Jornath: Assault on Gate S-2 (Evening)

This is the concluding stage of the Assault on Gate S-2, to see the first part click Here

After only a handful of hours after Bazbrag's initial assault on the walls, his Warband renewed its attack. This time the Orks had decided to withhold their heaviest equipment, their knight-titan equivalencies and dreadnaught walkers took severe losses from the Sons of Medusa's counter-assault. While the greenskins are often thought to be without number, not even the Ork can afford to waste that much heavy equipment on a consistent basis. However, where there once were machines there now were hundreds of alien warriors.  Bazbrag had ordered forward the Ded Burnin' Troop,  a division of his Warband, under the direction of a firey Ork Psyker (referred to as Weirdboyz in the tongue of the Xenos) The Ded Burnin' Troop numbered around 500 primarily foot mobile infantry as it launched its attack on the Walls around Gate S-2 at 9:30pm.

Behras Garrison Cohort II Company after its earlier losses was diminished down to a paltry 56 men, including all officers. However it was now freshly bolstered by reserve elements from the Garrisons internal QRF, returning assets from the 11KCC, and a few hundred conscripted civilians armed with anything the defensive force could find to hand. With Commander Souza slain in the initial attack on the Gate, overall command of the defensive sector fell to his immediate subordinate Confrater Galton. Normally Galton was involved in working with the Ecclesiarchy and the administrative sections of the Behras Vineyards Bottling Corporation, to provide alms of wine, grape by-product, and recycled industrial waste to needy areas of society. Which is to say that he essentially has little to no military experience beyond his essential training with the Cohort. Despite this, he does have a particular penchant for oratory, in the style of the Minstorum. 

Taking advice from the 11KCC detachment commander, Galton ordered II company and the reinforcing elements back off the wall, and created a secondary killzone just behind the wall, on the opposite side of the arterial causeway that ran behind the curtain wall.

The defense would be a simple plan, the QRF would hold the gate for as long as possible to force the greenskin's to take the much more exposed approach over the wall. Where the tankers would blast the aliens to pieces with massed firepower.  Should the gate fall, or the orks get over the wall a massed fusillade of rifle fire from the conscripted workers will act as the last line of resistance. 

Commander Galton set up his field command in the cemetery at the intersection of the arterial causeways. The location was wrapped in a large wrought iron fence, and the rows of mausoleums provided good cover from the ground. It was for the poetry of the place that Galton chose it as his CP for the battle however, he liked to imagine that the Imperium's honored dead might aid him in some way. 

As the bootfalls of hundreds of aliens descended on the wall, and the thud of localized mortars disturbed the relative quiet of the night air. The guards and conscripts of II company sat in formation, clutching prayer books, cleaning kit, or taking swigs of wine from the cellars, a thousand little comforts to ease the nerves. Between the lines, walked the robed figures of the Ministroum holding aloft swinging orange lanterns and loudly singing joyous hymnals. The priests and other members of the ordos had been withdrawn to the heart of the defense early in the Siege, to protect what High Command referred to as "vital spiritual and medical assets". Galton called in some old favors though, feeling that a fair bit of spirituality might do the company good. 

The call to arms came suddenly as the first trip-flare shot up into the skies from outside the wall. Officers and NCO's shouted loudly to gather equipment. The tank engines roared into life and begin to advance toward the wall with guns leading. 

As forces advanced something strange happened, a cloud of glowing green smoke drifted over the wall. Men began clamoring for their respirators, fearing a gas attack. As the smoke drifted above the causeway a deafening throaty drone blanketed the area and the cloud began to arc with electricity. The drone broke immediately, only to be followed hastily by that familiar Ork battle cry 

"WAAAAGGGHHHH!!!"

From the cloud over two dozen Orks charged the nearest KCC vehicle, firing wildly with oversized automatic weapons and waving crude axes. Stick Grenades detonated against the hull, blowing open hatches and crumpling the armor. The greenskins began to climb across the beleaguered Leman Russ, attempting to find a way to the crew within.

The initial surprise wore off soon enough, as every nearby unit unloaded a torrent of fire into the aliens, wiping out the greenskins before they could eliminate the vehicle. A mound of goreslick dead rested next to the vehicle. 

Outside the wall a harassing element from the 20th Chonn Firebrands, a Feral worlder regiment of rough riders, responsible for counter-assault and recon. Plunged headlong into the body of the Ork advance searing the aliens commander with superheated melta fire. Only to be dragged down on their attempted escape by the weight of numbers.

The Orks finally made it to the gate, pouring through and firing large caliber pistols at the men of the QRF. A frenetic short-range firefight took place as the mechanized infantry charged back.

With the gate heavily engaged Confrater Galton and the priests marshaled the conscripted workers towards their firing positions. 

The Gate was awash with combat now, as hundreds of Orks and men hacked at one another with bayonets, axes or digging tools. Automatic weapons fire from short range digging into the mass of bodies, killing scores with indiscriminate fire. 

The majority of the Orks had broken in, but a third of the QRF's infantry was able to successfully withdraw to the lines of vehicles and conscripts. The whole of the defense force formed a vee on the gate Killzone, and poured volleys of rifle fire into the onrushing Orks. 

The majority of the aliens were scythed down before they could get into contact. 

Outside the walls, the rest of the Ded Burnin' Troop started to question entering into the gate. In the face of stiff resistance, and with the force's leadership slain by the Chonn Firebrands. The remainder of the Ork forces withdrew back to their staging positions. 

After the Assault on Gate S-2, Bazbrag pulled back his warband to midtown in Saine Yeltsville, rejoining the rest of the encircling alien forces. The Walls of Fort Behras had held for another day, but as was the situation all across the fortress, men and material were desperately low. By the time of Bazbrag's assault, Tactica Command Jornath estimated that Behras would only be able to hold for another 7 months if combat levels were to maintain at their current ebb. A relief effort had been in the works for the majority of the year, to hopefully break the siege of the fortress, but reports like the attack on S-2 began to paint an ever-worsening picture of the situation, instigating a massive increase to the timetable of the counter-attack.

Named Operation Gray Jewel, the breakthrough attempt would see some of the heaviest fighting of the entire war up to this point with the deployment of new and terrifying weapons.The Battle for Jornath moved into its 3rd and potentially bloodiest year.

Thanks for reading! If you've been enjoying the Jornath setting then be sure to stay tuned. For a full list of all posts pertaining to the setting from all bloggers you can click the "Jornath [40k]" tab in the bar at the top of the page. 

-Your Favorite Madman-

Hobby: Puppets of Lonne Warband

I was digging through the Facebook groups backlog of pictures. I found this one of a Vampire Counts Warband for Mordheim that somehow escaped finding its way to being cataloged on this blog.

The Puppets of Lonne, are made up of the Vampire Lord Lonne,  his necromancer croney and two hired thugs and then a veritable cornucopia of undead monsters.  Normally this is the sort of thing I wouldn't both posting, as its four years old. But I can't seem to find them in the house anymore and I felt like they look quite nice, so I figured why not share them

These weird bat creatures saw action as Dire Wolves.

So thats all for now! More Jornath and AoS action coming quite soon!

-Your Favorite Madman-

Jornath: Assault on Gate S-2 (Morning)

Fortress Behras, has been besieged by three roughly regiment strength Ork assets since late last year, earlier in the Summer, one of these groups under the control of an Ork Warboss named Bazbrag, pushed through Imperial defenses to the East of the Fortress and fought their way through Saine Yeltsville, and attained positions within a kilometer of the curtain wall. The main eastern gatehouse was immediately fortified with veterans to stymie the aliens before they affect a major breakthrough. While sections of the warband did throw themselves at the East Gate, it was nowhere near the majority. Bazbrag was known for a particular level of guile, not common amongst others of his ilk, and employed a large number of specialist mercenaries called "Kommandos" that act as infiltrators, special operators and force reconnaissance experts for an Ork Warband. These infiltrators used a network of wine cellars and tunnels from Saine Yeltsville that stretch out into foundations of the fortress. They fed information on weak points in the Imperial defenses back to Bazbrag, who let loose a tide of war machines and infantry.

                          

Gate S-2, was defended by members of Bastion Cohort Behras, specifically II Company-East Div. These men had engaged in defensive actions on the northern wall sections, acting as a reserve to the North Division companies there. When Saine Yeltsville fell the company was immediately re-deployed back to its home position. The gate itself is a tertiary entrance used for small vehicle traffic, it is not large enough to fit heavy armored vehicles such as the Chimera APC or Leman Russ through, which means that 11KCC vehicle assets defending the entrance had to be parked beyond the safety of the wall, along with the necessary infantry support.

When the Orks finally came, it was an overwhelming wave of bodies and machinery. Indeed such was the number of Bazbrag's first wave that the men of the 2nd company were outnumbered nearly three to one by the greenskins. Commander Souza voxed immediately for reinforcement and set to giving the considerable population of vineyard workers and facility maintenance personnel any firearm to hand.  Chattering weapons fire and the crack-fizz of las weaponry issued forth from the walls scything down into the body of the Ork advance. The alien's reply was quick to come and horrifyingly efficient, a knight-class Ork war-walker stomped into view from behind the lines of rowhouses beyond the wall, a comically oversized assault cannon gave a sheet of cover to the approaching greenskin warriors. 

Commander Souza and Commissars attached to the Fortress' Bastion Cohorts marshaled the conscripted workers into rough firing lines blocking the gate. A motley assortment of autoguns, laslocks, and antiquated rifles held in shakey hands would be II companies last line in defending their position.  

As carriage mounted earth shakers pounded away into the approaching aliens, Bazbrag's Kommando's made their bid to silence the guns,  bursting out of a magazine casement linked to the fort's old wine cellars. The brutes charged toward the gun crews and were met by the conscripts who laid into the alien with knives, and close range fire. Of course, dozens of the militia were cut to ribbons by the Xenos special forces, but faith and superior numbers saw the threat subdued quickly enough.

With the threat within the walls taken care of, the battle had begun in earnest outside. 11KCC assets and sappers from II Company engaged the vanguard of the Ork attack force, made up of a mixture of lightly armored gun trucks and various classifications of war-walkers. 

Where the Orks had a weight of fire the Imperium had greater accuracy. Though the Kula Tankers were blasting fuming holes into the armored hide of a great number of the enemy vehicles, it was far from enough to stem the tide completely. It was a matter of softening the enemy enough to allow the infantry precious additional moments to lose shots into the foes before they hammered into the gate proper. 

Ork infantry began to engage the Sapper teams, and it was then that from the north the blessed Angels of Death arrived, storming across a roadway from the cover of a line of rowhouses firing bolters and superheated plasma into the flank of the alien's advance. The Sons of Medusa, had given no warning of their impending arrival to the garrison, many men sat in awe of the demigods as they came into view. Discipline was soon properly restored when the next volley of Ork autogun fire snapped overhead.

Though the Astartes had arrived, the battle was far from concluded, the Sappers found their positions massively overwhelmed, and began collapsing back towards the gateway as the aliens closed in for the kill. 

The battle reached its climax as the Astartes assaulted the area around the feet of the Ork Knight, the roadway was bustling with pounding hydraulic feet, the aliens had deployed a fully mechanized formation of dreadnaughts and heavy walkers to tear down the wall of the fortress known as a "Dread-Mob", an apt name indeed. At the gate the last of the sappers was slain, the handful of grenade-wielding guardsmen withstood nearly a hundred slavering greenskins before their end came.

Ork infantry dismounted their transports and swarmed into the buildings the Sons of Medusa were attempting to occupy resulting in frenetic close quarters fire-fights breaking out, as the Marines pushed through room after room of barbaric warriors in their quest to gain advantageous positions on the dread mob.

At the gate Commander Souza met the Orks head-on with the aid of the conscripts, it was here that he would join the honored dead in martyrdom. The volley of close-range shots and a well-timed charge proved enough to break the orks from the wall, the majority of the non-mechanized orks began withdrawing into the city. 

Shortly after Commander Souza's death at the gate Astartes Hellblasters attained good positions in the city to gain plunging fire down upon the vehicles of the Ork dread mob reducing a great many of the alien war machines to molten slag in moments. It was at this moment that the Ork attack broke apart, the Knight and several other machines began a withdraw in good order with the remainder of the infantry. Some walkers charged blindly into the row-housing, smashing apart structures in great billowing clouds of rubble smoke. Melta and well-placed grenades were able to see these off, but they had done well enough in providing a distraction for the remainder of their species to vacate the field for a time. 

With the gate secured for the moment, II Company picked up the pieces, regrouping what they could. and re-establishing defenses further behind the wall. The tankers from 11KCC sped north along with a group of messengers to make use of the Eastern Gatehouse to get the vehicles within the wall and plead for long-term reinforcement. The Sons of Medusa had taken a mauling, Captain Corporis had deployed the strike force, after having only just executed a multi-day long combat operation within the Ork Exclusion zone alongside the forces of the Adeptus Mechanicus. The Astartes left the field with one brother in need of emergency medical attention and twenty more in need of triage. The entire strike force was nearly depleted in terms of ammunition, particularly the Hellblasters. With the situation contained for the moment, the Sons of Medusa withdrew to their firebase to regroup and rearm. 

Bastion Command received the messengers with a weary acknowledgment. The Fortress could barely afford to pull of forces to other sections at this juncture, but an attack on this scale needed to be stoppered, and with the Astartes out of the fight, when Bazbrag's troops regroup it would fall to the men of the Cohorts to hold the line. 

Thanks for Reading!  This is the first of two battles at Gate S-2.

If you'd like to read more about the Forces, Lore, and Engagements from the "Battle for Jornath" campaign then you can click on the tab on the top of the page and view posts presented in chronological order in accordance with the setting, from anyone who's contributed!

-Your Favorite Madman-