Since the Ork invasion and subsequent occupation, Porphyry has had little contact with the galaxy at large. Nothing is known about the enslaved humans, and no members of the Adeptus Mechanicus mission are known to have escaped. At some point, weeks after the invasion, a distress signal was sent from the planet and intercepted by the Imperial Navy cruiser Vindicator. En route to the front, her captain made a detour to investigate the signal, and found a large Greenskin force blockading a planet that, heretofore, had been ruled by the Priesthood of Mars. Quickly determining that he was woefully outgunned, Vindicator’s captain turned his ship about and immediately dropped back into the Warp as the slow moving Ork assault ships got underway to intercept him. As Vindicator transitioned into the Warp, her signals crew received a second call from the surface. Hastily recorded to the ship’s data banks, the heavily encrypted signal was slowly deciphered by senior communications officers as the ship made her Warp passage. By the time Vindicator reached her original destination, the vox officers had made scant progress on the message. The origin was obviously Imperial, as some of the headings and footers were immediately recognizable, but the encryption was so fiendishly hard that it destroyed two cogitator banks that were being used to break it. The Captain consulted the vessel’s Enginseer Prime, and she reported that the encryption was one used by the Explorator fleets, but she had neither the knowledge nor technology to unravel it. Vindicator reported to her squadron, her captain made his official report to the admiral, with the addendum of the situation at Porphyry, and the matter was immediately dropped by the Imperial Navy in lieu of more pressing matters. Since Vindicator’s captain made his report about Porphyry, news has slowly leaked out of the Naval High Command and trickled down through the fleet and to the ears of some officers in the Imperial Guard...

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Now recruiting for a suicidal, promethium-fueled ride straight into the teef of WAAAaagh! Grimtoof.  Mech versus Deff-Dredd combat at its finest!