Afterfall Insanity Serial Number 13

In The Great War (Twilight of the Third Sun, Chapter 26) the Imperial commanders gather to discuss options on what to do with Vermaard in the aftermath of the Chaotic raids. The majority of the council is made up of those who want to go forward with the plan proposed by General Macros who says that Vermaard is but one of many worlds in the path of the Chaotic and should be removed from the Imperium's scope. In this plan, the Chaotic are left behind to "contaminate" the worlds they have attacked, but in the end there was never a plan to actually push this strategy. The side effect of leaving the Chaos forces alone was that it allowed space Cleansing to occur unchecked and thus the world of Merrimack , one of the Twilight World , was overtaken. In addition, an Imperial vessel was heavily damaged when operating at a safe distance from the worlds that were attacked by Chaos and, ultimately, this vessel sank, leaving behind a huge loss of Imperial resources.

Many of the Imperial commanders would side with the Archenemy, however, and planned to go after Vermaard themselves, due to the imminent threat it posed (i.e. space Cleansing), instead of leaving it to the Arbites, Warmaster Horus and the Word Bearers. Even when faced with the loss of a month to travel to Vermaard, this plan seemed far preferable to the lingering spectre of the Chaotic, which was not an easy foe to fight.

The Archenemy initially had no interest in taking action on Vermaard, and those ground forces chosen to go after Vermaard were kept so that the Archenemy could mow down its current enemies in the face of the Chaotic onslaught, obliterating them and then going after the Imperial forces. d2c66b5586