Scenery Showcase: Jungle Hive Fortress

Deep in the jungles of Pariah, the Jungle Men of Lapitar maintain hundreds of secret fortresses built around one or more landing pads.

The bases function as watchtowers, detecting enemy troop movements and quickly relaying them throughout the network.

The Jungle Men of Lapitar do not maintain a single headquarters base but instead distribute their command structure. In this way their organisation resembles more of a hive mind than a traditional top down framework.

Each Garrison Fortress holds a company of warriors, standing ready to quickly redeploy wherever they are needed or stand firm against an invading force.

The Jungle Men favour the Vendetta pattern gunship rather than the Valkyrie because of its heavier anti-tank armament. In these drop ship they can quickly drop in on grav-shoots to deal with enemy personal at the end of a flamer barrel.

Although on the surface, each fortress may seem small, most have tunnel networks beneath for additional command nodes and troop barracks.

Supplies are sourced locally on the whole but can be easily flown in.

Regular patrols pass out from the fortress every day both by air and on foot. In addition, the jungle for miles around each base is peppered with surveillance devices and traps. It is impossible for enemies to approach by land and not be spotted.

Each fortress is fortified to hold off attackers providing numerous parapets for occupying troops to fire from.

They are also equipped with emplaced heavy weaponry programmed to fire on approaching unfriendly personnel or vehicles. These can be manned directly in times of attack to provide greater accuracy of fire.

The Jungle Men of Lapitar are a secretive people and far more of them exist than Imperial records show.

These Hive Fortresses provide a perfect medium to keep numbers unknown, response time to threats low and dependability high.

Due to the devolved nature of the hive network, it is very difficult to deliver a crippling blow to the Jungle Men as a nation.

Destroy one or more fortresses and the highly manoeuvrable Lapitar forces will simply counterstrike with overwhelming force before disappearing into the mist-enshrouded jungles again.

Underground tunnels connect many of the larger base. These are set with demolitions in the case of enemy ingress with multiple redundancy systems to prevent them falling into enemy hands.

Hyper-charged underground transports are held ready within these tunnels for moving large bodies of troops at speed, either towards the front line or away from it as required.

In this way, if a major incursion were to occur in Lapitar, the enemy would suddenly face a force many times larger than anticipated as troops poured up from underground and flew in from the skies.

Including from the Tyranid assaults of the first Manticore War, Lapitar remains the most untouched and highly defended regions on Valorax Prime.

It remained relatively untouched during the planetary bombardment of the Scouring and continues to be so to this day.

The Jungle Men of Lapitar are aware of the menace of the Tyranids festering beneath the canopy in their realm and are already taking steps to combat it aggressively.

Ammunition and manpower are being moved into battle-ready positions and an alpha strike is being planed all across the hive network.

One hive mind will combat another as the Jungle Men sell their lives to eradicate all trace of these alien locusts.

The time to strike is approaching.

It is almost here!