The Tortuga Marches Sub sector

The Fall
The Tortuga Marches Subsector is a distant and forgotten back water of the Imperium of Man, lying on the outer edge of the Damocles Gulf in the Ultima Segmentum.


Conquered during the Imperial crusade, as a possible transit corridor for between spiral arms, the sub sector was discovered to be only a branch and soon became a sleepy backwater.
By 730.M41 many of its worlds had fallen to the Tau or succumbed to the greater good through trade and peaceful annexation. When the Bauxite and Tungsten mines of St Dolan were annexed by the Water-caste in 739.M41, the slow decay of the sub sector finally came to the attention of the Administratum. The Damocles Crusade had by this time been in planning for years and the Tortuga Marches were added to the target lists almost as an afterthought.
In 742.M41 the Damocles Gulf Crusade slammed into Tau space, at first things went well for the Imperials, capturing world after world, destroying many outlying settlements. but eventually the crusade ground to a halt. The Imperium had been attacked elsewhere and desperately needed the forces of the Crusade elsewhere. Primarily to slow the approach of Hive Fleet Behemoth. By the end of 742.M41, not even a year after the crusade had started, it was finished. Imperial commanders agreed to a withdrawal and a truce.

The Withdrawal
As the Segmentum Command began to realise the full extent and nature of the onslaught of Hive Fleet Behemoth, the cries for re-enforcement from the Damolces Crusade armies became more strident. What was planned as an organised withdrawal rapidly descended into a disorganised scramble: Armies were airlifted out leaving all of their equipment behind, to be re-equipped on the way to confront the Tyranids; Troops were abandoned when their Navy transport pulled out with all of their supplies, such as happened to the 17th Brimlock Dragoons; entire regiments were left behind because they couldn't get to the troopships on time.

The Aftermath
In the ensuing Chaos, fighting continued sporadically despite the peace treaty in some cases Tau sept's moved in to the vacuum left by departing Imperials only to run into die-hards and troops who had failed to reach the extraction point in time, in other cases such as the Tortuga Marches sector, local nobles conspired to keep the war going in order to retain that which the Imperium had so far managed to recover before the truce. The high tide mark of the Imperial advance was the star system Praxedes, and the Jewell in the crown: the civilised world of Praxedes IV. Five years after the peace treaty was signed ending the Damocles Gulf Crusade, the war in the Praxedes system continues unabated, neither side seems able to bring enough force to bear on the world resolve the issue, until in 747.M41 a collection of Tau Sept fleeing the destruction of their world by a splinter of Hive Fleet Behemoth come to settle on Praxedes IV.