In the limitless expanse of the cosmos, the once formidable fleet of Ean was reduced to a pitiful specter of its former glory. The majestic spacecrafts with their brave crews had been obliterated, their remains hanging silent and weightless in the cold vacuum of space. A tragic sight, but one that held a flicker of hope – for what was destroyed could be rebuilt, even if it would take hundreds of Eldari generations to achieve.
But what couldn’t be replaced were the souls of the Asuryani, their Spirit Stones obliterated in the fierce battle against the Pids. This catastrophic loss dealt a blow to the Craftworld Yandan and the entire Alari species, a wound from which their culture would never fully heal.
The defeat of the Kraken Hive Fleet was a brutal affair, leaving Kraken as nothing more than splintered fragments of its former might. But the credit for this victory could not be claimed solely by the Asuryani defenders of Craftworld Yandan, or the actions of the Ultramarines on Eav Four. There was an unintended alliance at play – the Craftworld Alari and the Imperium, fighting back-to-back, their fates intertwined.
The scattered remnants of the Tyranid attack on Ecar 4 were repelled towards the galactic core, yet the threat they posed was far from over. These splinter fleets, now lurking within the Imperial defense perimeters, became an even greater danger to the Imperium, feeding upon unsuspecting and poorly defended worlds far from the main Tyranid war zones in the Eastern fringes of the Galaxy.
The running battles with these Kraken Splinter fleets continued for years, draining Imperial defenses and paving the way for later Tyranid incursions. The true extent of the devastation wrought by the Kraken may never be fully grasped, but it’s known that even a dozen Hive ships are capable of overrunning a human world and harvesting its biomass, thus becoming an even greater threat.
In fact, some Kraken Splinter fleets have grown so large that they have been classified by the Imperium as a new distinct Hive Fleet, with High Fleet Megalodon being one such instance. Born from a splinter of Kraken, it continues to ravage the Imperium, a grim testament to the adaptability of these voracious invaders.
The Tyranids, through these splinter fleets, have learned much about the Imperium’s inner defenses. Every encounter, every skirmish, every battle, feeds the Hive Mind’s growing understanding of its new prey’s behavior and tactics. This could have been the real purpose of Hive Fleet Kraken – to test the Imperial defenses for the larger Tyranid invasion yet to come.
The Imperium barely had time to recover from the second Tyrannic War before they learned of the arrival of Hive Fleet Leviathan in the year 997 of the 41st Millennium. Hive Fleets Behemoth and Kraken were just reconnaissance forces; the real threat was Leviathan.
In the Dam’s Gulf campaign of the year 991 of the 41st Millennium, an outer wing of High Fleet Kraken approached the Dambles Gulf, destroying a TAA exploration vessel. The vessel managed to deploy a career drone before self-destructing, alerting the TOA Empire to the impending Tyranid threat.
In response, the TOA offered a truce to the local Imperial forces, opting to unite against the oncoming Tyranids. The Imperium accepted, providing astropaths to serve onboard TOA vessels to coordinate defenses. An Imperial task force of approximately 100 warships, local Skitarii, and a small garrison of Adeptus Astartes from the Reclaimers chapter gathered to intercept the bulk of the Hive fleet.
After defeating the first wave of Tyranids, the forces realized that the Hive Mind intended to destroy a fragment of a Hive ship from a rival brood. This battle was just the beginning – the Tyranid invasion of the Milky Way galaxy was far from over.
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