denizens of the warp glutted their eternal hunger upon mortal flesh. Less than half of the invasion force escaped alive. As the tortured screams of the astropathic choir reached a piercing crescendo, the skies above Vanitor split apart like an open wound.