"It fills me with loathing and frustration to pen this missive. You have my initial report, sent when the Grey Knights Edict of Forbiddance halted our progress. With the Emperor's Talons, I am enacting enquiries most thorough in the Greyshields we have aboard. There, we will find the weakness in their makeup that the Grey Knights are purging from their traitorous brothers. And what weakness! The sysem wardens whose "guard" I have accepted have updated me. The Ebon Sentinels' astropaths had been forced to be conduits for Daemons. Warriors of the Adeptus Astartes have debased their Emperor-given gifts, pouring the Warp into aspirants and inviting abominatus. With the Chapter's ships and means of escape crushed, the Grey Knights will prepare to unleash Exterminatus upon their home world."
- —Inquisitor Lord Giorgius Kavnar, Ordo Malleus
The Battle of Manask was a campaign fought between the Grey Knights and the Chaos Space Marines of the Ebon Sentinels, a Renegade Chapter of Space Marines, during the Indomitus Crusade. The Ebon Sentinels had been corrupted by the influence of a Greater Daemon imprisoned for eons on the Dead World of Vengla in their home star system. The Grey Knights moved to eliminate the threat and banish the Daemon back to the Warp before the Ebon Sentinels could receive Primaris reinforcements from the Conqueror's Forge Torchbearer Fleet.
History
Origins
The Ebon Sentinels were originally a lauded Loyalist Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes, the defenders of the Sunnan Strait since their Founding millennia ago.
Though an unrecorded incident early in their history saw them censured, the Ebon Sentinels' one-hundred-and-one-standard-year crusade of penance brought so many worlds back to the Imperial fold that a plaque of honour was consecrated upon the Cardinal World of Ophelia VII and the Chapter's good name was restored.
Conqueror's Forge
Inquisitor Lord Giorgius Kavnar of the Ordo Malleus
Records from prior to the opening of the Great Rift revealed the Ebon Sentinels' grievous losses of both warriors and starships in gruelling wars, their recruitment struggling to compensate. They were thus amongst the first Chapters of the Segmentum Tempestus to be assigned a Torchbearer task force during the Era Indomitus to proceed with replenishment.
Conqueror's Forge was one of an unrecorded number of the vital Torchbearer task forces. They had already made perilous journeys to deliver Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl's arcane science, tonnes of ordnance, armour and war engines to the Astral Spears and Condemnors Chapters, returning to Terra after each expedition.
Despatched next to the Manask System, Conqueror's Forge carried Greyshield reinforcements and Primaris Marine creation technologies to the Ebon Sentinels Chapter. The fleet's mass bulk hauler and vast Ark Mechanicus were shepherded by sleek and dangerous destroyers and light cruisers, equipped to ensure the completion of the mission by smashing any foes in their way, but with orders to ignore distracting pleas for aid.
The task force's Navigators maintained a swift route and its astropaths directed unanswered hails at Manask. Sisters of Silence spread through the ships eased their passage through the Warp with their soulless aura. They were not the only esoteric envoys of Terra's will. The Astrolineator who commanded the Ark Mechanicus held nominal authority over the task force, but beyond oversight of the Primaris technology, emergency powers were wielded by others aboard. Gilded giants of the Adeptus Custodes, a dour Rogue Trader employed as sub-sector pilot and Inquisitor Lord Giorgius Kavnar of the Inquisition all stood ready to issue diktats should the need arise.
Known only to the senior Custodian and the Inquisitor, a second flotilla shadowed Conqueror's Forge, unseen by their ships' sensors. The Prognosticators of Titan had seized damning omens from the Immaterium of what Conqueror's Forge would encounter at Manask. The Ebon Sentinels were clinging to survival after punishing campaigns of loyal service. In their desperation to stave off extinction they had heeded dark whispers that emanated from Vengla, a Dead World of their home star system. Promises of renewal, of swift and easy power led the Space Marines to employ the Warp in their recruitment and the Grey Knights had secretly accompanied Conqueror's Forge to purge the wayward Chapter.
Battle of Manask
Fighting at Ffion's Cluster, Justicar Gethnerin crushed Traitor skulls with his Nemesis warding stave, Fellward, and fed his power through it to shield his squad.
Arriving in the system simultaneously with the task force, Grey Knights of the the 6th Brotherhood, the "Rapiers," and the 8th Brotherhood, the "Silver Blades," spread out to isolate and destroy the Ebon Sentinels' orbital assets. Though much reduced in outright numbers, the Traitor Chapter had the resources of an Adeptus Astartes homeworld with which to defend their newfound power. A splinter of the Grey Knights warded the system's fringe, issuing the Edict of Forbiddance via Inquisitor Lord Giorgius Kavnar to the Torchbearer force. They remained at the system's Mandeville Point to ensure no Ebon Sentinel ships could escape and also to ensure none of the Torchbearer fleet strayed in-system.
An encirclement of rapid strike vessels, led by the strike cruiser Damnation of Fiends, surrounded the Ebon Sentinels' homeworld and scuttled the remains of their fleet at the Forghost orbital docks. Teleporting Terminators and Strike Squads, meanwhile, attacked the linked weapons platforms of Ta'rond. Reinforced psychic communion from Ta'rond revealed the depths to which the Ebon Sentinels had sunk.
There, corrupted Space Marines, possessed by Daemons to create the unnatural pairings known as the Possessed, mounted counterattacks against the Grey Knights. At Ffion's Chorus -- the system's astropathic relay -- Grey Knights Terminators, Interceptors and Purgators deployed via gunships. There they destroyed the Ebon Sentinels' capacity to call for aid by eliminating the surviving astropaths to ensure any Daemons had less chance to manifest.
Following the Prognosticators' strongest warning, the greater portion of the Grey Knights struck at Vengla, where they discovered an ancient daemonic presence imprisoned in its core. The beast's psychic influence, amplified by the influence of the Great Rift, seeped out beyond its million-Terran-year-old bonds, exploiting the Ebon Sentinels' desperation to survive and planting the seeds of their doom. Six squads led by Brother-Captain Mithrac Tor of the Silver Blades and the 8th Brotherhood deployed to enact a grand ritual of banishment. The Daemon at Vengla's core responded by summoning a horde of Warp-spawned vassal Daemons to its prison planet's surface, and with the addition of the debased Heretic Astartes of the Ebon Sentinels fought back, though ultimately the Grey Knights prevailed in banishing the Daemon and all its kin.
Order of Battle
Manask Encirclement
- Brother Gorvenae, Venerable Grey Knights Dreadnought
- Tydoric Vesta, Techmarine, 6th Brotherhood
- Krevn, Terminator Squad, 6th Brotherhood
- Boldarius, Strike Squad, 6th Brotherhood
- Vohr, Interceptor Squad, 6th Brotherhood
- Damnation of Fiends, Strike Cruiser
- Malleus Nox, Unidentified vessel, light cruiser displacement
- Fellbanes, unidentified vessels, rapid strike squadron
Purge of Vengla
- Mithrac Tor, Brother-Captain, 8th Brotherhood
- Danmar Guerest, Codicier, 6th Brotherhood
- Thrast, Terminator Squad, 8th Brotherhood
- Sorlen, Terminator Squad, 8th Brotherhood
- Derban, Terminator Squad, 8th Brotherhood
- Shewtus, Purifier Squad
- Arenal, Purgation Squad, 6th Brotherhood
- Crenthor, Paladin Squad
Silencing of Ffion's Chorus
- Eldon, Interceptor Squad, 6th Brotherhood
- Jestor, Interceptor Squad, 6th Brotherhood
- Mannas, Purgation Squad, 6th Brotherhood
- Oracles of Salvation, Stormraven gunship squadron
- Aquilae Argentum, Thunderhawk gunship squadron
System Wardens - Mandeville Point
- Thrane, Terminator Squad, 8th Brotherhood
- Soulbrights, Unidentified vessels, rapid strike squadron
Sources
- Codex: Grey Knights (9th Edition), pp. 26-27