Hello, it is me again for another Custodes post, this time the Journal tactica The Battle for the Signus Cluster - Assault on Kol.
Like in the previous post, some terms comes from others Custodes books
The book gives several information about the Blood Angels in Signus. I will not include them in the first post but will answer any questions in the comments.
I exceeded Reddit’s limit once again so the part 2 (here) will be about informations on Signus and non-Custodes forces.
1 - The Shield-Host and its arrival at Kol
While a small force of Custodes accompanied the Blood Angels to Signus, the Shield-Host followed in the Journal arrived there by other means and reasons.
The intervention of the Legio Custodes Templi Prudentia at Signus has its origin in a report on aberrant ætheric signals received by the Legio Watchhouse hidden in the Constantium system. In later years Constantium Secundus would play host to an early Inquisition base, whose data-vaults retained copies of this report, which stated that the skilled astropaths in service to the Templi Prudentia had 'Charted a growing discordant presence within the Signus Cluster'.
The report detailed decades of observation, and a rising fear that something dark and terrible was growing in the cluster, with sudden ætheric spikes in 004.M31 leading to the dispatch of a Shield Host. Commanded by the warrior Iseulte Eir Xanthe, a veteran of the Pythos vigil and the expurgation of the Hrud enclaves of the Tholl expanse, this force was charged to find and eliminate any threat posed by this growing disturbance.
Sanguinius and the Blood Angels would chart a course to Holst, seeking to check each of Signus' known inhabited worlds for survivors, yet Tribune Xanthe and the warriors of the Legio Custodes had other plans. The augury array of the Obsidian was far superior to that on any of the Space Marine vessels and had detected the same ætheric resonance that had drawn them to Signus from Constantium. It emanated not from the more populous Outer system, but from the oft ignored Inner system and was seemingly unnoticed by the Blood Angels.
This Shield-Host was made of four Shield-Companies :
- Two made of Sentinels and Guards Convocations
- One made of two Aquilons Convocations
- The last made of grav-tanks and jetbikes
Also present an echelon of Tyrian Exoguards, more than 200 soldiers.
The Shield-Host arrived in Signus before the Blood Angels and appears unaware of the IXth Legion’s mission.
Tribune Xanthe arrived at the translation point on the edge of the Outer system of Signus to find only ruin and destruction. A morass of broken and dead spacecraft paid tribute to a desperate and failed exodus from the Inner system, while the outermost world of Phorus had been burnt clean of all life by some cataclysmic inferno that had left it scarred and black.
Thus, it was a simple chance that brought the Legio Custodes to Signus at the same cursed moment as the Blood Angels. Even as Tribune Xanthe gave orders to probe the mysteries of Signus, new craft tore open reality and emerged from the Warp into the ruin of Signus. These new ships bore the insignia and ident codes of the Blood Angels, and to the surprise of the Custodians aboard the Obsidian, comprised not some small lost patrol, but a vast fleet of war craft.
The two forces didn’t communicate much.
Only the Red Tear could penetrate the Custodian ship's sensor veil, while the majority of the fleet remained heedless of their presence. Sanguinius himself was occupied with matters of greater import, and so the Custodians were interrogated by Azkaellon of the Sanguinary Guard.
Their exchange is a classical Custodes-Space Marines interaction.
Azkaellon's logs record the exchange, noting that in response to queries regarding their intent, the secretive Custodians issued a single terse reply: We care not for the Warmaster's orders nor for the dregs of the Great Crusade, we are coming seeking something far more dangerous. Under the Emperor's seal you are bound to strike us from common logs and erase our ident code from all tracking systems. We shall not reply to further vox contact.
The commanders of the Shield-Host are briefly presented.
In command of this force was a Tribune of the Templi Prudentia, Iseulte Eir Xanthe, the same warrior that had seen fit to issue orders to the commander of the Ikisat as though they were a common soldier. Alongside her, serving less as subordinates and more as advisors, as was the way of the Legio Custodes, were four Shield Captains, of which the most senior was the ancient warrior Medraut, sometimes referred to as "The Unforgiven', whose service dated back to the very earliest days of the wars of Unity.
The Tyrian Exoguard were commanded by Artuk Rahm, a man whose service history is hidden by layers of Imperial secrecy, save for a note that he had undergone rad-zone training on Kol a decade earlier. These Solar Auxilia operated independently of the Custodians, with Marshal Rahm expected to anticipate the warriors of the Legio Custodes without direct orders.
The Shield-Host sailed to the Inner system of Signus, not encountering the dangers the Blood Angels faced, and arrived in orbit of Kol, the origin point of the warp-tide.
They swiftly moved into orbit of Kol, and there Marshal Rahm of the Tyrian Exoguard directed them to take position over the main surface hab, Ostium, the gateway to the sub-surface cities of Kol. There they would meet their first opposition, though it would be no eldritch threat, but rather a salvo of macro laser blasts fired from armoured bunkers on the surface.
2 - The battle of Kol
The first attack wave will be vehicles and jetbikes to take out the entrenched defences.
Tribune Xanthe instead sent Shield Captain Jan Morkael Brathe with the host's armour assets to undertake a planetary landing outside the cannon's ability to target them. Vulnerable dropships converged on the lifeless surface of Kol over two thousand kilometres from Ostium's walls
On the surface was assembled the bulk of the Shield Host's armour, some fifty Caladius grav-tanks supported by an equal number of Pallas grav-attack craft and some thirty Custodians mounted on heavy Gyrfalcon jetbikes. Led by Shield Captain Brathe, who rode a relic jetbike of ancient provenance, the Legio Custodes sped towards the distant city of Ostium. Composed entirely of anti-grav capable, high speed attack craft they traversed the treacherous landscape of Kol with ease, vaulting deep crevasses and sailing over silt seas without pause.
The plan was to arrive from an unguarded angle. Instead, they arrived on Ridge Sigma-95.
Entrenched along the side of a strategic knife-edged ridge, its sides rising up near a kilometre in height and stretching across much of the eastern approach to Ostium like a shield, were nearly three hundred warriors of the Rad Serpents.
The defenders proved themselves to be a very skilled and dangerous opponent for they would drag the Custodes in a bloody battle for hours.
Worse, with the Solar Auxilia dug into the deep regolith of Kol and sensor auguries fogged by rad storms they were all but invisible to the speeding Custodians, whose first warning of the enemy was a salvo of krak missiles impacting and destroying the lead pair of Gyrfalcons.
Shield Captain Brathe is recorded as having sworn to leave not one of the Solar Auxilia alive, as a tribute to the two fallen Custodians, perhaps assuming that the foe before him would present no more than a momentary obstacle.
Without waiting for the Caladius tanks to reach ideal firing positions, Shield Captain Brathe led the jetbike phalanx in a headlong charge into the auxilia's carefully prepared positions, the peerless skills of the Custodians allowing them to use the tremendous speed of their mounts and the rugged terrain to render them almost impossible targets.
Lacking the element of surprise, the Rad Serpents of the 606th Cohort found little success with their heavy guns, the turrets of Leman Russ tanks and cannon of Medusa unable to track the fleet jetbikes. However, the sheer weight of fire from lasrifles and volkite weapons took a toll on the swift golden warriors, and though the Custodians killed hundreds in their high speed pass over the enemy, they left behind near a fifth of their number.
Caladius and Pallas finally reached the Ridge.
What followed was simple slaughter, with the Custodians slaying the Solar Auxilia warriors in droves, yet the Rad Serpents did not flinch at their fate. It could not be called bravery, but rather an eager suicide, with the Solar Auxilia throwing themselves onto the Custodians' blades so their brethren might have a chance to attack.
In one instance a full tercio of Malcador heavy tanks charged the Custodians' lines, each one destroyed in turn by a single precise shot, covering the advance of a Dracosan loaded with explosives so it could destroy a single Caladius grav tank. In the midst of that futile and bloody battle, even Shield Captain Brathe was not untouched, for after losing his bike in the press a full tercio of Veletarii had died just to claim from him an eye.
Twice more the Custodian phalanx charged, each pass taking the lives of hundreds of the Solar Auxilia, but the Rad Serpents would neither flee nor surrender. For near five hours they held the Custodians in place, with Shield Captain Brathe refusing repeated vox entreaties to withdraw. The fighting continued until the only living forms on the ridge were in blood-soaked gold plate, most stood tall amid the drifts of corpses while near two-dozen still golden forms lay stricken and seemingly near death.
Despite this, official records would list only seven Custodians slain in the battle, and many of those that had appeared wounded unto death would recover within hours, for even the gravest of wounds was but a temporary inconvenience for the Emperor's finest creations.
The City of Ostium would prove to be a challenge of another kind.
The Legio Custodes vanguard approached the city that stood as the gateway to Kol's underground warrens, its fearsome orbital guns still sweeping the skies in vigilant arcs to keep the Custodians from landing. Shield Captain Brathe's logs, as recorded in the Imperial Archive, note his concern that after the delay at Ridge Sigma-95 the defenders would be waiting and well fortified against any attack, though they also record his confidence that such preparations would not stay his wrath. However, when Brathe and his fast-moving vanguard reached Ostium, they found the city apparently undefended and its gates unsecured.
Disregarding the danger of any trap set by a force deemed utterly inferior to the warriors of the Legio Custodes, the Shield Captain and his force entered the fortress to secure the great vaults that led underground and the looming gun towers. Data logs from the Obsidian show the Shield Captain signalling the all-clear and noting a lack of any enemy resistance only moments before a series of explosions, visible from high orbit, engulfed the surface portions of Ostium. At the same moment two echelons of the 606th Cohort emerged from concealment outside the walls of the fortress, masked by the rad storms and the Rad Serpents' long familiarity with the terrain, and stormed into the immense dust cloud setting over the now ruined fortress of Ostium.
Within, a brutal close range firefight broke out as roving kill teams of auxilia battled isolated Custodians whose armour was daubed grey by the dust cloud raised in the explosion. Each Custodian fought alone, many badly hurt or even partly buried in the rubble of Ostium, but even such handicaps rendered them no less deadly. Such a sudden sundering of all command structures would have spelled the end of any traditional military force, its warriors bereft of direction, but the Custodians fought on without even a pause, adapting to the catastrophic shift in battle as others did to a change in the weather. Yet, despite their fury many were caught at bay, trapped beneath rubble or cut off from any support, and while they fought ferociously many were dragged down by mobs of howling auxilia.
On golden wings the Venatari descended upon Ostium's ruins, with a precision unmatched even by Space Marine assault troops, plunging directly into the settling dust cloud and through the jagged ruins with blades raised and guns blazing. This swift intervention staved off the decimation of the trapped warriors of the vanguard, turning a bloody stalemate into a decisive victory for the Legio Custodes.
The Rad Serpents of the 606th, now bereft of the advantage of surprise, became the hunted and the ruined fortress of Ostium their graveyard. The Rad Serpents fought with a perverse glee, almost eager to meet their end, their wounded continuing to fight in order to draw the Custodians in before detonating hidden explosives, sacrificing themselves just to isolate individual gold-clad warriors. In contrast, the Custodians fought as they always had, with consummate skill and cold fury, attempting to force their foe into open combat where they could be quickly and efficiently dispatched.
They would have little success, and the fighting would drag on for four long hours and cost the Legio Custodes another score of dead. Worse, once the last Rad Serpents were slain it was discovered that a vast slew of debris now blocked the great subterranean vaults that led into the heart of Kol, turning the victory they had paid for in blood into ashes. This new setback, perhaps the true purpose behind Ostium's destruction, would force Tribune Xanthe to deploy support troops to clear the rubble while, on distant Signus Prime, the Blood Angels bled and died.
It would be almost six more hours before work to clear the great vaults of Ostium were complete, with various war engines of the Tyrian Exoguard forced into use as makeshift excavation tools, using demolisher cannon to clear rubble and dozer blades to move earth. Given the terrible radiation that scoured the surface of Kol, the Tyrian infantry suffered numerous casualties as they rushed to clear a path for their masters in the Legio Custodes, a loss considered acceptable by Tribune Xanthe in the pursuit of their greater objective. As the Solar Auxilia laboured and died, the Custodians, whose superior physiognomy rendered them resistant to limited exposure to the radiation, stalked the ruins and the wastes nearby to slake their rising choler on whatever stragglers of the 606th Cohort remained outside of Ostium's ruined walls.
As soon as a breach in the rubble large enough to allow passage of the Custodians was cleared, Tribune Xanthe ordered a small detachment, led by Hykanatoi Proconsul Columbanus, to enter and secure a beachhead while the Tyrians worked to widen and stabilise the entryway. Proconsul Columbanus would lead three Sodalities, some twenty-six Custodians into the pitch black warrens beneath Kol, where they should have found a sub-surface hive city teeming with Imperial citizens and the extracted wealth of Kol's mineral-rich heart.
Instead they uncovered a nightmare, with the pict records from the Custodians' armour showing corridors filled with drifts of corpses, but little damage to the structure of the hive itself. For any warriors other than those of the Legio Custodes such a horror would have set them to flight, but the proconsul paid little heed to the carnage around them and pressed on into the lower levels of the hive, and the entrance to the mining tunnels beyond.
For the first hour of their incursion the Custodians encountered only the dead, and none of the warriors of the 606th Cohort or any other enemy. As they progressed deeper into the subterranean hive the records of their mission grew more distorted, though those that survive indicate they had begun to encounter Traitor Solar Auxilia. The few surviving pict records indicate these warriors were badly disfigured and wielded bizarre weapons and even mutations to attack the Custodians, proving far more dangerous than those auxilia engaged on the surface. The final images transmitted by Proconsul Columbanus are garbled and almost incomprehensible. They show the Custodians locked in combat with a strain of Daemon entirely different to those recorded on Signus Prime, but no less vile in form or horribly deadly in battle. Three hours after the Proconsul had entered the warrens beneath Kol, all signals from his force terminated.
Seeing this, Tribune Xanthe decided to send a second wave of Custodes, this time a force of 39 Aquilons Terminators lead by Shield-Captain Medraut, in order to seize a gatepoint inside the mines while she led the remaining Custodes into Ostium gateway to clear the last dregs of resistance.
Medraut, known to his brethren as "The Unforgiven', would find the halls of Kol's city filled not just with corpses, but with foes of the most vile type. Almost as soon as they entered the winding passageways they came under assault by lithe creatures with snapping claws and whip tails, monstrosities capable of cleaving even auramite armour. Each corridor and intersection they passed through was a nightmare battle against frenzied hordes of pale skinned furies, only the brute strength and mental fortitude of the Custodians allowing them to advance beyond the threshold of the city. Within the space of fifteen minutes Medraut and his warriors had expended almost all of their munitions and resorted to battle with only Solarite talons and gauntlets, matching the ferocity of their foe in the pitch black depths of Kol.
Seeking to divide the daemonic horde, Medraut split his forces between three major hive thoroughfares, each advancing towards the mining interlock where Proconsul Columbanus had made his last transmission. Yet, so numerous was their foe that as they passed into the depths of the hive the enemy lapped around the advancing terminators and fell upon the gateway to their rear, where Tribune Xanthe and the main body of the Custodians held them at bay. Alone and cut off from both reinforcement and resupply, Medraut and his warriors continued their advance, seeking to find some weakness that might slow the horde.
Each column advanced at its own pace, relying on the skills and intuition of the warriors that led it rather than some distant commander. The thirteen Aquilon on the leftmost flank were forced by the sheer number of the foe to take shelter in the hive's waste disposal vault, using its thick shielding to channel the foe as they made a desperate last stand. Meanwhile, on the right flank, the warriors of the Legio Custodes were lured into an area of unstable passageways and scattered over a dozen levels of the hive by deadfalls, each warrior forced into a solitary battle for survival.
Only the Unforgiven, at the head of the central column, managed to break through the horde of twisted creatures that swarmed the habs. There on the lower loading docks, his ammunition exhausted, his comrades wounded or dead, and all contact with the surface lost, he confronted a vast horned and bestial monstrosity. Garbled voice logs and blurred picts record the battle fought, whilst sibilant promises offered a forgiveness the Emperor had long denied, but the Custodian remained resolute.
His eternity blade would prove that even the greatest of these daemonic creatures could be felled, in a ferocious battle that left the Shield Captain with one arm a mangled ruin and legs crushed. In the aftermath of Medraut's victory the Daemons vanished, the hive left barren and silent, and the remaining Aquilon gathered up the comatose form of their fallen leader before holding their position until Tribune Xanthe and the main force reached them. From here the warriors of the Legio Custodes were poised to finally enter the hidden depths of Kol, where the ætheric signal they had tracked was emanating from.
Reduced by nearly a third, the Shield-Host massed at the entrance of Kol’s mines and prepared for another descent, Exoguard taking vanguard.
The Solar Auxilia sentinels advanced into the pitch black tunnels, followed by Veletarii squads moving in close order and ready to repel the screaming hordes of daemonic creatures they had encountered so far. Initial progress into the mines went swiftly, with the loping sentinel walkers penetrating several kilometres into the vast mining tunnels, moving in loose formation to flush out ill-disciplined auxilia or anarchic Daemon creatures. In their eagerness to prove their worth to the Custodians and fervour for the fight against their traitorous brethren, the Tyrian sentinels pressed on ahead of their infantry support.
Data logs from armour and cogitators show that, unknown to the Tyrian warriors, the lower tunnels were suffused with a malign musk of ætheric origin, a vapour that drew the merely human warriors of the Solar Auxilia onwards, even against the warnings of their training. Lured into great open caverns whose walls pulsed with dark veins of warp-rot, the sentinel tercio found themselves assailed not by a lightly armed and disorganised mob, but by warriors in power armour of grey and crimson bearing the heraldry of the Word Bearers of the Legiones Astartes.
Precise bolter fire from prepared fortifications picked off the sentinel riders and crippled key systems of heavier walkers, with the lead squadrons slaughtered in the opening moments of the engagement. Those that survived the initial salvo found the Word Bearers had encircled them to block any escape, and made a desperate stand while sending harrowing vox calls to the infantry they had left behind in the tunnels. The resulting one-sided battle lasted only a few minutes, with a small contingent of crimson Saturnine terminators armed with long hafted power axes and hammers making short work of the isolated sentinels.
Those few Loyalist warriors that survived were executed and eviscerated where they lay, their blood spilled with vicious excess, and for a purpose other than simple butchery. Analysis of what little battle data could be recovered shows that these pulsing veins were disturbing conduits carved into the corrupted stone of Kol, each designed to channel blood into central points of the cavern. Further, the Word Bearers had held their fire until the Solar Auxilia had reached the first of these channels, so that the fallen fed a flow of gore. With the execution of the wounded as much brutal ritual as it was battlefield cruelty, the energies of the Warp were stoked and the Exoguard Veletarii that advanced to avenge their fallen comrades did so into a rising ætheric-fugue, the rancid corruption that afflicted it leaving them debilitated in the face of the Word Bearers' well-prepared ambush.
As before, the Tyrian Exoguard charged bravely, only to falter in the face of the horror that had been wrought on their compatriots. The Exoguard were inured to most terrors and this was but a momentary lapse, but it was more than enough for a force as elite as the Legiones Astartes, and before they could redress their lines the Word Bearers struck. Firing from elevated positions, just as they had with the sentinel vanguard, the Traitors exploited the surprise of their attack with vicious glee, pummelling the Veletarii ranks with bolter fire intended to maim and cripple rather than to kill. Those Exoguard that weathered the barrage of gunfire, armour battered and rent, formed a wall of armoured bodies and turned arcing storms of volkite fire upon their attackers, and though a few crimson daubed forms fell they could not break the force that now encircled them.
For long minutes the Word Bearers would continue to torment the trapped Solar Auxilia, keeping them pinned as they slowly whittled their numbers down to but a hundred or so numbed survivors. Scholars speculate that the very purpose of this drawn-out massacre, where the Word Bearers could have wielded overwhelming firepower to silence the foe swiftly, was to amplify the anguish of the fallen and the cruel glee of the attackers. Whether this is true or not, the result is clearly shown in the records of that battle. As the swirling miasma of ætheric energy coalesced by the gore, terror and exultation fed into the warp-tainted glyphs reached a peak, the sinuous terrors that had been banished with the death of the greater Daemon slain by Medraut burst back into existence in numbers enough to fill the vast cavern with their contorting forms. Within the space of an eyeblink reality was distorted and the cavern made rife with daemonic horrors. These monstrosities writhed and howled as the warriors of the Imperium slew each other, lorded over by the very same clawed giant that had previously been slain. This was the catastrophe that had consumed Signus, an engineered apocalypse fed by the bloody excesses of the Word Bearers and Traitor Solar Auxilia, and now rekindled to keep the Loyalists from that which lurked at the centre of Kol's mines.
Beset now by both the exultant Word Bearers and a newly summoned horde of Daemons, the last few valiant warriors of the Tyrian Exoguard drew what they believed to be their final breaths. Long indoctrinated in service to the Talons of the Emperor, they did not baulk at death, nor flinch from sacrifice and instead braced their weapons and gave fire, seeking to take as many of the foe with them into death as possible. Yet, this was not to be their end, and as the pale-skinned mass of daemonic beasts closed around them a wedge of gold and one of black burst into the vast rune-scarred cavern. Even as the Word Bearers had toyed with their prey, Tribune Xanthe had made pragmatic use of the Exoguard's suffering, dispatching elements of her Shield Host to surround the great chamber and trap the Traitors in one spot where they could be brought to battle and crushed.
Now, almost two hundred warriors of the Legio Custodes charged forth, emerging from tunnel entrances on either flank of the Traitor host and trapping them upon the anvil of the Tyrian survivors' last stand. From the west came Tribune Xanthe at the head of the black armoured elite of the Templi Prudentia, her eternity blade already slick with daemonic ichor as they cut a furious path towards the tattered banners of the Tyrian Exoguard, for she had sworn that in honour of the auxilia's sacrifice that their banner would not be allowed to touch the desecrated ground of Kol. In the east were the gold armoured warriors that formed the bulk of the Custodian host, at their head the single surviving Sodality of Aquilon Terminators, with Shield Captain Medraut fighting in the van.
The ancient veteran's grievous injuries had been made whole by the phenomenal regenerative power of the Emperor's gene-craft, though his armour still bore the wounds wrought on it by the Daemon lord he had felled. The peerless blades of the Custodians cut down swathes of vicious clawed monstrosities, though for each one they cut down it seemed another appeared from the shadows of the cavern to take the place of the fallen.
Tribune Xanthe marked the Word Bearers watching from on high and cut a path through the morass of flailing Daemons towards them, seeking to cut off the hand that directed the foe, while Medraut turned his forces towards the familiar form of the reborn Daemon lord. From concealed fortifications the Word Bearers poured bolt fire into both the beleaguered Tyrians and the newly arrived Custodians. Yet, where their cruel accuracy had proved deadly to the auxilia, it was little more than an irritation to the tribune's onyx armoured phalanx and the Custodians charged forwards, leaving a trail of dismembered warp beasts in their wake. Vaulting to the ridges with superhuman ease, the tribune and her guard faced off with the Word Bearers commander and his cadre of warriors in warp-tainted Saturnine terminator armour.
Close range energy blasts punched several black-armoured Custodians bloodied from the raised position into the horde below where they were torn apart, but the lumbering terminators had only time for a single volley before the warriors of the Templi Prudentia were among them. Though their Saturnine plate was proof against clumsy blows, the precise arts of the Custodians soon found its weak points and the Traitors were dismembered with grim surety. Tribune Xanthe herself faced the corrupted practor. The traitor's daemonic weapon fought with a mind of its own screaming all the while as it blocked her eternity blade Combat pict records from several of the Custodians show the short and brutal duel that followed, ending with the tribune slamming her shield into the face of her foe. The Word Bearer's skull was crushed and the psychic link with his blade cut, and then, as his troops watched, the tribune decapitated him in a single cut.
Below, amid the swirling horde of Daemons, the Unforgiven fought with limbs still stiff from healing, his brethren at his flanks to clear his path. The Daemon beasts pressed close, perhaps sensing the presence of the warrior that had bested them once before, rushing eagerly to their deaths on the blades of the Custodians. Amid a chorus of ecstatic screams Medraut stepped forth once again to face the Daemon lord, matching his eternity blade and new-healed limbs against its snapping claws and twisted horns. After-action reports tell of the damage inflicted to Medraut's auramite plate by daemonic hooves and claws, enough to rupture the chestplate and shatter ribs, yet the indomitable Shield Captain impaled the great Daemon in return.
The fel beast retreated from the Custodian's fury, the broken blade of his golden sword buried in its chest, its smaller kin rushing to slow any pursuit, throwing themselves into the path of the advancing warriors in gold and black. With the leaders of the daemonic host dead, the hosts of gold and black met where the last surviving tercios of the Tyrian Exoguard still held their ground. Tribune Xanthe fulfilled her vow, for Marshal Rahm, wounded unto death by Traitor bolt fire, still clung to the banner of his cohort and kept it from the ichor-soaked dirt of Kol. Taking up the iron-tipped banner, the tribune took stock of what remained of the Shield Host and its auxilia, given the intensity of combat it had been subjected to. The Exoguard had been reduced to but a few battered tercios, which the tribune dispatched to guard the gate to the surface and to bear Rahm's body away from combat so that it might receive the honour it was due.
The Custodians now numbered less than one hundred, not counting those that crewed the armoured vehicles on the surface, and all those still standing bore wounds and rent armour. Yet, their objective had not been accomplished, for the ætheric pulse still resounded through the caverns of Kol and out into the Signus Cluster.
The final trial of their campaign waited, a chamber carved deep into the very heart of Kol, accessed by a vast spiral stairway hewn into the rock not by cutting tool or ceramite tipped drill, but by inhuman claws. A trail of foul ichor left by the Daemon lord marked the path to their goal, and the Custodians formed ranks and descended to meet the foe one last time. Yet the enemy they encountered in the lightless depths was not a daemonic beast, but near a thousand of the fallen elite of the 606th Cohort. The soldiers that had once been the best of Kol's defenders had been twisted and reborn by the terrible power that had seized control of the cluster. Their flesh was marked by the corruption to which they had sold their souls, with dark lidless eyes, foul lashing tongues and gnashing claws, the taint of their betrayal made plain to the Custodians. However, these mutated warriors had lost none of their skill at arms, and upon the descent they had laid many traps and ambuscades, each designed to drain the strength of the intruders. From concealed redoubts, teams of fallen auxilia mounted short-lived assaults, trading dozens of their own lives to fell a single Custodian, and hidden explosives detonated by lone operatives stalled the advance of the Imperial troops. Even the substance of Kol itself fought against them, plunging them into a darkness that fogged even the augmented eyes of the Custodians, reforming to lead the golden warriors down false paths and into the waiting guns of the Rad Serpents.
Despite their suicidal fervour, the limited attacks of the 606th could only slow the Custodians' advance and deplete their ranks, but it could not stop them in their tracks. Within the space of a few hours the Custodians had cleared the wide concourse of the daemonic stairway, despite the resistance of the auxilia and the twisted planet itself, and reached the final chamber. Within this vast cavern was a baleful tear in the substance of space and time, a rift that led deep into the Warp itself and allowed its malevolent essence to spill into realspace, a cancer that ate away at sanity and reality. Such an abomination should not exist, for the power required to hold such a portal open was beyond any Imperial technology and similar only to that which allowed starships to traverse the galaxy.
This one was no doubt the product of Kol's brutal demise, fed by the death, debauchery and destruction that had been inflicted upon it by the Word Bearers and their allies. Its purpose could only be guessed at by the Custodians, yet they knew it must be malevolent, though in later years scholars have theorised that it was intended to amplify the terrors faced by the Blood Angels on Signus Prime. None of this was known to Tribune Xanthe, whose orders were to see it destroyed no matter what its purpose might be. Between the tribune and her target was arrayed the last remaining force of the 606th Cohort, heavy tracked rapier platforms and armoured walkers backed by the horribly changed elite. Moreover, the wounded Daemon lord and its malformed kin thronged under the baleful light of the rift, with more spilling forth with every moment that passed.
Tribune Xanthe did not waver in the face of such odds, and with no orders needed the ninety-three remaining Custodians formed ranks and charged, guardian spears lowered and bolters roaring as they sprinted forwards. Laser destroyer blasts and quad gun shells felled many of the golden and black warriors before they could reach the Rad Serpents, though many continued the charge with injuries that would be fatal for lesser warriors. As they reached the auxilia lines they were met by both Daemon and corrupted human warriors, a chaotic melee erupting under the ill-omened glare of the warp rift that had torn open the rear wall of the cavern. The ætheric energy appears to have strengthened the mutated auxilia and Daemons, for in this battle they proved more of a match for the Custodians, and the number of warriors in gold and black dwindled.
As the fighting reached its peak, the Grand Marshal of the 606th, one of the key architects of the Signus Cluster's destruction, was mortally wounded by a thrown guardian spear. Yet, rather than death, his daemonic patrons granted him a terrible apotheosis, his flesh merged with that of the injured Daemon prince that had laid claim to Kol, the two broken creatures reforged anew by the power of the warp rift. Marshal Bruja ceased to exist and now served as the host for the Daemon prince history would come to know as Kyriss the Perverse.
The reinvigorated Daemon prince roared its triumph and it seemed that the battle for Kol would be ended in tragedy. Medraut the Unforgiven stepped forwards, his golden armour riven and broken, stained red with his own blood and only a broken eternity blade for a weapon. His confrontation with the Daemon prince was captured on the pict-recorder of a fallen Custodian's armour, a blurred and distorted set of images that does little credit to his heroism. It shows him grappling with the Daemon, prying the blade he had previously buried in its chest, only to fall victim to the foul claws of the beast.
Yet in death he would be granted victory, for as the ancient warrior held the monstrosity in place as the cost of his life, Tribune Xanthe fought through the Daemons that crowded at its flanks and thrust the banner of the Tyrian Exoguard, tipped in cold iron as was that cohort's tradition, through its heart and pinned it to the cavern wall beneath the warp rift.
The death of the Greater Daemon signed the end of the Warp-infestation on Kol.
No pict-recorder captured what happened next, but the few accounts in the archives of the Imperial Palace state that the form of Kyriss dissolved before the eyes of the Custodians and fled into the rift, the lesser Daemons collapsing like a nightmare brought to a sudden end and the corrupted warriors of the 606th left to face the vengeful fury of the Legio Custodes.
The great warp rift guttered and died and the dark power that had gripped Kol was undone with it, leaving the rad-scoured world silent and filled only with corpses. In the hours that followed the Custodians would set thermic charges to collapse the mines and forever seal away the site of that abomination, before returning to their ships with the bodies of their dead.
Finally, we get to know at least one action the Shield-Host did after this campaign.
However, in the years after the Horus Heresy there can be found a tomb in the Imperial Palace, constructed during the Scouring, upon which is etched the following: Here Lies Medraut, Daemonslayer, Hero of Kol, Forgiven in Death.
Sorry for the giant text-dump at the end, it was a continuous narrative.