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History of Cygnus Primaris: The Phantoms of Cipella

Necrons V Grey Knights

Game Size: 1530

Game Type: Capture and Control

Deployment: Pitched Battle

Results: 2 Objectives taken by the Necrons. 0 For the Grey Knights. 0 Contested on either side.

Battle brother Reicheim plunges his Nemesis spear through the crawling relentless remains of a Necron warrior staking it to the ground and finally ending the machine’s resistance.

“Damn these things. You have to disassemble them before they quit. There’s more fight in these Machines then in a rampaging ork. Just none of the guttural choir of the Green skin.” Reichheim comments with the same levity his squad mates have come to know of him. Though today they have no patience for it. Today they are part of the retinue of the Grand Master. If he disapproves of Reicheim’s comments then he hasn’t said a word of it.

They survey the old ruin site. A still and desolate place loomed over by a massive eroded statue of some nameless entity. A few of the mechanical things scramble about the site, less then a dozen of them and they are easy pickings for the Grey Knights. The locals spoke of demons and diablerie here. Such stories were the firelight that made moths of the Grey Knights. What the locals of Cipella spoke of were not demons, at least not the warp spawned kind anyway.

The Necron, even to the Grey Knight little is known. There is far more myth and theory then actual fact. All that is known is that they sleep in places long forgotten by other races. That and they have an unyielding hatred for life.

Reicheim surveys the half buried site and then looks into the cold lifeless eyes of the Necron at his feet. How many hundreds of thousands of years have those eyes surveyed death and suffering he wonders. He’s satisfied they’ll see no more.

“Should we be on our way? There is nothing left here for us to…” Reicheim begins to address his brothers and the Grand Master but a static burst in his helmet’s Vox unit distracts him. Mixed with that static is something else, a low hidden groan and whispers… none of them knowable.

Through the static comes the voice of Hector Nevares, the Justicar in charge of security in western edge of the ruins. “approaching…. Fr… they….taking cas…”

“Repeat Hector. You’re breaking up. Repeat!” Reicheim orders into his mouthpiece.

“They approach from… we’ve tak…” Reicheim listens through a few seconds of dead silence and static bursts. “By his throne… Run!” The final words of Hector Nevares are heard loud and clear. All Reicheim sees from the west is a blinding flash of green light and a deafening crack of sound that follows several long seconds afterward.

Reicheim looks toward his fellow battle brothers all clad in the impenetrable armor of a Terminator. He knows no fear but still feels remorse. He knows the Justicar and his squad met an ignoble end against and already he can see their murderer crest the top of the hill in the west. A pyramid like structure that floats on phantom energy and whose zenith is alight with green witch fire. His brothers had no hope of harming such a war machine and would have been pressed up against the banks of the western river and annihilated.

“Mount up Grey Knights. We take the battle to the enemy!” The words of the Grand Master are heard by each of the Terminators but the Tech crews of the blessed machine have already denied that plan. Reicheim listens to them speak of the techno-curses of the Necron and that the machine spirit of the Land Raider refuses their commands to move. Just as the Grand Master is about to protest the port side Las Cannon Batter erupts in flames. A squadron of Necrons mounted upon odd hovering platforms races past. The Land Raider was just an easy target on their way to more vulnerable enemies, Justicar Gavlin’s Squad. The men of that squad are out ranged and out gunned by weapons that strip them of their armor, flesh and bones. They are flayed apart with no chance of reprisal.

“We meet them on foot then!” Reicheim screams. Knowing full well there is little hope of catching the phantoms unless they allow themselves to be caught. His fears are affirmed as a haze of shadows swallow up an advancing Necron unit only for them to reappear on the far banks of the river and well into the Grey Knight position. He can see something moving with the warriors. Something with more grace and motion. Veiled in darkness and carrying a scythe of some kind inscribed with all manner of debased runes. It holds high some strange orb that pulses with green light and sends waves of energy across the battlefield.

Reicheim is stirred from his thoughts by the sound of clattering metal on metal. The lifeless thing at his feet now moves, crawls up and drags itself on his armor scraping metal claws and reaching to grip his neck. Again he smashes the thing from him and scatters it to debris on the ground. Again darkness claims the green fire in its eye sockets. With a final flickering pulse it fades from sight completely.

“Justicar Tembol take your men across that river and hold our position. The cruiser in orbit will be targeting the Necron deployment. We need only deny them their ground and hold our own do you hear me?” The Grand Master calmly speaks into his Vox. Reicheim cannot fathom the will of a man who remains so calm under this sort of pressure. With such a figure on the field of war this day surely will not belong to the dead.

Reicheim watches Tembol and his men make way across the river but a feint haze slowly starts to block his vision of them. At first he considers fog but the temperature is not right for such a weather condition. The haze takes on a greenish pitch and the silhouette of something massive stirs within. “No!” Reichheim screams and desperately tries to reach Tembol before the second Necron Monolith phases into reality. He finds the channel and shouts into the unit with none of the Grand Master’s serenity. “Tembol take cover! Take cover now!” Already the eastern side of the ruin glows as a green sun briefly bursts into being and dies away… seconds later a crack of thunder and then silence. None of Tembol’s men register on his internal monitors. The Monolith continues its ponderous advance into the Grey Knights staging area.

The ground shakes as the cruiser in high orbit unleashes its lance salvos on the Necron position but too few of the machine things are felled to make a difference. Reicheim knows enough of these things to know that they will deny him even the satisfaction of morning their own losses. They’ll never feel the sting of death as he does.

The Terminators watch as the last of their staging grounds’ defenders is felled. Brother Ambrosio, long since interred in the holy sarcophagus of a Dreadnought. His weapons shorn from his body and legs cut out beneath him by the blade of the Necron’s master. It cuts through him as if he was but mere flesh and bone not adamantium and piston.

It takes him a few seconds to realize that he and his fellow Terminators are alone. Every other brother on the field is dead or wounded.

“Let the dead have their ruin!” The Grand Master orders “We can scour this menace from orbit.” He orders what men are left that can hear to quit the field and collect the injured. Reicheim knows the ship’s gunners will soon find no trace of the Necrons to fire upon. The Phantoms will return to their limbo taking with them any Astartes they can wrap their cold fingers around. The new priority is to take every man still alive and retreat. He knows the Necrons hate the living and the longer they linger the more they risk all they have left. Their lives.