Battle of Lampadas

The Battle of Lampadas was the penultimate battle of the galactic civil war, a three-way engagement between the Butlerian movement, Josef Venport's Venport Holdings, and the forces of Emperor Roderick Corrino over the planet Lampadas, fought eight decades after the end of the Butlerian Jihad. It marked the severe weakening of the Butlerian movement through the death of its leader Manford Torondo, dealt a devastating blow to Venport Holdings, and solidified Emperor Roderick's rule.

Background#

With the Imperium in turmoil between the fanatical Butlerian movement under Leader Manford Torondo and the commercial empire of Josef Venport, the newly crowned Emperor Roderick Corrino struggled to secure his position after the incompetent rule of his brother Salvador and hoped the two extremes would annihilate one another. After breaking VenHold's siege of Salusa Secundus with the timely arrival of the Butlerian fleet, and securing the escape of Admiral Umberto Harte's battlegroup, Roderick sent Harte to Lampadas to lie in wait at the edge of the system and ambush whatever Butlerian ships survived an attack on VenHold's headquarters at Kolhar.

Unknown to Roderick, Manford Torondo had obtained a cache of forbidden atomics from a planetary ruler loyal to the Butlerian cause. With them the Butlerians turned what would have been a massacre into a decisive victory over their hated enemy, devastating the world with nuclear fire. Josef Venport survived thanks to a prescient warning from his great-grandmother Norma Cenva. He summoned Roderick to Arrakis, and the Emperor agreed to a rapprochement on the condition that Venport destroy the Butlerians. Venport agreed eagerly and personally led a fleet of spacefolders in a strike against Lampadas, where Torondo lived.

The battle#

VenHold forces arrived over Lampadas and engaged the old Ballista-class battleships of the Butlerians. At the same time a hundred VenHold cymeks, built with the brains of failed Navigators, were dropped in pods onto the capital city with orders to cleanse the planet of all life. They were led by a scientist named Ptolemy, who had a personal score to settle with Torondo for destroying his laboratory and killing his research partner. Admiral Harte watched from orbit through stealth probes, awaiting his moment.

In space the outnumbered Butlerians resorted to suicidal tactics, ramming and firing lasguns at shielded VenHold ships in mutual annihilation, and Venport ordered his own ships to lower their shields to avoid the catastrophic lasgun-shield interaction. On the surface the cymeks killed thousands, most of them devout Butlerians, who rushed the giant walker-forms and died by the tens of thousands before the survivors overwhelmed the cymeks and smashed their brain canisters. Manford Torondo led his followers into battle atop his Swordmaster Anari Idaho, but Ptolemy seized him and tore him to pieces before the Butlerians killed Ptolemy in turn. By the end of the ground fight tens, if not hundreds, of thousands lay dead, the capital was leveled, and all the cymeks had been destroyed.

In orbit the VenHold ships destroyed or heavily damaged most of the Butlerian fleet, but at great cost. Choosing this moment, Admiral Harte ordered his ships to open fire on both VenHold and Butlerian vessels, a strike that surprised even the prescient Norma Cenva. Weak and damaged, the VenHold forces could not fight back, and Venport ordered a retreat. To buy his Navigators time to charge their Holtzman engines, he warned Harte that he was holding the Emperor's sister Anna Corrino hostage. Harte paused his attack, and the surviving VenHold ships jumped away to Denali, the site of VenHold's secret laboratory.

Aftermath#

Admiral Harte's forces took control of Lampadas and summoned Emperor Roderick, who arrived in force to put an end to the Butlerian movement. The movement survived under the leadership of the Swordmaster Anari Idaho, but the devastating casualties and the loss of all its spacecraft had set it back severely. Infuriated that Venport had held his sister hostage, Roderick ordered Harte to scour the damaged VenHold ships and interrogate their crews for the Directeur's location. Harte's people uncovered the coordinates of Denali, setting the stage for the Battle of Denali that would end Venport Holdings.