Pirody Campaign
The Pirody Campaign was a war fought between Imperial and Chaos forces on the planet Pirody.[1]
Overview
The campaign began when Pirody was attacked by the forces of Chaos. Archenemy armies conquered the planet's eastern continent, and forty thousand Lammark Lancers (almost the entire complement of all Lammark regiments) were sent to defend this world. In addition, the liberation army included twenty thousand Fancho Armoured men with their machines, and a full company of Doom Eagles Space Marines.[1]
After the landing, the troops began to create defensive fortifications in the Pirody Polar - a cold region with giant towers and columns of green marble, built in ancient times and clearly not by human hands. These buildings looked very strange - the lines of their surfaces seemed to be trying to rebel against reality, and therefore evoked a feeling of abnormality. Over the course of several months, the Imperial Guardsmen, although equipped for winter warfare, gradually lost morale; their lasguns froze and refused to fire, and their vehicles stalled and had great difficulty starting. The inhabitants of the city were morally weak people who not only did not want to fight, but could generally lie down and wait for death if circumstances were against them.[1]
Two months after the landing and constant artillery duels and shelling, Chaos troops approached the city of Pirody Polar. The siege lasted five months when the first cases of the Torment disease were reported. After the first death - a captain of the Lammark Lancers - just a day later there were already six infected, on the second - two hundred, on the third - a thousand. Most died within a couple of hours, but some suffered for days, dying slowly and painfully. Then the infection spread to Fancho's mechanised units, and then to civilians in the city. Then, quite unexpectedly, the Space Marines began to fall ill. Despite their advanced biology and Emperors' gifts, they also died, and before dying each went mad and managed to take several of their brothers and nearly a dozen ordinary soldiers with them.[1]
At the end of the fifth month of the siege, one of the Doom Eagles deciphered the obscene script of the Chaos banners displayed outside the walls. Inscribed there was the name of Nurgle, so disgusting that it was hard to even pronounce it - it was just a filthy gurgle dignified by consonants. This arcane name was one of the ninety-seven Blasphemies that May Not Be Written Down. The power of the name alone was such that subsequently, even when uttered far from this planet, outside the direct action of the forces of Chaos, it caused people to vomit and faint, and madmen to rampage in a wild rage.[1]
By the twenty-first day of the epidemic, approximately 37% of the Lammark Lancers and virtually all of Fancho's soldiers on Pirody had died from the disease. Twelve thousand Pirodian civilians were dead or dying. Nineteen Doom Eagles had succumbed.[1]
From the very beginning of the epidemic, Subjunctus Valis, a Doom Eagles Apothecary, tried to cope with the disease. However, it soon became clear that he was the vector and the spreader of the infection. Succumbing to the influence of Chaos, he deliberately infected both people and Space Marines, injecting them with the Torment cultures he constantly improved, under the guise of vaccinations.[1]
Having accidentally learned the terrible truth about Subjunctus Valis, Colonel Ebhoe of the Lammark Lancers managed to grab a flamethrower and shoot him. Perhaps the flames would not have harmed the Space Marine, but suddenly the hospital’s chemicals flared up and in the resulting fiery hell, Subjunctus Valis itself and all its infection burned out. Ebhoe survived only by a miracle, although he received terrible burns and became disabled and half-mad.[1]
Despite the fact that after the destruction of disease's vector the epidemic began to subside, Warmaster Gatus started an orbital bombardment of the planet, destroying all chaos troops. Rescue ships evacuated the surviving Space Marines and Guardsmen. Of all the Guardsmen who landed on the planet, only four hundred people survived (including Colonel Ebhoe). How many Space Marines survived is unknown.[1]
