Crusade of Righteous Liberation

Overview
The most legendary campaign executed by the Crimson Fists was the Crusade of Righteous Liberation, conducted for three hundred years during the 36th Millenium. At this time, now known to Imperial historians as the Age of Apostasy, the Imperium was wracked by internal strife and physically disrupted by swirling warp storms. Much of the turmoil arose from a massive schism within the religious organisation of the Ministorum of Terra. After the arch-traitor Goge Vandire was finally killed, the Crimson Fists took it upon themselves to wrest back control of Imperial worlds that had fallen from the Emperor's grace. The whole Chapter left Rynn's World aboard its battle barges and strike cruisers and forged its way through the warp storms to liberate those planets which had fallen into anarchy or been invaded by alien races.

The first such world they came across was Welte, which they found subjugated by the Ork warlord Ghar Nazzghar - loathed by many at the time as the brutal Plunderer of Polemis. A force taken from four different Companies descended upon Welte, whilst the rest of the Chapter dropped back into the warp to locate other such stricken worlds. Led by the valiant Brother-Captain Sandriaz, the Crimson Fists fell upon Ghar Nazzghar like a blue storm. They struck at his ore mines, burnt the slave factories and wrecked the ramshackle convoys that transported food and weapons across Welte's treacherous dust bowls. Ghar Nazzghar's Orks soon found themselves scattered across much of the world trying to protect the few installations that still stood.

It was then that Brother-Captain Sandriaz mustered his force once more and attacked Nazzghar's stronghold in the ruins of what was once Welte Prime, the world's capital. With most of his warbands chasing ghosts across the dust bowls, Ghar Nazzghar could do nothing as the blue-armoured Space Marines advanced relentlessly through the shattered town. Nazzghar himself led a final counter attack, but he and his cadre of burly Ork warriors were wiped out as they ran the gauntlet of the Crimson Fists' deadly fire. With Ghar Nazzghar dead, the Crimson Fists left Welte, leaving the fragmented Orks to the Imperial citizens who had been so brutally enslaved and repressed.

Welte was just the first of eighty four worlds re-conquered by the Crimson Fists during the Crusade of Righteous Liberation. Over the Crusade's three hundred years, the Chapter's numbers dwindled through age and battle losses; whilst crusading, the Crimson Fists were unable to recruit initiates to replace their losses. Finally, after breaking the four-century long rebel siege of Barenthal on Excelsiva II, Chapter Master Kordova declared the Crusade of Righteous Liberation to have ended. Only one hundred and twenty eight Space Marines were left and ever since then, the numbers of the Chapter's First Company has always been kept at one hundred and twenty eight warriors, and its Captain is also always the Chapter Master. They are known amongst the Crimson Fists as the Crusade Company, and it is considered a bad omen if the Chapter goes to war without the Company being at full strength.