Campaign - Ardan V

Now that my friend Ian and I have completed our campaign on Ardan V, which saw my Space Wolves go up against his Eldar, I thought I would put up a sequence of posts to cover all aspects of the campaign.

This first post is purely to set out the background to the start of the campaign, with the scenario and rules for the first mission to be put up in the next few days.

I am also going to put up various artworks I found around on the net that I thought looked awesome, not sure who the artists are but they are very good indeed so hats off to them all.

Ardan V Campaign.

For the last two months, the warriors of Fjolnir Lightningwolfs Great Company of the Space Wolves of the Adeptus Astartes  have been fighting a bloody conflict with the Traitor Marines of the Oracles of Change.

This Tzeentchian warband and their sorcerous commander Amadeus Volkstein had attacked Ardan V without warning, and had devastated the PDF defending the capital city of Baston.

The PDF had however managed to hold off the traitor marines long enough for a good portion of the civilian population to evacuate the city, and for an astropathic distress call to be sent.

Luckily for Ardan V the Space Wolf strike cruiser Fang of Russ had been transiting the warp nearby on route to the embattled world of Cadia and diverted, along with its Gladius class escort Grimnar's Fury, to assist in the defence of Ardan.

When the Wolves arrived in the system two weeks later they encountered, engaged and destroyed the Carnage Class cruiser "Wanton Desecration" which had been in orbit around Ardan V, having glided into the system on low power, powering up to pound the Desecration with bombardment cannon and weapons batteries before it's crew knew they were there.

With the destruction of the Chaos vessel, the two Space Wolf vessels entered low orbit. Then with typical Space Wolf tactics, launched an immediate drop pod assault on two of the larger concentrations of the Oracles forces killing many traitors with only light casualties in return.

However the concentrations of Oracle units were never very high in any one area, instead they were scattered throughout the city as if searching for something.

With the sudden arrival of the Wolf Lord and his men however, this quickly changed, with the Oracle units reuniting and denying the Space Wolves the ability to isolate and destroy the originally small groups of traitors. The campaign settled into a bloody war of attrition as both sides hunted each other through the city. The sorcerous abilities of the Oracles pitted against the ferocity of the Wolves.

Eventually, after weeks of heavy fighting, the Wolves got the upper hand after a band of Wolf Scouts identified and located the Oracles commander, and guided the Lord Fjolnir and his Wolf Guard in for the kill.

Taken by surprise Amadeus and his bodyguard fought well, but the outcome was never really in doubt and Fjolnir struck the head from his shoulders with his Wolf Claw Vengeance.

Meanwhile in the dome of Crystal Seers on the Biel-Tan craftworld Farseer Arandril Starsong examined the skein of fate, looking for threats to his home and it's people. Drawing a rune from a pouch at his waist he cast it into the air before him, shaking his head in dismay seeing the rune of Tzeentch the Deciever before him, knowing it was not to be a good sign. Drawing more runes from his pouch the runes of war, and humanity took up an orbit around the rune of Tzeentch, with the rune of Biel-Tan taking orbit around these runes.

Allowing the runes to guide his perception of the skein of Fate he saw the super human warriors of humanity battling the forces of the Deciever on one of humanity's many worlds. Saw the savage Space Marines defeat the forces of Chaos, only to find something, a cursus, during the mopping up. Saw the bumbling human psychic activate the cursus, opening a direct gate to the realm of Chaos. Saw daemons pour through the rift in real space, overwhelm the Emperor's warriors, and infest a planet with a direct link to the webway. Saw daemons pouring through the webway into Biel-Tan itself.

The vision ended abruptly, as he saw his own death, torn apart by a pack of demons in service to the great enemy as they sort entry to the Dome of Crystal Seers.

Stunned briefly, Arandril stood there as his runes fell to the floor. Shaking off the after effects of the vision he gathered up his runes as his mind sought contact with another. His psyche soared through the towers and gardens of Biel-Tan until he found the one he sought, Elarique Dawnrunner, inspecting ships of the Fleet in the Forge of Vaul.

The Autarch immediately understood the seriousness of the vision, strode to the command centre of Biel-Tan's armed forces and began co-ordinating the assembly of a task force to intercept and destroy the humans before they could unleash this fate on the craftworld.

His first act was to send a small force under the Exarch Darryth Sunblade through the webway to secure an operating base on the world the humans knew as Ardan V.