Karthyx
Anvil of War
Classification (multiple allowed)
Death World
Sector / Segmentum
Ultima Segmentum
Description
Karthyx lies in the outer Ultima Segmentum on an abandoned trade line, three warp jumps east of Metalica. The nearest Imperial Navy fleet station is so far away that Astra Militarum blockade fleets reach the world only sporadically. Once, colonists wrested an agricultural colony from the death world of Karthyx. Bands of grain grew on dark volcanic rock, and freighters filled their holds with iron ore from the deposits of the high plateaus for the tithe. Sixteen years ago an Ork swarm out of the Maelstrom broke through the orbital defences. Within a standard year the continents were overrun, the silos plundered and the extraction plants torn apart into raw material for crude war walkers.
The Ash Sentinels, a Chapter of the Fourth Founding descended from the Salamanders, dispatched a battle group under Veteran Sergeant Korven. Its mission was to keep the last millions of inhabitants in the underground vaults until an evacuation became possible. That evacuation never came. The Orks have lodged themselves in the deeper layers like a tumour. They dig their own tunnels beneath the vaults and have thwarted every attempt to bring people to the landing fields.
The surface is now an ash desert of craters and wreck fields. Burnt-out harvesters stand there beside the hulls of shot-down landing craft. Underground, positional warfare rules. The defenders flood oil channels and set them alight to halt advancing squads. The Orks answer with demolition charges that turn whole passages into collapse zones. Every day costs a hundred lives, mostly auxiliaries from the colonist militia, who are sent into the breaches with mining lasers and shovels.
The rare transmissions of the Ash Sentinels are short and noisy. Again and again they contain the phrase “the burning earth that does not leave us”. After these reports Apothecary Korven, who bears the same name as the sergeant, collects the corpse oil of the fallen in sealed canisters. He uses it for the healing fires, as is the custom among the Fire-born. In these flames wounds are burned out and armour plates are consecrated anew. The colonists have begun to carry their own dead to the fires.
Whether Karthyx still has a garrison or is only an echo on old frequencies, no one outside the system knows with certainty.
The Ash Sentinels, a Chapter of the Fourth Founding descended from the Salamanders, dispatched a battle group under Veteran Sergeant Korven. Its mission was to keep the last millions of inhabitants in the underground vaults until an evacuation became possible. That evacuation never came. The Orks have lodged themselves in the deeper layers like a tumour. They dig their own tunnels beneath the vaults and have thwarted every attempt to bring people to the landing fields.
The surface is now an ash desert of craters and wreck fields. Burnt-out harvesters stand there beside the hulls of shot-down landing craft. Underground, positional warfare rules. The defenders flood oil channels and set them alight to halt advancing squads. The Orks answer with demolition charges that turn whole passages into collapse zones. Every day costs a hundred lives, mostly auxiliaries from the colonist militia, who are sent into the breaches with mining lasers and shovels.
The rare transmissions of the Ash Sentinels are short and noisy. Again and again they contain the phrase “the burning earth that does not leave us”. After these reports Apothecary Korven, who bears the same name as the sergeant, collects the corpse oil of the fallen in sealed canisters. He uses it for the healing fires, as is the custom among the Fire-born. In these flames wounds are burned out and armour plates are consecrated anew. The colonists have begun to carry their own dead to the fires.
Whether Karthyx still has a garrison or is only an echo on old frequencies, no one outside the system knows with certainty.