Creed’s Last Defense of Cadia

0:11 In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

0:15 Ten thousand years of endless conflict have led to this moment.

0:19 At the twilight of the 41st Millennium,

0:21 the fate of the galaxy will be decided upon a single, blighted world.

0:26 At the edge of the Eye of Terror, at the very gates of the Warp,

0:30 stands Cadia, the bulwark that has held Chaos back for so many years.

0:34 At the height of the 13th Black Crusade,

0:36 Abaddon the Despoiler returns with fleets beyond

0:39 counting and weapons forged to end worlds.

0:42 It is the greatest conflict to afflict the stars since the Horus Heresy.

0:47 Kasrs fall, fleets burn, worlds go dark.

0:50 Against the tide of chaos, Ursakar Creed stands defiant and unbroken.

0:54 From the lips of every serviceman and space marine,

0:58 a cry echoes against the coming darkness: Cadia will stand!

1:59 After days of bloody conflict,

2:01 Abaddon’s 13th Black Crusade was nearing the Cadian system.

2:05 Despite heroic imperial efforts and even many unforeseen triumphs,

2:09 the tide of Chaos inched ever forward.

2:12 Ursakar Creed and the indomitable warriors of humanity had

2:15 so far prevented the total collapse of Imperial lines.

2:19 Even so, every battle waged saw them pushed back, one world at a time.

2:25 Soon, there would be nowhere to run but to Cadia herself.

2:29 Slowly but surely, Abaddon was strangling the life out of Segmentum Obscurus,

2:33 patiently waiting to land the killing blow.

2:36 The defenders were hard-pressed to meet every challenge.

2:39 Like the mythical hydra,

2:41 Ezekyle’s forces sprouted new heads when one was cut down.

2:45 Ursakar’s spy ships soon spotted the newest threat as it revealed itself.

2:49 Emerging suddenly over Macharia, in the Cadian system,

2:53 the Planet Killer made its second appearance of the war.

2:56 After suffering heavy damage at the hands of the Honour Company over Lorthox,

3:00 the ship had evidently been repaired and refitted.

3:03 Now, she was ready to reap her revenge upon the Emperor’s faithful.

3:07 The planet was swiftly destroyed,

3:09 alongside its millions of inhabitants and garrison troops.

3:12 The sanctity of the Cadian system had finally been breached,

3:16 and the gauntlet thrown at the feet of its remaining defenders.

3:20 Soon, vowed the heretics, Cadia would meet the same fate.

3:24 This lethal threat at their very

3:26 doorstep sent shockwaves among Cadian High Command.

3:28 Creed and his men had long abandoned any hopes of a swift,

3:32 clean victory, but this was different.

3:35 Like previous legendary struggles such as the Great

3:38 Heresy or the Wars of Armageddon,

3:40 this war would be a bloody struggle against total extinction.

3:44 The best the Imperials could hope for was

3:47 to merely survive in the ashes of Abaddon’s ambition.

3:51 All efforts and military priorities were rediverted.

3:53 The plan was now as simple as the vicissitudes of war could allow:

3:58 protect Cadia at all costs.

4:00 After the terrible treason of the Volscani Cataphracts,

4:03 the fastness of the Fortress World had been compromised.

4:06 Throughout the months following the slaughter of the Tyrok Fields,

4:10 an unprecedented wave of chaos had spread over the planet.

4:14 Though long inured to the corrupting effects of the Warp,

4:18 the Cadians were certainly not immune to them.

4:20 As such, vast heretic and mutant hordes had sprung,

4:24 wreaking havoc across the planet.

4:26 Creed had stabilized the situation upon assuming command,

4:29 but battles and skirmishes still raged on the surface.

4:33 Salvation eventually came on pinions of fire,

4:36 when the Imperial Fists descended upon Cadia.

4:39 Nearly half the chapter’s strength purged

4:41 the world of its most pressing threats.

4:44 Afterwards, the sons of Dorn deployed across the sector,

4:47 lending their unparalleled defensive skills to every world in need.

4:51 In record time, every breached bastion was

4:54 shored up and made stronger than before.

4:56 Every weakness was turned into a killzone,

4:59 and every killzone was made to look like a weakness.

5:02 Diligently following the decrees of their primarch,

5:04 the Fists vowed to make the traitors pay

5:07 for every inch of ground with blood and gene-seed.

5:10 It was clear to General Creed that he had

5:13 entered the final phase of the 13th Black Crusade.

5:15 Though it would be fought across multiple regions in Segmentum Obscurus,

5:19 the hammer stroke would fall hardest on Cadia herself.

5:23 Soon, he was proven all too correct.

5:25 From the folds of the Immaterium,

5:27 at the edge of the Cadian sector, a vast Chaos armada appeared.

5:31 Though the Warmaster himself was nowhere to be seen,

5:34 the numbers arrayed against them left the loyalists with no doubt:

5:38 this would be the fight of their lives.

5:40 Battle after battle, siege after siege,

5:43 the bastions and fortresses of Cadia fell one after the other.

5:47 Countless imperial heroes, mortal and transhuman alike,

5:50 gave their lives for scraps of ground,

5:53 even as war made them barren and poisoned.

5:56 The Lord Castellan had given orders to adopt the same flexible defence

6:00 that had so vexed the Warmaster at the start of the crusade.

6:03 Every Kasr in the sector had been designed for such a war.

6:08 Like a mighty breakwater, meant to dispel the force of waves,

6:11 they had been built to slow down the enemy.

6:14 For every wall taken, another one stood behind it;

6:17 every bastion held tunnels or runways for its garrison to relocate;

6:21 every street and every corner held a trap or an ambush.

6:25 The traitors were presented with a nightmare of redundant defences and a foe

6:29 that moved like the wind from one stronghold to the next.

6:33 Yet despite their homefield advantage and even

6:36 the expertise of the Imperial Fists,

6:38 the defenders were simply delaying the inevitable.

6:41 Soon, Creed had been pushed back to Kasr Gehr.

6:45 Sensing an opportunity, the traitors pressed their advantage,

6:48 hoping to slaughter the massed imperials before they could slip away once again.

6:52 Nothing was spared in this effort.

6:55 Pressaged by a terrible psychic scream, the traitors attacked.

6:59 Chaos titans and knights, alongside heretic hordes and disciplined astartes,

7:03 hurled themselves against the walls.

7:05 Despite heavy Imperial resistance,

7:07 the traitor throngs showed no sign of stopping.

7:11 The Imperial defence was spearheaded by the legendary Cadian 8th.

7:15 Nicknamed “Creed’s own,” they had been trained

7:18 to the very pinnacle of human martial perfection.

7:21 Under the Lord Castellan’s unflinching gaze,

7:23 they stood as exemplars of what the guard was meant to be.

7:27 They shrugged off the effects of the psychic attack and made

7:30 the traitors pay double the cost in lives in their assault.

7:33 And yet, General Creed was faced with a grim choice.

7:36 Die here, in song and legend, or live to fight another day.

7:41 Ultimately, his duty was to the Emperor and his homeworld.

7:45 Although reluctant, the Lord Castellan gave the order.

7:48 They were to abandon Kasr Gher and relocate

7:50 to Kasr Partox- the next line of defence upon Cadia.

7:54 A fighting withdrawal was organized.

7:56 Slowly peeling men from the walls,

7:58 the general had to keep the enemy at bay while his forces escaped.

8:02 The only way to do this was to sacrifice a rearguard.

8:05 With a heavy heart, Creed gave this honour

8:08 to the only regiment he knew would not fail him.

8:11 Knowing full well their inevitable fate,

8:13 and taking immense pride in being selected,

8:16 3’000 brave soldiers of the 8th were left behind.

8:19 Their orders were to deny the forces of chaos the slaughter they sought.

8:24 After hours of desperate fighting,

8:25 they had bought their comrades the time they needed.

8:28 As the last ships escaped the battle,

8:31 survivors witnessed their doomed comrades’ final moments.

8:34 As the last, defiant las-shots were seen from low orbit,

8:38 the warmaster’s hordes swept through the streets of Kasr Gehr like a flood.

8:42 A few days later, those of the rearguard that had been

8:45 taken alive were mutilated and sacrificed in front of Imperial lines.

8:49 Courage, nobility, and honour would not be

8:53 rewarded with leniency by the forces of chaos.

8:56 The shaken imperial defenders swiftly garrisoned Kasr Partox.

8:59 This was it!

9:00 The final line in the sand.

9:03 The last stronghold.

9:04 The ultimate Stronghold that stood between

9:06 the heretics and the fall of Holy Cadia.

9:09 Here, they would make their stand before the war reached its inevitable end..

9:14 Every single branch of the Emperor’s vast

9:17 armies had gathered here for this fight.

9:19 From the pious adepta sororitas, to the grim and brooding Grey Knights;

9:23 from the rapturous Priests of the Ecclesiarchy,

9:26 to the stoic agents of the Inquisition; from the trembling mortals of the guard

9:31 to the inhumanly calm taghmata of the Omnissiah.

9:34 Even so, every warrior knew in their heart they were vastly outnumbered.

9:39 As the countless legions of chaos descended upon the planet,

9:43 the defenders made ready.

9:44 Guardsmen of innumerable different regiments looked

9:47 up to Astartes of countless different chapters.

9:49 If they were to fall, at least they would die next to the Emperor’s Angels,

9:54 safe in the knowledge that they gave their lives for His realm.

9:58 Survivors of the battle claimed that every square inch

10:01 of ground around the Kasr was filled with foes.

10:04 A veritable sea of chaos,

10:05 rippling with malice and corruption, had come for their souls.

10:09 The battle that followed was the bloodiest of the conflict so far.

10:13 Creed made use of every artifice at his considerable disposal to stay the tide.

10:18 Yet despite his best efforts, and those of his men,

10:22 Kasr Partox was doomed to fall.

10:24 Soon, the walls were being breached one after the next.

10:27 Void shields were failing;

10:29 traps were being depleted; entire regiments were dying.

10:32 Abaddon’s hordes were hurling themselves at the defenders

10:35 with no thought spared for their own lives.

10:38 Baying their devotion to the gods from ravaged throats,

10:41 they kept coming even as the loyalists were tearing them to pieces.

10:45 There was simply nothing in front of the heretics that terrified

10:48 them nearly as much as what stood at their back.

10:51 After a long struggle,

10:52 General Creed was once again forced to order a costly retreat.

10:56 The bulk of his forces were to abandon

10:58 the stronghold and make for the Caducades sea.

11:01 There, they would be extracted and relocated to further fronts.

11:05 The traitors, however, had gotten wise to Creed’s tactics.

11:08 This withdrawal would be far more costly than the last.

11:12 From the minute the garrison fell back,

11:14 they were hounded by all the horrors of the warp.

11:17 To make matters worse,

11:18 a significant portion of Cadian leadership had perished during the defence.

11:22 It took all of Creed’s skill to prevent the retreat from turning into a rout.

11:27 Here was an opportunity for the heretics

11:30 to avenge themselves of all their losses.

11:32 The ground between Kasr Partox and the Caducades

11:35 port was soon littered with loyalist corpses.

11:38 Only thanks to the actions of a few brave souls,

11:41 and the enemy’s uncontrollable bloodlust, did the imperial host survive.

11:45 Indeed, despite their masters’ urgings to maintain the pursuit,

11:49 thousands of traitors indulged in their worst excesses.

11:52 They fell upon the imperial dead,

11:55 desecrating their corpses and allowing many of the living to make their escape.

11:59 Meanwhile, the rearguard at the port was bravely held

12:02 by the Subjugators chapter and thousands of Ministorum preachers.

12:06 The Subjugators were one of the youngest chapters of the Imperium,

12:10 founded in the 41st millennium.

12:12 Their dedication, however, was worthy of a founding legion.

12:15 Despite having been brought to the brink of extinction,

12:18 they did not hesitate to volunteer for this duty.

12:21 As for the Ecclesiarchy preachers,

12:23 they brought everlasting honour to an organization

12:26 so often plagued by corruption and false piety.

12:29 As the rearguard held the line,

12:31 the remaining loyalist forces were ferried across the sea.

12:34 Much of their heavy equipment had to be left behind,

12:38 but the army was mostly intact.

12:40 Soon, it was redeployed across the planet,

12:42 where they vowed to fight to the last.

12:44 The forces of chaos pressed their advantage.

12:47 Every space-worthy craft at their disposal was thrown against Cadia.

12:51 Now that the ground forces were in disarray,

12:53 the opportunity had finally come to crush that hated planet once and for all.

12:58 As Creed was still organizing things on the surface,

13:02 Admiral Quarren led the battle in the void.

13:04 The Imperial fleet was ordered to hold at all costs.

13:07 If Quarren failed, Cadia would be lost.

13:10 A massive space-battle took place in the stars,

13:13 as the disorganized defenders on the surface looked on in horror.

13:17 Quarren showed once again his skills and zeal.

13:20 Imperials and heretics tore each other

13:22 apart in an apocalyptic shower of ordinance.

13:25 After what seemed like an eternity,

13:28 a high-priority message was sent to General Creed.

13:31 Anxiously awaiting news of the outcome,

13:33 every officer listened to the report with bated breath.

13:36 An exhausted and shellshocked Admiral Quarren reported

13:39 that the vast majority of his fleet had been annihilated.

13:42 The enemy, however, had been pushed back.

13:45 Cheers erupted from every man in the room.

13:48 Further reports soon confirmed Quarren’s story:

13:50 the enemy fleet was in full retreat.

13:53 Cadia had been saved!

13:55 Creed, however, did not share his men’s elation.

13:58 The Cadian system lay in ruin,

14:00 its worlds a smouldering carcass where corruption ran rampant.

14:04 Furthermore, the general had a hard time believing that the Warmaster

14:08 would not appear in person to make an attempt.

14:11 The chaos army that had invaded the sector had almost claimed Cadia,

14:15 but Creed had a sickening feeling they had

14:17 only dealt with the vanguard of the Warmaster’s forces.

14:21 The cheers and jubilation were abruptly cut off.

14:24 Now was not the time for celebration, but for planning.

14:28 What few, precious days of respite this pyrrhic

14:30 victory had afforded them needed to be used wisely.

14:34 The Lord Castellan issued at once new sets of orders.

14:37 What few ships remained were ordered to scout

14:40 the rim of the system for Abaddon’s personal fleet.

14:43 Sooner or later, the general believed he would appear.

14:46 The Cadian Kasrs were repaired and reinforced by the Adeptus Mechanicus,

14:50 including the infamous Bellisarius Cawl.

14:52 High Command was relocated to Kasr Kraf, the largest of Cadia’s fortresses.

14:59 Located on the Elysion fields and surrounded

15:01 by many enigmatic pylons that dotted the planet,

15:04 it would serve as Creed’s Headquarters.

15:06 Every Space Marine chapter serving in the crusade

15:09 rushed to the planet to reinforce it.

15:12 A roster of legendary warriors was soon gathered, including the Space Wolves,

15:16 the Dark Angels, the Black Templars, and the Imperial Fists.

15:20 The countless military regiments were put to a gruelling training regimen,

15:24 hardening them for the battle to come.

15:26 Finally, the Castellan attempted to send a desperate

15:29 cry for help to anyone who could still hear.

15:32 Though the warp had claimed most imperial astropaths,

15:34 a desperate Creed created an ad hoc choir out of sanctioned psykers.

15:39 Though doomed to an eternity of torment,

15:42 their sacrifice might just bring salvation to their brethren.

15:45 All perished, but the message was sent across the stars,

15:49 hoping against hope that someone might listen.

15:52 Against all odds, and perhaps thanks to the Emperor’s intervention,

15:56 the missive was heard.

15:57 Across the vastness of the galaxy, the Phalanx answered the call.

16:01 The massive Imperial Fists vessel, under the leadership of Tor Garadon,

16:06 had recently repulsed a massive Chaos attack.

16:08 Most of the Fists were away, fighting across the stars, including on Cadia.

16:13 Warsmith Shon’tu, of the Iron Warriors,

16:15 and the demon prince Be’Lakor sought to take advantage of the situation.

16:19 As such, the attack found the Phalanx severely undermanned,

16:23 with barely 30 veterans aboard.

16:26 Much of the vessel had been taken and corrupted by the enemy,

16:29 forcing its meagre garrison to drastic actions.

16:31 Tor Garadon ordered the vessel to fire upon itself,

16:35 scouring a full tenth of its decks.

16:38 At the climax of the battle,

16:39 the few remaining defenders were joined by the legion of the damned,

16:42 and the heretics were expunged.

16:44 Now, the behemothic space station was badly mauled and barely garrisoned.

16:49 Yet upon receiving Creed’s message, Tor Garadon did not hesitate.

16:53 Crippled or not, the captain vowed that the Phalanx

16:56 would serve in the coming battle for Cadia.

16:59 Meanwhile, on the other side of the galaxy, another,

17:02 less savoury character, was also making his way toward the planet.

17:06 From the vastness of his grotesque museum,

17:08 Trazyn the Infinite was setting forth.

17:10 Though a being like him could not have

17:13 cared less for the affairs of most mortals,

17:15 he had received a message of his own.

17:18 One he could not ignore.

17:20 From inside the halls of his collection,

17:22 the Bell of Saint Gerstahl had suddenly started to chime.

17:25 The Necron Lord had stolen the holy relic from the Imperium long ago,

17:29 during a previous Black Crusade.

17:31 It had sat dormant for millennia, on Solemnace.

17:34 Yet now, as Abaddon unleashed his wrath, it rang for thirteen terrible times.

17:40 Each chime brought untold devastation to Trajyn’s priceless collection.

17:44 With each echo, centuries of history and stolen relics were lost.

17:48 At his wits' end, the Necron Lord threw the accursed bell into the Webway,

17:53 in the petty hope it might plague the Eldar as much as it had him.

17:57 Standing in the ruins of his life’s work,

18:00 Trazyn finally decided to witness this 13th Black Crusade for himself.

18:04 Heroes and villains were thus answering the Lord Castellan’s call.

18:08 Though their arrival might well come too late.

18:11 A few days after the Imperial victory, alarms blared across Cadia.

18:16 A desperate vox-call reached General Creed.

18:19 From the garbled screams of pain and terror, a chilling message rang.

18:23 The remnants of the imperial fleet had been destroyed.

18:27 Admiral Quarren was dead.

18:29 The Warmaster had come for Cadia.

18:32 In our next episode on the Black Crusades,

18:34 the siege of Cadia will reach its climax,

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