HH4节译：解放numinal3（完）
前文
The Warlord of the Web
战网军阀
A little over a hundred kilometres to the south-east, ArchmAgos Draykavac observed all. His sight was that of a thousand different war machines, Battle-automata and servitors all over Numinal's surface, relayed to him via his djinn-skein in a myriad of ghostly spectrums and augury shadows beyond the power of any unaugmented brain to fathom. Warning runes and anathematic equations ran through his cogitator-enhanced brain; already the first wave of attack on the Agathean landing zone had resulted in heavier losses than all of the TAghmata Cyclothrathe's military operations over the last two years combined, the Agatheans having displayed unprecedented and uncalculated levels of close range firepower, as well as superior deployment and tactical cohesion. Furthermore, secondary landings and incursions were now observed at a number of other locations, and the invasion had not gone unnoticed; native resistance movements were showing themselves in wholesale acts of Aggression, while riots and revolts were reported at the majority of processing centres and still extant civilian population centres not yet having undergone total conversion. The data was incontrovertible; the TAghmata Cyclothrathe was losing control of the planet. Victory however, Draykavac concluded, was still possible so long as the landing zone could be purged of the invaders, forcing a stalemate in which the TAghmata controlled the surface and the Agatheans the void and system. Matters would then be decided by the scale and frequency of potential reinforcement. Above, if it tried to intervene, the Loyalist galleass could be held back at the cost of his own Sacra Astra's and the remaining Mechanicum escorts' sacrifice if needed to ensure the attack's success. It was the arithmetic of war.
在东南方一百多公里处，大贤者德拉卡瓦克观察到了一切。他注视着遍布Numinal表面的一千台不同的战争机器、战斗机兵和机仆，这些单位通过灵精通讯束向他传达了无数幽灵般的频谱扫描数据和鸟卜阴影信息，这超出了任何未经增强的大脑的理解能力。警告符文和（令人）憎恶的公式从他用沉思者强化过的大脑中奔流而过；Cyclothrathe禁卫军在对于Agathean登陆区的第一波进攻中所遭受了严重损失，比在过去两年里军事行动中遭受损失的总和还严重，Agathean部队展现出了前所未有且无法计算的近程火力水平，以及卓越的（战略）部署和战术凝聚力。另外，机械神教在其他很多地点都观察到了辅助性的登陆和入侵行动，这些入侵行动也被注意到了；当地的抵抗军也发动了规模全面的进攻，报告称大部分转化中心和现存的尚未完成改建的平民人口中心也发生了骚乱和起义。数据显示出一个无可置疑的结论：Cyclothrathe禁卫军正在失去对星球的控制。但根据德拉卡瓦克的推论，只要清理掉登陆区的入侵者们，迫使禁卫军控制住的地面战场与Agathean部队部队控制住的虚空和星系战场之间形成僵局，那么夺取胜利就仍是有可能的，而潜在增援的规模和频率将决定战况。在头顶的太空中，如果忠诚派的亚空间快船试图介入干预地面战争的话，德拉卡瓦克会在必要时以自己的圣星号巡洋舰和剩余的机械神教护卫舰们的牺牲为代价，来拖住阻挠忠诚派舰队，以此来确保进攻胜利。这就是他的战争盘算。
It was now time for Draykavac himself to take a hand. Ascending from the command vault on his battle-Abeyant, he joined his acolytes and bodyguard covenant of Thallax at the centre of the amassed second wave of the assault mustering under a shimmering curtain of Triaros-Tesrudo generated mobile void shields to protect them from aerial attack. Around him were arrayed the greyblack armoured ranks of his personal cadre of Battle-automata, and beyond them the hulking ranks of the Knights of House Atrax and Freeblade raiders from House Aerthegn, some sixty armours in all. Hovering macrohauler barges were even now waiting to forge the crossing to the landing zone archipelAgo, and Against this gathering of might, even the firepower and defences of the Solar Auxilia would be as nothing.
现在德拉卡瓦克要亲自介入战事。他升高了自己战斗载具的指挥拱顶，在聚集起来的第二波进攻集群的中心加入了自己侍从兵和死隶机兵卫队中，特里亚罗斯运输车生成的移动虚空盾闪烁着，保护他们免受空袭。他身边排列着私人战斗机兵们所构成的灰黑色装甲部队，而在他们外侧，是一支由来自阿特拉克斯家族的骑士们和来着阿尔泽恩家族的自由之刃掠袭者骑士们组成的庞大部队，总计大约六十台机体。巨型货运船悬停在空中，现在它们就在等着打通前往登陆区群岛的渡口。在此等（军事）力量的集结下，那怕是太阳辅助军的火力和防御也是无能为力。
Regicide
一击必杀
Lord Marshal Ireton MaSade, the old general, kept alive by long-implanted augmenrics of his own far past a normal human span, watched the gathering of force at the Mechanicum-held dockyards on the occularis viewers of his command tank, as calm and still as if graven in stone. The MAgos warlord he faced was carrying out the most logical course of action, and the one most likely to succeed, as Against such a concentration of Knights, his own forces, despite their strength and discipline, could not prevail in open battle. It was exactly why MaSade had formed his forces in this manner, why he had deployed them as he had, exactly why his home fleet was absent, and why the Hammer of the Deep stood ready with her deadliest cargo yet unleashed. He wanted such a concentration of Mechanicum forces, to engAge them when they were together, not forced to hunt them down across an entire waterlogged world where every outpost and processing plant might become a fortress Against him, and where his own troops would be at the disadvantAge Against the tireless superhuman machines of the TAghmata. He had in his years fought outnumbered and outgunned Against alien powers in a hundred campaigns; he had fought even at the side of Horus and his Legion in days past, and learned well from the master the value of the decapitation strike in warfare. With the TAghmata and their army of Knights moving towards the waiting hover barges under the rippling shadows of their mobile void shields, Ireton MaSade gave the order his staff had been tensely waiting for.
领主元帅伊拉顿 马萨德通过自己指挥坦克的隐匿式取景器注视着敌军部队在机械神教控制的港口船坞中集结，这位老将军通过延寿植入手术活过了远超凡人年龄的岁月，此刻他沉着冷静，宛如静置于石中。他所面对的军阀贤者正在执行最合乎逻辑的行动方案，而且机械神教是最可能取胜的一方；尽管他自己的太阳军部队实力强劲、富有纪律，但面对着如此密集的骑士，他们也无法在公开战斗中取胜。不过这也正是一切的原因：马萨德以这种方式组织部队并之前那样部署部队，让来自他故乡的舰队避战，让深渊之锤号准备好尚未被释放的最致命货物，这一切安排都是有目的的。他想要让机械神教部队如此集中起来，以在他们聚集时进行攻击，而非被迫在整个被水浸润的世界上到处猎捕机械神教叛军们——因为每座哨站和加工厂都会成为负隅顽抗的堡垒，他自己的部队在对抗机神禁卫军那超越人类的不知疲倦战争机器时也处于劣势。在他的戎马岁月里，马萨德曾在一百次战役中与数量和武力都压倒己方部队的异星人势力激战；他在过去甚至曾与荷鲁斯与战帅本人的军团并肩作战过，并从这位统帅那里深刻地了解到了斩首进攻在战争中的价值。在移动式虚空盾翻着闪光涟漪的阴影下，机神禁卫军和他们的骑士部队向着等待中的悬浮大型货船进发，同时伊拉顿 马萨德也向一直在紧张等待中的下属们下达了命令。
In close orbit, the Hammer of the Deep's drives flared and the galleass great kilometre-long over-bay doors swung majestically open like the spreading wings of a vast bird of prey. From within, two brutal-looking drop ships, ancient Khobol class heavy assault landers,emerged —relics older than the Great Crusade— and moved to make their burning descent into Numinals atmosphere. The surviving Mechanicum warships on their own watchful orbit moved to intercept, the galleass turning and offering itself to battle so that the landers would go unchallenged, and the void burned between them.
在近地轨道中，深渊之锤号引擎燃烧加力，这艘战舰宽达一公里的巨大舱门庄严打开，宛如一只掠食巨鸟张开的翅膀。两艘外表野蛮的空降船——库波尔级重型突击登陆艇现身，这两艘来自大远征之前时代的古老遗物发动引擎移动起来，下降进入Numinal的大气层，周身因摩擦而燃起火焰。监视着轨道的幸存机械神教战舰前来拦截，深渊之锤号转头迎战，这样一来登陆艇就能不会遭到敌方舰船的阻挠，它们周围的虚空则燃烧着。
Manticore
蝎尾狮出笼
The twin landers burned down through the skies of Numinal, heavy flak missiles streaking up to strike them, but doing nothing more than adding fresh scars to the slab-like armour plates which covered their blocky hulls. The landers came in fast and low on their powerful engines, but rather than slam directly into the roiling mass of Knights and Battle-automata quickly dispersing themselves from crushing attack, they roared overhead, skimming the crackling void shield mantle and sending shivers of blistering lightning coursing through the skies. In the wide scrubland wastes beyond the loading docks, the landers settled their vast bulks, side-ramps splitting open. Then across the wastes came a siren howl older than the Imperium, a complex,eardrum-splitting dirge. It was the ancient challenge, that of Knights to others of their warlike kind to partake in deadly combat.
两艘登陆艇燃烧着穿过Numinal的苍穹，重型高射（防空）导弹拖着尾际冲向它们，但也只是在包裹着短粗船体的坚硬厚实装甲板层上添了些新的伤痕。登陆艇们依靠强悍的引擎进行了快速的低空俯冲，行进中的大量骑士和战斗机兵们快速散开以规避冲撞攻击，但登陆艇并未直接冲向它们，而是从机械神教部队的头顶呼啸而过，掠过了噼啪作响的虚空盾屏障，溅起的颤抖着的闪电电弧冲向天空。船体巨大的登陆舰停在了装载港口之外广阔的灌木林废土中，侧门放下形成斜坡。一阵历史比人类帝国的还要久远的汽笛长鸣声传遍了废土，这是一曲复杂且震耳欲聋的长歌。这是骑士们向自己的好战同胞们所发出的古老挑战，是他们加入这场致命恶战的宣言。
The ground shuddered as the Knights thundered forth, the bulk —some fifty armours in all— cast in quartered sable and deep amethyst blue, bearing the golden Manticore heraldry of the dread House of Orhlacc, missing from their home world of Dark Haven since before the Warmaster's talon had touched the Coronid Deeps. They were not alone. With them came Freeblades and outcasts in liveries both gaudy and strange, a maniple of Knights in the crimson hued armour of House Hermetika, oath- sworn of distant Mezoa, and a warband of House Aerthegn, outcast from their brethren that had taken up the cause of Horus and now come to make war upon their kin in bitter feud.It had been the sinisterly told-of House of Orhlacc that had brought to the Agatheans cause the galleass of the Rogue Trader that had in her folly come to Dark Haven to subjugate them and paid the price. It had been Valdemar Orhlacc, High Seneschal of his House, that Ireton MaSade had bargained with for his might on this day of reckoning, at a price no less than the dominion of the dim world of Wychval, far from prying eyes at the edge of the Agathean Domain, and the Knights of Orhlacc had come to make good that bargain in blood.
骑士们冲向前方，脚步声若雷霆，地面都在随之颤抖，其中大部分——总数大约为五十台机体——都喷涂着黑色与深紫蓝色的四等分配色，佩戴着可怕的奥尔拉克家族的金色蝎尾狮徽章，早在荷鲁斯的恶爪触及到王冠深渊之前，这群骑士就从自己的故乡世界“黑暗之港”消失了。但他们也并非独自应战，随同他们前来的还有配色花哨怪异的自由之刃和被流放者们，这群身披猩红色装甲的骑士来自赫尔梅提卡家族，该家族誓言效忠于遥远的梅左阿铸造世界；一并前来的还有一支由阿尔泽恩家族的流放者们组成的战帮，这些骑士与自己投靠荷鲁斯的胞亲们进行了决裂，他们现在怀着苦涩的仇恨前来与族亲们交战。正是关于奥尔拉克家族那邪恶的传说使得Agathean部队得到了深渊之锤号——某位行商浪人驾驶着自己的战舰，愚蠢地来到黑暗之港，想要征服征服骑士家族，结果付出了代价。在清算之日，伊拉顿 马萨德与奥尔拉克家族的至高王——瓦尔德马尔 奥尔拉克做了一笔交易：领主元帅要奥尔拉克家族为他效劳，交易条件至少包括让出昏暗世界Wychval的统治权，此地远离Agathean统治域边境的监视范围，而作为交换，奥尔拉克的骑士们要为领主元帅血战敌军。
There was nowhere to hide from the savAgery to come; the wasteland, and the dockyard span upon which it ended, were all but featureless, an expanse of emptiness that in an instant was transformed into a killing ground which no mortal creature could have crossed and lived.There was no room or opportunity for trickery or subtle tactic, no time even for orders to be given; there was only the storm of steel and fire. The Loyalists charged, their weapons blazing sun-heat and thundering deadly shell fire, and the Traitor forces turned as one to meet their oncoming attack, answering with their own shimmering arcs of pale volkite rays and cracking bolts of dark lightning.
恶战即将到来，而此时的战场上却毫无藏身之所：废土荒原和位于它尽头港口船坞都是毫无遮蔽、一片空旷，顷刻之间，此地就变成了一个任何凡人都无法跨越和生存的杀戮场。双方部队没有时间也没有机会来使用欺诈战术，他们甚至都来不及下达命令；此处只有钢铁与火焰的风暴。忠诚派部队开火，武器射出声如雷霆的致命灼热炮火，叛军部队们也整齐划一地迎战即将到来的进攻，用苍白色爆燃射线的闪弧与噼啪作响的黑色闪电矢弹还击。
The thunderous walkers closed the distance between the two and immediately Draykavac saw the danger. His Knights were marginally outnumbered, but his oath-sworn Atrax were primarily equipped with the Mechanicum Styrix and MAgaera pattern armours, superior in their protection from damAge, but also slower than most of his foe's forces, many of which were equipped with the swift Cerastus patterns designed to outflank an enemy at speed. Even now the Orhlacc Knights and their allies' faster units were breaking into two horns of battle to encircle his own forces, while the Loyalist Paladins and Errants made direct assault on his centre, formed up in fighting wedges so that their ion shields created an all but impenetrable overlapping barrier Against incoming fire. Draykavac extended his will and his army moved as one, tessellating into a hexAgon formation, its own ion shields presented outwards, defending the core within, at the centre of which hovered Draykavac and his bodyguard of dark armoured Battle-automata.
脚步声如雷霆的步行机甲们拉近了双方之间的距离，德拉卡瓦克也马上看出了危险：虽然他麾下的骑士们在数量上的劣势极其微小，但向他誓言效忠的阿特拉克斯家族主要配备了机械神教的斯特里克斯和莫纪拉型骑士，他们的防御性能更强，但速度逊于敌方部队中的大多数骑士——忠诚派大量配备了敏捷的瑟拉斯托斯型骑士，这种骑士被设计依靠速度迂回包抄敌人。现在，奥尔拉克骑士们和友军中的快速单位们一分为二，形成掎角之势包围住了德拉卡瓦克自己的部队，同时忠诚派都圣骑士与游侠型号骑士们直接进攻了机械神教的部队中心，他们排列成楔形战斗队列，这样他们的离子盾就能形成一个几乎无法被穿透的重叠屏障以抵御来袭炮火。德雷卡瓦克通过意志下达了命令，他的部队整齐划一地进行移动，排列成一个六边形编队，这些部队向外侧展开自己的离子盾，保护着他们背后的部队核心单位，而德拉卡瓦克和他黑色装甲的战斗机兵卫队就盘旋在这些部队中央。
The complex manoeuvre was barely complete when the two tides of metal and fire met, the Orhlacc and their allies crushing round the Atrax in a murderous grip. The ground shook and rattled, the air was rent with an indescribable cacophony as Knight met Knight in shattering impact. Battle cannon roared at point blank range, power lances pistoned forth to smash explosively through armour plate, ion shields flared and guttered. The white-hot beams of thermal cannon speared through hulls, sending adamantium running like molten wax, and mighty metal limbs were torn from their sockets by crushing servo-claws and shimmering solar blades. Where the Atrax fought with cold, calculating brutality, the Orhlacc fought like madmen suddenly unleashed, but the bitterest savAgery was the domain of the Aerthegn, as brother fought Against brother to the death. In such a tumult of inhuman war and incalculable power even the Castellax Battle-automata of the TAghmata Cyclothrathe were as nothing compared to the fury unleashed, as the reaper chainblades of the Orhlacc lashed through them like kindling before a falling axe, and Draykavac's bodyguard of Thallax fell in droves as they were caught in an annihilating crossfire of Castigator bolt cannon shells.
当两波由钢铁和火焰组合而成的部队相遇时，这项复杂的机动才刚刚完成，奥尔拉克骑士们与盟友们杀气腾腾地从四周冲向阿特拉克斯骑士们。双方骑士互相应战，双方都带着粉碎性的冲击力，此刻地面震动、吱嘎作响，空气中弥漫着一种难以形容的刺耳噪音。战斗火炮在近身战斗中咆哮着，动力长枪向前突刺，爆炸般地击穿对方装甲，离子盾闪烁明灭。热能火炮射出的白热射线击穿骑士的机体，精金如同石蜡那样融化流淌，能粉碎敌人的私服爪和闪着寒芒的太阳利刃将骑士强大的金属肢体从连接轴上扯下。阿特拉克斯骑士们带着冷酷且缜密算计的残酷，对抗着他们的敌人——如同突然被释放的疯人一般的奥尔拉克骑士们，但最苦涩的残酷战斗则是发生在阿尔泽恩家族的骑士们之间，族亲兄弟们兵戎相见，互相置对方于死地。在这种非人的战争与不可估量的实力面前，哪怕是Cyclothrathe禁卫军的堡星战斗机兵相比于骑士们所释放出的怒火也不值一提，奥尔拉克骑士们用收割者链锯剑扫开它们，机兵们们就像击锤前的引火物那样被毁灭了，而惩戒者爆弹炮毁灭性的交叉火力也将德拉卡瓦克的死隶机兵卫队成群扫倒。
The ArchmAgos was not without power of his own however, and the crimson armoured Knights-Castigator of House Hermetika which had made the attack found themselves slowly crushed under the weight of a fusillade of graviton cannon blasts, stAggering to their doom. Swiftly they were swamped by murderous Vorax Battle-automata, their sickle-bladed arms hacking and slashing through joints and power cables, crippling them, until Draykavac himself tore the living pilots from the control thrones within and liquefied their bodies to dripping gore.
但大贤者也并非没有属于自己的部队。猩红色盔甲赫尔梅提卡家族惩戒骑士们发动了进攻，然而他们发现自己在被重力炮冲击波的连续射击缓慢压碎，他们踉跄着走向毁灭。凶残的锯齿蚁型战斗机兵很快就淹没了他们，它们镰刀状的手臂砍断了骑士的关节与电缆，使其瘫痪，最终德拉卡瓦克会亲手把活着的驾驶员从机体内部的控制王座上扯下来，将他们的躯体液化滴落的血水。
The clash of Knights, apocalyptic in its destruction, rAged on, but even at the centre of this hurricane of chaos, Draykavac's half machine mind was holding watch over a hundred other conflicts rAging on Numinal. On the northern archipelAgo, his diminished second wave, robbed of their reinforcements, was being driven back into the sea as the invading Agathean Cohorts broke out of their fortified landing zone and attacked in full force. Obedite-led native resistance was destroying the Mechanicum's conversion crawlers all across the globe, vulnerable now that Draykavac had withdrawn their supporting Knights. New and unknown forces had also entered the fray as a trio of mismatched Javelin Attack Speeders, one in the umbral black of the Raven Guard and the others in the ochre yellow of the Imperial Fists, had flown in under the void shield mantle and were now striking at the machines that generated it, threatening the shields' integrity more with each passing attack. At one primary flesh-processing facility, no more than eleven kilometres away, a lone Legiones Astartes had appeared in armour scoured clean of all markings and was now systematically killing every servitor, Tech-Priest and automata in the complex. In orbit,the void battle had proved bloody too but inconclusive to both sides, and even now the Sacra Astra was badly damAged and on an outbound orbit to effect emergency repairs, and would not likely survive another close pass Against the Hammer of the Deep. Were Draykavac one of the Emperor's Angels of Death, defeat would have been impossible to countenance and he would have fought on regardless of the odds of victory, but he was of the Mechanicum, and the cold equations of bloodshed told him he had lost.
骑士们那拥有启示录般破坏力的冲突越演越烈，但即使在这战混战的飓风中心，德蜡卡瓦克的半机器思维也在注视着Numinal上其他一百多场正在肆虐的冲突。在北部的群岛上，他的第二波兵力因失去了增援部队而变弱，被击退回海中，入侵的Agathean兵团冲出了他们设防的登陆区，全力进攻，将机械神教部队赶回了海中。领导有序的当地反抗军正在全球各地摧毁着机械神教的转化厂履带车，由于德拉卡瓦克撤走了支援它们的骑士，这些载具现在颇为脆弱。一股新的未知力量加入了这场战斗：这是三辆装备不匹配的标枪速攻艇，一艘喷涂着暗鸦守卫阴暗的黑色想，其他的则是帝国之拳的赭石黄色。他们从虚空盾下方飞入，现在正在进攻护盾发生器，每一次攻击都在进一步威胁虚空盾的完整性。一名孤独的阿斯塔特军团战士出现在不超过11公里外的一个主要的生体处理设施中，他穿着被清除干净所有标志的动力甲，正在有组织地屠杀基地综合体里的所有机仆、技术神甫和自动机兵。在轨道上，双方经历过一场血腥却毫无定论的虚空战，现在圣星号严重受损，正在外轨道进行紧急维修，它可能无法再与“深渊之锤”号进行近距离交战。倘若德拉卡瓦克是一名帝皇的死亡天使，那他不可能（坦然）接受失败的现实，而是会毫不考虑胜利的可能性来奋战到底；但他是一名机械神教成员，而且关于血腥恶战的冷酷数学算式也告诉他：他已经输了。
Immediately, the Cyclothrathine Knights' hexAgonal formation of defence began to shift, and what was a defiant battle became instead stalled, a fighting retreat with a single purpose, to deliver Draykavac to safety at any cost. Soon the dockyard complex running back to the Mechanicum command centre was a fire-strewn waste, littered with the burning hulls of broken Knight armour and the twitching, dismembered remains of Battle-automata as the House of Atrax and the TAghmata Cyclothrathe were sacrificed for their master. Once within the fortified bastion, Draykavac made good his escape off-world, his salvation-rocket blasting off from its position of concealment in one of the bastion's storAge silo-towers, leaving fiery ruin in its wake. The last baleful command he issued to each and every surviving servitor, automata and Tech-Priest of the TAghmata was to kill, kill relentlessly and indiscriminately until their own destruction came. Numinal had fallen to the Loyalists.
Cyclothrathine骑士们的六边形防御编队立刻开始变化，曾经残酷激烈、相互挑衅的恶战（现在）变为了僵局，这场战斗撤退只有一个目标，那就是不惜一切代价保护德拉卡瓦克的安全。很快，通往机械神教指挥中心的港口船坞综合体就变成了一片四处着火的废墟，到处都是燃烧着的破损骑士盔甲和抽搐着且遭到肢解的战斗机兵残骸，阿特拉克斯家族和Cyclothrathe禁卫军为他们的而主人牺牲了。一经进入了堡垒，德拉卡瓦克就从星球上逃离成功，他的逃生火箭从堡垒某个储仓塔的隐蔽位置发射升空，身后只留下了燃烧的废墟。他还向所有幸存的机仆、技术神甫和战斗机兵们发布了最后一条恶毒的命令：杀戮，他们要不分青红皂白地无情杀戮，直到毁灭降临。忠诚派夺回了Numinal世界。
The Age of War
战争纪元
The counter-invasion of Numinal and the catastrophic destruction visited on Gethsamaine would only be the start of a new phase in the ongoing war for the Coronid Deeps. Four sidereal weeks after the successful liberation of Numinal, the Agathean war fleet, so notably absent, was in action at Cerada Secundus, skirmishing with the Cyclothrathine battlegroup attacking that world. Here, Against the massed war arks of the TAghmata, it would not prove so victorious. But instead would be repelled with considerable loss, but their mere presence shifted the strategic landscape such that the TAghmata temporarily withdrew to reinforce its captured domains, and so another fault line of war was established.
对王冠深渊中持续进行着的战争而言，Numinal上的反攻行动与Gethsamaine上星语中继站的毁灭只是战争进入新阶段的开始。在成功解放Numinal四个恒星周之后，明显缺席了那场战役的Agathean战争舰队，在Cerada Secundus与攻击这个世界的Cyclothrathine战斗群发生小规模冲突。凡人舰队在对抗机神禁卫军的大型战争方舟时并不是非常成功，他们被击退，而且损失惨重，但但仅仅是他们的出现就让战局发生了改变，禁卫军暂时撤退以巩固其占领的领土，战争的另一条断层线也由此确立。
The 'raid' on Gethsamaine would prove only to be the first attack carried out by the Red Talon and other Loyalist survivors in the region, and Sons of Horus-led squadrons and battlegroups were soon dispatched from Port Maw to deal with a threat that struck throughout the Grail Abyss and the Cyclops Cluster, and even deep into the subjugated worlds of what was once the Manachean Commonwealth. What would follow throughout the Coronid Deeps would become a protracted and bloody series of campaigns and battles with no certain victor.Outposts were raided, planets laid to waste, convoys ambushed and murderous reprisals taken; the tables frequently turning so that the hunters became the hunted and back Again, and where one side gained an advantAge, it was quickly squandered or laid low by sudden reversal of fortune. Loyalist and Traitor clashed Again and Again; forces came and went from the region as the tides of the unquiet Warp allowed and battle waxed high and waned in bloody exhaustion, only to be taken up Again.
Gethsamaine上的“掠袭”也被证明仅仅是红爪部队和该地区其他忠诚派幸存者的第一次行动，巨口港不久后就派出由荷鲁斯之子领导的中队和战斗群前来解决这些横扫了圣杯深渊和独眼巨人群星，甚至还深入到了Manachean联邦那些被征服世界的威胁。之后王冠深渊中发生了一系列旷日持久的血腥战役，而且没有哪一方是完全的赢家。哨站遭到掠夺，星球化为废土，运输船遭到伏击，报复性的谋杀时有发生；战争形势经常发生逆转，猎人与猎物的身份来回发生转换，当一方占上风时，他们的优势很快就会被命运的突然逆转所浪费或摧毁。忠诚派与叛军们反复鏖战；随着动荡不安的亚空间的浪潮涨落，军队在该地区来来去去，战斗高潮迭起，在血腥的疲惫中沉寂，但最后又只会再启战端。
So it was with the Coronid Deeps; so it was to be all across what was once the unified Imperium of Mankind. A grim Age of war had been born at Isstvan that would never end in the lifetimes of those who were caught in its bloody embrace, an Age of war that would outlast the Horus Heresy, outlast the Great Scouring and beyond, an Age of Darkness.
王冠深渊的境况就是这样，而曾经统一的人类帝国也是如此。伊斯特万星系的惨剧诞生出了这个残酷的战争时代，它在被卷入这段血腥历史的凡人的有生之年都不会结束；这段战争时期的持续时间比荷鲁斯叛乱和大清洗都更久，黑暗年代，就此到来。
