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Pacification of Sigma-Agrius

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Many of worlds of the Agrippina Sector receive their food from Sigma-Agrius. Nevertheless, the good reputation of the planet was lost when the population, made up mostly of the Abhumans known as Ratlings, tiny humanoids considered mutants by many Imperial agencies, declared independence from the Adeptus Terra.[1][2]

The Departmento Munitorum calculated that a single Imperial Guard regiment would be sufficient to pacify the agricultural world as the Ratling rebels were poorly equipped and it is well known that the small abhumans lack any discipline. The leaders of the rebellion also realized this and the rebels fled to the hills as soon as the first assault ships began disembarkation of the 122nd Finreht Highlanders.[1][2]

Colonel Serat, the commander in charge of the invasion, ordered the companies of the vanguard to form a defensive perimeter around the landing points to guarantee that the heavily loaded transports of the regiment could land safely. But upon making landfall, to their great surprise, they did not find any enemy.[1][2]

They spent one week before the first contact with the enemy, when a patrol of Highlanders fell victim to snipers as they crossed a bridge on the Karline River. After being forced to retire, the Officer in charge called for reinforcements to pin and destroy the rebels who had conducted the ambush. That was the first incident of a war in which the rebels dedicated themselves to defend their world by guerilla warfare and lightning attacks. The Highlanders were forced onto the defensive during the many months before the High Command of the regiment ordered a change of strategy that totally horrified Colonel Serat and his men. The new orders required the Highlanders to devastate all the farms of all the towns that found with the intention of denying the rebels their means of subsistence and to thus attract them towards a battle which they could not win. The colonel accepted the necessity of a change of strategy and put the orders into effect.[1][2]

The end of the single war arrived after a continuous campaign of brutal suppression, in which the rebels were forced into a smaller and smaller pocket. The final battle came in a zone filled with smooth hills of about ninety square kilometres; the rebellious army was surrounded, bombed day and night and finally destroyed.[1][2]

The Highlanders, who had taken great losses in the first stages of pacification, suffered almost no casualties after they brought the battle to the enemy. By right of conquest, the survivors of the Highlander regiment became the new nobility, in charge of over-seeing Sigma-Agrius, its production and the abhuman workers. The world has since returned to the business of being a highly productive agricultural centre, although the descendants of the Highlanders remain vigilant for signs of heresy among the abhumans of Sigma-Agrius.[1][2]

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