Castigations of Golgotha

The Castigations of Golgotha was a long-term campaign carried out by the zealous Fire Hawks Space Marine Chapter that consisted of a series of Imperial Crusades (totaling 13 castigations) between 228.M40 and 902.M41 through the benighted war-torn area known as the Golgothan Wastes. The last Crusade ending just prior to the Badab War.

History
Following the loss of their second homeworld when it was rendered uninhabitable, the Fire Hawks found themselves once again relegated to the status of being a fleet-based Chapter. The Fire Hawks vowed to undertake repeated "castigations" throughout the Golgotha Wastes region of space, located to the north-west border of the Maelstrom Zone in the Ultima Segmentum. These missions ranged in scope from the use of the full might of the Chapter fleet such as the war that ended the Xenos domination of the Zharth-Omog Trinity in the Third Castigation, to the progress of the single Strike Cruiser Slaughtering Star which hunted the Renegade Space Marines warband known as the Damned Company of Lord Caustos in the Tenth Castigation.

The last Castigation up until 904.M41 was the Thirteenth, which saw the bulk of the Chapter's fleet spread out into three distinct spearhead formations passing laterally through the southern Golgothan Wastes, attacking and pursuing targets of opportunity as they came across them, notably locating and condemning the lost colony of Jenkin's Run to Exterminatus for the abominable taint to which its once human inhabitants had descended. It was an out-riding vanguard cruiser, the Red Harbinger, of this last dispersed fleet that was sent out to the Maelstrom Zone's edge at the request of the Karthan Satrap, Tanit Koenig, that the Fire Hawks agreed to investigate the disappearance of Karthan shipping in the area.

On a number of occasions in the past, the fleet-based Fire Hawks Chapter had used the vast orbital dockyards of the Karthan capital world Sidon Ultra for resupply. They had also been invited by the Karthan's to enact judgement on wayward planets and minor alien threats within the sector, and it was on this relationship the Karthans relied upon for a favourable hearing. The volatile and bellicose nature of the Fire Hawks Chapter was widely known, and it is likely that this was also figured in the Karthan Satrap's request to them directly. The subsequent attack and capture of the Red Harbinger when it entered the Endymion Cluster by forces from the Mantis Warriors Space Marine Chapter that sparked the calamity of the Badab War that followed.