Mechanicum

Weapons, servitors, praetorians and fighting vehicles were imbued with power, twisting them into new and terrifying forms that were divinely primordial in their savage beauty. Monstrous engines of destruction that would be the heralds of the new power rising in the galaxy were taking shape in Olympus Mons and the forges of those adepts and magi that had bound themselves to the cause of Horus Lupercal.

Billions toiled in the weapon shops and manufactorum to realise this grand dream of Mars resurgent, and none who touched the powers unleashed to roam throughout his forge remained unchanged.

Chants echoed from the darkened thoroughfares of Olympus Mons, mobs of hooded worshippers hunting down those who did not embrace the new way and feeding their blood to the hungry machines. Brazen bells tolled constantly and howling klaxons shrieked with the godlike power of the scrapcode.

The transformation of his forge was a magnificent thing, and Kelbor-Hal knew that what they did here would echo through the ages as the moment the Mechanicum was reborn.

He turned from the armoured glass of the viewing bay to face his followers.

Regulus, Melgator, Urtzi Malevolus, together with holographic images of Lukas Chrom and Princeps Camulos, stood attentively before him. He could see the cluttering lines of scrapcode infesting their augmetics.

He nodded towards Lukas Chrom. 'Dalia Cythera is dead. Once again, your assassin and thinking machine prove their worth.'

Chrom accepted the compliment with a short bow.

'Then it is time?' said Princeps Camulos. 'My engines long to make ruin of the Magma City.'

The bear-like Princeps Senioris of Legio Mortis was clad in beetle-black armour and Kelbor-Hal read the warp-enhanced aggression flaring from him in waves.

'Yes,' he said. 'It is time. Send word to the commanders of your allied Legios, Camulos. Tell their engines to walk and to crush our enemies beneath their mighty treads.'

'It shall be done,' promised Camulos.

Kelbor-Hal then addressed his fellow adepts of the Dark Mechanicum.

'This is a great day, my acolytes, remember it always,' said the Fabricator General. 'This is the day Mars and her forge worlds cast off the yoke of the Emperor's tyranny. Unleash your armies and stain the sands of our planet red with blood!'

ORIGENS MECHANICUS

3.01

Later histories would record that the first blow of the Martian civil war was struck against Magos Mattias Kefra, whose forge in the Sinus Sabaeus region was housed within the Madler crater. Titans of the Magna Legion marched from the southern Noachis region and within minutes had smashed down the gates of his forge. Howling engines daubed in red, orange, yellow and black, and decorated with flaming horned skull devices, ran amok within the high walls of the crater, crushing everything living beneath them and destroying thousands of years of accumulated wisdom in a fury of fire.

Vast libraries burned and weapon shops that served the Solar Guard were reduced to molten slag as the indiscriminate slaughter continued long into the night, the Magna Legion's trumpeting warhorns sounding like the atavistic screams of primitive savages.

Further north in the Arabian region, the great engine yards of High Magos Ahotep in the Cassini crater were struck by a hundred missiles launched from the atomic silos secreted within the isolated peaks and mesas of Nilo Syrtis. The explosions of the forbidden weapons filled the four hundred and fifteen kilometre diameter of the crater with seething nuclear fire, and sent conjoined magma-streaked mushroom clouds soaring nearly seventy kilometres into the sky.

Along the borders of the Lunae Palus and Arcadia regions, what had previously been confined to heated debate erupted into outright warfare as Princeps Ulriche of the Death Stalkers unleashed his engines upon the fortress of Maxen Vledig's Deathbolts.

Caught by surprise, the Deathbolts lost nineteen engines in the first hour of battle, before withdrawing into the frozen wastes of the Mare Boreum and seeking refuge in the dune fields of Olympia Undae. Their calls for reinforcement went unanswered, for all of Mars was tearing itself apart as the plague of war spread across the planet in a raging firestorm.

Amid the Athabasca Valles, war machines of Legio Ignatum and the Burning Stars fought in bloody close quarters through the teardrop landforms caused by catastrophic flooding in an earlier, ancient age of the red planet. Neither force could gain the advantage, nor could either claim victory, so after a night's undignified scrapping, both withdrew to lick their wounds.