Mission:
Slay the Cultists
Deployment:
Dawn of War
Planet: Gallesti
Black Templar vs. Bork’An Sept Tau – 1500 pts
----- +++ Early Morning +++ -----
Shas’O Yunt knew that the Tau had struck a
decisive blow against the tanks of the enemy, but the Gue'ron'sha had held to
their targets, opening fire upon the native population with deliberate
focus. Nearly a third had fallen in the
initial fusillade! To make matters
worse, the nova reactor on Shas’El Wnib’s Riptide had malfunctioned critically,
venting poisonous gasses directly into the cockpit and damaging the suit.
Using his jump jets to bound forward, he ordered
his auxiliaries to close and engage the enemy, noting with grim satisfaction as
they burst from the trees and charged towards the Gue’ron’sha at a run. He and his squad of bodyguards drove towards
their target, a boxy bipedal vehicle adorned with gold and covered in
fluttering parchment, which was keeping pace with an enormous tank. At close range they opened fire, swiftly
causing damage to its crude mechanics and causing it to burst into consuming flames. As the bipedal vehicle burned, the nearby
tank swerved to a halt disgorging a large squad of the black and white clad
figures led by a grim faced figure that could only be the Gue’ron’Shas’O
himself, brandishing glowing sword in his hand.
Yunt
ordered his squad back into the cover of some nearby ruins and Shas’El Ghast
and his stealthsuits opened fire, hitting the squad immediately with combined
fire from burst cannons, fusion blasters and ion shots alike. The hammerhead also opened fire, aiming
directly of the enemy leader. While
several of the enemy fell, the majority of the squad shrugged off the incoming
fire turned to face the attack.
On the other side of the battle field the Riptide
opened fire once again on black and white figures of the Terminator squad,
vaporizing another two and causing the last to turn and run. At the same time the kroot fired wildly into another
squad, but their crude rifle rounds went wide or simply struck sparks from the
armor of their foe, causing no significant damage.
----- +++ Mid-Morning +++ -----
Brother Betuheil was filled with incredible
fury. Not only were his forces being
systematically shot at from cover, but several groups of the chaos infected
natives were running furiously towards the Tau positions. If they were able to make the safety of the
tree cover, it would be much harder to complete his mission. With a quick set of commands into his radio,
he sent the two landspeeders rushing forward from the flank and unleashing the
full might of their guns upon the chaos scum, cowering in the mud to escape the
emperor’s fury. One had a hole burned
clean through him by a multi-melta blast while the others were caught by a
ferocious explosion from the Typhoon Missile launcher carried by the other.
With his primary
mission achieved Brother Betuheil was finally able to turn his attention to the
Tau invaders. Raising his powersword
high overhead he charged his squad headlong into an approaching horde of Kroot
warriors, a red mist of rage obscuring his vision. The kroot never stood a chance. Arms and limbs flew in every direction as the
enraged space marines fought onward, chainswords revving in the air as they
took vengeance for their fallen brothers.
As the last of the kroot turned to run, Brother Betuheil sprung swiftly
forward and, dropping to one knee, sliced the alien cleanly in half with his
powersword. With the red mist rising
from his eyes, he realized that his charge forward had left him open to fire
from the Tau guns and he shouted to his squad to find cover in the nearby
forest. Hoping to use it as cover to
regain the safety of the nearby Landraider.
Across the battlefield, things were going poorly
for the Black Templar forces remaining on the field. The massive battle suit had proven
devastatingly effective in ranged combat and had destroyed most of the Templars
in range. With his shield brothers
fallen around him, Brother Laredo leaped from his position of concealment
amongst the nearby ruins, bolt pistol blasting and chainsword revving, to
charge into the monster before it could shoot him down. Clambering up one of the legs of the massive
suit, Brother Laredo attempted to stuff krak grenades into the machine’s
jointed armor. With a mechanical whine
the suit swatted him aside. Lying on his
back, the last thing Laredo saw was the enormous descending foot of the riptide.
In the middle of the field, shield brother Jayne found
himself in a similarly desperate predicament, with a horde of chicken-faced
aliens bursting from the underbrush to attack him. Instead of running for the relative safety of
the nearby razorback, Jayne bellowed a challenge to the alien beasts and
charged forward momentarily staggering the kroot and dealing a devastating blow
with his chainsword.
----- +++ Late Morning +++ -----
Shas’O Yunt was horrified. Not only had the Gue’ron’sha ignored immense
losses as they went about their butcher’s work but they were obviously driven
by some fearsome madness that drove them.
Not since he had battled with the Orks under Commander Farsight had he
seen such ferocity. With the loss of the
native population, his own primary mission would be impossible to complete but
it was going to be nearly impossible to extract his troops from the
battlefield.
With a swift decision, borne of the pragmatism of
countless battles, he decided that they must be eliminated. Such madness could not be allowed to
continue. Moving swiftly, Yunt sent his
bodyguards forward to engage the blood spattered enemy commander while himself
calling for all of his forces in possession of any weapon of sufficient
strength to strike down the enormous tank that seemed to somehow have gotten
itself wedged upon a fallen tree and was unable to extricate itself. From across the field, his stealth suit team
leaders, opened fire on the behemoth, one fusion shot harmlessly flying wide,
but the other burning deep into the hull of the stricken behemoth. With a horrifying detonation the tank erupted
in a massive fire ball.
With plasma rifles blasting, Yunt’s bodyguard
opened fire on the enemy leader. Though
his surviving brothers leapt forward to try and protect him from the blasts,
there was simply no way to survive. Brother
Betuheil with a muttered, “For the Emperor,” he slumped to the ground with a
glowing hole punched clean through the chest plate of his power armor.
----- +++ Noon +++ -----
Commander Yunt checked his sensor display,
reviewing the drone footage of the battle while walking over the ground
again. While his tactics had proven
ultimately supreme, as was inevitable, the arrival and single minded focus of
the Black Templars had cause him to fail in his efforts to establish contact
with the native shaman. Her Ethereal
Magisty, Aun’li Ta, would be sure to be displeased.
He paused for a moment, looking down at the blood
riddled mud of the battlefield. Lying
unmoving was the body of a lone Gue’ron’sha, his once white and black armor
chipped and scratched and splattered with the distinctively purplish blood of
the kroot. In a loose circle surrounding
him lay the bodies of over a dozen kroot warriors. He shook his head in dismay, at such needless
barbarism. With a deep frown, he came to
a conclusion and opened a communications line with his craft in high orbit,
ordering them to hail the Gue’ron’sha craft so that they could retrieve the
bodies of their fallen warriors.
All time for speculation now fled, he issued a
three stage extraction order, wounded personnel extracted first with pathfinder
and stealth squads driving deeper into the jungle in search of another village.Battle Result: Minor Victory for Bork'An Sept
Notable Casualties: Emperor's Champion (BT Commander)
Shield Brother Jayne (BT Space Marine - recovered with significant damage)
