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|Conflict = [[Badab War]]
|Date = 913.[[M41]]
|Location = [[Badab Primaris]],[[Badab|Badab System]]
|Outcome = Loyalist Victory
|Combatant1 = [[Star Phantoms|'''Loyalist Forces]]'''|Combatant2 = [[Astral Claws|'''Secessionist Forces]]'''|Commanders1 = [[Captain]] [[Zhrukal Androcles]] (d)<br>Captain [[Tyberos]]<br>Lord High Commander [[Carab Culln]]<br> |Commanders2 = Tyrant of Badab [[Lufgt Huron]]<br>|Strength1 = Entire [[Star Phantoms]] (entire Chapter)<br>entire [[Carcharodons]] force<br>small contingent of [[Fire Hawks]] and <br>[[Sons of Medusa]]<br>One [[Exorcists]]<br>[[Legio Crucius]] [[Titan Legion]]<br>|Strength2 = Huron's Legion (containing the remainder of [[Astral Claws]] Chapter and <br>Badab Primaris PDF[[Tyrant's Legion]]<br>|Casualties1 = ~600 Star Phantoms<br>Unknown but presumed other casualties
|Casualties2 = Total Astral Claw forces except ~200 Marines
}}
The assault moved into its second and then third hour without any sign of relenting and soon Hive Dominar had become a city of death. Within its hundred of kilometers of multi-tiered roadways and vast, arched habitation towers, the Tyrant's Legion fought an insane and desperate battle against the grey giants that had come among them. Transit junctions were soon clogged with burning vehicles and shattered rubble, and for the wretched civilians trapped within the doomed hive, there was nothing for them but terror and death. Offered no chance of surrender or survival, the soldiers of the Auxilia bitterly fought on as best they could as the Carcharodons fell on them with nightmarish fury, savagely hacking through their defense lines and leaving nothing but torn bodies and shattered war machines in their wake. In the face of the unstoppable grey-red tide that had come upon them, all pretense of command and control within the Tyrant's Legion rapidly broke down as vox-sets uttered nothing but screams and unanswered peals for mercy. Fires began to spread out of control and the carnage was only worsened as those isolated Legion redoubts and tank squadrons that still survived began to shell indiscriminately into the shadows of buildings. Their desperate and chaotic attacks were in the vain hope of fighting an enemy that came at them with terrifying speed only to fade away and strike again, each time leaving fewer and fewer alive.
At the north-east of Hive Dominar lay the Palace of Thorns. Built into a mountainous volcanic plateau that rose high above the level of the hive city, it comprised a hulking, ornate citadel surrounded by wide statue-lined plazas and minaret-capped gun towers studded with defense lasers and flak batteries. This was the heart of the Astral Claw's domain and the lair of the Tyrant of Badab. Above the Palace complex's center, an actinic-bright lightning shield rippled and clashed in the air; a vast charged power-field that disintegrated anything it touched and shrugged off even the firepower of the warships above. The plazas and weapons batters that spread ouf beyond the Palace were not so impervious however, and it was into them the Star Phantoms descended with unmatched precision and timing, their drop pods smashing down through the ornate sepulchers and toppling needle-thin auspex-masts as they descended. Despite the blizzard of fire that had greeted them, over five hundred Battle Brothers out of the seven hundred strong force survived to make landfall, and now they set about besieging the heavily protected Palace. The combat was as fierce as any the Chapter had seen and at every turn the Star Phantoms encountered death-traps and heavily defended gun positions. They fought brutal close range engagements with Astral Claws assault squads who counter-attacked them from concealed sally-ports paying in blood for every advance. Further in, Land Raiders and Predators spilled from underground bunkers in defense of the citadel's shield wall, their power matched by the deadly accurate fire of Star Phantoms Devastator squads and Dreadnoughts firing from the shattered towers they had already stormed. The siege soon descended into a bloody meat-grinder as the wide-open plazas that ringed the citadel became lethal killing grounds which offered scant cover to attackers or defenders alike. For every two gun-ziggurats that were taken by the Star Phantoms, another held out or was re-taken by counter-assault, and soon the siege lines became a confused anarchy where the enemy could be encountered on all sides. Slowly though the bloody siege of the Palace's outer precincts began to tip in the Loyalists' favor, as making their way up the volcanic ridges, storm trooper reinforcements joined the fray allowing the Star Phantoms to press the attack, while Loyalist Terminator squads locked onto the Star Phantoms' teleport homers were dispatched to the surface from strike cruisers braving the much reduced ground fire. But despite the massive force brought to bear against against it, still the citadel held. The Palace of Thorn's lightning field remained un-breached, and attack after attack was hurled away from its citadel by murderous counter-attack as deadly fire rained down from the walls. The attackers' loses mounted steadily and even the Reaver Titan of the Legio Crucius alongside fresh Sons of Medusa detachments could not force the issue. Indeed the first Titan attempt to the attack was disable disabled as it sought to lend its firepower to the assault, its command deck gutted by a well-placed conversion-beamer blast in the shadow of the citadel. The siege of the Palace of Thorns was at a lethal impasse.
As true night fell over Hive Dominar and the Palace of Thorns, the fighting and killing went on unabated, spreading out to the planet's sub-hives and industrial zones. The pall of smoke from Badab's burning cities thickened the night to an umbral black deep enough to fog the auspexes of the ships in orbit; and the to them becoming a mass of indistinguishable heat blooms from the fires below. Titans stalked the benighted and ruined cityscapes, their powerful weapons lighting up the darkness like thunderstorms as their footfalls shook the earth. Crushing any hint of resistance they encountered and systematically smashing manufactora and habitation blocks, the Titans' machine spirits and crews reveled in the desolation they brought, driving waves of screaming refugees and routed Legion troopers before them in a disordered swarm. Meanwhile, the Carcharodons haunted the shadows of the Badab Hives like blood-painted grey specters, the city was theirs.
