Marcharius IX Campaign: Curtain Call

"I dont care about that damned planet,I only care that the heads of each and every [Chaos] Lord there is on a [expletive] pike" - Uriel Bejz (Renegade Marine, once of the Minotaur's chapter 999 M41)

"I commend them, the Gue'La. Not for their tenacity, not for their ferocity nor for their cunning. It is for their honor that I now have great respect for them. Even when drawn down to a man, even when death was inevitable, they still fought us with all they had, instead of cowering or surrendering like dogs. When faced against overwhelming odds, they stood strong, even when scores fell. These...humans...they will forever have my respect." -  Shas'O BrightSun (T'Kain Sept, Marcharius IX reclamation Force M41)

Today ends our groups Marcharius IX Table top Campaign. Marcharius IX first appeared in our Dark Heresy game as a world on the edge of the Imperium. Located between Tau Space and the Imperium, this world would come to have drastic consequences for the party.

The party first encounter Marcharius IX in their pursuit of the Rogue Trader Josiah. Josiah had been spreading chaos tainted wheat across the imperium for years, having been chased by Inquisitor Herodotus and his warband. Bo Terran, the charismatic interrogator and de facto leader of the party, unintentionally brought the party to the world after getting captured and pulled into in a webway with eldar pirates. What the party found was a world high in tension. Tau and Humans living together in tense truce. After reestablishing contact, they found that the local Governor of the world had made a trade deal with Josiah in order to sell the world's resources to chaos in exchange for immortality. It was discovered that Bubo the plague father and Kordan of the Thousand Sons would soon arrive. Bubo with the Rogue trader, and Kordan in pursuit of Bubo. The party only barely escaped as the world fell to chaos around them. Having made it out alive, the party called upon the Marines of the Dorn's Raiders and "The Coalition", a mass gathering of Space Marines, Guardsmen, and other factions of the imperium in order to retake Marcharius IX. When the party returned to Marcharius, they had one goal. Kill the 2 chaos lords. While Bubo was killed in the fighting, many members of the Coalition were lost. Unable to stop the imperium, Kordan summoned a warp storm and consumed the planet in the warp. The party was only barely able to escape having suffered major losses in friendly Non player characters and major damage to themselves. The Coalition along with the Dorn's Raiders took massive causalities in the fighting as well.

100 years passed......

This is where the table top campaign took off. After 31 days in May, each of the former PCs and GM recorded a total of 20 games played.  The armies were as followed:  Jon: Detachment D-44 (Imperium), Jerry: T'Kain Sep (Tau), Greg: Dorn's Raiders (Space Marines) and Tallarn (Imperial Guard), Kurtis: 186th Death Korp (Imperial Guard) and Chaos Marines (Night Lords) , and Matt: Brother Hood of Ferrus (Iron Hands Space Marines).

 The Imperium had a 1:4 win loss ratio.  The Tau had a 1:1 win loss ratio and chaos had a 0:0 ratio. The height of the campaign was when the Dark mech stole a former PC's power lance that they had left behind for the survivors. What chaos wants with the Power lance is a story that will be told when Wrath and Glory (the new 40k RPG) releases this June This is not the last we have heard of Marcharius IX. In the mean time, the Tau of the T'Kain Sept had reclaimed the world in the name of the Tau Empire. What they found was horrific and barbaric......

Post Campagin Patch for Detachment D-44

The last of the Gue'la lay dead in a pile. The firefight had been tough and many shas'la of the T'kain sept lay dead near where the Gue'la tank had blasted their position. After a month of fighting, the human world, once known as Marcharius IX had been reclaimed by the Tau Empire. The Etherals wanted to cleanse the world of all chaos taint and make it into a new sept world. One that would be a shining example to the rest of the Empire. However Commander Brightsun was not so sure. Having seen the horrors of the landscape and the chaotic influences that had ravaged this world for so long, Bright sun was sure that no tau citizen could ever truly consider this a home. The surviving human forces had either been scattered or died en masse. As for the chaos forces, they had disappeared as quickly as they had come. Many of the Imperiums soldiers had escaped and command reported that they had gotten back to the Imperium lines. Entire parts of the world burned. The Imperium had not left quietly and Brightsun believed they would back someday. Among the survivors had been found humans as old as 150 years old. Many Earth Caste believed this was not natural for the human life span and questions had been asked of those who had been found. One of them, a young human had responded that the warp had kept them alive to live their own personal hells. Many Earth caste scientist took this be the ramblings of a insane human.Whatever the case was, there was still work to be done. The twisted barren landscape was still full of daemon creatures and resistance cells. Whether or not the world could ever  be fully reclaimed Brightsun did not know. Taking a last look at the deadpile of tau warriors Bright sun activated his XV-8 and flew off to find another battle.

Posted in: 2018, 40k, 8th, adeptus mechanicus, battle report, campagin, Dakka Dakka, dark heresy, dramatis personae, edition, Imperial, Imperial Guard, inquistor, Marcharius, marines, Tau, Wargaming, Warhammer, wrath and glory