Battle of Carrion Deep

The Battle of Carrion Deep was a campaign fought by the Executioners Space Marine Chapter against the then-unidentified, ancient Xenos menace known as the Necrons. Responding to a series of frantic distress calls from Imperial deep-range outposts, the forces of the Executioners 2nd Company found themselves in desperate struggle against an awakened threat stirring in the dead worlds near the Veiled Region on the edge of the Segmentum Tempestus. Discovering nothing but a trail of shattered ruins and empty bastions where Imperial watchposts should be, the Executioners were ambushed in the wreckage of the frontier base on the dead world of Carrion Deep. Their attackers were terrifying metallic spectres whose weapons made a mockery of the strongest armour and who re-assembled and reanimated themselves even when blown apart. Surrounded and outnumbered by foes that would not die, it was only by the dauntless leadership and wise cunning of the Executioners' High Chaplain Thulsa Kane that they were able to survive.

Drawing upon the ancient chronicles of the Chapter for guidance, Thulsa Kane led the trapped Executioners in a furious counter-assault against a single point on the enemy line, the Executioners grappling at close quarters with their monstrous metal foes where the Space Marines' speed and ferocity could be brought into play. Thulsa Kane himself sought out and confronted the enemy leader, a towering personification of death clad in blighted gold and tattered cloth. After a titanic clash of arms which left Kane's Crozius Arcanum broken and his right eye withered in his skull, he managed to strike the monster down, enabling his brethren to fight their escape, and as much as many wanted to fight on to the bitter end, Kane's will prevailed. Less than a third of the force succeeded in breaking out of the trap their deathly foes had set for them and retreated off the planet. This victory alone is counted as nearly miraculous, and brought back to the Imperium one of the first confirmed and detailed battle reports by a surviving force against the awakening ancient menace later identified as the Necrons. Carrion Deep remains under quarantine by Imperial Order.