M30

Historitor's Note: All dates relating to the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy are only approximations as Imperial records from this time are too fragmentary to be wholly reliable.

Please see Great Crusade Chronology and Horus Heresy Chronology for more detailed records.

• Craftworld Aeldari Exodus (ca. M30-M31) - Sensing the end of their civilisation is approaching, a small portion of the Aeldari species combine and modify their starships into craftworlds, gigantic living vessels the size of continents that are able to accommodate an entire planet's population of Aeldari. One by one the craftworlds begin to escape the murderous, hedonistic corruption that now dominates the Aeldari Empire's homeworlds. Hundreds of craftworlds sail into the depths of space in search of the relative safety of the void from the catastrophe that their Farseers claim will soon consume the Aeldari people.

• Birth of Slaanesh, Fall of the Aeldari & Formation of the Eye of Terror (ca. M30) - The great interstellar civilisation of the Aeldari falls into decadence and depravity. A new Chaos God is born from the depths of their hedonistic excess in the Warp -- Slaanesh, the Dark Prince of Pleasure. The psychic violence of his apotheosis consumes the worlds at the heart of the Aeldari Empire in what is now the Segmentum Obscurus of the Imperium of Man. A vast section of realspace in this region is plunged into the Warp. Its wake forms the permanent Warp rift later known as the Eye of Terror amongst Mankind.

• End of the Age of Strife (ca. M30) - The Warp storms that have made interstellar travel and communications through the Immaterium impossible for the last 5,000 Terran years of the Age of Strife finally abate after the birth of Slaanesh within the Warp and the Fall of the Aeldari.

• Age of Wars (ca. M30) (Now considered apocryphal) - The Squat "Age of Trade" between the Squat Homeworlds in the galactic core, the Aeldari and the Orks lasts for nearly three Terran millennia, but finally collapsed when an enormous Ork battlefleet under the command of Grunhag the Flayer attempted a full-scale invasion of the Homeworlds. Losses on both sides were astronomical. The Squats appealed to their Aeldari trading partners for help against the invading Orks, but none was received. The "Age of Wars," as it became known, is regarded by the Squats as the blackest chapter in their history, and the double betrayal by Orks and Aeldari gave rise to a cultural enmity which still persists. Many Squat strongholds were wiped out by the Orks at this time, later remembered as the "Age of Wars."

• Unification Wars (ca. Unknown Date.M29-712.M30) - During the turbulent era known as the Age of Strife, the Sol System and the nearby star systems that had been colonised by Humanity during the Dark Age of Technology were effectively cut off from interstellar travel or communication with each other due to the massive Warp Storms that swept the galaxy as the Immaterium was roiled by the millennia-long gestation of the Chaos God Slaanesh and the turbulence that marked the decay of the Aeldari Empire before the Fall. During this dark time, Terra sometimes held sway over the Sol System, while at other times the rulers of Mars or Luna were dominant. The different worlds found themselves constantly at war. During this long, 5,000-Terran-year-period of anarchy, fear and violence, Old Earth's once unified planetary government had completely broken down and been divided into dozens of warring states of so-called techno-barbarians. Continuous warfare raged across the surface of Terra for 2,500 standard years, beginning in the late 27^th Millennium. Little remained of the once sophisticated civilisation of Old Earth's glorious past as the centre of a growing human interstellar civilisation marked by advanced science, high culture and wondrous technologies.

Techno-barbarian warlords and their warrior hordes continuously fought over the planet, which had become little more than a massive battleground for their wars of attrition. They made use of chemical, biological and even thermonuclear weapons of mass destruction, and slowly transformed the cradle of Mankind into a battered, post-apocalyptic wasteland across most of its scarred surface. This was a dark period for the people of Old Earth, when they were dominated by brutal rulers and despotic tyrants. It was against this backdrop of oppression, violence and casual brutality that the Emperor of Mankind first revealed Himself to the people of Terra. In secret, He had been planning for this moment in history for millennia, ever since the Age of Strife had fractured what remained of the ancient Human federation. With His massive army of genetically-enhanced warriors who comprised the first units of the Imperial Army and would serve as the prototypes for the later development of the Space Marines, the Emperor began His conquest of Terra with the intent to reunite the warring nations into a unified planetary government. He then planned to use Terra as the springboard from which to begin His reconquest of the galaxy under the aegis of an Imperium of Man dedicated to the Imperial Truth of progress and reason. Brutal rulers such as the warlord Kalagann of Ursh, Cardinal Tang of the Yndonesic Bloc, and the most infamous of all, the half-mad, half-genius Nathaniel Dume, the Tyrant of the Pan-Pacific Empire, would all fall by the wayside.

Once unleashed, the armies of the Emperor swept all before them like wheat before the harvester's scythe until all the techno-barbarian warlords had either been conquered outright or agreed through diplomacy to become subservient to the Emperor's will. During this time the Emperor created a number of military organisations, such as the Imperial Army, which would become the nucleus of the armed forces that would support His Legiones Astartes and His reconquest of the Human-settled galaxy. Amongst the early Imperial Army units that saw action during the Unification Wars were such venerable regiments as the Geno Five-Two Chiliad, which would become one of the oldest and most respected regiments within the Imperial Army. Like many of these early regiments, the geno-soldiers were created through the use of some of the Emperor's sophisticated genetic engineering techniques, developed in His laboratories beneath the Himalazian (Himalayan) Mountains and on Luna. The most elite of this first generation of genetically-engineered supersoldiers were known as the Thunder Warriors, men who were physically stronger and more formidable in combat than even the later Space Marines, though they were engineered to be vicious killers and lacked many of the more noble aspects of the Astartes as well as their tremendously long lifespans. The Thunder Warriors were engineered to be the means to an end and were never intended to be integrated into the Emperor's new realm after Unity had been achieved. Through genetic engineering and selection, the standard geno-soldiers displayed many of the characteristics of the perfect Human warrior -- they were physically more resilient, stronger and capable of taking more damage than any of their unaltered techno-barbarian foes. These early augmented Imperial Army regiments would go on to continue serving the Emperor after the conclusion of the Unification Wars. These regiments would eventually be referred to as the Old Hundred, and would form the core of the initial military force that embarked upon the Emperor's galaxy-spanning Great Crusade in the late 30th Millennium beside his newborn Space Marine Legions.

• Discovery of Mezoa (ca. 540.M30) - The world of Mezoa is first discovered in the Cyclops Cluster in the northern reaches of the galaxy and made an outpost of the Lucien Mechanicum. Within three standard centuries it would rapidly gain status as an independent Forge World in its own right.

• The Primordial Strain (ca. 550.M30) - The Emperor begins His Space Marine project beneath the Himalazian (Himalaya) Mountains, creating the Primordial Strain of prototype Legionaries using the genetic material already created for the ongoing Primarch Project. These early transhuman warriors are unstable and imperfect, but form the foundation for His future work building the Space Marine Legions.

• Battle of Mount Arrarat (669.M30) - The Emperor accepted the deaths of the many innocents that resulted from the conquest of Terra with great remorse in order to achieve the greater good of unifying Humanity and protecting it from the manifest predations of the Warp and xenos of the galaxy. Unimaginably large, full-scale battles during the campaign for Unity would last for solar weeks on end, with body counts in the millions that sundered mountains and split entire continents. Future Imperial scholars would later dismiss these victories as lurid hyperbole, refusing to believe that such clashes of arms could possibly have been fought, but indeed they were. The Imperial historical chronicles tell of the last battle of the Unification Wars, known as the Battle of Mount Ararat, which was fought in the Kingdom of Urartu. During this final battle the remaining Thunder Warriors -- powerful but short-lived precursors to the Space Marines -- were slain to a man. The chronicles recorded that the famed Thunder Warrior Arik Taranis, known as the "Lightning Bearer," raised the Banner of Lightning at the final declaration of Unity which established the rule of the Emperor of Mankind over the entirety of Terra before dying of his wounds. It was a measure of the Thunder Warriors' heroic sacrifice that they had all died to win the last and greatest victory for the Emperor. While reports say they fell in valiant battle, rumours abound that the Emperor ordered them purged to make way for his nascent Legiones Astartes. One source claims that it is the nascent I^st Legion that is tasked with the elimination of the remaining Thunder Warriors alongside the Legio Custodes when the Thunder Warriors rebel against the Emperor soon after the first introduction of the Astartes. According to this tale, the Thunder Warriors realised after learning of the Space Marines' functional immortality that their inevitable decline into insanity and death was the result of the Emperor's imperfect augmentations of their bodies, and they felt betrayed by their creator.

• Massacre of Gadure (ca. 675.M30) - Less than 5,000 Imperial Thunder Warriors slaughter 50,000 armed militiamen who opposed the Unification of Terra under the Emperor of Mankind in less than a solar hour on the hills of Gaduare in Franc during the Unification Wars.

• First Founding (ca. 700.M30) - Utilising the genetic material derived from the still-unborn primarchs, the Emperor, with the aid of the scientists of the Biotechnical Division and its director Amar Astarte, created the first gene-seed and implants it into His already elite Terran soldiers. These warriors provide the genesis of His Legiones Astartes. The 20 original Space Marine Legions are created during this so-called "First Founding." Grabiya's Theorem provides the solution to solve the diminishing stability of the Space Marines' gene-seed stores through over-use, due to the rapid expansion of the nascent Imperium of Man by the Legiones Astartes in this era. This theorem demonstrated that a primarch's genetic code could be used to stabilise and expand existing Astartes gene-seed stocks with what was hoped to be "minimal deviation" and mutation from the baseline genetic code. Sorian's Inductus Excelsus demonstrated that the need of the rapidly growing Imperium for more warriors was vast. Accelerated gene-culturing techniques were implemented, reducing the processing time to create a Space Marine from a mortal man to a single solar year. However, the gene-seed produced by these accelerated processes possessed unseen fundamental flaws.

• Sa'afrik Liberation (Unknown Date.M30) - The XII Legion's first recorded engagement was during the Sa'afrik Liberation of the Unification Wars where they served as a spearhead of shock troops, mounting direct annihilation assaults on enemy forces, both in open battle and fortified positions. They proved able to carry the attack despite their then-relatively small numbers by sheer courage and the fury of the violence they could unleash. After its initial battles in the conflict, the nascent XII Legion seems to have been largely held in reserve by the Emperor during the later Unification Wars.

• Pacification of the Cephic Hives (Unknown Date.M30) - The Pacification of the Cephic Hives was another early campaign of the XII Legion during the later days of the Unification Wars. The Emperor Himself dubbed the XII Legion His "War Hounds" at this time as a tribute to the savage and tenacious way they fought to pacify the narco-sprawls of the Cephic Hives.

• First Pacification of Luna (703.M30) - This early Imperial campaign was the first operation mounted by elements of the early Space Marine Legions beyond the skies of Terra while the Terran Unification Wars were still raging across the surface of Mankind's birth world. The Imperium's first off-world target was Terra's own moon Luna -- domain of the Selenar gene-cults, whose technology is vital to expanding the numbers of the Legiones Astartes. The Selenar reject the diplomatic overtures of the burgeoning Imperium, and three nascent Space Marine Legions are unleashed to force Imperial Compliance. The combined force of the VII, XIII and XVI Legions (later named the Imperial Fists, Ultramarines and Luna Wolves, respectively) lifted from the surface of Terra in a scattering of rocket flame. The as yet unnamed XVI Legion had been chosen to serve as the Space Marine force's vanguard, and had brought its full strength to bear. In a daring surprise assault, the XVI Legion launched a planetary strike while their brother Legions drew fire from Luna's defensive weapons. Within six solar hours of the first shot being fired, Luna had been pacified and brought into Compliance, the first off-world conquest of the Imperium of Man. Faced with annihilation, the surviving Selenar cultists bent the knee to the Emperor instead, their surrender communique transmitted to Terra calling for the Emperor to "call off his wolves." The XVI Legion thus earned their name -- the Luna Wolves. During the conflict, the XVI Legion encountered evidence of occultism amongst the Selenar gene-wrights. The Selenar methodology is sequestered into the Imperial Dungeon beneath the Imperial Palace.

• Destruction of the Last Church on Terra (ca. 700s.M30) - The Emperor of Mankind and a cadre of Legio Custodes and Space Marines destroy the last known church on Terra, the Church of the Lightning Stone, near the end of the Unification Wars, after the Emperor speaks with the last priest, an old man named Uriah Olathaire who was present solar decades earlier at the Massacre of Gadure. This marks the end of superstition and belief in a higher power on Terra in this era, ushering in the Emperor's secular, materialist ideology known as the "Imperial Truth."

• End of the Unification Wars (712.M30) - The Emperor consolidates His control over Terra and formally declares victory in the Unification Wars, bringing centuries of conflict to a close. Work intensifies on enforcing the rationalist state ideology of the Imperial Truth across the planet, culminating in the destruction of Old Terra's last church shortly before the beginning of the Great Crusade.

• Treaty of Mars (Treaty of Olympus Mons) (739.M30) - Realising that war with the techno-cults of the ancient Mechanicum of Mars would be a long and costly affair, the Emperor instead brokers an alliance. In return for constructing a mighty war fleet and supplying weapons and machinery for his Space Marine Legions and the Imperial Army, the Mechanicum are granted unparalleled autonomy as a client state and valued partner of the Imperium, and continue to practice their faith in the Omnissiah as the Cult Mechanicus in violation of the Imperial Truth. When the Emperor of Mankind came to Mars to propose the alliance with Terra He first landed atop the great volcano of Olympus Mons. At their first sight of the Master of Mankind, many Tech-priests were overcome with the feeling that they had met the living embodiment of the Omnissiah, their Machine God clad in Human form. In return for peace between Terra and Mars, the Emperor granted recognition of the Tech-priests' right to practice their faith and their right to maintain autonomous control over both Mars and the other Forge Worlds they had settled across the galaxy during the Age of Strife. In return, the Mechanicum agreed to build and maintain the Imperium's starships and provide all of the war materiel necessary for the armies of the Emperor's Great Crusade. The Mechanicum also agreed to be bound by the Emperor's commandment to never develop certain forbidden technologies such as "Abominable Intelligence" (artificial general intelligence). With the signing of this agreement, known as the Treaty of Mars or the Treaty of Olympus Mons within the Mechanicum, the Cult Mechanicus became the corps of scientists and engineers of the newly-forged Imperium of Man, and the Palatine Aquila was refashioned to bear two heads, one for Terra and one for Mars, the twin foundations of Mankind's interstellar dominion. From this time forward the Palatine Aqauila replaced the Raptor Imperialis as the primary symbol of the Imperium.

• The Invincible Reason (748.M30) - The Gloriana-class Battleship and flagship of the Emperor's Legiones Astartes I Legion, Invincible Reason, begins its service to the nascent Imperium of Man at this time.

• Incaladion Conflict (ca. 790.M30) - Around fifty standard years before the Great Crusade would finally reach the Forge World of Incaladion, after a particularly brutal series of incursions and raids, the Taghmata Omnissiah -- the feudal order upon which the defence and military hierarchy of a Forge World of the Mechanicum is based -- finally broke down. In the ensuing strife, the Preceptor-General of Incaladion was assassinated and the Forge World split into warring or isolationist factions, bereft of central control or coordination, laying it open to invasion and the devastation which followed. By the time the Great Crusade's advance elements reached Incaladion, it was a global battleground, disported by a dozen different armies; Mechanicum, Renegade and xenos unleashing atomic fire and yet more savage weapons upon each other. During this time, overwhelmed and vastly outnumbered, the Titan Legio Fureans refused to retreat or retrench, and shattered its blade on foes uncounted until it became only a shadow of its former might, reduced to defending the last forge-fane of its dead regent.

• The Primarch Project and The Scattering (792.M30) - The Emperor's greatest work of gene-craft nears completion, combining advanced science with otherworldly secrets to create 20 superhuman children -- the perfect generals, pro-consuls and diplomats to lead His Legiones Astartes. These so-called primarchs are second only in power and skill to the Emperor Himself, but shortly before the Primarch Project's completion an unforeseen catastrophe engineered through the machinations of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos scatters their containment tanks through the Warp to many different Human-settled worlds across the galaxy. But all was not lost, as the Emperor and His scientists of the Biotechnical Division still possessed the primarchs' gene-sequences, which He had utilised as the genetic templates for the creation of His Legiones Astartes. With these they could continue the creation of new Space Marines.

• Pacification of the Boetian Lowlands (ca. 798.M30) - When the XV Legion (the future Thousand Sons) was created, this nascent Astartes Legion was used to quell the few pockets of isolated resistance to the Emperor's rule that remained on Terra during the Wars of Unification. Boetia was a Terran nation that had existed since the Age of Strife and was chiefly known for holding out against the Unification for a considerable period of time until it was finally forcibly incorporated in the newborn Imperium. The ruling family, the Yeselti, attempted to stubbornly cling to power, forcing Imperial Army troops to invade their province. The Astartes of the XV Legion were sent in to finally crush any further resistance in a brilliant campaign that lasted only six solar weeks. Shortly after achieving this objective, the XV Legion was formally named the "Thousand Sons" by the Emperor Himself and was sent out into the galaxy as part of His Great Crusade. This particular conflict holds the distinction of being the final campaign of the Unification Wars that took place just as the Great Crusade began.

• Great Crusade Begins (798.M30) - The Great Crusade was the period in the early history of the Imperium of Man, lasting from approximately 798.M30 into the first decade of the 31st Millennium (a little over two standard centuries), when the Imperium was expanding as it sought to bring all of Human-settled space back under the control of a single ruler, the Emperor of Mankind. The Great Crusade marked a brief era in Human history of rebuilding, reunification and rapid technological advancement following the complete regression of Mankind into techno-barbarism during the 5,000 Terran years of the Age of Strife. It was a time when the Emperor of Mankind still lived in the conventional sense and led His people in person. It is considered the Golden Age of the Imperium before the long, slow slide into cultural stagnation, political repression and increasing warfare that marked the ten millennia after the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy had ended. The Emperor hoped to unite all of Humanity under one banner following the Long Night of the Age of Strife, and end inter-Human conflict. Once united, the Emperor intended to begin the next stage of His great plan to ensure Human domination of the Milky Way Galaxy, which He judged to be necessary if Humanity was to survive the never-ceasing threats to its existence embodied by Chaos, myriad xenos species and the fragility of its own Human nature.

To carry out the Great Crusade and reunite all the scattered colony worlds of Mankind beneath the single banner of the Imperium, the Emperor created the Space Marine Legions and the Imperial Army to serve the Astartes as a support and garrison force. The use of accelerated gene-culturing of gene-seed organs to fill the need for vast numbers of Space Marines later led to the development of genetic flaws in many of the Legions, which would be one factor in bringing on the Great Betrayal of the Horus Heresy. These forces, allied with the technological and military might of the ancient Mechanicum as required by the Treaty of Mars, would bring the light of the Imperial Truth and enforce Imperial Compliance with the new regime on every Human world encountered. At its peak in the early 31st Millennium, some 203 standard years after it began, there were 4,287 primary expedition fleets engaged upon the business of enforcing Imperial Compliance and extending the Imperial aegis across the galaxy as well as 60,000+ secondary deployment groups involved in regulating Imperial Compliance or Imperial occupations. A further 372 expedition fleets were regrouping or refitting in the Sol System or other Imperial hub star systems or resupplying as they awaited new orders. Some 4.3 million Remembrancers, official Imperial artists, historitors and journalists, were sent out with these fleets in the final days of the Great Crusade to record for posterity in pictures, words and music all that the Imperial warriors of the crusade were accomplishing in the name of Mankind. Finally, every Imperial expedition fleet carried with it a corps of Iterators, Imperial philosophers, rhetoricians and propagandists who sought to spread the Imperial Truth to every Human world and convince their populations of the benefits to be had from Imperial rule, thus seeking to dampen opposition from the very start of Compliance.

The Great Crusade was under the direct command of the Emperor until the great victory won against a massive Ork WAAAGH! during the Ullanor Crusade. After the defeat of the Orks achieved a new high point for the Great Crusade, the Emperor retired to Terra to begin work on a secret project deep within the dungeons of the Imperial Palace to open the labyrinthine interdimensional Aeldari Webway to Humanity's use so that the Imperium could be tied together as never before--and avoid repeated exposure to the corruption of the Warp. At this time, the Emperor named His favorite gene-son Horus, the primarch of the Luna Wolves Space Marine Legion, as the Imperial Warmaster and gave him full authority to direct the Great Crusade's progression as he saw fit, including the right to command all of his fellow brother primarchs and their Legions of Astartes. The Emperor also established the Council of Terra and the Imperial bureaucracy, the forerunners of the later Senatorum Imperialis of the High Lords of Terra and the Adeptus Administratum, to begin shifting the Imperium from His personal rule to a government that more closely served the needs of the Imperium's common people. The Emperor's secrecy and willingness to hand power over to others produced enormous tensions with some of the primarchs and ultimately became one of the weaknesses that the Ruinous Powers exploited to corrupt 9 primarchs and their Space Marine Legions into the service of Chaos. This unleashed the terrible civil war known as the Horus Heresy that ended the Great Crusade and the Golden Age of the Imperium. From that time to the 41st Millennium, the Imperium has known only stagnation, oppression, religious strife and endless war to protect its rule over the galaxy.

• The Unheard War (ca. 798.M30) - This terrible conflict was fought among the Azurite Stations of Uranus in the days before the Great Crusade broke the bounds of the Sol System. Named for the corroded blue of the inner surfaces of their hulls, the Azurite Stations were a linked crescent of void citadels, home to a collection of artisans and near-space scavengers. The newly Compliant Azurites turned to fueling the Great Crusade as conscripts for the ships of the Armada Imperialis. But soon they faced a threat in the form of the Solar Pirates -- remnants of a confederation of Renegades and mutants. Soon war raged, as the moons of Neptune were embroiled in conflict. The VII Legion heard the cries of the Azurites and assaulted the void stations. 50 Legionaries made their way inside where the Solar Pirates had fortified themselves. Sensing defeat, the Pirates released a psy-plague -- an ancient weapon thought eradicated during the Unification Wars. In a heroic display of bravery, the Imperial Fists sacrificed themselves, so as not to allow the psy-plague to escape the confines of the void station, by overloading the reactors, causing the void station to explode. The "Screaming" was never visited on Mankind again, and it is said that when the Emperor heard of the sacrifice of the fifty Imperial Fists, He ordered the newly-raised Bell of Lost Souls in the Imperial Palace tolled for the first time.

• Cerberus Insurrection (Unknown Date.M30) - The newly dubbed War Hounds Legion were tasked alongside the Terran XXII^nd Dracos Regiment of the Imperialis Auxilia to subdue the asteroid prison colony of Cerberus which had risen up in anarchic revolt in a state of near-continuous rioting and mob violence. Initial attempts to impose order by Terran troops had been thrown back in disarray as it became apparent that among the insurrectionists was a Renegade cadre of outlawed Thunder Warriors, long believed dead, calling themselves the Dait'Tar. With many of the Space Marine Legions already assigned to the first Expeditionary Fleets of the Great Crusade and en route to the stars, the Emperor Himself dispatched His War Hounds to Cerberus with explicit instructions to reclaim the Cerberus colony and carry the Emperor's wrath to those that had defied Him. Within five solar hours, a signal was received from Praetor-Commander Calyb Hax of the XII Legion that Cerberus-Primary had been returned to Imperial Compliance.

• Consus Drift Compliance (ca. 800s.M30) - The Consus Drift was a belt of stellar debris connected together by tunnels made from the metal entrails of shipwrecks. Billions of Humans who had been stranded for millennia made these asteroids their home. The Imperium discovered the Consus Drift by accident, when the 3^rd Expeditionary Fleet, under the command of the VII Legion, was caught in the stellar phenomenon known as the Mirror Race, and thrown into that region. They were soon set upon by the Drift Clans -- Humans schooled and blooded in the brutal arts of void warfare. Though the Driftborn fought well, they were no match for the transhuman Legionaries. The commander of the VII Legion gave the people of the Consus Drift an ultimatum: accept Imperial Compliance or extermination. The Clan Warriors immediately surrendered. The 3^rd Expeditionary Fleet left after repairs were made, but not before the Imperial Fists had taken the youngest and strongest male warriors of each of the Drift Clans. Of those who survived initiation into the VII Legion, all were inducted into a single unit; the 356^th Company, whose reputation for excellence in out-hull void warfare and starship assaults was without peer.

• Discovery of Horus Lupercal (801.M30) - The first of the lost primarchs is reunited with the Emperor, having spent his formative years engaged in vicious gang warfare on Cthonia, a nearby Mining World. Calling himself Horus, he pledges fealty to the Emperor and is given command of the XVI Legion, the Luna Wolves, spending many years as the Emperor's only returned son and one of His closest confidantes. Highly creditable claims state that the Emperor found Horus personally, the first of His lost sons, but no source specifies the location on Cthonia where the two met. Surrounded in millennia of myths and allegory, the truth of Horus' origins will more than likely never be known.

• Liberation of Sol (Sedna Campaign) (803.M30) - During the Sedna Campaign, eight full Space Marine Legions are deployed to undertake the destruction of the artificial xenos nemesis world of Sedna on the outer edge of the Sol System, whereupon they expunge an alien faction bound to war by unknown psychic means. In the aftermath, the false world of Sedna falls into silence and is lost to Imperial auspices.

• The "Flesh Change" (ca. 803.M30) - The XV Legion begins to display powerful psychic abilities, which was at first a welcome development for its Astartes as they sought to further emulate the Emperor. Throughout their long campaigns, the Thousand Sons made extensive use of Sorcerers, and their Warp-derived powers would leave whole populations in thrall to their will rather than carrying out a planetary conquest through a costly full-frontal assault like the other Space Marine Legions. But soon, the Legion's joy at their psychic gifts turned to revulsion and horror as a wave of ghastly, degenerative mutations began to affect large portions of the Battle-Brothers of the XV Legion. These mutagenic changes were called the "Flesh Change" by the Legionaries, and were much feared, as the spiral of degenerative mutation ultimately reduced a proud XV Legion warrior into a mindless mutant abomination that would later be recognised by the Imperium as a gibbering Chaos Spawn. The number of active Astartes within the XV Legion soon began to dwindle to dangerously low levels as a result of the ravages of the Flesh-Change.

• Discovery of the Paramar System (803.M30) - This unusual trinary star system which possesses vast mineral wealth amid its thirty-seven recorded main satellites, was identified and entered into the Carta Imperialis by the Rogue Trader Hel DeAniasie in 803.M30. Being located in an unusually stable, Warp-synchronous location in space, the Paramar System quickly became a waypoint for the Imperium's expansion into the Segmentum Obscurus.

• Hunting of the Ak'Haireth (ca. Early-800s.M30) - An alien menace known as the Ak'Haireth or "Bone Drinkers," were initially encountered in the early years of the Great Crusade in the western reaches of the Segmentum Solar. These fungoid, predatory and parasitic life forms were fuelled by the slow and agonisingly painful siphoning of nutrition from living animals, primarily Human bone marrow. They inhabited the scavenged voidships of other species and raided isolated Human colonies and Feral Worlds unable to resist their predations. They were subjected to extermination pogroms carried out by both the Luna Wolves and the VIII Legion (not then yet formally known as the Night Lords) which were thought to have been successful at the time.

• Siege of Reillis (805.M30) - The Emperor and Horus Lupercal fought together on many occasions during the early years of the Great Crusade. At the fortified city of Reillis, a Human settlement unwilling to accept the Emperor's Imperial Truth, the defending army used secret tunnels to infiltrate behind the besieging Imperial Army and hundreds of shock troops swamped the Imperial's command encampment. Unprepared and unarmoured, the Emperor and Horus fought back to back until a plasma blast stunned the young Primarch and sent him staggering to the ground. The Emperor stood over His son and refused to give ground until reinforcements arrived to drive their attackers back.

• The Gorro Hollowing (ca. 806.M30) - Within the Telon Reach was an Ork Empire that rivalled that centred on Ullanor, and at its heart was the scrap world of Gorro. Capable of generating destructive yields of terrifying potency, the Emperor decreed that Gorro must be destroyed. Leading the assault Himself, the Emperor, with His dutiful and favoured son Horus at His side, teleported into the subterranean tunnel network deep within the strata of the scrap planet. As the Space Marines attacked, the Ork resistance they faced was nearly overwhelming. At the height of the battle, the Emperor was split from the rest of His forces, and came face-to-face with an Ork of monstrous size, larger than any encountered by Mankind in its long history, who snatched the Emperor from the ground in its massive bionic claw. As the creature's grasp closed to throttle the Master of Mankind, Horus stormed through the press of battle and cut the Ork's arms from its body with a single blow. Together, father and son led their forces deeper into the vast sphere of scrap until they reached the centre of Gorro, and caused the scrap world to implode upon itself after they sabotaged its self-sustaining Warp-fold envelope.

• Compliance of the Osiris Cluster (806.M30) - In the eighth standard year of the Great Crusade, the Expeditionary Fleet of the XIII Legion discovered the Osiris Cluster, a grouping of eleven star systems that made up the inner portion of the Segmentum Solar's second quadrant. The inhabited worlds of this region, many technologically advanced at contact, were brought into Imperial Compliance in relatively bloodless order. It was viewed as a highly successful campaign in which the XIII themselves had a hand.

• The Battle of 02-34 (Rust) (807.M30) - The X Legion (yet unnamed as the Iron Hands) led the invasion of the planet designated 02-34 (or the "Battle of Rust" as it would be commonly known to Imperial military historians) against the Orks of the powerful and expanding "Krooked-Klaw" empire of Wardog Kulo, which spanned more than sixty inhabited star systems to the galactic northeast of Seraphina. Under the generalship of their then-Legion commander, Lord Commander Amadeus DuCaine, the X Legion formulated a plan of attack which owed much to the feared and pitiless battle-craft of Old Albia; a tactic known as the "Hammer and the Storm." After solar days of continuous fighting, though they had not lost the will to fight, the Orks of Rust simply ran out of blood and machinery to spend. At the end of the battle, the X Legion had suffered less than a fifth of its number in fatalities; a far lower figure than might have been expected. Rust was hailed as a great Imperial triumph also on account of how little had been sacrificed to attain it.

• War in the Shedim Drifts (ca. 800s.M30) - During the war in the Shedim Drifts against the marauding Asuryani of Craftworld Mór-ríoh'i, a vast Imperial force comprised of no less than four Titan Legions (the Legio Atarus, Legio Mortis, Legio Fureans and Legio Osedax) were assembled and placed under the overall command of Commander Horus Lupercal and his Luna Wolves Legion. The apocalyptic battle which raged upon the planet's surface saw a full demi-Legio of the Legio Atarus encircled and all but destroyed. The Lupercal had cruelly used them, without their foreknowledge or consent, as a ruse to divert the strength of the enemy away from the direct defence of their Craftworld while his Legion undertook a surprise assault against it. The war of the Shedim Drifts was a great victory for Horus and all those of the Imperium who fought in the campaign gained glory because of it, but at the expense of the Legio Atarus, an injury that the "Firebrands" would not forget.

• Mezoa Joins the Imperium (813.M30) - Mezoa was founded first as an outpost of the Lucien Mechanicum in 540.M30 before the Great Crusade, before rapidly gaining status as an independent Forge World in its own right in 813.M30. This Forge World was dedicated solely to the production of heavy arms and armour. The Mezoan forges were built under the direction not only of the Archimandrites of the Cult Mechanicus, but also the minds of both the Emperor and, it was said, the Primarch Ferrus Manus in later years after it joined the Imperium.

• Discovery of Leman Russ (819.M30) - The Emperor travels to the frigid Death World of Fenris to meet Leman Russ, who challenges him to three contests: eating, drinking, and fighting. Although the primarch wins the first two, Leman Russ is humbled in the third and swears loyalty to the Emperor, who grants him command of the VI Legion -- soon to be known as the Space Wolves.

• Discovery of [REDACTED] (821.M30) - [ERROR - RECORDS EXPUNGED]

• Contact with the Lethe (824.M30) - Lethe was first contacted in 824.M30 by the Rogue Trader Vaspperly Elgin, ahead of the Great Crusade's advance in force into the Coronid Deeps region some years later. Used as an early staging point by Crusade fleets, Lethe later served its part within the Imperial fold, providing several elite pioneer light infantry cohorts for the Imperialis Auxilia.

• Discovery of Ferrus Manus (824.M31) - The Primarch Ferrus Manus spends his youth slaying machine-monsters and plundering the buried secrets of Medusa, his frozen homeworld. As overlord of Medusa's rival techno-clans, Ferrus joins the Great Crusade After losing a cataclysmic battle with the Emperor, who came searching for the mythical wanderer, he joins the Great Crusade at the helm of the X Legion, which he renames the Iron Hands.

• The Proximan Rebellion (ca. 829.M30) - The Proximan Rebellion is one of the earliest recorded engagements of the as-yet unnamed III Legion. Assigned to the Imperial Compliance ceremonies and as the Emperor's honour guard for the world of Proxima's formal accession into the Imperium, an insurrectionist trap was sprung which resulted in the III Legion's XVI^th Cohort (Chapter) fighting and dying to the last warrior alongside the Legio Custodes, never giving ground during the insurrectionist surprise attack on that world's ceremonial plaza. By their sacrifice was the wounded Emperor, who had suffered injury through the use of a Vortex Weapon by the enemy, bought time to recover and fight His way clear of the Proximan insurrectionists' trap. In recognition of this sacrifice, the standard of the Palatine Aquila so fiercely fought for that day was given to the Astartes of the III Legion by the Emperor's own hand, to be their relic ever after, along with the right to end the Proximan revolt by Exterminatus and so repay the blood that was owed them.

• III Legion Gene-Seed Crisis (ca. 830.M30) - Coming within a standard year of their great moment of triumph fighting at the Emperor's side at Proxima, the III Legion suffers the catastrophic loss of nearly their entire gene-seed stock. This would prove a turning point that was to forever alter the Legion's future. When the III Legion's gene-seed reserve was despatched to Luna for establishment there, it is not quite clear what exactly happened next. Some claim that elements of the Selenite gene-cults still resistant to the Imperium hijacked a Defence Laser and destroyed the voidship carrying the gene-seed, while conflicting accounts recount that the ship lost control and crashed as it was attempting to dock, whilst others claim that it simply vanished. The loss of the III Legion's gene-seed reserve was a severe blow, but it would not have endangered the Legion's survival if a second calamity had not occurred in quick succession. It was soon discovered that a fast-acting viral blight had suddenly infected several of the gene-seed vaults on Terra, its cause and origin unknown. Feverishly the Bio-Magos sought to hold it in check as its progress threatened to wipe out in a matter of solar hours what had taken a Terran century to build, but the doubtlessly artificial -- and many surmised, xenos -- infection defied treatment, and it was only the intervention of the Emperor's own peerless genius that was to purge the taint. While many Legions suffered losses from this attack from an unknown quarter, the blight was found to have destroyed the gene-seed of the III Legion in its entirety.

• The "Ghost Legion" (ca. 830.M30) - Anomalous Legiones Astartes activity is first reported. There are only a few sparse but suggestive fragments -- anomalous records of unknown Legiones Astartes units carrying out targeted strikes, abductions and assassinations, both on Terra and beyond, and reports of Space Marine units answering to no known masters or Legion allegiance passing through war zones on high priority missions and under the writ of unassailable clearance codes which broached no question. These mysterious elements are attributed to the mysterious "Ghost Legion."

• Discovery of Fulgrim (830.M30) - The Emperor came to the industrial and resource-poor Mining World of Chemos and was reunited with His lost son Fulgrim, who had rebuilt his ravaged and resource-poor homeworld. Upon their first meeting, Fulgrim recognised the Emperor for who He truly was. Fulgrim bent his knee and offered his sword in eternal servitude. Pleased, the Emperor brought Fulgrim into the Imperial fold, and not long after, gave him command of the III Legion. The first speech Fulgrim gave to the III Legion moves the Emperor to rename them the Emperor's Children -- an extraodinary honour that Fulgrim swears to uphold by striving for perfection in all things.

• The Praxil Rebellion (ca. 830s.M30) - When the worlds of the Praxil System were first discovered, the Imperium was pleased by the prospect of adding them to the Imperium. Though bringing Praxil into Imperial Compliance would bring the Imperium great renown, this formidable civilisation refused to bend the knee to the light of the Imperial Truth, and instead were prepared to fight to maintain their independence. Their warfleet was formidable, and managed to push back the initial invasion of the Imperial Expeditionary Fleet. The Imperium wanted Praxil's wealth and resources to harness to the needs of the Great Crusade, and so the securing of Praxil fell to an army group-sized force of the Emperor's Children, supported by selected elements of the Imperial Army and the forces of the Mechanicum. But the initial campaign did not go well, as the Imperial forces sustained severe casualties and faced opposition at every turn, despite changing their tactics. Too prideful to ask for help, the War Council of Terra sent a force of Blood Angels and Imperial Fists to assist the beleaguered Imperial forces. Despite his misgivings and slight to his personal honour, the Lord Commander accepted his cousin Legions' assistance and immediately drew up plans for prosecuting the second offensive against the Praxil. With their combined strength, the Imperial forces launched a successful second offensive against the Praxil that soon saw an Imperial victory.

• Defence of Tranquility (ca. 800s.M30) - The Defence of Tranquility was a protracted and vicious engagement fought by the Emperor's Children on the periphery of the Dalinite Nebula region during the early phase of the Great Crusade's progress into the galactic east. Of particular interest to the Imperium was the discovery of the Dalinite Gates, which were part of the mysterious series of Warp Gates scattered across the stars, and could greatly increase the ability of the Imperium's fleets to reach new targets and expand the reach of the Emperor's forces. A Cohort barely numbering 500 warriors of the Emperor's Children were given the important role of securing the world of Tranquility on the trailing edge of the Imperial advance. The world was utterly worthless except that a Warp Gate, designated the Tranquility Gate, hung in high orbit above the planet's pole and a forward Imperial navigation and signal relay had been constructed there. Without warning, a larger xenos fleet exited the Warp Gate, which proceeded to mount a ground assault on the planet's surface. The Imperial warships executed a rapid, desperate counterattack, which caused the xenos fleet to flee back through the Warp Gate, and leaving their ground forces to be annihilated by the vengeful Emperor's Children.

• Extinction of the Katara (ca. 800s.M30) - The xenocide of the alien Katara was a brutal campaign of extermination carried out against this insular Abhuman civilisation that had evolved in the Kenuit System. Initially offering no resistance, matters only deteriorated when the Katara were asked directly to formally surrender to the Imperium. Soon a lone Kataran warship arrived and destroyed the Light Cruiser Locrian before sustaining damage itself and withdrawing. So provoked, acting Lieutenant Commander Abdemon of the Emperor's Children ordered the invasion of the largest Kataran city-complex. The Katara's diplomatic representatives came forward again, requesting to meet in a truce. He made the proposal that the conflict should be decided by a lone champion from each faction. Lieutenant Commander Abdemon agreed and said that he would enter the field as the Imperium's champion. Both combatants fought a brilliant, drawn out and bloody duel. Eventually, Abdemon slipped beneath the alien's guard and delivered the killing blow. With their champion defeated, the Kataran representatives ordered that all should know that their people had been defeated by an enemy of equal honour but superior arts. The order given, the Kataran leaders fell on their own swords before the Emperor's Children. Across all their domains, every member of the Katara followed their leaders in death and the Kataran cities became massive tombs. Showing respect for their fallen foes, the Emperor's Children departed the Kenuit System, leaving the worlds of Katara behind as Mortuary Worlds.

• Castigation of Terentius (ca. 800s.M30) - When the forces of the Great Crusade first entered the Ordoni Cluster, they encountered the formidable warlord Vatale Gerron Terentius. Observing the forces arrayed against him, Terentius was forced to take the path of survival and surrendered to the Imperium. For the next five solar decades he rose in power and reputation, conquering worlds around the Halo Stars in the name of the Emperor. At the height of his powers, he had the ear of Malcador the Sigillite and the countenance of several Primarchs. When he finally turned against the Imperium, many were shocked. He began a contra-Crusade to conquer already-Compliant worlds to add to his pocket empire. The Imperium responded by sending Horus and his Luna Wolves Legion to not only break the Renegade but to demonstrate to any others who harboured similar ideas within the Imperial forces the inevitability of a betrayer's defeat. Large support from the Night Lords, Iron Hands and the Alpha Legion joined the might of the Luna Wolves. Soon the rebel forces were fragmented, driven by tales of culled worlds. At the height of the campaign, Horus himself, with a cadre of 50 elite Justaerin Terminators, teleported aboard the bridge of Terentius' flagship, where the Commander slew the unrepentant traitor with his Talon. The Night Lords decimated every world within Terentius' rebel empire. The power of the Iron Hands and elements of the Ordo Reductor were brought to bear on every structure on Terentius' bastion worlds. Soon the rebels of his realm were slaughtered, their cities smashed to dust, and his homeworld's very air laced with toxins. Once the castigation was complete, Horus sent the gold-dipped skull of Terentius to Terra with the ironic warning carried on the lips of the messenger who bore it, "So perish all traitors."

• Discovery of Vulkan (832.M30) - The Primarch Vulkan was raised by a blacksmith on the fiery, volcanic world of Nocturne, becoming a giant hero amongst his people. The Emperor arrived upon Nocturne and reunited with His lost son, who only agreed to serve the Emperor after competing in a difficult challenge to slay the largest salamander -- a large drake-like creature native to Nocturne. During the contest, Vulkan's life ended up in jeopardy, and though the Emperor had obtained a larger prize, He sacrificed His trophy in order to save His gene-son's life. Humbled by the stranger's deed of self-sacrifice, Vulkan bent his knee to the Master of Mankind. It is believed he served with the Emperor for some time before he finally took command of the XVIII Legion -- the Salamanders.

• Osiris Rebellion (833.M30) - For unknown reasons, the eleven star systems of the Osiris Cluster declare independence from the Imperium. The XIII Legion sends their 12^th Expeditionary Fleet to put down the rebellion. But failures in intelligence turn what was intended to be a swift victory into a battle for attrition against a previously unknown xenos threat -- Osiran Psybrid xenoforms. The vile aliens drove the Human population to attack the Legiones Astartes in droves. Ordering his force to withdraw after sustaining heavy losses, Legion Commander Gren Vosotho, along with the XIII Legion's flagship Sethaln's Thunder, is lost. Command fell to First Captain Marius Gage. The Osiris Cluster was then blockaded. When the 12^th Expeditionary Fleet returned a standard year later with a force heavily augmented with troops from the Solar Armada, elements of the XVIII Legion and specialist anti-psyker cadres from Terra, they found worlds either left as wastelands of unburied dead or locked in turmoil and civil strife.

• Discovery of Rogal Dorn (835.M30) - The Great Crusade reaches the Inwit Cluster, a collection of Ice Worlds ruled by the Primarch Rogal Dorn. The lost primarch, the seventh to be rediscovered, greets the Emperor on the bridge of the Phalanx, a colossal reactivated starship dating back to the time of the Age of Technology, and submits to his authority. The Emperor quickly instructs Dorn in the ways of the Imperium and their objectives with the Great Crusade, and soon passes off command of the VII Legion, whom Dorn remakes into the Imperial Fists. The primarch transfers their headquarters to the Phalanx.

• Colchis Civil War Ends (ca. 838-844.M30) - The six-year civil/holy war led by the Primarch Lorgar Aurelian comes to an end. Lorgar, now the Archpriest of the reformed holy order known as The Covenant, promised the masses of his homeworld that their new God would arrive on Colchis no more than a standard year after their victory and that they would know Him only as "The Emperor."

• Discovery of Roboute Guilliman (837.M30) - Raised on the world of Macragge by a noble consul, the Primarch Roboute Guilliman grows into a prodigal leader. The Emperor's arrival is delayed for years by Warp Storms -- by the time He arrives, the primarch rules a stellar empire known as the Realm of Ultramar, the "Five Hundred Worlds." Impressed with His son's superlative organisational skills and strategic planning, the Emperor quickly passes on command of the XIII Legion to Guilliman, who reforges them into his own, as the newly renamed Ultramarines.

• Discovery of Magnus the Red (840.M30) - A strong Warp presence is detected on the remote world of Prospero, leading the Emperor to investigate. There He finds Magnus the Red, the most psychically gifted of his sons, and embraces him as commander of the XV Legion, the Thousand Sons. Magnus learns much from the Emperor's psychic might in the following years.

• Liberation of Incaladion (842-843.M30) - During the liberation of the war-torn Forge World of Incaladion, the IV Legion displayed their typical reliance on rationality and intellect set against infrequent but telling episodes of bloody-minded stubbornness in the face of overwhelming odds. In a gruelling year-long campaign, victory was at last achieved, but the war saw the near annihilation of the IV Legion's 8^th Expeditionary Fleet's frontline forces in what was arguably a needlessly costly fashion.

• Discovery of Xana II (843.M30) - A damaged galleass belonging to the Rogue Trader Casilida DeAniasie, having been flung far off-course after engaging in battle with Fra'al Corsairs, intercepts a trio of hulking automata (unmanned) warships at the edge of the intergalactic void. Although they might have taken or destroyed her already damaged ship with little effort, these vessels instead offered aid and carried with them a message of greeting and an offer of diplomatic exchange between the "Sovereign Forge Domain of Xana" and the Imperium of Man and its Emperor.

• Discovery of Sanguinius (843.M30) - Borne by the currents of the Warp to a moon scorched by radiation from an ancient thermonuclear war, Sanguinius possesses magnificent, angelic wings and psychic foresight. He thus foresees the arrival of the Emperor, and pledges himself to the Imperium in exchange for the safety of Baal's rad-scarred and pious people. Not long after their reunion, Sanguinius is given command of the IX Legion and remakes them in his own image, renaming them the Blood Angels.

• Discovery of Lion El'Jonson (846.M30) - Forward scouts of the Great Crussade encounter the Death World of Caliban, and the knightly orders that protect it from Warp-spawned beasts. Their leader, Lion El'Jonson, is found to be one of the lost primarchs, and assumes command of the I Legion upon meeting the Emperor -- later renaming them the Dark Angels after an alleogircal figure of Calibanite myth from his youth. A young, newly-inducted Calibanite I Legion Librarian, Zahariel El'Zurias narrowly averts an attempted assassination on the Emperor's life soon after His arrival.

• Discovery of Perturabo (849.M30) - A scientific and military genius on the world of Olympia draws the Emperor's attention, found to be his lost son, the Primarch Perturabo. The bitter and analytical primarch judges the IV Legion's war record to that point in the Great Crusade harshly, and orders their decimation -- execution of one in every ten Legionaries -- as punishment. Drawing lots, one in nine IV Legion Astartes are killed by their remaining battle-brothers with their bare hands. Following this action, Perturabo leads his Legion to the Meratara Cluster and forges them into a Legion in his own image. The IV Legion formally becomes known as the Iron Warriors.

• Fall of the Black Judges (ca. Late.840s.M30) - This was the Iron Warriors' first Imperial Compliance campaign under the direct command of their primarch Perturabo, which was conducted against the barren, ravine-hollowed moon known as the "Rock of Judgement" and its masters, the heretical Black Judges. These self-appointed arbiters of Human purity, life and death, were twisted and withered creatures that had once been Human in ages past. The IV Legion, reeling from its enforced Decimation as punishment at its new master's hands, was shamed into a desperate desire to prove itself to its primarch, and it was the Black Judges that were to suffer its pent-up hatred and wrath. By Perturabo's design the enemy was crushed without mercy and their domains were stripped of every valuable resource and technology; wreckage and weapons flowed to Olympia and the Black Judges' long-guarded secrets fell also to the newly renamed Iron Warriors and their lord, as well as to the Mechanicum in return for their aid. With the world stripped of its resources, the orbital shipyards of the Rock of Judgement were finally set in orbit afresh around Olympia and set to work fashioning a new generation of warships under Perturabo's seal.

• Pacification of Schravaan (ca. 850s.M30 - This was a joint Imperial Compliance action conducted by four Legiones Astartes (the Emperor's Children, Iron Warriors, Imperial Fists and Luna Wolves) against the vile xenos Badoon. Upon their homeworld of Schravaan, the Iron Warriors won a great victory when they stormed the final refuge of the Badoon. They breached the defences and held while the other Legions carried the city beyond. During the following victory feast, Horus proclaimed Perturabo the greatest master of siege warfare in the Great Crusade. Fulgrim then inquired of his brother Rogal Dorn whether he thought even the defences of the Imperial Palace could resist the Iron Warriors, to which Dorn replied that he regarded the defences as being proof against any assault if well-planned. Perturabo flew into a rage and unleashed unfounded accusations against his brother. After this the two rarely spoke, and neither of their Legions served in the same campaign for the remainder of the Great Crusade.

• Discovery of Mortarion (854.M30) - The Primarch Mortarion rebelled against the sorcerous xenos overlords of the toxic Death World of Barbarus, building an army from the suffering people of that poisonous planet. The Emperor comes to Barbarus in his Principia Imperialis fleet and reunites with His lost son Mortarion. Upon meeting the Emperor for the first time, Mortarion was oblivious to any obvious connection or physical resemblance. Angry, Mortarion declared that he and his Death Guard needed no help to finish their quest for justice. The Emperor quietly challenged the stormy young primarch's assertion, pointing out his soldiers' failure to reach the last high citadel of the High Overlord Necare, and then threw down a gauntlet. If Mortarion could defeat the high overlord alone, he would withdraw and leave Barbarus to its own means. But if he failed, the primarch would join His Imperium of Man and Mortarion would swear total fealty and allegiance to the Emperor. Mortarion was true to his oath, and when he failed to overwhelm the last of Barbarus' sorcerous overlords without the intervention of the Emperor, he bent his knee to the stranger and swore himself and the Death Guard to His service. Only then did the Emperor reveal Himself as the young primarch's true father, and the destiny such service would bring: command of the XIV Legion. Shortly thereafter, the Emperor gave his son command of the Dusk Raiders. Mortarion remade them in his own image, renaming them the Death Guard. However, Mortarion never forgave the Emperor for supposedly denying him his vengeance -- and his chance to prove that he was truly better than his foster father Necare.

• Conquest of Galaspar (ca. Mid-800s.M30) - This was the first major independent campaign conducted by the newly-dubbed Death Guard after Mortarion took charge of the XIV Legion. The conquest of the non-Compliant Hive World of Galaspar remains one of the most remarkable and brutal victories of the Great Crusade's course through the near reaches of the Segmentum Pacificus. When the Imperial support fleet arrived they were horrified by the aftermath of the slaughter. The billions of Humans "liberated" by the Death Guard were almost childishly eager to accept the Emperor's servants and adopt their ways. In the wake of the Imperial conquest of Galaspar, the cluster of worlds surrounding it quickly capitulated with terrified speed, all willing to submit to Imperial Compliance under any terms as long as they were spared the reaper's scythe.

• Kajor Compliance (ca. 800s.M30) - On Kajor during the Great Crusade, the Death Guard Legion encountered a warrior race of Humans that had fallen to barbarism. Extensive orbital surveys detected no trace of advanced technology, yet it took the XIV Legion nearly six solar months to bring Kajor to submission. Though the Kajori were savages, armed with little more than blades and crude flintlock carbines, this feral race was able to hold the Death Guard at bay. They were able to do so because they possessed fell powers and unseen allies. In his quieter moments, Mortarion later thought of the Kajor campaign and shuddered. Mortarion would recount the tale of this campaign during the Council of Nikaea as one example among many why he took a personal stance against sorcery and the use of psychic abilities.

• Destruction of WAAAGH! Mashogg (Mid-800s.M30) - In one famous instance, a joint Imperial Compliance campaign was conducted by the Iron Warriors, Space Wolves and White Scars Legions against the vast Greenskin horde known as WAAAGH! Mashogg. Legends record that it was the Primarchs Leman Russ and Jaghatai Khan who routed the Orks of Overdog Mashogg's WAAAGH!, while Perturabo was featured only as the "comrade" who calculated the optimum way to bypass Mashogg's low orbit defences.

• Compliance of the Araaki Spiral (Mid-800s.M30) - A joint Imperial Compliance campaign was conducted by the Iron Warriors, Imperial Fists, Dark Angels and White Scars Legions in a region of space known as the Araaki Spiral. The Araakites were well-versed in the art of building fortresses, and their strongholds were dug deep around narrow passes, remote hilltops and natural barriers in the landscape. Once again, the Iron Warriors were sent to a resistant star system to conduct brutal siege-warfare against formidable fortress-builders. The Araakites knew their craft well and the campaign to take their world for the Imperium proved both bitter and hostile. It would take many Terran years for the IV Legion to regain its former strength from the losses sustained during the drawn-out war of attrition that its Astartes suffered in the Araaki Spiral. In the wake of the inevitable Imperial victory, great works of art and heroic verse were composed, celebrating the courage of the other Space Marine Legions, but nowhere in the reams of poetry and artwork were the grim labours of the Iron Warriors judged worthy of note. Only in a predella to a larger work painted by a notable Imperial artisan were the warriors of the IV Legion displayed; it illustrated a lone Iron Warriors Apothecary removing the gene-seed of a dying Legionary as the flag of the IV Legion's greatest rivals, the Imperial Fists, flew over a captured fortress. Perturabo sought out the artist to procure the piece for himself, only to have it put it to the torch once he had done so. If his sons would not be honoured properly, he told the horrified artist, then they would not be a part of a record that glorified another. Afterwards, Rogal Dorn offered a rich commission for the artist to repaint the predella, but the artisan wisely refused.

• The Two Wars of Araneus (Mid-800s.M30) - The worlds of the Araneus Continuity were a series of planets close to the Sol System which had maintained links to one another due to the existence of a series of ancient Warp Gates of unknown origins. It was ruled by a caste of Technobility from the world of Araneus Prime at the heart of the network of Warp Gates. After an Imperial squadron accidentally jumped through one of the gates, they were boarded and overwhelmed by cybernetically-grafted warriors. An envoy fleet was sent, and was allowed to return bearing the Continuity's answer to the Emperor's demand of fealty. The Technobility flatly refused to bow to the Emperor, but instead invited Him to join their empire as a tributary. For its response, the Imperium turned to the Imperial Fists. It fell to Hashin Yonnad, Commander of the 39^th Household (Chapter) of Inwit, to prosecute the war. A full-scale assault was launched, and within two solar months the Aranean empire was cut from around its lords, and finally reduced to just Araneus Prime. But at the moment the Imperium was to claim victory, an unknown menace emerged from one of the Aranean Warp Gates, and soon six star systems of the Continuity burned. Overwhelmed by the vastly larger enemy force, Yonnad made the hard decision to destroy the Warp Gates, sparing the final system, but costing thousands of Imperial Fists' and billions of Human lives. Araneus Prime survived, but barely. Now a smoking cinder, the devastated world of Araneus Prime was given a new name by the Imperium -- Necromunda.

• Compliance of 82-17 (Nova Shendak) (Mid-800s.M30) - Early in the Great Crusade, the War Hounds Legion had found three star systems under the thrall of giant, worm-like xenos creatures who were both intelligent as well as hateful. Their weapons were filaments, metal feathers that they embedded in themselves to conduct potent bioelectrical energies out of their bodies. The War Hounds proceeded to burn them out of their colony nests and chase them back towards their homeworld. But on their cradle-world of Nove Shendak the XII Legion had, to their immense surprise, discovered Humans. The War Hounds, alongside their fellow Legiones Astartes, the Iron Warriors, and a large contingent of Imperial Army soldiers, were charged with exterminating the worms and liberating the Humans of Nove Shendak. When the worms finally emerged from the earth to assault their attackers, they met the Emperor and His War Hounds. Though the casualties were horrendous, the War Hounds eventually emerged triumphant and the worms of Nove Shendak found only extinction. The people of that world inherited the planet and became fervent supporters of the Imperium.

• Exploration of Mandragoran Stars (ca. 850.M30) - The Rogue Trader Lady Arica Orpheus explores the reaches of the Mandragoran Stars in the galactic southwest. She catalogues countless aged stars and Dead Worlds. Records of her voyages mention many pre-Human ruins and monuments.

• Discovery of Lorgar Aurelian (857.M30) - Lorgar Aurelian, archpriest of the theocratic Covenant of Colchis, met the arrival of the Emperor with great ceremony, believing him to be the saviour and long-awaited god of the Colchisian faith that he had spread across that world. Despite his insistence to the contrary to his father, the primarch preaches the Emperor's divinity across the galaxy at the head of the XVII Legion. He reshapes the XVII Legion, once called the Imperial Heralds, in his image, and renames them the Word Bearers. Lorgar at this time is considered one of the weaker primarchs by his brothers, largely because of his odd devotion to religion, something specifically prohibited by the atheistic Imperial Truth.

• Purging of Arachiana (858.M30) - The Word Bearers, newly reunited with their primarch, are tasked with the destruction of the Cult of the Iconoclast on the world of Arachiana; a religion worshipping the "One True God," a being described in the same terms as, but darkly distinct from the Emperor. The tenets of this religion would be incorporated into an early version of the Book of Lorgar.

• Battle of Rennimar (865.M30) - This was a great Imperial Compliance campaign conducted by the Imperial Fists Legion against the massive Ork WAAAGH! of the Over-Tyrant of Grel in the Rennimar System, who was himself already under siege by both the Death Guard and Space Wolves Legions. Rogal Dorn, alongside Captain Archamus, the commander of his Huscarl honour guard, led a force of 10,000 Imperial Fists against the Greenskin forces. Typical of the VI Legion, they established heavy-walled bulwarks on the planet Rennimar, which enticed the Orks to hurl themselves futilely against the Imperial Fists' stalwart defences. This enabled the Legiones Astartes to utterly crush their xenos foes.

• Discovery of Jaghatai Khan (865.M30) - After conquering the Feral World of Chogoris with a great nomadic army of steppe horsemen, Primarch Jaghatai Khan encounters the Emperor arriving with the Great Crusade's Principia Imperialis Expeditionary Fleet. Faced with submission or subjugation, the Great Khan pledges his sword to the Imperium and claims command of the V Legion -- his White Scars.

• Battle of Rennimar (ca. 865.M30) - This was a massive Imperial Compliance campaign conducted by the Imperial Fists Legion against the massive Ork WAAAGH! of the Over-Tyrant of Grel in the Rennimar System, who was himself already under siege by both the Death Guard and Space Wolves Legions. Rogal Dorn, alongside Captain Archamus, the commander of his Huscarl Honour Guard, led a force of 10,000 Imperial Fists against the Greenskin forces. Typical of the VII Legion, they established heavy-walled bulwarks on the planet Rennimar, which enticed the Orks to hurl themselves futilely against the Imperial Fists' stalwart defences. This enabled the combined force of Legiones Astartes to utterly crush their xenos foes.
• Compliance of Molech (869.M30) - The newly discovered Knight World of Molech is brought into the Imperium through a massive joint-Compliance operation between multiple Legiones Astartes (including the Luna Wolves, Dark Angels, Emperor's Children and White Scars). Cyprian Devine of House Devine is named Planetary Governor of Molech. In the presence of several of his Primarch sons, the Emperor leads them to a Warp portal located deep underground, where He proceeds to enter into the Realm of Chaos to parley with the Ruinous Powers. When He returns, the Emperor appears aged, but much more powerful. He then psychically suppresses his sons' memories of Molech and stations a large garrison force comprised of nearly 100 Imperialis Auxilia regiments, three Legio Titanicus cohorts, and detachments from two Space Marine Legions to protect the secrets of the Warp portal on Molech.

• ca. 839.M30 - ca. 890.M30 Rangdan Xenocides - The Titans of the Legio Gryphonicus as well as the Legio Vulturum, the Legio Kydianos and other Xanithe Mechanicum forces from Xana II served alongside the vaunted Dark Angels Legion during the vital campaign known as the Rangdan Xenocides. The Dark Angels hurled themselves at the enemies and broke their greater strength in countless battles against the xenos on the edge of the Halo Stars. This campaign culminated in the Third Rangdan Xenocide around 890.M30, which resulted in the loss of the lives of 50,000 Space Marines spent in preventing the destruction of perhaps the entire northern Imperium by the alien menace from the outer darkness. Due to the extensive losses suffered by the I Legion, by 899.M30, the Ultramarines Legion was on the cusp of becoming the largest of the Legiones Astartes, standing at around 166,000 Legionaries.

• Compliance of Zavarich (876.M30) - The Feudal World of Zavarich, located within the Cyclops Cluster region, is brought bloodlessly into Imperial Compliance by the 611^th Expeditionary Fleet. Shortly thereafter, Zavarich enters into operation as a fully managed Agri-World by the time of the Heresy, and is notable for being one of a relative handful of such worlds in the region.

• Crisis of the Hungering Gyre (891.M30) - The Mechanicum forces of Gryphonne IV, along with their resident Legio Titanicus forces from the Legio Gryphonicus fought a hence unknown xenos menace known as the Hungering Gyre, and arose victorious amid great personal sacrifice. In recognition for their great service and sacrifices during this campaign, the Emperor decreed that Paramar V and its industrial facilities would be granted as a vassal domain to the distant Forge World.
• Discovery of Lascal (Late-800s.M30) - This terrestrial world was discovered on the edge of the Grail Abyss by the 7^th Expeditionary Fleet under Lord Commander Suleiman Grimm of the I Legion. Originally it had been a Feral Ork holding before the Dark Angels exterminated the Ork infestation. Lascal became a forward outpost of the Great Crusade, and later a naval fleet anchorage was constructed there in orbit under the auspices of the Lucien Mechanicum. Continuing to grow, by 902.M30, Lascal had become an independent and self-sustaining Imperial colony.

• Discovery of Grail (891.M30) - The Expeditionary Fleet of Rogue Trader Corthona Van der Veld discover an errant Dead World and names it Grail. This world's namesake is later given to the region known as the Grail Abyss, a place of hidden wealth and terrible danger which has long drawn Explorators and would-be treasure hunters to their graves.

• Discovery of Konrad Curze (896.M30) - Stranded on the sunless world of Nostramo and plagued by precognitive visions, Primarch Konrad Curze becomes known as the "Night Haunter" for his brutal enforcement of justice. When the Emperor finally arrives, alongside several of His primarch sons, including Magnus the Red, Rogal Dorn and Fulgrim, as well as representatives from the Ultramarines Legion, Curze experiences a vision so terrible he tries to claw his eyes out -- nevertheless, he is placed in command of the VIII Legion -- which he reshapes into the fearsome Night Lords, who specialise in the use of terror as a weapon.

• Xenocide of the Osiran Psybrids (899.M30) - A sub-fleet of the XII Legion, under the command of Praetor Erad Krüg, was fighting on the southwestern extreme of the Great Crusade's frontier near the Eurydice Terminal, against Ork raiders of the self-styled Glortian Empire from the untracked abysses beyond. As both sides fought one another, they were suddenly best upon by a mysterious third party -- the deadly xenoforms known as the Osiran Psybrids. As the nightmarishly powerful xenos teleported aboard the War Hounds' vessels, only their savage tenacity allowed them to survive, as they lost dozens of their own starships and hundreds of Ork vessels were shattered. Primarch Roboute Guilliman ordered the War Hounds to hold at all cost, and if possible, to track the Psybrids' vessels to their source. The Ultramarines despatched a powerful Retribution Fleet to the Eurydice Terminal, and soon joined their fellow Legion. With their combined might, the Ultramarines systematically wiped out the Psybrids, and when they died, so too did their slave armies. They soon made short work of the remaining Glortian Orks as well, driving them into the outer darkness. The blood price of the battle had been high, but it was a price the Ultramarines were willing to pay for the defeat they had suffered nearly six solar decades earlier.

• Discovery of Angron (899.M30) - The Emperor arrived at the world of Nuceria, where he observed his long-lost son, the Primarch Angron Thal'kyr, lead a revolt of slave-gladiators against their cruel overlords. Angron had been found after his arrival on Nuceria as a young adolescent and sold into slavery. He then underwent horrific surgery, where barbaric cybernetic cranial implants known as the Butcher's Nails were inserted into his brain to increase his aggression. Thrown into the fighting pits for his masters' pleasure, he soon rose to the top, and became the "Lord of the Red Sands." On the eve of the largest gladiator exhibition ever held by the slave masters of the city of De'shea, Angron led a successful slave revolt and escape by many of his fellow gladiators. Taking refuge within the De'shea Mountains, the night before their final confrontation with their cruel overlords, Angron dug his own grave, ready to die alongside his brothers and sisters in the name of freedom. But before the battle took place, the Emperor intervened and teleported Angron aboard His own flagship, unwilling to see one of his primarchs slain before he could be put to use in the Great Crusade. Angron's fellow gladiators were slain to the last man and woman. Angron is enraged that he was denied an honourable death alongside his beloved comrades, and swears never to forgive the Emperor. Angron was then examined on Terra and given over to his genetic sons from the XII Legion, the War Hounds. After assuming command, he reshaped his Legion in his own savage image, and they became the World Eaters.

• Assault on Dulan (ca. 900s.M30) - As the Space Marine Legions pushed back the frontiers of the Imperium, each Primarch strove to excel in the eyes of the Emperor and none more so than Leman Russ, Primarch of the Space Wolves. Only Horus and Lion El'Jonson could claim more victories than Russ and this was a constant frustration for him. It was on the world of Dulan where the Space Wolves were fighting alongside the Dark Angels that matters came to a head. The Tyrant of Duran had personally insulted the Emperor, sacrificing thousands of Imperial priests to his patron daemon, and both Russ and Jonson desired the honour of slaying this Heretic. The Tyrant Durath insulted Russ, causing him to demand the right to lead the attack on the fortress. Johnson ignored him and led his own carefully planned attack instead, killing the Tyrant personally. After the battle Russ confronted and attacked Johnson, and the two dueled for a solar day and a night. Russ eventually stopped attacking, seeing the humor of the situation, at which point Johnson knocked him unconscious. Only then did the Lion consider honour to be satisfied. The prostrate Russ was carried from the fortress by his men and, when he regained consciousness, the Dark Angels had already departed to fight in the Alisore Campaign. Russ swore he would avenge the stain on his honour and, to this day, whenever the Space Wolves and Dark Angels meet, one of their number is called upon to refight the duel of the Primarchs in order that honour may be satisfied.

• Compliance of Tarsis (ca. 900s.M30) - This was an Imperial Compliance action carried out by the Ultramarines Legion upon the world of Tarsis against unknown assailants. During the assault the Primarch Roboute Guilliman was attacked by a mysterious assailant, but was saved by a native soldier of this world. In a supreme display of humility, Guilliman bent his knee before the soldier and vowed a warrior's oath that should this world ever need aid then the Ultramarines would answer the call. A temple within the capital city of Erebus displayed the Tarsis Frescoe, a mosaic of enormous proportions painted by an unknown artist that covered the walls, ceiling and even the floor, shrouding the entire chamber like a canvas. This frescoe displayed the events that had occurred during the Great Crusade. In gratitude to Guilliman and the Ultramarines, the planet renamed itself Tarsis Ultra in honour of its saviours.

• Shi'Hu'Gal Purge (ca. 900s.M30) - The Night Lords, supported by the Titan Legions Legio Vulcanum I ("Dark Fire") and Legio Vulcanum II, carried out the infamous xenocidal purge of the Shi'Hu'Gal Dominion during the Great Crusade; this was a campaign of such fury and viciousness it remains a legend of this bygone era, even after the far greater death and destruction caused by Horus' betrayal of the Emperor.

• Compliance of Tethonus (ca. 900s.M30) - The Luna Wolves Legion fought against an unidentified xenos-adversary whose identity is not recorded in existing Imperial records while bringing the world of Tethonus into Imperial Compliance. This Compliance action was a long siege of the xenos fortress-states on Tethonus. Horus had tasked the masters of the Forge World of Diamat to create continental Ordinatii siege machines; vast artillery pieces that could devastate the most powerful fortifications. But the war machines took much longer for the forge masters to complete than planned. By the time they were finished, the campaign on Tethonus had been over for over a standard year and a half, and Horus had moved on to other conquests. So the weapons were put into a depot on Diamat against the day when he would come to claim them. Fifty standard years later, Horus would reveal his perfidy at Istvaan III, and would send raiding forces to claim these siege engines for later use in his attempt to overthrow the Emperor of Mankind.

• Assault on Dahinta (ca. 900s.M30) - On the world of Dahinta, the Luna Wolves Legion fought against a race of self-aware machines called the Overseers, who were led by the general artificial intelligence known as the Archdroid. One of the Emperor's longest-standing commands was that no sentient machines could be allowed to exist, for they had nearly caused the extinction of Mankind when they had rebelled against their Human overseers during the Dark Age of Technology. Despite heavy casualties amongst the Astartes, the thinking machines were wiped from the face of Dahinta by the savagery of the Luna Wolves. Only after the campaign had ended was the full truth learned: the Overseers had been created by a vanished offshoot of Humanity that had settled Dahinta, perhaps during the Age of Technology. The Overseers had cared for their lost masters' crumbling cities long after they had become extinct or left their homeworld behind.

• Compliance of Five-Twenty-Nine (ca. 900s.M30) - This was an Imperial Compliance action carried out by the Alpha Legion against an adversary of unknown origin upon the world designated Five-Twenty-Nine.

• Compliance of Fernius Worlds (ca. 900s.M30) - This was an Imperial Compliance action carried out jointly by the Alpha Legion and an Imperial Army sentry force comprised of the genetically-augmented Geno Seven-Sixty Spartocid. The Seven-Sixty were a well-drilled regiment and did not spook easily. They played an instrumental role during the Compliance of the Ferinus Worlds.

• Compliance of Thorium Abominiplex (ca. 900s.M30) - This was an Imperial Compliance action that was carried out jointly by both the Alpha Legion and Death Guard Legions against an unrecorded adversary.

• Xenocide of Kamenka Troika (ca. 900s.M30) - This was a campaign of extermination waged in the middle years of the Great Crusade against the barbaric Orks of the Kamenka Troika System. The Emperor had issued the writs of war, commanding the Thousand Sons, the Legio Astorum Titan Legion and a Lifehost of PanPac Eugenians of the Imperial Army to drive that savage race of xenos from the three satellite planets of Kamenka Ulizarna, a world claimed by the Mechanicum of Mars. The savagery of that war, the slaughter and relentless, grinding attrition had left tens of thousands of dead in its wake. The Imperial forces proved victorious after two standard years of fighting and earned a score of honours for their war banners. Victory had been won, but the cost had been high. The Thousand Sons sustained severe losses of 873 Battle-Brothers of the 5^th Fellowship, effectively wiping the 5^th out as a functioning unit. This forced Magnus the Red to reduce his Legion from ten Fellowships to the Pesedjet, the nine classic Fellowships of Prosperine antiquity.

• Liberation of Alpha Shalish (ca. 900s.M30) - It was during the XII Legion's campaign in the Golgotha Sector that the World Eaters' 203^rd Expeditionary Fleet encountered the Lacrymole-infested world of Alpha Shalish. Remembrancers and Imperial artist-scribes of the 203^rd Expeditionary Fleet recorded the auspicious events surrounding the liberation of the xenos-controlled world of Alpha Shalish. The Imperial forces, spearheaded by World Eaters Space Marines, burst into the mounded Lacrymole cities with righteous fury, cleansing the planet of their foul, man-eating kind with extreme prejudice.

• The Carinae Retribution (ca. 900s.M30) - The conquest of the Carinae Sodality remains a black mark on the record of the Raven Guard, a campaign whose details, long suppressed by factions within the Officio Militaris, show the Raven Guard as directly responsible for the campaign's delay and the excessive casualties recorded by Imperial Army units assigned to the fighting. The Raven Guard were assigned to pacify the "Thousand moons of Carinae" -- immense void-cities that circled the otherwise planet-less primary. On one such moon, designated Zenith-312, the cities' Arch-Comptroller unleashed a terrible weapon -- an anima-phage of terrible potency that rendered men into creatures of rage and hunger, bereft of all reason and memory. The Raven Guard suffered little ill-effect, but the ordinary citizens of Zenith-312 and the mortal soldiers of the Imperial Army were reduced to a frothing, mindless horde that numbered in the tens of thousands. Immediately the Raven Guard found themselves beset on all sides, and were forced to put down those who they once called allies, granting them the mercy of death. In revenge, Corax hunted down the escaped Arch-Comptroller, and enacted a brutal and long, drawn-out death. But in their need for revenge, the Raven Guard were neglectful in their duty, allowing for the other moons to fortify themselves, drawing out what was supposed to be a relatively swift Compliance, for seven long solar months, costing thousands of Imperial lives in the process.

• The Fall of the Lords of Gardinaal (ca. 900s.M30) - The Gardinaal was a solar empire comprised of eleven inhabited worlds encountered at the edge of the Dominion of Storms to the galactic east. They were an empire who possessed a considerable might of arms, enough to give even the Expeditionary Fleets of the Great Crusade pause. When an honour guard of Thousand Sons were sent to meet with the lords of Gardinaal, at first the negotiations went well, but unfortunately, the Thousand Sons were able to detect a psychic attempt to subvert the Imperial emissaries. The nearby Ultramarines 413^th Expeditionary Fleet, commanded by Master Ulan Cicerus of the XV^th Chapter, was forced to intervene militarily. But soon their gains were forestalled by the superior defences of Gardinaal Prime, which proved disastrous, as they utilised powerful STC weaponry and vehicles never encountered before. A blockade of the Gardinaal's system was employed. The stalemate was soon broken by a new Imperial war-host led by the Iron Hands and the Emperor's Children Legions. The Emperor's Children contingent led a diversionary attack, while the Iron Hands led a relentless and tireless assault spread over every entire world. The Ultramarines requested to lead the assault on the capital city to restore some of their lost honour, though the blood price they paid was steep. The Iron Hands fleet left the Gardinaal System shortly afterwards, its other inhabited worlds pleased to surrender unconditionally to the Imperium's mercy. Though initially faced with famine and hardship, Gardinaal soon proved a valuable addition to the Imperium and a model of Imperial Compliance.

• Defence of Necromunda (ca. 900s.M30) - At some unknown date later in the Great Crusade, the Imperial Fists won a major victory against the Orks upon the ash wastes of the Hive World of Necromunda. The Hive Lords consented to recruits being drawn from their population in gratitude and a Fortress-Chapel was duly consecrated, but the Imperial Fists continued to refuse to accept any special rights on the worlds where their Legion recruited. Throughout the Great Crusade they refused to garrison or claim tithes of newly conquered worlds, instead opting to remain a military unit with none of the responsibilities that came with ruling a single homeworld.

• The Krypt Persecution (ca. 900s.M30) - The Compliance of Krypt was a relatively short campaign conducted during the Great Crusade by both the Death Guard and the Luna Wolves Legions against the Orks upon the frozen plains of the world of Krypt. Fighting together for more than a solar week across the frozen surface of the planet, the Space Marine Legions turned the blue ice dark with xenos blood. Battle-Captain Nathaniel Garro and his 7^th Great Company were known to have fought alongside the Luna Wolves' Captain Garviel Loken and his 10^th Company during this action.

• Battle of Gyros-Thravian (ca. 900s.M30) - The Battle of Gyros-Thravian was a massive joint-Imperial Compliance action carried out by three Space Marine Legions, composed of the Luna Wolves, Death Guard and Imperial Fists against the extremely powerful Ork Warboss Gharkul Blackfang, one of the most powerful Ork Warlords ever encountered up to that time. Despite the strength arrayed against the vile Greenskins, it was the Imperial forces who were soon on the verge of defeat. It was then that the Emperor Himself, aboard His flagship, Bucephelus, came to the aid of His sons. He personally led a force composed of 1,000 Legio Custodes into the heart of the mighty Ork horde. Blackfang was confronted by the Emperor and killed atop his Gargant while the Custodians proceeded to lay waste to the rest of the Greenskin horde. The Custodians accounted for the slaughter of the Orks, slaying over 100,000 of the savage xenos, with the loss of only three Custodians. Following their momentous victory, the Emperor commemorated the Custodians' sacrifice by engraving the names of the three fallen into His own personal Artificer Armour.

• X173 Plural Xenocide (ca. 900s.M30) - This was an Imperial Compliance campaign of the Great Crusade that was carried out jointly between the White Scars Legion and the 40^th Expeditionary Fleet's Imperial Army component made up of the genetically-enhanced soldiers of the G9K Division Kill upon the world designated X173 Plural. This campaign against unknown xenos was fought over a period of six solar months, in which the troops of the G9K came to admire the focus, dedication and mercilessness of the White Scars.

• Subjugation of Kaldorax Aleph 902.M30 - The Iron Warriors 118^th and 3^rd Grand Battalions undertake the forced subjugation of Kaldorax Aleph, but sustain a high blood price to achieve victory, suffering nearly 65% casualties, though the Iron Warriors absolutely crush the non-Compliant forces of the intransigent world.

• Compliance of 47-10 (Khur) (903.M30) - The Word Bearers successfully bring Khur into Imperial Compliance approximately a Terran century before the events of Istvaan III at the outset of the Horus Heresy. The beautiful capital city of Khur, known as Monarchia, called the "Perfect City" by the Word Bearers, was built by the people of Khur at the direction and exhortation of the XVII Legion to demonstrate their faith and devotion to the God-Emperor, in direct violation of the atheist doctrine of the Imperial Truth.

• Golgothan Slaughter - Siege of Sarum (Early 900s.M30) - The first known target to suffer the wrath of the World Eaters Legion after their Primarch Angron took command was the stellar wasteland of the Golgotha Sector, located near the galactic core in the Segmentum Ultima, close to the Warp rift known simply as the Maelstrom. Here, the World Eaters came upon the Sarum Sector, and the Forge World of Sarum, which was being besieged by the Abhuman empire known as the Brotherhood of Ruin who wished to take the Mechanicum's technological secrets for themselves. The World Eaters immediately launched a brutal assault upon the Abhuman army and brutally slaughtered them. The Redjak Cult Mechanicus Tech-priests of Sarum swore to Angron and his Legion directly many oaths of fealty and entered pacts of mutual protection and support. This provided the World Eaters and their Techmarines with a ready source of resupply and armament far outside the Imperium's inner sphere. The campaign that was to follow would last eleven standard years and see no fewer than 48 worlds and outposts ravaged and destroyed by the World Eaters, and 7 separate dangerous xenos species, including a branch of the Lacrymole, rendered extinct as the XII Legion's fleet cut a swathe of destruction through the wastes of Golgotha, and even into the Maelstrom itself.

• Ghenna Massacre (Early 900s.M30) - As the Great Crusade wore on there were increasingly those in the Imperial military who whispered that Angron was mad and his Legion had followed him into madness. These whispers were voiced as widespread discontent and demands for censure when stories began to circulate that Angron had ordered his Apothecarion to conduct widespread psycho-surgery, implanting the so-called Butcher's Nails cranial implants into his Astartes, after the infamous Ghenna Massacre came to light. This action, undertaken at Angron's instigation, resulted in the entire planetary population of Ghenna, a world that had rebelled against its Imperial Commander, being exterminated in a single night of extraordinary bloodshed. The psychic screams of the dying were reported to have been audible by astropaths half a sector distant.

• Night of the Wolf (Early 900s.M30) - After the events on Ghenna, the Emperor was moved to act and called Angron before Him for reprimand. He sent Leman Russ and his Space Wolves to Ghenna, to force Angron to submit before them and be brought back to Terra for judgement and censure. Russ warned Angron that the Emperor had ordered the end of such prohibited psycho-surgery in the XII Legion. Though the Wolf King tried to talk sense into his blood-maddened brother, Angron refused to listen to reason. Eventually, with tensions rising on both sides, an inevitable confrontation took place. No one is exactly sure who started the melee, but Russ wisely chose to order his Legion to withdraw, as both Legions faced mutual annihilation if they continued upon their course. The World Eaters were later issued with orders to depart to the northern fringes of known space, there to harry and reave against xenos far from the Imperium's Human-settled core worlds.

• Keylek Genocide (921.M30) - Early in the Great Crusade the Luna Wolves encountered the hostile alien reptilian race known as the Keylekid on the world of Keylek. The grotesque Keylekid were greatly skilled in the arts of combat, and rose against the XVI Legion angrily the moment the 63^rd Expeditionary Fleet made contact. This xenocidal campaign proved to be a long, bloody, and miserable affair for the Luna Wolves.

• Discovery of Corvus Corax (922.M30) - Raised by prisoners on the mine-moon Lycaeus, Primarch Corvus Corax leads a revolution and renames his home Deliverance. When the Emperor arrives in the Principia Imperialis fleet, the two hold a secret conversation which lasts a solar day and a night -- after which Corax is left to subjugate the world of Kiavahr alone, and ultimately agrees to lead the XIX Legion. Corax quickly transformed his Legion in his own image and renamed them the Raven Guard.

• Discovery of [REDACTED] (927.M30) - [ERROR - RECORDS EXPUNGED]

• Cryptosi Purgation (927.M30) - When an exotic, meta-dimensional strain of xenos thought to be the species later referred to in some accounts as the "Cryptosi" was encountered by Imperial forces, a sub-company from the Alpha Legion was sent to the Imperium's northern reaches to investigate atrocities that had been committed. This campaign appears not to have been committed to record, although contact with colony worlds in that region was lost soon after, seemingly as a result of Legiones Astartes activity.

• Third Temporaferrox Extermination (933.M30) - The Iron Warriors 33^rd Grand Battalion successfully conduct a successful xenocide campaign against the Temporaferrox xenos. Though they suffer 78% percent casualties, all xenos life-forms are destroyed. The Iron Warriors' high command deems these losses as acceptable.

• Compliance of 63-8 (Davin (941.M30) - The Feral World of Davin is brought into Imperial Compliance by the Luna Wolves Legion. The warrior tribes of Davin were allowed to remain mostly intact as they had impressed Horus with their courage on the battlefield and their willingness to learn to adapt to Imperial culture. The Luna Wolves departed after the surrender of the Davinites, taking with them their concept of the Warrior Lodge, which was quickly adopted throughout the Luna Wolves fleet. A detachment of the XVII Legion, the Word Bearers (then known as the "Imperial Heralds"), under the command of First Captain Kor Phaeron was left to shepherd the people of Davin into the light of the Imperial Truth. The Imperial governorship of the planet was given to Commander Eugen Temba of the Imperial Army, a close friend and confidante of Horus.

• Colonisation of Gethsamaine (942.M30) - The world of Gethsamaine is found by Merchant Fleet Captains on the far edge of the Cyclops Cluster. It was accidentally discovered after a Chartist liner went off-course in an attempted passage of the void between M'Pandex and Zarnov. Gehsamaine was found to be a lush, primordial world of steaming rain forest filled with primitive flora, but where animal life had not yet developed. It was immediately identified as a prime location for colonisation, and soon numerous Warp-arks filled with teeming hives of the Segmentum Solar colonised the newly-discovered world. Gethsamaine was founded with the hopes of becoming the cornerstone for a new Human expansion to further consolidate and exploit the nearby stars for Mankind.

• Suppression of Sarosh (948.M30) - The Human-settled world of Sarosh, ruled by a massive planetary bureaucracy and originally discovered by the White Scars Legion, had initially appeared eager to join the Imperium and embrace the Imperial Truth. Yet after over a standard year of Imperial rule under its Planetary Governor Harlad Furst, its native leadership had failed to meet any of the benchmarks of Compliance. Its leaders explained to Furst that the world's large bureaucracy made the movement towards Compliance slow and difficult. To speed up the effort, the Dark Angels took over Compliance duties for Sarosh from the White Scars. After an assassination attempt on the Dark Angels Primarch Lion El'Jonson by the Sarosi leader known as the Lord High Exacter aboard El'Jonson's flagship the Invincible Reason using a hidden nucleonic device, it is discovered that the Sarosi bureaucracy system is a cover for a cult supposedly communing with xenos entities from an alternate dimension, most likely the the Warp. The Dark Angels and forces from the 4th Expeditionary Fleet eliminate all traces of the cult and bring the world into Imperial Compliance after a short but savage campaign. Editor's Note: This date is likely incorrect, as later sources place the Lion's arrival on Sarosh sometime after the end of at least the Second Rangdan Xenocide, which did not begin until 863.M30. As such, this event most likely took place in the late 9th century of M30.

• Melkeji Salvation (ca. 957.M30) - The world of Melkeji was a planet on the trailing edge of the galactic rim which had retained many of the technological marvels of Mankind's Dark Age of Technology. Unfortunately, the Human population was enthralled to nameless parasitic xenos creatures that ruled Melkeji through a class referred to as the Ascended. Knowing that they could not capture the planet, the Grand Marshal of the Expeditionary Fleet in the region sent an astropathic message asking for aid. Lorgar himself came to Melkeji with eight full Chapters of his XVII Legion. Through Lorgar's tactical genius and superb guile, he overwhelmingly defeated the vile xenos. The people of Melkeji knew that their masters were gone and that they were facing a power greater and more terrible than any they could have dreamed in their wildest nightmares. Most of the Melkeji surrendered at that moment, the rest a few solar days later. A solar decade after, Melkeji was a world faithful to the God-Emperor. Nearly a solar decade after that, half a million of its sons and daughters would come to Ultramar in 007.M31 with the names of alien gods on their lips and aid the Word Bearers in the assault upon Calth.
• Pacification of the Saryine Compact (962.M30) - The Iron Warriors 282^nd Grand Battalion successfully conduct the Pacification of the Saryine Compact, reducing rebellious garrison forces to 30% effective strength. The 282^nd Grand Battalion suffers only 32% casualties, which leads the Battalion command to be censured for a lack of zeal.

• The Razing of Monarchia (964.M30) - Monarchia was the name of the capital city of the planet Khur, built as a beautiful shrine to the God-Emperor by the XVII Legion, the Word Bearers, earlier in the Great Crusade. Monarchia, along with its false temples, was destroyed by the warriors of the Ultramarines Legion as an object lesson in the folly of false religion and violation of the Imperial Truth. The entirety of the XVII Legion was then forced to kneel in the ashes of their devotion by the psychic power of the Emperor Himself, while the Ultramarines stood over them in judgement -- that which the Word Bearers had seen as worthy devotion to the Emperor now labelled treasonous. Suffering such a humiliating rebuke at the hands of the Ultramarines, this insult would apparently fester within the XVII Legion and its Primarch and drive them willingly into heresy and ultimate service to the Ruinous Powers.

• Compliance of 47-16 (965.M30) - Forty-Seven Sixteen was the first world brought into Imperial Compliance after the rebuke of the Word Bearers by the Emperor on the world of Khur. The lost Human world had at first rejoiced to be reunited with their long-lost brothers from the stars. But the Word Bearers immediately initiated military action in the form of an orbital bombardment that wiped out nearly every single city with the exception of one. The now-corrupted XVII Legion used the excuse that they did not have the time necessary to convert the population of Forty-Seven Sixteen to the Imperial Truth, and since their supposed profane beliefs were deemed incompatible with the Imperium's order, the world of Forty-Seven Sixteen would have to be purged. The Primarch dismissed the fact that the people of this world worshiped the Emperor as a God and that they had somehow obtained a copy of the Lectitio Divinitatus, scribed by Lorgar himself. The people of Forty-Seven Sixteen were condemned by Lorgar, for ignorance was no excuse for violations of the Imperial Truth.

• ALL DATA REDACTED (965.M30) - This is an unknown action that was carried out by the Space Wolves Legion and purged from all Imperial records.

• Discovery of Cadia (966.M30) - Not long after the Compliance of 47-16 the Word Bearers undertook the so-called "Pilgrimage of Lorgar", the spiritual quest undertaken by the Primarch Lorgar and his XVII Legion to commune with the Dark Gods. The Word Bearers' pursuit of any scrap of information that could be found on the Primordial Truth or the nature of the place where Gods and mortals could mingle ultimately led the 1301^st Expeditionary Fleet to the Cadia System near the largest permanent Warp storm in the galaxy, later known to the Imperium as the Eye of Terror. The Word Bearers laid anchor over an unknown world. They made planetfall on the newly discovered planet, which they designated as 1301-12. There, they discovered the Chaos-worshipping population. It was on Cadia that Lorgar first met Ingethal, a Daemon Prince of Chaos, who was appointed by the Ruinous Powers as a guide for Lorgar and inducted the naive Primarch into the service of Chaos. This interaction would set in motion the events that brought on the cataclysmic Horus Heresy nearly four solar decades later.

• Battle of Byzanthis (ca. Mid-900s.M30) - A Dark Angels' Expeditionary Fleet, under the command of Chapter Master Merir Astelan, discovered the far-flung world of Byzanthis during their exploration of system DX-619. Following this discovery, another Dark Angels force, under the command of Chapter Master Belath, arrived in-system. The two opposing Dark Angels commanders advocated different approaches in achieving the Compliance of the newly discovered world -- Belath wanted to use military force, while Astelan preferred to try diplomacy to win over the planet's population. However, hostilities soon broke out after an engagement between the Dark Angels and defence forces of Byzanthis, which the Legionaries easily dominated. Determined to continue a diplomatic approach, Astelan went before the Byzanthis government to plead his cause for Byzanthis to accept the Imperial Truth and join the Imperium. The proceedings were interrupted when Belath teleported directly into the session with a Terminator retinue, who proceeded to slaughter the Byzanthis delegation. Enraged, Astelan knew war was now inevitable. A campaign was fought that eventually forced Byzanthis into Imperial Compliance.

• ALL DATA REDACTED (969.M30) - This is an unknown action that was carried out by the Space Wolves Legion and deleted from all Imperial records.

• Pacification of Zaramund (970.M30) - A joint-Compliance campaign is conducted by the Luna Wolves and a contingent of Death Guard led by First Captain Calas Typhon and a formation of Dark Angels led by Luther, the acting Regent of Caliban. Following their victory, a celebration is held, but soon the festivities are marred when the Primarch Lion El'Jonson arrives to rebuke Luther for disobeying his orders to remain on Caliban, intensifying the growing bad blood between the Dark Angels' top commanders.

• The Farinatus Extermination (ca. 972.M30) - The Night Lords and Raven Guard participate in a joint-Imperial campaign known as the Farinatus Extermination. NO FURTHER RECORDS AVAILABLE.

• The Breg-shei Eradication (ca. 972.M30) - On the world of Farinatus Maximus, a detachment of the Raven Guard under Commander Alkenor carry out a Writ of Annihilation against the xenos-species of the Breg-shei -- highly dangerous and hostile insectoid aliens which had evolved there. Operating alongside the VIII Legion, the Night Lords, the Raven Guard infiltration team led by Sergeant Dravian Klayde charged with collapsing the Breg-shei's nest was discovered and killed but for the tenacious Sergeant. Having lost one arm and both of his legs, Dravian Klayde still succeeded in reaching Imperial lines, dragging himself by his sole functional arm for solar days on end. This feat earned him the nickname of "The Carrion", bestowed upon him by the Night Lords who found him. Klayde would undergo extensive augmetic repairs which ultimately led him to be selected for training as a Techmarine on distant Mars, thus allowing him to be present during the Schism of Mars and play an important role in its outcome.

• Persecution of Vaomir Reaches (ca. Late-970s.M30) - Encountered through highly unusual circumstances, the Night Lords take part in the protracted persecution of the void-born Gethora Warp-Witches across the Vaomir Reaches. This was done due to the Emperor's standing edict that any Alpha-level rogue psykers that were encountered were to be destroyed outright, either through Exterminatus from orbit without direct confrontation or hunted down and slain with due prejudice. The purpose of this edict was to prevent the truth of Chaos and those who promulgated such beliefs from being revealed and casting doubt on the tenets of the Emperor's Imperial Truth.

• Compliance of Dwell (976.M30) - The world of Dwell was brought into Imperial Compliance by the Ultramarines Legion, led by Roboute Guilliman himself. This world, settled during the Dark Age of Technology by settlers from Molech, contained a vast repository of information that would later lead the Chaos-corrupted Horus to Molech in search of the origin of the Emperor's power during the Age of Technology.

• Discovery of Alpharius Omegon (981.M30) - Conflicting reports surround the return of the Primarch Alpharius to the XX Legion. Some claim he was found leading a renegade fleet by Horus himself, or saved by the Emperor from the alien Slaugth. Others suggest he was marooned upon a Dead World -- or was never lost at all, but raised on Terra itself. Of the complete truth, none can tell. One extant account states that Alpharius was discovered accidentally by the Luna Wolves when they were lured into a trap after receiving a distress beacon from one of their own battleships. When they went to assist, Horus's flagship Vengeful Spirit came under attack by an unknown enemy, and a single assassin broke into the flagship and fought his way clear to Horus' command chamber. Horus himself was forced to confront him, but thankfully, did not slay his attacker but recognised him instead as his lost brother primarch -- Alpharius. Unfortunately, the validity of this account is considered highly suspect, as is so much else about the Alpha Legion and its primarchs.

• Alpharius Omegon Assumes Command of the XX Legion (981.M30) - <RECORDS NOT AVAILABLE>

• Burning of the Pharun Drift (981.M30) - The Iron Warriors of the 3^rd, 14^th and 72^nd Grand Battalions successfully conduct the subjugation of the rebellious population of the Pharun Drift, suffering an overall casualty rate of 42%. The 3^rd Grand Battalion suffers 80% casualties. All target worlds are depopulated. These losses are deemed acceptable by Primarch Perturabo.

• Pacification of the Cheraut System (984.M30) - Following the successful joint-Compliance by the Night Lords, Emperor's Children and Imperial Fists of the Cheraut System, the three Primarchs met in celebration. After the feast, the Night Lords Primarch suffered one of the violent fits that often plagued him, and Fulgrim rushed to Curze's aid. The Night Haunter then confided in his brother the dire visions that he had seen; his death at the hands of their father, that many of the Primarchs would die fighting amongst themselves, and that the light the Emperor had brought to his homeworld of Nostramo would destroy it forever. Troubled by these dire portents, Fulgrim confided in his brother Rogal Dorn. Dorn took exception to this slight on the Emperor's name and confronted Curze. Shortly thereafter, Dorn was found unconscious and bleeding with great gouges of flesh ripped away from his torso. Crouching above his fallen brother was the pallid form of the Night Haunter, weeping. Wracked with self-loathing and guilt, Curze was taken into custody and exiled to his chambers, while his brother Primarchs discussed what actions to take against their deeply disturbed brother. Solar hours later, when the council of Primarchs finally disbanded, they found Night Haunter missing and the Imperial Fists' honour guard watching over him butchered. By the time the Primarchs gave chase, Night Haunter had already disappeared with his Legion into the Warp.

• The Destruction of Nostramo (984.M30) - The destruction of Nostramo was an Exterminatus action conducted by the now-rogue Night Lords Legion after the Night Haunter's attack on Rogal Dorn towards the end of the Great Crusade, follwoing the pacification of Cheraut. The VIII Legion willingly destroyed their own homeworld of Nostramo on the order of their Primarch, concentrating deadly Lance-strikes on the planet's unstable core which resulted in tumultuous seismic activity that eventually ripped the dark planet apart in a wave of destruction. This event fulfilled the Night Haunter's vision of seeing his planet being destroyed by beams of white light that erupted from the heavens. For this crime, Curze was recalled to Terra by the Emperor to be reprimanded for his brutal tactics, but instead he ultimately joined the Warmaster Horus in open rebellion during the Horus Heresy before he could return to Terra and stand before his father.

• The Hunting of the Ak'Haireth (989.M30) - In 986.M30, reports of attacks against isolated outposts and shipping in the region of the stellar wastes near Olmec indicated that the Ak'Haireth were again dangerously growing in strength and number. The Alpha Legion were assigned the xenocide of the species before it could spread further. Within three sidereal Terran years, they accomplished this feat by working in conjunction with the Magos Biologis and creating a deadly bio-weapon that poisoned the source of the "Bone Drinkers" nourishment -- the Humans that lived on the worlds and plied the stars between those planets. The malignancy of the virus caused those Ak'Haireth that fed on the targeted populations to fall ill and die -- at the cost of also killing 7% of those Humans who had been infected with the virus. But the Ak'Haireth species had been caught unawares and was finally driven to extinction.

• Xenocide of the Khrave (ca. 990.M30) - Corvus Corax and his Raven Guard Legion were deployed in the far galactic north, pressing the Great Crusade's expansion past the reaches of the Segmentum Obscurus, when they discovered Indra-sûl, and the greatest Khrave dominion encountered so far in Imperial history. The Khrave were a dangerous species of psychically-gifted xenos that preyed on Human worlds, enslaving entire populations to feast on them and thus strengthening themselves. After a protracted and bloody campaign, Corax successfully wiped out the Khrave and liberated Indra-sûl from their xenos masters. Unknown to the Raven Guard, the Iterators and other Imperial servants following on the heels of the XIX Legion's advance would later condemn the survivors to a living death as Servitor labourers, seeing them as corrupted in both mind and body.

• Siege of Barrakan (Mid-900s.M30) - This was an Imperial Compliance action carried out by the Dark Angels during the Great Crusade against the Orks on the world of Barrakan. A notable campaign of this Compliance action was the defence of Firebase Endriago. A Chapter of the Dark Angels had been cut off by the Greenskins and trapped at the firebase for 18 solar months. By the end, the beleaguered Astartes were fighting off the alien assaults with fists and pieces of sharpened steel scavenged from bombed-out strongpoints, but through it all Brother Nemiel had never wavered. He had taunted the Greenskins relentlessly and exhorted his brothers to acts of ever-greater defiance in the face of insurmountable odds. When a Greenskin's crude axe had shattered his knee he had grabbed the beast by one of its tusks and kicked it to death just for spite. When the last line of defence was broken, he had stood his ground in the face of a massive xenos champion and fought an epic duel that had given the Chapter time to launch a counterattack that finally exhausted the last of the enemy's strength. The next day, when relief forces finally managed to fight their way through to the firebase, Nemiel had stood on the ramparts and cheered with the rest of his brothers. It took several solar minutes before he registered the slaps on his shoulders and back and realised that the Chapter was not cheering for victory -- they were cheering for him. Not long after, the Chapter voted unanimously for him to take the place of Brother-Redemptor Barthiel, who had fallen during the darkest hours of the siege.

• Compliance of the Istvaan System (994.M30) - One of the more notable campaigns carried out by Primarch Corvus Corax and his Raven Guard Legion during the Great Crusade was the Imperial Compliance of the Istvaan System in 994.M30, located in the northern reaches of Segmentum Ultima. The Istvaan System had required force to impose Compliance, so an outlander was chosen rather than a local to rule, and this task was given to Vardus Praal, formerly a Major of the XI^th Lastran Rifles of the Imperial Army, and later career politician of the Ultima Segmentum Court.

• Pacification of the Hith System (ca. 995.M30) - Approximately a solar decade prior to the events of the Istvaan III Atrocity, the pacification of the Hith System against the Orks of Charhack was the largest concentration of Imperial military force seen to that time, which comprised well over 200,000 Space Marines, although exact figures could not be corroborated. These Legiones Astartes fought alongside Titan support from the Legio Mortis, Legio Audax and Legio Vulpa and a number of Imperialis Auxilia units.

• Subjugation of Kernunnos (ca. 997.M30) - This was an Imperial Compliance action carried out by the Wolf Lord Bulveye of the 13^th Great Company and the Imperial Army contingent known as the Arcturan Dragoons against the world of Kernunnos located in the Lammas Sector. When the 954^th Expedition came to the Lammas Sector, they brought good tidings and the Imperial Truth from the Emperor. But despite the Wolf Lords' open-handed gesture of peace, the twelve ruling self-styled "Tyrants of Lammas" spat upon His gesture of peace and unity. Seven standard years later, their fleets lay broken and their armies scattered. The Tyrants were stripped of their position of power and all their pilfered wealth was used to help rebuild what was lost, and ensure that the worlds of the Lammas Sector became prosperous and stable members of the Imperium.

• Suppression of the Gordian League (998.M30-005.M31 - The Dark Angels Legion fought this Imperial Compliance campaign against the Gordian League -- a confederation of Human worlds who were allied with degenerate xenos. The Dark Angels were still bogged down during this campaign in 005.M31, when they received word of Horus' treachery at Istvaan III, as well as the secession of the World Eaters, Emperor's Children and Death Guard Legions. Lion El'Jonson believed that the Dark Angels' deployment to the Shield Worlds was part of an effort to scatter the Imperium's most loyal servants as far as possible in order to minimize the number of Loyalist Legions Horus would have to face at any given time. Jonson's forces were too deeply enmeshed in the Shield Worlds to respond quickly to Horus' treachery; the best estimates of the Primarch's staff indicated that it would take them nearly eight solar months to conclude their offensive operations, even on an emergency basis, and reposition themselves for a strike against Istvaan V. The Primarch issued orders for many of his reserve squadrons to resupply and prepare for immediate deployment to the Tanagra System. Their primary target was to secure the Forge World of Diamat. They could not afford to let the Warmaster acquire the substantial supplies and ordnance needed to fortify the world of Istvaan V against the approaching Loyalist strike force. Jonson would later personally lead the expedition to Diamat, with a battle group of fifteen warships.

• Compliance of Melchior (ca. 999.M30) - The Imperial Compliance of Melchior was a joint campaign that was carried out by both the Luna Wolves and the Blood Angels Legions. The world was the last bastion of the xenos known as the "Nephilim" -- a parasitic alien species that slowly fed on Humans and had claimed a hundred worlds before they had come to rest upon Melchior. Even their moniker, Nephilim, the name of the fallen biblical seraphs, was a name taken from ancient Human mythology. The Luna Wolves and Blood Angels stood shoulder-to-shoulder and brought their full unfettered wrath down upon the upstart xenos. Caught between the brutal fury of two Space Marine Legions on Melchior's shining sands, the Nephilim were finally put to the sword.

• Pacification of Aghoru (ca. 999.M30) - The Aghoru Campaign was an Imperial Compliance action carried out by the then-loyal Thousand Sons and a small contingent of the Space Wolves Legion in the waning years of the Great Crusade. Though Imperial Compliance was successfully accomplished through diplomacy and considered a success, soon notable combat action took place between the Thousand Sons and an apparent Warp denizen infestation (beings known to the local population as "Elohim") within the subterranean passages of the vast artificial peak known as "The Mountain" which the Space Wolves helped to put down.

• The World-Prince Campaign (ca. 999.M30) - This was one of the final campaigns fought by the Imperial Fists during the waning years of the Great Crusade upon an unnamed Hive World against a non-Compliant Human civilisation ruled over by a monarch known as the World-Prince. Initially, the World-Prince had refused to surrender to the Imperium and stubbornly resisted the efforts of the Imperial Fists led by Rogal Dorn himself. The Imperial Fists systematically fought one hive city at a time, and were making slow but steady progress, until the Alpha Legion arrived unexpectedly. Informing their fellow Legion that they were there as allies, the Alpha Legion immediately began operations against the intransigent world. Though no Alpha Legion warriors were encountered by the Imperial Fists during the campaign on the ground, their signature passing was abundantly clear, as soon, uprisings and coups began to erupt across the remaining hives, which threw the beleaguered world into absolute anarchy. Following the death of over 400 members of the World-Prince's nobility, he capitulated to Rogal Dorn. Enraged, Dorn confronted Alpharius and scorned him for his disreputable way of waging war. He then ordered the Alpha Legion to cease all operations and to leave the planet. In one final act of spite, Dorn also proceeded to lay out the Alpha Legion's entire plan, and poked holes in its overall effectiveness, before walking away in disgust.

• Compliance of 670-25 (Nurth) (ca. 999.M30) - The Alpha Legion responds to request for aid from the 670^th Expeditionary Fleet to take part in the Imperial Compliance of the world of Nurth. Unfortunately, the planet is lost when a Chaos-tainted local military force, known as the Echvehnurth, activated a Warp-tainted artefact known as a Black Cube, as a last act of defiance. Once the artefact was activated, Nurth was transformed into a world inimical to all sentient life nearly overnight, almost wiping out all Imperial forces on the ground.

• Pacification of Ark Reach Secundus (ca. 999.M30) - The Ark Reach Cluster had been discovered by the Word Bearers Legion's 47^th Expeditionary Fleet; it was a group of binary stars occupied by a number of belligerent planetary empires that rejected the Imperium's offer to become part of the Emperor's growing demesne. This Imperial Compliance action of the Great Crusade was carried out through the combined efforts of the Thousand Sons working in concert with elements from the Space Wolves and the Word Bearers Legions. The first four star systems fell to the Word Bearers and Space Wolves. But the fifth world and the sixth, known as Shrike, required the assistance of the Thousand Sons. The return to the XV Legion of the dreaded mutational "flesh-change" occurred at the conclusion of this campaign and helped to bring on the eternal enmity between the Space Wolves and the Thousand Sons, as the Space Wolves increasingly regarded the Astartes of the XV Legion as "impure".

• The Ullanor Crusade and Triumph of Ullanor (ca. 999.M30-000.M30) - The Ullanor Crusade was a vast Imperial assault on the Ork Empire of the Overlord Urrlak Urruk, the largest such Greenskin empire ever encountered in Mankind's history to that time. The Crusade included the deployment of 100,000 Space Marines, 8,000,000 Imperial Army troops, and thousands of Armada Imperialis starships and their support personnel. The Ullanor Crusade marked the high point of the Great Crusade's vast effort to reunite the scattered colony worlds of Humanity across the galaxy.

See Also

• Great Crusade Chronology

Sources

• Codex: Chaos Daemons (6th Edition), pg. 20
• Codex: Dark Angels (4th Edition), pg. 73
• Codex: Dark Eldar (5th Edition), pg. 20
• Codex: Dark Eldar (4th Edition), pp. 4-5
• Codex: Sisters of Battle (2nd Edition)
• Codex: Space Marines (5th Edition), pg. 8
• Codex: Space Marines (3rd Edition), pg. 47
• Codex: Space Wolves (5th Edition), pg. 9
• Codex: Ultramarines (2nd Edition)
• Dark Heresy: Blood of Martyrs (RPG), pg. 57
• Dark Heresy: Core Rulebook (RPG)
• Dark Heresy: Creatures Anathema (RPG), pp. 76-85
• Dark Heresy: Daemon Hunter (RPG), pp. 58-59
• Dark Heresy: Inquisitor's Handbook (RPG), pp. 68-70
• Dark Heresy: The Lathe Worlds (RPG)
• Horus Heresy: Collected Visions
• Imperial Armour Volume Twelve - The Fall of Orpheus, pg. 16
• Index Astartes I
• Index Astartes II
• Index Astartes III
• Index Astartes IV
• Renegades: Eldar and Chaos Armies for Space Marine (2nd Edition)
• The Horus Heresy - Book One: Betrayal by Alan Bligh, pp. 38-40, 80-81, 103-104, 122
• The Horus Heresy - Book Two: Massacre by Alan Bligh, pp. 14, 19, 65-66, 98
• The Horus Heresy - Book Three: Extermination by Alan Bligh (Forge World Series), pp. 19, 60, 67, 75, 80-82, 94, 102, 109-110, 152, 155, 251
• The Horus Heresy - Book Four: Conquest by Alan Bligh (Forge World Series), pp. 66-67, 72-73
• The Horus Heresy - Book Seven: Inferno by Alan Bligh (Forge World Series), pg. 10
• Warhammer 40,000: Compendium (2nd Edition), ""Warhammer 40,000: Squats - Space Dwarf Warriors & Mercenaries," by Bryan Ansell, Nigel Stillman & Graeme Davis, pp. 164-166
• Warhammer 40,000: Rulebook (6th Edition), pp. 167-168
• Warhammer 40,000: Rulebook (5th Edition), pg. 122
• White Dwarf 308 (US), "Priests of Mars", pg. 84
• White Dwarf 191 (US), "Ordinatus: Imperium - The Adeptus Mechanicus", pp. 49-53
• White Dwarf 178 (US), "The Titan Legions: History, The Adeptus Mechanicus - The Birth of the Cult Mechanicus", pp. 45-52
• White Dwarf 166 (UK), "Codex Imperialis"
• Horus Rising (Novel) by Dan Abnett
• False Gods (Novel) by Graham McNeill
• Galaxy in Flames (Novel) by Ben Counter
• Flight of the Eisenstein (Novel) by James Swallow
• Fulgrim (Novel) by Graham McNeill
• Descent of Angels (Novel) by Mitchel Scanlon
• Mechanicum (Novel) by Graham McNeill
• Legion (Novel) by Dan Abnett
• The Outcast Dead (Novel) by Graham McNeill
• A Thousand Sons (Novel) by Graham McNeill
• The First Heretic (Novel) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden
• Age of Darkness (Anthology), various Authors
• Tales of Heresy (Anthology), various Authors
• Fear to Tread (Novel) by James Swallow
• Deliverance Lost (Novel) by Gav Thorpe
• Mark of Calth (Anthology), "Umarked" (Short Story) by Dan Abnett
• The Imperial Truth (Anthology), "The Devine Adoratrice" (Short Story) by Graham McNeill
• Shadows of Treachery (Anthology), "Prince of Crows" (Short Story) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden
• Timeline of the 31st Millennium

M29	Timeline	M31