| abstract | - The Tyranid Hive Fleet that is assaulting the Jericho Reach is officially designated by the Imperium as Hive Fleet Dagon and has been identified as the greatest extant threat to the Achilus Crusade underway in the region, and indeed to the lives of every living being in the Jericho Reach. The Space Marines of the Deathwatch remain fully engaged in facing this threat. Not much is known about the origins of Hive Fleet Dagon other than that it hails from the edge of the galactic rim, far to the galactic east like all of the Tyranid Hive Fleets that have been encountered to date. It is highly suspected by the Imperial savants of the Ordo Xenos that this particular Hive Fleet may be a splinter of the decimated Hive Fleet Behemoth, which was destroyed during the First Tyrannic War in 745.M41 by Imperial forces. This new Hive Fleet brings many all-too-familiar horrors to the Jericho Reach. Alongside the familiar, however, come new and disturbing Tyranid variations, proving once again that as soon as the Imperium believes it understands the Tyranid, that hideous species changes and adapts once more. For the Jericho Reach, the arrival of the Great Devourer was a mighty hammer blow, catching the Achilus Crusade off-balance and forcing Imperial Commanders to scramble to face this new threat before too much ground was lost and too many worlds had fallen. Meeting the swarms head-on, millions died in those first desperate years after Dagon's arrival, and many planets could not be saved. They disappeared forever under a rising and bloody tide of razor-sharp claws and clacking mandibles. Commanders and soldiers alike came to know the signs and character of the swarm, the nature of its beasts and the unique hunger it seemed to possess for the Jericho Reach, as if it had a special taste for that sector's worlds. They also noted how it adapted and changed with each world it consumed, each battle it won or lost. This kind of rapid adaptation had been observed in other Tyranid Hive Fleets but in Hive Fleet Dagon it seemed as if the fleet were aware of the pain and suffering it was inflicting and the terror in the hearts of the soldiers trying to stop it. In the space of a few short standard years, this evolution and mutation within Dagon led to a number of unique bio-constructs and weapons never seen before by Imperial xenos-scholars; the most terrible of them all being the Dagon Overlord. The Achilus Crusade's forces within the Orpheus Salient were already stretched far too thinly to be effective defenders. As the Crusade scrambled to try to find reinforcements, the Tyranid Swarm moved ever deeper into the Reach. This left the Deathwatch as the only force capable of assuming responsibility for defending against the xenos incursion. By observing different star systems and selectively choosing their targets to maximise their small but potent forces available in the Reach, the Deathwatch valiantly attempted to blunt or even halt the Tyranid attack. Whether this strategy will prove successful or not remains to be seen.
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