In The Lore Explainer, we take a deep look at the lore behind our favorite games, movies, and books, and talk about the story behind them and sum up what you need to know and how you can find out more. In this article and the next, we’ll be looking at the lore behind the Shield of Baal campaign in Warhammer 40,000.
Games Workshop was on a roll with campaign books in Seventh Edition, using them as a major part of its plan to update the game’s armies with new units, kits, and Detachments. Only two months after the release of the final part of Sanctus Reach, Games Workshop published the first part of their Shield of Baal Campaign, in November 2014. Unlike Sanctus Reach, Leviathan kicked off a new trend for campaign books in seventh edition: Instead of a single book, each of these releases is split into two books – one for the lore and one for the rules. This made the releases larger and more expensive, but made them easier to carry around with you if you were only interested in having the rules for your army.
The Shield of Baal campaign is about the invasion of the Blood Angels’ home systems by a major tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathan. The first half – Leviathan – deals with the Hive Fleet reaching the shield worlds of the Cryptus System, defended at first by the Astra Militarum and the Blood Angels and Flesh Tearers chapters of space marines, with help from unexpected allies – the Necrons of the Mephrit dynasty.
The events of Shield of Baal are focused primarily on three factions, each of which saw the release of new rules and models across both books:
- The Blood Angels and Flesh Tearers Space Marines
- Tyranids
- Necrons
On top of this, the Astra Militarum, Militarum Tempestus, and Adepta Sororitas play a major role in the campaign, albeit without new model releases or rules. And as was the case with Sanctus Reach, Shield of Baal also pushes a new game mode and mission pack – this time around focusing on two new mission rule sets: Cities of Death (cityfighting rules), and Death From the Skies, which introduces additional rules for Flyer units (we call them AIRCRAFT today). Cities of Death here is no coincidence – the release of this book coincides with the re-release of plastic Imperial Sector terrain kits. We’ll talk about those later.
The Red Scar
Leviathan takes place in an area of the galaxy referred to as The Red Scar, named such because every single star in the area glows red, bathing the planets in their light with deadly doses of radiation. Despite this, the Imperium chose to throw billions of lives into settling the planets in this region, leading to a diseased population who, through chemical help from a drug called satryx, can reliably live to be as old as forty.
So in other words no, not a great place to live. But not a difficult place to defend, given how little value the words there have and how deadly the solar radiation is.
The Cryptus System
Our story in Leviathan centers on the Cryptus System, a series of planets orbiting a pair of twin red stars called The Eyes of Cryptus. The key worlds here are Asphodex, a civilised world with more than 38.5 billion inhabitants, Lysios, a world of more than 300 million, the mining world Aeros, and the Death World Tartoros, though a a couple of others – Vitria and Lysios – will also come into play.
The Cryptus System is surrounded by a massive asteroid belt of crystalline structures called The Aegis Diamondo, or the Glittering Shield by the locals. This eerie expanse of space is made of crystallized warp-infused ice, and surrounded by an unnatural cold that will freeze anything that enters its reaches. Although there are rumors of safe pathways through the Aegis found by Rogue Traders, ships entering the system are expressly ordered to translate in and out of the warp within the bounds of the Aegis, so as to avoid being frozen by its grasp. The perfect natural(?) defense, if you ignore the fact that space is three-dimensional.
The Encroaching Terror
The worlds of the Cryptus System had ample warning of the approaching hive fleets. As the tendril wound closer, communications in the region began to break down and become unreliable. In those early days, the hope was that the hive fleet would freeze in the Aegis Diamondo and shattered into stardust but the barrier was a double-edged sword: With the Hive fleet obscuring the light of the Astronomicon, Imperial Ships and Navigators would be unable to translate into the system inside the barrier. The Aegis would trap the defenders in – they were on their own.
As the first wave of Tyranids reached the glittering shield, the Hive fleet plowed right into the Aegis, freezing instantly from the extreme cold. Though the shield did not actually slow the fleet – they continued to propel forward, carried by the momentum they had built before freezing. And so there was a lot of cheering and high-fives and sighs of relief from Imperial generals and administrators who felt they’d dodged a hive fleet-shaped bullet.
As you might imagine, this relief was short lived. The Tyranid ships, having made their way to the other side of the Aegis, began to thaw, heated by the light of the system’s twin suns. To make matters worse, the Tyranid ships had expelled massive clouds of moisture before entering the Aegis, and were now encased in thick layers of ice that made them hard to damage.
So war comes to the Cryptus System. starting with the ocean world of Lysios.
The Tendrils Spread
Although Lysios was the first planet to see the blood rain of the Tyranid Hive Fleets, they were far from the last. Despite the best efforts of the Adepta Sororitas and the Astra Militarum, war soon spread to Asphodex, Phodia, Ixoi, and eventually spreading to the gas giant Aeros, where a fierce battle raged across its skies. The Astra Militarum – led by a coalition of Cadians and Vostroyans – would eventually fall on the world of Tartoros. Their collapse was far from the first, and soon the other worlds in the Cryptus System began to fall. There are several characters in this story, and most of them die as the Tyranids conquer the system.
The Magnovitrium
Before we talk about the missions, it’s worth talking about one particular relic of a bygone era. Hanging in low orbit above Tartoros is the Magnavitrium, an ancient lens array which can capture the solar energy from the Eyes of Cryptus and redirect it to the system’s other civilized worlds, powering them with ample energy to sustain the life force of hundreds of hive cities and power industry across the entire system. As Tartoros and the rest of the system fell, the Magnovitrium fell silent, drifting useless in the void. It’ll become important again later.
The Missions
There are twelve missions in Leviathan; six of them fall into the category “Echoes of War,” meaning that they’re intended to model key battles and engagements in the first half of the Shield of Baal campaign. The second half are Cities of Death missions, designed for the new narrative play game mode introduced in the book, in similar vein to how Sanctus Reach introduced rules and missions for Planetstrike games. Unlike Sanctus Reach, these follow less of a linear story progression and more tend to model the conflict as Tyranids assault each of the planets in the Cryptus System.
Echoes of War
These six missions represent key events in the Leviathan campaign. These are designed to use Cities of Death terrain and objectives, and the maps drawn for the battlefields are covered in buildings.
1. The Vitria Strike
The initial attack of the Tyranid Fleet landed on Vitria, a planet covered in a maze of towering buildings of jagged glass. This battle sees Astra Militarum forces facing off against Tyranids, in a vanguard force primarily composed of Genestealers and Lictors.
2. The Great Corral
The first planet in the Cryptus System to really take the Tyranid Invasion was Lysios, a desolate world whose land and cities have been scoured by a slow-moving tidal wave of water and debris. The planet’s surface was covered in water after a series of brutal solar flares lashed out and melted its ice caps in a cataclysmic event. The planet’s inhabitants live in huge crawler hulks, constantly on the move to stay ahead of the big tsunami. When the Tyranids attack, the hulks take up a defensive circle, and the Adepta Sororitas take up arms to defend them.
3. The Shield Tested
Asphodex is the most populated word in the Cryptus System, home to billions of Imperial citizens and covered in a vast cityscape. When the Tyranids make planetfall, the Astra Militarum are ready to defend the planet.
4. The Skywar of Aeros
Aeros is a massive gas giant in the Cryptus System that serves as a mining outpost for precious fuels, sending them to massive, floating processing centers. While there are ground battles to be fought on these platforms, the majority of the fighting takes places in the skies. As such this battle is between Tyranids and Astra Militarum and must either be flyers or deployed onto fortifications or buildings – units can’t end their moves off a building. This particular mission uses the Fighter Aces rules and sees flyers coming onto the table on the first turn.
5. The Beasts of Tartoros
Welcome to Tartoros. Their deal is “being bathed in deadly radiation.” Only large creatures can survive long, and that means that in this battle it’s basically Astra Militarum vs. Crusher Stampede nids.
6. The Wrath of Shelse
Despite the best efforts of the Adepta Sororitas, the Tyranid forces on Lysios haven’t been stopped and now the Sisters and the Imperial population are trapped between a chittering mass of alien devourers and a slowly encroaching tidal wave. This is all according to plan, however – the Imperial forces have been drawing the Tyranids into a trap, falling back and luring them in as they prepare to flee, letting the tidal wave sweep over and destroy the Tyranid forces. This is probably the coolest mission in the book, with Native population tokens that have to be moved off the table as a massive tidal wave sweeps up units it passes over.
One of the more grimly funny moments in the book follows this evactuation attempt – the inhabitants of Lysios tended to view their twin stars as malefic dieties. When the Sororitas arrived on the planet, they started a planetwide campaign to snuff out this superstition, replacing it with the Imperial Faith. As the planet fell and the Sisters attempted to draw the Tyranids’ ire away to buy time for the nomads to flee however, those same nomads – now converted to the Imperial faith – ran into the fray to reinforce the Sororitas, dying horribly in the process. Only about half of the intended refugees make it off the planet as the other half die trying to help the Sisters out. Whoops.
The Rules
Shield of Baal followed close behind Sanctus Reach in the fall of 2014 and preceded the release of Codex: Blood Angels in December 2014. Although Tyranids were still using their 6th edition Codex released in January of that same year, Leviathan coincided with the release of new kits for the army. Specifically the dual kit for the Tyrannocyte/Sporocyst and Toxicrene/Maleceptor.
There are three major sections to the rules in this book:
- New Tyranid Formations and Datasheets
- Cities of Death mission rules
- Death from the Skies Mission rules
The datasheets here are pretty straightforward – the Tyrannocyte gave Tyranids a long-awaited drop pod style unit to kick off their planetary invasions, while the Sporocyst gave players a kind of Tyranid fortification and left them with Mucolid Spores which could be assembled from the unused bits in the Tyrannocyte kit. The Maleceptor gave them a new psychic unit – a big deal in seventh edition, and the Toixcrene could poison enemy units. And Zoanthrope Broods gave us a datasheet for the new plastic Zoantrhope kit, featuring a Neurothrope leading the unit.
Tyranids gained a unique new Detachment in this supplement – the Hive Fleet Detachment – with its own Command Benefits and Warlord Traits, though it lacked the structure of the Necron Decurion-style Detachments which would come to dominate 7th edition list-building.
Cities of Death
Cities of Death missions brought back cityfighting to 40k for seventh edition, making use of the then-new concept of Maelstrom of War missions, missions in which players drew all of their objectives at random from a deck of 36 cards. The Cities of Death mission pack replaced that deck with one of its own, focused more on the way Cities missions asked players to place objective markers in or on top of buildings and ruins. Otherwise, there was nothing special about the way the game was played in these missions, only the terrain they used.
To go with these mission rules the book also included six Cities of Death missions, each with a suggested deployment map running heavy on Citadel cityscape ruin kits. Unlike the Echoes of War missions, these were purely faction-agnostic, giving players a compelling reason to buy the book even if they weren’t playing an army important to the specific campaign lore.
Death from the Skies
Just to make sure things were a bit too overstuffed, Leviathan also included rules for Death from the Skies, which introduce a series of extra rules for upgrading Flyer units with Fighter Aces rules. These are a set of three traits you can randomly acquire to make your flyer/flying monstrous creatures even better. Flyers were already insanely over-pushed in 6th and 7th edition and these rules just further reinforced the need to either have flyers or units which could deal with them.
Next Time: Exterminatus
Unlike with the end of part 1 of Sanctus Reach, there wasn’t nearly much hope following the end of Leviathan. The Tyranids pretty much ravage and devour the entire Cryptus System and destroy the Imperial defenses in the span of about three days. Out of the billions of inhabitants on the system’s planets, only a few million survived. Lysios was being hailed as a key imperial victory thanks to the Sosoritas’ tidal wave-based approach to warfare, but every other planet in the system was lost.
Of course, a single telepathic distress signal made it out, reaching an Imperial fleet and calling the aid of warriors whose efforts could only be doomed to fail.
Next week we’ll be back to cover the second book in the campaign series, Exterminatus, and talk about those warriors and the most controversial team-up in the history of 40k lore.
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