Lion El'Jonson invoked the ancient Ikaros Contingency and instructed the Masters of the Armoury to wake the Excindio that slumbered in the deepest stasis vaults of the Invincible Reason.Those Dark Angels still fighting on the surface withdrew to carefully prepared and fortified positions as the Invincible Reason detached a section of its lower hull, casting it into the churning atmosphere of Galatia .That cargo was truly terrible, 12 nightmares torn from the pages of history and the darkest horrors of old Night on Terra, immense inhuman forms of sculpted ceramite and steel adorned with weapons long forbidden by edict of the Emperor Himself. These were the Excindio, the last of the silica anima that had once been the plague of the Golden Age of Mankind, mutilated and bound to serve the Lion should the Mechanicum be so foolish as to go to war with the Imperium. Their neural cores immune to the crude cybertheurgy of the Mechanicum, the Excindio tore into the creations of the fallen magi that would come to be known as the Dark Mechanicum, the forbidden arts that had forged them in aeons now long lost far superior to the stumbling efforts of Galatia's nascent cult the nightmares he had unleashed hunted and killed as once they had done,There are few tales of what would follow, for on this battlefield no mortal human could survive, it was the haunt of demons and gods alone. What is known is that when the Dark Angels returned to the field of battle as the sun grew dim and night fell on Galatia, Lion El'Jonson stood alone amongst a field of metal corpses and the dormant shells of the surviving seven Excindio, whose limited power reserves had run dry and plunged them back into a state of torpor.
