Devastation of Baal



The Devastation of Baal, also called the Battle of Baal, was the assault by the single largest concentration of the Tyranid Hive Fleet Leviathan ever encountered upon Baal, the homeworld of the Blood Angels Chapter of Space Marines. The battle, fought in ca. 999.M41, was a part of the wider Third Tyrannic War and also marked a key battle of the Indomitus Crusade led by the resurrected Primarch Roboute Guilliman. Due to the temporal distortions unleashed at the time of the eruption of the Great Rift, the exact date of the battle is in question; the combat may have lasted for many Terran years from the point of view of Terra but only solar days may have passed for the participants.

Despite heavy losses, the Blood Angels and their Successor Chapter allies ultimately emerged triumphant, not only because of the timely intervention of the forces of Guilliman's Indomitus Crusade but also because at the moment of the Great Rift's birth the Blood Angels' ancient enemy, the Bloodthirster Ka'Bandha, led a massive legion of Khornate daemons against the Great Devourer on Baal Secundus. While the Blood Angels, their allies and the Primaris Space Marines of the Indomitus Crusade cleansed Baal proper of the Tyranid infestation, the daemons destroyed the largest concentration of the remaining xenos lifeforms in orbit of Baal. The daemons left behind massive piles of Tyranid skulls across the moon's surface.

The reasons for this intervention by one of Khorne's greatest servants remains unknown and deeply unsettling to the Blood Angels, though it be that Ka'bandha has determined that he, and he alone, will ultimately be the architect of the sons of Sanguinius' ruin.

In the wake of the Devastation of Baal, Guilliman, in his role as the Lord Commander of the Imperium, named Commander Dante, the Chapter Master of the Blood Angels, as the Regent of the Imperium Nihilus, the portion of the Imperium in the galactic north cut off from Terra and the light of the Astronomican by the Great Rift. After a period of intensive reconstruction of Baal and recovery for the Chapter, the Blood Angels moved out into the Dark Imperium, determined to bring the Emperor's light back to those similarly oppressed by xenos and the servants of the Dark Gods.

History
In the final days of the 41st Millenium the largest tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathan ever recorded descended upon Baal, home world of the Blood Angels Space Marines, and its twin moons of Baal Prime and Baal Secundus. The battle which followed would be the bloodiest and most costly in the noble history of the sons of Sanguinius.