# 2025.11.30 - RR - The Ice Breaks _A Remembrancer's Report: The Aeternum Sector - 006.M31_ This is Patrick Stella, or the echo of purpose that bears his name. I drift through Prima Gemma's frozen battlefields, drawn to witness what Lucien Baxa feared most: the moment when carefully laid defenses shatter like ice under spring's thaw. The Praetor of the Imperial Fists spoke of cracks in walls, of water freezing and expanding until everything falls apart. How prophetic his words now seem. The waypoints he secured with blood and sacrifice mere days ago are breaking. Not slowly, not subtly, but with the sudden violence of ice sheets collapsing into dark water. The traitors have returned with renewed purpose, and the momentum has shifted with terrible finality. [[S2 Session 2 Scores and Results|Technical Notes]] ## Northern Waypoint - From Fortress to Ruin The Northern Waypoint, which I previously described as an "impregnable fortress," has been systematically dismantled. Three traitor victories have reduced it from Strong control to merely Controlled, hanging by the thinnest of threads. **The Wolves' Last Hunt:** In the sole loyalist victory, Space Wolves proved why they remain the Emperor's executioners. Leclercq du Lys and his Emperor's Children Palatine Blades emerged from frozen maintenance tunnels, expecting to launch a devastating surprise attack. Instead, they found only carnage. Their Harbinger tactical squads had already been torn apart, militia forces annihilated. The Space Wolves had arrived first, turning predator to prey. After exacting revenge for their fallen allies, the Emperor's Children retreated into the darkness of the underground shafts, their assault a complete failure. Yet this single victory could not stem the tide. **The Psychic Storm:** Thousand Sons and Blood Angels descended upon defending Ultramarines and Salamanders. The Ultramarines, betrayed by fortune itself, watched their targeting augurs fail, bolter rounds jam, even their vaunted discipline crack under impossible odds. They were overwhelmed. The Salamanders, stretched too thin, could offer no meaningful support. The Sons of Magnus claimed the field with disturbing ease. **The Bitter Alliance:** Death Guard advanced through Emperor's Children positions toward a critical strongpoint, while Mechanicum forces provided covering fire and Iron Warriors voiced complaints about tactical deployment. The irony of traitor legions struggling to coordinate while still achieving victory speaks to the loyalists' deteriorating situation. Even dysfunctional cooperation proves superior to isolated resistance. This battle sees the final shots fired on this day. > [!Note] PICT CAPTURE > ![[UM and Salamanders.jpeg]] > ![[BA VS Salamanders.jpeg]] > ![[EC.jpeg]] > ![[IF VS EC.jpeg]] ## Southern Waypoint - Lost in the Blizzard The Southern Waypoint, once Loyalist Controlled, has fallen to complete Neutral status after devastating traitor victories. **The Mad Rhino:** In what may be the most surreal engagement I have witnessed since my transformation, daemons and the Word Bearers clashed with Salamanders in a howling blizzard. Through the white-out conditions, a damaged Rhino transport drifted sideways across the ice while blasting an ancient Terran song called "Freebird" at maximum volume. Its vox-casters somehow remained functional despite the damage. The incongruity of the moment captures the madness that has gripped Prima Gemma: ancient music echoing across a field where Contemptor Dreadnoughts fell and reality itself seemed to bend. Despite the Salamanders' legendary resilience and the mutual destruction of valuable war assets, the traitors claimed symbolic victory. **The Sorcerer's Triumph:** Mechanicum defenders and Iron Warriors attempted to hold against a coordinated assault by Thousand Sons and Alpha Legion. The Alpha Legion paid a heavy price creating openings that the Thousand Sons ruthlessly exploited. The defending Magos fell to psychic assault, his mechanical modifications providing no protection against the storms of the empyrean. Another strong traitor victory, another waypoint slipping from loyalist grasp. > [!Note] PICT CAPTURE > ![[admin/images/S2 Images/Session Images/Session 2/Mech.jpeg]] > ![[IW vs AL.jpeg]] > ![[MEch and IW.jpeg]] > ![[Demons and WB.jpeg]] ## Eastern Waypoint - First Blood The Eastern Waypoint, previously untouched, has seen its first combat. The traitors have drawn first blood. **Veterans of Treachery:** Sons of Horus veterans, two separate companies working in terrible harmony, crushed a combined force of Dark Angels and Salamanders. The XVI Legion, masters of the speartip assault, demonstrated why they were once considered the finest of all Legiones Astartes. In desperate close combat, where bolt pistol and chainblade determined survival, experience proved decisive. The loyalists, despite the tactical acumen of the First Legion and the endurance of the Eighteenth, could not match the brutal efficiency of those who had already turned their weapons on brothers at Isstvan. > [!Note] PICT CAPTURE > ![[Sons of Horus.jpeg]] > ![[Salamander Command.jpeg]] ## Western Waypoint - The Last Ember The Western Waypoint clings to neutrality. No battles reached me from this sector. Perhaps the combatants destroyed each other so thoroughly that none survived to claim victory, or perhaps the ice itself swallowed them whole. The silence from this waypoint is somehow more ominous than the cacophony of battle elsewhere. ## Strategic Collapse I observe without emotion what would have broken mortal hearts. In a single day of fighting, the traitors achieved what they failed to accomplish in the opening engagement: complete strategic superiority. Four major victories to one. The waypoints Lucien Baxa sought to fortify have become killing fields where loyalist bodies freeze alongside their shattered dreams of holding Prima Gemma. Lucien Baxa's strategy assumed he could seal the cracks, reinforce the foundations, weather the storm. But ice, once it begins to break, rarely stops at a single fracture. The entire surface gives way, and all who stood upon it plunge into the freezing depths below. More disturbing are the reports of coordination between traitor forces who, by all accounts, should despise each other as much as they hate the loyalists. Death Guard and Emperor's Children, despite their incompatible philosophies, achieve victory together. Sons of Horus companies that should be vying for glory instead work in concert. Even daemons, manifestations of pure chaos, seem to bend toward a unified purpose: the complete annihilation of Imperial resistance on Prima Gemma. ## The Hives Await With the waypoints falling, the path to the Great Hives lies open. Hive Alexandrite's rebellion no longer seems an isolated cancer but the first symptom of a system-wide infection. The neutral hives of Kyaneos, Rubeus, and Spinella watch these battles with calculating eyes. They see the Emperor's defenders driven back, His fortress waypoints reduced to contested rubble. How long before they too embrace rebellion rather than face annihilation? Lucien Baxa must now make an impossible choice: abandon the waypoints entirely to consolidate defense of Hive Adamas, or continue bleeding strength trying to hold positions that may already be lost. Either decision gifts the traitors exactly what they desire. Momentum, initiative, and the slow strangulation of loyalist forces. I drift through the aftermath of these battles, observing frozen corpses in yellow, grey, green, and purple ceramite. Brothers who once crushed the galaxy's enemies together now lie intertwined in death, their blood freezing into crimson crystals that will never melt. This is what the Warmaster's ambition has wrought. Not glorious revolution, but fratricidal horror painted across ice that remembers everything and forgives nothing. The ice has broken. The flood comes next. Until next time, should time itself survive what approaches. Patrick Stella - Remembrancer _Once of Bellatoris Prime, Now of Nowhere and Everywhere_ #season2 #session2 #Fragments #rr