The war-torn surface of Megiddo Prime has suffered for eight battle scarred years. The forces of Chaos and the forces of the Imperium have continued their endless war with one another, this planet yet another footnote in their bloody eon’s long war. With the coming of spring to the planet’s surface, the harsh winter winds are subsiding, and the surface temperature is rising. Great vent of steam once more rise from smoking fissures, the Virgrid Plains are crumbling as the layer of permafrost is melting for unknown reasons. Theories run wild among the Adepts of the Imperium, speculations ranging from an opening Warp Gate to geothermal spikes to planetary fission. One thing remains certain, the surface of the planet is starting to crack under the strain of battle! Driven from the Virgrid Plains by the expanding fissures, the Orks dwelling there have set upon the forces of the Ultramarines once more. An army of thousands of greenskins march upon the defenses of the Artemis Hive, hell-bent upon capturing the crown jewel of Megiddo Prime. The combined forces of the Ultramarine 6th company and the 27th Combined Arms Division had been reinforcing the Hive City over the course of the past 5 months. The Orks ran into an array of minefields, razorwire defense lines and dozens of newly formed Bastions. Their crude trukks and ramshackle vehicles blossomed in the morning sun as they hit the minefields, Orks pin wheeling through the air as their transports were blown asunder! As the assault ground to a halt, the Orks struggled to reform as batteries of Quad Guns, Medusa launchers and Basilisks rained down tons of ordnance on their lines. The Orks were pounded for hours as they sought cover. The Ork Warbosses cracked heads and killed underlings as they sought to find a way through the defenses. Each of their ploys was meant with heavy resistance from the Imperials forces. Kommandos stalked through the minefields, only to run into booby trapped trenches and Ratling snipers. Feints with Stormboys and trukkboys were countered with rapid reserves of Stormtroopers and Marine scouts. Three days of continued bombardment were starting to take the toll in Ork bodies. On the fourth day of the battle, the stalemate was broken. Forces of Night Lords, infiltrating through the lines beyond the trenches, were able to assail the Basilisk guns with melta bombs. 

With the guns silenced, the Orks drove thousands of Grots through the minefields, their Runtherd masters using grabbastikk and squighounds to goad the little monsters into the mines. As hundreds of Grot bodies were thrown skyward by the blasts, the Ork trukks and boyz surged forward, throwing themselves upon the forces of the Imperium. Marine, Guardsman and Ork locked in deadly hand to hand combat as the greenskins sought to break the back of the defenders through sheer numbers. As the battle looked like it was turning against the Imperials, help arrived from above…. The orbit around Megiddo Prime was choked with asteroids, planetary dust clouds and drifting wrecks. The battle in the heavens around Megiddo Prime had raged even longer than the ground attack. Contact with the fleets had been lost but the battle for space supremacy raged none the less. Orks, Imperial and Chaos cruisers all clashed in and around the asteroid fields for many years now, the Orks gaining the upper hand for much of the campaign. Their insane asteroid pilots cared little for their ships, going full thrust through the spinning mazes of rocks to emerge on the other side and launching attacks on both Chaos and Imperial alike. With the arrival of an immense Rok, the Orks gained the upper hand for some time; the rest of the space vessels could do little more than hit and run attacks, trying to keep the Ork commanders off balance. As the seventh year of fighting came to an end, this would all change…. A force of Ultramarine and Blood Angel Battle Cruisers emerged from warp space in system and moved to engage the Orks at close range. Unprepared for the sudden appearance of reinforcements, the Orks scrambled to counter the Adeptus Astartes. But to no avail. The Space Marines proceeded to unleashed payloads of torpedoes into the Ork Rok, blasting it into thousands of pieces that burned up in the atmosphere or joined the eternal dance of asteroids orbiting the planet. With the seemingly easy destruction of the Rok, the Orks commanders ordered their remaining ships to leave orbit and seek safety in the asteroid belt beyond Megiddo’s sun. 

With the space lanes open to landings, Thunderhawk gunships, laden with Blood Angles and Ultramarines prepared for a surface assault. Led by the legendary Chapter Master Dante, the Blood Angels were given the honor of setting down upon Megiddo Prime first…. Even as the Imperium’s finest warriors prepared to land, the forces of Chaos played their final card. A vast army of Traitor Guard, under the lashes of the Angels of Rapture, moved down from the north and engaged the defenders at Artemis Hive. Hundreds of tanks, many of them barely able to move or in need of repairs, lumbered into position north of the Hive, a mustering of armored might not seem yet in the eight years of war. Immediately the bombardments began. Megatons of heavy shells rained down upon the Hive. Soon, the corroded armored skin of the Hive began to crack and crumble under the strain of the bombardment, metric tons of debris falling into the ice choked streets below. The loss of civilian life was horrendous, many of the workers unable to avoid the collapsing structure and retreating out into the teeth of the Angels of Rapture! Bolters grew red hot as the Traitor Marines gunned down thousands of refugees. Soon a great pile of steaming corpses littered the northern groundscape, and here the Cultists preformed their terrible ritual. A huge gaping hole opened in the permafrost, vile gasses spewing forth from the fissure, followed by insane cackling! A great host of Demons were vomited forth through the fissure. Flesh Hounds, Bloodletters and even a mighty Bloodthrister emerged from the rift and fell upon the hapless refugees! The carnage was sickening but mercifully quick as the host of Khorne bellowed at the Hive walls and moved to engage the Ultramarines. And so, the final bloody day of fighting on Megiddo Prime began…… 

The horrors of that final day of battle were too numerous to recall, though halo vids continued to record every event during the battle. As dawn broke upon Megiddo Prime, the fissures in the Virgrid Plains began to widen into kilometer long scars, tons of ice and snow vaporizing in an instant as the superheated gases wafted into the chill air. Soon great streams of liquid hot magma bubbled to the surface, the tortured land screaming out its agonies. Captain Perjurious of the Ultramarines 6th Company could only gaze with small concern at the distant thermal activity. Arrayed before him was the might of his enemy. Three full companies of Angels of Rapture, hundreds of thousands of traitor Guard and a host of Khorne demons stood before his dwindling forces. Reinforced overnight by the Ultramarine 4th and 5th company, as well as a detachment of Black Templars, his own company waited for the final push. The order to withdraw had been given overnight and the 27th Combined Arms Division had been transported off planet via Valkeries, their Lord Commander Isen renouncing the decision but understanding Perjurious was his superior. The 27th had fought valiantly during the war but the Emperor degreed their time on Megiddo Prime was done, they were to move with all haste to the Minos Cluster to deal with a Tyranid incursion there. So only the Emperors finest troops remained behind to rearguard the final evacuation of Megiddo Prime. The Inquisitor Stallman Klim had requested and received approval to submit the planet to the fires of the Exterminatus.