Fortis Binary

Spoiler!

The following paragraphs contain spoilers for:

First and Only (Novel)

Fortis Binary is described as a Forge World, a planet-wide factory that fell to Chaos. First and Only describes how the Ghosts manage to sabotage a Chaos ritual after Lord Militant General Hechtor Dravere orders them on a suicidal attack on an enemy trench line. This marks the first demonstration of the hatred that Colonel Draker Flense, the commander of the Jantine Patricians who suggested that general Hechtor Dravere give the assault order, has for Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt. ¹

Imperial Guard fought with Chaos forces in four hundred kilometres of battlefield frontline which represented the focus of the war here on Fortis Binary, a vast and ragged pat­tern of opposing trench systems, facing each other across a mangled deadland of cratered mud and shattered factories. ¹

The ducal palace on whose Hechtor Dravere was miraculously intact after six months of serial bombardment and overlooked the wide rift valley of Diemos, once the hydro­electric industrial heartland of Fortis Binary, now the axis on which the war revolved. In all directions, as far as the eye could see, sprawled the gross architecture of the manufacturing zone: the towers and hangers, the vaults and bunkers, the storage tanks and chimney stacks. A great ziggurat rose to the north, the brilliant gold icon of the Adeptus Mechanicus displayed on its flank. It rivalled, perhaps even surpassed, the Temple of the Eccesiarchy, dedicated to the God-Emperor. ¹

There are silos and shelled-out structures of the rising industrial manufactories just behind the Shriven lines, sooty shells of melted stone, rusted metal girder-work and fractured ceramite. Gargoyles, built to ward the buildings against contamination, had been defaced or toppled completely.²

During the conflict, food shortages in the Forge World's Hive Cities caused the citizens of Fortis Binary to process the flesh of dead soldiers as food. ³

A few years after Fortis Binary is liberated, the planet is able to raise 5 regiments that join the 2nd Front under Lord General Van Voytz ³

Sources

• ¹ First And Only (Novel) by Dan Abnett Part.Two: Fortis Binary Forge World. Chapter Four.
• ² First And Only (Novel) by Dan Abnett Part.Two: Fortis Binary Forge World. Chapter Nine.
• ³ His Last Command (Novel) by Dan Abnett