The Hivewyrm was a Genestealer Cult which infested the Shrine World of Saint's Halt in the Chalnath Expanse of the northern Segmentum Ultima in the Imperium Nihilus. It came into conflict with the Deathwatch Space Marines of the watch fortress of Mortguard during the Chalnath Expanse Campaign of the Era Indomitus.
History[]
The Chalnath Expanse Shrine World of Saint's Halt was home to billions of people that came under assault by the forces of the T'au Empire's Fifth Sphere Expansion. They crowded into cramped coastal cities that were squeezed between acidic seas and inland plateaux dominated by continental reliquary palaces. The Deathwatch strike cruiser Void Sentinel, sent by the Deathwatch of Mortguard, upon translation into the system found the world already under siege by the forces of the T'au Empire. Native Planetary Defence Force infantry regiments of the Saint's Tidecasters fought alongside the battle-sisters of the Order of the Blue Robe, and Astra Militarum forces from the Riatov and Pennutsk Systems that had breached the T'au orbital blockade to reach the surface.
From Void Sentinel's command throne, Watch Master Agathon conducted Mortguard's global campaign against both T'au cadres and Genestealer Cult uprisings. Hive Tor Saev burned, illuminating the southern pole. At Hive Delina, the Absolutis Arch was hung with bloody Loyalist corpses as their Genestealer cultist murderers defended the city from T'au bombardment. Vast battle lines had opened up around every major hive city; Agathon concentrated his strikes against three.
At Leonis Hive, the watch master directed kill-teams to sabotage a Shield Generator protecting the T'au flank from Riatov artillery companies. To Gedronis, he dispatched waves of Storm Speeders to cut off the xenos grav-tanks attacking the Gate of the Emperor's Vengeance, hoping to allow the Adepta Sororitas trapped there to break out. Mortguard's Watch Company Quintus in its entirety smashed into the T'au offensive outside the planetary capital city, Boran Prime. In a storm of special-issue bolter ammunition, cleaving blades and psychic scourges, the T'au buckled. The Deathwatch drove them back into the claws of xenophile cultists who declared themselves to be the Hivewyrm, forcing the two breeds of xenos to turn on each other.
In orbit, Deathwatch reserves awaited the ambushes Agathon knew both faithless xenos species were capable of initiating. When the next one struck, he would be ready, as the war for the Chalnath Expanse ground on.
Sources[]
- Codex Supplement: Deathwatch (9th Edition), pp. 18-19