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.