Danik's World Campaign
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The Danik's World Campaign was a prolonged Imperial counter-insurgency operation fought on the ex-Agri World Danik's World initially against the secessionist Dannikkin Independence Army and later also against Ork forces on the planet.[1]
History
Prelude
Although formerly an Agri-World, in M39 Danik's World experienced major volcanic catastrophes and the resulting damage to the atmosphere from volcanic fallout led to a two thousand year winter. During this period, the Administratum sent little Imperial aid due to the financial demands from anti-xenos campaigns in the sector. By the time that planetary temperatures began to rise, the population decline had been reversed and public opinion supported open rebellion at an estimated 93 percent. The eventual rebellion was led by Lord General Graush Vandrasse, a PDF career officer who had become High Commander of the Danik's World PDF at the age of sixty-one. Vandrasse led his rebel force, the Danikkin Independence Army and, together with his secret police, Special Patriotic Service, he overpowered loyalist PDF elements in a brutal war in which the SPS committed numerous atrocities. Vandrasse publically executed the planetery Governor and his family and sent a formal notice of succession to the Administratum.[1]
Deployment
Two years after the deceleration of secession, the Administratum pressured Lord Marshal Graf Harazhan, Sector commander of ground operations in the Second Kholdas War, to send a punitive force to Danik's World under orders to restore orders and return to the front line. Harazhan collected available forces as the Twelfth Army under the command of the elderly General Vogor Vlastan. At the time, the Imperium commanders were unaware of the presence of Ork forces on the planet. Vlastan set up his headquarters at the city of Seddisvarr and commenced his assault on the Danikkin rebels.[1]
Stalemate
After over a year, a stalemate had developed on the Eastern Front, where Imperial lines had advanced to the western part of the continent of Varanes. The winter had now begun to take its toll on the men in the trenchworks on the snowfields facing regular Ork and rebel assaults and frostbite had become so problematic that Twelfth Army command had declared it a capital offence, forces at the front line were stretched thin, with reinforcements hard to find due to the other, more important campaigns in the sector, and the Eastern Front had become a death sentence that politically unpopular officers would be deployed to. However, the situation was soon to change.[1]
Imperial Retreat
On the 681st day of the campaign, the news broke that the city of Barahn guarding the mouth of the flatlands between the Carcavian Mountains and the Valensian Peaks, had fallen to the orks and that the 104th Vostroyan Fusiliers, the garrison force, was decimated. The rest of the Valles Carcavia down to the River Solenne and the Varensian Peaks to the south was open to the Orks. Meanwhile, rebel armoured units based in South Varanes pushed upwards and took the town of Ohslir. Twelfth Army command made the decision to abandon the continent of Varanes and pulled the 98th Infantry Regiment from Korris, where they were based.[1]
