Each planet has its own Map consisting of Planetary Empires tiles, representing the number of territories that can be controlled there.

• Each planet begins with 0 tiles claimed.

• Every time a player wins a battle on that planet, they claim one tile for their faction.

• When a planet’s maximum tile count is reached, further victories instead allow a player to capture a tile from their opponent on that planet.

• A tile represents both narrative control and tactical foothold — a base, outpost, or strategic zone.

At any time, the faction controlling the majority of tiles on a planet is considered its Ruler.

• The Ruling faction gains a Planetary Advantage.

• If control becomes tied, the planet enters Contested Status, and its advantage is suspended until one faction regains the majority.

Once a planet is considered Ruled for the first time, the ruling player selects a planetary advantage from the below. No Planetary Advantage may be used twice

• Logistical Supremacy: Once per battle, reroll one failed Reserves or Deep Strike roll.

• Orbital Command: +1 to  the roll off for deployment

• Supply Dominance: One Core Infantry unit gains the Line subtype for the mission.

• Defensive Entrenchment: The controlling player may place an extra Fortification or barricade.

• Tactical Foresight: Add +1 to Seize the Initiative rolls.

• Vox Network Control: Once per game the player can reduce the cost of a reaction by 1

• Local Auxiliary Support: The player may add 1 free unit of 20 Levy from the Militia list to their force without taking up a Force Organisation slot

• Relic of the War-Torn Age: One non-character walker or Vehicle model (not super heavy) gets a 6+ invulnerable save

When two forces fight:

1. Agree which planet the battle takes place on.

2. Apply Planetary Advantage to the Ruler

3. Play the mission as normal (any Horus Heresy scenario, Zone Mortalis, Legion Imperials etc.).

4. Complete the Battle sheet below

5. The winner gains a tile on that planet.

   • If the map is already full, they steal a tile from their opponent.

6. Record the outcome on the campaign map. Prepare a narrative summary of the battle (From any perspective)

After-Action Chronicle: Battle Against Battle Maniple Vesuvius

Recorded by The Red Hawk, Khural Lord of the White Scars

We rode not with speed this time, but with weight.

The storm does not always howl across open ground. Sometimes the storm gathers, coiled close, thunder behind a single step. So I chose the Tartaros Plate over wings, and my chosen brothers marched beside me. Hard and unmoving. Let the Mechanicum see that the sons of Chogoris can be mountain as well as wind.

With us came the Anvil of Chogoris, bearers of the Steppe's flame — and the Windborn Kharash, the Ebon elite whose spirits run like river ice: fast, quiet, cold where it must be. To anchor our spear point strode Qorban Ironscale, old as the star-trails we follow, caged in adamant and wrath. Behind, the Sons of the Steppe, the Plains Wolves, and Sorkhan-Shira of the Plains — light in spirit, sharp in judgment — moved with the ease of practiced hunters.

We formed the wedge — the old shape, the shape of the horse-roar on the plains.
We drove toward the heart of the machine host.

But the first breath of the foe was fire.

Thallax melta fire hammered us before we reached the soil we intended to claim. My brothers of the retinue fell, their deaths hot and sudden. I myself felt the bite of burning metal through the plates of the mountain. I ordered withdrawal — not defeat, but reshaping. The wind does not break the cliff; it moves around it.

While I drew back to guard the center, the Windborn Kharash hurled themselves into the Arch-Magos and his Castellax guard. It was a sight worthy of the high feasting tents. The Keshig struck like lightning cutting down iron trees. They held — not by chance, nor by desperation — but by brotherhood, and in that holding they bought us breath.

Our Despoilers and Tactical squads moved as the dust-devils of the plains. Here—gone—here again. Supply markers vanished into our keeping before the machine-mind could register the loss. This was battle as it is meant: motion, will, fire, and choice.

At the base of the wedge, the Siege Squad advanced with Qorban beside them, fire and ceramite and the shriek of teeth on metal. Scyllax fell to the axes of the Tartaros and were pulped under the Leviathan’s drills. We pushed them back, step by step, flame on steel.

But the machine-forces were coiled deep — layered gunlines, auto-tracking kill-spirals, and the iron patience of that which does not understand death.

To remain would be to waste lives for no gain.
So I gave the signal, sharp and clear.

We withdrew intact, with survivors, knowledge of the field, and the honor of those who fought without hesitation.

Reflections

The Windborn Kharash have earned great esteem.
The Siege brothers proved the strength of the anvil.
The Plains Wolves and Sons of the Steppe were the wind that fills the lungs of war — swift and sure.

But I will not ignore the truth the mountain taught me today:

We are strongest when we strike in motion, when we are the hunt.
When we choose to stand firm, we must choose where and why with a surgeon’s precision.

I will remember this.

And we will return.

The storm has not passed.
It has only changed direction.

After-Action Mandate Record
Filed by: Eskaton Kazrai Cadmoss, Praetor of the First Legion
Eskaton Imperative
The Lirac Lament — Initial Contact Phase
 

Lirac Prime Designation Update:

• Previous Status: 0 — Unobserved

• Revised Status: 1 — Observed
  
  

Operational Summary

Planetfall was executed on the surface outskirts of Hive-Prime Exterior District Seven. Atmospheric conditions: particulate-choked air, low-visibility ash drift, industrial ruin terrain providing obscured movement and firing corridors. Initial objective: establish a secured forward staging zone for subsequent expansion of compliance actions.

Contact was made with Mechanicum-aligned forces, designation unclear — likely remnants of displaced Forge Sovereignty or local Priesthood acting autonomously after Warmaster’s Schism. No formal heraldry or recognised command signals; hostility on sight suggests either premeditated resistance or doctrinal deviation.

The ground was contested across multiple salvageable corridors and collapsed transit-ways, necessitating advance under fire. No orbital or high-altitude bombardment authorised due to density of infrastructure and concentration of target-sensitive resource zones.

Force Utilisation & Conduct

Quakebringer and attached Gravitic Rapier Batteries initiated suppression fire with commendable consistency, generating denial fields that curtailed enemy automata maneuver attempts. Servitor-run counter-batteries were ineffective against gravitic distortion and mass-displacement shells.

Despoiler Cohort Terran Blades under command of Paladin Krassenir Abdurer advanced up the central causeway through collapsed transit masonry. They achieved contact with the Archmagos Prime and accompanying Castellax maniple. Close-assault was joined.
The Paladin was engaged with by the Archmagos in direct duel.
Result: Paladin Abdurer was struck down by thermal lance breach to thoracic plating.
Status: Vitals maintained. Prognosis: Recovery probable.
The Terran Blades withdrew in disciplined order, efforts to delay held the junction-route long enough to prevent counter-encirclement.

Right flank: Deathwing Companions established interlocking fire lanes and prevented automata encroachment, engage Scyllax and Magos in close-assault - outcome success.
Left flank: Destroyer cadre executed area-denial protocol, but required contamination warnings remain in effect.

Losses & Material Considerations

• One Despoiler squad rendered temporarily combat-ineffective. Breacher squad in recovery

• Paladin Abdurer incapacitated; expected return to full operational ability pending cybernetic reinforcement.

• Field contamination levels in left flank sectors noted. Future deployment must account for residual rad hazard from our own armaments.

Enemy losses moderate — Thallax and Scyllax detachments shattered or rendered immobile by combined gravitic collapse and focused Deathwing engagement. Archmagos withdrawn; no pursuit authorized due to operational priority of position consolidation.

Planetary Status Revision Justification:

Lirac Prime is now designated:

1 — Observed

Rationale:

• Confirmed hostile military presence of non-compliant Mechanicum.

• Destruction of an Astartes unit element in combat.

• Objective site contested and lost mid-engagement, though position regained through later redeployment.

• Employment of Eskaton-level weaponry (rad, grav, phage) now recorded and cannot be retracted from planetary history.
  
  

Compliance operations will continue. Silence, if required, will be applied with escalating method.

Eskaton’s Closing Observation

This world is not yet judged.
It is only seen.
Its fate will be determined by its next reaction to our presence.

We are the First. Our arrival is not announcement — it is measurement.

Filed and sealed under First Legion authority.
— Eskaton Kazrai Cadmoss

Attributed to the Anonymous Scribe of the Third Binding
(Catalogued under Restricted Verse: “Annotations of Questionable Veracity”)

“It is said that the Alpha Legion knew of our workings before the first rune was carved.”
—This line is often dismissed as self-aggrandisement, yet the timing of the Hydra’s strike suggests foreknowledge incompatible with mere reconnaissance. Some whisper that a mortal seer of Lirac Prime broke beneath interrogation and spilled the truth. Others say a serpent was already among the Ochre Gate.

“Zar Askaneq’s fury alone held the right.”
—A common refrain, though incomplete. Later examination of his armour—preserved in the Catacombs of Ochre Metal—revealed warp-burn patterns consistent not only with pyroclast flame but with internal ignition. Scholars of the Third Covenant argue this was the first outward sign of the transformation he would later pursue.

“The Lerneans seized the altar-stone and the ritual trembled.”
—A detail often exaggerated. True, the Lernean breach nearly collapsed the central locus, but fragments of the ritual lattice recovered after the battle indicate that collapse would not have ended the summoning—merely redirected it along a more violent thread.
(A later scribe has added in smaller script: “The entity we received was not the one requested. It is rarely so with faith.”)

“The daemons on the left advanced with unnatural hunger.”
—Some in the legion insist these creatures were not those originally bound in the Ochre Gate’s litany. Their behaviour was erratic, their cohesion unstable. It is theorised that the Hydra’s interference allowed opportunistic lesser entities to seep through the weakened veil and bind themselves prematurely.
If so, then the violence on the left was not Word Bearer triumph, but simple predation.

“The summoning continued, though changed.”
—This phrasing appears in every surviving Ochre Gate account. Its consistency is suspicious.
The standard explanation is that the ritual was forced into an alternate configuration to account for the central disruption. But some esoteric commentators propose that the change was not procedural, but intentional. They claim the entity who answered had been waiting long before the first rune was cast, and merely used the turmoil to mask its arrival.

(This line is repeatedly crossed out in red ink—an ecclesiarchal censor’s work.)

“We were victorious, though the cost was dear.”
—There exists a sealed scroll in the Librarium that lists the true casualties of the Ochre Gate that day. The names include more than Astartes.
The ritual demanded tithe.
And the Ochre Gate, zealous as ever, paid without question.

Final Note, written in a trembling hand
“The Hydra sought to stop us, yet they only ensured the shard arrived imperfect, hungry, and searching.
I have begun to dream of it.
I pray this is not the beginning of the Third Woe.”