Survival, day to day, is the most basic of needs: that which you require in order to move on to the next day. So it is in war. Once begun,even the greatest can not fully comprehend or contain it, for logic of war and actions within it can not be predicted, and so the great must lean on what is necessary for this moment. And necessity makes for unlikely bedfellows.
To attempt to comprehend the full picture of the events in that vast cataclysm is futile. The tide of blood and slaughter that overtook the Imperium can be mapped, itemised, logged, studied, analysed and perhaps even understood to a degree, but the categorisation of the war into theatres, and campaigns, is a fiction rather than dry fact. It is a the necessary elision of the storyteller. But this too, as the actions of the principal actors, all flow from what is necessary.
For those of the loyal Astartes that were betrayed by their own kin at Istvaan, necessity had already carried them so far from normality that their duty had become stretched beyond its limits. They would fight for retribution –for their brothers, lost to corruption or death –or for their desire to hold together a shattered empire –for their kinsman at their side, and no greater goal.
For many of those who fought had little, if any comprehension of the true stakes at hand. Many of the Mechanicum, who already held their biological partners in some contempt, an evolutionary rump, considered a civil war just that, and believed that once the winner emerged from a private struggle they would be able to resume their march towards knowledge, and cut off from the great directing intelligence born of unity of purpose, fell back on necessity.
It was necessity that linked them. I saw, and this is my testament.
I was there when the Graven Reach fell into apocalypse, when the Nebula burned brightly and the commanders wondered why.
I remember.
All games to be run using the 8th edition Heresy Project Rules. As a fan dex we should constantly assess and discuss an issues arising. Narrative and Open play, power level recommended. Ideally the players involved will discuss the mission beforehand and if the forces should be unbalanced play them that way –use ruses and stratagems to balance rather than simply points.
by Tom Taylor Bigg