The Horus Heresy Book 5 - Tempest

lTHRACA CITY part of the city's infrastructure provided War Host stationed around Landing Zone
both drinking water for its population as Macro-Gamma. The war host was a massive
Perhaps the most important orbital well as vast quantities of coolant waters for mechanised army group of the Excertus
transhipping hub on the surface of Calth, the numerous blast pits and yard facilities Imperialis hailing from a chain of industrial
rivalled only by Lanshear in the size and of the Macro-dock. Further on, the city's night worlds known as the Calaq Sequence.
scale of its facilities, the Ithraca Macro-dock sprawling southern inland edge gave way This army group comprised three 90,000
comprised three distinct landing zones. to an area of barrens and industrial spoil strong divisions of mechanised infantry with
Each contained a cluster of interconnected known as the Spur Wastes. Here was to be five companies offield artillery and two full
star docks and loading platforms, fed by a found the designated ground for wrecking cohorts of super-heavy tanks in support.
labyrinthine array of semi-subterranean yards, salvage sites and refuse processing
storage and logistics facilities. Overall, operations, a blighted and desolate expanse of In addition, within the city's core inside the
these landing zones formed an uneven- ground leading to the rocky barren plains of subterranean bunker system that spread
sided triangle several thousand square the Sanachi hinterlands beyond them. out from the Ithraca Heliokon, the greater
kilometres in area. Between and around strength of two chapters of the Ultramarines
these vast facilities, Ithraca City had grown. The Titan Muster Legion had been temporarily based: the 4'h
Clad around the vast spider web of arterial When the drum beat of war was heard Chapter (the Aurorans), a chapter whose
roadways and the extensive network of upon Calth and the vast army of conquest structure was biased towards heavy armour
elevated maglev railways designed for was gathered there for the assault against tactics with its own super-heavy division,
transporting priority personnel and cargo the Orks that would never be, Ithraca, with and the 24'h Chapter (the Exitium), which
transport between the landing zones, the city its potent resources both as a star port and operated as part of the XIII'hLegion's
had formed semi-organically, first as part of arms store, as well as its formidable civil strategic reserve and featured a considerably
the support structure serving the bustling infrastructure, was key in the campaign's above-strength contingent of dedicated
dockyards, then increasingly as a habitation muster and deployment plans. As the support ordnance, mobile artillery systems
space for the thousands, then several lynchpin of the Sanachi Province muster, and munitions train. These noted units
millions-strong population who carried out and because of the scale of its macro- formed only the most prominent of the
its industries and their ancillary services. In transhipping facilities , which were able forces deployed to Ithraca for the muster
its overall layout, Ithraca City was complex to handle the largest orbital landers and operations though, and kilometres offreshly
but orderly and, in addition to the numerous shuttles, coupled with its proximity to large constructed temporary hangars and barrack-
precincts of worker habitation-blocks, it areas of uninhabited barren land nearby, blocks had been erected in the Spur Wastes
possessed myriad sub-districts centred on Ithraca City was selected for the singular and the Sanachi hinterlands beyond the city's
storage deports, power generation plants, role as the mustering point for the principal boundaries to accommodate the vast influx.
repair workshops, support manufactoria and strengths of two entire Titan Legions: the
Administratum chamber-houses. Legio Praesagius (the True Messengers) and A further quarter of a million soldiers of the
the Legio Suturvora (the Fire Masters), and Excertus Imperialis, ranging from feral tribe
Civil and military control of the city and over two hundred god-engines. levy to elite Solar Auxilia elements, as well as
the dockyards was bound to the Ithraca more exotic units such as the ochre-liveried
Heliokon- a fortified spire-cluster which, A force sufficient to raze whole worlds to battle-automata of the Taghmata Xerxes
at one and a half kilometres high, was both ashes stood awaiting their orders on the city's from distant Accatran, also found temporary
the tallest structure on the city's skyline outskirts like a terrifying second city skyline home there awaiting resupply, assignment
and the most heavily constructed bastion of baleful figure cast on a gargantuan scale, and orbital lift to the waiting fleet and the
in the entire Sanachi Province of Calth. their sirens piercing the darkness of the promised war.
The Ithraca Heliokon served as the primary night. These two mighty forces, assigned to
orbital traffic control interface for Calth's Landing Zones Macro-Alpha and Macro-
southern equatorial region and the Ithraca Beta respectively, dwarfed all around them,
Macro-dock in particular, as well as being but they were not alone. Several other
one of the principal centres of ground- major Imperial units requiring the use of
side command redundancy for the planet's macro-loaders and supporting Colossi class
defence grid should the central control at machine shops, as well as other facilities able
Kalkas Fortalice become compromised. Built to handle the repair, rearming and refit of
to withstand direct attack as well as potential large numbers of super-heavy tanks, were
crash collision from wayward orbital traffic, also accorded Ithraca City as their muster.
the Heliokon possessed its own void shield Of these by far the largest was the Calaq
generators equal to a capital class warship as
well as its own missile batteries and defence
turbo-laser emplacements to be called on in
an emergency.

Bordered to the north by the sea, Ithraca
City's coastline was dominated by a thirty
kilometre-square industrial aqueduct and
desalination facility, known in local parlance
as 'The Trident,' a name owing its origins to
its three great water reservoirs. This vital

ADARKNEss AT MAcRo-GAMMA THE BETRAYAL AT lTHRACA

Just as the first great blow of the Battle

Just as so much of the record of the Battle of Calth is fragmentary, so much of what of Calth was struck and the fleet tender

happened in and around the Muster of Calth has been lost to the savagery loosed against Campanile smashed into the planet's supra-

the planet itself and the solar-scouring it would suffer long afterward; data-corrosion and orbital ring, wreaking havoc and destroying
I the dead themselves taking with them much that could offer explanation and clarity into
the Calth Veridian Anchor stations and

i the events of this apocalyptic battle and its inception. There are however exceptions to this ravaging dozens of vessels docked there,

~''• rule and artefact-data where it has survived has offered great insight, for the Ultramarines Ithraca, in the southern hemisphere and
and their demi-realm were nothing if not meticulous in their record keeping. One such with the planet's mass between them and the
artefact, an arbitrator-notary's personal logos-core found in the wreckage ofArcology orbital conflagration, was at first ignorant of

Epsilon-XXIV, speaks to the days and hours at Ithraca City before the betrayal. The logos- what had transpired.

core contained a report detailing a wave of strange and unaccountable phenomena, and a

vast upswing in violent criminal incidents in the region of the Macro-Gamma sector of It was mid-morning by the local diurnal

Ithraca City. The reports date almost exactly in their commencement to the arrival of the cycle and the industry of the port was in

Calaq War Host to the Sanachi Province muster some five local weeks before the arrival of full swing, with the activities of the muster

the Word Bearers Legion and their auxiliaries in the Veridia system. having progressed to the stage where the

Legio Praesagius and the Legio Suturvora

The reports range from inexplicable power outages and localised weather and temperature were at last beginning the embarkation of

phenomena, to a 300 per cent increase over average of equipment breakages and petty their Titans to waiting macro-transporters

systems failures in the sector. In parallel with this was a steadily escalating pattern of civil in high orbit in imminent preparation for

disturbances, from an increase in domestic violence in the dock workers' habitation stacks, the coming war. Of all of the forces that had

to a seemingly unconnected web of individuals suffering catastrophic mental breakdown, been gathered around Ithraca City, the True

furthered as time progressed to include a spike in reported murders -often of an Messengers had been given the honour

extremely bloody character- and a staggering increase in missing persons in the sector of being the first to depart, and in order to

(both from the local population and other Excertus Imperialis regiments of the muster facilitate this, its major strength of Titan

assigned to the region). This culminated in the arrival of a forty-carriage maglev worker engines, some seventy god-engines, had been

shuttle train, full at departure but putting into its destination the day before the attack on drawn up into close order at the primary

Calth empty save for blood-spattered walls and a few shreds of gore-clotted clothing. This facility of the vast Macro-Alpha landing zone.

incident was considered so shocking and inexplicable that the masters ofUltramar, in Several smaller sub-deployments destined

the shape of the feared Vigil Opertii, had been called in to investigate. The tide of history for various sub-commands within the future

however would prevent any answers being found. invasion force , designated Battlegroups

Argenrus, Geryron and Peregrine, were then

The final addendum of the report fearures a commentary by the author that no such scattered to other smaller marshalling zones

strange or violent occurrences can in any way be connected or attributed to the Calaq at the edges of Macro-Alpha.

War Host, despite its general proximity in all cases to the locations involved. It does note

the considerable disquiet generally resulting from the war host's noted insularity, lack of The leading elements ofLegio Praesagius,

cooperation with local authorities and seemingly barbaric and sinister character. Though including its heaviest and most honoured

the report itself notes that such a reputation had preceded the Calaq War Host, and was not Battle Titans, had already boarded the

uncommon in regards to tithed armed forces drawn from worlds grown savage during the colossal orbital lifter Arutan at the centre of

Age of Strife-going so far as to include a reference to the works of the Imperial Iterator- Macro-Alpha's primary landing zone, and

General Emnilda Zmavc who cited the Calaq Hold Worlds as a rare Res ipsa loquitur case it would be the Arutan which would be the

of a society which had suffered complete social and moral regression while maintaining an first to carry the Legio's Titans back to the

almost unaffected technological base after the fall of human-galactic civilisation. stars. The Arutan was a vast, slab-like vessel, a

purpose-built Mechanicum Titan-conveyor,

In retrospect, the assignment of the Calaq War Host by the orders of the Warmaster itself almost two kilometres in length by

directly to the Calth Muster can now be seen for what it was; an entirely deliberate act, nearly a kilometre across and near half a

most likely at Lorgar's direct request. It had been the Word Bearers who had brought the kilometre in height. The lifter was fitted

Calaq Holds to Compliance during their great post-Monarchia campaign of conquests, and with plasma-thruster engines so powerful

who had also held their strange superstitions to be of a nature that prolonged exposure no other craft could operate in its vicinity

to Imperial culture would dispel. The powerful Calaq War Host had served on many with any margin of safety as it blasted off. To

battlefronts in the intervening years and for a number of masters with great success, as the this end, air and orbital traffic across Ithraca

Calaq's savagery and military expertise, in conjunction with their mental resilience, was City had been placed in temporary abeyance
in preparation for the Arutan's departure,
. found extremely useful in a variety of high-intensity war zones. But with the wisdom of and the countdown had reached its end
and the colossal plasma thrusters bloomed
'• hindsight it can be acknowledged that ignorance of the true nature of the Calaq culture into fire only moments before, when,
suddenly and inexplicably, the vast flow
"ai had been deliberately fostered by the Traitors' conspiracy, and the dangers of its ritual of coordination signals and command and

I beliefs had been fatally underestimated.

I

~

£ control information from Calth's planetary

:J data manifold fell silent, killed in an instant
piU by the Campamle's deadly work. This silence
was the cue for the Traitors to act.
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As the Arutan rose on its ponderously slow Though the brieffury of the first orbital channels were now completely jammed with
assent, its engines flaring like new suns rising
over the city, force commanders and systems attack meted out destruction to the Legio chanting incantations and endlessly repeated
control officers across Ithraca who were
not part of the treachery fruitlessly tried to Praesagius, they were not its sole or indeed names, which caused many human operators
re-establish contact with the signal control
network, only to be greeted at first by the principal target. Instead, this was the scores exposed to them to succumb to hysteria or
maddening absence of transmission which
served as an ominous prelude to a slowly of orbital lifters, landed gunships, fighter even spontaneous psychotic breakdowns.
rising dirge of incomprehensible chanting
and malign data scrapcode, which began to squadrons and void shuttles caught supine While the internecine slaughter was at first
assail any cogitator system that received it,
blotting out all else. Elsewhere, the Traitors on the ground below, and across these the largely confined to the forces of the Imperial
were not so afflicted; to them the dirge was a
sacred call to arms. Engines roared to life and Traitors sowed total havoc, shattering hulls Army stationed around the city and in the
war machine reactors spiked into full power,
as on sealed and encrypted vox-channels and rending fuselages, detonating munitions mustering camps beyond, other off-world
harsh orders were barked and baying cries
issued by discipline masters to their troops and fuel lines so that entire dockyard forces from the Taghmata Xerxes to the
as the betrayal swung into operation and fire
struck down from the sky. complexes became seas of fire rumbling Titans of Legio Praesagius were at a loss as to

The first strikes which fell were few but with the percussion of an endless series of how to react, unsure ofjust who the enemy
strategically targeted and scheduled by the
Word Bearers' plan of attack, lance-beams secondary explosions as power cells and shell was or whether some vast accidental calamity
and plasma-burst cluster barrages unleashed
from Traitor vessels in high orbit before magazines cooked. was unfolding around them, the true danger
they turned on closer prey in the void. Each
struck down at Landing Zone Macro-Alpha, not apparent until it was far too late. Great
raining a blaze of destruction down on the
ill-prepared Titans of the Legio Praesagius, The city reeled in shock, but this was but plumes of fire and toxic smoke were already
slicing through armour caught unprotected
by void shields. the beginning. All across Ithraca and its rising above the city from the blasted

With the Arutan still ascending above Macro- vast array oflanding zones and marshalling dockyards and landing zones, and panic was
Alpha, the city found itself at the centre of
the storm and was struck a dozen times by yards, and out into the wastelands and already spreading throughout the civilian
the spears of killing light from space. The
Arutan also suffered through the attack's fury; plains beyond, the Imperialis Auxilia in population faster than any wildfire. Arterial
a lesser vessel would have been immediately
destroyed, but the Titan-conveyor was their hundreds of thousands were set cheek roadways soon became blocked by multiple
forged on Mars to deliver and extract its
precious cargo in the heart of the most by jowl, regiment by regiment, Traitors vehicle collisions, and crowds stampeded
tempestuous battle and its armoured hide
was more akin to that of a battleship than a alongside Loyalists who were not yet even away from the carnage the forces of the
simple lifter craft. But still the Arutan shook
and shuddered under the bombardment, aware of the division, but to whom the reality Imperialis Auxilia were suddenly inflicting
its ascent wavering as its upper hull glowed
ember-red with searing heat,when suddenly was about to be made bloodily plain. Just on each other as hundreds of civilian workers
one of its four great thruster units, slammed
again by lance fire, broke away, becoming a as the treacherous assault from space fell, and functionaries were killed in the crossfire.
fiery missile careening across the city-scape
to plunge into the seas beyond, and the betrayal and murder were unleashed. At
Arutan began to fall. The huge lifter slewed
across the skyline ofithraca, its Mechanicum sentry posts and checkpoints, in commissary On the south-western flank of the city,
Navarchos pilots desperately trying to retain
height as the craft smashed the upper stories halls and barrack-blocks, loading bays and the great span of the Spur Wastes which
off habitation blocks and toppled the vent
spires off of high-reaching thermo towers vehicle slipways, men and women were separated Landing Zones Macro-Alpha and
as it went, creating a swath of destruction
through the city before crash landing in the gunned down by those they had thought Macro-Beta and their respective muster
civic parklands at the city's core.
comrades, blades were bared and blood sites began to roil and shake as if localised

flowed. Grenades were hurled into packed earthquakes were taking place. Such was

dormitories and on muster fields . Whole the tread of an entire Titan Legion at flank

battalions waiting in ordered ranks were march. Drawn out in a wide, shallow echelon,

scythed down like wheat, fired on at point- some seven kilometres end to end, more

blank range or simply crushed under the than one hundred Titans charged to war, the

tracks of armoured vehicles of supposed might of the Legio Sururvora hungering for

allies in the Imperium's cause. It was a tide of battle. In their passing, the Spur Wastes were

murder; a massacre of a multitude carried out hammered flat, and anything caught in their

in minutes. path, friend or foe, be it soldier, armoured

vehicle, bivouac or bastion, was simply

The Clash ofthe Gods pulverised like an insect beneath the tread

Little more than fifteen minutes had elapsed of the unstoppable god-engines. For all the

from the first fall of the orbital strike when Titans' breakneck charge, there was method

a deep report, louder even than the sound to the madness and strategy, and no Titan

of explosions and disaster sirens that swept from this gargantuan attack wave let forth its

the city, was heard, drowning all else out weapons until their true quarry was in sight.

as the ground trembled. It echoed across Rounding the broken line of refineries and

Ithraca from far beyond its boundaries-a tech-reclamation yards which marked the

sound that can now be identified as the deca- boundary of Landing Zone Macro-Alpha,

megaton impact concussion wave generated throwing up a great dust storm around

by the hulk of the falling Ultramarines them, at last the vast plasma coils of the Fire

grand cruiser Antrodami.cus striking Kalkas Masters began to burn hot and their mega-

Fortalice to the north and all but obliterating bolters wracked their chambers with shells;

that fair city. This death cry was answered the unsuspecting Legion Praesagius waited.

immediately by the terrifying exultation of a

hundred Titan war sirens bellowing at once; Far above the city, the sky began to at once

the Fire Masters were on the move. Their darken and became scattered with brief,

targets, the remaining True Messengers at savage flares of light as the void battle i

Macro-Alpha, however, were still unaware broke out in Calth's orbital space, while at

the Ithraca Heliokon, savant-magos and !
..of their intentions and did not respond. Vox •
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.. of death to come, and such it was. The instead siege weapons; directed melta charge
lexmechanic clades struggled with little hovering blaze was in fact the orbital entry warheads designed to unleash their power in
success to engage their emergency control burn of the Dirac's Lament, a Mechanicum- tightly patterned cones of effect. The greater
protocols to assume control over the city's modified Tritonos class galleass which number of the missile spread fell towards the
defences and airspace, or even to gain any served as the sovereign domain and principal prostrate Heliokon, its defences in disarray,
kind of accurate portrayal ofjust what conveyance of the Ordo Reductor Covenant its void shields stubbornly inactive thanks to
calamity was befalling them, blinded as they ofMormoth-Null, and unlike the ships the baleful infection in its control systems,
were and infected with malign scrapcode which had unleashed the first sweep of fire whilst other lesser clusters streaked down
which bedevilled their every effort to assert from high orbit, it moved with measured towards the generatora stations of the city
command. It is likely that the Mechanicum and deadly patience. As the Dirac's Lament and its arbitrator block fortresses-anywhere
Tech-Priests of the Heliokon could well attained its precisely calculated geostationary that would cripple the city and any resistance
have reasserted such control in time, but it orbit above the city, it emptied its missile it might rally.
banks towards the surface and, for a brief
l moment, the burning star was haloed in a Exactly fifty metres above their targets and
many-barbed crown of fire. This was to be in utter synchronicity, the machine-spirit
iI . was not time they were allowed, and in their no saturation strike by atomantic fusion -inhabited weapons detonated, unleashing
ignorance they also awaited their doom. warheads however, a blow that might have blinding down-beams of heat and killing
put an end to Ithraca City, as helpless as it radiation, each equal to that of the radiance
Slowly at first and then in gathering was, in a single strike -and on reflection of a dying star. Wherever the killing blaze
numbers, the black smoke trails and fiery a perhaps more merciful manner- but a struck, ferrocrete burned to ash and the ash
comets of burning debris began to fall upon far crueller and drawn-out death was in burned to nothingness, plasteel became
the city, adding steadily to the gathering the Traitors' design. The warheads were superheated steam and adamantium flowed
chaos and the mounting death toll in the
streets. One such orb of fire grew more
steadily brighter than the others but did
not fall; instead it hung there like a portent

like water. The Ithraca Heliokon ceased endoskeletons simply coming apart under their wits and rallied. The battlegroup fell
to exist, replaced by a blinding wash of the assaults of a hundred of their brethren into a defensive 'trinity shield' formation.
light before a vast black mushroom cloud into twisted wreckage. It was a slaughter of This comprised three maniples of five Titans
rose up to the heavens like the afterblow god-engines unprecedented in its speed and each of their most heavily armoured units,
of a wrathful god's hammer. A hurricane scale since the dawning of the Imperium, all as yet undamaged Warlord class Battle
of superheated air driven forth from the and still the Fire Masters came on. Titans forming a continuous wedge of
blast tore through the city, howling like the reactor-overcharged void shields as a bastion
triumph of the damned,bowling ground The Slaughter of the Innocents wall behind which their lighter units and
vehicles through the streets and tearing mag- On the other side of the city from the Titan damaged brethren could rally. But as the air
lev carriages from their rails like spilled toys. battle that was then erupting, the Calaq War between them and the closing Fire Masters
It was to this tumult and its portent that the Host broke from Landing Zone Macro- front line Titans was rent with annihilating
Titans and scions of the Legio Praesagius at Gamma and fell upon the panicked city like energy blasts and screaming shells, even this
the Macro-Alpha landing zone were turned, ravening jackals. Having already slaughtered nigh-impenetrable wall of atomantic force
their shields and armour plates angled city- everyone not of their company within the began to quickly buckle and waver as the
ward to protect them against the blast, when landing zone area, they poured through the ground before them was fused to black glass
the Fire Masters slammed into their flanks , streets killing as they came, using the bladed and the firmament above recoiled in washing
their weapons blazing. prows of their tanks' dozer blades to create plasma flame.
utter carnage amongst crowds huddling for
A score of Praesagius Titans fell to the Fire cover, and turning to bayonet and cleaver With the other general officers of the
Masters' first salvo, and a score more were wherever they could, the more to sow terror Legio trapped in the wreck of the Arutan
savaged brutally, their back carapaces rent and mutilate those they killed, daubing somewhere in the city and out of contact, and
open, reactor-vessels cracking, or their vast strange sigils in the blood of their victims on for all she knew dead, field command of the
their bodies and the flanks of their armoured True Messengers fell by seniority to Master-
vehicles. Wherever the Calaq met stern Princeps Rhiko Trieste of the Warlord Auric
resistance, be it a Loyalist army unit quickly Pegasus at the heart of the shield line. She
dug in, or even a force of tech-adepts who knew without doubt that the situation was
had managed to engage an emergency lock- dire; her surviving True Messengers were
down on a bunker-manufactora, the Calaq outnumbered and vastly outgunned by
quickly concentrated strike forces of super- the onrushing world-burners of the Legio
heavy tanks to smash such resistance aside, Suturvora, who were now closing the final
or unleashed close support wings ofAvenger breach of distance between the rwo lines.
bombers and gunship-modified lifters to She knew that when the Legios collided, the
saturate the area with fire. numerically superior, wider-file Fire Masters
force would encircle and crush her own and
But this tactical expediency aside, the Calaq there would be no escape.
War Host's goal was clearly wholesale
slaughter, and they pursued the workers and Cursing the Traitors, she issued her first
the citizenry with a diabolical fury, running and final command as mistress of the Legio
them down, penning them in and butchering Praesagius; all of her surviving units behind
them like cattle. They held no ground, the trinity shield formation, some thirty-
established no lines of supply or forward three god-engines of various classes along
bases of attack, they simply pressed on with a with a score of affiliated Knights -nearly all
relentless, malign hunger to kill while above damaged in some way- would immediately
them , the skies were blackening further and fall back into Ithraca City and disperse,
a fresh rain of fire was beginning to fall. But finding cover in order to try to restore shield
these were not merely the burning debris of power and blunt the numerical advantage of
dead warships, these were the dark contrails the Fire Masters in the artificial canyons of
ofLegiones Astartes gunships bedecked the great city and carry on the fight unto the
in the Word Bearers' new livery of dark death. The nine Warlords, including her own,
crimson, and the bright falling stars of drop would buy them the chance to flee with their
pods and Ordo Reductor war crucibles. blood. To these, she issued a single order;
charge. Two of the True Messenger Warlords
The Fate of the Pegasus never made contact with the enemy, one
It is a testament to the courage and discipline at the extreme end of the formation as it
of the Legio Praesagius that faced with such broke caught the weight of weapons fire
shocking catastrophe and brutal losses, they against it as the shield wall moved apart,
succumbed neither to panic nor disarray in its own shields sheering away in a blaze of
the face of the onslaught. Those of the True light before it detonated in a thunder of
Messengers who remained active and those plasma, while another, its knee joint burned
ancillary forces who attended them that through by a volcano cannon strike, toppled
survived after the initial storm offirepower disastrously to the ground in a vast plume
from the Fire Masters quickly recovered of dirt and wreckage. The fallen Warlord's

i'' weapons were still firing blindly as it was fell back towards the city, selecting a heavy death throes,bringing yet more devastation
overrun minutes later, but the seven-strong industrial zone in its southern quarter and sending up great black palls of scalding
counter-shock charge slammed home into as affording the greatest cover. Traitor toxic vapour, which further added to a
miasma of dust and smoke which had spread
the thinner Fire Masters line and splintered auxiliaries in the form of the Mordechai out across the city in a false night. In the
Occlusion regiments had thought to bar midst of this chaos and bloodshed, the Legio
! it, forcing the attack echelon to prematurely their way, but the feudal world-raised troops Praesagius Battlegroup Argentus, although
possessed only relatively light armaments relatively few in number, at a dozen Titans of
j close upon itself to compensate. The various classes still largely intact and under
surviving Warlords of the Legio Praesagius the command of the Invigitator, pressed on
through the cataclysm with a single goal-
battled on with desperate fury, each fighting and proved no match for the taghmata, the wreck of the Arutan and the hope that
within its armoured bulk salvation lay.
with pride and contempt, and one by one which pitilessly eradicated the chanting
In the city's eastern sectors, on the opposite
they died. assault waves, killing thousands, while side of its core from the crashed Arutan, the
murderous assault of the Calaq War Host
~'l Apocryphal accounts of the action state Mechanicum-affiliated Knights secured the held sway. It was only when armoured
taghmata's flanks as it advanced en masse figures in praetorian blue and burnished gold
that it was indeed the Auric Pegasus that was into the industrial zone. began to appear at the edges of the spreading
Calaq attack to confront them that at last
the last of them to fall, the severed head the stampede of murder met its match. The
warriors of the XIII'h Legion were a scattered
of an enemy Reaver Titan clutched in the The initial wave of slaughter and destruction few at first, members of the 4'h and 24'h
Chapters who had been diverted to smaller
Warlord's power fist, its carapace weapons was over. Now the stage was set for the Battle sub-deployments across the city's core and
who had been caught up in the catastrophic
left little more than blackened stumps and its ofithraca's second bloody phase. after-blast of the Helikon's fiery destruction.
These small commands had immediately
armour running like molten wax under the rallied and were now independently seeking
access to the deep sub-city bunkers in which
savagery of the Fire Masters' attack. The nine DARKNESS AND FIRE their brethren had been based beneath
the sprawling Helikon complex. The
fell, but their wounded brothers had escaped By the end of the first hour of the Battle main entranceways to the bunkers around
the blasted Helikon were sealed under a
into the city. of Ithraca, the western sectors of the city seething tarn of molten rock, but slowly
auxiliary tunnels were opened up or blasted
had become the scene of a deadly conflict clear of rubble, often by Tech-Priests and
Ultramarines that were under direct enemy
They were not alone. Elsewhere, several of between Titans, the most powerful of all fire, and the number of the XIII'h Legion's
forces in the fray began to increase; however
the smaller sub-deployed Legio Praesagius the Imperium's war machines, in a clash a great many of their number had already
been lost, either incinerated or buried alive
battlegroups had survived, although one, of unprecedented scale and ferocity. The in collapses and cave-ins caused by the
Traitors' onslaught.
Battlegroup Peregrine, had been annihilated Legio Praesagius god-engines, battered and
Confronted by the Calaq War Host's wanton
outright by the fury of the Dirac's Lament's wounded but far from helpless, scattered butchery of the very men and women of
Ultramar they were sworn to defend, many
missiles. Conversely, Battlegroup Argentus, down the ferrocrete and plasteel canyons of the Ultramarines in the eastern sector
fringes turned immediately to counterattack,
led by the Reaver Titan Invigitator, had and pathways of the city's main arteries just as those to the west became embroiled
in the Titan battle. Striking with a righteous
survived the initial attacks all but unscathed, and thoroughfares, forming a maze walled and avenging anger terrible to behold, they
plunged into the blood-soaked ranks of the
saved almost perversely by its close in on all sides by sky-scraping multi-level Calaq, their power armour resistant to the
war host's small arms and offering precious
proximity to the trailing edge of the Fire habitation blocks, squat manufactora little vulnerability to be exploited by knife
blade or bayonet point. The superhuman
Masters' own sub-marshalling area when the complexes and hulking modular storage Ultramarines killed with machine-like
efficiency, the bodies of the Calaq riflemen
orbital assault had occurred. Coming swiftly bunkers. The Titans of the Fire Masters exploding apart in hails of bolter fire or

under attack from the Fire Masters' outlying followed relentlessly on their heels, their

elements, it had quickly fallen back into apocalyptically powerful weapons blazing

the city, but had been tragically unable to great arcs of bright plasma and screaming

warn the main Legio Praesagius force of the shellfire. Soon, the city-scape was a

calamity that was about to befall it owing to crumbling ruin; towers were toppled into

vox interference. This relatively small force rubble or shot through with gaping rents like

would go on to play a key role in the battle bullet-ridden corpses as the Titans did battle,

to come. manoeuvring to put such cover as they could

between them and the foe or simply using

The battle-automata cohorts and armoured their bulk and power to crash a path through

squadrons of the Taghmata Xerxes had buildings and elevated plazas, uncaring of the

likewise weathered the storm. After suffering results so long as they lived to fight on.

initial losses from orbital attack, they also

Whole streets were set aflame by the lethal

breath of inferno cannon, and crowds of

The Glorious Dead, known to the terrified citizens were driven before the

annals of the Collegia Titanica as the battling giants in mindless panic. For the

Nine Paragons ofIthraca people ofithraca there was no sanctuary and

• The Auric Pegasus the death toll was nigh incalculable. Soon the

• Sabris Regnum battlelines of the two Titan forces became

• Ptutarchos hopelessly interpenetrated, the burning

• The Lion of Mars city-scape forcing the larger Fire Masters

• The SilverThorn force to break up in order to pursue their

• Reason's Thunder foes, and the fighting devolved into a score
of savage brawls, ambushes, counter-attacks
i • The Witt of Adamant

~~ • The Triumph of Accatran and desperate retreats between small bands

I' • Chrysaor's Wake ofTitans and Knights. The sundered reactors
·1 of over-taxed Titans exploded in their bitter
1' I
--- ""---~t_=~~,.--;:::.;;;:::;:::-"._-;;:;;:;._,·~----_;l~w•,.,.. •• - 1-' -
~ - ~ _, .............__......____ ...-..-.:;_;;-_,._;.t.i;_,=.-t.,..;,;

slashed apart by whirling chainswords. The the Taghmata Xerxes. Vastly outnumbered alongside a cadre of Fire Masters skitarii
Ultramarines' desire for vengeance, however, and now seriously threatened, the Taghmata barring their way, where they might -and
did not fray their discipline and where they were forced to slowly begin giving ground so perhaps should- have found a triumphant
met concentrations of enemy combat walkers that they could fall back in an ever-shrinking demi-Legio gloating above a smouldering
or armoured vehicles, they held back until series of redoubts and hastily, though crater where the Arutan had been. Even
heavy weapons could be brought forwards to efficiently organised, defensive perimeters. this would prove a deadly match, for while
deal with them. Battlegroup Argentus had the numerical
Nor even were the Legio Suturvora and its advantage in Titans, the Fire Masters
Quickly co-ordinating as best they could, mighty Titans exempt from this unreasoning Nemesis -the darkly renowned Revoka-
the Legiones Astartes formulated a strategy madness. Although Suturvora had been was a true Titan-killer of appalling power,
by which they used the city's topography to the holy name gifted to the Titan Legion alone able to destroy any Titan of the True
their advantage and the terrain of the soaring on its inception on Mars at the dawning of Messengers' number in a single volley of
habitation blocks to gain the higher ground. the Great Crusade, they had taken another its gargantuan weapons. Knowing that time
From there they used concentrations of cognomen, that of'Infemus' in the popular was not on their side and their only chance
missile launchers and lascannon to strike parlance of their peers, while the rank and to reach the Arutan was in an all-out attack,
down upon an enemy whose tactical sense file of the auxilia who had seen their work Argentus engaged without hesitation.
seemed rapidly replaced by rabid madness had dubbed them simply the 'Fire Masters'; it
and bloodlust. But even as the Ultramarines' was a name in which they had come to revel, THE DRUM BEAT OF HELL
few held out against the Calaq's many, the and on this terrible day, never had it been
vast reverberations from the west of the city, more deserved. Across Ithraca, as across Calth itself, war
which shook the ground and rent the air, raged, but at Ithraca, no one side had the
drowning out even their own pitched battles, As the hours wore on, less and less did upper hand. By the sixth hour of the fighting,
told them that far more terrible struggles the Fire Masters seem to operate as a more Ultramarines reinforcements had
were raging elsewhere whose outcome coherent fighting force and more as akin to moved into the city by gunships and Rhinos
would yet decide Ithraca's fate. nightmarish and murderous beasts let loose from the west to add their strength to the
to savage the city like creatures of ancient Loyalist forces. These were the surviving
Apocalypse myth. Tactical considerations slipped aside in companies of the 17'h and 18'h Chapters,
The strange malady of wrath which first their desire simply to kill, and while some of fighting their way clear of ambushes and
revealed itself within the Calaq War Host the Fire Masters Titans continued to pursue dogged by aerial attack by the Word Bearers
soon began to show evidence within the their chosen foes in the dwindling ranks of Black Comet Chapter's void strike wings.
other Traitor forces as well. Wave upon wave the Legio Praesagius, others, having lost sight The commanders and squad leaders of these
of other Traitor Aux:ilia and cult forces began of their quarry, simply began to turn on the companies had guessed rightly that although
to hurl themselves against the improvised panicked and fleeing masses of humanity Ithraca City offered no safe harbour, to
defences and barricades the Taghmata before them, slaughtering thousands as remain exposed on the plains beyond meant
Xerxes had quickly set up in the southern they went and shattering tower blocks filled certain death, as already the Word Bearers,
industrial zone they had marked for their with screaming innocents for the seeming in control of the planetary defence network
stand against their foes. These waves came so pleasure of seeing them fall. Against these and all but unchallenged now in orbit,
thick and so fast that the carefully calculated fleeing masses, the Fire Masters employed were commencing a renewed and savage
kill zones became swamped with bodies, tactics used previously only against worlds bombardment of the southern hemisphere.
and the weapons of the defenders began to that had shunned the Imperial Truth or
overheat and magazines ran dry, such was the xenos forms marked for utter extermination; Separated from their battle-brothers by
relentless, suicidal fury of the enemy. with the raw power of their battle sirens, tens of kilometres ofburning cityscape,
they drove people staggering, bleeding and the surviving force of the Ultramarines 4'h
It was an enemy spurred on now by hulking deafened from cover and corralled them like Chapter had solidifi.ed around the leadership
crimson-armoured figures in their midst; stampeding cattle into streets and loading- of Sub-captain Mantargo. He had led a
Word Bearers whose power armour the bay defiles where only fire and death waited, break-out from beneath the city of a sizable
magos now registered as having become and none were spared. proportion of his chapter's armour and
corrupted with non-blessed adornments mobile artillery, deploying it in a stroke
and modifi.cations, such as jutting, bladed As baleful as this madness proved for the of strategic brilliance to the high ground
horns rising from their helms and burning people of Ithraca, for the grievously wounded offered by the city's great Trident Aqueduct
censors gouting psychotropic incense remnants of the Legio Praesagius it offered system, whose massive construction, built to
from their backpacks. These Word Bearers, a vital respite, as had the Fire Masters force hold vast tonnages of purified water, had yet
identifi.ed in after-action data extractions been able to concentrate properly on the withstood the ravages of the war. Holding
as carrying the iconography of the Chapter wreck of the Arutan, all would have been lost off probing attacks from Traitor Reductor
of the Unspeaking, bought with them for the True Messengers. As it was, when Thallax strike forces, from there Mantargo
recognisable Legiones Astartes heavy Battlegroup Argentus forced its way through directed deadly counter-battery fire across
armour and weapons, as well as devices of to the crash site, along with a ragged support the city's northern reaches and coastline, and
unrecognised pattern and murderous power column formed ofless than a company's channelled reinforcements to where fighting
which, in conjunction with the relentless worth ofUltramarines survivors and a tercio was thickest. But for all Mantargo's effective
human and abhuman attack waves, started to of the 312'h Solar Auxilia, it found only a command, he was still limited in his reach by
cause signifi.cant damage to the hard-pressed single hulking Nemesis class Heavy Battle the incessant jamming of all long range vox
battle-automata and Adsecularis cohorts of Titan and a pair ofWarhound Scout Titans and signal traffic by an incessant chanting of
repeated words and phrases on all channels

r =--. .h- ---="' ---=;.·--"·+ - - - - - =-;;::;~..,-e;j,_-=c---·-~'-"'""i>--·--"-"-···--·;,.,,,....-o,•., - '&~

1i' [not duplicated here on grounds of potential

~ mimetic contamination] which had intensified

i to the point that soon resembled nothing so

i. much as a maddening drum beat.

j; At the site of the Arutan's fall, after the mighty
Fire Masters Titan Revoka had been defeated
but at great cost to Battlegroup Argentus
and its allies. The Legio Praesagius Warlord
Evocatus and the Warhound Deathrunner had
also been destroyed, while the commanding
Invigilator and its two surviving comrades
had been badly damaged. The remnants of
the battlegroup, along with the last survivors
of the Legio saved by the sacrifice of the
nine, were now holding out in a desperate
last stand around the Arutan. They were
under heavy fire from increasing numbers
ofTraitor infantry and freshly encroaching
Fire Masters Titans as Loyalist Techmarines
and Mechanicum work teams laboured to
free the half-buried and heat-buckled main
assault bay doors of the crashed macro-lifter.
But their hopes had already been proved
sound, as contact with those within had
ascertained that some of the heaviest units
of the Legio Praesagius had survived, though
they were rendered impotent. Contained
as they were, they could not activate their
void shields and did not dare trigger their
weapons to burn their way out due to certain
lethal back-blast in a compartment awash
with spilled fuel and munitions.

To the south-east at this hour, matters
for the Taghmata Xerxes were becoming
increasingly desperate. The arrival of a
Household of Loyalist Knights from the
stranded House Vornherr detachment at
Ithraca had bought a temporary respite,
but the Xerxes had shortly afterwards
found themselves pinioned between the
living waves of Word Bearers-driven cult
troops and the crimson and black liveried
siege-automata of the Ordo Reductor of the
Traitor cohort of Covenant Mormoth-Null,
which had sought them out for destruction.
While the scions of House Vornherr bought
time with their steel and their blood, the
magos of the Taghmata Xerxes, cut off from
outside contact and aid, enacted a desperate
plan, working feverishly to dismantle and
reconfigure a large plasma reactor unit which
had been until then the beating heart of
one of the great manufactora of the city, the
plasteel-clad ruins of which now constituted
the Taghmata's final redoubt.

Seven point six hours after the battle had

commenced, the Taghmata Xerxes launched

l its counter-attack. Utilising its last reserves of

pi Castellax class battle-automata as a fighting
il
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minm<" - -·.
~• power blades to cut their way through the
-be they Titan engine or levy infantry- when a single final burst of garbled signal

! enemy, the charge of the battle-automata seemingly overcome by pure homicidal suddenly came m· "... tmposstb!e... wmged

· ! cleared a path to the heart of the Word rage, blundering and killing almost at figure, not aTitan but taller than us, out of a

; Bearers-driven horde. Into this breach, random, and against these madmen the co- fog ... cannot be living ... Omnissiah, is that thmg
ordinated power of the Legio Praesagius was alive? ... red like bl.ood, auspex screaming ...
~ three damaged but still-functional Thanatar

class siege-automata dragged the modified unstoppable. On their respective battlefields, register ... bl.ood fog ... it cannot be... thousands ...

reactor, now rebuilt into a highly unstable the separated elements of the Ultramarines armour compromised ... he! ... Machma Sa!vea

plasma bomb of prodigious explosive power. consolidated their forces and began a Potenti ... save!"

Oblivious to their fate, the cultic horde targeted series of attacks, taking advantage

drove on afresh to the attack, while high of the sudden shift in the fortunes of war Of the Lacardio, no further report was ever

above aboard the Dirac'sLament, the master in their favour. They also began to channel made.

of Covenant Mormoth-Null, the Archmagos such civilians as had survived to evacuation

Barbatos Hexad, known as 'the Worm' to the via newly secured sub-city routes to the HELL AND RurN

commanders of the Great Crusade, perceived underground arcologies thirty kilometres No concrete narrative of the concluding

the danger and ordered an immediate to the west of Ithraca. Hampered by the horror of the final hours of the Battle

withdrawal, but it was too late. anarchy and vox-storm as much as by the ofithraca can be given. Such reports

devastation that had engulfed the city, this which remain beyond the eighth hour are

Having determined that victory was logically was a near impossible task and the flow fragmentary and much data, even drawn

impossible, the magos of the Taghmata of refugees only merely a trickle. Against from systems pertaining to recovered

Xerxes activated a program of mutual all odds, the Loyalist forces were retaking Legiones Astartes wargear, Mechanicum

destruction, detonating the bomb. An area Ithraca City, and the enemy was in disarray. cogitator and Cybernetica necro-cortical

of roughly a half kilometre in diameter was The eighth hour was at hand. extraction, is often incomplete, corrupt

immediately burned to vapour, while beyond and unreliable. Eyewitness testimony is if

that, the blast wave reached out to ravage an From Beyond anything more unreliable; very few who

area equivalent to rwenty-three city blocks, The first indication of what was to come faced what was to come in battle survived,

charring flesh to cinder and twisting metal was the sudden cessation of the blinding and of those who did, their recollections are

into smouldering wreckage. vox interference which had blanketed the by their very nature compromised by direct

city. The silence that followed was ominous exposure to what they witnessed. What can

The explosion which destroyed the after such a horrific tumult, but was soon be conjectured with some accuracy was

southern heavy industrial zone, despite its replaced by a blizzard of Loyalist signal; that in the ruins ofithraca City, a number

tremendous power, went unnoticed at the isolated units attempting to reconnect with of spontaneous ruptures in the fabric of

Arutan crash site, such was the firepower their commanders, distress calls, demands for corporeal reality occurred; breaches berween

and destruction being unleashed berween casualty and situation reports, and a myriad our reality and the Warp through which a

the warring Titans across the Demesnus other desperate impeachments for aid, vast torrent of hostile entities emerged into

Parklands. The sacrifice and determination obedience and information as the survivors the city.

of Battlegroup Argentus, now reduced to of the Traitor onslaught sought order amid

only the half-crippled lnvigi!ator, had not the anarchy of war. Of these schisms into the empyreal

been in vain. Just before the beginning of maelstrom beyond, the largest and most

the seventh hour, the Arutan's assault door Across this fresh cacophony cut a high powerful occurred at the site of the death of

had been lowered and the most powerful priority vox burst from the Legio Praesagius the Taghmata Xerxes, while others occurred

units of the Legio Praesagius were unleashed Warhound Titan Lacardio. The Scout Titan at what seems at first glance to have been

into the fray, among them the Immortalis had been despatched into the smoking random placement throughout Ithraca

Domitor, a Warmonger class Emperor Titan, wasteland of the industrial zone where the City and the marshalling yards beyond.

whose power and stature dwarfed even the Taghmata Xerxes had made their defiant However, savants have since theorised that

rwo full maniples of Warlord Titans which end, shielded as it was against both heat and this placement was in fact keyed to locations

accompanied it from the Arutan's hold. The radioactive fallout, in order to search the area of bloodshed and massacre of particular

massed firepower of these fresh god-engines for survivors, Loyalist or Traitor, and respond enormity, and indeed the malevolence and

smashed flat the parklands in a three accordingly. It reported arriving at scenes of wanton slaughter perpetrated by both the

kilometre radius, destroying outright the burned bodies fused with rwisted metalwork Calaq War Host and the other Traitor Auxilia

Fire Masters Battle Titans Deus Vassago, Orias, raised up almost to form a concentric forest under the puppet-like control of the Word

Consecratus lnfema and Tyrant's Fist in their of macabre trees, evidently not consistent Bearers was in fact calculated and carried out

opening salvo. with any known weapon or blast effect, to this exact end.

while its auspex and sensory equipment

The tide was turned. The lmmorta!is were nearly overloaded with contradictory Against such horrors which came howling

Domitor led the vengeful Titans of the True life signs and energy readings, which forth, whose nature was as yet unknown to

Messengers in a scouring of the western seemed empty one second and filled as ifby the Ultramarines and the Titans of Legio

sectors of the city, operating as a single, co- a multitude the next. Shortly after its initial Praesagius alike, there was no preparedness

ordinated group. Though the vox and signal report, its transmissions cut out and repeated and no ready counter. Already spent and

interference had now reached a crescendo, attempts to raise the Lacardio by both the reduced by long hours of unexpected combat

the Titans reverted to the age-old practice Immortalis Domitor and several Ultramarines of the most violent intensity imaginable,

of communicating through the deafening Damocles command vehicles operating to the Loyalist forces were almost immediately

outmatched and overwhelmed as thousands Knight as it tore through the Legiones their lives to heed it or simply there was no
of malefic warp entities appeared, ranging Astartes around it, feeding and growing one left alive; certainly no extant record from
in form from tides of bestial vermin, to more powerful as it killed, until at last it was any survivor in these sectors has ever been
nightmarish mockeries of the human felled by a desperate close-quarter airstrike recovered for analysis.
form whose speed and might matched the via Fire Raptor gunships. This incident
power of the Legiones Astartes themselves. itself bears disturbing parallels to similar Of the Legio Praesagius, it is recorded by
Similarly, vast and terrible monstrous forms reports elsewhere on Calth that day, where the testimony of their few survivors -the
whose stature rivalled even that of the Battle by identical means monstrous entities wounded crew of crippled Titans who alone
Titans materialised, while indescribable appeared, each repeating an identical certain were ordered to seek rescue- that it was
horrors soared above the battlefield, driving word [which is here withheld] indicating that immediately understood that for the dozen
mad those who looked upon them. The some form of manifold or gestalt entity was or so Titans that remained to the Legio, there
skies rained down steaming acid as the involved in all of them. could be no escape. The Arutan certainly
ground trembled and the dead screamed and would never fly again and no lifters capable
juddered to baleful half-life, corposant fires This attack in which he himself was injured, of handling a Titan remained anywhere in
burning in their skulls, and something very coupled with terrified reports that flooded in Ithraca, save for those in the hands of the
much like the apocalyptic myths of Ancient from across the city, convinced Sub-captain retreating Fire Masters at Landing Zone
Terra was visited upon the beleaguered Mantargo that this was no longer a war it was Macro-Beta. With many of the survivors of
survivors of Ithraca. possible to win, and even resistance would the Legio Suturvora having seemed to have
offer a futile death. His general evacuation regained their senses just as the baleful signal
At the Avaris Plaza, a gaseous malignancy and dispersal order issued to his forces at interference cut out, they were themselves
like a great dark storm cloud writhing with the thirteenth hour was quickly taken up in now in full retreat to their landing zones,
blind serpents, each hundreds of metres the northern sectors, where the warp entity burning everything, friend or enemy in their
long crushed the Reaver Titan Knossos in its attacks were least severe, and in these regions wake. Escape by that means was equally
coiling embrace, while the last of the valiant many fled into the tunnels or commandeered impossible. The True Messengers then took
312'h Solar Auxilia known to have had thus gunships and surviving transports to escape the decision to fight on rather than stage a
far survived the battle made a last stand the city- particularly from Macro-Gamma, futile break-out to the wastelands, where
against what witnesses have since described which had been largely spared orbital attack they might be picked off easily from the air.
as a 'wild hunf of ghostly luminous beasts as it had already been occupied by Traitor Their lot would be to fight on against the
and bladed chariots, sacrificing themselves troops at the start of the battle. tides of horror which were renewing each
so that a column of refugees could flee into moment, and by their sacrifice buy time for
the tunnels below. Nor were the attacks Elsewhere, desperate flight and bloody what remained of the Ulttamarines Legion,
from beyond limited to the Loyalists and pursuit had already become the general loyal Auxilia and the civilians of Calth to live
the wretched civilians oflthraca; the state of affairs against a terrifying foe whose to fight on elsewhere.
denizens of the Warp it seems were utterly shapes were as myriad as its numbers seemed
indiscriminate in their attacks, save for limitless. When the signal for retreat and No Titan of the Legio Praesagius is known
the Word Bearers who, it is testified by escape reached the southern and eastern to have survived the Battle oflthraca, but it
unverifiable accounts, passed among them regions of the city it went unheeded, likely was through their sacrifice that more than
as if charmed. The surviving magos and either because the few humans remaining four thousand Ultramarines were to escape
Cybernetic cohorts of the Traitor Covenant were by now too desperately fighting for its hell-haunted ruins and swear vengeance
Mormoth-Null it appears were not spared the for the dead.
ravages of the warp entities' claws and flame,
and immediately began to withdraw to their
crucible drop ship, and blasted off for the
Dirac's Lament, which promptly broke orbit.

At the field command post of the
Ultramarines 4'hChapter at the Trident, a
shifting, dog-headed entity sprang from the
ruptured body of a Word Bearers captive
and swelled to the size of an Imperial



motion on the surface formed the fulcrum With the Warhound slain, the Ultramarines Ventanus had reached the guildhall, but
of the Ultramarines' resurgence and led Land Raiders led the advance on the Word even as his Mechanicum allies awakened
ultimately to the wresting back of control Bearers' positions about the guildhall. the data-engine, they perceived they were
of the Calth Defence Grid. At that point, the When the charge struck home, the battle too late, their sacrifices for nothing as a
Battle of Calth turned. devolved into bitter and savage carnage and massive enemy force was detected closing
the Ultramarines fought with a righteous on the guildhall. With the cold clarity of the
The key to victory lay with the defence grid, fury born of the myriad injustices heaped machine, the Mechanicum measured the
consisting as it did of many thousands of upon them by their erstwhile brother survival of the strike force as scant minutes,
weapons emplaced on the surface and aboard Legion. Scores fell on both sides, the but they fought on with relentless and noble
the platforms in orbit. The fell genius of Gal Vorbakjoining the fray and cutting resolve, the defence bolstered when a second
the Word Bearers had gained control of the down Ultramarines with war cries born wave of allies converged on the guildhall.
grid early in the battle through the Traitor of the madness of the Warp, but the sheer The ru'h and II2'h Companies were led not
Mechanicum's integration of their tainted fury of the Ultramarines attack carried by a Legion officer, for their command cadres
machine code into Calth's command and them through their enemy's lines with had been decimated, but by a single sergeant
control systems. When at last it was possible unstoppable force. named Anchise, whilst alongside them came
for the Ultramarines forces in orbit and
on the surface to share intelligence and THE RE-TAKING OF THE ZETSUN VERID YARD l
coordinate their actions, the fight-back well The final act in the battle for Calth Near-Space took place on the Zetsun Verid Yard, the I
and truly begun. orbital platform captured by Kor Phaeron, the Word Bearers Master of the Faith, soon
after the betrayal of the Calth Conjunction. It was from this station that the Word Bearers' l
It took the form oftwo simultaneous Mechanicum allies subverted control of the Calth Defence Grid, which they used to
operations; one in orbit and the other on poison the Veridian star, shatter Veridia Forge and strike down Ultramarines warships with l
the outskirts of what remained ofLanshear impunity. It was the Primarch himself who led the assault on Zetsun Verid Yard, utilising
City on the surface. On the ground, the flagship's teleportation array to do so. Failure in this mission would have resulted in the I
Captain Ventanus rallied what he could death of the Primarch and the entire assault force, for the long range teleportation would
of the Legion's strength and launched an drain so much power from the flagship's reactor that extraction by that method would not I
all-out assault on the Lanshear Guildhall,
his mission to gain access to the data- have been possible. Guilliman judged the risk worthwhile though, for if the defence grid 1
engine sealed in its basement, the only one was not disabled, his Legion would meet its death either way.
of its class not infected with the Traitor I
Mechanicum's poisoned machine code. With the boarding assault led by a Primarch, it could be expected that there was little that
Having done so, allied loyal Mechanicum the Word Bearers could do to oppose the Ultramarines. The Word Bearers however were
would be able to purge the enemy code from led by Kor Phaeron, a man so steeped in the raw power of the Warp that he came close
the system. But control of the grid would not just to repelling the attack, but to slaying Roboute Guilliman. It was in Kor Phaeron
only be gained when the enemy's grip upon that Lorgar had invested responsibility for the death of Calth, the Ultramarines mustering
its master systems was wrested from the there and even, if the opportunity presented itself, the death of Guillirnan himself
Word Bearers and their Traitor Mechanicum
allies. That could only be achieved by When Guilliman and Kor Phaeron finally faced one another on the master conttol deck,
disabling the overseer data-engine on the the Word Bearer unleashed a sorcerous beam of black light so powerful it drove the
Zetsun Verid Yard orbital station. Ultramarines Primarch to his knees. At that moment, Kor Phaeron might have killed a son
of the Emperor, a feat no mortal had ever performed, but even as he pressed the blade of
The surface battle began with Captain his warp-tainted ritual athame to Guillirnan's throat, he stayed the killing blow and instead
Ventanus leading a large and heterogeneous whispered an offer he had no right or authority to make. Kor Phaeron promised Guilliman
force into the ruins ofLanshear. The a position of honour at the side of Horus and Lorgar if he would only foreswear his oaths
spearhead of this advance was a company of to his father.
Land Raider tanks, and behind them came
the bulk of the Ultramarines 4'h Company, Guillirnan's answer was unequivocal. As Kor Phaeron had been speaking, the Primarch had
bolstered by the many varied elements of been rallying his sttength. In a movement too rapid for the human eye to follow, Guillirnan
other units it had swept up since the betrayal punched through the Word Bearer's armour and closed his fist about the traitor's beating
hours before. The advance was further heart. The last sight Kor Phaeron witnessed was his own heart torn from his chest and cast
supported by a company of Shadowsword aside upon the metal deck.
super-heavy tanks and various battlefield
support vehicles, a cohort of Mechanicum Zetsun Verid Yard was finally under Ultramarines control and within moments the
skitarii and the remnants of the Neride IO'h. fearsome power of the entire Calth Defence Grid was turned upon the Word Bearers, both
at their warships in orbit and upon their ground forces ranging across the surface.
As Ventanus' column pressed along the
main arterial transit, it encountered its first
enemy presence, a Warhound Scout Titan of
the Legio Mortis. Its void shields pounded
out of existence by the column's numerous
Predators, Whirlwinds and Sicarans, it fell to
the Shadowsword to strike the killing blow.

the 19'h Company, known as 'the Honoured', in from all quarters, were consumed in blooded and vengeful hosts of the surviving
under Captain Aethon. From another blinding incendiary fire. The yard had finally Ultramarines Legion, Mechanicum and
quarter still came a host of mortal soldiery fallen and the Mechanicum in the guildhall Imperial Army.
and armour led by no less a worthy than the data-crypt below finally had control of the
Tetrarch of Konor, Eikos Lamiad, and the defence grid. But the fury unleashed upon the Word
Dreadnought Telemechrus. Yet, with the Bearers was not reserved for those Traitors
Zetsun Verid Yard still under enemy control, Hell rained down upon the Word Bearers on the surface. The instant the Word
all their efforts were as nothing. and their auxiliary forces across the surface Bearers' attack on Ventanus' force was
of Calth. In an instant, the Ultramarines' defeated, the grid was turned upon the
And then salvation. The first that Captain imminent extinction had turned to enemy ships in orbit. No fleet could survive
Ventanus and the Loyalist forces outside deliverance and a planet-wide counter- such punishment. Word Bearers warships
and around the Lanshear Guildhall knew attack exploded as from nowhere. The Word that had served for decades through the
of the re-taking of the Zetsun Verid Yard Bearers were forced from the offensive bloodiest actions of the Great Crusade and
was when the heavens erupted in flame and to the defensive as they were assailed by come through the terrible void battles fought
the Word Bearers and their allies, pressing orbital strikes and then overwhelmed by the to contain the Loyalists at Isstvan V were

annihilated by the dozen. Until that point, the Traitor fleet being destroyed all about The second crisis brought to the Primarch's '~
Calth Near-Space had been alight with the him, the shipmaster of the Infidus Imperator, attention was at that time only partially
burning debris ofslaughtered Ultramarines Sire Antonius Antwark, saw that they had understood, but already astrotelepathic '
Legion vessels. Now it exploded with the contributed all that they could towards messages were relaying desperate pleas
fiery wreckage ofTraitor warships so dense the invocation ofthe Ruinstorm and that for aid from all over the Five Hundred I
that for future generations it would form their death could serve no possible service. Worlds ofUltramar. The Traitors' assault
a visible and hazardous ring about the Antwark ordered the Infidus Imperator to on Calth was not an isolated event; other '
devastated planet. come about and make full speed for the edge attacks were being reported across dozens of
On the bridge of the Infidus Imperator, of the system where it could safely translate other systems. In a moment of stark clarity,
havoc reigned,for Kor Phaeron had been into the Warp. Guilliman saw what the Word Bearers had
teleported back to the Word Bearers flagship, intended at Calth-they had planned the
somehow still alive despite his heart being The Word Bearers flagship would not escape extinction of the Ultramarines so that the
torn from his chest, but too wounded to so easily however. Roboute Guilliman, on the Traitors could reave unopposed across those
assume command. Seeing the vessels of shattered command deck of the Zetsun Verid stars under his protection. In this they
Yard, was informed of its escape by Marius had failed, for while the Ultramarines had
• Gage. The Primarch immediately ordered his suffered unprecedented losses, the Legion
First Chapter Master to take the Macragge's had rallied and was yet a formidable force .
Honour and run the Imperator down-the Guilliman's vengeance would be terrible
account of Gage's pursuit of the enemy indeed, and well earned.
flagship though is a tale for another volume.
Suffice to say that Guilliman would remain But here the Primarch's counsellors set their
ignorant of the fate of his beloved vessel and final piece of ill news before him. The Warp,
his most trusted Legion officer for many which had been turbulent and capricious for
years until word of the epic clash that led to the past year, was now rising towards a storm
the destruction of the Infidus Imperator finally of unprecedented fury. Worse, it was now
reached Macragge. closing in around the Veridian System and
any vessels that did not leave in the coming
THE LOOMING SHADOW hours might be stranded there for years.
Though the Ultramarines were victorious,
they would not be afforded the luxury of In the manner for which he had become so
reaping the fruits of that victory. Even as the well known, Roboute Guilliman listened to
Primarch Roboute Guilliman reviewed the this flood of portentous omens, considered
terrible events of the thirty hours or so since their combined import, and stated clearly
the destruction of Calth Veridian Anchor his solution, which was this. The fleet would
embark what units it could, prioritising
by the Campanile, his surviving counsellors armoured units and the few surviving
and advisors, in particular a delegation Loyalist Titan god-engines. Those infantry
representing his fleet's most senior units remaining would withdraw into the
Navigators and Astropaths, came before him arcologies to continue the Battle for Calth, a
with dire news indeed. conflict that would develop into the decade-
long Calth Underworld War.
The first trouble placed before the Primarch
was the issue of the Veridia star. It had been At the last, Guilliman took his leave of the
grievously wounded by the Word Bearers once-bountiful world of Calth, the would-be
in some manner they could not understand jewel in the crown ofUltramar which had
and the solar winds emanating from it were stood for so much that now could never be
inexplicably poisoned. The surface of Calth, realised. Before the Primarch ordered the
its atmosphere already grievously injured by fleet to depart, the Warp closing in all about
the Word Bearers' bombardment, was rapidly it, he swore to return to Calth and to deliver
destabilising to the point that it would soon it from the Traitors. It would be many years
be impossible for unprotected mortals to and many battles, across five hundred worlds
walk upon it. The only possible course of and more, before that promise could be
action was to evacuate all civilians and all delivered upon.
Legiones Astartes and other units on the
surface into the vast subterranean arcologies But it would be delivered upon, for Roboute
in an effort to provide some shelter, however Guilliman, Primarch of the XIII'h Legion
tenuous, from the fell light of the Veridia and Master of the Five Hundred Worlds of
star. Captain Ventanus, the hero of the Battle Ultramar, had sworn it.
of the Guildhall, would take this duty upon
himself, and a worthy account ofhis deeds
in the subsequent battles would fill an entire
tome on their own.



At the outset of the cataclysmic civil war gene-work, and records lost in the key part of this. During this period the XIII'h, ~
created by the treachery of Horus and the destruction caused on Terra during the great then around 8,ooo strong, began to make its
machinations of the dark powers of the Warp, siege, certain facts can still be pieced together mark by taking part alongside other Legions i
the XIII'h Legion, the Ultramarines, stood and a hypothesis formed. under the Emperor's direct generalship,
as one of the single, most powerful military gaining renown in notable campaigns I
forces in the Imperium. With an active In terms of recruitment, evidence is apparent such as the Liberation ofDiurnus and the
fighting strength somewhere in the region for a net being cast across Terra for initiates destruction of the Scorvidian xeno-empire, [
of a quarter of a million Legiones Astartes, for the XIII'\ with intake from areas as as well as amassing a string of successful
a sector-spanning domain under their diverse as the sub-equatorial maglev clans Compliance actions in solo operations on '1'
overlordship and an arguably unparalleled ofPanpocro, the war families of the Saragon planets such as Lorin Sigma, Sekel's Landing
strucrure for the supply and training of Enclave, the proud Midafrik Hive Oligarchy and Ne'deble. From each of these conquered '
initiates -allowing it to withstand losses and, most latterly, the anthropophagic tribes human worlds, the most militant factions
that would potentially cripple other of the Caucasus Wastes. As varied in culture provided additional intakes of recruits tithed
Legions- it was this very strength that and origin as these groups were, they all had for the XIII'h, much as the war-born sons of
would make it a prime target for the Traitors' one factor in common; their violent and Terra had infused their first intake.
conspiracy. It would be at Calth that this often bitter resistance to the later stages of
blow would fall. But while the legend of Unification, a resistance broken ultimately It was during this early period of the Great
the lapis-blue hosts ofUltramar and the in each case not by negotiated surrender but Crusade that the genius of the Emperor's
strategic genius of its Primarch Roboute near annihilation, with in some situations grand design for his Space Marine Legions
Guilliman were already widely promulgated little remaining save interned refugees and became increasingly apparent. While each
by the Iterators and Remembrancers of the orphaned populations left by the savage of his superhuman cadres proved itself
Great Crusade, the path by which it arrived conflicts which had brought these peoples able to fight on any battlefield and achieve
at this apotheosis of power was not so well to heel. It was this which led to the first victory, the Emperor had clearly patterned
known and in some cases, the facts actively informal cognomen by which the XIII'h in the alchemical mix of his sons a diversiry
kept secret. The complexities of the Legion's Legion was known by the forces alongside of tempers and abilities that had given each
past and the sometimes divisive and even which they served-'the War-born'. It Legion a strength or suitabiliry to a theatre
antagonistic relationship the Ultramarines may then be theorised that the particular of war of its own beyond that of its peers. In
had with several of their fellow Legions psychological effects of the XIII'h Legion's some cases these talents were atavistic and
was also concealed. It would be this hidden gene-seed may have been used deliberately visible, be they the near preternarural fury
history that was to bear bitter fruit on Calth as a final weapon of the Unification to already being displayed by the IX'h Legion or
and cast its own shadow on the wars that bleed away potential rebellion on Terra, the uncanny resilience of the XIV'h. In others
were to follow. and also further absorb the strength of the they were subtle and bred in the bone, such
savage tribes of Old Night into the fledging as the obsessive darkness which consumed
ORIGINS: THE WAR-BORN OF OLD NIGHT Imperium. Further evidence for this can be the souls of the VIII'\ and they could
The XIII'h Legion's origins lay, as with their perhaps inferred by the fact that no evidence manifest in word and deed to the ruin of
fellows, on Terra and the closing years of remains of the XIIIth Legion seeing active their foes, or the unyielding, cold passion and
the Unification Wars. Extant records from deployment on Terra itself during the technological aptitude of what was already
this time show the XIII'hLegion's 'Alpha' Unification Wars' bitter dregs -as both the becoming known as the 'Iron Tenth'. It was
intake -the test bed raising of several VII'h and VIII'hLegions' early incarnations into this latter category which the XIIIth fell.
thousand warriors by which its gene-seed's were, for example- with their first full
stabiliry and adaptabiliry was judged- was battle honours recorded as being for the In them was found a mixrure of aggression
passed firmly within acceptable parameters Pacification of Luna, and the brutal Sedna and restraint, discipline and determination
and with no singular or notable physical Campaign at the edge of the Sol System. which rendered them supremely suited for
mutation beyond the expected pattern, with joint taskforce operations and cross-theatre
full functionaliry of implanted organs to As the earliest phase of the Great Crusade, warfare. The Legion also gained significant
projected specifications. Psycho-organically, the liberation of the Segmenrum Solar, success in independent operations where it
initiates were noted to display increased progressed, it was discovered that this took direct command of secondary support
aggression, as was expected, but also a ancient and most heavily settled region forces of the Imperialis Auxilia, whether
marked tendency towards cohesion and the of the first stellar domains of humaniry the professional and elite regiments of the
adoption of hierarchy, alongside an almost held many survivors from the Dark Age of Solar Auxilia and the regiments of the 'Old
pathological dedication to the achievement Technology. Of these there were some who One Hundred', or the often resentful and
of an assigned goal, particularly when openly welcomed the Imperium as patron fractious hosts of Imperialis Militia auxiliary
compared against the psychological profiles and protector, but there were also many forces raised or even indenrured from worlds
of certain other alpha samples such as those worlds who resisted Compliance, either recently forced into Compliance. In the
of the XII'hand V'h Legion groups, who through ignorance or prideful assurance in latter case, the XIII'h Legion often detached
demonstrated more markedly heightened their own strength, just as there were others cadres of its own warriors to act as provosts
individualistic and fractious tendencies who were enslaved under the yoke ofxenos and disciplinarians if needed, handing out
post-implantation. Although much of what oppression. The tide of conquest however, final justice to the recalcitrant and inspiring
would then transpire for the XIII'h Legion's with the Emperor at the head of the war bravery from the front lines; duties at which
very early expansion past its test stage has effort, quickly gained rapid momentum, many other Legions baulked at as beneath
been occluded by layers of the unbreachable and the fledging Space Marine Legions their honour or as a poor use ofLegiones
secrecy inherent in much of the Emperor's undergoing their first great expansion were a Astartes in battle.

In their adaptability and range of operations, influences drawn from the host of martial were recorded as having a practical and
they were said to be reminiscent both of cultures from which they were founded forthright mien, with little time given to
the vaunted x" Legion and the prominent and the other Legions alongside which they the esoteric arts of warfare or conjectural
Luna Wolves on whose glory and served, from the knife-craft of the Opaki strategising, preferring a direct approach of
accomplishments, since that Legion's early gangs of Hive Kor to the armoured warfare swift engagement. In warfare, they relied
restoration of its Primarch, much has already tactics of the X'hLegion. upon the rapid attainment of quickly defined
been made. The key to their fighting style tactical objectives and strategies born of
was imitation and adaptation. Their own The Brotherhood of the Thirteenth tried and tested battlefield experience and
arts of war had evolved quickly from the By the third decade of the Great Crusade, determined by the situation at hand. They
tenets laid out during their indoctrination the XIII'h Legion had begun to develop also had their pride, and while they were
and training, becoming combined with a distinct character of their own. They accorded as being unwaveringly loyal to the

Imperium's cause, they developed a tendency companies who had come to prominence sample- suffering relatively little mutation
to guard their honour well and engaged in in a particularly important Compliance or deviation in subsequent generations of
an open rivalry of achievement with the operation or campaign took on additions to harvested organs. This allowed the Legion
other Legions alongside which they served, their core Legion livery -which maintained to steadily expand its numbers, even without
particularly those few whose Primarchs the post-Unification storm grey and the stabilisation brought by a Primarch's own
had already been recovered. The warrior gunmetal they had worn since Sedna- to mature gene-code.
brotherhood of the XIII'h had also, in recent commemorate their greatest achievements.
years, begun to display its achievements Those companies who had fought alongside Such was the size, self-sufficiency and
visually. But rather than take on a particular the vrn•h in the purgation of the abhuman stability of the XIII'h Legion that while the
livery and iconography as a whole as the III'd corsairs of the Cancerai Nebula afterwards Emperor, in command of the might of the
Legion or the Dusk Raiders had, individual bore black gauntlets, midnight blue helms Principia Imperialis war fleet, Ferrus Manus
and the ancient weighing scales and death's and his Iron Tenth, and Horus and his Luna
head icon ofjudgment in heraldic opposition Wolves respectively led the three main
of their Legion numeral, and took the name thrusts of the Great Crusade at this time,
of 'Nemesis' as their own. Conversely, the pushing on into the outer void far beyond
principally armoured formations of the the Segmentum Solar, the u•h Expeditionary
XIII!h who had halted the Ork advance on Fleet was entrusted with the task of
the ash plains of Cypra Mundi, and in doing exploring the extent of the inner galactic
so had saved a city of millions from a savage disc and its densely packed star systems
death, afterwards commemorated the battle coreward ofTerra. This was why when a
by mirroring on their right pauldron the secession crisis unexpectedly flared up close
emerald light of the blazing aurora borealis to the capitoline systems of the Segmentum
that had riven the skies under which they Solar itself, the XIII'h Legion was the closest
had fought. Such honours were claimed as available Legion and the swiftest to respond.
the Legion's strength made visible, but for
them no formal name for the Legion as a The Osiris Cluster, a grouping of eleven star
whole was desired save for its number, as systems making up the inner portion of the
their first Lord Commander Gren Vosotho Segmentum Solar's second quadrant, had
is recorded to have said," ... I am told that once suddenly and without warning declared
the numeral thirteen was taken as an iH omen by secession from the Imperium. Chartist
the weak minded and those enslaved by the lies of merchant vessels had been seized, Imperialis
superstition, but in the Emperor's service we shaH Armada naval patrol squadrons fired upon
make it a byword for redemption and glori'· The and driven off by system defence ships, and
sorest test of the XIII'h's resolve and their arts agents of Imperial authority rendered silent
of war was yet to come however. and assumed dead. The inhabited worlds
of the Osiris Cluster, many technologically
The Osiris Rebellion advanced at contact, had originally come
By the year 833.M30, the XIII'h Legion into Compliance during the Great Crusade's
had increased in number to an active force eighth year in relatively bloodless order.
of around 33,000 Space Marines, whose It had been viewed as a highly successful
primary battlegroup now consisted of the campaign in which the XIII'h themselves
autonomous u 'hExpeditionary Fleet. This had a hand. That the Osiris Cluster had
expansion of their number in a relatively now fallen into open rebellion was deemed
short space of time had been due to two an affront to the Legion's honour by its
principal factors. The first was that their Lord Commander, Gren Vosotho, and the
particular practical style of warfare had a master of the XIII'hhad vowed to bring
tendency to avoid casualties where possible the matter to a resolution as swiftly and
compared to the tactics employed by certain emphatically as possible. Vosotho, acting
other Legions. The XIII'havoided battles on initial intelligence reports, ordered the
of attrition and prided themselves on warships of u 'hExpeditionary Fleet to
achieving strategic goals with the minimum proceed directly to the halo world of Septus
expenditure of life-and where salvageable XII, leaving behind the fleet's support
human worlds were involved, this desire elements, lumbering transports and forge
was also extended to the minimisation ships guarded by its slower combat vessels.
of collateral damage. The second was a The target of this rapid strike force was to
latterly revealed aspect of their gene-seed. be the atmospherically-sealed hive city of
While the rates of gene-seed implantation Cabasset, located on the night-side of Septus
success for the XIII'hLegion's zygote type XII, and the economic and political capital of
were very close to the median level, it had the Osiris Cluster. A strike there before the
proved to be in the highest resistance band rebels had time to consolidate their forces,
during extensive replication -a meridian Vosotho reasoned, might end the rebellion in
matched only by the r" Legion's own core a single, bloody stroke.

Breaking into realspace in the outer system, steadily growing losses, the Legiones Astartes Imperium had been met, and word of it must
the power of the n'h Expeditionary Fleet's forced their way deeper into the hive city reach Terra at any cost. Vosotho committed
two score of capital warships, led by the and one by one began to claim their tactical his life to the command of the rearguard
Legion's flagship, the Goliath class macro- objectives, crushing better armed but equally on the surface, taking penance for his
battleship Sethatn's Thunder, easily swept aside vacant-minded opposition formed of what error, and his last act was to transfer Legion
the system defence monitors and fireships had once clearly been the bodyguard cadres command to the most senior surviving
sent out to intercept them. Immediately of the hive's nobility. It was then, when the commander present in orbit, Marius Gage.
after the short firefight, in which the Space XIII'h Legion was heavily committed and It was a testament to Gage's swift thinking
Marine ships sustained no losses, they kilometres deep into the hive, that the trap and tactical acumen that he was able to hold
engaged in a brief and equally successful was sprung. A xenos fleet of unknown type off the enemy vessels until every surviving
long-range precision bombardment to defang and origin, comprising five vast hourglass- Stormbird from the ground assault had
Septus XU's orbital defences, before moving shaped vessels whose structure turned and departed the planet, fighting a swirling three-
to attack the planet itself rotated ceaselessly like clockwork, appeared dimensional battle of thrust, counter-thrust
with great speed from within the fiery corona and retreat which held the enemy titan-ships
Vosotho had formulated a plan of attack of Septus' giant star. Realising the disaster at bay until the n'h Expeditionary Fleet had
based around a decapitation assault against that was about to unfold, Vosotho called a fought its way clear.
the governmental and environmental control general retreat from the surface, but as his
complexes on which all life in the hive city forces battled to return to their gunships and Ultimately, what could have been a disaster
was dependant for survival. The strategy was transports, the assault on the Space Marines had been fought into a mere defeat, and
a variation of a tried and proven tactic in intensified as the nature of the attacks began when all was afterwards measured, the XIII'h
part developed from close observation of the to change. Legion had suffered a little over 6,500 Space
Luna Wolves' mastery of such attack forms, Marines lost, the largest tally of any single
and which promised a quick resolution While the waiting Stormbirds fell under battle in the XIIIth's history. Although this
with the minimum of damage to the hive concerted all-out attack in an attempt to was approximately a fifth of its fighting
world's infrastructure and an object lesson cripple or destroy them,fresh mobs of strength in terms ofLegiones Astartes, the
in the futility of rebellion. The plan itself grasping civilians poured from side-junctures lost counted among them much of the elite
was predicated on detailed prior knowledge and corridors, their intention not to kill of the Legion, many of them Terran veterans
~ of the world as an Imperial holding and a but to overwhelm and pinion individual from its founding and its Lord Commander
! military assessment of the potential numbers Legiones Astartes, drowning them in their Gren Vosotho with them. Its fleet had
mass of bodies, heedless of the cost in life. also suffered severely, with a quarter of its
I! and capabilities of the rebellious militia Above them in the void, the two fleets warships lost or irrevocably damaged, not
forces the Legion was projected to encounter. clashed. The great hourglass craft, each least of all its flagship. Just as bitter a blow
easily out-massing the gargantuan Sethatn's was to the Legion's pride and honour at the
li Unfortunately, every assumption Vosotho Thunder, lashed out with blazing whips of defeat to which their overconfidence had led
r and his command staff had made about what elemental particles, scorching and burning them. They hungered for vengeance but even
the Imperial warships and engulfing any this was denied them.
I awaited his Legion was wrong. fighter squadrons or torpedo salvos that
came close in collapsing gravitational When the XIII'h Legion returned to the now
i singularities, annihilating them utterly. The quarantined and blockaded Osiris Cluster
n'h Expeditionary Fleet was overmatched a little under a standard year later with a
I The Attack on Septus XII but fought on valiantly, causing one of the force heavily augmented from the Solar
titanic xenos craft to fall back, strangely- Armada, elements of the XVIII'h Legion
s The attack began well enough, with the coloured vapours bleeding luminously from and specialist anti-psyker cadres from Terra,
its rent hull, but at the cost of a dozen of its of the xenoforms the Officio Biologis had
;l close support fire of the Setha!n's Thunder own number, while the Sethatn's Thunder, at designated with the cognomen of'Osiran
opening up great rents in Hive Cabasset's that point a burning wreck, tumbled out of Psybrid', they instead found worlds either
control through the line of battle. left as wastelands of the unburied dead or
l protective outer shell into which Vosotho locked in turmoil and civil strife. But of the
It was then that fearful figures , aglow from architects of these atrocities they found no
personally led his Legion's Stormbirds to within with sickly light, began to materialise sign. Piecing together fragmentary records
the attack. Resistance was immediately far among the attackers both on their surface from planetary dataspheres and human
heavier than expected as the landing force and to teleport directly onto the warring minds alike all but purged clean, it was
became swiftly bogged down in human Imperial vessels. Armoured in some form of impossible to know from where the xenos
attack waves made up of at first hundreds baroque bio-mechanical containment suits, had come or where they had gone, only that
and soon thousands of dead-eyed civilians the creatures within were barely corporeal; they had operated covertly at first, insidiously
crudely stitched into makeshift pressure ghoulish shapes of glowing mists whose claiming certain worlds outright; burning
suits and armed with improvised weapons of gauntlets spat ethereal fire and whose alien out the wills of their populations, stealing
every sort, not least among them explosive wills reached out to crush the minds of those away some bodily into the void, and leaving
mining charges converted to suicide devices. who resisted them. Vosotho's final command the others to simply mindlessly perish by
The XIIIth quickly modified their tactics to was for the fleet to withdraw with as many starvation or inaction in their absence. Other
inflict maximum attrition but, heedless of of the XIII'hLegion that could be recovered, worlds they had sent first into rebellion
casualties, the tide of bodies pressed on in but withdraw it must. A new enemy of the and then strife through covert psychic
cold silence and it was quickly apparent that
this was no mere rebellion and no ordinary
enemy. Unwilling to allow his attack to be
stalled and his invasion force surrounded,
Vosotho called down reinforcements and

domination of their rulers and manipulation the Emperor's arrival at Espandor and the talent for statecraft and macro-organisation 'I
of their population's fears. The revelation isolated region so far from the frontline of of staggering potential. Yet few could then
was of a foe perhaps not numerous, but both the Great Crusade's main spur of progress guess what such talents harnessed to the !
insidious and frighteningly powerful, a clear was no accident, and that by some arts he Great Crusade would go on to achieve.
threat now marked for extermination by the had perceived or had foreknowledge of what r
Emperor's own writ. he would find. Regardless, what followed The Unification of Body and Blood
was certainly not foreseen. As the Emperor's The XIII'h Legion of Space Marines was i•
In the wake of the short campaign, empty fleet quickly moved on to Macragge, it was assigned to the command ofRoboute ~
of glory, which brought the remains of the almost immediately deflected by violent Guilliman in short order, for the Primarch
Osiris Cluster back under the Imperium's warp squalls which had risen up to separate needed little urging or aid in the assimilation
control for repopulation, the XIII'hswore a Macragge and a handful of nearby systems ofknowledge of the wider galaxy, the
blood oath for vengeance against the xenos from approach. Thwarted by a power even Great Crusade and the many technological
wherever and whenever they might appear the Emperor could not readily ignore, it wonders of the new-born Imperium of
again. The Legion, now under Marius Gage's would be something in the region of five Man. It was a development greeted by the
stewardship, reorganised and sought to standard years before contact could be XIII'h with great rejoicing and pride in the
quickly replenish its numbers and supplies, successfully attempted. honour that Roboute Guilliman paid them
and afterwards redoubled its effort in the in accepting their fealty. The oratory and
Great Crusade's service, as if trying with In the years that intervened, Macragge had vision with which their new-found Primarch
each fresh victory to prove that the defeat at undergone a striking transformation. It expounded to them his designs for the future
Septus had been an aberration never to be was now a world of uniformity and order, and the righteousness of the Great Crusade
repeated, and the name of its lost master and prosperous and productive. Its cities had filled the Legiones Astartes with a renewed
indeed the battle in which he fell became a been rebuilt in glittering marble and shining vigour and dispelled any shadows of doubt in
thing no longer spoken of but which dwelled steel, and the serried ranks of its armies their minds, and made Guilliman's takeover,
as a shadow at their shoulders. were well armed and well equipped, and according to official records, all but seamless.
outfitting themselves now for operations
There existed within the Legion now a beyond their own world. For even before Roboute Guilliman did far more than merely
brooding sense ofloss and a canker of doubt the Emperor's arrival, Roboute Guilliman, take command of the XIII'h Legion, he set
in its own abilities, and in the hearts of its it is said, had dwelt much on the ancient about transforming it. His vision was for a
Legionaries grew the desire, always present histories contained in the great libraries that Legion that was more than simply one army
but now lent keen impetus, to reunite with he had confiscated from his world's deposed among many, however exceptional, but a
their Primarch as a balm to all their ills, aristocracy, and the fragments he found there self-sustaining power for conquest, order
to become -as they saw it- whole. The telling ofthe ancient domains ofMankind, and expansion; the strength of the body and
dark irony was that more than two years and he had begun to dream of new horizons blood of the Imperium made manifest by
previously, unknown and withheld from the and new worlds to conquer, of a domain the will of the Emperor through His servant
Legion's knowledge and before the events 'beyond the sea of night' or to use the ancient Roboute Guilliman. To him, a military force
at Septus, their Primarch had been located scholarly form found in the texts-'U!tramar'. was more than the warriors who wielded
by the Emperor, but owing to the vagaries of By his will, he made it so and within their arms-it was their chain of supply, the
the Warp, contact would not prove possible warp-sealed enclave, vessels from Macragge ships which carried them between, the
for several more years. During this period, now plied regular and well-patrolled trade manufactora which supplied their munitions
brief as it was and yet seeming an eternity routes with local star systems, bringing raw and the worlds which bred their recruits;
to the sons of the XIII'h, the Legion fought materials and people to the flourishing world, they were indivisible and equally vital. To
on with a relentless but joyless hunger for while against some of its neighbours, short, Guilliman's mind, all of these things made
battle, taking world after world for the Great victorious conflicts had already been waged a Space Marine Legion, and he meant to
Crusade in rapid succession, but shunning to pacify the strife they had found there. control them all so that his own would
now both the laurels of victory it once prosper and the Emperor's will be done.
courted and the respect of its peers it once It is said that when the Emperor saw what his
craved, until the hour of its salvation came lost son had wrought, he was indeed pleased, In accordance with this grand design, he
at last. and that he met with Roboute Guilliman planned to not merely take the world of his
without the dissembling that had been fosterage as his headquarters and recruiting
r ULTRAMAR needed with those Primarchs he had found ground as his peers had done and would
Around the time that the young Roboute of more savage timbre. It is furthermore continue to do, but from the start set it up as
Guilliman waged war in Illyria, the recorded that once Guilliman learned the merely the fulcrum of a far larger network
Emperor's fleet had reached the planet of truth of his origins, he immediately swore of provender and support. The basis of this
Espandor at the outer edge of the network of his fealty to the Emperor, who he knew was network would be the worlds Macragge had
worlds with which Macragge had maintained his true father, for he had already theorised long maintained links with, but they would
tenebrous contact. From the Espandorians correctly the purpose for which he had merely be its first components, not its fullest
the Emperor learned of the existence of not been born so much as deliberately extent. This would be the start ofRoboute
Macragge and the extraordinary son of the created. It was immediately apparent to Guilliman's 'Ulttamar' and it would be a
Consul Konor Guilliman, and from what Imperial observers that Roboute Guilliman project of decades, and continue to expand
he learned he knew that this child could be possessed a powerful analytical intelligence, right up to the first treacherous blow of the
even when compared to the superhuman Horus Heresy.
=,~,~:=:~~~-:=·=:~none other than amissing Primarch. There cognitive abilities of his peers, as well as a

THE SoN oF MAcRAGGE people had continued to build sub-light was said to border on the inexplicable. His
spacecraft even during the time of the most greatest talent, however, lay in the art of war,
Thanks to the widely distributed efforts intense warp storms. This had allowed the which was itself treated as a high and lauded
of numerous Imperial Iterators, the story people ofMacragge to maintain contact science in Macragge's culture. As soon as he
of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman, his with several neighbouring human-settled had attended his legal majority, Roboute's
early life and his finding is widely known star systems, despite the storms' fury, and so foster-father Konor immediately granted
and well accounted for, in stark contrast to retain a tenuous link to the rest of human him command over an expeditionary
certain others of the Primarchs. Much of space and the knowledge that it was not force sent to pacify the far northern lands
these accounts have of course served the alone in the darkness. of Macragge. Named Illyrium, it was a
role of edification for the masses and the barbarous land of outcasts and petty, warring
demands of propaganda, but between the So it was that when the Primarch's fallen micro-states that had long harboured
accounts, variously embellished, a number capsule was discovered by a group of brigands and mercenaries who raided
of consistent facts and themes emerge. magnates who were on a hunt in a local more civilised lands as often as they hired
forest, they knew it immediately for a device themselves as foot soldiers to fight their
Planetfall of advanced technology rather than a thing neighbours' wars. Roboute fought a brilliant
After their mysterious expulsion from Terra, of superstition or magic. The magnates campaign and won both the submission
the twenty incubation capsules of the infant broke the capsule's seal and discovered a and the respect of the fierce Illyrian warrior
Primarchs came to rest on human-settled strikingly beautiful and perfectly formed bands, but when he returned to his home
colony worlds throughout the galaxy- child within it who was surrounded by a from the northern frontier, Roboute found
distant worlds that were inhabited by a wide glowing nimbus of power. The child was the capital ofMacragge Civitas in turmoil.
variety of human cultures, and whether brought before Konor Guilliman, one of a
by fickle fate or cruel design, each world pair of nobles who bore the title of'consul', The Death of Konor
would provide a crucible which would whose authority governed the most civilised During Roboute's absence, Konor
temper the child into the Primarch they and powerful region ofMacragge, and Guilliman's co-consul, a man named Gallan,
would become, be that hero or monster, Konor adopted the infant as his own son had unleashed a coup d'etat against Konor
tyrant or liberator. The capsule containing in a manner not uncommon to his culture, - a development far from unknown
the developing form of one Primarch fell naming him Roboute. historically, if in this instance a surprise.
upon the world ofMacragge in the Eastern Gallan, it transpired, had long harboured
Fringe of the galaxy. Macragge was a bleak The young Primarch grew unnaturally designs on undiluted rulership and had
but not inhospitable world, part of a decayed quickly and as he did so, his unique physical conspired with those amongst the wealthy
star empire of ages past that Mankind had and mental powers became obvious to nobility ofMacragge who were jealous of
inhabited for many centuries since the all. It is recorded that by the time of his Konor's political power and popularity, and
time of the Dark Age ofTechnology. Its tenth birthday, Guilliman had mastered also increasingly afraid of his preternaturally
industries had survived the Age of Strife everything the wisest tutors ofMacragge precocious foster child's future. These
relatively intact, and its people had retained could teach him. His insight into matters of malcontents represented Macragge's ancient
an authoritarian but cohesive society. It history, philosophy and science astonished regime, an aristocracy whose wealth was
had remarkably preserved a number of his teachers, while his recall was absolute manifested by vast estates which were
antiquated short range warp-capable craft and his ability to extrapolate accurate supported by the toiling of a multitude of
which could be utilised for near-stellar conclusions from fragmentary information impoverished vassals. Konor, backed by
transit -conditions permitting- and its Macragge's industrial magnates -rivals to
the old regime- had moved to challenge
this balance of power, forcing the aristocracy
ofMacragge to provide their vassals with

increased living standards and rights ridden and blasted ruin, and even the rebels The new ruler broke the old, aristocratic
before the law, weakening the aristocracy's it seemed had fled the scene to join the order and stripped from them their
stranglehold on the polity. Konor had looting. There, in the half-collapsed shelters lands and titles. Callan and his fellow
also passed legislation that obliged the beneath the building, he found his father conspirators were seized, the ring leaders
nobility of Macragge to begin an ambitious dying. For three days the wounded Consul publicly executed and the rest sentenced
programme ofimproving the long neglected had directed the defence of the besieged to hard labour rebuilding the city they
infrastructure of their nation and enlarging senate house, even as surgeons fought for had ruined stone by stone by hand. It was
the capital city at their own expense. These his life following a botched assassination not a sentence they would long survive.
reforms made Konor Cuilliman all but attempt on the senate floor which had In the new order, loyal soldiers and
unassailable in the common people's eyes, touched off the conspiracy's chaotic attack. hardworking settlers were granted rights
but were highly unpopular among all but a It is apocryphally said that as he gasped out where the oppressive aristocracy had once
few of the more far-sighted aristocrats. his last breath, Konor detailed the extent of held sway. With super-human energy and
Callan's betrayal to his beloved foster son the singularity of vision only a Primarch
As Roboute Cuilliman and his triumphant and named those whose hands were stained was capable of executing, the new Consul
army approached the city of Macragge with his blood. reorganised the social order ofMacragge,
Civitas, they saw the smoke from a creating a ruthlessly enforced meritocracy
multitude of fires and encountered citizens Roboute Cuilliman's cold rage at his where the hardworking prospered and
fleeing from a city in anarchy, and Roboute foster father's death was unstoppable. the honourable received positions of high
learned that Callan's private army had With the full backing of his army and the office, and those who shirked the law or
attacked the senate house while Konor and beleaguered citizens ofMacragge Civitas, worked against the good of the whole faced
his loyal bodyguard troops had been inside. Roboute crushed the aristocratic rebels, draconian, but faultlessly even-handed
The refugees each told the same story; scattered their hireling armies and lined punishment. The stagnated and uneven
that rebel soldiers had attacked the senate, the streets with the hanging bodies of the economy was re-ordered, technology
whilst a drunken mob, instigated by Callan rioters, thereby quickly restoring order to disseminated rather than hoarded by the
but now out of anybody's control, roamed the capital city and the surrounding lands. elite, and the armed forces were transformed
the city burning, looting and murdering. Thousands of citizens flocked to the senate into a powerful and well-equipped force.
Roboute hurried to his foster father's rescue. house and amidst a wave of popular acclaim, Macragge flourished as never before-one
Leaving his own troops to deal with the Roboute assumed the mantle of the sole and people and one order, united under the
drunken rioters without quarter, Roboute now all-powerful Consul ofMacragge. unchallengeable rule ofRoboute Cuilliman.
personally fought his way towards the
centre of the city, passing the bloody work
of rebel firing squads everywhere in the
government district, but at the senate house,
found himself too late. All was a bullet-

THE EAGLE OFTHE EAST had already partly shaped them, however As with the society Roboute Guilliman had
As swiftly as he put his plans for Ultramar unconsciously, and through the application built on Macragge, the XIII'h Legion under
into action, he embarked on the root of analysis and reason sought to purge any his mastery would be as ruthlessly even-
and branch reorganisation of his Legion. weaknesses or deficiencies to achieve the handed as it was efficient, with the needs
Adopting an extraordinarily detailed plan optimal military outcome. This, as with so of the individual sublimated to the greater
which drew from both the military doctrines much of the Legion's affairs, was considered whole, but the life of the individual never
and political philosophies of his surrogate by the Primarch an ongoing project, and spent wantonly or without purpose; for the
home world, a detailed study of the history it evolved quickly into a dual doctrine doctrine stated that each Legionary lost
of the XIII'h and each and every other which embraced in parallel on one hand weakened those who remained. Within the
Legion and armed force under the Emperor's what were the ancient and deterministic Legion, the valour and the achievement of
banner in their then current form, he remade values of the warrior: courage, discipline, the individual were rewarded with honour
the organisational structure and tactical skill and adaptability, defined as that which and responsibility, but the obedience to
doctrines of his Legion accordingly. was 'practical,' and on the other: planning, hierarchy and order it demanded of its
precedent, analysis and assessment, defined members was to be unquestioning and
The result was an elegantly structured but as that which was 'theoretical.' Both were of unchallenged. The outward signs of this
elaborate and highly meritocratic force. equal weight and value, one complementing transformation were striking, the livery of
It unsurprisingly built on much that had and informing the other, blending together the XIIIth was altered to a deep blue, chased
already been evident in the character of the as the metals which made a fine blade. This with gold, while the symbol of the ancient
XIII'h Legion, as their Primarch's gene-seed became the Legion's doctrine and its creed. 'Ultima' glyph found in the pre-isolation

stellar charts of the region was adopted as its expanded their range out from Macragge, the conquering fleet ofRoboute Guilliman
icon and seal to tie them to the newfound identifying suitable targets for Compliance had gone. The process was meritocratic and
realm which they embodied, and with it the and singling out xenos holds for eradication. exacting; only the strongest and most able
cognomen of'Ultramarines', perhaps as one Interrupted only when called upon to join candidates were selected, chosen for both
monograph attributed to the Remembrancer larger campaigns by the will of the Emperor, desired physical and mental attributes, but
L. Amphidal suggested, "Roboute Guilliman for nearly a century the rz'h Expeditionary the net was flung so wide that the intake
and his Legion would vow to take the Great Fleet ranged as far to the galactic north as the dwarfed that of any other single Legion. This,
Crusade beyond the stars themselves if needed to dead expanse where the Dominion of Storms coupled with the Ultramarines' resistance
see its completion". ended and as far to the galactic east and south to what they saw as the 'waste' of attrition
as the point of Ultima Thule, where the stars warfare, created a kind of amplification
With its forward base relocated to Macragge, paled and emptied out into the limitless effect in practice where the larger the
Guilliman was granted independent Crusade darkness of the exo-galactic void. Legion used in a single Compliance action,
command for the region, and quickly set the more force was bought to bear and the
about a series offresh conquests. His rz'h During this period, the Ultramarines, by fewer the casualties taken. Where this was
Expeditionary Fleet reformed under his some records, succeeded in liberating more not the case -and there remained many
command and supplied with warships of worlds than any other single Primarch's hard battles fought by the Ultramarines
the latest designs from Mars as a boon of the forces, and the planets Roboute Guilliman against hideously powerful foes such as
Emperor. Fresh conquests were immediate, brought within the Imperium always savage Ork empires, the Tanaril and other
as the newly named Ultramarines rapidly benefitted from his intense passion for nightmarish xenoforms- and heavy losses
efficient and ordered government. Whenever were inevitably suffered, the Legion's sheer
Guilliman and the Ultramarines made a size and its huge capacity to renew itself with
world Compliant, his forces spent as much more recruits offered it formidable resilience,
effort in establishing it afresh, setting up and such losses were almost invariably
self-supporting defences, and ensuring that replaced within a few years.
in his wake, the agents of the Imperial Truth
and industry would firmly seal the world's By the time Horus was appointed
place in the fabric of the Imperium. This Warmaster, the Ultramarines were by
spread of cohesive civilisation in the Legion's any official assessment the largest single
path served both to solidify and expand Space Marine Legion by number of
supply lines for its advance, facilitating in no Legionaries with a considerable margin.
small part the great speed and range of the Owing to this expansion, the now massive
Ultramarines' conquests. rz'h Expeditionary Fleet was sub-divided
into a score of smaller Expeditionary and
The Pattern ofEmpire Persecution fleets, allowing the Legion to
As inexorably as its tally of victories range further, each still numbering scores of
multiplied, the Ultramarines Legion's vessels and thousands and sometimes tens
numbers began to also grow. Even before its of thousands of Legionaries. The numeric
reunification with its Primarch, the XIII'h strength of the Ultramarines Legion
Legion had been mindful of its losses and would be an achievement that would not
demonstrated its ability to expand steadily be surpassed, though in secrecy the late
thanks to the resilience of its gene-seed expansion of the Word Bearers would come
during multi-generational replication. But to rival them by some assessments, while
with its Primarch's vision to guide it, his the wilder claims as to the strength of the
organisational skill and his own genetic Alpha Legion also have them run closer than
material available to further strengthen the official records would indicate.
Legion's gene-stocks, the resultant expansion
was meteoric, perhaps beyond anyone - This scale of military force and the near
even the Emperor's- expectations. Within autonomous 'empire within an empire' that
months of the Legion's establishment on maintained it, Ultramar having reached a
Macragge, the first influx of new recruits dominion popularly ascribed as the Five
had arrived at the Fortress of Hera, the new Hundred Worlds before the outbreak
Legion headquarters Roboute Guilliman had of war, would have dire and unforeseen
ordered constructed there, and the process consequences for the Ultramarines and their
of renewal and increase in the XIII'h Legion's Primarch. Separate and inviolate in the east,
fighting strength had begun and never since and a great power within their own right, the
had ceased. Legion's very existence made them a threat
to the Traitors' conspiracy that could not be
Wave after wave of recruits were taken in and ignored, and on Calth would the Warmaster's
processed, not simply from Macragge and the plan and the Word Bearers' desire for revenge
surrounding worlds of the slowly expanding see that threat destroyed.
Ultramar, as numerous as they were, but from
scores ofworlds and colony outposts where

UNIT FoRMATION STRUCTURE WITHIN THE LEGION

From its earliest incarnation, the XIII'h efficacious. This spoke to Guilliman's own any theatre of war with equal ability and
Legion had remained true to the strictures predilection for analysis and observation, emerge victorious, magnifying this power
of the Principia Be!!icosa, as laid down by the and in his case what the Primarch saw he in combination with other chapters almost
Emperor and his advisors at the beginning studied with a relentless precision, always geometrically. To this end, each chapter
of the Great Crusade. The warriors of the seeking to distil and improve upon success featured a proportionate mix of tactical and
Legion were organised into standardised and exceed the originator's accomplishments assault units, armour and artillery as well as
companies of approximately a thousand by the application of his intelligence gunships and transports.
warriors, then into chapters, each of ten and the diligence of his Legion. Such
companies. Unlike many of their brother improvement was something he always With the sub-division of the massed ranks
Legions, they made little attempt to re-codify believed a possibility, an attitude which at of the XIII'h that occurred in the latter years
the structure or vary the size of individual times brought the ite of some of the Roboute of the Great Crusade, reforming it into more
units. Instead, the War-born enshrined the Guilliman's peers. individual Crusade fleets than any other
basic strictures of this system as an honoured single Legion, the value of the doctrine was
tradition of the Legion, one that was to see The operational doctrines of the XIII'h quickly re-established and built upon, the
little modification even in its later years after favoured tactical diversity and the application Legion attempting to standardise much of
the rediscovery of Guilliman, who expanded of overwhelming force. As a reflection of its equipment base and supplement it where
and elaborated on this structure, seeing in it this, the Legion maintained relatively few needed with local patterns, which if not
great virtue, rather than replacing it. Roboute specialised companies, instead choosing to the most potent or advanced of their type
Guilliman also expanded on the XIII'h's spread those units which maintained large required lesser resources to mass produce, in
practice of observing how others fared stocks of non-standard equipment and order to optimally meet the ever-expanding
in battle and adopting modified versions munitions evenly throughout the various needs of its warriors. This factor itself
of their comrade Legions' tactics where companies of the Legion. It was intended would have great impact on the latter day
that every Ultramarines company would development of Space Marine forces beyond
be individually capable of meeting the the wars of the Horus Heresy.
enemies of Mankind on any terrain and in
While this doctrine of structured adaptability
was to become deeply ingrained within
many of the Legion's chapters, there were
some notable deviations from this pattern.
Some few individual chapters, through long

held preference or some quirk of supply, A later development, but of equal aspirants whose minor deficiencies of mind i
maintained notable strengths of non- importance, were the Invictarii; a veteran or body barred them from joining the ranks
standard equipment or personnel. The 4'h cadre who served both as a Legion elite of the XIII'h Legion, but not from service. ,I
and 22"d Chapters are the most noteworthy and as a pool of warriors who through This organisation reported to the lnvictarus
examples of this, with the 4'\ known within their actions had singled themselves out and went where a superhuman Legiones I
the Legion as the Aurorans, operating for potential future high command, not Astartes could not go covertly or easily, and
roughly five times as many armoured simply by bravery or skill at arms, but in its manner may have been patterned at f
vehicles as a standard chapter, while the also for displaying a talent in governance, least in some part on the similar operatives
22"d, the so-called Nemesis chapter - long organisation and administration. Their ranks of certain other Legions ofmore insidious
a hold-out of its Terran-born contingents- formed the core outside the usual Legion mien, although with an assuredly ironclad
maintained large number of Space Marines strucrure devoted in no small part to the code of conduct set for their operations.
equipped as destroyer units, and was one of control and order of the Ultramarines writ
the few Ultramarines formations to routinely of domain, and increased in number as the Legion Command Hierarchy
be deployed especially to Exterminatus Legion itself expanded and the realm of The XIII'hLegion operated under a
operations by the Legion. Roboute Guilliman Ultramar with it. strict hierarchy where each warrior's
was known to hold something of distaste for responsibilities and duties were known at
such horrific weapons as fundamentally self- The most famed and potent of these elite all times. Roboute Guilliman had overall
defeating; they destroyed the very ground sub-formations were the Suzerain Invictarus. command of the Legion, deciding its
on which they were used, which was to his These formed the retinues of the five disposition and strategic objectives, as well
doctrines a poor way to conquer or liberate a Tetrarchs ofUltramar, and functioned as as taking command of whichever fleet or
world. But this having been said, Guilliman both a military force for the defence of that war zone he was present in. Beneath the
held no outright ban upon such weapons' use fiefdom, arbiters oflaw for the population Primarch were the chapter masters, each of
in his Legion as Vulkan did, realising that and an honour guard for their commander in whom led approximately ro,ooo warriors
in certain cases their use was all that would battle. The individual forces of these Suzerain and a contingent ofUltramar's void fleet.
suffice, and strategically he would not let lnvictarus varied in size, with Tetrarch Assisting them were the cadre of senior
his Legion be without the abiliry to deploy Amyntas maintaining a force of several officers and commanders, the Legatii.
phosphex, oxygen destroyers and even thousand as feared peacekeepers in the Each chapter of the Legion contained ten
carbosilic cascades in extremis. troubled worlds around lax, while Tetrarch companies each in turn of r,ooo Legiones
Lamiad had but one hundred in his guard, Astartes commanded by a captain, who was
Alongside the conventional order of battle partly in deference to the Mechanicum responsible for the tactical deployment,
with which the Ultramarines operated, warriors who stood in Konor's defence and efficiency and training of his warriors.
several unique formations stood wholly apart did not need aid in doing so. Outside of the
from the traditional strucrure. The earliest of Suzerain forces, members of the Invictarii THE LORDS OF ULTRAMAR
these to emerge were the Evocatii chapters, could also be found in limited numbers The Lords Martial of the domain of
first introduced by Lord Commander spread out through the Legion's veteran Ultramar in 007.M3r:
Vosotho and later reorganised, expanded units and various sub-stratas of command
and renamed by Roboute Guilliman. The (although by number only a fraction of The Tetrarch Council
Evocati was the training ground of the all veterans, officers or sergeants ranked • Roboute Guilliman, Master of
Legion; comprising rwo double-strength amongst them) gaining further battlefield
chapters composed of both raw recruits experience and honing their skills by field Macragge, Primarch of the XIII'h
from across Ultramar and beyond, as well command. Legion and Lord of the Five
as a core of war-hardened veterans. Where Hundred Worlds
the late Lord Commander had once blooded Though rarely spoken of, there existed • Eikos Lamiad,Tetrarch ofKonor
these neophyte warriors at the forefront of another agency of the XIII'h Legion at work • Tauro Nicodemus, Tetrarch of
his campaigns, Guilliman assigned them within the borders ofUltramar. The Vigil Saramanth
first to a tour of defensive operations within Opertii, an organisation whose roots stretch • Eben Frain, Tetrarch of Occluda
the borders ofUltramar in conclusion to a back to the early days ofUltramar's founding, • Stolos Amyntas, Tetrarch oflax
rigorous training regime which favoured operating as a shadow arm of the military
both practical battle experience and government ofUltramar, silencing those Legati and Senior Commanders
more rigorous and more lengthy cerebral threats uncovered within the Five Hundred of Note
conditioning and memetic implantation than Worlds and holding custodianship over • Marius Gage, 'First Master'- Chapter
most other Legions undertook. the various defence militias of its standing
human armies. Little is recorded of their Master Primus of the XIII'h Legion
internal organisation, save that the warriors • Orfeo Cassandar, Legarus of the
who made up their forces were at their
core a body of augmented humans-those Evocatii and Seneschal of Armatura
• Valentus Dolor, Legatus of the Vigil

Opertii, Provost-Magistratus of
Ultramar
• Drakus Gorod, First Legatus of
the Invictarus Assembly and Fief-
commander of the Primarch's Guard

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i! Some few chapters retained and employed The Ultramarines Fleet recalled fully twenty chapters to Calth, with

variations of the older XIII'h Legion's In contrast to the vast numbers of Space fourteen of them rendezvousing at Saturn

·~ sub-structures and heraldry, marking Marines in the Ultramarines Legion, the in the Sol System to take on supplies before
achievements of the Terran first generation naval assets ofUltramar were more limited. making the onward voyage. This meant
of the 'War-born' or the disparate origins of Historically, Roboute Guilliman had made that somewhere in the region of zoo,ooo

their warriors, but these had faded somewhat a virtue of close alliance with the Imperialis Legiones Astartes -alongside uncounted

! over the years as the body of the Legion's Armada fleets of the Ultima Segmentum, and auxiliaries- were deployed to Calth. Such
demographic changed to favour the sons of relied upon them closely when a particular was the death toll at Calth during the atrocity,
campaign called for a powerful capital ship that while exact figures are impossible to
1 Ultramar. By the closing decades of the Great contingent to be employed or extensive obtain, it is estimated that no more than

' Crusade all, regardless of origin, followed the

same detailed organisational scheme, with orbital bombardments to be undertaken. 40,000 Ultramarines were to escape Calth's

only minor variations allowing for personal The Primarch himself was known to have system in the aftermath of the fighting, many

heraldry and honours among its highest observed that his warriors were intended to of whom were casualties, with an indefinable

echelons. All twenty-five chapters of the excel in spheres of combat other than the number trapped beneath the surface of that

Legion -a vast notional strength of around impersonal long range clash of star ships ruined and radiation-wracked world.

zso,ooo Legionaries by the time of the Horus many kilometres apart in the deep void, and

Heresy- comprised then a single cohesive greatly favoured his own Legion fleet to be Of those chapters that were not recalled for

force with a fully integrated command optimised for close assault and maintained the Ghaslakh Crusade, the following details

structure, and were capable of seamlessly ships designed for invasion operations for are known. The 7'h Chapter was embarked

forming together for grand strategic this reason. on a costly campaign sweeping the Eastern

assaults or operating flawlessly in smaller Fringe of a splintered Khrave infestation

detachments to carry out individual actions As a result, the Legion had never operated that threatened to overwhelm Imperial

under this flexible arrangement. large numbers of the heaviest capital ships, colonies established in the area and could

retaining less than 30-35 of such craft at not be spared for the muster, while the ro'h

While the captains and chapter masters of various points, having lost several in battle was scattered across the north-eastern limits

the XIII'h Legion governed the crusading over time, notably the Legion's first flagship of Imperial expansion and was simply too

armies of the Legion, it was the parallel among them during the disaster at the far away to have been considered for recall.

system of tetrarchs and their own legatii who Osiris Cluster. Of those heavy capital ships The 24'h and zs'h Chapters, elements of the

governed the many military institutions of which remained, most had served since the Evocatii, alongside the 19'h Chapter, were

the realm ofUltramar and were entrusted Legion's inception at the beginning of the dispersed across the most important worlds

with its defence. Each tetrarch was a military Great Crusade and had been heavily refitted ofUltramar to remain as Guilliman led the

dictator of one of the five 'king worlds' of over time. Only a handful of the newer bulk of his Legion to war, unaware of the

Ultramar, and ruled over a sub-sector of models of heavy capital ships had been coming storm that was to follow, but spared

that realm. The tetrarchs were appointed by assigned to them since the Primarch Roboute at least initially from its ravages.

the Primarch, who was himselfMaster of Guilliman's command tenure had begun,

Macragge and the core worlds of Ultramar- although of these notably two were of the Alongside a great many bonded ships of the

though his duties as governor of these worlds extremely powerful Gloriana class. Imperialis Armada, and hundreds of military

often fell on his seneschal in practice, while and Mechanicurn transport vessels, the

he led the armies of the Emperor's Imperium The main body of the Legion's void craft fleet bulk of the Ultramarines fleet was at Calth

on crusade. was then made up of mid-scaled cruisers and for the muster, and caught ill-prepared for

smaller battle barges of various classes, along the Traitors' attack and suffered savagely

The legatii were a special division who held with substantial numbers oflighter pattern for it. Many of the Ultramarines capital

rank equivalent to a praetor of the Legion purpose-built strike cruisers, frigates and fast and cruiser class craft were hammered into

by the Terran pattern. They served as the patrol cutters, all which could be produced burning hulks, were simply missing or were

commanders of the Legiones Astartes armies by the shipyards of worlds across Ultramar. sorely damaged and in need of repair. This

stationed within Ultramar itselfand of Although this fleet structure did allow the state of affairs left the Legion, and Ultramar,

particular specialised units and detachments Legion a great deal of flexibility and range dependent primarily on smaller craft for

outside of the legion's regular order of battle. in how it deployed its many Space Marine their defence and strategic transport, and

A particular legatus, sometimes known as a chapters, its combined overall tonnage and military ship building became a priority for

fief-commander, was also assigned to lead firepower ranked the Ultramarines fleet in those worlds which were left able to do so.

each of the tetrarch's retinues of the Suzerain the mid-tier of the Legions, considerably Guilliman sought to improve his position by

Invictarus, a position of high honour. Overall behind the Imperial Fists, for example, in adding to his few remaining heavy warships

command of the twin chapters of the Evocati terms of tonnage and destructive power, and (a handful had not been present at the

and the war world of Armatura also fell to a behind the Death Guard in terms of number muster and so were spared the ambush), with

legatus, charged with maintaining a steady of heavy capital units. additional warships appropriated from the

flow of recruits for the crusading chapters of Imperialis Armada if they were available and

the Legion, while another was placed at the War Disposition modified for Space Marine use, and where

head of the Vigil Opertii, and charged with Prior to the orders to assemble on Calth for possible made capturing enemy warships

overseeing civil order, a position of much the Ghaslakh Crusade, the majority of the by boarding action a priority, The rapidity

influence and dark renown within the realm XIIIth Legion had been distributed across the and efficiency with which this was done was

I ofUltramar. southern and eastern sectors of the galaxy in nothing short ofphenomenal and would
numerous crusade fleets. Of these, Guilliman have great import on the battles to come.
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ANCIENT MARCELLUS
H EAVY SuPPORT EcHELON, II i" CoMPANY

BATTLE oF IrnRAcA, LANDING ZoNE MAcRo-GAMMA

A former Consul-Centurion with three decades service and numerous citations for valour, Captain Marcellus fell at the
First Portresh Compliance when recidivist forces unleashed a bio-psionic weapon of forbidden provenance. He is depicted

here as he deployed to Ithraca City, where he mustered at Landing Zone Macro-Gamma. Marcellus stood against the
traitorous Calaq War Host at Macro-Gamma, his heavy weaponry cutting down scores ofTraitors. He was last recorded
battling against the wave of summoned warp entities that slaughtered almost the entirety of the Loyalist forces mustered
in that region, and while his remains were never located, his name was added to the roll of honour of the many thousands

who fell during the Battle of Calth.

I, ULTRAMARINES TACTICAL MARKINGS

!

AND HERALDRY

Legion Icon Legion Icon variant Legion Icon and Numeral Legion Honour variant
standard heraldic use

Chapter Master Senior Captain Line Captain Line Captain variant
Invictarus Honour
'aI r·. ....t,·~.:.f,;'. .'
\ '
-- ~

Breacher Sergeant Heavy Support Sergeant Veteran Legionary

Tactical Squad Tactical Squad variant Assault Squad Assault Squad variant
with Chapter Numeral

Heavy Support Squad Heavy Support Squad Heavy Support Squad Variant Breacher Squad with
(Speciahst weaponry) (Armour core) (Armour core) Chapter Numeral

ULTRAMARINES TACTICAL MARKINGS
AND HERALDRY

ULTRAMARINES LEGION APOTHECARION ULTRAMARINES HELM VARIANTS

Ultramarines Apothecaries replace some or Like many Legions, the Ultramarines utilise a range of armorial variants unique to
all of the Legion's standard cobalt blue with their own Legion Forge. The 'Praetor' pattern helm featuring its distinctive visor plate
white, making them easily recognisable is often worn as a mark of distinction and honour by veteran and Legion officers.
on the field of battle. Legiones Astartes Shown here is a range of unit and rank markings used within the XIII'h Legion.
Apothecaries bear the 'prime helix', the Variation exists between chapters, in particular those stationed or serving beyond the
symbol of their unique genetic inheritance. borders ofUltramar.
This is frequently adorned with further
iconography such as common Great :;j~-..~ --· -~~_aJ
Crusade era symbols or motifs unique to the l · · .; _, ·., ..·. )·f!. '!.;
individual Legion. 4 _·''''
I. -~ ,,
Medicae Primus
Line Legionary Sergeant Apothecary

Veteran Sergeant Lieutenant Captain
Vehicle crew
Legion Apothecary Destroyer Destroyer Sergeant

ULTRAMARINES LEGION
DESTROYER VARIANTS

The Ultramarines observe the common,
although not universal, Legiones Astartes
convention of adorning their Destroyer
units with heraldry of black. This practice
has its origins in the earliest days of the
Great Crusade, where those warriors given
the often odious and invariably perilous
task of employing weapons forbidden to the
greater bulk of the Emperor's hosts were
often kept apart from their peers.

Terminator Terminator Sergeant Terminator Captain

Destroyer Squad with Chapter Numeral

ULTRAMARINES LEGION HERALDRY

ULTRAMARINE$ LEGION BANNERS

Of all the many banners and icons borne by the Ultramarines, the Legion battle standards carry the most significance. These large, fabric
banners are individually commissioned by Legion High Command and issued to chapter sub-commands, often in honour of a great victory and

a symbol that the chapter's commanding officer bears the authority of the Primarch and the honour of the entire Legion.

ULTRAMARINE$ SHIELD ICONOGRAPHY

The Ultramarines Legion places a high value on the deployment of shield-equipped units, and aside from the standard Legion Breacher
squads commonly fielded across the Legiones Astartes, the XIII'h Legion equips its elite Invictarus Suzerain squads with artificer-wrought

boarding shields which many Invictarii continue to bear in their subsequent service in the ranks of the Legion's officer cadre.

Legion Officer Honour variant

ULTRAMARINES VETERAN TACTICAL LEGIONARY

LEGIONARY KRATO PELEOS

t 'CoMMAND CoMPANY, CHAPTER

EURYDICE RETRIBUTION TASKFORCE

Legionary Peleos is depicted here on the eve
of the final destruction of the xenos 'Psybrids'.
The bulk of the 7'hChapter was deployed to
the Eurydice Retribution Taskforce aboard the
warship Thunder of Hera and took part in the
boarding assault against the alien nomad-ships.
Legionary Peleos and his company fought as
part of the second wave against the xenos vessel,
moving through the interior in the bloody
wake of the r" Chapter's Terminators, planting
charges and performing a key role in the ultimate
destruction of that vessel.
Legionary Peleos is equipped with mid-
production Mk II power armour, constructed on
Mars and common in the Legion in this era. He
bears Veteran Tactical Legionary iconography
and displays a marksmanship honour on his chest
plate awarded a decade earlier during the Uttaus
Compliance.
Panoply of War
1. Phobos pattern boltgun: Standard Legion

issue, mid-Great Crusade era.
2. Combat knife: Terran Unification issue.

I. 2.

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ULTRAMARINES TACTICAL LEGIONARY

LEGIONARY NAEVIUS

II2m CoMPANY, lim CHAmR

UNSHEAR COUNTER-THRUST
Legionary Naevius was recruited from Orpheus
Prime having not only survived, but excelled in
the ritual games associated with the annual tribal
levy, and at the time of the Calth Conjunction was
in his fourth year of Legion service, fighting in
the ranks of the II2'h Company. Having sustained
calamitous losses at the outset of the Battle of
Calth, the remnants of the II2'h Company were
rallied by Naevius' squad commander, Sergeant
Anchise, at whose side he fought throughout the
advance on Lanshear.

Legionary Naevius is depicted here on the
eve of the Erud Muster. He wears the Mk IV
('Maximus') battle plate he was issued upon
induction into the Legion, the Ultramarines
Legion numeral displayed upon his left knee
armour. Naevius served in a Legion Tactical
squad, as indicated by the icon on his right
shoulder pauldron, but this battlefield distinction
became all but irrelevant in the aftermath of
the Word Bearers' betrayal, Sergeant Anchise
re-organising the surviving warriors according to
the skills and experience of each Legionary.

Panoply of War
1. Phobos pattern boltgun with combat blade

attachment: Note addition of Legion numeral.

I.

ULTRAMARINES LEGION BREACHER

LEGIONARY VARINIUS

9t' CoMPANY, 9rn CHAPTER

(ATIACHED TO 402NOFLOTILLA)
FLEET DEFENCE DETACHMENT, BATTLE BARGE 'PHAUNOS'
BATTLE OF CALTH NEAR-SPACE

Legionary Varinius was a long-serving warrior
of the 9'h Chapter and marked for ascension to
one of his Chapter's Veteran Tactical squads. At
the time of the Calth Conjunction, Varinius was
serving in a Legion Breacher squad assigned to
shipboard security detail onboard the battle barge
the Phaunos, having displayed formidable skill in
this role during the scouring of the nine orbital
plates of Hydras Reach in oor.M31. Varinius and
his battle-brothers were especially noted for their
expertise in counter-boarding actions, and it was
in this role that they fought during the Battle
of Calth, successfully repelling three separate
breaching assaults against the Phaunos by Word
Bearers boarding parties.

Legionary Varinius is depicted here wearing late
production Mk III battle plate ('Iron' Armour)
and bearing a boarding shield displaying the
heraldry of a veteran Breacher squad. The
numeral 'CDII' on the shield refers to the 402"d
Flotilla of the Ultramarines fleet, of which
the Phaunos was the flagship, and the icon and
numeral 'IX' below it marks his membership
of the 9'h Chapter. On his right knee armour
Legionary Varinius wears an icon honouring his
skill in void warfare battle doctrines, bestowed
upon him after the conclusion of the Hydras
Reach campaign.

Panoply of War
1. Phobos pattern boltgun.

2. Breaching charge.

I. 2.

lNVICfARUS SARERVAN
15TH CHAPTER COMMAND CADRE
DAINHOLD MUSTER
Legionary Sarervan was at the time of the
Calth Conjunction a fully inducted member
of the Invictarii, having served his Legion for
three decades and earned the approbation of
the Primarch himself. Marked for high rank,
Sarervan was serving in the command squad
of his battalion's commanding officer, Captain
Teutona, at the time of the Battle of Calth. When
his immediate superior was slain by frenzied
Traitor auxilia, Sarervan assumed command of
the remaining Legionaries and led the dwindling
force for a further six hours before the Dainhold
Manufactoria fell.

As a member of the Invictarii, Sarervan wears
a highly ornamented, artificer-modified suit of
Mk IV ('Maximus') power armour. The armour is
typical of that worn by many Invictarii,featuring
adapted motifs drawn from the heraldry of the
Battle-kings ofMacragge and the armies ofTerra,
including the laurel wreathes of victory, the
ultima icon ofUltramar, the lightning bolts and
raptor head ofTerran Unification and the eagle of
the Imperium ofMankind.

Panoply of War
1. Proteus pattern power sword.

2. Ryza 'Sunspite' pattern Mk Illv plasma
pistol.

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ULTRAMARINES lNVICTARUS CENTURION II

il'

lNVICfARUS CASSIAN
XmlH LEGION HIGH CoMMAND CADRE
At the time of the Calth Conjunction, Cassian
was serving with Legion High Command and
had recently completed service in the ranks of
the Invictarus Suzerains having been identified
as a candidate for company command by First
Chapter Master Marius Gage himself Cassian
had served in the honour guard of the Primarch
on three occasions and fought in the ranks of
the Suzerains in a dozen battles. Although he
would never know the honour that was to be
bestowed upon him, Lucius Cassian had been
marked by Lord Guilliman for command of the
213'h Company. During the Traitors' betrayal at
the Calth Conjunction, Cassian was on board the

Ultramarines flagship the Macragge's Honour. He
and his squad were last seen rallying an ad hoc
force of several dozen Legionaries and armsmen
in defence of the starboard primary enginarium
against a horde of warp entities. While the vital
location was saved, Cassian and his warriors gave
their lives for victory.

Cassian is depicted clad in artificer wrought
Mk IV ('Maximus') Astartes power armour. His
armour's adornments and markings indicate
his former service in the ranks of the Invictarus
Suzerains and his helmet crest marks his rank as
that of a Cenrurion.

Panoply ofWar
1. Artificer wrought thunder hammer.

I.

.~

--~'•

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~' ULTRAMARINE$ LEGION TERMINATOR

LEGIONARY KLION
13m CHAmREmE
CAREN PROVINCE MUSTER
Legionary Klion had served his Legion for
four and a half decades at the time of the Calth
Conjunction, and having been stationed on the
outskirts of the Prohibited Zone had not set foot
on any of the Five Hundred Worlds in almost
ten years. Klion was a veteran of the xenocidal
wars fought along Ultramar's frontiers and had
sustained such heavy injuries fighting ravening
xenos that he had been considered for interment
within a Dreadnought. On each occasion, the
13'h Chapter's isolation had necessitated arduous
surgery and an extended recovery period, Klion
returning to the fray after each injury more
determined in his dury than ever.

Legionary Klion is depicted clad in the
Cataphractii pattern Terminator plate he had
worn for the best part of ten years, which for the
muster at Caren was restored to nigh pristine
condition by the hand of his chapter's weapons-
artificiers. At Calth, Klion was to sustain yet
another, near-mortal wound in his long service,
not by the hand of the xenos but, for the first
time, at the hand of his brother Astartes.

Panoply of War
1. Proteus pattern power sword.

2. Mars-Omega pattern volkite charger.

I.

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ULTRAMARINES LEGION TERMINATOR

LEGIONARY SowN

12™CHAPTER CoMMAND CADRE
SYLATOR PRoVINCE MumR

Solon was the standard bearer of the 3'd Battalion
of the u•hChapter, an honour earned in
recognition of a decade of line service. Solon's
armour bears numerous honour marks, notably
the laurel and skull icon indicating that his rank
was conferred by the hand of a Chapter Master.
The marking on Solon's right knee armour is a
personal motif, memorialising his service in the
ranks of his battalion's Veteran Tactical squads.

Legionary Solon served with distinction at the •I
Battle of Calth, bearing his battalion's standard
so that his battle-brothers could rally against ij!'
the Traitors at Sylator. Solon's battalion faced
the entire Traitor 199'h Thorion Yeomanry, an ~
Imperialis Militia unit serving under the Word
Bearers and deployed to Sylator for the Calth '
Conjunction. Accounts of the clash between the
desperately outnumbered force of Legionaries '!
of the u •h Chapter and the thousands-strong
host of inducted militia state that Solon never j
once faltered in his duty. Even when the enemy !
revealed formerly concealed mutations and ~
unleashed the power of the Warp upon the
Space Marines, Solon fought on and by his §_
example Sylator was saved.
'
Panoply of War
I. Meridius pattern Mk VI power m aul. ;

2. Tigrus pattern combi-bolter. !

I. I
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2.
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'f ULTRAMARINES LEGION APOTHECARY

APOTHECARY THEON

SuPPORT EcHELON, 3'" CHAPTER

OuROSENE PROVINCE MuSTER
Apothecary Theon was deployed to his chapter's
command post at the landing fields on the Bay of
Lisko. At the moment of the destruction of Calth
Veridian Anchor,Theon and his brethren from
the Chapter Apothecarion were embarking an
orbital transport, but as the burning debris began
to fall, they rapidly disembarked in anticipation
of the casualties to come. Within the hour, the
coastal landing zone was aflame and thousands
of Legionaries, Auxilia and civilians were dead
and many more were wounded. There was little
Theon could do for the majority, but operational
records state he served with courage and
resolution that day, and recovered the progenoid

ri glands of dozens ofbattle-brothers fallen in glory.
Apothecary Theon wears modified Mk IV
Astartes battle plate, bearing not only the
specialised chirogenical systems crucial to his
role, but a number of honour marks conferred
upon him by Legion high command. The marbled
surface finishing of his armour is normally
reserved for formal occasions, indicative that the
Ultramarines were not anticipating imminent
combat at the time of the Traitors' attack.

Panoply of War
1. 'Thunder edge' pattern chainsword.

2. Tigrus pattern Mk XXIq bolt pistol.

I.

2.

ULTRAMARINES LEGION DESTROYER I;tl
~,
LEGIONARY KLEros ~.
2"" DESfROYER CoMPANY, 22"" CHAmR
THRACius PROVINCE MuSTER N'.
Legionary Kletos was deployed to one of
the many muster camps scattered across the
highlands ofThracius and served in one of the
'Nemesis' Chapter's Destroyer squads. The 22"d
numbered many specialised units, most of which
utilised unconventional weapons and tactics,
and so they were deliberately mustered far from
Calth's centres of population.

Legionary Kletos wears mid-production
Mk II ('Crusade' Armour) Astartes battle plate,
displaying the predominantly black heraldry
worn by Destroyer units within the Ultramarines
and several other of the Legiones Astartes. The
suit bears several common icons, such as the
veteran's laurel on the left shoulder pauldron and
the three-pointed destroyer icon on the right.
The Terran Raptor icon at the waist indicates the
bearer is a veteran of the early Great Crusade and
in this case ofTerran origin. The markings on
the forearms are highly idiosyncratic and have
only been observed in use amongst the Destroyer
cadres of the Legiones Astartes Ultramarines,
Emperor's Children and Raven Guard.

Panoply of War
I . Paired phobos pattern bolt pistols.

2. Rad, frag and krak grenades.

"l
I

I. 2 . 'i.
I

~

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~

Yet for all this, Roboute Guilliman knew
that a shadow of doubt afflicted his Legion's
soul. That doubt had its origins in its

~ darkly storied defeat during the disastrous
intervention in the Osiris Cluster Rebellion

II a few short years before the Primarch's
reuniting with his Legion. Marius Gage's
tenure in command had commenced
with this disaster, and it became a baleful
influence in the psyche of the Legion, a thing
which while left unspoken nevertheless had
power, and that even seemed to cast a pall
over the Legion's recruits unborn when the
battle was lost. The Primarch knew that the
only way to truly purge his Legion of this
shadow of the mind was to find once more
the xenos known as the Osirian Psybrids, and
with the Ultramarines at his back, destroy
them utterly.

To this end, ever since he had first reviewed
reports of the action when he took over
his Legion, Roboute Guilliman had begun
planning the Psybrids' destruction, analysing
and re-analysing every facet of the Legion's
battle-logs, gun-picter footage and even the
deep auspex data gathered from the aetheric
cogitators of the warships that had survived
for microscopic flucruations. In the decades
as his Legion had gone from Compliance
to Compliance, war zone to war zone, the

~'I' Primarch had never stopped running
continued theoretical battle scenarios
against the macabre and powerful xenos,
knowing that one day they would make their
reappearance and that he and his Legion
would be waiting. But decades passed and

. they did not rerum.

' ~ There had been rumours of course,
unsubstantiated accounts passed on from
frontier Rogue Traders, intermittent
reports of inexplicable massacres and
mass disappearances, but the galaxy, even
within the fold of the growing Imperium,
was a strange and dangerous place, and the
evidence was seldom conclusive as to the
culprit, or pointed to the more commonplace
if no less deadly privations of the Khrave,
the Enslavers or degenerate Eldar corsairs.
Only at Maxilla Veritas near the Maelstrom,
twenty-six standard years after the Osiris
Rebellion, was the evidence for the Psybrids
involvement considered viable. Here an
agri-world had been robbed of a third of its
population almost overnight, the remainder
simply lying down in the fields to starve
to death, their minds and wills utterly
destroyed. But by the time fast cruisers from
the Ultramarines fleet had arrived, the trail
was already long cold and the planet's dead
bore silent witness to the Psybrids' passing.

It was in the closing segments of 899.M30 already several standard months out of date, War Hounds had proved able to resist the .
that conclusive word finally reached the and he knew that his own orders, sealed creatures' baleful influence, but massively
Ultramarines Primarch that the Psybrids had under his authoriry as a Primarch and a Lord outnumbered they had paid for their '
not only been encountered, but met in battle. Marshal Primus of the Great Crusade, for resistance in blood, and would have been
Relayed from the central Astrotelepathic the War Hounds to hold at all cost and if overwhelmed regardless ifhuge numbers .!I
chamber of Terra, the strange report had possible track the hourglass ships to their of enraged Orks, seemingly the massed
come from a sub-fleet of the XII'h Legion, source might arrive too late. Regardless, forces of the entire Glortian Empire, had not I
then in its last days as the War Hounds Roboute Guillirnan swung his long-planned swarmed into the system.
before its own Primarch, Angron, was found. strategy into action, and with near-
impossible dispatch, a powerful Ultramarines The Orks had fought with unbelievable
The fleet, under the command of Praetor Retribution fleet was soon underway to fury even given their warlike species' mien,
Erad Kri.ig, was fighting on the south-western Eurydice Terminal. seeking either revenge or compelled by
extreme of the Great Crusade's frontier near some inbuilt genetic drive to exterminate the
Eurydice Terminal. Here the War Hounds The Killing Star Psybrids. More of the gargantuan hourglass
had been engaged in repelling an attack When the retribution fleet arrived, not even ships in turn had appeared to reinforce their
on the frontier outpost world by Ork void the intellect of the Ultramarines Primarch fellows, and with them thousands of enslaved
raiders from the self-sryled Glortian Empire could have predicted what his Legion would xenos warriors and ships, few of which were
from the untracked abysses beyond. The War find there. The entire star system had been known even to the lexicanic datacores of
Hounds, though severely outnumbered, had sundered into a battleground littered with the Imperial ships. Eurydice Terminal had
held off the repeated Ork attacks through burning debris and the radioactive echo of become a killing star; a vortex of destruction
a series of savage boarding actions in close heavy weapons fire. The dead and broken that was even now calling more armies to
orbit and high intensiry assaults on their hulks of Ork and Imperial warships, as well their deaths, and here the Ultramarines had
landing zones, preventing the xenos from as less readily identifiable wrecks, were come to restart the battle afresh.
gaining a foothold on the ground. It had been scattered everywhere, and the atmosphere
during the latest of these assaults, the largest of Eurydice Noctis, the system's only Guillirnan, having apprised himself of the
yet attempted by the Orks, that a mysterious life-sustaining world, was scorched and tactical situation, modified his battle plans
third party had attacked both sides. blackened with the fires of war. Above accordingly and without pause put his
this battle-torn orb, at the heart of a sea of strategy of attack into operation. Despite
A duo of immense hourglass-shaped vessels orbital wreckage, no fewer than seven of the Erad Kri.ig's request for his surviving
had appeared and launched a devastating monolithic, clockwork-spinning shapes of Legionaries to be lifted from their wrecked
assault, which the Orks -reacting in a the Psybrid hourglass vessels hovered, several vessel and given a place in the line of battle,
frenzy unwarranted even for their kind- badly damaged by intense conflict. the War Hounds were denied; this would be
had responded by immediately abandoning a battle for the Ultramarines alone. It was
the planetary assault and turning on the Immediately coming under scattered attacks to be a tactical operation more traditionally
newcomers with suicidal abandon. The by Ork gunships stalking the debris fields, the specialiry of other Space Marine Legions
War Hounds had taken advantage of this the Ultramarines fleet began scanning the than his, but at which his own warriors
unexpected respite to regroup and then system in an attempt to comprehend just were still well versed-a full assault-strike
counter-attack the Orks' all-but-unprotected what was transpiring there, but it was not boarding assault.
flank, so savagely were the raiders engaged until they were contacted by a narrow band
in attacking the hourglass vessels, many of Imperial vox signal from the surface of one Having long poured over the action reports
their warships simply ramming the enemy, of the system's outer ice moons that matters from the disaster at Osiris, Guillirnan had
all guns blazing. The War Hounds battle became clear. The signal was from the badly parsed out a number of cohesive facts about
barges massacred a path through the Orks damaged War Hounds battle cruiser Cold his enemy that he planned to exploit to their
and carried through to the unknown foe, Cerberus, which had made an emergency downfall. The first was that despite their vast
encountering the Osiran Psybrids first- landing on the ice moon to make repairs. On ships and the enslaved hosts they deployed
hand as the nightmarishly powerful xenos board were the last surviving few hundred with such ruthless determination, the real
smashed the War Hounds void shields and Legionaries of the XII'\ the remnants of enemy, the semi-vaporous Psybrid-creatures
teleported aboard. In the chaotic void melee a force that had once been ten times its themselves, were relatively few in number.
that followed, only the savage tenaciry of number, led by the terribly wounded but still Their entire sryle of combat, to fight battles
the War Hounds allowed them to survive, commanding Erad Kri.ig. first by proxy as marshals rather than as
as dozens of their own ships and hundreds frontline warriors, intervening only to tip
of Ork vessels were shattered and left The arrival of the Ultramarines fleet was a the balance with their prodigious psychic
as burning wreckage in the skies above welcome surprise to him, for he had received powers, was predicated on keeping their
Eurydice Terminal before the two hourglass no orders to stand and fight to the last against own exposure to casualties as low as possible.
ships were finally driven off But not before the xenos menace- he hadn't needed any. The hourglass vessels, as massive as they
one Psybrid vessel made a low pass of the He detailed to the Primarch the story of were from what he could ascertain from data
planet's surface and strange energy readings a strange and terrible battle in which the gathered via auspexes, were themselves more
spiked across its ground stations. Psybrids had managed through their mental akin to mobile space stations than warships,
powers to enslave a vast feral population of and their internal habitation limited in
By the time the report had reached Orks to do battle for them against their own scope, the rest a vast provision for supply and
Guillirnan, thanks to the vagaries of kind, and had sought to do the same to the self-sufficiency. This supposition was now
astrotelepathic communications, it was Imperial defenders ofEurydice. Only the confirmed by his warships' concentrated

scanning as the Ultramarines fleet myth and illustrate the truth that such tactics Instead the Ultramarines fleet ploughed
approached their targets; the Psybrids had no were often wasteful and unneeded by a on through the spacial-gravitic turbulence,
home system, no empire; they were nomads, skilled general, but when such sacrifice was their pilots and captains having practised
wanderers with all they possessed on their the most efficient and indeed perhaps the such manoeuvres in endless simulations at
backs, and they were few. The war upon the only path to victory, he and his Legion would their Primarch's command, and few ships
surface of the world, the Orks, the mind- pay that price with fervour and unbreakable were lost to the roiling void, though many
blasted slave-soldiers, all were irrelevances determination. were pounded and battered like flotsam in a
- a smoke screen- the enemy was the terrible sea storm. The Psybrid vessels began
masters of war, the puppeteers aboard the So it was that the huge fleet set off, its to scatter, but slowed by their own huge
nomad ships, and Roboute Guilliman would engines at maximum burn with at its centre mass, which rendered them ungainly in the
not suffer them to live. the Primarch himself aboard the Macragge's planet's gravity despite their power, could not
Honour, spearheading a dozen battle barges break away in time to avoid the vast fleet of
The Fire upon the Deep and a score of cruisers. While in parallel, warships hurtling at them.
The Primarch's plan of attack was a the two other giants of the fleet, the Spear of
shockingly direct one. His fleet would not Konor under Marius Gage and the Thunder of At a range of no more than a handful of
pause for long range bombardment, it would Hera under the command of Severin Vale, led kilometres apart, the Ultramarines at last
not present broadside and pound the enemy their own strike groups of battle barges and unleashed their wrath, and before the after-
at close quarters as a High Admiral of the cruisers, while the heavier line of battle void image of the blinding fire-flash of a thousand
Imperialis Armada might have done, but ships of the fleet, more suited to firepower lance batteries and macro cannon unleashed
rather he would conduct a full boarding than assault, formed an echelon behind. could fade, hundreds of gunships and assault
strike without prelude. Guilliman would rams were roaring from their flight bays to
drive the core of his fleet and with it nearly This rear echelon broke in parallel as the the attack. The Psybrid nomad-vessels lashed
wo,ooo Ultramarines into the heart of the fleet made its final approach, sweeping about them with frenzied whips of elemental
enemy. Unlike Thetos, where it had been the out to encircle the enemy and cutting off energy, and all around them hulls burst and
Ultramarines who had been outnumbered any avenue of escape. At first, the Psybrid ships burned, but it was too little against the
and slowly overwhelmed, now it would nomad vessels responded by closing ranks unstoppable tide of ire which crashed against
and hurling out great pulses of sheering them. The Ultramarines fleet engulfed the
be the Psybrids, forced to contend with gravitational force in the path of the towering Psybrid vessels, strike cruisers
oncoming Ultramarines, hoping to break and battle barges themselves ram-charging
a blazingly blue armoured mass of super their formation and crush or deflect the into the turning clockwork-like cores of the
human warriors whose only purpose was volleys of fire they expected to be unleashed nomad-ships, grapple nets and corvus bridges
their utter annihilation. It is not without against them at any moment. But too late piercing the alien ships' sides. They were as
irony that Roboute Guilliman records in his they realised the danger they were in as giants beset by hundreds of birds of prey and
own testimony about the assault that in the no such bombardment was forthcoming. slowly torn to pieces.
past some had thought to opine that he and
his Legion were adverse to strategies which

resulted in a heavy cost of
litfes; this single action

Through maze-like networks of turning for the warriors of the XIIIth Legion were psychic plane with very ounce of power in
corridors like the innards of a great machine, implacable, and in them had been woken his possession, sacrificing his life so that
the Ultramarines stormed with deadly intent, a rarely displayed drive for vengeance that Guilliman would be defended from the
destroying as they went. The ghoulish, half- could not be diverted nor denied. nightmarishly powerful creature's psychic
solid vapour forms, lean and gaunt without assault. The monster fell and the Primarch
their exo-armour, fought with the savagery It was Roboute Guilliman himself who of the Ultramarines enacted his Legion's
of caged animals, burning bright with breached the innermost chamber of the vengeance, ripping the thing's glowing brain
psychokinetic energy and striking out with largest of the hourglass ships to find the from its skull and crushing it under his heel.
mind-burning blasts of power, but for every master of the Psybrids. It was a towering,
Legionary who fell, a dozen pressed forward multi-limbed gestalt-thing, thrice the One by one the towering hourglass vessels
in their place and, one by one, the Psybrids Primarch's own height, whose long, almost of the Osiran Psybrids fell, either torn apart
began to be corralled, cornered and killed. equine head screamed out shockwaves by explosive charges from within, or rent
Led by axe- and shield-wielding Invictarii of ceramite-breaking force as its inner to flinders in the crossfire of the waiting
and moving bulwarks ofTerminator armour- sanctum was invaded. But even as his own Ultramarines' echelons as they tried to break
clad veterans, the Ultramarines pressed into Terminator armoured bodyguard staggered free. There was no escape. As the Psybrids
the heart of the great vessels, mining the and fell under the psychokinetic onslaught, died, so too did their slave armies still
corridors and power junctures with melta- the Primarch, with his chief battle psyker warring on the ground, and soon only the
bombs and atomantic implosion charges Aaroth Ptolemy beside him, charged. The Glortian Orks, already mauled and all but
as they went. The armoured claws of the Psybrid-King reared up above them, its exhausted, remained, and the Ultramarines
Ultramarines Dreadnoughts tore open clawed arms bearing strange weapons like made short work of driving them away once
bulkheads to reveal vaults of plundered the image of some forgotten devil-god of more into the outer darkness. The blood
treasures and the wealth of innumerable Old Night, but Guilliman with the strength price of the battle had been high enough,
worlds, but the Ultramarines were not and speed born of the Emperor's unmatched several thousand Legionary casualties, and
swayed by such wonders any more than they arts struck, cleaving the creature limb from many among them veterans of the Legion's
were halted by the larder-surgeries they vaporous limb as Ptolemy fought it on the Terran roots, eager to be the first in battle
encountered, where the cephelvoric aliens in order to expunge the failings of the past.
hung the still-living heads of their victims But it had been a price willingly paid for
by the hundreds for later consumption, vengeance, and it would be a price and
more that the Ultramarines Legion would
willingly pay again in the future.

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ll; ULTRAMARINES ARMoURED FoRcEs

The Ultramarines Legion was able to draw conveyance of massed squads across open Specialist Armoured Vehicles
upon the wealth and resources ofUltramar terrain, while many maintained sufficient The Ultramarines Legion armoured forces
and as such possessed extensive strategic numbers of Land Raiders to prosecute included a wide range of vehicle classes,
reserves of munitions and materiel amassed armoured spearhead assaults directly into the patterns and types, including the very
over many years. Not least among these assets teeth of enemy positions. These transport earliest patterns of war machines which were
was the mighty fleet of war ships, many of vehicles were bolstered by armoured support subsequently deployed in large numbers
which were constructed within the Five echelons of Predator and Sicaran battle tanks, across the entire Legiones Astartes. Some
Hundred Worlds or, in the case of the very with long range bombardment being supplied of these had been kept operational by
heaviest of classes, in the Forge Worlds of by batteries of Whirlwind missile tanks and constant field repair and had not received
Thramas. Of equal import to the Legion's other patterns of mobile Legion artillery. the attentions of the Legion Forge for many
ongoing operations were the large numbers decades. Conversely, the Legion's forces
of armoured vehicles which its chapters One body within the Legiones Astartes included vehicles only just beginning to see
were able to call upon, and the Ultramarines Ultramarines maintained especially extensive use, one of which was the Damocles pattern
were well versed in the many doctrines of numbers of armoured vehicles - the 4'h command Rhino, a Deimos pattern armoured
armoured warfare. Chapter, known with increasing formality carrier modified by replacing most of its troop
as the 'Aurorans'. This formation operated a carrying capacity with a suite of sophisticated
Each of the Ultramarines Legion chapters wide range of tanks, but was especially well communications equipment. Following the
maintained its own stocks of armoured known for its expertise in the deployment of Ultramarines' example, this command and
vehicles, allowing individual formations to super-heavy engines including the Fellblade, control platform was beginning to enter
deploy as befitted tactical and environmental Falchion and Glaive as well as other, far less service across the Legions by the close of the
conditions. All held large numbers of well known or prototype classes. Great Crusade, the sons of Guilliman leading
Rhino armoured carriers, used for the rapid by example and sharing their hard-won battle
doctrines with their brother Legions.

!

ill

11

·'II'

j•
l.~~ ,

•i

!I

I

Whirlwind Scorpius Missile Tank: This missile tank belonged to the support echelon of the n'h
Chapter, the ultima symbol on its rear superstructure marking it as belonging to a strike company and
the laurel wreath motif indicating it is that formation's command vehicle. The vehicle was deployed for
muster south ofNuminus City at the time of the betrayal of the Calth Conjunction and is depicted here
bearing the ceremonial heraldry applied for that muster. Its blackened shell was later discovered on the
shattered Malonik Transit, where it is surmised the tank was ambushed by elements of the Word Bearers

chapter identified as the Asps of the Sacred Sands.

Land Raider Proteus 'Lhatyrion Compact': This ancient, armoured variant of the venerable Proteus pattern Land Raider served with the 7'h Chapter
for over a century. Externally, the vehicle appears to be in very poor condition indeed. Mechanically however, the Land Raider is extremely well
maintained, its crew devoting all their efforts to keeping it operational and considering its external heraldry of secondary concern. Such a view is

regarded as a throw-back to the age before the Primarch joined his Legion, and is held by few outside the units serving far beyond Ultramar's frontiers.

THE MusTER oF CALTH

The Calth Conjunction was intended as others were so new they had never borne any machines were to be loaded onto combat
an auspicious gathering of the combined other colours. Heraldry ofcobalt blue and transports and shipped to war, much of their
forces of rwo entire Legions and as such the white was often rendered with a distinctive finery to be obscured by more practical
Ulrramarines mustered not only the war marbled surface pattern reminiscent of the battlefield markings. The phenomenon is in
machines ofthe line formations and those magnificent stone architecrure ofMacragge, keeping with the traditions of the Imperium
of the Legion armoured reserve, but also polished to a sheen as bright as that of any however, for Roboute Guilliman had learned
hundreds of vehicles manufacrured especially palace ofgovernance. The flanks of many from his father the value of such a visible
for the campaign against the Orks of the vehicles were plated with gold, inspired statement. It was Guilliman's hope that the
Ghaslakh Xeno-hold. Many of these assets by the war-thrones of the Battle-kings of display would honour his sons in his own
were gathered together at Calth and mustered Macragge. Each was further adorned with a Legion and the sons ofhis brother Primarch,
at the macro landing fields in and around complex array of symbols, drawing from the Lorgar and bind them together in common
Ithraca City to be reviewed by the Primarch iconographic traditions of both Macragge endeavour.
Roboute Guilliman and the assembled and Terra, and exemplifying the shared
Chapter Masters before being loaded into culrural heritage of both worlds. The ultima One tragedy amongst the many heaped upon
heavy orbital transports. As with so many symbol, long associated with the region of the Ulrramarines during the Battle of Calth
other elements of the XIII'h Legion, all but a Ulrramar and adopted as the Legion's icon, was the fact that many of their war machines
handful would be destroyed at the opening of was displayed prominently, as were the spear- met their deaths clad in the finery intended
the Battle of Calth. tipped lightning bolts of Unification. to honour their brother Astartes. Instead
of rerurning that honour, the Word Bearers
Many ofthe war engines of the XIII'h Legion The ostentation lavished upon the armoured offered only betrayal and death to their
Reserve had been formally prepared for the vehicles of the Legion Reserve might appear ersrwhile brothers.
Calth Conjunction in a manner befitting excessive or superfluous to some outsiders,
the traditions of the Ulrramarines, while especially given that within days the war

Sicaran Battle Tank' Praetorian Prime': Detached from the XIII'h Legion Armoured Reserve
and assigned to the r6'h Chapter's sub-muster in eastern Erud Province, the Praetorian Prime led the
armoured spearhead that broke the Traitor Imperialis Militia cult forces massed in the central Dera
Caren Lowlands. Though too distant to take part in the relief ofLanshear, the vehicle was instrumental

in scouring the wastes about the Holophusikon of retreating Word Bearers units.

'!

Legion Spartan Assault Tank 'Ardentian': This mighty war machine was constructed on Mars and served with the n'h Expeditionary Fleet
before Roboute Guilliman assumed command of his sons. At the time of the Calth Conjunction, Ardentian had yet to be assigned to a specific

Legion sub-unit, but served with the armoured companies of 4'h Chapter throughout the Battle oflthraca.