text
stringlengths 27
208k
|
|---|
Ulthwé - Sources: Citadel Journal 17, "The Storm, The Hunter and the Seer: Eldrad Ulthran, The Farseer of Ulthwe", pp. 47-48Codex: Adeptus Sororitas (6th Edition) (Digital Edition), pp. 17-18Codex: Craftworlds (8th Edition), pg. 29Codex: Eye of Terror (3rd Edition)Codex: Eldar Craftworlds (7th Edition), pp. 39-40, 48, 52, 172-179, 279-281Codex: Eldar (6th Edition), pp. 14, 21-23, 28, 53, 74, 82, 86Codex: Eldar (4th Edition), pp. 50-51Codex: Eldar (3rd Edition), pg. 37Codex: Eldar (2nd Edition), pg. 33Craftworld Iyanden - A Codex: Eldar Supplement (6th Edition), pp. 23-24The Gathering Storm - Part Two - Fracture of Biel-Tan (7th Edition), pp. 4-101Psychic Awakening - Phoenix Rising (8th Edition), pp. 14-15Warhammer 40,000: Planetstrike (5th Edition), pg. 56White Dwarf 286 (US), "Heroes and Villains of the 41st Millennium: Eldrad Ulthran, Farseer of Ulthwé" by Phil KellyWhite Dwarf 227 (US), "Chapter Approved: Eldar - Eldrad Ulthran: Farseer", pp. 73-80White Dwarf 172 (US), "The Eldar", pp. 5-16Fulgrim (Novel) by Graham McNeillDawn of War Omnibus (Novel) by C. S. Goto, pp. 279-281Dawn of War: Tempest (Novel) by C.S. GotoHarlequin (Inquistion War Trilogy) by Ian WatsonFarseer (Novel) by William KingWarrior Coven (Novel) by C.S. GotoWarhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Winter Assault (PC Game)Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade (PC Game)Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Soulstorm (PC Game)Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II (PC Game)Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II (PC Game)Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Retribution (PC Game) |
Ulthyr Ellarion - Ulthyr Ellarion: Ulthyr Ellarion is an Aeldari Corsair lord active in Calixis Sector space who also may have some unknown ties with the Crow Spirits corsairs of the Koronus Expanse. He is the commander of the Craftworld Aeldari starship called Twilight's End.The enigmatic Aeldari are rarely seen in the Calixis Sector -- these aliens seem to shun the region, though relics and ruins of their ancient civilisation have been discovered on a handful of Calixian worlds. Among the few Craftworld Aeldari who do traverse the sector, none are as infamous as the corsair lord Ulthyr Ellarion. Some say he remains in order to recover a special spirit stone, precious to him for some personal reason. Others claim that he simply revels in the thrill of the hunt, and finds Humanity to be most excellent sport.The Navis Imperialis' Battlefleet Calixis has pursued Ellarion's elusive voidship throughout the sub-sector of the Drusus Marches for over four standard centuries. Though he has been brought to battle more than once, the Eldar and his vessel have either triumphed or disengaged in every encounter. Merchant vessels, however, have had even worse luck -- over a thousand shipments have been raided by Ellarion's piratical crew. A figure of some myth and legend, Ulthyr Ellarion keeps no counsel but his own, striking when and where he wishes with seemingly no regard for the Imperial Navy's orbital defences or patrols.More than a few Inquisitors of the Ordo Xenos have lost their lives or vanished into the depths of space attempting to confront this alien marauder and end his predations upon Imperial shipping once and for all. A handful of dedicated Radicals, however, seek Ellarion more to learn from him than to slay him, for he has shown he can be bargained with on a number of previous occasions.In 784.M41 at the Battle of Sheol the Dauntless–class Light Cruiser Argent Herald of the Battlefleet Calixis under the command of Captain Marchand was ambushed by a Chaos warship that had been concealed by some type of Warp sorcery as it emerged back into realspace. It was not long before the Argent Herald was crippled, adrift and venting plasma into the void.Like many other systems, the ship's saviour pods were nonfunctional, and the ship's confessor began to consign his crew's souls to the Emperor. It was then that one of the ship's officers, Leomyr, a future captain of the Imperial Navy, saw a xenos vessel appear upon the Imperial starship's flickering auspex array, black and sharp like the edge of night. The image shifted and flowed, barely visible from one solar second to the next.The alien vessel was the Aeldari Corsair voidship Twilight's End, and it slid smoothly behind the Traitor vessel and blew it apart with a perfectly–timed volley of torpedoes. The alien vessel hailed the Argent Herald on vox to gloat. In a few, well-chosen words in perfect Low Gothic, the xenos ship's corsair captain, Ulthyr Ellarion, mocked the Imperials, made sport of their valour, and humiliated Captain Marchand. Yet all aboard knew that they owed their lives to the duplicitous alien pirates. |
Ulthyr Ellarion - Wargear: Craftworld Aeldari Mesh ArmourMaster-crafted Shuriken PistolMaster-crafted Aeldari Power SwordXenos-craft Medi-kit (Adopted for Aeldari physiology) |
Ultima Founding - Ultima Founding: The Ultima Founding of Space Marine Chapters occurred in the wake of the events of Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade and the fall of Cadia in ca. 999.M41.The Chapters raised during this Founding consisted entirely of Primaris Space Marines who had been created from a new stock of modified gene-seed -- crafted over ten millennia by Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl -- as the supreme contingency plan and the ultimate defenders of the Imperium of Man against the darkness that now encroaches from all sides.The Ultramarines Primarch Roboute Guilliman, always an optimist, but never a fool, had learned from the mistakes of the Horus Heresy. He had foreseen that the forces of Chaos would never relent in their aim to bring the Imperium of Man low.He anticipated that the threats Chaos and the xenos presented to Humanity would engulf the galaxy and knew that warriors resilient enough to stand against them would be needed as never before.Therefore, he set a task for the Priesthood of Mars: to develop a new legion of transhuman warriors -- the Primaris Space Marines -- who were bigger, more physically powerful and possessed faster reaction times than their original Astartes counterparts.Developed by Archmagos Dominus Cawl on orders from Guilliman 100 standard centuries past, the Primaris Space Marines were perfected by the Mechanicus during the long intervening millennia.Now, as the Imperium is poised on the brink of annihilation at the hands of its myriad foes, Guilliman's task is at last complete. |
Ultima Founding - History: In the latter years of the 41st Millennium, the scattered Space Marine Chapters of the galaxy have been bled dry by ten thousand standard years of constant battle. With the advent of gigantic Warp Storms that swallow whole star systems, the formation of the Great Rift and constant attacks by the forces of Chaos, rampaging xenos and more, the Adeptus Astartes are stretched thinner than ever.With many Chapter planets now actively under siege, some Chapters are confirmed as destroyed or lost, and even those faring relatively well have suffered high casualties and are in desperate need of reinforcement.With the resurrection of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman, the Avenging Son has assumed command as lord commander of the Imperium over all of Humanity's military forces. Finally, after ten millennia, he has put into action his ultimate contingency plan -- the Primaris Space Marines.These new warriors are the next step in the evolution of the Emperor's original Angels of Death, genetically altered from their brethren to be bigger, stronger and faster. The Primaris Space Marines represent timely reinforcements for the Imperium's armies as their enemies close in for the kill.This initial wave of Primaris Space Marines emerged from over 10,000 standard years of stasis fully psychologically indoctrinated to each fulfil a single strategic role. Some were Intercessors, some Aggressors and so forth, and almost all specialised only in that one area of combat.These warriors were able to immediately take up their front-line combat duties with the expertise of veterans, and all possessed a modicum of additional skill with Machine Spirits thanks to their Martian heritage.Yet ultimately they were somewhat strategically inflexible, for they had not undergone the gruelling progression through their existing Chapters' companies or gained the wealth of experience that progress bestowed. Some of these Martian Primaris Marines formed entirely new Chapters such as the Rift Stalkers or the Silver Templars.The rest joined the Indomitus Crusade as "Greyshields," fighting together with the scions of other Chapters and Primarchs as part of the force known as the Unnumbered Sons until the Indomitus Crusade fleets reached their adoptive homeworld or the fleet of the Firstborn Chapters they were destined to join.Each time such a momentous occasion came, another cadre of Battle-Brothers would peel off and reinforce the Chapter whose colours they wore and whose genetic heritage they shared. Not all of these Primaris reinforcements had an easy time integrating with their erstwhile Firstborn brothers, but ultimately all brought fresh strength to the Space Marine Chapters fighting furiously against the tide of horrors vomited from the Great Rift.The newly reinstated Lord Commander of the Imperium has decreed that those Chapters most devastated by the ongoing wars should be amongst the first to be reinforced with this new breed of transhuman warrior. Starting with the Ultramarines, but also deploying these new Space Marines to every other Chapter in need, Guilliman aims to reinforce the Imperium's scattered defenders across the galaxy. It is not just as reinforcements to existing Chapters though.Guilliman has also ordered the creation of a host of new Chapters, the so-called "Ultima Founding," composed entirely of Primaris Space Marines. The warriors of these new Chapters were created entirely using the new processes discovered by Archmagos Belisarius Cawl and established with all the necessary weapons, armour and equipment that they will need to conduct their defence of the Imperium.These Chapters still trace their genetic lineage back to the gene-seed of the First Founding, and scions of all nine Loyalist Space Marine Legions emerged from the vaults beneath the Red Planet. They benefit from three additional gene-seed organs and larger size, but it still remains to be seen if Cawl was able to successfully stabilise any of the known genetic deviations or impart any additional resistance to the effects of Chaos.Many of these new Chapters have been assigned homeworlds on the edge of the Great Rift, the Imperium's new frontline in the war against Chaos, though some have inherited the empty fortress-monasteries of Chapters that had been lost to the attrition of constant war. Many of these worlds face a continuous battle against the daemons of the Warp, as well as an unpredictable mix of xenos raiders, pirates and invaders. |
Ultima Founding - Primaris: At the dawn of the Indomitus Crusade to retake the Imperium from the advancing armies of Chaos and xenos alike, Lord Commander of the Imperium Roboute Guilliman gathered his new armada, along with elements of the Adeptus Custodes, a small contingent of the Silent Sisterhood and a vast war host of Primaris Space Marines as he fought to liberate the scattered bastions of the Imperium.Some, Guilliman had forged into new Space Marine Chapters, whole brotherhoods comprised only of these new transhuman warriors. Others he offered to the existing Space Marine Chapters. Many Chapter Masters welcomed their Primaris brethren into their ranks, accepting the new reinforcements gladly.Others, though, viewed these new creations with suspicion or outright hostility, claiming that the Emperor's work should never have been meddled with by mere mortals.Fortunately, the Emissaries Imperatus, a Shield Host of the Adeptus Custodes, the elite bodyguard of the Master of Mankind, stepped forward to intercede, stating that the gift that was the Primaris Marines was the will of the Emperor.As "Heralds of the Golden Throne," they accompanied Guilliman's crusade, many of them taking to the air as Vertus Praetors, the quicker to deliver messages of reinforcement to the embattled Space Marines.The presence of the Adeptus Custodes also ensured that even the most traditional Chapters accepted the Primaris warriors into their ranks. One does not decline a gift from the Emperor's own hand, after all. |
Ultima Founding - Indomitus Crusade: As the Indomitus Crusade launched by Guilliman penetrated deeper into the galaxy, Archmagos Cawl kept his automaton workers on overdrive, risking meltdowns with their accelerated speeds.Locked deep in the labyrinthine holds of his Ark Mechanicus Zar-Quaesitor, thousands of Primaris Space Marines -- some comprising entirely new Chapters and others designated as reinforcements for existing ones -- were awakened out of stasis and made ready to join the fray.On battle-scarred Rynn's World, the arrival of the Indomitus Crusade broke the daemonic legions of the Daemon Prince Rhaxor.After the fighting was done, the Crimson Fists marvelled at the return of Roboute Guilliman, but were even more grateful for the arrival of Primaris Space Marines bearing their own heraldry. Here were warriors whose genetic composition was closer to their own primarch, Rogal Dorn, than had ever before existed.For his raw material, Cawl had selected warriors of Terra, and had taken them only a few generations after the original Imperial Fists had been created by the Emperor. Indeed, some had been held in stasis since the days of the Great Crusade; a few of the Primaris Space Marines could recall having seen Rogal Dorn himself.Again and again the crusaders watched the same tale unfold. When those of the Ultima Founding were brought before their Chapters, it was like a meeting of brothers separated at birth. Arriving at a time of great darkness and upheaval, the new transhuman warriors' strength was welcomed.Such unusual reunions were repeated on many Astartes worlds, including Chogoris, Ultramar and Baal, where the Crusade arrived even as the proud Sons of Sanguinius were making what they thought would be their last stand against the Tyranids of Hive Fleet Leviathan during what became known as the Devastation of Baal.Despite cleaving a wide path through the darkness that beset the Imperium, the Indomitus Crusade began to break down. When the vast holds of the Zar-Quaesitor were at last emptied, Archmagos Cawl departed, for he had many more secret vaults to activate in order to complete the Ultima Founding.Once deployed, the new Primaris Chapters -- such as the Rift Stalkers or the Umbral Knights -- remained after the initial conflicts were won, seeking to consolidate the Crusade's gains; in many cases, they did this by establishing their own new Chapter planets.In this way, the Crusade not only freed worlds from the tyranny of the Dark Gods, but also strengthened their defences against further attacks that were sure to come. Finally, Roboute Guilliman could no longer delay responding to the distress signals coming from his Chapter's own home Realm of Ultramar, which was itself once more besieged.All their triumphs were but a sliver of light piercing the ink-black void, their many campaigns unable to reach the vast number of imperilled planets -- yet it was a start. Later it was said that during the darkest hours the Imperium had endured since the Horus Heresy, it was the Indomitus Crusade -- and the reinforcements of the Ultima Founding -- that gave Mankind the hope to persevere. |
Ultima Founding - Notable Ultima Founding Chapters: Chapter NameChapter IconProgenitor ChapterLegion NumberAngels of DefianceDark AngelsIBlades of Vengeance <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/3/3e/BoV_SP_2.png/revision/latest?cb=20171222001727" class="image"><img alt="BoV SP 2" src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/3/3e/BoV_SP_2.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/210?cb=20171222001727" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="210" height="169" class="thumbimage" data-image-name="BoV SP 2.png" data-image-key="BoV_SP_2.png" data-relevant="1" data-src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/3/3e/BoV_SP_2.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/210?cb=20171222001727" /></a> Dark AngelsIAstral BearsPict-File UnavailableWhite ScarsVStorm Reapers <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/3/39/StormReapersBadge.png/revision/latest?cb=20181220165009" class="image"><img alt="StormReapersBadge" src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/3/39/StormReapersBadge.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/210?cb=20181220165009" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="210" height="173" class="thumbimage" data-image-name="StormReapersBadge.png" data-image-key="StormReapersBadge.png" data-relevant="1" data-src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/3/39/StormReapersBadge.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/210?cb=20181220165009" /></a> White ScarsVIcefangsPict-File UnavailableSpace WolvesVIWolfspearSpace WolvesVISons of the PhoenixImperial FistsVIIKnights of ByzantiumIron HandsXBlood ScythesBlood AngelsIXKnights of the Chalice <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/1/1d/KoC_SP.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20230808223708" class="image"><img alt="KoC SP" src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/1/1d/KoC_SP.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/210?cb=20230808223708" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="210" height="184" class="thumbimage" data-image-name="KoC SP.jpg" data-image-key="KoC_SP.jpg" data-relevant="1" data-src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/1/1d/KoC_SP.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/210?cb=20230808223708" /></a> Blood AngelsIXCastellans of the RiftUltramarinesXIIIFulminatorsUltramarinesXIIIKnights CeruleanPict-File UnavailableUltramarinesXIIIPraetors of UltramarPict-File UnavailableUltramarinesXIIIVoid Tridents <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/0/0f/Void_Tridents%27_Chapter_Badge.png/revision/latest?cb=20181219092121" class="image"><img alt="Void Tridents' Chapter Badge" src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/0/0f/Void_Tridents%27_Chapter_Badge.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/210?cb=20181219092121" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="210" height="182" class="thumbimage" data-image-name="Void Tridents' Chapter Badge.png" data-image-key="Void_Tridents%27_Chapter_Badge.png" data-relevant="1" data-src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/0/0f/Void_Tridents%27_Chapter_Badge.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/210?cb=20181219092121" /></a> UltramarinesXIIISilver TemplarsUltramarinesXIIIBlack VipersSalamandersXVIIICovenant of FireSalamandersXVIIIDark KrakensSalamandersXVIIIDragonspearsSalamandersXVIIIIron DrakesPict-File UnavailableSalamandersXVIIIIron RavensRaven GuardXIXNecropolis HawksRaven GuardXIXRift StalkersRaven GuardXIXBlack VulturesPict-File UnavailableUnknownUnknownBrazen SkullsUnknownUnknownNemesorsPict-File UnavailableUnknownUnknownKnights of ThunderPict-File UnavailableUnknownUnknownPrime Absolvers <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/6/6d/Prime_Absolvers_Armorial.png/revision/latest?cb=20220615062830" class="image"><img alt="Prime Absolvers Armorial" src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/6/6d/Prime_Absolvers_Armorial.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/210?cb=20220615062830" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="210" height="182" class="thumbimage" data-image-name="Prime Absolvers Armorial.png" data-image-key="Prime_Absolvers_Armorial.png" data-relevant="1" data-src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/6/6d/Prime_Absolvers_Armorial.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/210?cb=20220615062830" /></a> Dark AngelsIRift CobrasPict-File UnavailableUnknownUnknownSilver DrakesPict-File UnavailableUnknownUnknownSoul DrinkersUnknownUnknownThe Unnamed <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/b/b1/The_Unnamed_Armorial.png/revision/latest?cb=20220615064926" class="image"><img alt="The Unnamed Armorial" src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/b/b1/The_Unnamed_Armorial.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/210?cb=20220615064926" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="210" height="182" class="thumbimage" data-image-name="The Unnamed Armorial.png" data-image-key="The_Unnamed_Armorial.png" data-relevant="1" data-src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/b/b1/The_Unnamed_Armorial.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/210?cb=20220615064926" /></a> Dark AngelsIValiant BladesPict-File UnavailableUnknownUnknownUmbral KnightsPict-File UnavailableUnknownUnknown |
Ultima Sector - Ultima Sector: The Ultima Sector is a sector of Imperial space located in the Segmentum Ultima in the galactic east. It is the home sector of the Realm of Ultramar, the autonomous stellar domain of the Ultramarines Chapter, which is one of its sub-sectors. |
Ultimaris Decree - Ultimaris Decree: The Ultimaris Decree was a proclamation made by Primarch Roboute Guilliman after his resurrection in the Era Indomitus that provided Primaris Space Marine reinforcements for the struggling Deathwatch Chapter. |
Ultimaris Decree - History: Resurrected and returned to the Imperium in its hour of greatest need during the Ultramar Campaign of the 13th Black Crusade, Primarch Roboute Guilliman strove to reunite his father's shattered realm after the start of the Era Indomitus. As the lord commander of the Imperium and Imperial Regent, he presided over the Ultima Founding of the Adeptus Astartes, wherein the long-slumbering Primaris Space Marines were awoken by the primarch's ally and their creator Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl and sent to join the war against Chaos.As part of this grand mobilisation, Guilliman seconded entire Chapters' worth of Primaris battle-brothers and deployed them -- along with all their supporting materiel -- to reinforce the hard-pressed Deathwatch as so-called "Fortis Kill-teams" and pull them back from the brink of annihilation. Other types of Primaris kill-teams were soon established as the watch masters of the Deathwatch began to find new ways to use their improved transhuman warriors.When Guilliman first learned of the existence of the Deathwatch after his awakening, he realised two things: the necessity for the Chapter's existence and the wisdom of its creation in the 32nd Millennium, and how thinly stretched its resources were. In some places, the Great Rift had cut watch fortresses off from any support. In others, furious Warp storms drove desperate xenos migrations before them, leaving the Deathwatch embattled against waves of displaced enemies that had nothing left to lose. Foreseeing that Humanity's shield against the alien would soon be sundered without aid, he issued the Ultimaris Decree, so that every newly-founded Primaris Marine-only Space Marine Chapter created during the Ultima Founding would be bound to provide Primaris Marines for the Deathwatch in perpetuity.The Ultimaris Decree also directly reinforced many watch fortresses across the Imperium with Primaris Marines. In total, thousands of the new generation of Space Marines were distributed to the Chapter's watch masters, nearly all of whom accepted the new Space Marines without question, so dire were their circumstances in the Era Indomitus. Soon enough the Primaris Marines' might was proven to their Firstborn brethren, and put to good use.There had long been no single name for the agreement by which Space Marine Chapters pledged their warriors to the Deathwatch, and few possessed identical terms. To the Ultramarines, it is the "Accord Eternus," while the White Scars fulfill what they call the "Kardunn Pact" -- named for the site where the bargain was struck in blood. The Knights of Abhorrence maintain their secret "57th Protocol," while most Ultima Founding Primaris Chapters had their Deathwatch tithe established through the holocryptic sections of the Ultrimaris Decree.However, some Primaris Chapters have since annulled those sections of the decree from applying to them and enacted their own individual alliances with the Deathwatch like many of the Firstborn Chapters. |
Ultramar - Ultramar: Ultramar, also called the Realm of Ultramar, referred to in ancient times as the "Five Hundred Worlds" and known formally in the 41st Millennium as Sub-sector Ultramar, is the feudal interstellar empire within the Imperium of Man's Segmentum Ultima that is governed by the Ultramarines Chapter of Space Marines. It is a part of the Ultima Sector in the Segmentum Ultima of the galactic east. It is ruled directly by the Ultramarines' Chapter Master who holds the Imperial noble titles of "Lord Macragge" and "Lord Defender of Greater Ultramar." The name of the realm was derived from an ancient phrase meaning "beyond the sea of night."The commonly used demonym for the citizens of Ultramar is "Ultramarian."One aspect of the Ultramarines Legion that survived the Second Founding was the close relationship between those Astartes and the populations of the surrounding planets. During the Great Crusade the worlds around the XIII Legion's homeworld of Macragge provided young recruits for the Ultramarines. They also supplied raw materials, armaments and spacecraft. At that time, Ultramar was a vast stellar pocket empire comprising over five hundred worlds.Although the need to recruit from these worlds diminished almost to the vanishing point with the reorganisation of the Imperium after the Horus Heresy when Ultramar was reduced to its present, far smaller size on the orders of Primarch Roboute Guilliman, the tradition continued. To this day, the Ultramarines recruit not from a single world, but from the whole sub-sector of their local space. This area around Macragge is called Ultramar, the stellar empire of the Ultramarines.In the wake of the resurrection of Roboute Guilliman during the Ultramar Campaign of the 13th Black Crusade in ca. 999.M41, one of his first acts was to declare the autonomy of many worlds that had once been a part of Ultramar but had been allowed by him to break away after the Horus Heresy to be null and void.With his reclaimed authority as the Lord Macragge and Lord of Ultramar, Guilliman declared the restoration of what had been known during the time of the Great Crusade as the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar. When the primarch left Macragge to pursue the Terran Crusade, he left Ultramarines Chapter Master Marneus Calgar behind on Macragge to serve as his regent and over the restoration of the full extent of his stellar empire.After the Great Rift fractured the Imperium in half following the 13th Black Crusade, Ultramar came under assault by the servants of Nurgle, the Plague God, who had decided to add the whole of Ultramar to his Garden in the Realm of Chaos. The worlds of Ultramar were attacked from within and without by Nurgle's forces, including an invasion led by the Daemon Primarch Mortarion and his Death Guard Traitor Legion and the Daemonic Plague Legions led by Ku'gath Plaguefather. These so-called Plague Wars lasted for over a solar decade, until following the official conclusion of the first phase of the Indomitus Crusade at the Battle of Raukos, Roboute Guilliman, now the ruling lord commander of the Imperium and Imperial Regent, finally arrived with reinforcements to aid his beleaguered home.Arriving on Macragge, Guilliman announced that he had made a grave mistake when he had allowed the official borders of Ultramar to shrink so drastically in the days after the Horus Heresy. Instead, he reestablished the ancient ruling Tetrarch Council for Ultramar, and tasked its newly-appointed Tetrarchs, including his Primaris Space Marine Equerry Captain Decimus Felix and the Ultramarines First Captain Severus Agemman, with beginning to expand the territories of Ultramar to include all of the star systems that had once comprised the Five Hundred Worlds.The primarch then launched a counterattack against the Nurglish Chaos Space Marine and Daemonic forces besieging the sub-sector. After cutting them off from their supply lines by retaking the Espandor System, Guilliman forced his brother, the Daemon Primarch Mortarion, to launch the bulk of his forces against Parmenio where the largest armoured clash in the Plague Wars took place.Once the Ultramarines and their allies ultimately gained the upper hand there, Guilliman next struck at the final stronghold of Chaos in Ultramar, fighting his brother Mortarion to a draw on the "Hospital World" of Iax that had earlier been invaded by the Daemonic legions of the Great Unclean One Ku'gath. In the wake of a titanic personal clash on the battlefield between the two primarchs that left both wounded, Mortarion ordered a final withdrawal of the Chaos forces from Iax under the cover of a Virus Bomb assault that cleansed all life from that former Garden World. The Nurglish forces then returned to their base in the Scourge Stars. |
Ultramar - History: Forged by the brilliant strategic mind of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman and the martial prowess of his XIIIth Legion, the Ultramarines, Ultramar was the jewel of the Imperium's border realms, over five hundred worlds torn from the grip of unspeakable xenos empires and the despots of Old Night.Two standard centuries of disciplined and masterfully planned campaigning since the rediscovery of Roboute Guilliman by the Emperor in 837.M30 had won the Ultramarines Legion an industrial base which rivalled any of the ancient strongholds at the Imperium's core, and this vast industrial complex supported one of the largest armies in the Imperial war machine, providing troops and resources for the hundreds of regiments of the Excertus Imperialis raised across Ultramar, as well as the XIIIth Legion itself, one of the largest of all the Space Marine Legions. |
Ultramar - Age of Strife: The world of Macragge is located in the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy. Macragge was a bleak but not inhospitable world, part of a decayed star empire of ages past that Mankind had inhabited for many centuries since the time of the Age of Technology.Its industries had survived the Age of Strife relatively intact, and its people had retained an authoritarian but cohesive society. It had remarkably preserved a number of antiquated, short range, Warp-capable spacecraft which could be utilised for near-stellar transit -- conditions permitting -- and its people had continued to build sub-light spacecraft even during the time of the most intense Warp storms. This had allowed the people of Macragge to maintain contact with several neighbouring Human-settled star systems, despite the Warp storms' fury, and so retain a tenuous link to the rest of Human space and the knowledge that it was not alone in the darkness. |
Ultramar - Roboute Guilliman: After their mysterious expulsion from Terra, the twenty incubation capsules of the infant primarchs came to rest on Human-settled colony worlds throughout the galaxy -- distant worlds that were inhabited by a wide variety of Human cultures, and whether by fickle fate or cruel design, each world would provide a crucible which would temper the child into the primarch they would become, be that hero or monster, tyrant or liberator.The capsule containing the developing form of one such primarch fell upon the world of Macragge. The primarch's capsule was discovered by a group of noblemen out hunting in the forest. They broke the capsule's seal to reveal a striking child surrounded by a glowing nimbus of power. The amazing infant was brought before Konor Guilliman, one of a pair of consuls who governed the civilised part of Macragge. Konor adopted the child as his son and named him Roboute.The young primarch grew unnaturally quickly and as he did so, his unique physical and mental powers became obvious to all. It is recorded that by the time of his tenth standard birthday, Guilliman had mastered everything the wisest tutors of Macragge could teach him. His insight into matters of history, philosophy and science astonished his teachers, while his recall was absolute and his ability to extrapolate accurate conclusions from fragmentary information was said to border on the inexplicable. His greatest talent, however, lay in the art of war, which was itself treated as a high and lauded science in Macragge's culture.As soon as he had attended his legal majority, Roboute's foster-father Konor immediately granted him command over an expeditionary force sent to pacify the far northern lands of Macragge, known as Illyrium. In his absence, Guilliman's co-consul, a man named Gallan, had unleashed a coup d'etat against Konor -- a development far from unknown historically, if in this instance a surprise. Gallan, it transpired, had long harboured designs on undiluted rulership and had conspired with those amongst the wealthy nobility of Macragge who were jealous of Konor's political power and popularity, and also increasingly afraid of his preternaturally precocious foster child's future.As Roboute and his army approached Macragge City they saw the smoke from fires and hurried to investigate. From citizens fleeing from the city, Roboute learned that troops in the pay of Gallan had attacked the Senate House with Konor and his loyal bodyguard inside. The rebels surrounded the Senate, whilst drunken soldiers roamed the city looting and murdering at will. Roboute hurried to his father's rescue. Leaving his troops to deal with the drunken mob, he fought his way into the Senate House. There he found his father dying of wounds inflicted by an assassin in Gallan's employ. For three whole solar days the consul had directed the defence of the building, even as surgeons fought for his life. With his dying breath Konor told his son of Gallan's treachery.Roboute crushed the rebels and quickly restored order to the city. Thousands of citizens flocked to the Senate House and amidst a wave of popular acclaim Roboute assumed the mantle of sole and all-powerful consul of Macragge. The new ruler acted swiftly to crush the old order. Gallan and his fellow conspirators were executed and their lands and family titles taken from them. In the new order, loyal soldiers and hardworking settlers were granted rights where the oppressive aristocracy had once held sway.With super-human energy and the singularity of vision only a primarch was capable of executing, the new consul reorganised the social order of Macragge, creating a ruthlessly enforced meritocracy where the hardworking prospered and the honourable received positions of high office, and those who shirked the law or worked against the good of the whole faced draconian, but faultlessly even-handed punishment. The stagnated and uneven economy was re-ordered, technology disseminated rather than hoarded by the elite, and the armed forces were transformed into a powerful and well-equipped force. Macragge flourished as never before -- one people and one order, united under the unchallengeable rule of Roboute Guilliman. |
Ultramar - Coming of the Emperor: Around the time that the young Roboute Guilliman waged war in Illyria, the Emperor's fleet had reached the planet of Espandor at the outer edge of the network of worlds with which Macragge had maintained tenebrous contact. From the Espandorians the Emperor learned of the existence of Macragge and the extraordinary son of the Consul Konor Guilliman, and from what he learned he knew that this child could be none other than a missing primarch.There have been some who have suggested that the Emperor's arrival at Espandor and the isolated region of the Segmentum Ultima so far from the frontline of the Great Crusade's main spur of progress was no accident, and that by some arts He had perceived or had foreknowledge of what He would find. Regardless, what followed was certainly not foreseen. As the Emperor's fleet quickly moved on to Macragge, it was almost immediately deflected by violent Warp squalls which had risen up to separate Macragge and a handful of nearby star systems from approach. Thwarted by a power even the Emperor could not readily ignore, it would be something in the region of five standard years before contact could be successfully attempted.In the years that intervened, Macragge had undergone a striking transformation. It was now a world of uniformity and order, prosperous and productive. Its cities had been rebuilt in glittering marble and shining steel, and the serried ranks of its armies were well armed and well equipped, and outfitting themselves now for operations beyond their own world. For even before the Emperor's arrival, Roboute Guilliman, it is said, had dwelt much on the ancient histories contained in the great libraries that he had confiscated from his world's deposed aristocracy, and the fragments he found there telling of the ancient domains of Mankind.The primarch had begun to dream of new horizons and new worlds to conquer, of a domain "beyond the sea of night" or to use the ancient scholarly form found in the texts -- "Ultramar." By his will, Guilliman made it so and within their Warp-sealed enclave, vessels from Macragge now plied regular and well-patrolled trade routes with local star systems, bringing raw materials and people to the flourishing world, while against some of its neighbours, short, victorious conflicts had already been waged to pacify the strife they had found there.It is said that when the Emperor saw what His lost gene-son had wrought, He was indeed pleased, and that He met with Roboute Guilliman without the dissembling that had been needed with those primarchs he had found of more savage timbre. It is furthermore recorded that once Guilliman learned the truth of his origins, he immediately swore his fealty to the Emperor, who he knew was his true father, for he had already theorised correctly the purpose for which he had not been born so much as deliberately created.It was immediately apparent to Imperial observers that Roboute Guilliman possessed a powerful analytical intelligence, even when compared to the superhuman cognitive abilities of his peers, as well as a talent for statecraft and macro-organisation of staggering potential. Yet few could then guess what such talents harnessed to the Great Crusade would go on to achieve. |
Ultramar - Horus Heresy: Ultramar was a blade at the throat of the Warmaster Horus' rebellion against the Emperor. Left unopposed and given time to gather in strength, for the warriors of the XIIIth Legion and their oath-bound Imperial Army auxilia, Ultramar would form a bastion that could resist even the full might of Horus' dark hosts. Worse, with Ultramar intact and alerted to Horus' plans, any attempt by the Traitors to move against the core systems of the Imperium would see the forces of Roboute Guilliman sally forth to trap him between their defenders and their own vast numbers.Yet, if Horus could bring Ultramar to ruin and leave the warriors of the XIIIth Legion scattered or slain, there would have been no other Loyalist force capable of stopping the advance of his growing armies. That the Primarch Lorgar found the breaking of his brother's realm to his liking is undoubted; the XVIIth Legion had suffered a humiliating rebuke at the hands of the Ultramarines years before at Monarchia, an insult that had apparently festered within the Legion and driven them willingly into heresy. Indeed, it is commonly believed that the plan adopted by the Traitors for the destruction of Ultramar originated in the twisted mind of the Word Bearers primarch. |
Ultramar - Battle of Calth: It is unlikely that the true architect of the Calth Atrocity will ever be known, and weighed against the innumerable sins committed by both Lorgar and Horus, the attribution of this one offence is inconsequential. What is known is that the earliest stages of the assault on Ultramar were laid down long before Horus arrived at the fateful worlds of Isstvan III, in the year 005.M31, with a series of orders issued under the seal of the Warmaster despatching a number of Legions to campaigns in the furthest reaches of the Imperium.Of these, the Blood Angels were sent forth in their entirety to Signus, the Dark Angels to Tsagualsa and the Ultramarines received orders to muster alongside the Word Bearers at Calth, both Legions to be deployed against the Ork hold of Ghaslakh. Gathering at Saturn those of his Legion who had been embarked on crusades in distant parts of the galaxy, Roboute Guilliman would depart the Sol System mere solar months before news of Horus' rebellion reached the Emperor's ears.The turbulent state of the Empyrean in those years would see the Ultramarines' main strength journey to Calth by a winding and obtuse trail which would also cloak them from all attempts by Terra to recall them or forewarn them of Horus' actions. The Word Bearers, delayed by the slaughter at Isstvan, would not arrive at Calth until the majority of the XIIIth Legion had already gathered, travelling a path of blood and ashes of their creation.Though the Ultramarines would eventually prove victorious, they would not be afforded the luxury of reaping the fruits of their victory. In one final callous act, the Word Bearers somehow, and through inexplicable means, poisoned the solar winds emanating from Calth's Veridia star. The surface of Calth, its atmosphere already grievously injured by the Word Bearers' bombardment, rapidly destabilised to the point that it soon became impossible for unprotected mortals to walk upon it. The majority of the population was evacuated into the vast subterranean arcologies in an effort to provide some shelter, however tenuous, from the fell light of the Veridia star.The second crisis brought to the primarch's attention was at that time only partially understood, but already astrotelepathic messages were relaying desperate pleas for aid from all over the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar. The Traitors' assault on Calth was not an isolated event; other attacks were being reported across dozens of other star systems. In a moment of stark clarity, Guilliman saw what the Word Bearers had intended at Calth -- they had planned the extinction of the Ultramarines so that the Traitors could reave unopposed across those stars under his protection.In this they had failed, for while the Ultramarines had suffered unprecedented losses, the Legion had rallied and was yet a formidable force. Guilliman's vengeance would be terrible indeed, and well-earned. But here the primarch's counsellors set their final piece of ill news before him. The Warp, which had been turbulent and capricious for the past standard year, now rose towards a storm of unprecedented fury. Worse, it closed in around the Veridian System and any vessels that did not leave within a few solar hours would be stranded there for standard years.The losses inflicted upon the Ultramarines' fleet assets at Calth were crippling and hamstrung any effort to prosecute a war beyond the bounds of Ultramar. Such was the Ultramarines' desperation, missions to salvage the hulks drifting in orbit above Calth were quickly authorised despite the death toll such missions exacted in the deadly radiation of the altered Veridia star.Eventually, Guilliman took his leave of the once-bountiful world of Calth, the would-be jewel in the crown of Ultramar which had stood for so much that now could never be realised. Before the primarch ordered the fleet to depart, the Warp closing in all about it, he swore to return to Calth and to deliver it from the Traitors. It would be many standard years and many battles, across five hundred worlds and more, before that promise could be delivered upon. But it would be delivered upon, for Roboute Guilliman, primarch of the XIIIth Legion and Master of the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar, had sworn it. Ultramar would endure. |
Ultramar - Sector-Wide Invasion: With almost half of the Ultramarines Legion killed or put out of action after the Battle of Calth, and interstellar communications and travel disrupted by Lorgar's conjured Ruinstorm, each Ultramarian planet was left to fend for itself. Some worlds were able to repel the invaders completely. On Astagar, a force led by Lucretius Corvo (later the founder of the Novamarines) managed to win the battle for the planet by destroying a Daemonically-possessed Warlord-class Titan belonging to the Word Bearers.On other worlds, the Ultramarines destroyed the planet rather than let the enemy possess them. This occurred on Percepton, where an outnumbered chapter of the Ultramarines Legion subjected the planet to phosphex orbital bombardment, burning away both defenders and invaders who were unlucky enough not to evacuate in time. |
Ultramar - The Furious Abyss: The Word Bearers Dark Apostle Kor Phaeron would put his own plan in motion to strike at the heart of Ultramar and destroy its core worlds while Lorgar and the Primarch Angron's World Eaters Legion tore through its outer rim. His Abyss-class Battleship, the Furious Abyss, was unleashed to destroy Maccrage, the homeworld of the Ultramarines, while the bulk of the XIIIth Legion was stationed at Calth.This mighty vessel would then join a smaller fleet of Word Bearers vessels in laying waste to the remaining core worlds of Ultramar. Fortunately, a small strike force of Ultramarines and Space Wolves boarded the Furious Abyss and were able to destroy it from within at the cost of their own lives. Without the support of the Furious Abyss, the Word Bearers attack on Maccrage and the core worlds of Ultramar ultimately failed. |
Ultramar - Battle of Nuceria: Lorgar and Angron's main force did manage to conquer or destroy over 100 planets, including the world of Armatura which had been the Ultramarines' training world during the Great Crusade. Accompanying this force were the two other Abyss-class Battleships in existence as well as the Word Bearers and World Eaters Gloriana-class flagships. This campaign came to its climax on the world of Nuceria, Angron's hated homeworld, which saw the final major battle of the so-called Shadow Crusade. Guilliman and his motley fleet of 40 escort and cruiser class warships, patched together with whatever he could muster after the Battle of Calth, threw itself at the combined spearhead of the Word Bearers and the World Eaters.Though the XIIIth Legion lost 12 of these vessels, they managed to destroy Lorgar's flagship, the Fidelitas Lex, by swarming it with their numerically superior fleet. The World Eater's flagship, by contrast, was subjected to an intense boarding action.On the surface of Nuceria, the Ultramarines were pushed back and forced to retreat under the unrelenting pressure of two Traitor Legions commanded by their primarchs. Although the XIIIth Legion ultimately withdrew from the battle, this marked the end of the Shadow Crusade. Lorgar considered the Ruinstorm to have been sufficiantly powered by the deaths of the Shadow Crusade and redirected his forces, along with those of the newborn Khornate Daemon Prince Angron, towards the ultimate invasion of Terra. |
Ultramar - Auxiliary Invasions: Several of the other Traitor Legions invaded Ultramarian space during the Horus Heresy. The 25,000-Astartes-strong force of Night Lords that were one of the six splinter fleets escaping the Dark Angels following the Thramas Crusade attacked the world of Sotha. Due to the superb strategic defence put in place by the Loyalist Iron Warriors Warsmith Barabas Dantioch, the Imperial Fists Captain Alexis Polux, and the thousand-strong Ultramarines Aegida Company, this ended up being one of the most lopsided battles of the Horus Heresy.The invaders suffered near-total losses and were forced to retreat as they learned that Guilliman himself was leading a retribution fleet to Sotha. Though the victory was only made possible due to the tragic sacrifices of Warsmith Dantioch and the Aegida Company, its survivors would later go on to become the Scythes of the Emperor Chapter after the Heresy.In the outer reaches of Ultramar, the Death Guard would also launch probing attacks on the relatively undefended border worlds. Late in the conflict, the Salamanders strike cruiser Charybdis would find the corpse of another Abyss-class vessel in the extreme outer edges of Ultramarian space. It seemed to have been attacked by a large Ultramarines fleet and destroyed after it had been boarded and its Warp-Drive detonated by the intruders. |
Ultramar - Aftermath: During the Horus Heresy, 120,000 Ultramarines died at the Battle of Calth. The losses for the mortal troops of the Ultramar Auxilia were even more devastating, with its units suffering 500,000 dead at Calth alone. |
Ultramar - Reformation: The confusion and disorder following the Horus Heresy left the Imperium weak and vulnerable. Many worlds remained in the grip of Chaos. Into this breach stepped Roboute Guilliman and the Ultramarines. Always the largest of the Space Marine Legions, the Ultramarines found themselves divided and despatched all over the Imperium in a desperate effort to stem the tide of invasion and unrest that followed the Heresy. Guilliman and the Ultramarines successfully held the Imperium together during a time of great danger.Macragge was able to supply new recruits at such a rate that, before long, the Ultramarines alone accounted for more than half the total number of Space Marines in the galaxy, and few were the star systems where their heroism went unnoticed. Over the course of solar decades, order was eventually restored to the Imperium following the campaigns of the Great Scouring. Even as the Ultramarines restored order, a new theory of warfare was emerging. Under the guidance of the Ultramarines' primarch, the Codex Astartes, Guilliman's superbly written treatise on Astartes strategy, organisation and tactics, was taking shape. Its doctrines reshaped the future of the Space Marines and dictated the foundation for the Imperium's military strength and the ultimate survival of Mankind for the next 10,000 standard years.In the wake of the Heresy, believing that Space Marines should no longer rule directly over large swathes of Mankind, just as the Emperor had wanted, Guilliman during the early years of the Time of Rebirth allowed hundreds of worlds in the Realm of Ultramar to declare their autonomy, until only a small core of 11 planets remained officially a part of what had become an Imperial sub-sector.At some point during this time, the Tetrarchy of Ultramar was disbanded, and after Guilliman's mortal wounding by the Daemon Primarch Fulgrim during the Battle of Thessala in 121.M31 and interment in a stasis field within the Temple of Correction on Macragge, the Realm of Ultramar came under the rule of the current Chapter Master of the Ultramarines Chapter. Thus would things stand for the next 10,000 standard years until Guilliman's resurrection in ca. 999.M41 during the Ultramar Campaign after the Fall of Cadia in the 13th Black Crusade. |
Ultramar - Plague Wars: After the birth of the Great Rift at the climax of the 13th Black Crusade fractured the Imperium of Man in half, Ultramar came under assault by the servants of the Plague God Nurgle, who had decided to add the whole of Ultramar to his Garden in the Realm of Chaos. Three star systems to the galactic north of Ultramar, the so-called Scourge Stars, were corrupted by the influence of Nurgle and its planets were transformed into staging grounds for the invasion of Guilliman's stellar empire.The worlds of Ultramar were attacked from within and without by Nurgle's forces, including an invasion led by the Daemon Primarch Mortarion and his Death Guard Traitor Legion and the Daemonic legions of Ku'gath, a Great Unclean One. These so-called "Plague Wars" lasted for over a solar decade, until following the official end of the first phase of the Indomitus Crusade at the Battle of Raukos in ca. 012.M42, Roboute Guilliman, now the ruling lord commander of the Imperium and Imperial Regent, finally arrived with reinforcements to aid his beleaguered home. |
Ultramar - Invasion: Mortarion's already large invasion force, bolstered by mutants and Chaos Cultists from the Scourge Stars, was accompanied by Typhus and his Plague Fleet alongside a Great Unclean One named Ku'gath who led a host of 7 Greater Daemons of Nurgle called the "Plague Guard." Their strategy concentrated on taking and holding a few of Ultramar's major worlds such as Iax, Espandor and Konor. The Nurglites only launched smaller raids on the more minor worlds of the sub-sector, always withdrawing before any Ultramarines Astartes were deployed.The Espandor System was the first to come under siege. All the worlds in the system other than Espandor itself fell to the forces of Chaos; the Ultramarines bitterly contested Espandor Prime until they were later relieved. One of the Greater Daemons of the Plague Guard, Qaramas, led this attack, and his partial conquest of the Espandor System prepared the way for the rest of the Nurglish invasion fleet to surge into Ultramar.Iax was overrun by the Daemons of Nurgle led by Ku'gath as the bulk of the invasion force came to bear upon it. It had been converted into a so-called "Hospital World" earlier in the conflict to deal with the spread of Nurgle's pathogenic "gifts" across the sub-sector and was therefore susceptible to infiltration by the heralds of Nurgle despite its stringent quarantine measures. Iax would serve as the base of operations for the Nurglish conquest of Ultramar as Mortarion, the Death Guard and the rest of the Daemonic Plague Guard ultimately concentrated their forces there late in the conflict.Macragge suffered from bouts of Chaos-induced unrest as Mortarion led probing attacks on the Ultramarines homeworld. While this did not lead to any widespread destruction or damage to critical facilities, these incidents caused a drop in civilian morale and forced the Ultramarines Chapter Master Marneus Calgar to waste precious time and resources on peacekeeping missions and displays of force to shore up the morale and confidence of Maccrage's suffering civilians.The Death Guard Chaos Lord Typhus and his Plague Fleet overran and captured one of Ultramar's star forts. He was later directed by Mortarion to attack the Ultramarines' training world of Parmenio.Konor came under assault by the forces of the Death Guard, their objective to conquer the crucial star system and use it as a springboard for a final attack on Macragge itself. |
Ultramar - Spear of Espandor Counterattack: At the end of the first phase of the Indomitus Crusade to stabilise the Imperium Sanctus, following the Battle of Raukos, Lord Commander of the Imperium and Imperial Regent Roboute Guilliman announced his intention to return to his home realm with thousands of Primaris Space Marine reinforcements and drive back the Chaos assault. First, he cleansed the Hive World of Ardium in the Maccrage System of its Death Guard occupiers. In the course of that operation he learned that Mortarion was using the ancient artefact known as the Hand of Darkness to craft Plague Engines that were re-animating the dead and turning them into Plague Zombies. Guilliman destroyed the Plague Engine on Ardium and freed the world from the influence of Nurgle.His next destination was Maccrage itself, his ancient homeworld. He and his Astartes reinforcements, including the Primaris Marines, brought much-needed relief to the weary populace and defenders. After taking stock of the dire situation, Guilliman reorganised the Ultramarines and their mortal auxilia and launched a large-scale counterattack against the invaders. Several Ultramarines Successor Chapters also joined the fight at their primarch's behest, their Chapter fleets engaging the Death Guard and doing their best to keep Ultramar's shipping lanes and supply lines to the broader Imperium safe and secure.Guilliman first set his eyes on the Espandor System as part of what he named his "Spear of Espandor" campaign, because it served as the main supply line for the Death Guard invasion from the Scourge Stars. He retook each of the lost worlds in the system and destroyed the Plague Engines that were raising the endless tide of Plague Zombies on each of its worlds. After a ferocious battle in which the Ultramarines Chapter found itself fighting side-by-side with their Primaris Astartes brethren for the first time, the forces of Nurgle were routed from Espandor. Guilliman decisively ended the battle by slaying the Great Unclean One Qaramas with the Emperor's Sword and destroying the last Plague Engine in the system. The Espandor System had been cleansed of the taint of the Plague God and the forces of Nurgle were now cut off from their base in the Scourge Stars.With their supply lines to the Scourge Stars cut, their Plague Engines disappearing and slowly eliminating the constant tide of undead reinforcements, and new Imperial reinforcements pouring into Ultramar with each passing solar day, Mortarion found himself on the wrong side of what had become a war of attrition. Guilliman had successfully cut the Death Guard off from resupply and would now proceed to cut their forces to pieces, one star system at a time. With this in mind, Mortarion decided to throw all his remaining forces at a single target in the hopes of reversing the tide.Maccrage was still too heavily defended for the forces of Nurgle to carry out a successful assault, so Mortarion decided that the Plague God's servants would target the Ultramarines training world of Parmenio. This battle saw the biggest armoured clash between the Chaos and Imperial forces during the war.The largest star fort in Ultramar, Galatan, attempted to provide support but was engaged by Typhus' Plague Fleet and was boarded by a contingent of Traitor Marines, leading to the death of the Novamarines' Chapter Master Bardan Dovaro in the vicious fighting.On the surface of Parmenio, however, the Ultramarines slowly gained the upper hand. Guilliman killed Ku'gath's lieutenant, Septicus, and shattered his Daemonic Plague Guard, an action that finally gave the Emperor's servants the upper hand in the conflict. With the campaign at last in hand, Guilliman turned to the hunt for his traitorous brother. |
Ultramar - Withdrawal: Roboute Guilliman next led a relief force to the benighted "Hospital World" of Iax. Having not discovered Mortarion leading his forces on either Parmenio or Espandor, the lord commander of the Imperium was determined to hunt down his traitorous brother once and for all.The climactic battle of the conflict took place on Iax, where Guilliman and Mortarion personally fought each other to a brutal stalemate amongst the ruins of the Hospital World. In the wake of this battle, as the Nurglish forces in Ultramar continued to lose ground on every front, Mortarion and the Death Guard were summoned back to the Scourge Stars, for Nurgle's outpost in realspace had come under assault from the forces of Khorne in what would become the War in the Rift, another campaign in the endless Great Game between the Ruinous Powers as they maneuvered for advantage against each other.The Death Guard withdrew from Iax under the cover of a Virus Bomb attack on the Imperial forces and Nurgle's remaining servants ultimately retreated from Ultramar, but the threat of a renewed attack from the Scourge Stars was now a persistent threat for the people of the Five Hundred Worlds. |
Ultramar - Government: Ultramar is unique amongst the demesnes of the Space Marines. Where other Chapters rule over a single planet, asteroid or, in some cases, a mobile Chapter fleet or orbital fortress, the Ultramarines have a far larger feudal demesne. Before the Horus Heresy, the Realm of Ultramar consisted of more than five hundred worlds, and was commonly referred to as the "Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar" or the somewhat heretical "New Empire." These 500 worlds were all themselves divided into fiefdoms. The largest was the Ultramarines' homeworld of Macragge, with the fiefdoms of the worlds of Saramanth, Konor, Occluda, and Iax all varying in size. Before the Word Bearers' surprise assault on the world of Calth during the Heresy, there was talk of Calth gaining its own fiefdom due to its industrial output nearly rivalling that of Macragge before the Traitors destroyed its biosphere during the Battle of Calth.The fiefdoms of Ultramar were ruled by officials called Tetrarchs, similar in function and precedence to later Imperial Sector Governors, each an Ultramarines Captain or Chapter Master chosen for this position by Roboute Guilliman, the primarch of the Ultramarines Legion. The Tetrarch would then choose both a military governor, an Emperor's Champion and his honour guard for his region of the realm.After the Horus Heresy, during the Imperial reforms overseen by Guilliman during his first tenure as the lord commander of the Imperium, when the Space Marine Legions were broken down into smaller 1,000-man Chapters, the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar were divided up and given over to the many Successor Chapters of the Ultramarines or simply allowed to become autonomous, as Guilliman found himself uneasy in the wake of the Heresy with the idea that Space Marines should rule over mortals as a type of governing warrior caste.The Ultramarines Chapter kept control of the original political and economic centre of Ultramar, consisting of no fewer than 11 local star systems, each with its own worlds and governments loyal to the Chapter. All the worlds that once comprised the larger Realm of Ultramar in the region still share a common cultural heritage with Macragge, so it is not surprising that their styles of architecture, government, and societal traditions are similar.For ten thousand standard years, this was the political structure of Ultramar. Then, in ca. 012.M42, after his return to Maccrage following the end of the first phase of the Indomitus Crusade at the Battle of Raukos and his intervention in the Plague Wars, Guilliman announced that he had made a grave mistake when he had allowed the official borders of Ultramar to shrink so drastically in the days after the Horus Heresy.Instead, he reestablished the ancient ruling Tetrarch Council for Ultramar, and tasked its newly-appointed Tetrarchs, including his Primaris Space Marine Equerry Captain Decimus Felix and the Ultramarine First Captain Severus Agemman, with beginning to expand the territories of Ultramar to include all of the star systems that had once contained the Five Hundred Worlds. This is a mission which has become even more crucial in the wake of the Plague Wars, as Ultramar now faces a continuing threat from the nearby Scourge Stars.At the time of the Plague Wars, Ultramar had expanded to approximately three-quarters of its pre-Heresy size. Guilliman was informed during the Battle of Raukos by Captain Uriel Ventris that the planetary governors of the remaining former member worlds of the realm had refused to recognise Guilliman's authority, claiming that they could find no proof of the ancient treaties that had bound their worlds to Ultramar or even outright claiming that no such relationship had ever existed. Guilliman explained that such behaviour was the way of Humanity, but that ultimately, the governors of those worlds would either submit to his authority and rejoin Ultramar or be executed. |
Ultramar - Economy: After the Horus Heresy all 11 remaining inhabited worlds of Ultramar benefited from the Imperial reforms enacted by Roboute Guilliman during the Time of Rebirth and Ultramar's citizens remain disciplined, productive and loyal. As a result, Ultramar is a wealthy stellar empire within the larger Imperium that knows little unrest and no rebellion or heresy -- a somewhat unique distinction in the increasingly desperate days of the 41st Millennium. The population lives in sprawling cities, but these cities are surrounded by extensive farmlands and seas that teem with fish.Each of Ultramar's worlds are self-sufficient in raw materials and food. Trade between the planets is active, and each planet has its specialties and delicacies. Each world is balanced as a society and also as an ecosystem -- although composed of primarily Industrial Worlds, Ultramar has none of the nightmarish toxic wastelands that are common phenomena throughout the rest of theHuman-settled galaxy. It is therefore little wonder that many system governors and planetary lords across the Imperium regard Ultramar with an envious eye. |
Ultramar - Defences: Even without the presence of the Ultramarines, Ultramar was one of the most heavily defended sectors in the Imperium of the 41st Millennium. Each world is protected by a nigh-impenetrable network of orbital defences and battle stations. The Ultramar Defence Fleet stands ever-vigilant against pirate raids and enemy invasion while every world raises its own regiments of mortal troops for its planetary defence force known as the Ultramar Auxilia, who are easily the equivalent of almost any Astra Militarum regiment in terms of the quality of their training and wargear. Meanwhile no fewer than six massive star fortresses -- with Galatan being the largest -- stand sentinel over shipping lanes and critical strategic positions, each a formidable bastion protected by Void Shields and possessed of enough firepower to destroy a moon.Due to repeated Chaos invasions that began in ca. 999.M41 such as the Invasion of Ultramar, the Ultramar Campaign of the 13th Black Crusade and the Plague Wars, as well as the ever-present threat of the Scourge Stars, Guilliman further bolstered the defences of his personal empire.Eight Primaris Space Marine Chapters created from the gene-seed of the Ultramarines' primarch during the Ultima Founding were permanently stationed in the region at the conclusion of the Plague Wars, a new Chapter homeworld provided for each of them. Along with the Scythes of the Emperor and the Ultramarines themselves, there is now a force of 10,000 sons of Guilliman ready to defend the Realm of Ultramar at all times. |
Ultramar - Worlds of Ultramar: Ultramar is the feudal realm of the Ultramarines Chapter within the greater realm of Humanity that is the Imperium. Its worlds do not pay the Imperium's tithes. Instead they contribute directly towards the upkeep of the Ultramarines Chapter. The rulers of the individual worlds of Ultramar are feudal lords in service to the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines. This is why the Ultramarine leader is also the Lord of Ultramar as well as the Lord Macragge, with all the rights and responsibilities that such noble titles entail.Just like other worlds in the Imperium, each world of Ultramar raises planetary defence force regiments for its own defence, known as Ultramar Auxilia. Most worlds in the Imperium are obliged to provide regiments for the Astra Militarum when required, but Space Marine homeworlds are an exception. In the case of Ultramar, however, the Ultramarines rule so efficiently and are so prosperous that they maintain several hundred regiments ready and willing to join the Astra Militarum when the need arises. As a result, regiments from Ultramar have fought all over the galaxy, often in campaigns alongside the Ultramarines themselves. Each world of Ultramar also provides Space Marine recruits for the Ultramarines Chapter itself.Throughout Ultramar, proud citizens point to public statues of famous Ultramarines who were born to local families. Amongst the older aristocratic dynasties it is a matter of considerable esteem to send recruits to the Ultramarines. For a family to have provided a renowned hero, perhaps even an actual Master of the Chapter, is a great honour that brings considerable fame and status for many generations. |
Ultramar - Stellar Geography: Ultramar is currently divided into five regions called Tetrarchs (north, south, east, west and center). Four of these regions are ruled by a Tetrarch appointed by Roboute Guilliman himself. Every region has a capital world where the Tetrarch resides, although each world considers itself under the rule of Maccrage. Each Tetrarch has been tasked with expanding Ultramar in the galactic direction that he governs.The northern region is based around the world of Konor. Its Tetrarch is Severus Agemman, first captain of the Ultramarines.The southern sector is based around the world of Andermung. Its Tetrarch is Captain Portan of the Genesis Chapter's 2nd Company.The western region is based around the world of Protos. Its Tetrarch is Captain Balthus of the Doom Eagles Chapter.The eastern region is based around the world of Vespator. It had been previously ruled by a political entity known as the Sotharan League, but since the world of Sotha was destroyed by Hive Fleet Kraken Guilliman re-constituted what was left of the league around Vespator. Its Tetrarch is Decimus Felix, a Primaris Ultramarine recently promoted to serve as the Eleventh Captain of the Ultramarines and the former Equerry to Roboute Guilliman.The central region falls under the direct rule of Macragge and its regent, the Ultramarines Chapter Master Marneus Calgar. It encompasses all of the star systems in the heart of Ultramar with the exception of Konor, Veridia and Espandor, which fall under the remit of the northern Tetrarch. |
Ultramar - Core Worlds: The Ultramarines are unique in that, unlike their fellow Astartes Chapters, for ten standard millennia they controlled nine major habitable worlds, rather than a single Chapter planet, star system or fleet. Collectively, these thirteen star systems and the recent additions made to the realm by the command of Roboute Guilliman in the wake of the Plague Wars are known as the Realm of Ultramar, a sub-infeudated autonomous region of the Imperium of Man, with Macragge as the capital world.Macragge is a cold and rocky world with large, inhospitable polar regions, though certainly capable of sustaining Human life. It is home to the Fortress of Hera, the Ultramarines' fortress-monastery. Ultramar is located in the galactic southeast of the Eastern Fringes near the galactic rim. The Asuryani Craftworld Iyanden has been sighted in this sector and the expanding T'au Empire] is also nearby. Twice Ultramar has stood in the path of a Tyranid Hive Fleet and the Tyranid threat in the Eastern Fringes remains strong.The core worlds of the Realm of Ultramar in the Era Indomitus include:Andermung - Capital world of the southern Tetrarch.Calth (Cavern World / Civilised World) - Calth is an airless Civilised World whose inhabitants live in underground cities where the deadly light of Calth's blue sun cannot reach them. The caverns of Calth are constructed on such a huge scale, and with such grandeur, that they are as light and airy as any city of Macragge. Of all the local worlds, Calth is the most specialised, for although its people grow vast quantities of food in nutrient vats, they prefer to import most of what they eat from the neighbouring system of Iax. Calth is famous for its orbital shipyards, which provide the spacecraft used by the Ultramarines as well as civil and military craft for wider use in the Imperium. Calth was the site of a major battle during the Horus Heresy, in which the Word Bearers Traitor Legion attempted to destroy the Ultramarines to prevent them from reaching Terra in time to aid the defence of the Imperial Palace from the forces of Chaos.Espandor (Cardinal World) - Most distant from Macragge is the world of Espandor, a planet of extensive forests whose major cities are confined to the westernmost of its two continents. Espandor is a secondary settlement whose people are the descendants of explorers from Macragge and hold considerable pride in their rugged existence. Tradition has it that Espandor was settled during the Age of Strife by traders blown off-course and subsequently stranded by Warp Storms. It is the least densely populated of all the worlds of Ultramar.Gantz (Forge World) - Gantz is the moon of Konor and an ancient Forge World that produced much of the Ultramarines Chapter's equipment. It was also the home of their allied Titan Legion, the Legio Praesagius, which had been devastated by the Traitor Legions during the Battle of Calth.Iax (Agri-World) - Iax is sometimes described as the Garden of Ultramar. Its climate and fertility have made it one of the most naturally productive worlds in the Imperium. The inhabitants have harnessed the planet's inherent verdancy, covering its surface with well-ordered farms and cultivated woodlands. There are no large cities on Iax, but many small towns dotted over the landscape, connected together by an efficient system of fast hydroways. The oldest and most urbanised area of Iax is the ancient city of First Landing, whose citadel has withstood the barrages of invaders over the centuries. Legend has it that Guilliman came to Iax many times, and that he treasured the world almost as much as his beloved Macragge. Iax served as a "Hospital World" for Ultramar during the Plague Wars, but was eventually overwhelmed by a daemonic invasion led by the Great Unclean One Ku'gath. Following the final battle of the Plague Wars between Guilliman and the Daemon Primarch Mortarion, Iax has been reduced to little more than a ruin in the wake of the Death Guard's use of a Virus Bomb to cover their withdrawal off-world.Konor (Research Station) - Konor is one of the founding worlds of the Realm of Ultramar and has long played host to a large population of the Adepts of the Machine Cult. It is currently the capital world of the northern Tetrarch. It was formerly an officially chartered Forge World of the Adeptus Mechanicus but now bears only the designation of Research Station due to internal Mechanicus politics. Its moon of Gantz is still officially recognised as a true Forge World. Konor shares a common culture with the rest of Ultramar, but technically is independent of the Lord of Ultramar's rule as it owes allegiance instead to the Fabricator-General of Mars. However, Konor often relies upon the Ultramarines for its defence and the products of its manufactoria are mostly intended for use by the Chapter.Macragge (Civilised World) - Macragge serves as the Chapter homeworld of the Ultramarines Chapter of Space Marines and the capital of the Ultramarines' Realm of Ultramar. Macragge itself is mostly bleak and rocky, with more than three-quarters of its land mass formed from mountainous upland almost entirely devoid of life. Macragge is famous as the site of the invasion of the Tyranid Hive Fleet Behemoth, which was repelled by the might of the Ultramarines at the Battle of Macragge. Macragge, the Ultramarines' homeworld and location of their fortress-monastery, the Fortress of Hera, and the great planetary capital Macragge Civitas, is just one of the 11 original worlds in the Realm of Ultramar. Macragge itself is mostly bleak and rocky, with more than three-quarters of its land mass formed from mountainous upland almost entirely devoid of life. The people of Macragge do not live in this inhospitable region, but the fortress-monastery of the Ultramarines is built here upon a craggy peak surrounded by impenetrable mountains. Within this mighty fortress, inside the vast Temple of Corrections, is the shrine of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman himself. This is where his body once sat before his resurrection in 999.M41 upon a huge throne of ornately-carved marble. He was preserved near death by a stasis field impervious to the decaying effects of time. This was once one of the holiest places in the Imperium, and thousands came from all over the galaxy to look upon the face of the ancient Primarch.Parmenio (Training World) - Parmenio is an Ultramarines Training World used largely for the recruitment of the Chapter's Neophytes.Prandium (Dead World) - Prandium once teemed with life. Settlers from Macragge established a colony on the planet after the Horus Heresy. Thanks to a mild climate and fertile virgin environment, the people of Prandium soon prospered. The planet in time became the most beautiful jewel of Ultramar, a world of remarkable prosperity and an incredibly rich native flora and fauna. Unfortunately, Prandium's diverse biosphere was destroyed by Hive Fleet Behemoth in the First Tyrannic War. The lifeless planet is now reduced to bedrock, its atmosphere blown into space by the ferocity of the Tyranid attack.Protos- Capital world of the western Tetrarch.Talasa Prime (Fortress World) - Talasa Prime is the domain of the Inquisition's Ordo Xenos and serves as an Inquisitorial Fortress World. Talasa Prime is most notable for housing the headquarters of the xenos-hunting Deathwatch, the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Xenos. It is here that Space Marines are recruited from all different Chapters, trained and equipped as Deathwatch Kill-teams for service against the various alien menaces that lurk throughout the galaxy. The lords of Talasa Prime's Deathwatch keep their own counsel, though their wars against the Tyranid Hive Fleets and the Tau race have proved critical. The Watch Fortress also recruits, trains and equips Kill-teams composed from the Ultramarines, Scythes of the Emperor and Lamenters Chapters for service against the Tyranids.Talassar (Ocean World) - Talassar is a planet of storm-tossed seas and rocky islands whose single continent is known as Glaudor, which was the site of a major battle between the Ultramarines and invading Orks immediately after the Horus Heresy. This is the homeworld of the famed Ultramarines hero Cato Sicarius, commander of the Ultramarines 2nd Company.The Triple Worlds (Quintarn, Tarentus and Masali) (Agri-worlds) - These small planets of the Masali System form a triple world combination orbiting around a common centre of gravity much like Terra and Luna. Gigantic horticultural cities cover hundreds of square kilometres, capturing precious water in wind traps and storing it in massive underground tanks. The cities of the Three Planets are enclosed by gigantic domes under which flourish forests and gardens as lush as any in Ultramar.Vespator - Capital world of the eastern Tetrarch. |
Ultramar Campaign - Ultramar Campaign: For the Chaos assault upon the Realm of Ultramar initiated by the Daemon Prince M'kar that came earlier in 999.M41, please see Invasion of Ultramar.The Ultramar Campaign was an attempt by the Warmaster of Chaos, Abaddon the Despoiler, to prevent the resurrection of the Ultramarines Primarch Roboute Guilliman during the 13th Black Crusade of ca. 999.M41. To this end, he despatched a portion of his forces to launch an invasion of the Ultramar Sub-sector in the Eastern Fringe.In the days immediately after the fall of Cadia at the climax of the 13th Black Crusade, Ezekyle Abaddon, lord of the Black Legion, was informed by the Chaos Sorcerer Zaraphiston of a disturbing reality. The sorcerer had discovered through his Warp-scryings that the Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl had escaped Cadia's destruction with a device in his possession that could turn the tide of the Long War in favour of the Imperium of Man.The Despoiler also learned that Cawl was one of a number of survivors of Cadia, now calling themselves the Celestinian Crusade, who had escaped into the Webway with the aid of the Aeldari Ynnari and were making their way to Macragge, the homeworld of the Ultramarines Chapter.To neutralise the nascent threat to his coming triumph over the Corpse-Emperor, the Despoiler detached a portion of his Black Fleet and ordered a Chaos invasion of the Realm of Ultramar as part of the 13th Black Crusade.The Celestinian Crusade, named for Saint Celestine, the Living Saint who had come to aid the defenders of Cadia in their darkest hour, was led not only by its namesake but also by Archmagos Cawl, Marshal Marius Amalrich of the Black Templars, and Inquisitor Katarinya Greyfax of the Ordo Hereticus.These individuals, joined by the Ynnari's commanders Yvraine, the Daughter of Shades, and her war leader The Visarch, first stepped from the Webway and onto the soil of the Shrine World of Laphis in the Macragge System.They were surprised to discover that they had set foot in a war zone, but they soon defeated the local Chaos forces that had been in the vicinity of the Webway portal. The Celestinians and their uneasy Aeldari allies defeated the Heldrakes besieging the local Ultramarines fortress and then convinced the Space Marines to grant them passage to Macragge, though Yvraine and the Visarch sent the majority of the Ynnari back into the Webway to carry out missions more pressing for their people.The Celestinians arrived at Macragge aboard an Ultramarines Strike Cruiser to discover that the capital world of Ultramar had come under a full-scale invasion by the forces of Chaos. While a massive battle raged in orbit between the Chaos and Loyalist fleets, on the ground the Fortress of Hera, the Ultramarines' fortress-monastery, was in danger of falling to the Archenemy.Gaining an audience with Marneus Calgar, the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines and the Lord of Macragge, Belisarius Cawl revealed that he was over 10,000 standard years old and had known the Ultramarines' Primarch Roboute Guilliman during the time of the Horus Heresy.Cawl explained that he had been tasked by Guilliman with finding a way to restore the primarch to life even before his mortal wounding by the Daemon Primarch Fulgrim at the Battle of Thessala in 121.M31 during the Great Scouring.Within the auto-reliquary he had kept with him since before coming to Cadia, Cawl maintained a unique suit of Artificer Armour, the Armour of Fate, that could sustain the primarch's life functions, and the Emperor's Sword, a weapon in which was embedded a small portion of the Emperor's own psychic essence.Though Calgar and his Chapter Council were wary of the Celestinians, especially because they had openly allied themselves with xenos, Chief Librarian Varro Tigurius supported their story. He explained to Calgar that he had been having prophetic dreams and the arrival of the Celestinians was no coincidence.In fact, it might be the Ultramarines' only hope in the face of the Chaos onslaught. Calgar accepted this explanation, and allowed the Celestinians and the Ynnari into the Temple of Correction where Guilliman sat in stasis despite his reservations about the newcomers.While Cawl began his work on the time-frozen body of Guilliman, seated upon his throne in the temple, the Black Legion took notice of the activity and launched a massive assault upon the Temple of Correction, fearful of what the Loyalists were attempting.The Celestinians, aided by the Ultramarines' officers and the 3rd Brotherhood of the Grey Knights led by Grand Master Aldrik Voldus who had come to Macragge to aid the defence, faced off against over a hundred Black Legionaries.Yet, even as the Loyalists fought to give Cawl just one more solar second to complete his work, more Chaos forces poured into the shrine from above using Dreadclaw assault boats, and the defenders quickly found themselves overwhelmed.Only then, at the last, did Yvraine call upon the power of her patron, Ynnead, the recently awakened Aeldari god of the dead. The alien god's power over life and death combined with Cawl's arcane technology to heal the primarch's wound and awaken him from his ten-thousand-year slumber.An awakened and enraged primarch proved more than the Chaos attackers were prepared to deal with. Guilliman shattered the attacking forces of Chaos and provided an extraordinary surge in morale for his Ultramarines and the other Loyalist forces.The Imperials quickly swept the Black Legion before them, breaking the back of the Chaos assault upon the Ultramarines' fortress-monastery. In that one moment of resurrection, the fate of Macragge and of all Ultramar was decided.In the wake of the battle in the Temple of Correction, Guilliman was crowned as the restored primarch of the Ultramarines Chapter and all of its Successor Chapters, and as the Lord Macragge and ruler of Ultramar. Marneus Calgar happily ceded the role of Chapter leadership to his gene-father, while Guilliman declared that the autonomy of all the worlds that had once belonged to the Realm of Ultramar and gone their separate ways in the millennia since the Horus Heresy was revoked.Ultramar was to be restored to what it had been in the golden age of the Imperium, a miniature stellar empire comprising five hundred Human-settled worlds. Once in full control of the Loyalist forces on Macragge, the primarch's strategic genius was unleashed, and the forces of Chaos were driven off of Macragge and then from most of Ultramar within approximately seven solar months.At that time, Yvraine, the Visarch, and the remaining small force of Ynnari took their leave to pursue their own agenda, with the primarch's wary blessing -- and thanks.During this time, the primarch found himself suffering from a spiritual malaise, as he was forced to come to grips with the reality of the Imperium of Man in the late 41st Millennium. Far from the golden rule of prosperity, scientific wonder and freedom promised by the Emperor, the Imperium in His absence had degenerated into a despotic, tyrannical regime defined by ignorance, fear and superstition.At first despairing, Guilliman finally found hope for Humanity's future once more deep in his heart and declared that he must make his way from Macragge through the roiling tides of the Warp to Terra. There he would consult with his father, the Emperor, and determine what must be done to save the Imperium from the servants of the Dark Gods.And so began the fateful Terran Crusade... |
Ultramar Campaign - The 13th Black Crusade: For 10,000 standard years the Emperor of Mankind has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Terra, His withered body little more than a husk of the great man that He once was. His grand vision, the Imperium of Man, endures -- yet it does not prosper, for it lingers under a pall of misery and persecution, suspicion and mistrust.It is assailed on all sides and from within by Heretics, witches and aliens, and only by the endless sacrifice of countless citizens does the Imperium continue to exist. Yet now, at the close of the 41st Millennium, the people of the Imperium face their greatest trial. Orks wreak havoc across the galaxy, the Tau Empire expands in the Eastern Fringe, the Tyranids send vast alien swarms from beyond the stars to consume all in their path, and the Necrons awaken to reclaim what was once theirs.And above all, more deadly than any other foe, the forces of Chaos chose this moment to begin their most concerted invasion of the Imperium. Under the eye of Abaddon the Despoiler and his 13th Black Crusade, countless worlds have already fallen.Madness and heresy are rife and violent Warp Storms tear great rents in the galaxy. Blind in their ignorance, the High Lords of Terra send billions to their deaths in a bid to save the Imperium. Yet it took the Eldar, a more far-sighted race, to realise that what the Imperium needs now is a hero, a symbol of the Emperor's will made manifest. The Imperium needs a Primarch.The full might of the 13th Black Crusade assailed the Fortress World of Cadia, which stood as the lone sentinel of the Cadian Gate, the only predictably stable way out of the Warp rift known as the Eye of Terror. Though severely outnumbered and assailed on all sides, the Imperial defenders held their ground, mounting a valiant defence under the superlative leadership of the Lord Castellan of Cadia, Ursarkar E. Creed.As the conflict became increasingly desperate, many heroes of the Imperium gathered on Cadia. Space Marines from multiple Chapters lent their strength to the defence, including the Black Templars of Marshal Marius Amalrich, and the Imperial Fists of Captain Tor Garadon, who brought the mobile star fort Phalanx into the war. Saint Celestine swept down upon Cadia in its darkest hour, her miracles instilling faith in its ragged protectors.Inquisitor Katarinya Greyfax, long a prisoner of the Necron Lord Trazyn the Infinite, was released from captivity to lend her prodigious will and talents to the cause. Yet the key to victory upon Cadia was discovered by the ancient Martian tech-priest, Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl of the Adeptus Mechanicus.Urged on by the Harlequin Shadowseer Sylandri Veilwalker, he had unlocked the secrets of the Necron-built black pylons that studded the surface of Cadia and other worlds throughout the Cadian System.Abaddon had long sought out these ancient and mysterious structures to destroy them during his many Black Crusades, which weakened the veil between reality and the Immaterium. In truth, Cawl had been en route to honour an ancient pact made with the Lord of Ultramar many Terran millennia ago, but on Cadia he saw a chance to reverse the Despoiler's work and perhaps close the Eye of Terror forever. But it was not to be.Though the servants of the Emperor fought with dogged determination and courage, Cawl's works were undone when the pylons were destroyed and Cadia was dealt a final death blow. Those few Imperial defenders that were left alive were forced to flee before the flood of the forces of Chaos that assailed the doomed world.As they did so a terrible Warp rift yawned in their wake as the Eye of Terror actually began to expand. Yet there was still one chance of salvation that remained -- Cawl's ancient pact and the mysterious artefact that he transported within an armoured auto-reliquary.Declaring themselves the Celestinian Crusade in honour of the Living Saint who still lit their way through the darkness, the surviving warriors of the Imperium made for the Macragge System within the Realm of Ultrmar, with the forces of the Despoiler hot on their heels.At the same time, the Aeldari species had been rocked to its very foundation by a cosmic upheaval of great significance. Ynnead, the Aeldari god of the dead, had awoken in the æther and chosen a former Asuryani of Craftworld Biel-Tan to be his prophet.Yvraine, the Daughter of Shades, had walked many Paths during her long life, from that of dancer to Warlock to Aspect Warrior. She eventually had become a famed Corsair leader until a mutiny forced her to flee into the Webway, where she ended up in the Dark City of Commorragh, the primary home of the Drukhari.Fighting as a gladiatrix in the dark city's infamous Crucibael arena, she defeated many foes before having fallen to a priestess of Morai-Heg, however, while she lay between life and death, she was resurrected by Ynnead and chosen to act his prophet in the material realm. Her rebirth caused a great Dysjunction within Commorragh, and the Dark City was beset by the daemonic servants of Slaanesh.Fleeing the Drukhari forces of the Dark City's supreme overlord, Asdrubael Vect, Yvraine, aided by the mysterious warrior known as the Visarch, and followed by some of the Drukhari who believed in her cause, successfully brought word of the Whispering God's awakening to Craftworld Biel-Tan.While there, the craftworld underwent a swift and terrible cycle of death and rebirth that brought the Yncarne, avatar of Ynnead, into being. Some amongst the Aeldari embraced Yvraine's belief that the cycle of death and rebirth would be their salvation, and became her followers, known as the Ynnari -- the Reborn.Others rejected this upstart's teachings as arrogance and dangerous in the extreme. But Yvraine pressed on regardless, and departed Biel-Tan in search of the time-lost artefacts known as the Croneswords and formulated a desperate plan to turn back the tides of Chaos.It was this mission that brought Yvraine through the Webway to the frozen moon of Klaisus in orbit of the Fortress World of Kasr Holn in the Cadian System, leading an army of her people from every faction who once more laid claim to the ancient name of Aeldari. They emerged from the moon's Webway gate just in time to rescue the Celestinian Crusade from their pursuers.Driving off the Heretic Astartes of the Black Legion, the Ynnari negotiated common cause with the Celestinians, agreeing to aid them in reaching the Realm of Ultramar. Thus, as Warp Storms billowed and spread across the galaxy, the assembled pilgrims hastened through the Webway, bearing a thin sliver of hope between them. |
Ultramar Campaign - Invasion of Ultramar: In the closing years of the 41st Millennium, the stellar realm of Ultramar came under sustained attack from myriad foes. Menacing shapes stirred in the intergalactic void, the Tyranids of Hive Fleet Leviathan drifting inexorably towards Guilliman's realm. The Arch-Arsonist of Charadon, one of the greatest Ork Warlords in the galaxy, led a monstrous WAAAGH! from his anarchic domain with the intent of overrunning the Ultramarines' eastern defences. Yet the greatest threat of them all was that posed by the dark servants of Chaos.A vast horde of Traitors, Renegades, mutants and madmen fell upon Ultramar under the leadership of the foul Daemon Prince M'kar the Reborn. That invasion plunged dozens of worlds into bloody battle, war raging from the worlds of Espandor and Tarentus to oceanic Talassar. Yet eventually, after long solar months of sorrow, bloodshed and loss, the Ultramarines prevailed. M'kar was defeated and his armies driven off, pursued to the stellar void beyond the bounds of Ultramar.So began a period of rebuilding and consolidation across Ultramar, as Marneus Calgar and his Chapter led their peoples' efforts to shore up the battered defences of their realm. It was a period of repose and recovery that was to be all too swiftly ended.Acting upon the prophetic revelations of the Sorcerer Zaraphiston, Abaddon the Despoiler hurled a fresh coalition of Chaos Space Marine warbands against the defences of Ultramar. Though the Despoiler himself was engaged in the ongoing fighting of the 13th Black Crusade around the recently-shattered Cadian Gate, his influence as Arch-champion and Warmaster of the Dark Gods extended far. So it was that he was able to muster a sizeable force of warriors from the Black Legion, the Iron Warriors, the Night Lords and a number of other Traitor factions, and hurl them against the worlds of Ultramar. While some warbands struck at the outer star systems in an effort to tie up potential Loyalist reinforcements, the main Traitor horde rode the tempestuous currents of the Warp straight into the Macragge System itself. So began a desperate and bloody invasion... |
Ultramar Campaign - A Realm at War: High in the Atheron Mountains of the Shrine World of Laphis in the Macragge System, unearthly energies stirred. They flowed in barely perceptible currents, whipping up dust and ash as they washed across a corpse-scattered plateau. Gradually they picked up pace, invisible forces tugging at the flames that licked from wrecked main battle tanks, and causing billowing smoke to curl into sluggish vortices. A handful of living warriors remained on that arid mountaintop, Chaos Space Marines clad in the brutal armour of the Black Legion. They stood amidst the mounded dead of recent battle, a few of their own fallen scattered amongst heaps of Ultramar Defence Auxilia. The Traitors checked handheld scrying devices and raised spiked Bolters, panning their weapons as they sought the source of the aetheric buildup. Harsh voices barked challenges through fanged Vox grills, while sensors swept the cobalt-blue sky above and the hulking forms of mountains that rose beyond the plateau's edge. Still no enemy revealed themselves.With sudden fury the building energies roared, hurling Heretic Astartes from their feet. The surging power was dragged inwards to a tight point, and there it coalesced into a towering structure. Tall and elegant, the curved edifce shimmered into view as though it had stood atop the mountain for a thousand standard years. The air swam around it, and from within spat a hail of firepower. Roars of anger and pain rose from the Traitors as monomolecular discs cut through armour and shattered eye lenses. Blood sprayed dark across sun-bleached stone. Severed limbs encased in black Power Armour clanged to the ground as ancient Heretics were cut to pieces by the sudden firestorm.As the Chaos Space Marines reeled, the Ynnari and Celestinians burst from the Webway entrance. Yvraine and the Visarch led a force much reduced; deeming it unwise to appear suddenly in the bounds of Ultramar at the head of an entire warhost, many of their followers, guided by the Farseer Eldrad Ulthran and the Autarch Meliniel, had departed on other crucial missions. The two remaining Eldar leaders sprinted across the plateau with breathtaking speed, empowered by the deaths of their enemies and weaving like dancers around the bolt shells that roared in their direction. The Visarch skidded low, sliding under a thumping volley of fire to ram his blade through a Traitor's breastplate. Yvraine, meanwhile, leapt nimbly over a hail of shots, planting one foot atop a Black Legionary's Bolter and vaulting over his head. The Prophet of Ynnead swept her blade in a flashing arc, and her victim's helm left his neck an instant before his form crumbled to glowing ash.More warriors surged from thin air to join the Ynnari charge. Swift-footed Dire Avengers and Klaive-wielding Incubi charged out alongside bellowing Black Templars Space Marines, their ingrained hatred for each other put aside. Marshal Marius Amalrich and Inquisitor Katarinya Greyfax stormed out of the Webway side by side, blades lashing out to shed Heretic blood once more. The winged figure of Saint Celestine soared above them, her Geminae Superia leaping at her side with Bolt Pistols blazing. The Battle-Sisters of the Order of Our Martyred Lady followed them into battle, guns flaring as they spat fire at the traitorous foe. Behind them all came the Magos Belisarius Cawl, skittering on his many mechanical legs as his precious auto-reliquary trundled along behind him. Skitarii and Kataphron Battle Servitors advanced with him, and the ground shook at the tread of a pair of towering House Taranis Knights that brought up the rear.The Black Legionaries did not panic at this sudden assault, as lesser warriors might have. Their numbers were few, however, and their attackers had the advantage of complete surprise. Mass-reactive bolts blew a handful of Skitarii apart, and two of the Visarch's Incubi were beaten down and bludgeoned to death at close quarters. Yet between the flashing blades of the Celestinians and the Ynnari -- who seemed to move with greater speed and skill by the moment -- all but a few of the Black Legionaries were swiftly cut down.The last of the Traitors fell back in good order, determined to bear word of what they had seen to their masters. It was not to be; none escaped the howling firestorm as the Knights braced their legs and let fly with gatling cannons and armour-piercing missiles. Fire billowed, shrapnel flew, and the fleeing Traitor Marines were reduced to bloody tatters.As quickly as it had begun, the one-sided battle was over. The Celestinians and Ynnari were left standing amongst the freshly fallen dead with their weapons smoking in their hands. Terse orders were given, warriors jogging out to establish a bristling perimeter of guns around the Webway portal. The Eldar and humans had fought together, yet they remained wary of one another, leaving tacit gaps between their formations as they deployed.Thus shielded, the leaders of the Ynnari and the Celestinians gathered beneath the harsh blue sky. Questions needed to be asked, and facts established. The Imperial Vox channels were found to be thick with clipped exchanges between Space Marine officers, Defence Auxilia regiments, starship captains and countless others. All were clearly engaged in fierce battle against Chaos forces, with dread names such as the Black Legion, the Alpha Legion, the Iron Warriors and the Emperor's Children ringing through the Vox. Palls of smoke rose from horizon to horizon, while the skies above were crisscrossed with contrails. Ultramar, it appeared, was a realm plunged into a desperate war for survival.Hot winds hissed across the barren plateau, bearing the distant rattle of gunfire and thump of explosions to Katarinya Greyfax's ears."Macragge is invaded," she said dourly. "This is grave news.""You are labouring under a misapprehension," said Cawl. "According to my internal gyro-cartolog, we do not stand upon the surface of Macragge. We are located one hundred and sixty million miles spinward of our intended destination, allowing for variable positioning and empyric distort.""Then where are we?" demanded the Inquisitor, rounding upon the tall xenos priestess standing nearby. Yvraine turned to Greyfax with a cold, imperious look. The Ynnari leader lowered her blade with slow deliberation, her head cocked to one side as though listening to something only she could hear. When she spoke, her voice was cold as the grave, and Greyfax felt a shiver at the faint, insectile susurrus that scratched behind the alien's words."Would you have been gladdened, Mon-Keigh, to find that my people kept a hidden way upon the surface of one of your most prized worlds? I think not.""No," growled Marshal Amalrich, "we would not." The Black Templar had been more grim than ever since the battle on Klaisus. Greyfax knew that he had taken the fall of Cadia, and the subsequent alliance of the Celestinians with the xenos, very badly."The Marshal is right," said Saint Celestine. "Such knowledge would have unsettled us. But it would, perhaps, have eased our road. Where, then, do we stand? And how shall we proceed along our appointed path?"All looked to Yvraine. The Daughter of Shades made a show of staring off to the far horizon, her Gyrinx winding around the train of her dress, rumbling a leonine growl."This is the world that your species calls Laphis, in the star system of Macragge," she said, her voice drifting around them like cold mist. "In order to proceed, we need only locate representatives of the Ultramarines present upon this world.""And what if they are disinclined to lend us their assistance?" prodded Sister Eleanor, one of Celestine's Geminae Superia. "We walk with xenos at our side, and come uninvited to their world. Are they not as like to shoot us as to offer welcome?""That is your concern, not ours," replied Yvraine, her tone dismissive. "These are your Emperor's finest warriors, are they not? Surely they have the mental discipline to discern friend from foe.""They have the mental discipline to remain wary of xenos trickery," rumbled Amalrich. "And to suspect those who traffic with such creatures.""We pilgrims will convince them that our cause is holy and just," said Celestine forcefully, shooting a stern glance at the scowling Marshal. "And that our alliance is an honest one. But not by standing here and arguing. We must move at once, for darkness draws close, and time grows short." |
Ultramar Campaign - Through the Flames: At Saint Celestine's urging, the Crusade forces and their Ynnari allies moved off through the Atheron Mountains. Events were moving quickly now, accelerating like a river in full flood tide, and the pilgrims did not have the luxury of time. Cadia had fallen, but worse -- judging from the ferocity with which he had pursued his broken foes, and his knowledge of their intended destination -- Abaddon the Despoiler knew something of their mission.From the heights of the plateau, a broad, packed-earth roadway led down the mountainside. Wide enough for several Baneblades to pass side by side, the roadway angled steadily downward between taller mountain peaks, and its entire length was lined with ancient stone supports. Atop these stood sombre statues of robed figures with the unmistakably oversized features of Space Marines. Lit braziers in the statues' hands trailed streamers of incense, and the allies saw heaps of devotional offerings and prayer papers piled at the effigies' feet.As they travelled, the Celestinians and Ynnari kept their weapons ready and their eyes fixed warily on the horizon. They threaded their way between occasional wrecked tanks and scattered corpses, both of Defence Auxilia and traitorous Chaos Cultists. The bodies looked to have fallen a matter of solar hours earlier, their blood still congealing around them and local insects only just beginning to settle, but the pilgrims saw no sign of living beings along their road, whether friend or foe.Archmagos Cawl assured his comrades that they were travelling in a favourable direction, their road carrying them towards a large urban centre and -- if his Vox-thieves and the local cartographia inloads were accurate -- the Ultramarines fortification that watched over it. The extraordinary allies spoke little as they pressed on. They listened instead to the sighing of the wind through the high places, the crunch of their footfalls on dry earth, and the distant clangour of battle borne to them through the thin mountain air.Those sounds grew suddenly louder as the road wound around the towering flank of a sun-scorched mountain. Ahead, less than a Terran mile distant, a ferrocrete bastion loomed over the roadway, built into the mountainside itself. The stylised U of the Ultramarines was embossed proudly upon the structure's flank, and twin Icarus Autocannon arrays swivelled back and forth atop its battlement, barrels pistoning as they hammered fire into the sky.The barrage of shots was aimed at a brood of Heldrake Daemon Engines. The draconic war machines swooped and circled, diving down to gout baleflame across the bastion's ramparts before soaring away again with soul-chilling roars.One of the Heldrakes broke off in the direction of the pilgrims. Marshal Amalrich was the first to react, yelling for everyone to spread out and run for the cover of the Imperial bastion.The Knights of House Taranis swiftly overtook them all, their Noble pilots spurring their mechanical steeds into a loping run. The massive war engines shook the ground as they advanced, guns swivelling skywards with ominous menace. One of the Knights bore an Icarus Autocannon array atop its broad carapace, and as the Heldrake swooped into range, the towering construct let fly. Avenger Gatling Cannons and Heavy Stubbers joined the fusillade, filling the air with a storm of projectiles that ripped the wing from the approaching Daemon Engine and sent it spinning down to detonate against the mountainside. Another of the roaring Heldrakes was blown apart as it banked around to attack the pilgrims, while the third broke off its attack and jetted away into the hard blue skies, dwindling until it was nothing more than a speck.The Knights stomped to a halt, weapons ticking as they cooled, and the rest of the pilgrims quickly caught up to them. Moments later, the armoured portal set into the bastion's feet hissed as its pressure-locks disengaged. The heavy door swung open and a trio of Ultramarines Battle-Brothers emerged, Bolters raised. The Space Marines advanced, pacing carefully forward with their weapons trained on the Ynnari.Voice amplifed by his Vox grill, one of their number barked a challenge to the newcomers, asking who they were, where they hailed from and why they travelled in the company of xenos.The conversation that followed was tense, but measured discipline prevailed. Perhaps if the allies had come to a world of a less rational or temperate Chapter, matters might have escalated towards violence.For the Ultramarines, the combined presence of an Inquisitor and the Living Saint -- albeit appearing less than cordial towards one another -- was enough to offset the presence of the Eldar at their side. Saint Celestine explained that their mission was a divine pilgrimage ordained by the Emperor Himself, and that Archmagos Cawl and his autoreliquary must reach the Lord of Ultramar with all haste.The Living Saint smiled in an entirely unsurprised fashion when the Ultramarines revealed that a flight of Stormravens was even now en route to their bastion. The gunships had been requested to provide air interdiction against the packs of Heldrakes harassing fortifications in this region. However, two gunships could be spared to transport the leaders of the Ynnari and Celestinians up to the Strike Cruiser Sword of Honour, which in turn could bear them on to Macragge. The Ultramarines explained that the Lord of Ultramar had, indeed, returned to the Fortress of Hera just solar days earlier. They would see Cawl and his allies there safely.While they awaited the inbound gunships, the pilgrims split their forces. All of the Ynnari, save Yvraine and the Visarch, would return to the Webway portal, departing this world to spread the word of Ynnead's awakening amongst their people.As a gesture of good will to their hosts, Celestine asked the Battle-Sisters of Our Martyred Lady to remain on Laphis. Along with the Knights of House Taranis, they would place themselves at the disposal of the Ultramarines, and aid in the ongoing defence of the planet.So it was that, as the Ultramarines Stormravens burned hard for orbit just solar minutes later, they bore a much-reduced company up to the waiting Strike Cruiser. From the Celestinians came Greyfax, Marshal Amalrich and a handful of Black Templars, Celestine and her Geminae Superia, and Cawl, accompanied by Kataphron Servitors and Skitarii.The gunships docked with their parent warship and, once they had been formally introduced to the cruiser's captain, the allies were ushered into confnement quarters under heavy guard. The Eldar bristled at this treatment, as did Marshal Amalrich and his Astartes, but Saint Celestine pacified her comrades once more with firm words of faith and acceptance.So began a grim and frustrating journey, trammelled in a spartan suite of brushed steel chambers and corridors, watched constantly by silent Chapter helots armed with heavy naval shotguns.Solar hours ran slowly into solar days. The omnipresent rumble of the ship's engines, and the sluggish stirring of artificial gravity and recycled air, became simple facts of existence. The Visarch trained endlessly, even deigning to spar with Marshal Amalrich. Inquisitor Greyfax, meanwhile -- with the aid of Archmagos Cawl -- was purged of the Necron Mindshackle Scarabs that had enforced her captivity. This process was effected over several solar days, and wracked the Inquisitor with terrible agonies as the invasive cyber-parasites were strained from her blood stream.Despite the pain that she endured, Greyfax's iron will never faltered, nor did she show any but the most minor outward signs of pain. Instead, she concentrated on keeping a wary eye on Saint Celestine. In private, Greyfax was beginning to suspect that Celestine's apparent divinity was more than a sham. She had seen the Living Saint battle against Arch-heretics and twisted Traitors; she had seen her predict events about which she could not have known in advance; she had seen how the light of Celestine's faith repelled the wicked and brought new strength to the righteous.Yet Greyfax was an Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus, a Witch Finder whose first duty was to doubt and to suspect all that seemed fair in case it concealed foulness at its heart. In Greyfax's long experience, true miracles were few and far between, and that which seemed a gift from the Emperor was, more often than not, a tainted temptation laid by the Gods of Chaos. Thus, even as the seeds of hope grew in her heart that Celestine might be uncorrupted, and even through her own agonies, Katarinya Greyfax kept watch over the Living Saint, alert for the slightest hint of duplicity.Amidst the enforced tedium, none noticed when Yvraine beckoned Cawl away into a recessed cargo bay in which his auto-reliquary had been stored. Beneath the mindless gaze of Cawl's Kataphron Servitors, the Emissary of Ynnead spoke earnestly with the Archmagos Dominus.The mysterious discussion waxed long, Yvraine labouring to convince the intractable Magos of certain unpalatable truths. Eventually, Cawl nodded his cowled head in agreement, a single, curt gesture that brought the clandestine meeting to an end. Satisfed, Yvraine swept away in a whirl of whispering skirts, leaving the looming Archmagos Dominus to contemplate the ramifications of their meeting. |
Ultramar Campaign - The Siege of Hera: At last, after solar days of realspace transit, the Sword of Honour reached Macragge's orbital envelope. TheCelestinians and their allies were hurried through the starship's corridors under armed escort. The StrikeCruiser shook around them, the unmistakable shudder of gun batteries discharging and void shields soaking up monumental kinetic impacts. As they boarded their Stormraven gunships once more, the pilgrims saw through the embarkation deck's shimmering Void Shields that their craft was under heavy attack. The Stormraven pilots reported that a sizeable Chaos armada was even now engaging the Ultramar Defence Fleet over Macragge, the two factions' lumbering Battleships and blade-fast Escorts filling the void with Lance beams and torpedoes. The Chaos attack was focussed primarily upon the Fortress of Hera itself, the titanic fortification covering much of Magna Macragge Civitas, capital city of the Ultramarines Chapter planet. Regardless, the gunship pilots vowed to get their charges down safely, and deliver them for their audience with the Lord of Ultramar.Marneus Calgar had been alerted of their coming via heavily encrypted Vox communiqué, and awaited their arrival with interest. This last comment was delivered in a flat tone which suggested that perhaps the Lord of Ultramar felt he had more pressing matters to attend to than their mysterious, holy mission.Nonetheless, the Stormravens lifted off with a scream of powerful thrusters. With their passengers strapped in and Cawl's auto-reliquary firmly secured, the pugnacious gunships fired their ramjets and shot out into the fire-lit void of space. Macragge turned slowly below them, a vast orb of blue, white, green and grey. Closer, bedlam lit the blackness. Lance beams stabbed and seared. Broken wrecks of once-proud warships tumbled through the void, chunks of metal and globules of liquid spreading slowly away from their blazing carcasses. Entire wings of Stormhawk Interceptors hurtled through blizzards of flak fire to execute daring strafing runs upon lumbering Chaos Cruisers.From what sigils the pilgrims could make out, it appeared that Abaddon and his Black Legion were attacking Macragge in significant numbers. Nor were they alone. Spacecraft bearing the icons of the Iron Warriors, the Purge, the Night Lords and many more clove through the gloom above the planet. Glinting specks rained from their flanks, swarms of Dreadclaw Drop Pods and armoured Attack Craft arcing down on invasion trajectories.Accompanied by an escort squadron of Stormhawks, the Ultramarines gunships turned their noses downward and dived through the madness of battle. They hit Macragge's upper atmosphere travelling at immense speeds, and flame washed across their hulls as they shuddered and shook with the violence of re-entry.Watching through external pict emitters, the Celestinians and Ynnari saw the flames flutter away. They were replaced by a dizzying vista of towering mountains that grew rapidly larger as the Stormravens hurtled downward. In the midst of the mountain peaks sprawled an immense, fortifed cityscape, lit from end to end by the muzzle flare of flak batteries and missile silos all hurling their wrath up into the skies. Heldrakes and Traitor fighter craft swarmed thick above the Fortress of Hera, weaving at speed between towering statues and monolithic buildings to strafe the defenders, or dump tons of ordnance onto ground targets. Explosions brought down colonnaded templums and looming hab-stacks throughout Magna Macragge Civitas, while the Ultramarines' withering return fire saw dozens of Chaos Attack Craft blown apart with every suicidal pass they made. Even as they fell, Heretics steered into the Ultramarines' defences, demolishing gun towers and massacring warriors.The Stormravens sped downward, making for the immense fortifications that dominated the heart of the city. A wave of Renegade Drop Pods thundered around them, speeding past like meteors and almost knocking one transport from the sky. Wings tucked tight to their metallic bodies, a pack of Heldrakes dropped behind them, and the escorting Stormhawks peeled off to intercept as the metallic beasts tried to latch onto the diving gunships.Surrounded by streams of cannon fire and tumbling comets of metal and flame, the Stormravens screamed onward. They plunged headlong through their comrades' curtain of anti-aircraft fire, only the superhuman reflexes and skill of the Ultramarine pilots preventing their craft from being torn apart by the countless threats through which they flew. The pilgrims clung onto their restraining straps for dear life as they were shaken violently back and forth while the gunships ran the gauntlet of aerial approach to the Fortress of Hera. Then, finally, the gunships decelerated, raising their noses and arcing gracefully into an armoured hangar set into the flanks of the edifice. At last, the Celestinians and the Ynnari had reached their destination.The pilgrims emerged from their scorched, battered gunships into one of the fortress' many embarkation hangars. They found themselves surrounded by urgent bustle on every side. Around the hangar entrance, Chapter Serfs crewed thumping anti-aircraft cannons that swivelled within gyroscopic cages as they chased their targets across the skies. Bulky Servitors lumbered back and forth, hauling carriages of ammunition to keep the guns fed. Further back within the hangar, Stormtalon and Stormraven gunships were refuelling, re-arming and undergoing swift binharic baptisms beneath the ministrations of Chapter Techmarines. Servo-arms whined. Welding braziers sparked and flared. The sound of rivet cannons buzzed and thumped through the cavernous chamber over the clipped voices of Defence Auxilia and robed serfs. Hundreds of men and women went about their business within the hangar, grim-faced and determined, and this was but one chamber within a fortress the size of a city.Through the military bustle marched a band of Chapter Serfs, led by a single Ultramarines Battle-Brother. The warrior's helm was white and gold, and his armour bore numerous oath papers and honour markings. The helots who followed him bore gilded Autoguns and stern expressions -- the uniform tabards of several were spattered with what looked like fresh blood, and it was clear to all that these soldiers had come directly from the defence of the fortress' walls.Announcing himself as Veteran Sergeant Cassean, the Ultramarine welcomed the Celestinians to the Fortress of Hera. He took a moment to nod respectfully to Marshal Amalrich and his Battle-Brothers, then requested that Cawl and his companions follow. Cassean turned briskly without waiting for an answer and marched away across the hangar floor. Left with little choice, the uneasy allies followed the brusque sergeant as he ascended a long, granite ramp and led them into the corridors of the Ultramarines fortress. They marched along at a brisk pace, through grand chambers of marble statuary and gilt ornamentation, across railed walkways hung with magnificent Ultramarines banners, and across void-shielded courtyards where Battle-Brothers blazed Bolter fire from the fire steps above. The din of battle was never far away. Thunderous explosions shook the walls around them from time to time, causing dust to fall like snow and electrosconces to flicker.Making their way across an armaglass-shielded sky bridge, the pilgrims got their first clear look out across the fortress proper. Towering fortifications sprawled away in all directions, their guns pouring fire into the sky and spitting death at the foes that pressed close outside the walls or landed within the fortress' grounds. The pilgrims saw Ultramarines Terminators striding relentlessly along armoured battlements, driving back Jump Pack-wearing Traitors with storms of fire. They saw squadrons of anti-aircraft tanks drawn up amidst ornamental gardens, launching missiles skyward to blast plummeting Chaos Assault Craft from the air. In the distance, a monstrous Traitor Titan was framed by the breach it had torn in the fortress' outer curtain wall. The great war engine's guns blazed like poisoned stars, and its Void Shields flickered and burst as the phenomenal firepower of the Ultramarines hammered into them.Hastened along by Sergeant Cassean, the Celestinians and Ynnari climbed a statue-lined stairway of marble and brushed steel, passing a squad of battle-scarred Ultramarines jogging the other way. At the stairway's head, the party emerged into a broad circular chamber with a frescoed floor, and walls and ceiling of void-shielded transparisteel. A massive bank of ornate consoles and holomaps dominated the chamber's centre, Servitors wired into its inset thrones and chattering binharic cant back and forth to one another. Dozens of robed functionaries, Quill Servitors, Chapter Serfs and strategos talked animatedly as they hurried around the central hololith, which projected a real-time map of the entire complex into the air. Runes and signifers swarmed across it in such profusion that the Fortress of Hera appeared to be caught up in a cyclone of data.Standing before the display, faces set in frowns of concentration, were Chapter Master Marneus Calgar, First Captain Agemman, Chief Librarian Tigurius, and a Grey Knight whose scrollwork chest plate announced him as Grand Master Aldrik Voldus. As Cassean led the pilgrims around the table, the hubbub died away, all eyes turning toward the extraordinary group.Solemnly, the Chapter Serfs moved aside and knelt with their heads bowed to the Lord of Ultramar, forming a corridor through which the pilgrims advanced. As they drew to a halt before Calgar and his assembled advisors, Marshal Amalrich too dropped to one knee with his sword held out before him, its point to the ground and his hands resting on its cross guard. His Battle-Brothers followed his example, showing their absolute respect for a hero of the Imperium. Inquisitor Greyfax bowed deeply, as did Celestine and her Geminae Superia. Only Cawl and the Ynnari remained standing, impassive despite the gravitas of the moment. Behind them, Cawl's auto-reliquary hissed and hummed, its mysterious contents still veiled by thick armour plates.In a clear voice, Cassean announced the pilgrims one by one. As the sergeant finished speaking and stepped back, an expectant hush fell. Explosions blossomed in the sky outside. Gunships and Heldrakes raced past, the chatter of their guns muted by the thick insulation of the strategium. The huge strategium console continued to rattle and hum with flowing information. Finally, Calgar said that he had no notion of who Belisarius Cawl might be, nor had he ever made any sort of pact with any Priest of Mars. On Saint Celestine's face there dawned a look of calm revelation, but the rest of the Celestinians turned their horrified expressions upon the Archmagos in their midst. Yet Cawl's next words caused greater consternation still, for he stated flatly that he had not come to see Marneus Calgar. Cawl had travelled across the galaxy to attend the Lord of Ultramar, and now demanded to be taken to him at once. The auto-reliquary, he stated, must be delivered to the Shrine of Roboute Guilliman.The outcry that followed Cawl's demand was immediate and intense. Marneus Calgar's expression grew thunderous as his advisors and Chapter Serfs cried out in shock. Auto-quills scratched a mad tattoo upon reams of parchment as hooded scribes frantically recorded every detail of this dramatic moment. The pilgrims exclaimed in anger and confusion, Greyfax turning upon Cawl and squaring up to the looming Magos as she barked a demand for immediate explanation. Only the Ynnari seemed unsurprised by this development, the Visarch standing statue still while Yvraine wore a faint smile upon her alabaster features, as though enjoying some private joke.From amidst the tumult of voices, First Captain Agemman's voice rose in a Vox-amplifed boom. The Ultramarines First Captain issued a demand for calm, urging those around him to remember where they stood and the conduct that was expected of them. As quiet was restored, Agemman turned to Calgar and said in no uncertain terms that he did not trust these newcomers, nor the mysterious device they brought with them. The First Captain counselled that, with such immediate danger all around and a furious battle to win, there was only one viable solution at this time. The pilgrims should be put into confinement, and their mysterious package locked down in a stasis vault until its contents could be safely examined. As for the xenos, Agemman counselled that they be swiftly destroyed lest they pose a threat to the safety of the Chapter Master or the Fortress of Hera.Saint Celestine spoke up then, attempting to explain the divine nature of her mission and the revelations she had received from the Emperor. She found herself staring into the muzzles of several Honour Guard Bolters -- not to mention the Condemnor Bolter of Inquisitor Greyfax, whose Puritan suspicions had been fired anew -- a clear indication that now was the time for the rulers of Ultramar to speak, and not their visitors.All eyes rested upon Calgar as he looked to Chief Librarian Tigurius for further counsel. Though not even the vigilant warriors of the Honour Guard saw it, in that moment both Yvraine and the Visarch tensed themselves in preparation for battle, subtle muscle contractions and minuscule alterations in posture leaving the Ynnari poised to fight their way out should matters turn against them.The Librarian remained silent for several long heartbeats, his weathered features contemplative. When he spoke, Tigurius' voice was deep and resonant, rich with power and wisdom. He reminded his Chapter Master that he had experienced troubling visions in the solar days leading up to the attack upon Macragge. Tigurius had seen a flight of iron birds take wing from a distant, crimson orb full of churning cogs. In the visions, those avian shapes had soared through fire and shadow that spilled from a ruptured castle gate of vast size. They had clutched a blazing sword in their jagged claws, and their wings had shone with holy light as they flew toward Ultramar. Through the ruptured gateway had been visible a staring, slit-pupilled eye, and as the birds neared Macragge, a giant maw full of blooded fangs had yawned wide around them, ready to bite down with crushing force.The Chief Librarian had believed that his visions concerned the fall of Cadia and the subsequent attack by the Black Legion upon Ultramar. Certainly they had spurred the readying of the fortress' defences, and the sending of astropathic communiqués that had brought the Ultramar Defence Fleet back to the Chapter planet at the critical moment.Now, though, Tigurius declared himself convinced that the visions pertained also to these travellers. The Chief Librarian said that he was willing to vouch for their presence, even that of the mysterious Eldar, and that he believed their arrival to be the Emperor's will made manifest.Hushed whispers ran through the strategium at this pronouncement, and Calgar nodded solemnly. Without further comment, the Chapter Master bade the Celestinians speak, and explain their presence in their own words. Between them, Inquisitor Greyfax, Marshal Amalrich and Saint Celestine did as they were asked, relaying the bloody tale of Cadia's fall and their subsequent flight. Even Yvraine of the Ynnari deigned to speak a little, providing a few, scant details that went some way toward explaining the aliens' presence amongst the group. The only one who refused to divulge further information was Belisarius Cawl; despite Marneus Calgar's repeated questioning, the Archmagos would not elaborate upon what his auto-reliquary contained, or what he expected to occur within the shrine.While the pilgrims spoke their piece, the war raged on. Information continued to stream in regarding troop deployments, attack and counterattack patterns, enemy drop sites, ammunition counts, and endless other articles of strategic intelligence. Marneus Calgar absorbed them all even as he listened to the pilgrims, issuing curt orderswhere required and keeping one eye always fixed upon the ever-shifting holomap that hung overhead. The Chapter Master wished to understand these strange visitors and the supposed pact they served, but he would not neglect the defence of his fortress while he did so.Finally, Greyfax concluded their tale, adding that she was empowered to act as the Emperor's representative in this matter, and that she would gladly take responsibility for Cawl's summary execution should he prove false. Calgar raised a hand to forestall further comment, both from the pilgrims and from the frowning Captain Agemman. Then, in a sombre voice, Calgar pronounced his verdict.The Chapter Master would permit the Celestinians to bring their auto-reliquary to the Shrine of Guilliman, though they would do so under heavy Ultramarines guard. Calgar said that while he understood and welcomed Agemman's prudent counsel, they lived in unusual days. The worshippers of Chaos had set foot upon the bedrock of Macragge once again, while the Warp churned to madness all around them. Calgar judged that the foe had been aided greatly by the supernatural beings they worshipped in this desperate endeavour. He would not turn his back upon the precognitive powers of his own Chief Librarian, or the wisdom of the Living Saint, at such a time as this, even if he had been given precious little reason to trust Archmagos Cawl.Had Agemman been a hot-tempered Space Wolf or relentlessly logical Iron Hand, he might have contested such a ruling. Instead, he accepted his lord's judgement with stoicism. Belisarius Cawl went to speak, but Calgar forestalled him. The Chapter Master gave his permission for the Ynnari to accompany their allies, for it seemed clear to him that great events were afoot that bore the hand of the Emperor upon them. The presence of the Ynnari could be no accident, and whatever the Emperor's will was in this matter, Marneus Calgar would not be the one to contravene it.Wasting no time, the Lord of Macragge issued his orders. He charged Agemman to remain in the strategium, taking personal command of the defence of the Fortress of Hera. Tigurius and Voldus would accompany the pilgrims to the Shrine of Guilliman, as would a heavily armed complement of Honour Guard, 3rd Company Battle-Brothers and 1st Company Terminators. Should the Celestinians or xenos prove treacherous, they would not find themselves short of executioners.Celestine spoke words of thanks to Marneus Calgar, praising his sagacity. By comparison, Yvraine's features were inscrutable, while Cawl merely seemed impatient, as though irritated by such petty wrangling and keen to be about his business. As the pilgrims set off once more, Inquisitor Greyfax and Marshal Amalrich exchanged a loaded glance, before moving to position themselves at the very rear of the motley procession with weapons ready. The Ultramarines would not be the only ones to turn guns upon Cawl and his questionable choice of allies if their intentions should prove false.Outside, the battle raged on as Macragge's sun dipped slowly behind the Crown Mountains. Fire lit the twilight as wave upon wave of Heretics plunged down from the firmament. As the pilgrims and their armed guards made for the Shrine of Guilliman, the Traitors without redoubled their efforts, the outcome of the battle hanging in the balance. |
Ultramar Campaign - Revelation and Rebirth: Entering the resting place of Roboute Guilliman was like stepping into some doleful warrior's afterlife. The chamber itself was enormous, a vaulted sepulchre through which a Warlord-class Battle Titan could have strode without hindrance. Marble columns held aloft a ceiling of stained armaglass and obsidian inlaid with theldrite moonsilver. Guilliman's greatest deeds were depicted in spectacular friezes and statuary, arranged around the chamber and lit artfully by flickering electrosconces to lend the images the greatest possible gravitas. Huge braziers of devotional incense burned throughout the shrine, lacing the air with subtle scents, while from cherub-visaged laud hailers spilled a steady background murmur of martial arias and reverent prayer.Despite the grandeur of the shrine, the pilgrims' eyes were drawn to the splendid figure enthroned within a pool of stark white illumination at one end of the chamber. There, upon a throne of marble, gold and finely worked adamantium, sat Roboute Guilliman. Esoteric machineries loomed over the Primarch's throne, thrumming and whispering as they fed remarkable energies through ribbed cables to enfold him in a rippling stasis field. Guilliman sat as though in repose, his eyes closed and his blood glinting jewel-like in a delicate necklace about his throat. Guilliman wore his finely-crafted Power Armour, still marred by the damage it had sustained during his final duel with the Daemon Primarch Fulgrim. Across his knees was laid a grand blade of prodigious size, the "Emperor's Sword", once wielded by the hand of the Master of Mankind Himself. Though the Primarch sat peacefully upon his throne, the force of his presence was palpable.The pilgrims approached the throne in reverent silence, their Ultramarines escort marching alongside them and Cawl's auto-reliquary at their rear. The group drew to a halt near the foot of the steps that led up to the Primarch, where countless Ultramarines had knelt in communion over the millennia. Marneus Calgar moved forward to stand at the very base of the steps, bowing his head reverently to his Primarch for a moment before turning to face the assembled pilgrims. The sounds of furious battle were still audible, even in this sacred place, muffled and distant but inescapable.Calgar drew a deep breath, and then asked once more for Belisarius Cawl to state his business here. The Chapter Master had indulged his visitors thus far, but with a desperate battle raging outside his fortress' walls, he could offer them no more time or patience.Magos Cawl inclined his head, and told an incredible tale. Cawl explained that, in the years before Guilliman was mortally wounded, the Primarch had summoned him into his confidence. Cawl's memengrams of that meeting were eroded and incomplete, but he believed that Guilliman had seen in him the potential for great things. The Magos had been charged with a great labour by Roboute Guilliman, one for which he would be richly rewarded with information that only a Primarch could provide. Cawl stated that he was not at liberty to reveal the nature of his task, forestalling Calgar's angry response by explaining that his labours had been divided into two distinct parts, and that he was here to deliver on the first of those. He brought a magnificent new suit of armour fit for the Ultramarines Primarch, one whose ancillary systems possessed the power to heal Guilliman's grievous wounds. Stunned silence reigned at this announcement. To bring back a living, breathing Primarch, to restore one of the Emperor's greatest sons to the Imperium in its hour of need; such a notion filled the Imperial warriors with awed wonderment.Yvraine spoke up, explaining her presence at this seminal moment. She was the Emissary of Ynnead, the Eldar God of the Dead, and her powers would be vital to Guilliman's restoration. Reading the puzzlement on her audience's features, Yvraine explained with sharp impatience that such a miracle could not be brought about without sacrifice. Cawl had laboured long and hard to fulfill the Primarch's request, but without Ynnead's aid, the fruits of that labour would not be enough. In order for Roboute Guilliman to live once more, first he must die.Where Cawl's words had been met by shocked silence, Yvraine's raised a storm. Calgar exclaimed his fury at such a notion, vowing that no xenos witch would ever lay hand upon the Primarch while he drew breath. Grand Master Aldrik Voldus moved to stand alongside Calgar, his expression grim, and Greyfax and Marshal Amalrich followed his example. The surrounding Ultramarines raised their weapons, pointing them at Cawl, the Ynnari, even the hulking shape of the auto-reliquary itself. They awaited only their master's order to open fire.Yet others raised their voices in support of this apparent insanity. Cawl blurted loudly that he was bound by the terms of his pact with Guilliman, and that he must bring it to completion. Saint Celestine too spoke up, imploring those around her to have faith, and asserting that this was, indeed, the will of the Emperor. Most unexpected of the proponents was Chief Librarian Tigurius, who strode, Force Staff ringing against the stone floor, to stand alongside Magos Cawl. Tigurius spoke in a calm voice that cut through the clamour, asking Lord Calgar to trust his counsel and saying once more that he had seen hints of this future in his visions. It was a scene of anger and confusion, but it was about to get worse. |
Ultramar Campaign - Shattered Sanctity: Amongst the storm of angry voices and brandished weapons, Marneus Calgar's Vox chimed insistently in his ear. Angrily, the Chapter Master accepted the priority Vox hail, but his words of rebuke died on his lips. Calgar's voice boomed over the commotion, his shout of warning coming a split-second before the stained armaglass of the shrine's ceiling exploded inward.Shattered crystal filled the air, shards the size of Storm Shields embedding themselves in walls, floor and armoured bodies. A huge shape smashed through into the shrine, a plummeting mass of blue metal travelling at the speed of a runaway mag-train. Hurtling down at an oblique angle, an Ultramarines Thunderhawk gunship slammed into the shrine's floor and skidded out of control. The aircraft was badly damaged, flames pouring from rents in its hull, one wing ripped away. It slewed drunkenly across the shrine's floor, away from the pilgrims and their Ultramarines guards, ploughing through a marble column and bringing it down in a thunderous avalanche of precious stone. The Thunderhawk slammed into the shrine's far wall, demolishing a statue of Guilliman battling Alpharius, before listing onto its side with a deafening clang.Even as the stricken vehicle was settling to a stop, its assault ramp burst open with a shriek of torn metal. Spilling from within came Chaos Space Marines in twisted armour of black and gold, spiked Jump Packs melded to their backs and deafening war cries ringing from their Vox grills.The Ultramarines responded with instant efficiency, Bolters and Assault Cannons roaring to life. A hail of shots ripped into the Black Legion Raptors, puffs of blood bursting from their avian forms as they jerked and danced amidst the fusillade. Still the Ultramarines were not quick enough to prevent catastrophe. Screaming their defiance, a trio of Raptors jetted through the rain of fire to slam spiked icons into the temple's floor. Tall spears of adamantium and iron, the icons were festooned with macabre trophies and anointed in daemonic gore. Empyric energies whirled around them, and reality rent apart with the calamitous thunder of teleportation flares.As the surviving Raptors leapt clear, a hulking wedge of Black Legion Chaos Terminators appeared, dozens of elite killers clad in spiked and tusked Tactical Dreadnought Armour.With exemplary discipline, the Ultramarines coolly shifted their aim. Bolts and blasts tore into the Black Legion Terminators, ringing from their armour with cacophonous fury. Yet these were chosen warriors imbued with the daemonic gifts of the Dark Gods. Though several of the massive Black Legionaries stumbled or fell, the rest shrugged off the salvo and began a grinding advance, firing back as they came.Marneus Calgar looked about himself aghast. The Shrine of Guilliman, the sacred heart of the Ultramarines Chapter, had been profaned by the minions of Chaos. Already a thunderous gunfight was erupting, Ultramarines hurling themselves into cover, returning fire at their attackers from behind columns and statuary. It was clear to all that the enemy were driving for the fallen Primarch. Calgar was forcibly reminded of a prior warning given by Aldrik Voldus in the astropathic communiqué he had sent to Macragge telling the Ultramarines that the Grey Knights would be offering their aid because they feared that Chaos planned an assault that could impact the entire Imperium's future. Calgar was still deeply suspicious of Cawl, the Ynnari and those who had accompanied them, yet here was a threat far clearer and more diabolical than them. With a stern demand that his visitors refrain from acting until he had the situation under control, the Chapter Master activated the energy fields around his Power Fists, known as the Gauntlets of Ultramar, and strode into the fight.He was not alone. Turning from the shrine, Saint Celestine drew her Ardent Blade. With a hymn of battle upon her lips and her Geminae Superia at her side, the Living Saint leapt toward the foe. Amalrich did the same, bellowing oaths of hate as he and his last few Battle-Brothers ran headlong at the Black Legionaries.Grand Master Voldus, too, moved to join the fight. He bit off orders into his Vox bead as he advanced, loosing shots from his Storm Bolter even as he called in reinforcement from his Grey Knights Battle-Brothers. The Imperial counterattack met the Black Legion assault in the middle of the shrine with a rending crash of metal on metal, and blood fell like rain as the two forces tore into one another.All throughout the shrine, tales of heroism and sacrifice played out. Inquisitor Greyfax took a glancing shot to her ribs in the opening moments of the fight. The bolt shell dented her armour, driving the air from her lungs, but by the grace of the Emperor it failed to detonate. Greyfax, seeing black spots before her eyes, dropped hastily into the cover of a marble pew only a few dozen Terran feet from the base of Guilliman's throne. Sucking down several deep breaths, Greyfax leant around the edge of the pew and fired off a tight burst of shells from her Condemnor Bolter. The rounds roared across the shrine, punching into the faceplate of a Black Legion Raptor and blowing his helm apart in a bloody spray.Greyfax's bionic eye switched rapidly through multiple scrying filters, collating tactical data and cogitating threat assessments at the speed of thought. To her fore, the Inquisitor saw Saint Celestine slicing her way through the Black Legion Terminators, spinning and leaping through the air as she clove the Traitors apart with her blade. One of the Geminae Superia was badly wounded, the armoured Seraphim sprawled in a slick of blood. The other was still fighting, emptying her Bolt Pistol into the foe. Greyfax still did not fully trust the Saint, but she could not fault the woman's selflessness or skill.Nearby, Marneus Calgar and Grand Master Voldus fought side by side, weathering the thunderous blows of their hulking enemies as they smashed and impaled one Traitor after another. As Greyfax watched, Voldus loosed a ruinous shock wave of psychic force from his outstretched gauntlet, hurling a Chaos Terminator through the air to demolish another towering statue. Still the Traitors pressed forward, and as they did so new warriors appeared to fill the gaps in their ranks. Teleport energies flared again, clearing to reveal a trio of Terminator-armoured Black Legion Sorcerers, flanked by monstrous warriors of fleshmetal and living weaponry. At the same time, Dreadclaw Drop Pods plunged through the shattered armaglass above, slamming into the ground behind the advancing Black Legionaries. From within spilled more of Abaddon's chosen warriors, Heretic Astartes including bellowing Khorne Berzerkers charging forward to join the fray.The Ultramarines stood their ground, despite being increasingly outnumbered. Veterans rattled volleys of fire into the advancing foe, ripping Black Legionaries off their feet or blasting them into glowing ash with bolts of plasma. Blue-armoured Terminators duelled with their blackarmoured counterparts, Heavy Flamers spewing fire across adamantium and ceramite as Power Fists delivered crushing blows. Marshal Amalrich and his brothers hurled themselves in alongside the Ultramarines, howling Chainswords and lashing Lightning Claws reaping a tally of Traitor lives. One Black Templar fell to a Chainfist's swipe, but still his brothers fought on.Greyfax's Psyocculum chimed a warning as Warp energies built amidst the battle. Following the device's quavering brass needle, the Inquisitor saw the trio of Black Legion Sorcerers with their staves raised, black fire boiling around them. Greyfax lined up her Condemnor Bolter and launched a blessed silver stake at the nearest Sorcerer. She cursed as the holy projectile impaled her target but did not fell him, then she ducked down to reload as bolt shells blew craters in her cover. As she did so, Greyfax saw that not all of the pilgrims, nor indeed all of their hosts, had joined the fight.The Inquisitor swore again as she saw Cawl hunched, spider-like, over the controls of his auto-reliquary. The Magos' metallic fingers danced across runic keys, his Mechadendrites slithering from one socket-port to another while the Ynnari and Skitarii stood guard over him. Beside them stood the Ultramarines Chief Librarian, Warp light glowing from his eyes and weaving around his skull-topped stave. As Greyfax watched, several frothing Berzerkers charged at Tigurius. The Librarian barked a string of syllables that caused the Khorne-worshippers to implode in a crumpled mass of flesh and metal. Greyfax's Psyocculum burbled confused readings as the life energies of the three Berzerkers left their bodies but did not vanish altogether. Ghost returns flickered around the two Ynnari, and Greyfax's suspicions of the Eldar deepened as she realised that they had -- in some fashion that she did not yet comprehend -- been empowered by the stolen animus.Greyfax pushed herself to her feet again, intending to dash across the open ground and command Cawl to cease in the name of the Holy Ordos of the Inquisition. At that moment, a stitching line of Autocannon fire marched along the top of the pew. Explosions of fire and shrapnel burst around the Inquisitor, hurling her from her feet. Greyfax fired back at her attackers, lashing out with her telepathic powers as she did so, but she was -- for the moment -- pinned in place.Marneus Calgar swung his right gauntlet in a punishing arc, hammering it up through his enemy's guard and catching a Chaos Terminator square under the jaw. His enemy's helm disappeared in a blizzard of metal and blood, his corpse slamming down onto its back with bone-breaking force. Before the Traitor even hit the ground, Calgar was already turning on the spot, both gauntlets held out from his body and bolters thundering. The Chapter Master revolved in a half-circle, blazing rounds into the Black Legionaries on every side and eviscerating another of them with explosive shells. Blocking the return swipe of a crackling Power Mace, Calgar prepared to swing another titanic blow into his enemies. Then he caught sight of movement at the base of Guilliman's throne, and cold horror clenched in his chest.Calgar saw the Martian Tech-priest step back from his auto-reliquary with the air of one completing a satisfying task. The dome-shaped device hummed forward, unfurling like the petals of some huge, carnivorous flower. The watching Chapter Master was at the wrong angle to see inside the machine, but he had a fleeting impression of glowing energies, unfurling Mechadendrites, clamping pincer-limbs and whirring bone-drills that filled him with revulsion.The auto-reliquary was rising and stretching out, enfolding the Primarch's form in its metallic embrace. At the same moment, the xenos witch-priestess lunged with preternatural grace, evading whistling bolt shells as she raised her blade high."No!" bellowed Calgar, finding his voice. "I command you to stop! In the Emperor's name, Brother Tigurius, stop them!" The Chapter Master's dismay rose to new heights as Tigurius looked straight at him, and shook his head."Do it!", shouted the Chief Librarian, blazing psychic energies into the foe that pressed close all around. "And may the Emperor condemn me if you have played me false, xenos."In desperation, Calgar raised his Bolters and prepared to fire at the Eldar witch, but Yvraine's blade fell lightning fast, hacking through the cabling that fed power to Guilliman's stasis field. Energies flared, and from within the closing arms of the autoreliquary, Calgar heard a rattling sigh that would haunt him until his dying day."What have you done?" he roared, despair and fury blazing through him like a firestorm. Fists clenched, Calgar turned upon the Traitors that had forced this terrible tragedy to come to pass, and waded back into the fight with unstoppable fury.The auto-reliquary engulfed Roboute Guilliman and his throne entirely, runic designators and auto-lumen flickering in mesmerising patterns across its surface. As though spurred by the sight, the Black Legionaries redoubled the intensity of their attack.Bellowing war cries, the Black Legion Terminators drove hard into their foes. Marneus Calgar was pushed back by his enemies, his battle plate cracked by the crunching blow of a Power Maul. Braving the Chapter Master's lashing gauntlets, a band of Traitor Terminators surrounded him entirely so that their brethren could break away towards the auto-reliquary. Gunfire echoed thunderously around the shrine as the Traitors let fly into Cawl's unfolded device. Bolts and shells alike exploded harmlessly as they struck hardened void shielding, unable to punch through the Archmagos' data-wards to damage the device behind.The last of the Raptors formed into a single talon and bounded across the shrine. Their Jump Packs howled, and terrifying screams burst from their Vox grills. They were met by a thin line of Ultramarines Veterans, the Loyalist Astartes abandoning cover to interpose themselves between the Chaos assault troops and Guilliman's throne with Bolters blazing. Several Raptors fell, but the Ultramarines paid for their bravery as the enemy's Obliterators opened fire. Plasma blasts and Lascannon beams smashed the Veterans from their feet, reducing chest cavities to blackened craters and helmed heads to scatters of ash.The Chaos Sorcerers leading the attack drew deep upon the energies of the Warp, risking damnation in their haste to break through. Two of the psychically-empowered warriors unleashed a storm of crackling black lightning at Grand Master Voldus, driving the Grey Knight to one knee with their combined fury. The Grey Knight's eyes glowed and the runes on his armour shimmered with power as he roared counter-incantations. Meanwhile, the last of the Sorcerers stormed toward the Primarch's throne, arms raised above his head and voice booming from his Vox grill. As the Sorcerer chanted, so the Temple of Correction began to shudder and shake. Pillars split from bottom to top, chunks of marble the size of Drop Pods shearing off to crash down into the fight. Gaping rents yawned wide in the floor, swallowing warriors from both sides, and the frescoed ceiling became webbed with cracks.Realising that the Sorcerer was attempting to bring one end of the shrine down upon Guilliman's throne, Tigurius brandished his staff and focussed his psychic energies to unmake the Chaos worshipper's incantation. Yet the Chief Librarian's concentration was shattered as a fresh wave of Khorne Berzerkers hurled themselves at him. Tigurius frantically parried one roaring Chainaxe after another with his staff, cursing as he felt the powers of the Empyrean draining away from his touch. The Ynnari were suddenly there beside him, fighting with blistering speed. Never had Tigurius seen living creatures move with such swiftness and grace, Yvraine and the Visarch blurring through the air and leaving greyed-out after-images in their wake as they ruthlessly laid the Berzerkers low.All across the shaking temple, the dwindling forces of the Imperium fought like lions to hold back their foes. Celestine still hacked and cut, span and leapt, leaving a trail of slain Black Legionaries in her wake. Archmagos Cawl sent blasts of searing energy ripping through the Chaos ranks while intoning binharic psalms to fortify his allies' weapons and wargear. Marshal Amalrich, accompanied now by just two remaining Sword Brethren, fought tirelessly atop a heap of Black Legion corpses. Teleport energies flared once more and a squad of Grey Knights Paladins flashed into being, bolstering their Grand Master's psychic defences with their own.For a moment the battle hung in the balance. Then a second flight of Dreadclaw Drop Pods began their descent upon the shrine, fires billowing around their hulls as they fell. No scattered handful of reinforcements was this, but a pinpoint attack wave of ten armoured pods, held in reserve by the masters of the Chaos invasion and hurled in to strike the killing blow. Heldrakes dived alongside them, jaw cannons chattering to tear a path through Ultramarines interceptors and gunships. More than one of the plummeting Daemon Engines hurled itself into flak fire, compelled to self-sacrifice in order to shield the Dreadclaws from harm. Thus protected, all ten pods flashed down through the sundered dome of the Shrine of Guilliman, touching down amidst billowing clouds of smoke and sulphurous flame.As one, the Dreadclaws irised open to disgorge squad after squad of heretical killers. An entire Traitor warband surged into battle, the Talons of the Despoiler deployed en masse to sweep away all resistance in the shrine. It was a force whose combined strength could subdue worlds, one hundred super-human murderers, fresh and ready for battle. The Black Legion reinforcements struck the Imperial defence like a battering ram.Ultramarines Veterans and Honour Guard fell as they were riddled with overwhelming bolt fire. Courageous Terminators crumpled, even their potent armour unable to withstand the hammering volleys of Bolter, Melta and plasma fire that engulfed them. Marneus Calgar roared in defiance as he was borne to the ground by a surging mass of foes that swung, stabbed and stamped at him. Marshal Amalrich and his brothers charged down the mound of corpses rather than be caught in the open by the foe's massed firepower, determined to hack down as many of their tainted kin as they could before they were slain. Saint Celestine, too, swooped down upon the mass of foes. Her remaining sister had been smashed from the air by a plasma blast, and even the Saint herself was now fighting one-handed, her left arm hanging broken at her side. Still she sang out a hymn to the Emperor, determined to meet death with words of purity and hope on her lips.Everywhere the massed Chaos worshippers pressed forward, engulfng the shrinking islands of Imperial resistance, while sorcerous energies continued to tear at the shrine itself. Not a single defender took a step backward, but it was clear that their lives could now be measured in solar minutes at most. |
Ultramar Campaign - The Avenging Son: The foremost Black Legionaries were mere Terran yards away from the foot of Guilliman's throne when the rune-panels on Cawl's auto-reliquary flickered from red to green. A single chime sounded, a clear, pure note that cut through the clangour like a knife. The Archmagos himself, fighting back-to-back with the Ynnari and Chief Librarian Tigurius, emitted an uncharacteristic blurt of binharic triumph. The next moment, the outstretched armatures of the auto-reliquary folded back with a gaseous hiss to reveal a sight of breathtaking splendour.Where before Roboute Guilliman had sat, a pale, stasis-locked revenant, now the Primarch stood awake, alert and very much alive. His presence was immense, dominant as a thunderhead suddenly filling the shrine with its crushing pressure. Guilliman was clad in a magnificent new suit of Power Armour, an ornate masterwork that had travelled all the way from the forges of Mars within Cawl's auto-reliquary. In one hand the Ultramarines Primarch held the Emperor's Sword, lit now from hilt to tip with leaping flames, and in his eyes was a look of such murderous intensity that even the Loyalists within the shrine quailed to see it.It was as though a spell had settled over the shrine. Though outside the din of war thundered on, within that echoing chamber friend and foe alike stared awestruck at the legendary figure reborn in their midst. An incoherent scream of rage shattered the silence, a single Khorne Berzerker charging headlong through the stunned combatants to launch himself in a flying leap at the Primarch. Guilliman moved with such blistering speed that the Ynnari themselves would have struggled to match it. His burning blade drew a pyrotechnic arc through the air as it swung, bisecting the Khorne Berzerker at the waist and hurling his severed halves to the ground.As the Chaos worshipper's armoured corpse crashed to the floor, the spell was broken. With a great howl of hate, the Black Legion warriors surged towards Roboute Guilliman. Wordlessly, the noble demigod strode to meet them, and the carnage truly began.Saint Celestine looked upon the towering form of the Primarch reborn, and knew the abiding satisfaction of her faith being borne out once more. A son of the God-Emperor Himself, a demigod of battle to lead the Imperium out of the darkness that, with each passing solar day, seemed more certain to engulf it entirely. In what greater endeavour could she have played a part? What single event could possibly be more important than the manifestation of this breathtaking miracle? Humbly, Celestine offered up her profound thanks to the Emperor for permitting her to be a part of such a wondrous thing.Around her, the battle still raged, yet every aspect of the conflict had changed for Celestine in that singular moment of rebirth. The strewn corpses of Imperial warriors were no longer a tragic waste, but instead the fallen bodies of martyrs whose sacrifice would be immortalised forever. The traitorous killers filling the shrine were no longer hated despoilers, but instead merely the first of an endless tally of Heretics that Guilliman would lay low. Her own hurts no longer mattered, whether the physical wounds to her own body or the spiritual rents opened by the deaths of her Geminae Superia."Thank you", intoned Celestine, a single golden tear rolling down her cheek as she turned her face to the heavens. "Thank you, my Emperor. He is a blessing we do not deserve."Snarling, a Black Legionary lunged at Celestine with a serrated blade in hand. Presumably he thought her distracted in her moment of sublime gratitude, but he could not have been more mistaken. With the fires of faith searing through her veins, Celestine turned the golden radiance of her gaze upon the Heretic and smiled beatifically as she felt her broken arm heal itself anew. The Ardent Blade came up in a single, swift movement and ran the Heretic Astartes through.Even as her assailant fell back with blood gushing from his mouth, the Living Saint launched herself skyward and soared across the shrine. She alighted beside Inquisitor Greyfax, who was stood atop a sarcophagus pouring Bolter fire into the Heretics massed on every side."I erred", shouted Greyfax over the roar of her Bolter. "And I shall do penance. You truly are an instrument of the Emperor's will.""Vigilance is not a sin, Katarinya Greyfax", replied Celestine, slashing her blade through the enemies before her. "You serve Him as surely as I.""Indeed", said Greyfax with a curt nod. "Then let us serve him together, as true warriors of faith." With that, she raised her blade and lunged into the foe, Celestine leaping at her side.First to die was the Sorcerer whose powers had shaken the temple to its foundations. Guilliman raised his mighty gauntlet, the Hand of Dominion, and a storm of armour-piercing fire erupted from beneath it to rip the tainted psyker to pieces.Next to fall were the remaining Black Legion Berzerkers. Following their comrade's example, they flung themselves screaming at the reborn Primarch. Like their fellows, they were reduced to so much armoured meat, smashed from the air with terrifying speed. Guilliman was running now, storming forward through the hail of bolts and shells unleashed by the Black Legionaries. Rounds exploded against the Primarch's armour, but none could pierce its inviolable plates.As he crashed into the front ranks of Black Legionaries, Guilliman let out a building roar of pure, undiluted fury. The Primarch's first blow threw a Black Legionary high into the air, blood streaming behind the corpse in a red trail. His second strike smashed a Traitor Terminator into a bronze and marble column with enough force to drive the Chaos worshipper clean through it, and out the other side. A spiked Power Fist swung for Guilliman's chest, only to be lopped from its wielder's arm before the blow could land. Guilliman's return swing parted his attacker's head from his shoulders, cauterising the stump of the Traitor's neck as the body crumpled to the floor. On it went, the Primarch moving with such speed that even the Heretics' superhuman reactions couldn't save them. None could match Guilliman. None could even come close, and the few opponents that landed lucky blows found their weapons turned aside by the Primarch's masterwork armour.As the Black Legion hurled itself towards the towering warrior in its midst, so the pressure lessened upon the surviving Loyalists in the shrine. Full of vengeance, inspired by the spectacle of the Primarch, the last of the Celestinians and their allies threw themselves back into the fight with renewed vigour.As Guilliman cleared the foes from around the foot of his throne, Tigurius, Cawl and the Ynnari followed him into the gap. Yvraine blurred through the air, felling a Chaos Space Marine before cart-wheeling between two more and leaving them as crumbling statues of dust and ash. A Traitor raised his Plasma Gun to blast the whirling priestess, only for the Visarch's sword to lop his arms off at the elbows. The Champion of Ynnead reversed his grip on his blade, ramming it through his victim's helm before basking in the escaping psychic energies of the Traitor Marine's corrupted soul.Tigurius released a thunderous barrage of aetheric energies, thumping tectonic shock waves that hurled Heretic Astartes from their feet and shattered their armour like porcelain. The Chief Librarian felt Guilliman's gaze upon him then, for just a heartbeat. The Primarch's appraising stare seemed to strip Tigurius down to his soul. Then Guilliman stormed on through the enemy ranks.With every blow, the Primarch of the Ultramarines sent mutated corpses tumbling through the air. His expression was graven granite and frozen hate, a mask of vengeful anger that had endured millennia.For Guilliman, his last memory was a desperate battle against a tainted brother, a fraternal contest of godlike strength and barbed, hateful taunts -- then poison and pain beyond endurance. Now he found himself in strange surroundings, facing a twisted horde of creatures that were nightmarish parodies of the Adeptus Astartes ideal.Not that his apparent allies struck Guilliman as much more familiar, but he could at least detect who in this vast sepulchre was tainted by Chaos and who was not. For now, that was enough. The Primarch compartmentalised his questions for later, and concentrated solely on the battle at hand.The Black Legionaries continued to hurl themselves at the reborn Lord of Ultramar, clearly willing to sustain any amount of casualties if it meant laying Guilliman low. Yet they were laughably outmatched in almost every regard. Sweeping the Emperor's Sword in wide arcs, firing off hammering volleys from the Hand of Dominion, the Primarch reaped a bloody tally as he drove the Traitors back. As they retreated, so the prone form of Marneus Calgar was revealed, his armour cracked and his face beaten bloody. Guilliman paused for a moment in his rampage, looking down upon this fallen son with an unreadable expression on his face.Calgar stirred, one eye opening to look up at the Primarch reborn. Satisfied that his scion lived, Guilliman pressed on, leaving the fallen Chapter Master to stare in disbelief at his resurrected gene-sire.Across the chamber, Grand Master Voldus and his Paladins were driving the surviving Chaos Sorcerers back. The Heretics were powerful psykers both, but neither could hold a candle to Voldus' preeminent power. Surrounded by a crackling vortex of empyric energies, the Grand Master strode through the dark flames and molten lightnings conjured by his foes. Propelled as much by thought as by his steely sinews, Voldus' lightning-wreathed Nemesis Daemonhammer Malleus Argyrum swung in an unstoppable arc and slammed into the helm of the closest Sorcerer. Ceramite, flesh and bone exploded in a crackling spray, and the Traitor toppled backwards as a headless corpse.The last of the Heretic leaders lost his nerve, barking orders at his underlings to cover his retreat from the shrine. The Sorcerer turned, lumbering in his Terminator Armour, and found himself face-to-face with Roboute Guilliman. Screaming witch-light rushed in as the Sorcerer attempted to conjure a potent curse. Before he could even spit the jagged syllables to unleash his power, the Sorcerer was hoisted bodily off the ground, Guilliman's Hand of Dominion clamped firmly around the Traitor's gorget. In a breathtaking display of strength, the Primarch lifted his foe high into the air, Guilliman's face a cold mask of disgust. The Sorcerer made a last, croaking attempt to speak before the Emperor's Sword slammed through the Traitor's midriff, and ripped it swiftly upward. Ancient armour and corrupt flesh parted as easily as silk, and the Sorcerer's innards spilled out in a rush to splatter upon the flagstones.Leaderless, reaped like corn by the seemingly unstoppable Primarch and his allies, the last of the Black Legionaries turned and fled. Not a single one of them would escape the Fortress of Hera alive. |
Ultramar Campaign - Enthroned Anew: By the time reinforcements reached the Temple of Correction, the fighting was done. Every single Ultramarine who rushed into that vaulted space dropped to their knees in worshipful awe at the sight of their Primarch reborn.Calm now, Roboute Guilliman took charge of his warriors. He asked no questions, save those of a purely strategic nature. He made no reference to the circumstances of his rebirth, his long repose, or the strangers that he found himself surrounded by, and none dared raise such matters with him. The Primarch would doubtless seek answers, but caught between wonder and a kind of overawed fear, the Ultramarines, the Celestinians, and even the Ynnari kept their own counsel. Besides, war still raged outside the shrine.News of the Primarch's rise spread like wildfire through the Fortress of Hera. It was proclaimed from every Vox speaker, shouted from every rampart, and broadcast from the vocal emitters of countless Cybercherubim that fluttered through the cauldron of war. Guilliman ensured that it was so, for he understood well that his living presence would embolden his armies and cow his enemies. Ultramarines and Ultramar Defence Auxilia alike knew first bewilderment, then newfound strength as they processed this incredible news. The Chaos worshippers, by comparison, faltered in their attack. Even the most feared of their Champions were eclipsed by the martial glory of a living, breathing Primarch, and ripples of unease spread through the Heretic throng at the thought of facing him.Guilliman made straight for the fortress' strategium, and -- in a dramatically charged moment that would become enshrined in statuary -- formally accepted command of the defence from First Captain Agemman. Marneus Calgar stood at his Primarch's side during this exchange, sorely wounded and supported by two Honour Guards, yet determined to be present all the same. Guilliman showed his nobility by humbly requesting the Chapter Master's leave to assume full command of the Ultramarines at that time. Calgar shrugged off his Battle-Brothers and, grimacing in pain, knelt before his gene-sire. He matched Guilliman's solemnity as he offered unending fealty to the Primarch, and bequeathed full control of the Chapter to him in perpetuity.Like an impresario settling before his instrument, Guilliman spread his hands upon the strategium table and took a deep breath before beginning to command. With his every utterance, the invaders' plight became more apparent. The Primarch's strategic acumen, his tactical genius and miraculous mental acuity were unmatched. The leaders of the Ultramarines looked on in amazement as Guilliman marshalled the defenders like regicide pieces, drinking in reams of strategic data and issuing a steady stream of orders that turned one fight after another in the defenders' favour. Calgar and his lieutenants had executed a superhuman campaign of defiance against the invaders, but the Primarch was operating on a different mental plane.At Guilliman's command, thunderous overlapping firestorms and interlaced webs of interceptor strikes cleared the airspace over the Fortress of Hera. No longer threatened from above, Ultramarines reserves and vast numbers of Defence Auxilia flowed into the fight in masterful deployment patterns. Feints, ambushes, false retreats and sudden, overwhelming counterattacks ripped through the Chaos forces and drove them from within the fortress' grounds. Guilliman wielded hundreds of thousands of warriors at once, predicting every move his enemies made and countering before they had even thought to act.By the time the Primarch and his coterie strode out to lead the fight in person, the Chaos attackers were reeling in disarray. The attack led by Guilliman into the heart of their lines was like a final bolt round placed between the eyes of a wounded enemy. Black Legionaries, Iron Warriors, Alpha Legion and Night Lords -- all were hurled back from the walls. Traitor Titans toppled like vast, flaming trees to smash down in ruin. Just three solar hours after his resurrection, Roboute Guilliman concluded the wholesale purge of Chaos invaders from the Fortress of Hera, and confidently proclaimed the Ultramarines' stronghold secure.There now came a time where breath could be drawn, and stock taken. Even as lumbering Servitors and Chapter Serf work gangs laboured to shore up the fortress' battered defences, Guilliman summoned a select company to attend him in the Chapter Master's sanctum. This had long been the domain and throne room of Marneus Calgar. Now it would become the sanctum of the Primarch himself, and it was here that he was formally invested as Lord of Ultramar and Master of the Ultramarines once more. Calgar, Tigurius, Agemman and their closest lieutenants were present for Guilliman’s elevation, as were representative brothers from every company of the Chapter. The Celestinians, too, attended Guilliman's formal coronation, the Saint herself ceremonially bestowing her blessings upon the Primarch. Even the Ynnari watched from the sidelines as this momentous event occurred; they lurked amongst the shadows, a silent and staunchly unremarked-upon presence whose expressions remained cold and watchful.As the ceremony concluded, Guilliman rose and addressed the assembly. There was much to be done, and countless questions to which the Primarch required answers. Before he could act further, Roboute Guilliman needed to know everything that had occurred during his long absence. |
Ultramar Campaign - Dark Revelations: The Warp is, in many ways, a mirror of our reality. Like a dark and fathomless pool, its surface ripples with the impact of momentous events, or great outbursts of passion and emotion. The resurrection of Roboute Guilliman sent bow waves of psychic energy rolling outward through the Immaterium, racing tsunamis of turmoil that did not go unnoticed.One by one, the Champions of the Dark Gods of Chaos became aware of the resurrected Primarch. Reclining amidst an endless banquet of souls, Fulgrim pouted in displeasure as daemon imps whispered the news into his ear. The Daemon Primarch of the Emperor's Children Traitor Legion bestirred himself from his velvet throne, vowing to his depraved god Slaanesh that this time, he would ensure Guilliman's eternal fall from grace.In hidden fanes and crystalline mazes, the greatest daemons of Tzeentch watched as the weft and weave of fate rippled and changed with the implications of Guilliman's return. Reading their master's will in the shattered facets of the future, each set itself to the task of tainting, tempting or destroying the Ultramarines Primarch in a myriad of subtly varied fashions.Deep within the noisome swamps of Nurgle's Garden in the Realm of Chaos, a conclave of Great Unclean Ones listened indulgently to the frantic babbling of messenger flies. They leered in delight, bile and maggots slopping down their festering chins. A Primarch! One untouched and untainted by any of Nurgle's brothers. Their pestilential master would no doubt value such a prize most highly. Perhaps, they chortled mockingly, they might even arrange a final reconciliation between the bitter Daemon Primarch Mortarion and his brother. Such an opportunity had not presented itself in thousands of standard years, and the Great Unclean Ones hummed a cheerful ditty as they began to concoct a sickness fit for a demigod.Elsewhere in the galaxy, the Mendox Cataclysm was coming to its hideous conclusion. Along a war front that spanned entire star systems, the Champions of Khorne burned eighty-eight Imperial worlds at once. Amidst the rising flames of their genocide, Champions of Khorne both mortal and daemonic witnessed visions of their furious deity, raging against Guilliman's return. His apoplectic bellows rang as thunder through the skies of the dying planets, and Warp Storms shuddered into being through rents in reality as though the Blood God was hacking at the stars with his ruinous blade. The servants of the other Dark Gods might try to corrupt Guilliman, to mislead or despoil him. Yet Khorne's servants knew that their master had no patience for such things. Instead, they fell to battle amongst each other, warring for the right to hunt down the reborn Primarch and claim his skull.Other dark lords, too, saw the glowing beacon of Guilliman's rebirth from afar and began to marshal their forces accordingly. Forewarned by the prophetic visions of Zaraphiston, Abaddon the Despoiler had fashioned a loose alliance of Traitor Marine warbands to strike Guilliman down before his resurrection could occur. It was this that had spurred the sudden, frenzied Chaos invasion of Ultramar, but -- even with the aid of a sizeable force of Black Legionaries -- Abaddon's vassal warlords had failed in their initial gambit. Furious, Abaddon summoned and bound the Lord of Change Kairos Fateweaver, sending him winging his way across the galaxy to gather fresh forces against the Primarch.Upon far-flung hell worlds, Magnus the Red and the Death Lord Mortarion received word of their brother's awakening. Their reactions were as different as fire and ice. Mortarion raged, a cold and virulent storm of anger whirling around him until its echoes in realspace seeded seven new and terrible plagues upon luckless Imperial worlds. Mired amid plans that were nearing fruition, the Daemon Primarch of the Death Guard Traitor Legion could not yet act to strike at Guilliman. Instead, as he stared with glowing eyes across the mist-wreathed parade grounds of his Plague Planet, and the massed ranks of Death Guard there assembled, Mortarion vowed that he would render Guilliman and his empire to rot soon enough.Magnus, by comparison, gave a booming laugh of utter delight. Like a fortune teller who flips their final tarot card and gains sudden insight, the Crimson King saw now before him paths of glorious fate, where before had been a wilderness of confusion. Magnus began to issue orders, his words bursting forth as swarms of crystalline insects. They flitted away to marshal the thrallbands of his once proud Space Marine Legion, the Thousand Sons. Already, the cyclopean Daemon Primarch had revenged himself upon one hated foe of old, setting the Fenris System of the Space Wolves alight in the fires of retribution. Now, he saw a chance to punish another.So the might of the Warp began to gather, coiling and writhing like a serpents' nest. Traitor Marine warbands rode the dark tides of the Empyrean toward Ultramar, howling with naked bloodlust and swearing vows to strike Guilliman down in the name of the Ruinous Powers.Swathes of the galaxy were already riven with Warp Storms that had spilled through the Cadian Gate with all the ferocity of Old Night, or been unleashed by the shattering of the Eldar Craftworld Biel-Tan. Now those tempests spread further, as the Primordial Annihilator turned its full attentions upon realspace. Screaming maws burst open between the stars, horrifyingly immense, yawning gulfs ringed by mountainous fangs and coiling, ectoplasmic tentacles. Dozens of worlds were plunged into darkness and terror as time shattered apart around them, and the energies of the Immaterium burst their banks to flood into realspace.Within the Warp, wars ended even as fresh ones began. Daemonic legions were pulled away from nightmarish battlefields and hurled through breaches in the veil of reality, charged with hunting down and putting an end to the reborn Primarch. Yet the servants of the Dark Gods are ever opportunists, and believed that this moment of distraction could be used to strike at their respective masters' rivals amongst the Chaos pantheon.Mounted upon a cogwork scorpion the size of a city, Khorne's blood legions drove headlong into the winding edges of the Lord of Change's Crystal Labyrinth, swarms of flame-belching Tzeentchian daemons pouring out to meet them like insects defending their kicked hive. At the same time, Slaanesh's cavalcade of hedonism hacked its way into the Garden of Nurgle, even as the Plague God's infamous Sluggardhost came squirming through the brimstone caverns beneath Khorne's Ironfire Bastion. Soon enough, fresh wars raged throughout the domains of the Chaos Gods, their eternal rivalries stoked by the momentous events, yet still a portion of their attentions were focused upon the fate of Roboute Guilliman, and upon their worshippers' schemes to lay him low.As for the Primarch himself, Guilliman was, as yet, unaware of the daemonic madness that his return had spurred. This was a mercy, for the Lord of Ultramar already had a crushing weight of questions and shock to deal with. Everything Guilliman knew was gone, replaced by the madness and horror of a future he had tried so desperately to prevent ten thousand standard years before.Roboute Guilliman settled heavily into his new throne. The Primarch had despatched all of his attendants and advisors, even sending his Honour Guard to wait outside the sanctum. At last he could allow a little of his sorrow, trauma and pain to show, and Guilliman let his mask drop with a sigh of relief. Whatever had been done to him to bring him back, it had left the Primarch with a constant, gnawing ache that radiated from deep within. He suspected that pain would never leave him.Physical hurts were the least of Guilliman's troubles. One by one, the Primarch had spoken with each of the Celestinians, the lords of the Ultramarines, and even Yvraine of the Ynnari. Solar days had been spent in deep, earnest conversation, Guilliman using every iota of his statesman's guile to set his guests at ease, to tease from them as much information as he could, and to hide his reactions to their words. Guilliman had thanked each of his visitors for their insights and their service to the Imperium, inwardly assessing each of his guests and showing them whatever aspect of his personality was surest to render them sympathetic and voluble.Though he had not shown it, each fresh revelation struck the Primarch like a cannon shell. He was exhausted from staving off bewilderment and horror, hollowed out by pain. Guilliman groaned and placed his head in his hands, his new suit of armour hissing and humming with the motion."Millennia have passed", he murmured, unsure to whom he spoke. He knew only that he had to vocalise his situation before it drove him mad. Not for the first time since his return, Guilliman wished for one of his brothers to speak with. They, at least, might have understood."Thousands of years", he said. "And look what has become of them. Of us. Idolatry. Ignorance. Suffering and squalor, in the name of a god who never desired the title."Guilliman shook his head and stood, pacing across the Chapter Master's sanctum to stare up at the banners hanging on the western wall. Each was the height of an Imperial Knight, a cascade of masterfully woven cloth depicting the glories of the Ultramarines.Slain alien beasts, executed Heretic despots, worlds saved and worlds burned. The Chapter's proud iconography was much in evidence, but so was the Aquila of the Imperium and there, presiding over several of the heraldic designs, a figure with throne and halo who must surely be the Emperor."We failed, father", said Guilliman, his words tired and leaden with sorrow. "You failed your sons, and we, in our turn, failed you. And now, to compound our arrogance and vainglory, we have failed all of them, too. Did Horus not say that you sought godhood? He built a rebellion upon that claim. How he would gloat, to see the Imperium now."Anger surged through the Lord of Ultramar, and he clenched his fists with the effort of self-restraint. He imagined destroying this chamber, tearing it apart and hurling its wreckage around like a wild beast. He dared not, lest these strangers in his Chapter's livery see through his facade. Though he wrestled with despair, the Primarch knew that he could not let his weakness show. Marneus Calgar, Tigurius, Agemman, all the others -- they looked at him as though he was the Emperor Himself. Guilliman was painfully aware of his symbolic quality, and of how desperate and dark the hour had become. He must show nothing but strength to his gene-sons, lest his despair taint their hearts, too."And yet, would it really matter," he sighed, turning his back on the banners and pacing across the chamber to stare through a stained glass window. Out there, across the war-torn immensity of the Fortress of Hera, Guilliman saw the sweeping bulwark where his old chambers had once been. They had belonged to his father, even before him. He had laid his plans there, spoken to his brothers, laughed and raged and -- on one occasion -- almost died. Now they were gone, buried beneath ugly agglomerations of buttressing and gun batteries. It was apt, he thought bitterly.Guilliman's anger spilled over, and he spun on his heel, staring up at the woven Emperor with accusing eyes."Why do I still live," he snarled. "What more do you want from me? I gave everything I had to you, to them. Look what they've made of our dream. This bloated, rotting carcass of an empire is driven not by reason and hope but by fear, hate and ignorance. Better that we had all burned in the fires of Horus' ambition than live to see this." Even as he said it, Guilliman heard the lie in his words. Amongst his brothers, none had been more idealistic than Roboute Guilliman. None had envisioned a brighter future, not just for Mankind but also for the warriors of the Legiones Astartes. That flame of hope had been a part of him for as long as he had lived. Even now, as it was smothered by darkness and woe, Guilliman realised that his flame endured."There's hope still," he told himself, turning back to the window and placing one armoured palm against it. He stared out at the work gangs, labouring to repair the damage of war, and the Ultramarines stood proud and determined upon the ramparts. They had been born into this dark millennium, and had known nothing but the hardship, suffering and despair of unending conflict. Yet still they struggled on unbowed, despite the countless enemies ranged against them. Guilliman had seen a better age, one of hope and triumph. What right had he, a superhuman son of the Emperor Himself, to show any less strength and courage than his followers born in darkness?Guilliman had seen what Humanity could achieve. Moreover, he knew what fruits Bellisarius Cawl's labours had borne beneath the surface of Mars. He believed that a better future for the Imperium was still possible. But only if those who tormented Mankind were first defeated."All of this misery," said Guilliman. "All of this suffering and pain. It is not the doing of Humanity, but of those who have betrayed us. Too long have the pawns of Chaos dictated our species' fate. That must end."Guilliman felt new strength fill him. Inspired by it, the Primarch took his pain, and his desolation, and locked them away deep within his mind. But his rage he kept. That, he would have use for.Later there would be time to mourn, to reason, to plan anew. Now was the time to fight, and to make his father's enemies pay for every horror they had inflicted upon the Imperium. |
Ultramar Campaign - Battle for Macragge: Four solar days and nights after his coronation as the Lord of Ultramar, Roboute Guilliman emerged from seclusion. In his absence, Marneus Calgar had continued to lead the fight, ignoring his injuries as he coordinated the Ultramarines' war effort. Now, though, Calgar willingly ceded control of the campaign to his gene-sire. Recognising the vastly capable Chapter Master for the asset he was, Guilliman kept Calgar close at hand in the battles that followed, and asked his counsel constantly. Brother-Librarian Tigurius, too, swiftly became a trusted advisor, the Primarch accepting that in this darker age, the trappings and powers of the Librarius had -- by necessity -- also become darker. In a move that surprised many, Guilliman also included Voldus, Cawl, Saint Celestine and Inquisitor Greyfax amongst his coterie of lieutenants. The Primarch sought the insights of every arm of the Imperial war machine, recognising that in unity lay strength.With his advisors at his side, and the unbowed might of the Ultramarines at his disposal, Guilliman began the reconquest of his homeworld. Wider galactic matters would have to wait; Macragge was still beset from every side, and if the Chapter planet fell, then even the resurrected Primarch would surely be dragged down by the tide of foes.The war for Macragge lasted a little over a solar month, and its pace was blistering. Roboute Guilliman was a force of nature, an unstoppable avatar of the Emperor's will who drove his enemies before him like cattle. First came a series of lightning-fast offensives to clear the Valley of Laponis and the partially ruined city of Magna Civitas. Batteries of Iron Warriors siege guns were overrun. The semi-sentient artillery engines were blown apart by Melta charges, their whip-fisted overseers executed with swift efficiency. Chanting masses of Chaos Cultists were surrounded inside gilded domes and soaring habblocks, before being systematically cut apart. Agemman, Celestine and Greyfax led pinpoint strikes to take back the city's primary orbital batteries. Soon enough, ruby columns of light were spearing up into the heavens to drive the Chaos warships out of their geosynchronous orbits above the Ultramarines' fortress-monastery.This was only the beginning. Led by the famed tank commander Antaro Chronus, roaring columns of Ultramarines armour swept the Traitor battle groups from the Magletine Highlands, and drove their survivors into the storm-tossed Pharamis Ocean. Grand Master Voldus and his 3rd Brotherhood of the Grey Knights lent their might to the reconquest when they spearheaded the strike against the corrupted city of Collosae. Here the silver-armoured Daemon Hunters fought a cat-and-mouse battle with cruel bands of Night Lords, who had veiled the city in an unnatural gloom. The Traitors were eventually driven out, and a mysterious blood ritual halted before it could come to fruition, though the entire city had subsequently to be levelled from orbit for fear of its Chaos taint.Guilliman led attacks against Valmari, Mount Tarphus and the snowy Gallinus Pass, emerging triumphant at every turn. The Ultramarines swept all before them, combining their exceptional skill and discipline with the visionary battle plans of their Primarch into an unstoppable whole. The Ultramar Defence Auxilia followed up each new conquest, digging in and fortifying in great number so that any attempts by the Forces of Chaos to counterattack were met by overwhelming resistance. Though the Heretic Astartes fought furiously, and inflicted sore losses upon the Loyalists, they simply could not match the strategic acumen of Roboute Guilliman, and one Chaos warband after another was defeated. Even those who fled Macragge found no haven in the void, for their invasion craft had been surrounded and reduced to burning scrap by the Ultramar Defence Fleet.Finally, after long solar weeks of vicious battle and a vast toll of the dead, the world of Macragge was liberated once more. |
Ultramar Campaign - The Crown of Glories: The first steps had been taken upon the road of reconquest. Macragge was free of Chaos taint. Guilliman wished to press on, consumed by his desire to drive the Ruinous Powers from Ultramar. However, those he led needed time to regroup and consolidate. Countless wounded required attention. Hundreds of war machines needed repair.Guilliman was wise enough to give his followers the time they needed. Meanwhile, Imperial reinforcements gathered around Macragge. Braving the Warp Storms raging through local space, Space Marine craft by the dozen assembled above the Ultramarines homeworld. Delegations from many Primogenitor Successor Chapters of the Ultramarines had ploughed through the Empyrean, risking terrible danger to see for themselves that the Primarch had returned. Novamarines, Sons of Orar, Genesis Chapter and countless others joined the growing throng, kneeling before the Primarch and swearing allegiance to him.While the armies of the Ultramar Reconquest were gathering, a further opportunity presented itself. It was the Arch-Consul of Magna Civitas -- the closest Ultramar had to a conventional Planetary Governor -- who suggested that a grand victory parade could be held, and its majesty recorded on pict casts to be sent far and wide through the Imperium. The Consul said that people needed the light of hope in this dark hour, a shining example of victory to renew their faith not just in the Emperor, but in Guilliman reborn.The Primarch acceded to this demand, though it sat ill with his bleak inner mood. Guilliman saw the wisdom in it, but he accepted such aggrandisement only grudgingly. Mere solar days after victory was declared, a grand triumph swept up from the Titan Gate to the very steps of the Fortress of Hera. Thousands of war engines and millions of warriors presented their colours and raised cheers and horn blasts to the skies. A seething sea of the city's residents packed the crater-pocked processionals and plazas to watch the proceedings, and voices beyond count rang out as one to cry Guilliman's praise in a single deafening roar.Standing upon a marble-columned platform with his closest lieutenants at his side, the Primarch dutifully presented the most magnificent spectacle he could for the assembled masses. The Arch-Consul himself presented Guilliman with a stunningly wrought laurel wreath crafted in gold, urging the Primarch to don the gilded crown at once. The moment Guilliman did so, he found his mind filled with thoughts of future glories. This paltry triumph would be nothing compared to the breathtaking spectacle of his galactic conquest. The Primarch's armies would be beyond number, their adoration for their heroic lord so great that they would die for him gladly. Planets, systems, whole Segmentums would be renamed in honour of he who had liberated them, and the whipped dogs of Chaos would flee before him like the curs they were. Statues would be raised to commemorate Guilliman's majesty, and eventually even the Golden Throne of Terra itself would be his to mount. The Emperor's most loyal son deserved no less an inheritance, and he would have his due.It was this last thought that wrenched Guilliman from the wreath's insidious curse. With a gasp, he tore the gilded crown from his head and bellowed a command for the Arch-Consul to be restrained. It was Grand Master Voldus who grabbed the robed dignitary, and as his blessed gauntlets touched the man's flesh it sizzled and crisped. The din of the triumph was colossal, an ocean swell of noise that hid the Arch-Consul's shrieks as the illusions that veiled him were unmade.Guilliman and his lieutenants recoiled at the misshapen mutant thing that was revealed. Bulbous and deformed, the keening, fleshy abomination wore a glowing amulet about its neck on a thong of human skin. As Guilliman stared in disgust at this cursed fetish, he heard a susurration hissing within his mind that he had not heard since that fateful encounter on Thessala ten millennia before. In mocking tones, Fulgrim welcomed Guilliman back to his beloved Imperium. The Daemon Primarch revealed that he had concealed a fragment of his own animus in the amulet that his servant wore, and confessed disappointment that Guilliman had rejected his gift, the Crown of Glories. Many heroes great and pure had fallen to the trinket's blandishments, and Fulgrim had hoped that he could corrupt Guilliman in the same fashion. Yet the Slaaneshi Daemon Prince assured his brother that this was but the first of endless temptations that Guilliman would have to face. Laughing cruelly, he taunted that the Lord of Ultramar would never be able to trust any feeling of triumph or self-satisfaction again.Disgusted, Guilliman drove his sword through the amulet and into the hideous creature that bore it, silencing the voice of the damned brother who had laid him low millennia past. Yet as the triumph rumbled on, Fulgrim's words continued to echo in Guilliman's mind. They would do so for many solar days to come. |
Ultramar Campaign - War Zone Ultramar: As the armies of reconquest gathered upon Macragge, so ever more Imperial forces came seeking the Primarch. Some, like the Dark Angels and the Raven Guard, sent small delegations to determine the veracity of this miracle. Others came in hope and celebration, bands of Space Wolves, White Scars, Black Templars and others hastening to the Primarch's side. A glorious moment came to pass when the Black Templars made planetfall, for they were reunited with Marshal Marius Amalrich, who alone of his brotherhood had survived the battle in Guilliman's shrine. Taking one look at the zealous light in Amalrich's eyes, the Black Templars Chaplains declared him touched by the hand of the Emperor. The Marshal was brought aboard the Strike Cruiser Scourge of Heretics, and girded with the armour and the Black Sword of the Emperor's Champion.Others, too, came to Ultramar upon the insistence of their seers, Astropaths, soothsayers and lords. Battleships of the Imperial Navy, regal Barons of Imperial-aligned Knight Worlds, fleets of warships from the Adeptus Mechanicus and their Titan Legions, processions from the Adeptus Administratum; all came to offer fealty to the Primarch.A grotesque cyber-synod of the Adeptus Ministorum descended upon the Fortress of Hera and insisted upon first confirming, and then proclaiming, Guilliman's alleged divinity. The horrified Primarch agreed to such beatification only after Celestine and Greyfax impressed upon him just how powerful the Ecclesiarchy was in the Imperium of the 41st Millennium. Better to have them as a firebrand ally than an obstreperous foe.Before his departure from the fortress, Guilliman had one more order of business. He decreed that now was an age of wrath and war, in which learning and lore must be set aside. The Primarch shocked his Chapter by ordering the great Library of Ptolemy barred to all comers on pain of death. Every last tome, every lingering, dangerous secret contained within that ancient repository was locked behind adamantium bulkheads and Servitor guns. At the same time a new war room was built. This was the Strategium Ultra, from where Guilliman's reconquest could be plotted, tracked and coordinated.When finally the armies of reconquest were ready to set out, Roboute Guilliman led them into battle with something akin to relief. After the endless political infighting and bureaucracy of this turgid new Imperium, the thought of a battlefield seemed almost welcoming.Guilliman began with the Macragge System itself, several of whose worlds were beset by the Forces of Chaos. A warband of Iron Warriors known as the Bitter Sons had invaded the Hive World of Ardium, conquering one of the planet's three subterranean hive cities and fortifying its winding tunnel networks. Linking up with the surviving Auxilia garrisons of Hives Geodrane and Tarnis, Guilliman led elements of the Ultramarines 4th and 6th Companies through a subterranean hellscape to assault Hive Magmaria. The fighting was savage in the extreme, the outnumbered Iron Warriors clinging tenaciously to their defences until the last man. Corpses choked entire magtunnels, and blood filled the undersump until it overflowed through the hive's drainage grilles. In the end, Guilliman and his gore-drenched followers emerged victorious.The Shrine World of Laphis became the site of the liberation's greatest naval engagement when the Ultramar Defence Fleet engaged the ships of the Alpha Legion blockading the planet. Marneus Calgar commanded the offensive, seated in the captain's throne aboard the ancient flagship Macragge's Honour. The Ultramarines vessels swept in through the void with their guns thundering, successfully driving back those Alpha Legion voidcraft engaged in surface bombardment. Triumph turned to horror when a flotilla of fleeing Imperial bulk carriers were revealed to be crewed by Alpha Legion Chaos Cultists. Packed with explosives, the lumbering haulers ploughed into the Ultramarines starships and crippled several. Calgar had expected treachery from his foes, however, and now revealed his own masterstroke as a second, reserve fleet of swift Strike Cruisers and frigates swept in from behind Laphis' third moon, Aurora. At the same time, elite strike units containing Ultramarines Techmarines dropped onto Laphis' surface and succeeded in awakening the world's battered orbital defence grid. Caught from three sides, the Alpha Legion warships were torn apart, left as a belt of drifting wreckage above the Shrine World.Through such heroic actions was the Macragge System made secure, allowing the armies of Imperial reconquest to sweep on towards the neighbouring star systems that made up the Realm of Ultramar. That stellar domain had once comprised five hundred human-settled worlds, before Lord Guilliman had granted many their own sovereignty after the Horus Heresy. All such treatises the Primarch now declared null and void, the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar reborn like their ruler. In such grim and desperate times, he would see his personal empire forged anew, for in this, as in all things, Guilliman desired strength through unity.Onward through shuddering Warp Storms and Traitor hosts swept the armies of Ultramar. Not once did they falter. Iron Hands fought alongside Praetors of Orpheus on Talasa Secundus. Dark Angels went to war beside Titans of the Legio Fulminari to liberate Ischara. The chanting processions of the Cult Mechanicus fought shoulder to shoulder with Novamarines and Battle-Sisters of the Order of the Ebon Chalice against mutant hordes on the killing fields of Konor Prime. Unified and elevated by the leadership of Roboute Guilliman, their war efforts coordinated with clockwork precision from the Strategium Ultra on Macragge, the armies of reconquest overcame Warp Storms, Traitor armies, and even daemonic incursions in their battle to drive the ravagers of Chaos from ever more worlds. Yet still the fight ground on, solar weeks becoming solar months, for Ultramar is a vast stellar realm and its numerous invaders, the fires of their old hatred stoked, were obstinate. The Long War raged, worlds burned, and blood stained the stars. |
Ultramar Campaign - The Sorrow: It was during the seventh solar month of the campaign to reconquer Ultramar that the first cases of a mysterious new sickness were reported. Throughout the Drohl, Talassar and Parmenio Systems, Ultramar Defence Auxilia found themselves weeping uncontrollably. In the midst of battle, warriors were blinded by endless streams of viscous, stinking tears that gummed their eyes open and soon turned them red raw. Overcome by sorrow, sufferers wailed and wept for solar days on end. In the worst cases, the so called "Weepers" were permanently blinded as their infected eyeballs festered and rotted from their skulls.The disease, soon named the Sorrow, or the Weeping Plague, spread with alarming rapidity. Its vector was believed to be an infestation of tiny, biting mites that were found amidst rations, squirming inside uniforms and ammunition packs, and even spilled from the pages of opened Imperial Primers. Nothing stopped the mites from multiplying, and no sanitary measure could long keep them out. The siege of Leotold's Keep collapsed thanks to the pernicious influence of the Sorrow, while the previously devastating Ravishol offensive ground to a halt as its human soldiery were reduced to blinded, wailing revenants.Roboute Guilliman hastened to Talassar, leaving the war in the Prandium System to the command of Chief Librarian Tigurius and Inquisitor Greyfax. Guilliman knew that only mortal soldiery had been afflicted with the Weeping -- no warrior of the Adeptus Astartes or tech-thrall of the Mechanicus had fallen prey to the sickness as yet. Furthermore, though they were not absolutely immune, only a very few cases had been reported amongst the ranks of the Adepta Sororitas. Some ascribed this to the presence of the Living Saint amongst the reconquest forces, but more believed that it was the enduring faith of the Battle-Sisters that protected them from sickness.Whatever the truth, Guilliman did not fear the terrible disease, but was instead far more concerned for the fate of his mortal soldiery. The Primarch arrived upon the world of Ravishol expecting nothing but sadness and horror. Guilliman's shock, therefore, was as great as anyone's when instead he brought a miracle.Braving the hammering flak screens of the Iron Warriors encampments on the circuit-plains, Guilliman had his Thunderhawk deliver him to the fortified Imperial encampment in the Soldermask Valley. Over the thunder of the encampment's Servitor guns -- busy keeping the enemy Daemon Engines at bay -- Guilliman ordered the camp's Ultramarine commander to lead him to the sick. There were several thousand of them in this encampment alone, tank crews, artillerymen and infantry soldiers trammelled for their own protection within huge prefabricated sheds. From outside, the muffled cacophony of the Weepers' lamentation was unsettling even for Roboute Guilliman, yet as the shed's armoured doors swung open, the sobbing slowly died away. One by one, the stricken Auxilia rose from their sick beds, blinking in amazement with eyes that could see once more. Even those who had lost their sight altogether subsided with sighs of relief, knowing their first true sleep in weeks. None could explain how, but Guilliman's presence had healed the Weepers.The same thing occurred in three more encampments along the offensive's stalled front. Wherever Roboute Guilliman walked, the Sorrow was driven out and the mites that spread it died until they piled up in black drifts. The medicae and Apothecaries were at a loss, but the Ecclesiarchy were quick to declare the phenomenon miraculous. It was the Emperor's mercy, they bellowed, brandishing their Aquilas, and it shone from His son as healing light.So began long solar weeks of relentless pilgrimage for Guilliman, as he rushed from one site of sickness to another. The Primarch knew that while he was engaged in healing his followers, his attentions were drawn away from the wider war. Yet of all the Emperor's sons, Guilliman was perhaps the most human, and his compassion would not allow him to ignore his followers' plight if he could heal them.Solar days became weeks, during which the Weeping continued to spread and -- worse still -- recur at sites that the Primarch had already cleared. Without Guilliman's peerless genius the reconquest began to suffer, the Chaos forces overturning Imperial victories in the Veridian and Tarvan Systems. All the while, the dreadful Warp Storms that had riven Ultramar and its surroundings worsened further. Soon, whispered the Navigators, the empire of the Ultramarines might be cut off from the wider galaxy altogether, just as it once had ten thousand Terran years before during the time of the Ruinstorm.It was Grand Master Aldrik Voldus who finally confronted Guilliman. In a heated argument, during which the Grand Master dared the Primarch's wrath, he forced Guilliman to acknowledge that which he already knew. Weeks of labour had been for nought. Guilliman was not healing his subjects, for such was not his gift. In the Weeping Plague, Voldus recognised all the hallmarks of Nurgle. Most likely, the Plague God was simply withdrawing his dubious blessings from his victims upon Guilliman's arrival, then gleefully restoring them once the Primarch had moved on. The Lord of Ultramar was playing into the Plague God's hands, his desire to save his people perverted into a never-ending trap of entropy and despair.Though furious, Guilliman accepted Voldus' wisdom. Further, he saw that Nurgle's desire had been to trap him within his own realm, and to keep him from the wider galactic stage. The Primarch realised then that his desire for completeness, for a neat solution and an unsullied Ultramar was, in itself, an echo of mistakes he had made long ago. Nurgle did not wish Guilliman to leave Ultramar because there, the Primarch could be contained like a wasp in a bottle. But this war did not belong to Ultramar alone -- it was a war for the entire Imperium. Guilliman saw that he could waste no more time focussing solely upon his own stellar empire. He must tend, instead, to his father's.With a heavy heart, Roboute Guilliman stopped his efforts to end the Weeping Plague, instead charging his Apothecaries and Chaplains with finding a spiritual cure for what was clearly a spiritual affliction.The Primarch announced his intention to set out upon a great journey. Once before, when the Dark Gods had threatened the Imperium of Mankind, the Primarch of the Ultramarines had reached Terra too late to do his duty. He would not make that mistake again. Guilliman intended to journey to Terra, to kneel at the foot of the Golden Throne and ask his father for guidance.Conscious of the worsening Warp Storms lashing the space lanes of Ultramar, Guilliman announced his intention to make for Terra as soon as a suitable force could be assembled. The Primarch would not travel alone; the galaxy had become a dark and dangerous place, while the attempts by Slaanesh and Nurgle to tempt and trick him had shown Guilliman that his resurrection had drawn the eyes of the Ruinous Powers.The war across Ultramar was still ongoing, however, and with Guilliman leaving, it would require strategically gifted warriors to keep pushing the Forces of Chaos back. As such, Guilliman gathered a select force of Battle-Brothers from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Companies of the Ultramarines to accompany him to Terra, and gave the honour of their command to Captain Cato Sicarius. He further requested that Grand Master Aldrik Voldus and the Grey Knights of the 3rd Brotherhood join their Crusade. Others pledged their aid to the Primarch's cause, including the assembled strength of the Primogenitor Chapters, and Emperor's Champion Amalrich and his Black Templars brethren. The Living Saint, the Inquisitor and Archmagos Dominus Cawl accompanied the Primarch also -- whatever aid they or the military forces under their command could provide the Primarch would be gladly given. Guilliman gratefully accepted all offers of aid before commanding Marneus Calgar, Chief Librarian Tigurius and Captain Agemman to remain and lead the reconquest of Ultramar.The Ynnari, meanwhile, chose this moment to depart. The Eldar had their own wars to fight, and had already lingered overlong amidst human affairs. Though Cadia had fallen, worlds still remained upon which the Necron-built black pylons stood strong. It was to these that the Ynnari would now attend, directing those of their race who would listen to defend them and thus hold back the expanding power of the Warp.The Celestinian Crusade had come to its end with its objective met beyond its heroes' wildest expectations. In its place, the Terran Crusade would begin. Mere solar days after Guilliman made known his intentions, the Imperial fleet set out, engines burning hot as they began the long journey to the cradle of Mankind.The audience chamber in the Fortress of Hera was empty but for Yvraine, the Visarch, and Guilliman. In a matter of solar hours, the Terran Crusade would depart Macragge, yet the Primarch had found a few moments to speak to the Ynnari leaders alone. Even after solar weeks of mutually fruitful alliance, most warriors would have been cautious of standing alone in the presence of two such sinister and powerful xenos. Guilliman was not most warriors."It will be a long and dangerous journey", said Yvraine. "The galaxy grows darker by the day. Have a care, Primarch. You may have cheated death once, but you are not invincible."Guilliman nodded solemnly. "Can I say nothing that will convince you to join us on our road? I have come to value the strength of you and your warriors greatly these past weeks.""You cannot", Yvraine replied. "Already we have given you the gift of rebirth, not to mention a number of our peoples' lives. Is that not enough?""It is a debt I'm sure won't be forgotten", said the Primarch. "Before you depart, tell me this. Cawl may have fashioned the armour that I wear, but it was not he alone who ensured my resurrection, was it?"Yvraine smiled demurely. "His technology would have healed your physical wounds, Roboute, but you and I know that the worst damage had been done to your soul. So no, Primarch; it is by the grace of Ynnead that you stand once more amongst the living. If you wish to remain, however, I would caution you against removing your war-plate. Not that you could easily do so."A flicker passed across Guilliman's features at this, a faint ghost of pain well-hidden, swiftly replaced by a stony mask of duty."I could press you for greater insights into the powers that brought me back, and assurances against any taint in their nature", said Guilliman, noting how the Ynnari stiffened their postures at this. "But I suspect that our newfound understanding is of more value to my father's realm than my own satisfaction. And that those answers would not come easily."Yvraine inclined her head, while the Visarch silently eased his hand away from the hilt of his blade."Thus, instead, I shall simply wish you victory in your ongoing battles against our mutual foes.""May you walk with fortune, Roboute Guilliman", said Yvraine. "And know that we shall stand together in battle again, before whatever end befalls us."The Visarch offered an elaborate warrior's salute to Guilliman, who nodded curtly in return before the Aeldari turned and swept gracefully from the chamber."No doubt we will," murmured the primarch thoughtfully, watching the enigmatic xenos withdraw. "As long as it serves your needs..."And with that, the primarch turned his attention to the crusade to come. A long voyage to Terra through the perils of the Empyrean, and the audience with his father the Emperor, ten thousand standard years overdue.The Terran Crusade was about to begin... |
Ultramar Campaign - Sources: Gathering Storm - Part Three - Rise of the Primarch (7th Edition), pp. 4-47 |
Ultramarines - Ultramarines: The Ultramarines are considered one of the strongest and most honoured of all the Space Marine Chapters in the Imperium of Man, and were responsible for almost single-handedly holding the Imperium together after the Horus Heresy.Highly-disciplined and courageous warriors, the Ultramarines have remained true to the teachings of Primarch Roboute Guilliman for 10,000 standard years. The Ultramarines were originally the XIIIth Space Marine Legion before the reforms that initiated the Second Founding and reshaped the Imperium after the Heresy in the Time of Rebirth on the orders of Guilliman himself as the lord commander of the Imperium and Imperial Regent.The name "Ultramarines" is a nod to the Chapter's galactic region of origin, its standing amongst the other Space Marine Chapters and their role as the source for the gene-seed of more Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes than any of the other former First Founding Legions combined.The culture of the Ultramarines is loosely themed upon the culture of Old Earth's ancient Roman Empire, as exemplified in their Astartes' High Gothic names and their strict adherence to the Codex Astartes, as well as the society of their homeworld of Macragge and the Chapter's method of recruitment.The Ultramarines directly rule the sub-sector of space in the Segmentum Ultima of the galactic east known as Ultramar as a fief of the Imperium and their Chapter Master is also considered the Lord of Macragge and the Master of Ultramar.Of all the thousand and more Space Marine Chapters in the Imperium, it is the blue-clad Ultramarines that, in the mind of the countless billions of the Emperor's subjects, personify everything that the Adeptus Astartes stands for. The Ultramarines and their many Successor Chapters have stood at the very forefront of the war against the Traitor, the alien, and the Daemon since the very foundation of the Imperium. Across the domains of the Emperor, the Ultramarines are celebrated as heroic, virtuous, and noble defenders of Humanity, their deeds recorded in devotional works the length and breadth of the galaxy.Even amongst the Space Marine Chapters themselves, the Ultramarines occupy a position of special honour. The gene-seed from which the original Ultramarines Legion was founded is considered the purest that remains, and it is estimated that some two-thirds of Chapters across the galaxy share their inheritance, being either direct successors or created from tithed Ultramarines genetic material. This shared inheritance often ensures that when the Ultramarines go to war, they are supported by many other Chapters, and that when Space Marine commanders gather to consider common strategy, the counsel of the Ultramarines is greatly valued.Often, the presence of even a small number of Ultramarines units in a larger military undertaking will ensure the participation of many more Chapters, so highly are the sons of Roboute Guilliman held in their brothers' esteem.When Hive Fleet Behemoth struck the Eastern Fringe, it was the Ultramarines Chapter that turned the tide, even at the cost of the Chapter's entire Veteran 1st Company. At the Chapter homeworld of Macragge, one of the largest battles seen in centuries was fought, with the Ultramarines, led by their master Marneus Calgar, at the very forefront. In addition to the great honour won by the Chapter in that titanic struggle, the Ultramarines gained invaluable experience in fighting these vile xenos, which they have passed on, often via service in the Deathwatch, to many other Chapters.When the Horus Heresy erupted, the Ultramarines were long prevented from defending the Throneworld by the great Ruinstorm conjured by the Word Bearers during the Battle of Calth that cut the galaxy in half for long years. By the time the Ruinstorm dissipated and the Ultramarines could move to reinforce Terra, the Warmaster Horus' Siege of Terra was already underway.Nevertheless, the Ultramarines fought their way towards Terra, and although they defeated a massive Traitor space fleet, were unable to reach the Sol System in time to intervene in the final battle. It is Guilliman's actions subsequent to the Horus Heresy that made him the figure of adoration that he would become. With the Traitors scattered and the Emperor to all intents and purposes lost to Humanity, the Imperium stood at the precipice.It was the genius and leadership of Roboute Guilliman that saw the Imperium through its first standard century after the Heresy, as he kept invaders at bay and saved the scattered Human worlds from collapsing into anarchy, reforming the Imperial bureaucracy and armed forces as needed.Roboute Guilliman fell at the hands of his erstwhile brother, the Daemon Primarch Fulgrim of the Emperor's Children Traitor Legion, at the Battle of Thessala in 121.M31. Poisoned unto death, Guilliman's barely living body was placed in a stasis field, and later enthroned in the Ultramarines' fortress-monastery. There it remained for ten thousand standard years, until he was resurrected by a combination of Imperial science and Aeldari mysticism during the 13th Black Crusade in ca. 999.M41. He would take up the mantle of the lord commander of the Imperium and the Imperial Regent once more, and now leads the defence of Mankind from the darkness brought by the birth of the Great Rift at the dawn of the Era Indomitus.The Ultramarines are by far the best known and most celebrated Adeptus Astartes Chapter in the long and bloody history of the Imperium of Man. Statues of their primarch and their greatest heroes rear high above countless plazas and city gates, and images of their myriad victories glow from stained glass windows in the mightiest basilicas imperialis.The Ultramarines Legion was the largest of those bodies raised to prosecute the Great Crusade so long ago, and as a result it provided the largest number of Chapters when the Second Founding occurred in the aftermath of the Horus Heresy. In addition, the Chapter's gene-seed is generally held to be the purest of all the Adeptus Astartes, and it is so stable that even 10,000 standard years after its inception, mutation is well within tolerable limits. For this reason, a majority of Space Marines Chapters extant in the 41st Millennium are thought to be related to the Ultramarines, whether either is aware of it or not, and as such, inheritors of all that made that Legion so great.The Ultramarines Chapter is at once the exemplar of everything a Space Marine aspires to, and the template by which he acts, fights and worships. Every Chapter has its own traditions, histories and battle-honours, but the Ultramarines are the standard by which many others, especially those of their genetic lineage, judge themselves and their peers, whether they acknowledge it or not.It is through the dictates of the Codex Astartes that the 10,000 Terran years of wisdom and expertise gleaned by the Ultramarines are enshrined. This vast reserve of lore was authored by the Ultramarines primarch, Roboute Guilliman himself, wherein he laid the foundations of the Imperium's reformation during the Time of Rebirth in the aftermath of the calamitous wars of the Horus Heresy. Guilliman was a leader of prodigious intellect, and not just in the military fields. With the Imperium brought to its knees by galactic civil war, he turned his mind to uniting and codifying the highest echelons of the Imperium's government, imposing order on institutions that had been split asunder by the anarchy of the Heresy. Only a primarch, a gene-son of the Emperor Himself, could have conceived such an undertaking, for the scattered Imperial worlds that had survived the Heresy were on their knees, riven with plague and famine and rife for rebellion or invasion.The task was gargantuan, and no mere mortal man could have faced it without going mad. Guilliman offered leadership and hope, and he became a figurehead for the reborn Imperium. Countless billions came to know his name, and while he could never replace their beloved Emperor, Guilliman was a firm hand when it was needed most, and the Imperium endured.In committing his wisdom to the first volumes of the Codex Astartes, Guilliman must have known that he would not see his most cherished ambitions fulfilled. After all, none had ever imagined that a primarch might know death, but the Horus Heresy had seen several slain or otherwise lost, and in the years that followed more would suffer similar fates.When Guilliman was lost to the Imperium, he left behind him countless works of wisdom and insight, and the greatest of these was the Codex Astartes. Though the Imperium would again rise to heights rivalling those of the Great Crusade, and descend to depths of despair as dark as the Horus Heresy, Roboute Guilliman's wisdom would prevail.The Ultramarines were and are the guardians of that wisdom, and the exemplars of all their primarch embodied. The Codex Astartes has become a sacred text for them, a blueprint describing the ideals by which the majority of Chapters organise themselves, fight, recruit, train and operate.The Ultramarines rule over a region of space called Ultramar, an autonomous realm that owes no tithes to the Imperium and looks entirely to its own defence. The peoples of the various worlds of Ultramar look to the Ultramarines as both beneficent rulers and as distant figures of legend. While the vast majority of Humanity will never even see a Space Marine, let alone speak to one, the people of Ultramar are more familiar with these mighty warriors. Some even have the honour of being distantly related to one, perhaps some distant ancestor having been accepted into the Chapter. The Ultramarines regard it as their sacred duty to rule their domains justly, and to protect them as the source of their recruiting and resources. In this the Ultramarines are continuing the legacy of their primarch, whose teachings each warrior studies and memorises over the course of his service.The Codex Astartes is such a vast body of wisdom that even the prodigious, genetically-enhanced mental capacity of a Space Marine is taxed with absorbing it all. Yet the Ultramarines regard it as their duty to do so, and choose to eschew the blunt tool of psycho-conditioning in favour of learning every passage by remorseless study.Each battle-brother absorbs and analyses entire chapters of the Codex, so that after several standard centuries of service he is at once a master and a scholar of his chosen area of expertise. Within a company, especially a low-numbered one consisting of numerous long-service Veterans, it is likely that the entire Codex Astartes will be known by the battle-brothers, allowing its commanding captain to draw upon an enormous pool of wisdom as well as experience. A Veteran Ultramarines battle-brother is therefore a deeply learned individual, schooled in every nuance of the arts of war and the wisdom of his primarch. |
Ultramarines - Chapter History: At the outset of the cataclysmic civil war created by the treachery of Horus and the machinations of the dark powers of the Warp, the XIII Legion, the Ultramarines, stood as one of the single, most powerful military forces in the Imperium.With an active fighting strength somewhere in the region of a quarter of a million Legiones Astartes, a sector-spanning domain under their overlordship and an arguably unparalleled structure for the supply and training of initiates -- allowing it to withstand losses that would potentially cripple other Legions -- it was this very strength that would make it a prime target for the Traitors' conspiracy.It would be at Calth that this blow would fall. But while the legend of the lapis-blue hosts of Ultramar and the strategic genius of its Primarch Roboute Guilliman were already widely promulgated by the Iterators and Remembrancers of the Great Crusade, the path by which it arrived at this apotheosis of power was not so well known and in some cases, the facts actively kept secret.The complexities of the XIII Legion's past and the sometimes divisive and even antagonistic relationship the Ultramarines had with several of their fellow Legions was also concealed. It would be this hidden history that was to bear bitter fruit at the Battle of Calth and cast its shadow on all the wars that were to follow. |
Ultramarines - The War-Born: The XIII Legion's origin lay, as with their fellows, on Terra and the closing years of the Unification Wars. Extant records from this time show the XIII Legion's "Alpha" intake -- the test bed raising of several thousand warriors by which its gene-seed's stability and adaptability was judged -- was passed firmly within acceptable parameters and with no singular or notable physical mutation beyond the expected pattern, with full functionality of implanted organs to projected specifications.Psycho-organically, initiates were noted to display increased aggression, as was expected, but also a marked tendency towards cohesion and the adoption of hierarchy, alongside an almost pathological dedication to the achievement of an assigned goal, particularly when compared against the psychological profiles of certain other alpha samples such as those of the XII and V Legions (later known as the World Eaters and White Scars, respectively), who demonstrated more markedly heightened individualistic and fractious tendencies post-implantation.Although much of what would then transpire for the XIII Legion's very early expansion past its test stage has been occluded by layers of the unbreachable secrecy inherent in much of the Emperor's ancient gene-work, and records lost in the destruction caused on Terra by the great siege of the Imperial Palace during the Siege of Terra, certain facts can still be pieced together and a hypothesis formed.In terms of recruitment, evidence is apparent for a net being cast across Terra for initiates for the XIII, with intake from areas as diverse as the sub-equatorial maglev clans of Panpocro, the war families of the Saragon Enclave, the proud Midafrik Hive Oligarchy and, most latterly, the anthropophagic tribes of the Caucasus Wastes.As varied in culture and origin as these groups were, they all had one factor in common: their violent and often bitter resistance to the later stages of Unification, a resistance broken ultimately in each case not by negotiated surrender but near-annihilation, with, in some situations, little remaining save interned refugees and orphaned populations left by the savage conflicts which had brought these peoples to heel.It was this which led to the first informal cognomen by which the XIII Legion was known by the forces alongside which they served -- "the War-born." It may then be theorised that the particular psychological effects of the XIII Legion's gene-seed may have been used deliberately as a final weapon of the Unification to bleed away potential rebellion on Terra, and also further absorb the strength of the savage tribes of Old Night into the fledging Imperium.Further evidence for this can be perhaps inferred by the fact that no evidence remains of the XIII Legion seeing active deployment on Terra itself during the Unification Wars' bitter dregs -- as both the VII and VIII Legions' (later known as the Imperial Fists and Night Lords) early incarnations were, for example -- with their first full battle honours recorded as being for the First Pacification of Luna, and the brutal Sedna Campaign at the edge of the Sol System.As the earliest phase of the Great Crusade, the liberation of what became the Segmentum Solar, progressed, it was discovered that this ancient and most heavily settled region of the first stellar domains of Humanity held many survivors from the Dark Age of Technology.Of these there were some who openly welcomed the Imperium as patron and protector, but there were also many Human colony worlds who resisted Imperial Compliance, either through ignorance or prideful assurance in their own strength, just as there were others who were enslaved under the yoke of xenos oppression. The tide of conquest however, with the Emperor at the head of the war effort, quickly gained rapid momentum, and the fledging Space Marine Legions undergoing their first great expansion were a key part of this.During this period the XIII Legion, then around 8,000 Astartes strong, began to make its mark by taking part alongside other Legions under the Emperor's direct generalship, gaining renown in notable campaigns such as the Liberation of Diurnus and the destruction of the Scorvidian xeno-empire, as well as amassing a string of successful Compliance actions in solo operations on planets such as Lorin Sigma, Sekel's Landing and Ne'deble. From each of these conquered Human worlds, the most militant factions provided additional intakes of recruits tithed for the XIII, much as the war-born sons of Terra had infused their first intake.It was during this early period of the Great Crusade that the genius of the Emperor's grand design for His Space Marine Legions became increasingly apparent. While each of His transhuman cadres proved itself able to fight on any battlefield and achieve victory, the Emperor had clearly patterned in the alchemical mix of His gene-sons a diversity of tempers and abilities that had given each Legion a particular tactical strength or suitability to a theatre of war of its own beyond that of its peers.In some cases these talents were atavistic and visible, be they the near-preternatural fury already being displayed by the IX Legion (Blood Angels) or the uncanny resilience of the XIV Legion (Death Guard). In others they were subtle and bred in the bone, such as the oppressive darkness which consumed the souls of the VIII Legion (Night Lords), and they could manifest in word and deed to the ruin of their foes, or the unyielding, cold passion and technological aptitude of what was already becoming known as the "Iron Tenth" (Iron Hands). It was into this latter category which the XIII Legion fell.In them was found a mixture of aggression and restraint, discipline and determination which rendered them supremely suited for joint taskforce operations and cross-theatre warfare. The Legion also gained significant success in independent operations where it took direct command of the secondary mortal support forces of the Imperialis Auxilia, whether the professional and elite regiments of the Solar Auxilia and the regiments of the "Old One Hundred," or the often resentful and fractious hosts of Imperialis Militia auxiliary recently forced into Imperial Compliance.In the latter case, the XIII Legion often detached cadres of its own warriors to act as provosts and disciplinarians if needed, handing out final justice to the recalcitrant and inspiring bravery from the front lines; duties at which many other Legions baulked at as beneath their honour or as a poor use of Legiones Astartes in battle. In their adaptability and range of operations, they were said to be reminiscent of the vaunted I Legion (Dark Angels) and the prominent Luna Wolves. The key to their fighting style was imitation and adaptation.Their own arts of war had evolved quickly from the tenets laid out during their indoctrination and training, becoming combined with influences drawn from the host of martial cultures from which they were founded and the other Legions alongside which they served, from the knife-craft of the Opaki gangs of Hive Kôr to the armoured warfare tactics of the X Legion. |
Ultramarines - Brotherhood of the Thirteenth: By the third solar decade of the Great Crusade, the XIII Legion had begun to develop a distinct character of their own. They were recorded as having a practical and forthright mien, with little time given to the esoteric arts of warfare or conjectural strategising, preferring a direct approach of swift engagement. In warfare, they relied upon the rapid attainment of quickly defined tactical objectives and strategies born of tried and tested battlefield experience and determined by the situation at hand.They also had their pride, and while they were accorded as being unwaveringly loyal to the Imperium's cause, they developed a tendency to guard their honour well and engaged in an open rivalry of achievement with the other Legions alongside which they served, particularly those few whose primarchs had already been recovered.The warrior brotherhood of the XIII Legion had also begun to display its achievement visually. But rather than take on a particular livery and iconography as a whole as the III Legion (Emperor's Children) or the XIV Legion (at that time still the Dusk Raiders) had, individual companies who had come to prominence in a particularly important Compliance operation or campaign took on additions to their core Legion livery -- which maintained the post-Unification storm grey and gunmetal they had worn since the Sedna Campaign -- to commemorate their greatest achievements.Those companies who had fought alongside the VIII Legion in the purgation of the Abhuman corsairs of the Cancerai Nebula afterwards bore black gauntlets, midnight blue helms and the ancient Terran weighing scales and death's head icon of judgement in heraldic opposition of their Legion numeral, and took the name of "Nemesis" as their own.Conversely, the principally armoured formations of the XIII Legion who had halted the Ork advance on the ash plains of Cypra Mundi, and in doing so had saved a city of millions from a savage death, afterwards commemorated the battle by mirroring on their right pauldron the emerald light of the blazing armour borealis that had riven the skies under which they had fought.Such honours were claimed as the Legion's strength made visible, but for them no formal name for the Legion as a whole was desired save for its number, as their first Lord Commander Gren Vosotho is recorded to have said, "...I am told that once the numeral thirteenth was taken as an ill omen by the weak-minded and those enslaved by the lies of superstition, but in the Emperor's service we shall make it a byword for redemption and glory."The sorest test of the XIII Legion's resolve and their arts of war was yet to come however. |
Ultramarines - Osiris Cluster Rebellion: By the year 833.M30, the XIII Legion had increased in number to an active force of around 33,000 Space Marines, whose primary battlegroup now consisted of the autonomous 12th Expeditionary Fleet. This expansion of their number in a relatively short space of time had been due to two principal factors.The first was that their particular practical style of warfare had a tendency to avoid casualties where possible compared to the tactics employed by certain other Legions. The XIII Legion avoided battles of attrition and prided themselves on achieving strategic goals with the minimum expenditure of life -- and where salvageable Human worlds were involved, this desire was also extended to the minimisation of civilian collateral damage.The second was a latterly revealed aspect of their gene-seed. While the rates of gene-seed implantation success for the XIII Legion's zygote type were very close to the median level, it had proved to be in the highest resistance band to errors during extensive replication -- a meridian matched only by the I Legion's own core sample -- suffering relatively little mutation or deviation in the subsequent generation of harvested Astartes organs. This allowed the Legion to steadily expand its numbers, even without the genetic stabilisation brought by the availability of a primarch's own mature gene-code.At this time, the Emperor, in command of the might of the Principia Imperialis expeditionary fleet, Ferrus Manus and his X Legion and Horus and his Luna Wolves, respectively, led the three main thrusts of the Great Crusade. They were pushing on into the outer void far beyond the Segmentum Solar.But such was the size, self-sufficiency and genetic stability of the XIII Legion that the 12th Expeditionary Fleet alone was entrusted with the task of exploring the extent of the inner galactic disc and its densely packed star systems coreward of Terra. This was why when a secession crisis unexpectedly flared up close to the capitoline systems of the Segmentum Solar itself, the XIII Legion was the closest available Legion and the swiftest to respond.The Osiris Cluster, a grouping of eleven star systems making up the inner portion of the Segmentum Solar's second quadrant, had suddenly and without warning declared secession from the Imperium. Chartist merchant vessels had been seized, Imperialis Armada naval patrol squadrons fired upon and driven off by system defence ships, and agents of Imperial authority rendered silent and assumed dead.The inhabited worlds of the Osiris Cluster, many technologically advanced at contact, had originally come into Compliance during the Great Crusade's eighth standard year in relatively bloodless order. It had been viewed as a highly successful campaign in which the XIII Legion itself had a hand. That the Osiris Cluster had now fallen into open rebellion was deemed an affront to the Legion's honour by its Lord Commander, Gren Vosotho, and the Legion Master of the XIII Legion had vowed to bring the matter to a resolution as swiftly and emphatically as possible.Vosotho, acting on initial intelligence reports, ordered the warships of the 12th Expeditionary Fleet to proceed directly to the halo world of Septus XII, leaving behind the fleet's support elements, lumbering troop transports and forge ships guarded by its slower combat vessels. The target of this rapid strike force was to be the atmospherically-sealed city of Cabasset, located on the night-side of Septus XII, and the economic and political capital of the Osiris Cluster.A strike there before the rebels had time to consolidate their forces, Vosotho reasoned, might end the rebellion in a single, bloody stroke. Breaking into realspace in the outer system, the power of the 12th Expeditionary Fleet's two score of capital warships, led by the Legion's flagship, the Goliath-class macro-battleship Sethaln's Thunder, easily swept aside the system defence monitors and fireships sent out to intercept them. Immediately after the short firefight, in which the Space Marine ships sustained no losses, they engaged in a brief and equally successful long-range precision bombardment to defang Septus XIII's orbital defences, before moving to attack the planet itself.Vosotho had formulated a plan of attack based around a decapitation assault against the governmental and environmental control complexes on which all life in the hive city of Cabasset was dependent for survival. The strategy was a variation of a tried and proven tactic in part developed from close observation of the Luna Wolves' mastery of such attack forms, and which promised a quick resolution with the minimum of damage to the Hive World's infrastructure and an object lesson in the futility of rebellion against the rule of the Emperor.The plan itself was predicated on detailed prior knowledge of the world as an Imperial holding and a military assessment of the potential numbers and capabilities of the rebellious militia forces the Legion was projected to encounter. Unfortunately, every assumption Vosotho and his command staff had made about what awaited the Legion was wrong. |
Ultramarines - Attack on Septus XII: The attack began well enough, with the close support fire of the Sethaln's Thunder opening up great rents in Hive Cabasset's protective outer shell into which Vosotho personally led his Legion's Stormbirds to the attack.Resistance was immediately far heavier than expected as the landing force became swiftly bogged down in Human waves made up of at first hundreds and soon thousands of dead-eyed civilians crudely stitched into makeshift pressure suits and armed with improvised weapons of every sort, not least among them explosive mining charges converted to suicide devices. The XIII Legion quickly modified their tactics to inflict maximum attrition but, heedless of casualties, the tide of bodies pressed on in cold silence and it was quickly apparent that this was no mere rebellion and no ordinary enemy.Unwilling to allow his attack to be stalled and his invasion force surrounded, Vosotho called down reinforcements and ordered his attacking squads to press on, relying on speed and coordination, as well as the superiority of his Space Marines in close quarters combat, to carry the battle.Slowly and with steadily growing losses, the Legiones Astartes forced their way deeper into the hive city and one by one began to claim their tactical objectives, crushing better-armed but equally vacant-minded opposition formed of what had once clearly been the bodyguard cadres of the hive city's nobility. But once the XIII Legion was heavily committed and kilometres deep into the hive the trap was sprung.A xenos fleet of unknown type and origin, comprising five vast hourglass-shaped vessels whose structures turned and rotated ceaselessly like clockworks, appeared with great speed from within the fiery corona of Septus' giant star. Realising the disaster that was about to unfold, Vosotho called a general retreat from the surface, but as his forces battled to return to their gunships and transports, the assault on the Space Marines intensified as the nature of the attacks began to change.While the waiting Stormbirds fell under concerted all-out attack in an attempt to cripple or destroy them, fresh mobs of grasping civilians poured from side-junctures and corridors, their intention not to kill but to overwhelm and pinion individual Legiones Astartes, drowning them in their mass of bodies, heedless of the cost of life. Above them in the void, the two fleets clashed.The great hourglass craft, each easily out-massing the gargantuan Sethaln's Thunder, lashed out with blazing whips of elemental particles, scorching and burning the Imperial warships and engulfing any fighter squadrons or torpedo salvos that came close in collapsing gravitational singularities, annihilating them utterly.The 12th Expeditionary Fleet was overmatched but fought on valiantly, causing one of the titanic xenos craft to fall back, strangely-coloured vapours bleeding luminously from its rent hull, but at the cost of a dozen of its own number, while the Sethaln's Thunder, at that point a burning wreck, tumbled out of control through the line of battle. It was then that fearful figures, aglow from within with sickly light, began to materialise among the attackers both on the surface and directly onto the warring Imperial vessels.Armoured in some form of baroque bio-mechanical containment suits, the creatures within were barely corporal; ghoulish shapes of glowing mists whose gauntlets spat ethereal fire and whose alien wills reached out to crush the minds of those who resisted them. Vosotho's final command was for the fleet to withdraw with as many of the XIII Legion as could be recovered, but withdraw it must. A new enemy of the Imperium had been met, and word of it must reach Terra at any cost.Vosotho committed his life to the command of the rearguard on the surface, as penance for his error, and his last act was to transfer Legion command to the most senior surviving commander present in orbit, First Master Marius Gage. It was a testament to Gage's swift thinking and tactical acumen that he was able to hold off the enemy vessels until every surviving Stormbird from the ground assault had departed the planet, fighting a swirling three-dimensional battle of thrust, counter-thrust and retreat which held the enemy titan-ships at bay until the 12th Expeditionary Fleet had fought its way clear.Ultimately, what could have been a disaster had been fought into a mere defeat, and when all was afterwards measured, the XIII Legion had suffered a little over 6,500 Space Marines lost, the largest tally of any single battle in the Legion's history. Although this was approximately a fifth of its fighting strength in terms of Astartes, the lost counted among them much of the elite of the Legion, many of them Terran veterans from its founding and its Lord Commander Gren Vosotho with them.Its fleet had also suffered heavily, with a quarter of its warships lost or irrevocably damaged, not least of all its flagship. Just as bitter a blow was to the Legion's pride and honour at the defeat to which their overconfidence had led them. They hungered for vengeance but even this was denied them.When the XIII Legion returned to the now-quarantined and blockaded Osirin Cluster a little under a standard year later , it was with a force heavily augmented from the Solar Armada, elements of the XVIII Legion (Salamanders) and specialist anti-psyker cadres from Terra. Of the enemy xenoforms the Officio Biologis had designated "Osiran Psybrid," there was no sign. Instead, the Imperials found worlds either left as wastelands of the unburied dead or locked in turmoil and civil strife.Piecing together fragmentary records from planetary dataspheres and Human minds alike all but purged clean, it was impossible to know from where the xenos had come or where they had gone, only that they had operated covertly at first, insidiously claiming worlds outright; burning out the wills of their populations, stealing away some bodily into the void, and leaving the others to simply mindlessly perish by starvation or inaction in their absence.Other worlds they had sent first into rebellion and then strife through covert psychic domination of their rulers and manipulation of their population's fears. The revelation was of a foe perhaps not numerous, but both insidious and frighteningly powerful, a clear threat now marked for extermination by the Emperor's own writ.In the wake of the short campaign, empty of glory, which brought the remains of the Osiris Cluster back into the Imperium's control for repopulation, the XIII Legion swore a blood oath of vengeance against the xenos wherever and whenever they might appear again. The Legion, now under Marius Gage's stewardship as the new Lord Commander and Legion Master, reorganised and sought to quickly replenish its numbers and supplies, and afterwards redoubled its effort in the Great Crusade's service, as if trying with each fresh victory to prove that the defeat at Septus XII had been an aberration never to be repeated, and the name of its lost master and indeed the battle in which he fell became a thing no longer spoken of but which dwelled as a shadow at their shoulders.There existed within the Legion now a brooding sense of loss and a canker of doubt in its own abilities, and in the hearts of its Legionaries grew the desire, always present but now lent keen impetus, to reunite with their primarch as a balm to all their ills, to become -- as they saw it -- whole. The dark irony was that more than two Terran years previously, unknown and withheld from the Legion's knowledge and before the events at Septus XII, their primarch had been located by the Emperor, but owing to the vagaries of the Warp, contact would not prove possible for several more standard years.During this period, brief as it was and yet seeming an eternity to the sons of the XIII, the Legion fought on with a relentless but joyless hunger for battle, taking world after world for the Great Crusade in rapid succession, but shunning now both the laurels of victory it once courted and the respect of its peers it once craved, until the hour of its salvation came at last. |
Ultramarines - Son of Macragge: Thanks to the widely distributed efforts of numerous Imperial Iterators, the story of Primarch Roboute Guilliman, his early life and his finding is widely known and well-accounted for, in stark contrast to certain others of the primarchs. Much of these accounts have of course served the role of edification for the masses and the demands of Imperial propaganda over the millennia, but between the accounts, variously embellished, a number of consistent facts and themes emerge.According to Imperial legend, the Emperor of Mankind created the primarchs from artificially-engineered genes using His own genome as part of the original template, carefully imbuing each of them with unique, superhuman powers. Imperial doctrine goes on to tell how the Ruinous Powers of Chaos spirited away the primarchs within their gestation capsules, scattering them widely across the galaxy through the Warp.More than one of the capsules was breached whilst it drifted through Warpspace -- the forces of the Immaterium leaked in, wreaking havoc on the gestating being inside the capsule. Undoubtedly damage was done and Chaos corruption affected several of the primarchs, although the nature of that corruption would not become apparent until the Horus Heresy.After drifting for solar decades, or in some cases even hundreds of Terran years, the twenty gestation capsules came to rest on Human-settled worlds throughout the Milky Way Galaxy -- distant planets inhabited by a variety of Human cultures, and whether by fickle fate or cruel design, each world would provide a crucible which would temper the superhuman child into the primarch they would become, be that hero or monster, tyrant or liberator.The capsule containing the developing form of one primarch fell upon the world of Macragge in the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy. Macragge was a bleak but not inhospitable world, part of a decayed star empire of ages past that Mankind had inhabited for many standard centuries since the time of the Dark Age of Technology. Its industries had survived intact, and its people had retained an authoritarian but cohesive society.Macragge had remarkably preserved a number of antiquated short range Warp-capable craft which could be utilised for near-stellar transit -- conditions permitting -- and its people continued to build sub-light voidcraft even during the time of the most intense Warp storms during the Age of Strife. This had allowed the people of Macragge to maintain contact with several neighbouring Human-settled star systems, despite the Warp storms' fury, and so retain a tenuous link to the rest of Human space and the knowledge that it was not alone in the darkness.So it was that when the primarch's fallen capsule was discovered by a group of magnates who were on a hunt in a local forest, they knew it immediately for a device of advanced technology rather than a thing of superstition and magic. The magnates broke the capsule's seal and discovered a strikingly beautiful and perfectly formed Human child within it who was surrounded by a glowing nimbus of power. The child was brought before Konor Guilliman, one of a pair of nobles who bore the title "consul," whose authority governed the most civilised and powerful region of Macragge, and Konor adopted the infant as his own son in a manner not uncommon to his culture, naming him Roboute.The young primarch grew unnaturally quickly and as he did so, his unique physical and mental powers became obvious to all. It is recorded that by the time of his tenth birthday, Guilliman had mastered everything the wisest tutors of Macragge could teach him. His insight into matters of history, philosophy and science astonished his teachers, while his recall was absolute and his ability to extrapolate accurate conclusions from fragmentary information was said to border on the inexplicable.His greatest talent, however, lay in the art of war, which was itself treated as a high and lauded science in Macragge's culture. As soon as he had attained his legal majority, Roboute's foster-father Konor Guilliman immediately granted him command over an expeditionary force sent to pacify the far northern lands of Macragge.Named Illyrium, it was a barbarous land of outcasts and petty, warring micro-states that had long harboured brigands and mercenaries who raided more civilised lands as often as they hired themselves as foot soldiers to fight their neighbours' wars. Roboute fought a brilliant campaign and won both the submission and the respect of the fierce Illyrium warrior bands, but when he returned to his home from the northern frontier, Roboute found the capital city of Macragge Civitas in turmoil. |
Ultramarines - Death of Konor Guilliman: During Roboute's absence, Konor Guilliman's co-consul, a man named Gallan, had unleashed a coup d'etat against Konor -- a development far from unknown historically, if in this instance a surprise. Gallan, it transpired, had long harboured designs on undiluted rulership and had conspired with those amongst the wealthy nobility of Macragge who were jealous of Konor's political power and popularity, and also increasingly afraid of his preternaturally precocious foster child's future.These malcontents represented Macragge's ancient regime, an aristocracy whose wealth was manifested by vast estates which were supported by the toiling of a multitude of impoverished vassals. Konor Guilliman, backed by Macragge's industrial magnates -- rivals to the old regime -- had moved to challenge this balance of power, forcing the aristocracy of Macragge to provide their vassals with increased living standards and rights before the law, weakening the aristocracy's stranglehold on the polity.Konor had also passed legislation that obliged the nobility of Macragge to begin an ambitious programme of improving the long-neglected infrastructure of their nation and enlarging the capital city at their own expense. These reforms made Konor Guilliman all but unassailable in the common people's eyes, but were highly unpopular among all but a few of the more far-sighted aristocrats.As Roboute Guilliman and his triumphant army approached the city of Macragge Civitas, they saw the smoke from a multitude of fires and encountered citizens fleeing from the city in anarchy, and Roboute learned that Gallan's private army had attacked the Senate House while Konor and his loyal honour guard troops had been inside. The refugees each told the same story; that rebel soldiers had attacked the Senate, whilst a drunken mob, instigated by Gallan but now out of anybody's control, roamed the city burning, looting and murdering.Roboute hurried to his foster father's rescue. Leaving his own troops to deal with the drunken rioters without quarter, Roboute personally fought his way towards the centre of the city, passing the bloody work of rebel firing squads everywhere in the government district, but at the Senate House, found himself too late. All was a bullet-ridden and blasted ruin, and even the rebels it seemed had fled the scene to join the looting. There, in the half-collapsed shelters beneath the building, he found his father dying.For three solar days the wounded consul had directed the defence of the besieged Senate House, even as surgeons fought for his life following a botched assassination attempt on the Senate floor which had touched off the conspiracy's chaotic attack. It is apocryphally said that as he gasped out his last breath, Konor Guilliman detailed the extent of Gallan's betrayal to his beloved foster son and named those whose hands were stained with his blood.Roboute Guilliman's cold rage at his foster father's death was unstoppable. With the full backing of his army and the beleaguered citizens of Macragge Civitas, Roboute crushed the aristocratic rebels, scattering their hireling armies and lined the streets with the hanging bodies of the rioters, thereby quickly restoring order to the capital city and the surrounding lands. Thousands of citizens flocked to the Senate House and amidst a wave of popular acclaim, Roboute assumed the mantle of the sole and now all-powerful Consul of Macragge.The new ruler broke the old, aristocratic order and stripped from them their lands and titles. Gallan and his fellow conspirators were seized, the ring leaders publicly executed and the rest sentenced to hard labour rebuilding the city they had ruined, stone by stone, by hand. It was not a sentence they would long survive. In the new order, loyal soldiers and hardworking settlers were granted rights where the oppressive aristocracy had once held sway.With superhuman energy and the singularity of vision only a primarch was capable of executing, the new consul reorganised the social order of Macragge, creating a ruthlessly enforced meritocracy where the hardworking prospered and the honourable received positions of high office, and those who shirked the law or worked against the good of the whole faced draconian, but faultlessly even-handed punishment.The stagnated and uneven economy was re-ordered, technology disseminated rather than horded by the elite, and the planetary armed forces were transformed into a powerful and well-equipped force. Macragge flourished as never before -- one people and one order, united under the unchallengeable rule of Roboute Guilliman. |
Ultramarines - Coming of the Emperor: Around the time that the young Roboute Guilliman waged war in Illyria, the Emperor's Principia Imperialis fleet of the Great Crusade had reached the planet of Espandor in ca. 832.M30 at the outer edge of the network of worlds with which Macragge had maintained tenebrous contact. From the Espandorians the Emperor learned of the existence of Macragge and the extraordinary son of Consul Konor Guilliman, and from what He learned He knew that this child could be none other than a missing primarch.There have been some who have suggested that the Emperor's arrival at Espandor and the isolated region so far from the frontline of the Great Crusade's main spur of progress was no accident, and that by some arts He had perceived or had foreknowledge of what He would find. Regardless, what followed was certainly not foreseen.As the Emperor's fleet quickly moved on to Macragge, it was almost immediately deflected by violent Warp squalls which had risen up to separate Macragge and a handful of nearby systems from approach. Thwarted by a power even the Emperor could not readily ignore, it would be something in the region of five standard years before contact could be successfully attempted.In the years that intervened, Macragge had undergone a striking transformation. It was now a world of uniformity and order, prosperous and productive. Its cities had been rebuilt in glittering marble and shining steel, and the serried ranks of its armies were well-armed and well-equipped, and outfitting themselves now for operations beyond their own world.For even before the Emperor's arrival, Roboute Guilliman, it is said, had dwelt much on the ancient histories contained from his world's deposed aristocracy, and the fragments he found there telling of the ancient interstellar domains of Mankind, and he had begun to dream of new horizons and new worlds to conquer, of a domain "beyond the seas of night" or to use the ancient scholarly form found in the text -- "Ultramar."By his will, he made it so and within their Warp-sealed enclave, vessels from Macragge now plied regular and well-patrolled trade routes with local star systems, bringing raw materials and people to the flourishing world, while against some of its neighbours, short, victorious conflicts had already been waged to pacify the strife they had found there.It is said that when the Emperor finally saw what His lost gene-son had wrought in 837.M30, He was indeed pleased, and that He met Roboute Guilliman without the dissembling that had been needed with those primarchs He had found of more savage timbre, such as Leman Russ, Ferrus Manus, Mortarion and Vulkan. It is further recorded that once Guilliman learned the truth of his origins, he immediately swore his fealty to the Emperor, who he knew was his true father, for he had already theorised correctly the purpose for which he had not been born so much as deliberately created.It was immediately apparent to Imperial observers that Roboute Guilliman possessed a powerful analytical intelligence, even when compared to the transhuman cognitive abilities of his peers, as well as a talent for statecraft and macro-organisation of staggering potential. Yet few could then guess what such talents harnessed to the Great Crusade would go on to achieve. |
Ultramarines - Unification of Body and Soul: The XIII Legion of Space Marines was assigned to Guilliman in short order, for the primarch needed little urging or aid in the assimilation of knowledge of the wider galaxy, the Great Crusade and the many technological wonders of the new-born Imperium of Man.It was a development greeted by the XIII Legion with great rejoicing and pride in the honour that Roboute Guilliman paid them in accepting their fealty. The oratory and vision with which their newfound primarch expounded to them his designs for the future and the righteousness of the Great Crusade filled the Legiones Astartes with a renewed vigour and dispelled any shadows of doubt in their minds, and made Guilliman's takeover of the Legion, according to official records, all but seamless.Roboute Guilliman did far more than merely take command of the XIII Legion, he set about transforming it. His vision was for a Legion that was more than simply one army among many, however exceptional, but a self-sustaining power for conquest, order and expansion; the strength of the body and blood of the Imperium made manifest by the will of the Emperor through His servant Roboute Guilliman.To Guilliman, a military force was more than the warriors who wielded arms -- it was their chain of supply, the starships which carried them between, the manufactoria which supplied their munitions and the worlds which bred their recruits; they were indivisible and equally vital. To Guilliman's mind, all of these things made a Space Marine Legion, and he meant to control them all so that his own would prosper and the Emperor's will be done.In accordance with his grand design, he planned to not merely take the world of his fosterage as his headquarters and recruiting ground as his peers had done and would continue to do, but from the start set it up as merely the fulcrum of a far larger network of provender and support. The basis of this network would be the worlds Macragge had long maintained links with, but they would merely be its first components, not its fullest extent.This would be the start of Roboute Guilliman's "Realm of Ultramar" and it would be a project of solar decades in the making, and continue to expand right up to the first treacherous blow of the Horus Heresy. |
Ultramarines - Eagle of the East: As swiftly as he put his plans for the creation of the Realm of Ultramar into action, Roboute Guilliman embarked on the root and branch reorganisation of his Legion. Adopting an extraordinarily detailed plan which drew from both the military doctrines and political philosophies of his surrogate homeworld of Macragge, a detailed study of the history of the XIII Legion and each and every other Legion and armed force under the Emperor's banner in their then-current form, he remade the organisational structure and tactical doctrines of his Legion accordingly.The result was an elegantly structured but elaborate and highly meritocratic force. It unsurprisingly built on much that had already been evident in the character of the XIII Legion, as their primarch's gene-seed had already partly shaped them, however unconsciously, and through the application of analysis and reason sought to purge any weaknesses or deficiencies to achieve the optimal military outcome.This, as with so much of the Legion's affairs, was considered by the primarch an ongoing project, and it evolved quickly into a dual doctrine which embraced in parallel on one hand what were the ancient and deterministic values of the warrior: courage, discipline, skill and adaptability, defined as that which was practical, and on the other: planning, precedent, analysis and assessment, defined as that which was theoretical. Both were of equal weight and value, one complementing and informing the other, blending together as the metals which made a fine blade. This became the Legion's doctrine and creed.As with the society Roboute Guilliman had built on Macragge, the XIII Legion under his mastery would be as ruthlessly even-handed as it was efficient, with the needs of the individual sublimated to the greater whole, but the life of the individual never spent wantonly or without purpose; for Guilliman's doctrine stated that each Legionary lost weakened those who remained.Within the Legion, the valour and the achievement of the individual were rewarded with honour and greater responsibility, but the obedience to hierarchy and order it demanded of its members was to be unquestioning and unchallenged. The outward signs of this transformation were striking.The livery of the XIII Legion was altered to a deep blue, chased with gold, while the symbol of the ancient "Ultima" glyph found in the pre-isolation stellar charts of the Ultramar region was adopted as its icon and seal to tie them to the newfound realm which they embodied. And with the new cognomen "Ultramarines," perhaps as one work attributed to Remembrancer L. Amphidal suggested, "Roboute Guilliman and his Legion would vow to take the Great Crusade beyond the stars themselves if needed to see its completion." |
Ultramarines - Pattern of Empire: With its forward base relocated to Macragge, Roboute Guilliman was granted an independent crusade command for the region by the Emperor, and quickly set about a series of fresh conquests. His 12th Expeditionary Fleet reformed under his command and was supplied with warships of the latest designs from Mars as a boon of the Emperor.Fresh conquests were immediate, as the newly named Ultramarines rapidly expanded their range out from Macragge, identifying suitable targets for Imperial Compliance and singling out hostile xenos holds for eradication. Interrupted only when called upon to join larger campaigns by the will of the Emperor, for nearly a Terran century the 12th Expeditionary Fleet ranged as far to the galactic north as the dead expanse where the Dominion of Storms ended and as far to the galactic east and south as the point of Ultima Thule, where the stars paled and emptied out into the limitless darkness of the exo-galactic void.During this period, the Ultramarines, by some records, succeeded in liberating more Human-settled worlds than any other single primarch's forces, and the planets Roboute Guilliman brought within the Imperium always benefitted from his intense passion for efficient and ordered government.Whenever Guilliman and the Ultramarines made a new world Compliant, his forces spent as much effort in establishing it afresh, setting up self-supporting defences, and ensuring that in his wake, the agents of the Imperial Truth and industry would firmly seal the world's place in the fabric of the Imperium. This spread of cohesive Imperial civilisation in the Legion's path served both to solidify and expand supply lines for its advance, facilitating in no small part the great speed and range of the Ultramarines' conquests.As inexorably as its tally of victories multiplied, the Ultramarines Legion's numbers also began to grow. Even before its reunification with its primarch, the XIII Legion had been mindful of its losses and demonstrated its ability to expand steadily thanks to the resilience of its gene-seed during multi-generational, rapid replication. But with its primarch's vision to guide it, his organisational skill and his own genetic material now available to further strengthen and enhance the fidelity and purity of the Legion's gene-stocks, the resultant expansion was meteoric, perhaps beyond anyone's -- even the Emperor's -- expectations.Within solar months of the Legion's establishment on Macragge, the first influx of new recruits had arrived at the Fortress of Hera, the Legion's fortress-monastery and new headquarters, and the process of renewal and increase in the XIII Legion's fighting strength had begun and never since had ceased. Wave after wave of recruits were taken in and processed, not simply from Macragge and the surrounding worlds of the slowly expanding Ultramar, as numerous as they were, but from scores of worlds and colony outposts where the conquering fleets of Roboute Guilliman had gone.The process was meritocratic and exacting; only the strongest and most able candidates were selected, chosen for both desired physical and mental attributes, but the net was flung so wide that the initiate intake dwarfed that of any other single Legion. This, coupled with the Ultramarines' resistance to what they saw as the "waste" of attrition warfare, created a kind of amplification effect in practice where the larger the Legion used in a single Compliance action, the more force was brought to bear and the fewer the casualties taken.Where this was not the case -- and there remained many hard battles fought by the Ultramarines against hideously powerful foes such as savage Ork empires, the Tanaril and other nightmarish xenoforms -- and heavy losses were inevitably suffered, the Legion's sheer size and its huge capacity to renew itself with more recruits offered it formidable resilience, and such losses were almost invariably replaced within a few Terran years.By the time Horus was appointed Warmaster over all the Space Marine Legions and other Imperial military forces at the Triumph of Ullanor, the Ultramarines were by any official assessment the largest single Space Marine Legion by number of Legionaries with a considerable margin. Owing to this expansion, the now massive 12th Expeditionary Fleet was sub-divided into a score of smaller expeditionary and persecution fleets, allowing the Legion to range further, each still numbering scores of vessels and thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of Legionaries.The numeric strength of the Ultramarines Legion, in excess of 250,000 Astartes before the Isstvan III Atrocity, would be an achievement that would not be surpassed, though in secrecy the late expansion of the traitorous Word Bearers, who originally numbered approximately 100,000 Astartes, would come to rival them by some assessments, while the wilder claims as to the strength of the Alpha Legion also have them run closer to the Ultramarines' strength than official records would indicate.This scale of military force and the near-autonomous "empire within an empire" that maintained it -- as Ultramar had reached a size popularly ascribed as the "Five Hundred Worlds" before the outbreak of the galactic civil war -- would have dire and unforeseen consequences for the Ultramarines and their primarch.Separate and inviolate in the east, and a great power within their own right, the Legion's very existence made them a threat to the Traitors' conspiracy that could not be ignored, and on Calth would the Warmaster's plan and the Word Bearers' desire for revenge seek to see that threat destroyed. |
Ultramarines - Battle of the Eurydice Terminal: Since his takeover of the Legion in the fourth solar decade of the Great Crusade after his rediscovery by the Emperor in 837.M30, Roboute Guilliman had succeeded in transforming the XIII Legion into an intricate and highly functioning weapon of war, and in doing so had built upon a track record of success in battle which held very few stains of defeat.For more than half a standard century the Legion had gone from strength to strength, waging Compliance actions and liberating Human-settled worlds for the Imperium across the eastern reaches of the galaxy, and forging the Realm of Ultramar in the process.Though not yet having reached the decisive numerical superiority of the other Legions, it would manifest by the time of the Horus Heresy, yet the Ultramarines of 899.M30 were perhaps already on the cusp of becoming the largest Legion, as their ranks, then standing at around approximately 166,000 Legionaries, stood them in the forefront of their peers.The Dark Angels, who in the previous decade to this had been undoubtedly the most powerful single Legion, had fallen in number and evened this figure, having suffered massive casualties holding the line during the famed Third Rangdan Xenocide. 50,000 Space Marines had spent their blood in preventing the destruction of perhaps the entire northern Imperium by the alien menace from the outer darkness.The Ultramarines in contrast had spent solar decades in building up their forces and expanding the frontiers in the galaxy's east, having had the advantage of their excellent network of supply and recruitment, and their primarch's formidable generalship was at a zenith of its strength thus far. Yet for all this, Roboute Guilliman knew that a shadow of doubt afflicted his Legion's soul. That doubt had its origins in its darkly storied defeat in the Osiris Cluster Rebellion a few short Terran years before the primarch's reunion with his Legion.Marius Gage's tenure in command as Legion Master had commenced with this disaster, and it became a baleful influence in the psyche of the Legion, a thing which while left unspoken nevertheless had power, and that even seemed to cast a pall over the Legion's recruits unborn when the battle was lost. The primarch knew that the only way to purge his Legion of this shadow of the mind was to find once more the xenos known as the "Osirian Psybrids," and with the Ultramarines at his back, destroy them utterly.To this end, ever since he had first reviewed reports of the action when he took over his Legion, Roboute Guilliman had begun planning the Psybrids' destruction, analysing and re-analysing every facet of the Legion's battle-logs, gun-picter footage and even the deep auspex data gathered from the aetheric cogitators of the warships that had survived for microscopic fluctuations.In the solar decades as his Legion had gone from Compliance to Compliance, war zone to war zone, the primarch had never stopped running continued theoretical battle scenarios against the macabre and powerful xenos, knowing that one day they would make their reappearance and that he and his Legion would be waiting. But solar decades passed and they did not return.There had been rumours of course, unsubstantiated accounts passed on from frontier Rogue Traders, intermittent reports of inexplicable massacres and mass disappearances, but the galaxy, even within the fold of the growing Imperium, was a strange and dangerous place, and the evidence was seldom conclusive as to the culprit, or pointed to the more commonplace but no less deadly privations of several known xenos species.Only at Maxilla Veritas near the Maelstrom, twenty-six standard years after the Osiris Rebellion, was the evidence for the Psybrids involvement considered viable. But by the time fast cruisers from the Ultramarines fleet arrived, the trail was already long cold and the planet's death bore silent witness to the Psybrids' passing. It was in the closing segments of 899.M30 that conclusive word finally reached the Ultramarines primarch that the Psybrids had not only been encountered, but met in battle.Relayed from the central astrotelepathic chamber of Terra, the strange report had come from a sub-fleet of the XII Legion, then in its last days as the War Hounds before its own primarch, Angron, was found. The fleet, under the command of Praetor Erad Krüg, was fighting on the southwestern extreme of the Great Crusade's frontier near Eurydice Terminal. Here the War Hounds had been engaged in repelling an attack on the frontier outpost world by Ork void raiders from the self-styled Glortian Empire from the untracked abysses beyond.The War Hounds, though severely outnumbered, had held off the repeated Ork attacks through a series of savage voidship boarding actions in close orbit and high intensity assaults on their landing zones, preventing the xenos from gaining a foothold on the ground. It had been during the latest of these assaults, the largest yet attempted by the Orks, that a mysterious third party had attacked both sides.When the Ultramarines retribution fleet arrived, not even the superhuman intellect of the Ultramarines primarch could have predicted what his Legion would find there. The entire system had been sundered into a battleground littered with burning debris and the radioactive echo of heavy weapons fire. The Ultramarines found the last surviving few hundred Legionaries of the XII Legion, the remnants of a force that had once been ten times its number, led by the terribly wounded but still commanding Erad Krüg.The War Hounds praetor detailed to Guilliman the story of a strange and terrible battle in which the Psybrids had managed through their mental powers to enslave a vast feral population of Orks to do battle for them against their own kind, and had sought to do the same to the Imperial defenders of Eurydice. Only the War Hounds had proved able to resist the creatures' baleful influence, but massively outnumbered they had paid for their resistance in blood, and would have been overwhelmed regardless if huge numbers of enraged Orks, seemingly the massed forces of the entire Greenskin Glortian Empire, had not swarmed into the system.During the ensuing battle, the Orks fought with unbelievable fury even given their warlike species' tendencies, compelled by their baleful masters to exterminate their enemies. More of the gargantuan Psybrid hourglass voidships in turn had appeared to reinforce their fellows, and with them thousands of enslaved xenos warriors and ships, few of which were known even to the lexicanic data cores of the Imperial warships.Eurydice Terminal had become a killing star; a vortex of destruction that was even now calling more armies to their deaths, and here the Ultramarines had come to restart the battle afresh. Guilliman, having apprised himself of the tactical situation, modified his battle plans accordingly and without pause put his strategy of attack into operation.Despite Erad Krüg's request for his surviving Legionaries to be lifted from their wrecked vessel and given a place in the line of battle, the War Hounds were denied; this would be a battle for the Ultramarines alone. It was to be a tactical operation more traditionally the specialty of other Space Marine Legions than the Ultramarines, but at which Guilliman's own warriors were still well-versed -- a full assault-strike voidship boarding assault.The primarch's plan of attack was a shockingly direct one. His fleet didn't pause for a long-range bombardment or present a broadside and pound the enemy at close quarters; instead, he ordered his Legion to conduct a full boarding strike without prelude. Guilliman drove the core of his fleet and with it nearly 100,000 Ultramarines into the heart of the enemy.It was not without irony that Roboute Guilliman records in his own testimony about the assault that he and his Legion were adverse to strategies which resulted in a heavy cost of Ultramarines' lives; this single action would dispel that myth and illustrate the truth that such tactics were often wasteful and unneeded by a skilled general, but when such sacrifice was the most efficient and indeed perhaps the only path to victory, he and his Legion would pay that price with fervour and unbreakable determination.The Ultramarines at last unleashed their wrath as they closed with the enemy vessels, hundreds of gunships and assault rams roaring from their flight bays to the attack as the Ultramarines fleet unleashed a cannonade of a thousand lance batteries and macrocannons. The Psybrid nomad-vessels lashed about them with frenzied whips of elemental energy, and all around them hulls burst and ships burned, but it was too little against the unstoppable tide of ire which crashed against them.Through the maze-like networks of turning corridors like the innards of a great machine, the Ultramarines stormed with deadly intent, destroying as they went. Soon they encountered ghoulish, half-solid vapour forms, lean and gaunt without their exo-armour, who fought with the savagery of caged animals, burning bright with psychokinetic energy and striking out with mind-burning blasts of power, but for every Legionary who fell, a dozen pressed forward in their place and, one by one, the Psybrids began to be corralled, cornered and killed.Led by axe-and-shield-wielding Invictarii and moving bulwarks of Terminator Armour-clad Veterans, the Ultramarines pressed into the heart of the great vessels, mining the corridors and power junctions with Melta Bombs and atomantic implosion charges as they went. For the warriors of the XIII Legion were implacable, and in them had been woken a rarely displayed drive for vengeance against the Psybrids that could not be diverted nor denied.It was Roboute Guilliman himself who breached the innermost chamber of the largest of the hourglass ships to find the master of the Psybrids. It was a towering, multi-limbed gestalt-thing, thrice the primarch's own height, whose long, almost equine head screamed out shockwaves of ceramite-breaking force as its inner sanctum was invaded. But even as his own Terminator-armoured honour guard staggered and fell under the psychokinetic onslaught, the primarch, with his Chief Battle Psyker Aaroth Ptolemy beside him, charged.The Psybrid-king reared up above them, its clawed arms bearing strange weapons like the image of some forgotten devil-god of Old Night, but Guilliman with the strength and speed born of the Emperor's unmatched arts struck, cleaving the creature limb from vaporous limb as Ptolemy fought it on the psychic plane with every ounce of power in his possession, sacrificing his life so that Guilliman would be defended from the nightmarishly powerful creature's psychic assault.The monster finally fell and the primarch of the Ultramarines enacted his Legion's vengeance, ripping the thing's glowing brain from its skull and crushing it under his heel. One by one the towering hourglass vessels of the Osirian Psybrids fell, either torn apart by explosive charges from within, or rent to flinders in the crossfire of the waiting Ultramarines' echelons as they tried to break free. There was no escape.As the Psybrids died, so too did their slave armies still warring on the ground, and soon only the Glortian Orks, already mauled and all but exhausted, remained, and the Ultramarines made short work of driving them away once more into the outer darkness.The blood price of the battle had been high enough, several thousand Legionary casualties, and many among them veterans of his Legion's Terran roots, eager to be the first in battle in order to expunge the failing of the past. But it had been a price willingly paid for vengeance, and it would be a price and more that the Ultramarines Legion would willingly pay again in the future. |
Ultramarines - Triumph of Ullanor: In the final years of the 30th Millennium, forces of the Imperium undertook the Ullanor Crusade, a vast Imperial assault on the Ork empire of the Overlord Urrlak Urruk. The capital world of this Greenskin stellar empire, and the site of the final assault by the Space Marine Legions, lay in the central Ullanor System of the galaxy's Ullanor Sector. The crusade included the deployment of 100,000 Space Marines, 8,000,000 Imperial Army troops, and thousands of Imperial 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. The Orks of Ullanor represented the largest concentration of Greenskins ever defeated by the military forces of the Imperium of Man before the Third War for Armageddon began during the 41st Millennium. Following the defeat of the Orks of Ullanor, the Emperor of Mankind was to return to Terra to begin work on His vast project to open up the Aeldari Webway for Mankind's use. In His place to command the vast forces of the Great Crusade He left Horus Lupercal, primarch of the Luna Wolves Legion.In the aftermath of the Ullanor Crusade, Horus was granted the newly-created title of "Warmaster," the commander-in-chief of all the Emperor's armies who possessed command authority over all of the other primarchs and every expeditionary fleet of the Great Crusade. When the Emperor proclaimed Horus Warmaster of the Imperium, Guilliman accepted the news of his brother's promotion without resentment, and Horus continued to seek his counsel. However, Horus believed that Guilliman felt that he had deserved the honour of being named Warmaster just as much, if not more.Before returning to Terra to oversee the next phase of the creation of His stellar empire, the Emperor suggested to Horus that he rename the XVI Legion the "Sons of Horus," in honour of their primarch and to show his preeminent place amongst the other primarchs. Horus initially declined this honour, not wishing to be set above his brothers, and so his Legion continued as the Luna Wolves for a little while longer. But Horus and the other primarchs never came to terms with the Emperor's absence.Their hurt feelings over His seeming abandonment of the Great Crusade to pursue a secret project whose purpose He chose not to reveal to His gene-sons laid seeds of jealousy and resentment that would ultimately blossom alongside other problems into the corruption that began the Horus Heresy. |
Ultramarines - Battle of Calth: When the Warmaster Horus turned his back on the Imperium, swore his allegiance to the Ruinous Powers of Chaos, and began the great rebellion against the Emperor later named the Horus Heresy, his first act before making his break with the Emperor of Mankind open was to lure away as many Loyalist Legions from the defence of Terra as possible.As part of this ruse, Horus ordered Roboute Guilliman to lead an expeditionary fleet to the world of Calth in the Veridian System in the Realm of Ultramar to prepare for a campaign in the Eastern Fringes of the galaxy, where, Horus claimed, an Ork WAAAGH! was massing on the Ghaslakh Xeno-hold.Horus expected the Ultramarines to await the arrival of the Word Bearers who would join with the XIII Legion in prosecuting a campaign against the Ork menace. Unknown to Guilliman, the XVII Legion had four solar decades before turned Traitor in service to the Chaos Gods, and its primarch, Lorgar Aurelian, gleefully accepted Horus' orders to close the trap on his Legion's long-hated rivals.The Word Bearers' sudden attack at Calth decimated Guilliman's Legion fleet, and the Ultramarines' ground troops quickly found themselves impossibly outnumbered by their former allies as the infamous Battle of Calth erupted. The Word Bearers slew their Loyalist foes in droves in the early stages of their surprise attack and pushed them back over huge stretches of territory.The Traitors rejoiced at the terrible blows they were inflicting upon the Legion that had once aided the Emperor in humiliating them upon the world of Khur solar decades before the start of the Heresy when the Word Bearers had been taken to task for repeated violations of the atheistic philosophy known as the Imperial Truth.Unknown to them, Guilliman's flagship, which had survived the initial Word Bearers' attack on the Ultramarines fleet, effected emergency repairs and regrouped with the other surviving Ultramarine starships in space. Having taken stock of his remaining forces, Guilliman sent an immediate astropathic distress call to Macragge.The Loyalist Space Marines on Calth, Ultramarines all, had been forced into a fighting retreat, but soon occupied fortified positions. Many Ultramarines had been born on Calth, and proved more resolute than the Word Bearers anticipated. In space, Guilliman's vessels began hit-and-run attacks on their over-confident enemy. Guilliman assessed his ground troops' positions and broadcast clear, concise orders to each pocket of defence, coordinating them into a cohesive force. One Ultramarine force led by Captain Remus Ventanus led a breakout and retook Calth's Defence Laser silos, aiding the sorely-pressed Ultramarines fleet from the surface of Calth.Guilliman's depleted forces slowed the Word Bearers down long enough for the remainder of the Ultramarines Legion to arrive and rout the Traitor Marines from the system, though at a heavy cost. The Word Bearers turned Calth's own orbital defence platforms on the Veridian star, stripping away the outer layers of its photosphere and destabilising it, ultimately rendering the surface of Calth uninhabitable due to a massive increase in ionising radiation bursts from the world's sun.At the same time, the Word Bearers had used the battle taking place on Calth to fuel the Warp sorcery required summon a massive Warp storm called the "Ruinstorm" that was intended to cut off Ultramar from the rest of the galaxy and prevent the Ultramarines and other Loyalist forces from providing any reinforcements to Terra as Horus made his assault upon Humanity's homeworld.The eruption of the Ruinstorm cut off Calth from the main body of the Ultramarines Legion and left the Astartes of the XIII Legion trapped on Calth, locked in a brutal subterranean war with those Word Bearers units that had also been left behind when their Legion retreated from the Viridian System.Yet Roboute Guilliman and a large portion of his Legion had remained off-world as a result of the Word Bearers' devious assault upon the Ultramarines fleet. Bloodied but unbowed, the Ultramarines received the orders of Malcador the Sigillite, the Regent of Terra, while the Emperor was in disposed pursuing the secret Imperial Webway Project, and prepared to meet the needs of the Imperium's defence against the Traitor Legions as best they could. |
Ultramarines - Martyrs of Calth: In the aftermath of the fighting on Calth, it was all but impossible to form an accurate picture of the losses incurred on the combatants. With the surface of the planet rendered all but uninhabitable by the actions of the Word Bearers' First Captain Kor Phaeron, it proved impractical to recover many of the fallen or verify the deaths of those who came to Calth with treachery in their hearts.The Ultramarines recorded their casualties at the moment when Guilliman and the remains of the XIII Legion fleet departed Calth at 119,422 Legiones Astartes fallen in combat, with a further 28,392 rendered combat-incapable by battle injuries and trauma.Few of the chapters of the Legion committed to Calth could muster even a quarter of their nominal strength in the wake of that betrayal, and some were so decimated that they faced being reorganised into other chapters and their old designations removed from the XIII Legion's order of battle. Most of the injured were evacuated to the surviving voidcraft of the Legion fleet and swiftly returned to combat duties in the crisis that was unfolding across Ultramar, a crisis that forced Guilliman to order the prioritisation of military assets over the stranded civilians in the brief evacuation effort.Almost 40,000 Ultramarines, both wounded and combat-ready, were forced to remain on Calth, some as volunteers, set to the protection of those Calthian civilians who could not be evacuated, and others due to the brutal dictates of circumstance. Of the forces of the Excertus Imperialis, details are more vague, but it seems likely that at least half a million troops-under-arms perished during the fighting, alongside the entire fighting complement of the Legio Praesagius.Of the Word Bearers who landed on the surface of Calth, almost none would ever leave. It is estimated that 50,000 or more of Lorgar's gene-sons and an uncounted mass of their allied Imperial Army Imperialis Auxilia troops were sacrificed in the battle, although only 20,000 are thought to have died in the initial fighting, with the remainder prosecuting the subterranean Underworld War on Calth for over a solar decade after the initial battle.Just as bitter to the Ultramarines Legion was the damage inflicted on its fleet assets. Never renowned for the numbers of heavy combat voidcraft in its service, the losses suffered at Calth were crippling and hamstrung any effort to prosecute a war beyond the bounds of Ultramar.Such was the Ultramarines' desperation, missions to salvage the dead hulks drifting in orbit above Calth were quickly authorised despite the death toll such missions exacted in the deadly radiation of the damaged Veridian star. |
Ultramarines - The Unmarked: Of the entire XIII Legion, only five whole chapters of the Ultramarines and a handful of separate detachments from other chapters were spared the Mark of Calth. As with those Legiones Astartes of other Legions who had lived through the Isstvan massacres, an unspoken rift formed between the veterans of Calth and those who had not passed through the fires of that terrible betrayal.No official designation to mark the veterans of the Battle of Calth was ever promulgated amongst the XIII Legion, nor did Roboute Guilliman ever sanction any division between the warriors of his Legion, yet on those occasions where the Ultramarines gathered afterwards in numbers, the survivors of the Calth campaign ever formed a separate body.The bitter wound of base betrayal was one they carried through all their days, the lasting legacy of the Word Bearers' assault on the worlds of Ultramar; trust came to them only with difficulty and always there was a hint of paranoia in their preparations for war and the execution of their campaigns.Of the so-called "Unmarked" chapters, two had been assigned to distant Great Crusade forces at the time of the Calth Atrocity; the 7th Chapter was divided amongst the vast reaches of the Dominion of Storms and the 10th Chapter was battling through the xenos-infested Eastern Fringe. The remaining chapters, the 19th as well as those which bore the title "Evocati," the 24th and 25th, had been assigned garrison and training duties amongst the myriad worlds of Ultramar.Though none escaped the fires of Horus' rebellion, none were tested as were those few who had stood against the unthinkable at Calth, none ever stood at the brink of annihilation and the edge of madness as did their brothers. In the later years of the Great Scouring, the Unmarked would continuously see assignment to operations removed from the main body of their brethren; even Guilliman seemed averse to their company on campaign, perhaps seeing in them a reminder of days now lost.Eventually, the Unmarked would be among the first of the XIII Legion to be renamed and separated during the Second Founding, and remain perhaps the truest reflection of the Ultramarines of old, before the tragedy of the Horus Heresy reshaped the Imperium forever. |
Ultramarines - Shadow Crusade: In his wrath at the outcome on Calth, the Lord of Ultramar had gathered what vessels he could spare after Kor Phaeron's ambush, drawn additional numbers from the first Ultramarines relief fleet bound for Calth after the massacre above that world, and tracked Lorgar directly through the use of the XIII Legion's own astropathic choirs.In the wake of the Battle of Calth, the Word Bearers Legion, led by Lorgar, linked up with Angron and his World Eaters Legion to launch a Shadow Crusade against the Realm of Ultramar's five hundred worlds in an attempt to spread the massive Warp storm known as the Ruinstorm that had been conjured by the Word Bearers' First Chaplain Erebus at Calth across the Eastern Fringe. This prodigious Warp storm would effectively split the galaxy in half and deny needed reinforcements to the Loyalists as Horus drove on Terra in an attempt to overthrow the Emperor of Mankind.The Shadow Crusade laid waste to 26 worlds of Ultramar until Roboute Guilliman's retribution fleet finally caught up to the Traitors upon Angron's homeworld of Nuceria, which the World Eaters Legion were preoccupied with wiping clean of all life in vengeance for the treatment the Nucerians had meted out a standard century before to Angron, when he had served as one of their slave-gladiators.The XIII Legion's warship Courage Above All, Guilliman's temporary flagship, broke Warp at the system's edge, at the head of a large void armada consisting of 41 vessels. The Ultramarines armada looked wounded, cobbled together from separate fleets. It was not a dedicated interdiction war-fleet, but clearly a ragtag strike force, a lance thrust to the enemy's heart.Guilliman himself had done the best he could with limited resources. The XIII Legion's cruisers and battleships ran abeam of the enemy fleet for repeated exchange of broadsides, offering targets too big and powerful to ignore, while the rest of the Ultramarines fleet used calculated Lance strikes from safer range. The armada then divided its assault potential, doing its utmost to destroy Lorgar's flagship Fidelitas Lex, and attempted to take the World Eaters' flagship Conqueror in a boarding action.But the Ultramarines not only fought a void war, they also attempted to take the fight to the surface of Nuceria, for this attack was personal. The Ultramarines had come for revenge against Lorgar and the Word Bearers, just as they had pursued Kor Phaeron all the way to the Maelstrom on the other side of Ultramar.Several Ultramarines warships attempted to make a run on Nuceria, haemorrhaging Drop Pods, landers and gunships, forcing planetfall by any means necessary. The Ultramarines fleet swept over and against the Traitors like an insect horde. But the tenacious commander of the Conqueror, Lotara Sarrin, put up a difficult fight and destroyed a number of Ultramarine vessels that attempted to make a run for the surface. Though the World Eaters' flagship transformed a number of the smaller vessels into flaming wreckage, the Ultramarines eventually punched through her tenacious defence and managed to land troops on the surface of Nuceria.Meanwhile, the Fidelitas Lex was already a ruin, its armour pitted and cracked, its void shields a memory. The cathedrals and spinal fortresses barnacling along its back were gone, laid waste by the Ultramarines' incendiary rage. The XIII Legion's armada attacked in strafing runs and protracted exchanges of broadsides, trading fire with the superior warship and accepting their own casualties as the cost of bleeding the bigger vessel dry.Each assault left the Fidelitas Lex weaker, firing fewer turrets and cannons, taking punishment on its increasingly fragile armour. But she fought on. Crawling with smaller ships, the Lex lashed back with its remaining macrocannons, rolling in the light of its own burning hull.Guilliman guided the battle from the command deck of Courage Above All, and had decided that the Lex would die first, killed in the death of a thousand cuts and swept from the game board, while the Conqueror would be boarded and killed from within. In the course of the battle in Nucerian orbit, the Conqueror could not rise to its sister-ship's defence. Both Traitor Legions' flagships fought alone, starved of support and suffering the endless attacks of the XIII Legion's ragged armada.Salvation Pods streamed from the Fidelitas Lex's sides and underbelly, along with heavier Mechanicum craft and bulk landers. With the Legionaries of the Word Bearers already on the surface, the ship's Human population fled in the vessel's final solar minutes. And still the great vessel fought -- rolling, turning, raging. The Ultramarines Cruisers that drifted past burned as badly as the warship they were killing. This void battle was a form of dirty fighting between warships, too close for the neat calculations of ranged battery fire. Instead, it was an up close and personal slugfest.The Ultramarines battle barge Armsman intercepted the Conqueror and came abeam, launching assault carriers and Boarding Torpedoes. While the World Eaters flagship was busy repelling boarders, a number of smaller XIII Legion vessels slipped past her defences and launched Drop Pods, gunships and troop carriers. The first Drop Pods hammered home on the planet's surface. Sealed doors unlocked and the first Ultramarines poured forth, bolters raised, moving in perfect and well-trained unity. But the World Eaters were waiting for them. Those not lost to the Butcher's Nails at once had the presence of mind to note that these Ultramarines were not the pristine cobalt-blue warriors they had previously faced on the War World of Armatura.These Legionaries of the XIII Legion wore cracked power armour, still scarred and burnwashed from some horrendous battle solar weeks or months before. These were hardened veterans of the Battle of Calth. They burned with a cold intensity to carry out the vengeance in their hearts, and were intent on getting to grips with the Word Bearers.As was their way, the Ultramarines established footholds at defensible positions, clearing room for their reinforcements to land. For every position they held, another was overrun by the World Eaters in a storm of roaring axes, or lost to the Word Bearers' chanting, implacable advance. The XII Legion crashed against the XIII in rabid packs, showing why Imperial forces had feared to fight alongside them for solar decades. Uncontrolled, unbound, unrestrained, they butchered their way through Ultramarines strongpoints, enslaved to the joy of battle because of the Butcher's Nails cortical implants sandwiched within the meat of their minds.The XVII Legion also met their Loyalist cousins, replacing ferocity with spite and hate. The Ultramarines returned it in kind, hungry for vengeance against the vile Traitors who had defiled Calth and damaged its star. Word Bearer units marched, droning black hymns and chanting sermons from the Book of Lorgar, bearing corpse-strewn icons of befouled metal and bleached bones above their regiments.As the fighting raged, the burning shell of the Fidelitas Lex cut through the clouds into the planet's atmosphere, shuddering on its way east, rolling ever downwards, achingly slow for something of such scale. The weight of the Lex's massive plasma engines dragged the stern down first, colliding with the Nucerian ocean's surface far from shore.In the meantime, the demigod in gold and blue had finally found the object of his obsession amidst the clamour of war. Guilliman confronted Lorgar, possessing the advantage of two weapons, but Lorgar's Crozius gave him a reach his brother lacked. When they first met, there was no furious trading of frantic blows, nor were there any melodramatic speeches of vengeance avowed. The two primarchs came together once, Power Fist against Power Maul, and backed away from the resulting flare of repelling energy fields. Their warriors killed each other around them both, and neither primarch spared their gene-sons a glance. Lorgar flicked the clinging lightning from the head of his Crozius, shaking his head in slow denial.Both primarchs fought without heeding their warriors, their godlike movements an inconceivable blur to the Space Marines fighting around them. None had ever imagined the heroes of this new age would take the field against each other, nor could they have predicted the wellsprings of spite between them. Guilliman confronted Lorgar for what his Legion had done across the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar. In his righteous anger the Ultramarines primarch struck Lorgar with one of his fists, battering the Word Bearers primarch's sternum.Lorgar repulsed him with a projected burst of telekinesis, weak and wavering, but enough to send his brother staggering. The Crozius followed, its power field trailing lightning as Lorgar hammered it into the side of Guilliman's head with the force of a cannonball. Both primarchs faced each other beneath the grey sky, one bleeding internally, the other with half of his face lost to blood sheeting from a fractured skull.As the two primarchs were locked in their furious life-and-death struggle, they were oblivious to the destruction being wrought around them. Suddenly, Angron burst forth from the Ultramarines ranks, his armour a shattered wreck, and both of his chainswords spat gobbets of ceramite armour plating and scarlet gore. Angron was plastered with the blood of the slain after solar hours in the crush of the front lines of intense combat. On his chest hung a bandolier of skulls taken from the mass grave of his former gladiator comrades at Desh'elika Ridge. Blood painted them as surely as it marked Angron. Even through the constant pain generated by the Butcher's Nails, that pleased him.He wanted his deceased gladiatorial brothers and sisters to taste blood once more. He had carried them with him across Nuceria, letting their empty eyes witness the razing of his former, hated homeworld. The World Eater launched himself at Guilliman with murderous hatred. The two primarchs fell into a seamless, roaring duel where Lorgar and Guilliman had abandoned theirs. Guilliman was forced back by the storm of Angron's blows.As the two primarchs fought, Guilliman landed a glancing blow, his fist pounding across Angron's breastplate. One of the skulls of Angron's fallen kinsman that hung from the chain worn across his breastplate was partially shattered and scattered across the ground. Guilliman stepped back, his boot crushing a skull's remnants to powder. Angron saw it, and threw himself at his brother, his howl of wrath defying mortal origins, impossibly ripe in its anguish. Lorgar saw it, too. The moment Guilliman's boot broke the skull, he felt the Warp boil behind the veil.The Bearer of the Word started chanting in a language never before spoken by any living being, his words in faultless harmony with Angron's cry of torment. Lorgar finally enacted his dark plan to save his brother's life from the Butcher's Nails, summoning the Ruinstorm to the world of Nuceria, tearing the sky open and unleashing a crimson torrent, formed from the ghosts of a hundred murdered worlds, raining blood.Guilliman had been holding his own against both Traitor primarchs until Lorgar ceased his attack and started his achingly resonant chant. Angron and Guilliman still fought, with the Lord of the Ultramarines giving ground each time Angron landed a blow. Angron plunged his chainsword up under Guilliman's breastplate -- a shallow stab, but a telling one. The Ultramarines primarch crushed the impaling sword in one fist and staggered back, truly bleeding now.Despite the maelstrom of combat and sorcery raging around them, Angron still fought Guilliman, standing above the kneeling Ultramarines primarch. He had not even noticed the storm of blood streaming from the sky in a red torrent. Sparks sprayed from Guilliman's raised gauntlets as he struggled to ward off blow after blow. He was beaten and down. His wounds bled profusely, a palette of proud defeat. His warriors fought desperately to retrieve him.Fortunately they were granted a brief reprieve, as Lorgar's incantation locked up Angron's muscles, and began to transform the Red Angel into a new form as a Daemon Prince of Khorne. Guilliman took the opportunity to escape into his gene-sons' defiant phalanxes, retreating in enviable unity. Lorgar saw the expression of disgusted awe on his brother's face as the wounded Ultramarine primarch stared at Angron's metamorphosis atop the mound of dead sons from all three bloodlines of Space Marines. The XIII Legion continued to fire even in retreat, leaving the world of Nuceria battered and bloody. Their campaign against the two Traitor Legions was over...for now.Roboute Guilliman escaped from Nuceria, unable to face or even fully comprehend what both of his brothers had become through their corruption by the Ruinous Powers.The World Eaters completed their purge of Nuceria until not one Human life remained on the benighted world. Angron, now the very embodiment of the Blood God's Eight-Fold Path, shook the dust of the world from his feet and did not think of it again. |
Ultramarines - Imperium Secundus: With the torrential Ruinstorm raging, blocking out the light of the Astronomican and causing Warp travel and astrotelepathic communication to be all but impossible, the Imperium was effectively cut in half during much of the Horus Heresy following the Battle of Calth. Unable to learn what was occurring beyond the limits of the great Warp storm, Guilliman came to fear that Terra had been lost and the Emperor was dead. He obsessed over a way to ensure that the Imperium would survive.He used the ancient xenos device known as the Pharos on the world of Sotha to create a psychic beacon in the Warp capable of guiding any Loyalist Space Marine Legions lost in the disruptions of the Ruinstorm to Ultramar. Miraculously, the Primarch Lion El'Jonson and his Dark Angels Legion managed to lock onto the beacon of the strange alien device which guided the I Legion's fleet safely through the Warp and to the Realm of Ultramar's capital world of Macragge.There, they were greeted by Roboute Guilliman and his brother primarch Sanguinius, whose Blood Angels Legion was also guided through the Ruinstorm to the Realm of Ultramar by the Pharos as they made their way towards Terra following the Signus Campaign. The three primarchs were instrumental in the foundation of the "Imperium Secundus" as a means of continuing the fight against the Traitors and securing the Emperor's great work of unifying Humanity. Guilliman proclaimed Sanguinius as the rightful heir to the Emperor and declared him the new ruler and Regent of Imperium Secundus. Lion El'Jonson was made the Lord Protector of this new empire of Humanity and supreme commander over all its military forces, a title that was similar to that of Warmaster which he had once so coveted.Unfortunately, the foundation of Imperium Secundus was marred when the captured Night Lords Primarch Konrad Curze escaped from the Dark Angels' flagship Invincible Reason and rampaged across Macragge, intent on spreading as much terror and chaos as he could. Eventually, both Guilliman and the Lion confronted the cornered Curze. Their attempts to kill him were unsuccessful as the Night Lords primarch had laid a cunning trap. He brought down an entire chapel upon the two primarchs through the use of planted explosives and fled the scene.Guilliman and the Lion were only saved through the direct intervention of the Loyalist Iron Warriors Warsmith Barabas Dantioch, who was communicating with Guilliman at the time of the attack through a portal that was opened by the Pharos. On instinct, the Warsmith reached through the portal and pulled the two primarchs to safety on Sotha.The Imperium Secundus next faced a major test in the Battle of Sotha, where the Ultramarines and their fellow Astartes allies that had gathered fought off a force of Night Lords intent on reclaiming their primarch. |
Ultramarines - Exile of the Lion: While Lion El'Jonson continued his obsessive hunt for the elusive Night Haunter, he and Roboute Guilliman continuously clashed over policy, especially in regards to the security of Imperium Secundus. They were particularly vexed with how best to deal with the emergence of rebels on Macragge that the Lion was certain Curze had instigated.Following a suicide bombing of an Astartes convoy by these rebels, the Lion used the I Legion to establish martial law on Macragge. Certain that Curze was hiding within the rebellious Illyrium region of the world, the Lion advocated the use of a massive orbital saturation bombardment of the region to ensure Curze's death. Facing resistance from both Sanguinius and Guilliman, who objected to the civilian casualties such an action would unleash, the Lion instead opted to deploy his Legion's Dreadwing in order to flush out Curze and the rebels.During an attack on the city of Alma Mons, the Lion finally cornered the elusive Night Lords primarch and the two came to blows. After a brutal confrontation, the Lion eventually emerged victorious, and questioned his brother why he had turned away from the Emperor, to which Curze simply replied: "Why not?"Curze went on to explain that there was a monster in his head that he could not stop. Though he finally had Curze at his mercy, the Lion couldn't bring himself to kill his brother, and instead pummeled him again. He then ripped off Curze's backpack from his battle-plate, lifted him over his head, and brutally brought the Night Haunter down across his knee, breaking Curze's spine and paralysing him. The Lion brought the grievously wounded Konrad Curze before Sanguinius and Guilliman to stand trial.A Triumvirate was later called by the three Loyalist primarchs where Curze defended his actions, but refused to admit his guilt. Since each of the primarchs had been created to perform a specific military function, Curze argued he was merely acting according to his own Emperor-granted nature, and therefore had committed no crimes. The Night Lords primarch further divided Guilliman and the Lion by accusing the latter of secretly ordering an orbital bombardment of Macragge in direct violation of Guilliman's orders to prevent civilian casualties.Enraged at the accusation, the Lion sought to kill Curze, but was halted by the words of Sanguinius as Guilliman snatched El'Jonson's Lion Sword and broke the blade across his armoured thigh in his fury at the Lion's actions. El'Jonson was furious, but Sanguinius dismissed the Lord Protector, ending the Triumvirate. The Lion was then banished from Imperium Secundus for ignoring the authority of his fellow primarchs. Taking his leave, the Dark Angels Legion withdrew from Macragge only solar hours later.Standing in the chamber of the Tuchulcha Engine aboard the Invincible Reason, the Lion brooded over recent events. He questioned his actions over the course of the last few solar decades -- the banishment of Luther, the death of Nemiel as well as other decisions he had come to regret. As the Dark Angels made their final preparations to depart back to Caliban, the Lion went back to the Tuchulcha Engine's chamber. He ordered the device to teleport himself and Holguin, "Deathbringer", the voted-lieutenant of the Deathwing, back to Macragge.As Sanguinius prepared to execute Curze for his crimes, both the Lion and his lieutenant teleported directly into the chamber and told Sanguinius to stop. As troops entered the room, demanding the Lion surrender, El'Jonson explained his reasons for the intrusion. He reasoned that Curze had the ability to see precognitive visions of potential futures, and repeated the Night Haunter's claim that his death would one day come at the hands of an assassin sent by the Emperor. If this was true, the Lion reasoned, then it was proof that the Emperor was still alive beyond the barrier of the Ruinstorm.Sanguinius knew the Lion's explanation rang true, as he recognised that his own precognitive visions of his inevitable death would also eventually come to pass. When Guilliman demanded to know what would become of Curze, the Lion knelt before his two brothers and promised that he would be Curze's gaoler. |
Ultramarines - Second Battle of Davin: In the wake of these revelations, Imperium Secundus was abolished by the three primarchs as an unfortunate mistake. The three instead led their Space Marine Legions in an attempt to breach the Ruinstorm and reach Terra to defend the Emperor.Through an arduous journey, they eventually reached Davin, the nexus of the Ruinstorm, and engaged a vast Daemonic host that had emerged out of the Warp storm. After the Second Battle of Davin and the destruction of that foul planet, a way to Terra through the Ruinstorm was made clear as the great Warp storm began to slowly subside. But in the Legions' way stood multiple Traitor fleets intended to serve as blocking forces as Horus had foreseen that this route to Terra might open for the Loyalists.Sanguinius and the Blood Angels raced directly for Terra through the opening, as was their destiny in Sanguinius' precognitive visions, while Guilliman and Lion El'Jonson led the Ultramarines and Dark Angels Legions in diversionary attacks against the Traitor fleets that allowed the Blood Angels to slip through the cordon.As the Ruinstorm continued to fade, Guilliman gathered whatever forces he could and made haste for Terra. In his path lay a large defensive chain of hundreds of worlds manned by the Iron Warriors. In a series of bitter engagements, both sides took heavy losses but the Loyalists were able to maintain a steady, if slow, advance on the Throneworld. |
Ultramarines - Siege of Terra: As the long and bloody years of the Horus Heresy passed, the Traitor Legions under the command of the Warmaster Horus Lupercal finally closed on the homeworld of Mankind and launched their great assault against the Imperial Palace while they believed a good portion of the Loyalist Space Marine Legions remained occupied in other regions of the galaxy.While the forces of Chaos came close to battering down the gates of the Imperial Palace, the Loyalists' stout defence managed to hold the line within the Inner Palace long enough for Loyalist reinforcements to drop from the Warp on the edges of the Sol System. Salvation was coming.In orbit of Terra, Horus' allies delivered the fateful news. The Ultramarines, Dark Angels and Space Wolves Legions were only solar hours away from reinforcing the Emperor and His Loyalist defenders in the Imperial Palace. Horus then knew that his great gamble to seize Terra had failed.What happened next is disputed; some believe Horus disabled his flagship's void shields as he experienced one last moment of regret, and some believe it was simply a personal challenge to the Emperor, to win the battle on his own terms when he could no longer gain victory using conventional means. For whatever reason, Horus lowered the shields of his flagship, the battle barge Vengeful Spirit, allowing the Emperor, the Blood Angels' Primarch Sanguinius, a company of Imperial Fists and a force of Legio Custodes to teleport aboard and ultimately slay him, ending the Horus Heresy.But Sanguinius was slain and the Emperor mortally wounded in the titanic fight with the Chaos Gods' chosen champion and interred in the Golden Throne immediately afterwards by the Primarch Rogal Dorn, leaving a dangerous void of power and authority within the shattered Imperium. Unfortunately, the Ultramarines fleet did not arrive at Terra until after Horus' defeat, and they found Terra and the Imperium itself in ruins.Roboute Guilliman steadfastly refused to allow the Imperium to fall, and began despatching elements of his Legion to all corners of the galaxy to stem the tide of invasion and unrest as the other Loyalist forces recovered and rearmed to force the Traitor Legions to surrender the territory they had seized during Horus' seven-standard-year-long advance towards Terra.After solar decades of further intense fighting, some measure of stability was finally restored to the Imperium. |
Ultramarines - Great Scouring and the Imperial Reformation: Throughout most of the time that the Horus Heresy was under way, the Ultramarines had been engaged in bringing new worlds into Imperial Compliance on the southern edge of the galaxy. Their very success had carried them far from Terra and isolated them from the conquering Traitor Legions which had been concentrated in the galactic northeast.Consequently, the Ultramarines were poorly placed to contribute to the Loyalist defence during the early stages of the Horus Heresy. Luckily, the Ultramarines were therefore also largely untouched by the fighting of the Warmaster's rebellion, other than the casualties suffered at the Battle of Calth.Other Loyalist Space Marine Legions like the three "Shattered Legions" had lost most of their complement of Legionaries during the fighting, and half of the original 18 Legions had sided with Horus and been corrupted by Chaos. As a result, the number of Astartes left to the Imperium in the wake of the Heresy was very few, yet never had they been more needed by its people.The disorder following the Horus Heresy had left the Imperium weak and extremely vulnerable. Everywhere the enemies of Mankind prepared to attack. Many worlds remained in the grip of the forces of Chaos. Into this breach stepped Roboute Guilliman and the Ultramarines. Always the largest of the Legiones Astartes in the wake of the Rangdan Xenocides, the Ultramarines found themselves divided into smaller units that were despatched all over the Imperium in a desperate effort to stem the tide of invasion and unrest during the campaigns of what became known as the "Great Scouring."The Ultramarines successfully held the Imperium together during this time of intense danger when many centrifugal forces were seeking to rip the edifice of the Imperium asunder. Macragge was able to supply new neophytes for the Legion at such a rate that before long the Ultramarines alone accounted for more than half the total number of Space Marines operating in the post-Heresy Imperium, and there were few Human-settled star systems where their heroism went unnoticed at this time.Within a few solar decades, order had been restored to the Imperium and the demoralised forces of Chaos had been largely driven into the Eye of Terror. Even as the Ultramarines reconquered the worlds lost to the Warmaster and his allies, a new theory of warfare was emerging. Guilliman single-handedly held the Imperium together in the wake of the Horus Heresy, assuming the mantle of the lord commander of the Imperium and Imperial Regent and leading a major reformation of the Imperium's bureaucratic and military structures to ensure that another betrayal from within could never happen again.To prevent a single commander from ever again threatening the Imperium with as many transhuman Astartes at his command as Horus had, Guilliman reformulated the sizes of all of the Loyalist Space Marine Legions into thousand-man "Chapters," breaking apart the 9 original Loyalist First Founding Legions into the much smaller Second Founding Chapters. Never again would one man, no matter how noble his motives, wield the power of an entire Space Marine Legion.Under the guidance of Guilliman's military genius, the Codex Astartes took shape. Its tactical and organisational doctrines would reshape the future of all Space Marines and forevermore dictate the foundation of the Imperium's military strength and therefore the path to survival for Mankind.The majority of the remaining Loyalist Legions were divided into fewer than 5 Successor Chapters so depleted had their numbers been by the civil war, but the Ultramarines were divided many times. The exact number of Successor Chapters created from the Ultramarines at this time is uncertain: the number listed in the oldest copy of the Codex Astartes gives the total as 23, but does not name them.The Second Founding caused dissention among the remaining Loyalist primarchs. Rogal Dorn, Vulkan and Leman Russ opposed the splitting of their Legions while Guilliman's position was supported by Jaghatai Khan and Corvus Corax. Neither side was willing to relent and the controversy grew more intense, with Rogal Dorn calling Guilliman a coward for not having participated in the Siege of Terra, and Guilliman accusing Dorn of being a Traitor and rebel like Horus for his refusal to accept the prescriptions of the Codex.The situation threatened to unleash another civil war upon the Imperium. When the Imperial Fists strike cruiser Terrible Angel was fired upon by the vessels of the newborn Navis Imperialis, Dorn realised that another civil conflict would tear the Emperor's realm apart and finally relented. He agreed to split his Legion.With the Second Founding, the size of the Ultramarines force was much reduced. Most of the Space Marines of the Legion left Macragge to establish new Chapters elsewhere. The Ultramarines' fortress-monastery, the Fortress of Hera, had been built to accommodate more than ten times as many Space Marines as now remained on their homeworld. As a result its arsenals and weapon shops were partially dismantled and taken by the new Chapters to found their own fortresses. The genetic storehouses of the Ultramarines, and the Legion's powerful recruitment mechanism, were similarly divided amongst its successors.Due to this diaspora of Ultramarines successors, the Ultramarines' gene-seed became pre-eminent across the Imperium among the newly-founded Adeptus Astartes. These new Chapters created from the Ultramarines Legion during the Second Founding are often referred to as the "Primogenitors," or "first-born." |
Ultramarines - Iron Cage: Shortly after the end of the Horus Heresy, during the campaigns of the Great Scouring, the Imperial Fists Legion laid siege to the Iron Warriors' greatest construct, the "Eternal Fortress" on the world of Sebastus IV. The fortress consisted of over 20 square kilometres of bunkers, towers, minefields, trenches, razor wire, tank traps, redoubts and a system of complex underground tunnels in the shape of an eight pointed star.At the centre was a massive bunker intended to serve as a decoy and of no military value whatsoever. Guilliman advised Rogal Dorn against the siege, but Dorn was embittered at having lost the debate over the implementation of the Codex Astartes and resented the coming division of his Legion in the Second Founding. The Imperial Fists primarch wanted to vent his anger and frustration on his most hated rival, the Traitor Primarch Perturabo and his Iron Warriors.True to his brother's warning, before the battle ended the corpses of hundreds of Imperial Fists littered the grounds of the fortress before Guilliman and an Ultramarines relief force finally arrived, three solar weeks and six Terran days later. The Imperial Fists had fought without sleep and had long run out of ammunition before the Ultramarines found them.Perturabo, unable to hold the position against two full Space Marine Legions, unleashed his final ploy, and prevented the Imperial Fists from recovering over four hundred of their dead and their precious gene-seed. Following the campaign, Dorn believed the remaining warriors of his Legion were now ready to accept the division required by the Codex Astartes and he proceeded to divide the VII Legion into at least five Successor Chapters.Though Perturabo had not destroyed Dorn's Legion, his victory proved to be enough to earn him ascension as a Daemon Prince in the eyes of the Chaos Gods. |
Ultramarines - Duel on Eskrador: Roboute Guilliman continued to serve with the Ultramarines Chapter and their allied successors after the Heresy, leading them for another Terran century after the Second Founding, through the remaining battles of the Great Scouring.It was said that during those years, Guilliman led several incursions alongside his brother primarchs against the Traitor Legions of the Chaos Space Marines.On Eskrador, Alpharius, the Alpha Legion primarch, was apparently taken by surprise when Guilliman departed from his own strictures and led a surprise assault by his elite units on the Alpha Legion headquarters.In the personal combat that followed between Alpharius and Guilliman, it is believed that Alpharius was killed. The Alpha Legion responded, not by breaking and fleeing as Guilliman expected, but by turning on the Ultramarine detachment and harrying them so mercilessly that by the time they had returned to the main body of the Ultramarine force their casualties were almost total.The Ultramarines were driven from the planet in the subsequent battle. |
Ultramarines - Destruction of Colchis: It was not until many years after Calth's fall that the Ultramarines exacted their revenge for the Word Bearers' perfidy. Even when they did, during the Great Scouring, the gesture turned out to be tragically hollow.Elements of the Ultramarines Chapter at last reached Colchis, the homeworld upon which Lorgar had been raised by his mentor, Kor Phaeron. However, the Ultramarines found the world to have fallen into degenerate anarchy. Before Lorgar's brief period of rule, Colchis had been a fragmented and feudal world and, now that the master of the Word Bearers had retreated into the Warp to serve his new masters, it had fallen back into the most extreme expression of that state.Adjudged hopelessly corrupt and beyond redemption by agents of the Holy Ordos of the Inquisition, Colchis was marked for death. It was the Ultramarines who carried out the destruction, bombarding the planet with Cyclonic Torpedoes.The geological structure of Colchis was highly unstable and the resultant seismic activity caused by the torpedoes' detonations split the planet apart. Nothing now remains of Colchis and the location of where it once existed is still a closely guarded secret of the Inquisition. Calth had finally been avenged in kind, though it seemed the Traitor Legion against whom the blow was struck now cared little. |
Ultramarines - Battle of Thessala: In 121.M31 during the final days of the Great Scouring, Roboute Guilliman assembled the Ultramarines and six of its Successor Chapters to hunt down the Daemon Primarch Fulgrim and his Emperor's Children Legion once and for all. At the world of Thessala, Fulgrim laid a trap for the Ultramarines' fleet and nearly turned the tables on his hunter.Guilliman gathered a small, elite strike force and teleported aboard the Emperor's Children flagship Pride of the Emperor to put an end to the Daemon Primarch. Guilliman entered the great ship's corrupted Heliopolis alone, where he was soon confronted by Fulgrim, who tried to convince Guilliman to embrace the worship of the Chaos Gods like he had.Guilliman refused and the two primarchs clashed, but it was soon obvious that Guilliman was no match for Fulgrim's Warp-enhanced strength and sinuous new Daemonic form. Seeing that he was about to be slain by his brother, Guilliman called for aid from his Ultramarines, but as their forces entered the Heliopolis, Fulgrim called forth a horde of Emperor's Children who had been waiting nearby as well.As their gene-sons fought around them, the two primarchs clashed once again, but Fulgrim proved victorious when he slit Guilliman's throat with his poisoned sword. A shocked Guilliman asked Fulgrim how he was able to fatally wound him and Fulgrim replied that his Warp infused eyes had seen the scar Kor Phaeron's athame had inflicted upon Guilliman during the Battle of Calth.Guilliman collapsed unconscious, but was teleported back to safety aboard the Ultramarine flagship Gauntlet of Power, along with the surviving Ultramarines of the 1st and 2nd Companies that had accompanied him. He was placed in a stasis field for return to Macragge. Afterwards, the Emperor's Children massacred Guilliman's fleet. The Gauntlet of Power was among the few Loyalist warships that escaped the slaughter.Once on Macragge, the Shrine of the Primarch built to contain Guilliman's body frozen in time was one of the most holy places in the entire Imperium, and one which welcomed millions of pilgrims to the shores of Macragge every Terran year in the days before the primarch's resurrection.The Shrine of the Primarch lay within the Temple of Correction, a vaulted sepulchre forming a small part of the Ultramarines' vast northern polar fortress on Macragge. The temple is a miracle of construction and typical of the attention to detail which defines the Ultramarines' every endeavour. Its proportions defy the Human mind by the scope and grandeur of its design.The multi-coloured glass dome that forms its roof is the largest of its kind. Even the Techno-magi of the Adeptus Mechanicus come to marvel at the structure said to have been designed by Roboute Guilliman himself. According to the Ultramarines there is enough marble within the temple to build a mountain, and sufficient amounts of adamantium and plasteel were used in its construction to build an Imperial warfleet capable of defending an entire sector.Within this edifice was the great marble throne of Roboute Guilliman, and upon that throne sat his still-regal body. Though 10,000 standard years passed following the Battle of Thessala, the primarch's body was perfectly preserved by the stasis field. Even his death wounds from Fulgrim's blade remained visible upon his throat.His mortal remains were preserved from the ravages of time by a stasis field that isolated the primarch from the passage of normal, four-dimensional space-time. Everything encompassed by the field was trapped in time and could neither change nor decay.There were some among the more extreme devotees of the Imperial Cult, however, who claimed the primarch's wounds in those years did change. They claimed that Guilliman's body was slowly recovering and that his wounds showed mysterious signs of healing. Others denied this, and pointed out the sheer scientific impossibility of any form of change occurring within a stasis field.Yet enough chose to believe the stories to come and witness for themselves the supposed miracle of the primarch, generation after generation. Hope, as Roboute Guilliman well knew, is truly the most powerful force in the universe. |
Ultramarines - Tyrannic Wars and the Battle of Macragge: Over the 10 Terran millennia that passed after the loss of Roboute Guilliman, Ultramar held against all manner of invaders -- some so strange as to defy the comprehension of the common man. The Ultramarines have tested their might against Ork WAAAGH!s and Renegade uprisings, T'au incursions and Necron raids, but the measure of their heroism is shown truest in battles where they have defended all life in the galaxy itself in the face of threats from beyond known space.So did the Sons of Ultramar prove in the 35th Millennium in battle against the Star-Striders of Crioth, and in retaliation for the Heavenfall Massacres. But of all these terrible wars and heroic struggles, there is one conflict that stands above all others -- the onslaught of the Tyranid Hive Fleet Behemoth, and the Battle of Macragge in 745.M41.Upon learning of the threat posed to Ultramar by Hive Fleet Behemoth from Inquisitor Fidus Kryptman, Chapter Master Marneus Calgar at once drew up his plans. Deeming Macragge to be the star system most immediately threatened, Calgar ordered its already formidable defences to be further improved. A dozen warships already hung in orbit, and each day more arrived from the Warp.Massive strike cruisers cast shadows over civilian vessels and Navis Imperialis destroyers, and were themselves dwarfed by the brooding presence of the Ultramarines' battle barges. Between this mighty fleet of warships and the planet's no less formidable orbital defence stations, Macragge was anything but defenceless. Scant solar weeks later, the outrider vessels of the Tyranid hive fleet attacked Macragge.The alien bioships swept aside attacks by Ultramarines strike cruisers and swarmed over the planet below. Soon many thousands of Mycetic Spore-birthed bioforms scurried and rampaged across Macragge. Deeming that the Tyranid threat was too massive to be opposed piecemeal, Calgar combined his ground forces into three mighty armies.The primary and secondary taskforces, composed largely of Ultramarines 1st Company Veterans and Ultramarian Planetary Defence Forces of the Ultramar Auxilia, bolstered Macragge's polar fortresses against the Tyranid onslaught. Meanwhile, Calgar's own taskforce, the largest of the three, performed a series of rearguard actions, attempting to slow the Tyranid advance and eliminate Hive Mind synapse-control organisms. Calgar achieved great success in the early days of the campaign, buying time with blood for his battle-brothers to the north and south. However, the Tyranids kept coming.In a final climactic battle on Cold Steel Ridge, the Ultramarines rearguard was brutalised by the Tyranid horde and Calgar himself was gravely wounded. Knowing that to remain planetside was to doom his followers to wasteful death, Calgar withdrew to the orbiting battle barge Octavius. Refusing all but the most vital medicae attention, the Master of Macragge took command of the fleet, and sought a way to save his world from certain destruction.Solar hours later, the main Tyranid hive fleet arrived at Macragge. With no sign of reinforcements, Calgar led his fleet in a series of daring attacks, striking at isolated vessels as they spread out to invade Macragge in force. Caught between the blistering firepower of Macragge's polar fortresses and the vengeful hammer blows of Calgar's fleet, Tyranid vessels were destroyed by the score, but many more yet remained.As battle raged, the Tyranids unleashed thousands of Mycetic Spores above the vital polar fortresses -- if the fortresses were taken, Macragge's guns would be silenced, and the world left defenceless. So it was that the Tyranids landed in even greater numbers than before, and the fortresses soon found themselves sorely beset. Their gruesome cargo delivered, the battered Hive Ships retreated from orbit.Trusting to his Ultramarines to keep the fortresses secure, Calgar relentlessly pursued the Tyranid fleet, determined that it would not bring ruin to other worlds. Never before or since has the valour of the Ultramarines been tested as it was in the defence of the polar fortresses. The Veteran Space Marines of the 1st Company led the lightly-armed Ultramar Auxilia in a tenacious defence of the fortresses, holding every wall and trench until the last possible moment before it was overrun by the Tyranid swarm.Slowly the Imperial troops withdrew ever deeper into the fortress, while making the Tyranids pay for every single metre of ground they advanced. The Titans of the Legio Praetor stalked the ice fields and drove smoking furrows through the onrushing Tyranid hordes with shells and plasma. The ferocity of the swarms was unbelievable. At the northern polar fortress they overran the walls by using the steaming piles of their own dead for cover. Imperial Battle Titans were dragged down and ripped apart by sheer weight of numbers. The defenders' gun barrels glowed red hot and jammed in spite of the arctic cold, ammunition began to run low even though the fortress had contained stockpiles intended to last for solar months of siege.Yet still the defenders fought on. Lumbering, scythe-armed Carnifexes tore into the defenders' bastions like living battering rams, smashing their way through metal and rockcrete walls with equal fury. The Ultramarines had to rely on heavy, short-range firepower to bring down the foe, but for each Tyranid that fell, another three sprang forward to continue the fight. Lesser troops were paralysed with terror as the Tyranids broke through the perimeter again and again, but the Ultramarines never despaired and never gave thought to defeat.Calgar pursued the Tyranid fleet toward the ringed world of Circe at the edge of the Macragge System. The timely arrival of the Armada Imperialis' entire Battlefleet Tempestus from Bakka finally sealed the Tyranids' fate by catching them in a vice between the two fleets. Even now, the Imperial fleet was overmatched, for the Tyranids were too many.The battle would have been lost save for the heroic sacrifice of the great battleship Dominus Astra. Charging into the heart of the hive fleet, the huge Emperor-class Battleship detonated its Warp-Drive, creating a Warp vortex that dragged both it and the entire Tyranid hive fleet to oblivion.With the bulk of the hive fleet destroyed, Calgar's surviving starships came about and returned to Macragge to try to save the polar garrisons. The survivors of the Ultramarines 1st Company were still believed to be fighting amongst the defence laser silos of the northern citadel, but all contact with them had been lost after the Tyranids overran the surface outposts. Of the southern polar garrison, nothing was known.Calgar, feeling that the situation was becoming critical, sent the 3rd and 7th Companies of the Ultramarines ahead in their fast strike cruisers while his remaining damaged voidships limped back to Macragge. The Space Marines of the 3rd and 7th Companies deployed onto the poles by Drop Pod, their supporting units following up in Thunderhawk gunships.Scenes of unbelievable carnage awaited them below. Piles of mangled Tyranid corpses and shattered wargear lay strewn across the ice. Vast, steaming craters pocked the snows where Titan Plasma Reactors had gone critical. The stench of death lay everywhere. The 7th Company landed unopposed at the southern polar fortress and quickly linked up with the survivors of the garrison above ground.Together they pushed on to clear the subterranean passages that the Tyranids had overrun. Devastator Squads kept the alien swarm at bay until Thunderhawk gunships arrived to blast the Tyranids back into the darkness. Captain Mikael Fabian of the 3rd Company prudently awaited the arrival of the company's three Dreadnoughts before proceeding into the fortress itself to search for survivors.The dark, dank corridors beneath the northern polar fortress were already altered by the xenos presence. Mucous dripped from the walls and ceilings and a pervasive musky stench filled the air. Alien screams and roars echoed and reverberated along the tunnels. The Space Marines pushed onward into corridors littered with Tyranid and Ultramarines dead, the darkness reluctantly receding before the lights of their power armour.Chameleoid Lictors lay in ambush amongst the defenders' corpses, slashing into the advancing squads in an orgy of destruction. Eventually the forward squads used flamers to burn their way along the passages and flush out their enemy. Even as fire consumed them, the Tyranid creatures still leapt forward with claws outstretched to rend and slay.Through darkness and terrors unimaginable, the 3rd Company finally reached the lower Penitorium where the defenders had made their last stand. Tyranid bodies were piled deep around the doors, and within the room a circle of Terminators lay where they had fought back to back. Each had given his life for his brothers. The Ultramarines' 1st Company had been wiped out to the last man. The Battle of Macragge remains a great source of both sorrow and pride for the Ultramarines. The names of its fallen are commemorated each year at the Feast of Days, their sacrifice remembered throughout Ultramar with honour and gratitude. But the cost had been great. The Ultramarines 1st Company was gone and the 3rd and 7th sorely diminished. It would be many long years before the Chapter could properly replace its losses, but replace them it would. The Ultramarines would endure.Since the Battle of Macragge, the Ultramarines have become instrumental in the Imperium's wars against other Tyranid hive fleets. In response to the threat, and counter to the dictates of the Codex Astartes for the first time, the survivors of the Battle of Macragge were formed into elite, specially-trained anti-Tyranid squads. These so-called Tyrannic War Veterans make up the first and most powerful of the Chapter's reformed elite 1st Company, and are second to no other warriors of the Imperium because of their experience, training and upgraded power armour. |
Ultramarines - Defenders of Ultramar: The Ultramarines have always held the Eastern Fringes of the galaxy in the vast Ultima Segmentum against the forces of darkness that threaten the Imperium from beyond the Halo Stars, and the Chapter's 4th Company has a special hatred for the savage xenos invaders known as the Tyranids.Rapacious, extra-galactic predators, these relentless alien killers consume all before them in their quest for bio-matter to feed the ever-hungry biological factories of their Norn-Queens. The first Tyranid hive fleet to openly assault the galaxy, code-named "Behemoth", smashed into Imperial space in 745.M41 and descended upon Macragge in a fury of talon and claw.Forewarned of the coming xenos danger by the Ordo Xenos Inquisitor Fidus Kryptman, the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, Marneus Calgar, stood ready to face the deadly aliens, but nothing could prepare his warriors for the sheer horror of what was to come. Commanded at this time by Captain Idaeus, the 4th Company fought at the forefront of the invasion and were instrumental in the destruction of several of the larger Tyranid vessels.At last the invasion of Hive Fleet Behemoth was repulsed, but at terrible cost; the entirety of the Ultramarines' Veteran 1st Company was wiped out defending the northern polar defences of Macragge and many great heroes of the Adeptus Astartes met their end. The Ultramarines had won the First Tyrannic War, but Kryptman assured Calgar that the Tyranids would be back.With the destruction of Hive Fleet Behemoth, the Ultramarines set about consolidating their hold on the interstellar Realm of Ultramar. Many of their best and bravest warriors had fallen to the Tyranids, and with their strength thus depleted, many other alien and piratical raiders took advantage of this lapse in security and launched their own raids throughout Ultramar to sack worlds previously unassailable.Thus it was that the 4th Company -- which had been at full strength when the Tyranid fleet attacked -- had come through the war with the fewest casualties, and were thus the first called upon to help liberate Vorhn's World, a Shrine World of the Ecclesiarchy in a neighbouring sub-sector.The Ork warlord known as the Arch-maniac of Cabela had seized the world, enslaving its population and defiling the holy temples of the Emperor. Such barbarity could not be countenanced on such a holy world and thus the 4th Company was tasked with its liberation.Idaeus once more led his warriors into battle, using a combination of rigid adherence to the words of the Codex Astartes and an uncanny ability to adapt to rapidly changing battlefield conditions to circumvent many of the Ork strongpoints and destroy the most vital elements of their defences. With much of their energies spent hunting down the Space Marine raiders in their midst, the Orks were unable to repulse the massed tank companies and regiments of the Astra Militarum's Jovian Hussars who overran the Greenskins with an unusually low casualty rate.It was during the cleansing of Vorhn's World that a young Space Marine named Uriel Ventris first came to Idaeus' attention. Descended from the legendary Lucian Ventris, who had died fighting the Tyranids of Hive Fleet Behemoth beneath the polar defence fortress 180 standard years before, Uriel displayed an exemplary courage, even amongst warriors for whom heroic feats of bravery were the norm. Taking command of his squad when his sergeant was killed by an Ork warlord, Uriel displayed the qualities that would one day lead him to command the 4th Company itself.With the liberation of Vorhn's World, the task was now to secure the borders of Ultramar, and upon their return from the victorious campaign against the Orks, Idaeus' company joined their battle-brothers in securing the borders of Ultramar against further attack. For the next five standard years, the company patrolled the northern borders of their realm, running interdiction attacks and boarding actions against any and all raiders they encountered.Aboard the Vae Victus, an honourable strike cruiser commanded by Captain Lazlo Tiberius, himself a scarred veteran of the Tyrannic Wars, the 4th Company destroyed over 300 enemy vessels and achieved the highest number of kills to add to the banner in their company chapel.Over the next few standard years, between occasional returns to Macragge for obeisances at the Temple of Correction, where the stasis-sealed, mortally wounded form of Primarch Roboute Guilliman watched over his Chapter, the 4th Company regained its strength and inducted many new members.Returned to full combat readiness, the company was once again fit for duties beyond the borders of Ultramar and in the Mereneas Core, the company was to earn the gratitude of the Adeptus Mechanicus when they boarded and destroyed the space hulk Flame of Iniquity, an agglomerated structure of scores of derelict starships that threatened a number of their Forge Worlds, the giant factory planets where much of the armed might of the Imperium is produced.Following this success, the determination and courage of the 4th Company came to the attention of Inquisitor Markhov, who was in need of warriors of such great skill. He petitioned Marneus Calgar for the Ultramarines' assistance in a matter of grave urgency. Calgar consented to allow the 4th Company to be seconded to the Inquisition's service and Idaeus' company was despatched to the world of Epsilon Regalis -- a world later to be made infamous by the Witch Hunter Tyrus.Precisely what occurred on this world has never been made known, the events subsequent to the Ultramarines' deployment on Epsilon Regalis having been sealed by the order of the Ordo Hereticus. Immediately following this mysterious mission, the 4th Company were involved in the eradication of several indigenous life-forms on the world of Horranveth to allow colonisation by an Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator team to proceed. Many among the Ultramarines felt that this type of combat was beneath them, but none dared defy their Chapter Master's decree.Following the purgation of Horranveth, the company was recalled to take part in the Balur Crusade, a mixed-Chapter-force led by Marneus Calgar himself. A strong coalition of xenos creatures (identified as the T'au, alongside Kroot and Tarellian mercenaries) had launched an attack into Imperial-held space and demanded that the inhabitants of the captured worlds swear allegiance to their blasphemous empire.Naturally, such naked aggression could not go unanswered and together with warriors of his own Ultramarines and others drawn from the Blood Angels, Marines Malevolent, and the taciturn remnants of the Scythes of the Emperor Chapter, Calgar led the combined Space Marine army to swift victory, destroying the nascent xenos colonies and re-establishing Imperial rule.The 4th Company was to fight the Tyranids again on the world of Ichar IV when the Tyranids returned with yet another hive fleet, this time known as the "Kraken." Far from the battering ram of Hive Fleet Behemoth, it appeared that the Tyranids had somehow learned from their defeat centuries before and attacked in a series of smaller, yet no less lethal splinter fleets -- advancing across a much wider front.Many of these fleets were destroyed, driving the aliens to consolidate their attack on the Industrial World of Ichar IV. Again, the Tyranid threat was met with courage and steel, the warriors of the Ultramarines fighting alongside hundreds of Astra Militarum regiments and elements from 7 other Space Marine Chapters.The 4th Company was again in the forefront of the fighting, with Idaeus and Uriel Ventris both awarded the Imperial Laurel for their heroism. Once more the aliens were repulsed, though the threat of Hive Fleet Kraken remained strong. The Tyranid fleet broke into a number of smaller fleets as it retreated from Ichar IV and it is known that many of these splinter fleets penetrated deep into the galactic core. Some even reached as far as the Segmentum Solar though the massed guns of the Navis Imperialis' battlefleet destroyed these without mercy. However, whether every one of these Kraken splinter fleets has been destroyed remains unclear.Following the defeat of the Tyranids at Ichar IV, the 4th Company was despatched to the world of Thracia, where the rumoured deployment of the Night Lords Chaos Space Marines necessitated a force capable of meeting them blade-to-blade. Regiments of Astra Militarum pushed towards the planetary capital city, meeting stiff resistance, but crushing all before it.As the campaign progressed, the Imperial lines became lengthy and strung out -- all too easy to attack and destroy from the flank. Realising this, the 4th Company attacked the bridges that would allow such an attack, but in the process Captain Idaeus was lost, heroically sacrificing his own life to destroy the last bridge. Mourning his loss, the 4th Company returned to Macragge, whereupon Veteran Sergeant Uriel Ventris was elevated to the rank of captain and commander of the company.Together with the newly appointed Captain Ventris, the 4th Company set off on their latest mission; to escort Adept Barzano of the Administratum to the troubled world of Pavonis. On the Eastern Fringe, Pavonis had been plagued by piratical raiders and civil insurrection. Upon the Ultramarines' arrival, the planet was very nearly plunged into a bloody civil war between its competing industrial cartels.Captain Ventris and Adept Barzano (now revealed to actually be an Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos) went on to discover that the planet's troubles were at the instigation of a madman named Kasimir de Valtos who desired the release of an ancient and powerful C'tan Shard who had been imprisoned beneath the surface of Pavonis for tens of millions of standard years. De Valtos was ultimately thwarted, though the ancient being known as the Nightbringer was freed from its aeons-long slumber and set loose amongst the stars. Only time will tell whether its escape will cost the Ultramarines and the galaxy dearly.With peace and Imperial rule restored to Pavonis, the 4th Company journeyed to the northern reaches of Segmentum Tempestus to the world of Tarsis Ultra -- a world brought into the Imperium by Roboute Guilliman himself during the early days of the Great Crusade -- and a world with a proud history of upholding the traditions of the Ultramarines.Ancient oaths of brotherhood bound the fate of Tarsis Ultra to the Ultramarines and when a gargantuan space hulk drifted in-system, Captain Ventris led his warriors deep into its haunted depths to destroy it from within. Buried deep within its structure, the Ultramarines discovered nests of frenzied Orks and something much worse: Genestealers.The fighting within the hulk was amongst the fiercest encountered by the 4th Company, but its warriors were able to fight their way clear of the hulk and watch its destruction from the bridge of the Vae Victus. But the victory was tinged with dread, for the Astartes vessel's astropaths detected the forward edge of a bow wave of Warp interference -- a phenomenon known as the "Shadow in the Warp" -- which could mean only one thing. The Tyranids were approaching the borders of the Imperium once more.With warning of the approaching Tyranid Hive Fleet Leviathan given, the Imperial response was unusually swift. The Ultramarines contacted a brother Chapter of Space Marines, the Mortifactors, though they had diverged considerably from the ideals of Roboute Guilliman -- embracing a culture of death worship. A fleet led by the Navis Imperialis Admiral Bregant de Corte aboard the battleship Argus was assembled, including many ancient and noble ships of war; the Sword of Retribution and the Kharloss Vincennes to name but two.Astra Militarum soldiers from the Death Korps of Krieg and the Logres Regiments were shipped in and the local Planetary Defence Forces trained by Sergeant Learchus using the methods of the Ultramarine training barracks. Inquisitor Lord Fidus Kryptman once again lent his expertise to the commanders of the defence of Tarsis Ultra as well as bringing an elite Deathwatch Space Marines kill-team led by the justly famed Watch Captain Bannon. As far as any world could be defended, Tarsis Ultra was as secure as it could be made given the time available to its defenders.Battle was joined in the system's outer reaches and though the world of Barbarus Prime was lost to the Tyranids, the first elements of their fleet were defeated. The advance of the hive fleet could not be stopped and Kryptman was forced to sacrifice the world of Chordelis -- ordering the Mortifactors to virus bomb it from orbit before the Tyranids could assimilate its biomass. Despite fractures appearing among the Imperial commanders, the Tyranid threat was met with courage and honour on the surface of Tarsis Ultra, though the defenders were hard-pressed to stave off the relentless attacks of the aliens.Though many thousands of lives were lost, and a huge proportion of the 4th Company was slain, the Tyranids were once more defeated when Captain Ventris cast off the teachings of the Codex Astartes and took command of the Deathwatch kill-team. He led them on a last, desperate mission to deliver a lethal gene-poison to the heart of the last remaining Hive Ship.Having once served with the Deathwatch, Captain Ventris knew that this was where he could do the most good, and despite the grim warning from Veteran Sergeant Learchus that Marneus Calgar would hear of his flouting of the Codex, he set off on his mission. Through alien terrors and biological horror, the Deathwatch Space Marines and Captain Ventris were successful and the gene-poison was administered to the Tyranid Norn-Queen aboard the main Hive Ship.Driven into spasms of uncontrolled mutation by the gene-toxin, the Norn-Queen died and her death throes drove the slave Tyranid organisms connected to her via the gestalt psychic consciousness of the Tyranid Hive Mind into paroxysms of feral self-destruction. The Tyranids were defeated, but like Ichar IV before it, the taint of the alien invasion would forever be impossible to remove from the surface of Tarsis Ultra -- and the souls of its surviving population.With Tarsis Ultra secured, the 4th Company gathered its dead and returned to Macragge, the hearts of its warriors heavy as they contemplated the cost of honouring their ancient debt. But something worse was awaiting the 4th Company upon their return to their homeworld. Allegations of heresy awaited Uriel Ventris for his actions on Tarsis Ultra and with them, the potential to strip the company of its honour.Captain Ventris was spared the expected execution for his breach of Ultramarine doctrine and instead given a Death Oath by Marneus Calgar: he and his faithful companion, Sergeant Pasanius Lysane, were to seek out "a place of dark iron" where twisted reflections of the Space Marines were being wrought. Shortly after departing Macragge, Ventris' starship was attacked by Warp entities directed by a Daemon imprisoned inside a Daemon Engine called the Omphalos Daemonium.This Daemon Engine resembled a huge, grotesque steam locomotive, which could travel between the Warp and realspace. The two Space Marines were seized and taken deep within the Eye of Terror to Medrengard, the Daemon World that was the home of the Iron Warriors Traitor Marines. The pair soon linked up with a band of Renegade Space Marines and two surviving former Imperial Guardsmen, who were escaped slaves of the Iron Warriors.The group became a self-styled guerrilla band, engaging in hit-and-run attacks against the Iron Warriors. Ventris, Pasanius and the band of guerrillas were eventually captured by Warsmith Honsou of the Iron Warriors, and after defying him, Ventris was "implanted" in the womb of a Daemonculaba, a genetically-modified woman whose womb had been amplified with Imperial Fists gene-seed the Iron Warriors had stolen during the 13th Black Crusade from the world of Hydra Cordatus and which was intended to turn normal adolescents into new Chaos Space Marines.This twisted technology was a mechanism that would accelerate the development of new Traitor Marines in the laboratories under Honsou's fortress. These new Chaos Space Marines were intended to refill the ranks of the Iron Warriors Legion, which had been unable to replace its losses over the 10 Terran millennia since the Horus Heresy. The Daemonculaba were also the mutated creatures that Uriel and Pasanius had been tasked with destroying in the first place.At the same time, Honsou was under siege by rival Iron Hands Warsmiths for refusing to hand over their share of the untainted Imperial Fists gene-stock taken after the invasion of an Imperial Adeptus Mechanicus facility on Hydra Cordatus. As the fighting raged, Ventris and Pasanius managed to get free and succeeded in destroying Honsou's labs and his fortress, although in order for this to happen they had to release a captive Khornate Daemon Prince.The Daemon Prince annihilated the rival Daemon it had previously imprisoned in the Omphalos Daemonium, destroyed Honsou's fortress and minions, and attacked Honsou's rivals, driving them away. Later, Uriel, Pasanius, and a group of the so-called Unfleshed, who were the mutant rejects of the Iron Warriors' experiments to make new Space Marines using the Daemonculaba, escaped from the Eye of Terror on the Omphalos Daemonium, which had reverted to a normal starship with the banishment of its possessing Daemon.However, the former Daemon Engine brought them through the Warp to a troubled world called Salinas, and more specifically to a forbidden zone on that world's surface that reeked of death. Ventris and Pasanius were then confronted by the veteran Astra Militarum regiment that ruled the planet as a gift of conquest, and the suspicious and ruthless planetary governor, the regiment's ex-commander.They requested help in reaching Macragge, but their astropathic transmission was intercepted by the Grey Knights, who were monitoring Salinas for other reasons. A squad of them arrived on the planet, arrested Ventris and Pasanius, and after grueling physical, mental and spiritual trials declared them untainted by their exposure to Chaos during the events on Medrengard. In the meantime, it was revealed that a powerful psyker had likely brought the Omphalos Daemonium to Salinas in order to use the freed Unfleshed as an instrument of revenge against the governor and his former regiment.This was vengeance for the regiment's murder of tens of thousands of civilians, including the entire population of a town that was the birthplace of many of the leaders of a small-scale guerrilla campaign that now operated on Salinas. The campaign itself had been caused by the brutality and heavy-handedness of the Imperial governor.This ravished town was the forbidden zone the Ultramarines had first found themselves in when they arrived on Salinas. After being possessed by the psyker, the Unfleshed went on a killing rampage, but they were eventually killed by Uriel, Pasanius, and the Grey Knights, who subsequently returned the Ultramarines to Macragge.Having successfully completed their Death Oath, Uriel and Pasanius were welcomed back to the homeworld of their Chapter but were subjected to interrogation and tests by the Chief Librarian to insure they had not been tainted by their time on the Daemon World of Medrengard.After both Uriel and Pasanius were deemed free of Chaos taint, Uriel was reinstated as captain of the Ultramarines' 4th Company and given the opportunity to prove himself in the eyes of those who still doubted him by returning to the world of Pavonis and defending it from T'au invaders. Pasanius was not so fortunate, as he was demoted in rank and forced into one hundred solar days of isolation from the Chapter.This harsh treatment was a punishment for hiding the unusual regenerative abilities of his bionic arm, which he had gotten after the C'tan Shard called the Nightbringer had scythed off his biological arm during the earlier Ultramarines mission to Pavonis. Apparently because of this contact with the C'tan, the bionic arm had become infused with the Necron's living metal, the substance called necrodermis. After one hundred days Pasanius was reinstated as a line battle-brother of the 4th Company and rejoined his captain.In the meantime, the Warsmith Honsou was consumed by hate for Ventris and the Ultramarines following the events on Medrengard and the destruction of his Chaos Space Marine incubation experiments. He hatched a plan to annihilate the Ultramarines, and especially Uriel Ventris.As bait, he used a stolen Mechanicus virus to turn Tarsis Ultra, the world the Ultramarines had vowed to protect, into a Dead World. He had assembled a large invasion force, which apart from his Iron Warrior warband, included Chaos Cultists, Traitor Marines and Traitoris Militarum, Drukhari pirates, Kroot and other alien and Human mercenaries, a Dark Mechanicum force led by the Traitor Magos Cycerin, and a multitude of criminals, psychopaths and killers.Honsou managed to find and board a star fort hidden for the previous 60 standard years in the depths of uncharted space in the Ultramar Sub-sector, guarded by an Ultramarines contingent. He slaughtered the star fort's Ultramarines garrison and then freed the powerful Daemon Prince M'kar, secretly held captive within the fort.The Daemon Prince, who had once been the Word Bearers Dark Apostle named Maloq Kartho who had originally attacked Ultramar during the Horus Heresy, was imprisoned by Marneus Calgar, the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, with the help of the Inquisition. M'kar hated the Ultramarines Chapter and the Imperium of Man with a passion.Aligning with the Warsmith Honsou, the Daemon Prince possessed a desecrated Ultramarine Dreadnought shell so that he could interact with the material universe, turned the star fort into a Chaos abomination linked directly to the Warp, and called forth a huge Daemon army to join in attacking the worlds of the Realm of Ultramar.Honsou had managed to acquire a clone of Uriel Ventris, known as the "Newborn," who had been created from the genetic material left behind while Uriel was in the womb of the Daemonculaba on Medrengard. The Newborn was a psychic as well as physical clone of Uriel.As such, the Newborn had fragments of Uriel's knowledge and memories, including the defence protocols of Ultramar, which Honsou first used to attack the star fort, and then the entire Realm of Ultramar. The whole Chapter rose in defence of the realm, aided by an Adeptus Mechanicus contingent under Magos Locard, the warband of the system-based Ordo Malleus Inquisitor Suzaku, a squad of Raven Guard Space Marines, the mobilised Ultramar Planetary Defence Force regiments known as the Ultramar Auxilia, and many civilians.The war expanded to encompass several Ultramarian worlds, at least one of which was destroyed. Finally, Uriel confronted the Newborn (and Honsou), on Calth, his planet of birth. Honsou had gone there at the request of M'kar, to the Tomb of Remus Ventanus (an ancient Ultramarine hero of the 4th Company known as "the Saviour of Calth") to destroy Ventanus' sarcophagus and his wargear. Uriel killed the Newborn using a blade that was part of Ventanus' wargear, and in the battle that followed Honsou's more numerous force was defeated thanks to the sudden appearance of spectral guardian-warriors around the sacred tomb.Honsou, faced with capture or death, detonated the explosives the Iron Warriors had previously placed around the Tomb of Ventanus, collapsing the grand edifice of the tomb on top of himself and his opponents. Uriel and some of his fellow warriors survived and headed to Talassar, an Ultramarian world where M'kar and his Daemon army were close to overrunning Chapter Master Calgar and his dwindling forces.Uriel and other friendly reinforcements arrived in the midst of the final, climactic battle for the world. Ventris tossed the powerful anti-Daemonic Blade of Ventanus to Calgar as the Chapter Master was duelling with M'kar, and Calgar used it to completely annihilate the Daemon Prince.With the Daemon army and Honsou's forces defeated in all the theatres of the war, the Imperial forces proceeded to engage in mopping-up operations, and within six solar months, the Realm of Ultramar was declared free of the touch of Chaos. Ominously, while the ruins of the Tomb of Ventanus were searched thoroughly, the body of Warsmith Honsou was never recovered. |
Ultramarines - The Ultramar Campaign and the Terran Crusade: Soon after the Iron Warriors' Invasion of Ultramar was defeated in ca. 999.M41, Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade began in earnest. In the days immediately after the fall of Cadia the Despoiler was informed by the Chaos Sorcerer Zaraphiston of a disturbing reality.The sorcerer had discovered through his Warp-scryings that the Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl had escaped Cadia's destruction with a device in his possession that could turn the tide of the Long War in favour of the Imperium of Man. The Despoiler also learned that Cawl was one of a number of survivors of lost Cadia, now calling themselves the Celestinian Crusade, who had escaped into the Webway with the aid of the Aeldari Ynnari and were making their way to Macragge, the homeworld of the Ultramarines Chapter.To neutralise the nascent threat to his coming triumph over the Corpse Emperor, the Despoiler detached a portion of his Black Fleet and ordered a Chaos invasion of the Realm of Ultramar as part of the 13th Black Crusade.The Celestinian Crusade, named for Saint Celestine, the Living Saint who had come to aid the defenders of Cadia in their darkest hour, was led not only by its namesake but also by Archmagos Cawl, Marshal Marius Amalrich of the Black Templars, and Inquisitor Katarinya Greyfax of the Ordo Hereticus.These individuals, joined by the Ynnari's commanders Yvraine, the Daughter of Shades, and her war leader The Visarch, first stepped from the Webway and onto the soil of the Shrine World of Laphis in the Macragge System.They were surprised to discover that they had set foot in a war zone, but they soon defeated the local Chaos forces that had been in the vicinity of the Webway portal. The Celestinians and their uneasy Aeldari allies defeated the Heldrakes besieging the local Ultramarines fortress and then convinced the Space Marines to grant them passage to Macragge, though Yvraine and the Visarch sent the majority of the Ynnari back into the Webway to carry out missions more pressing for their people.The Celestinians arrived at Macragge aboard an Ultramarines strike cruiser to discover that the capital world of Ultramar had come under a full-scale invasion by the forces of Chaos. While a massive battle raged in orbit between the Chaos and Loyalist fleets, on the ground the Fortress of Hera, the Ultramarines' fortress-monastery, was in danger of falling to the Archenemy.Gaining an audience with Marneus Calgar, the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines and the Lord of Macragge, Belisarius Cawl revealed that he was over 10,000 standard years old and had known the Ultramarines' Primarch Roboute Guilliman during the time of the Horus Heresy. Cawl explained that he had been tasked by Guilliman with finding a way to restore the primarch to life even before his mortal wounding by the Daemon Primarch Fulgrim in the time after the Heresy.After much debate, the Celestinians and the Ynnari were allowed into the Temple of Correction where Guilliman sat in perpetual stasis despite Chapter Master Marneus Calgar's reservations about the newcomers. While Cawl began his work on the time-frozen body of Guilliman, seated upon his throne in the temple, the Black Legion took notice of the activity and launched a massive assault upon the Temple of Corrections, fearful of what the Loyalists were attempting.The Celestinians, aided by the Ultramarines' officers and the 3rd Brotherhood of the Grey Knights led by Grand Master Aldrik Voldus who had come to Macragge to aid the defence, faced off against over a hundred Black Legionaries. Yet, even as the Loyalists fought to give Cawl just one more solar second to complete his work, more Chaos forces poured into the shrine from above using Dreadclaw assault boats, and the defenders quickly found themselves overwhelmed.Only then, at the last, did Yvraine call upon the power of her patron, Ynnead, the recently awakened Aeldari god of the dead. The alien deity's power over life and death combined with Cawl's arcane technology to heal the primarch's ancient mortal wound and awaken him from his ten-thousand-year slumber.Cawl had taken with him all the way from Mars a reliquary containing a new suit of unique primarch-sized power armour, the Armour of Fate. Its systems augmented by the soul-magic of the Aeldari, this incredible suit of armour captured and restored Guilliman's soul before it could flee beyond the veil. It cleansed at last the foul Chaos-tainted poisons that Fulgrim had poured into his brother's bloodstream and restored Roboute Guilliman to life. The primarch might be cursed to wear his ornate armour forevermore, for without its soul-sustaining technologies Cawl believed he could soon perish, but he had been resurrected in the Imperium's hour of greatest need and this would have to be enough.An awakened and enraged primarch proved more than the Chaos attackers were prepared to deal with. Guilliman shattered the attacking forces of Chaos and provided an extraordinary surge in morale for his Ultramarines and the other Loyalist forces. The Imperials quickly swept the Black Legion before them, breaking the back of the Chaos assault upon the Ultramarines fortress-monastery. In that one moment of resurrection, the fate of Macragge and of all Ultramar was decided.In the wake of the battle in the Temple of Correction, Guilliman was crowned as the restored primarch of the Ultramarines Chapter and all of its Successor Chapters, and as the Lord Macragge and ruler of Ultramar. Marneus Calgar happily ceded the role of Chapter leadership to his gene-father, while Guilliman declared that the autonomy of all the worlds that had once belonged to the Realm of Ultramar and gone their separate ways in the millennia since the Horus Heresy was revoked.Ultramar was to be restored to what it had been in the golden age of the Imperium, a miniature stellar empire comprising five hundred Human-settled worlds. Once in full control of the Loyalist forces on Macragge, the primarch's strategic genius was unleashed, and the forces of Chaos were driven off of Macragge and then from most of Ultramar within approximately seven solar months. With Ultramar safe for the moment, Guilliman decided that the time had come to journey to Terra and meet with his father the Emperor for the first time in ten millennia.Gathering forces from all across the Imperium who were able to reach Macragge as the Warp grew ever more turbulent in the wake of the 13th Black Crusade, the primarch assembled a massive Imperial fleet to reach Terra that was known as the Terran Crusade. Leaving Macragge and Ultramar in the capable hands of Marneus Calgar, Guilliman's fleet was passing near the great Warp rift known as the Maelstrom when it was intercepted by a Chaos fleet led by the Daemon Primarch Magnus the Red and his Thousand Sons Traitor Legion.Magnus had stirred himself from the Planet of the Sorcerers for the first time in millennia in recent days, to assault the Fenris System of his ancient foes the Space Wolves and restore his Daemon World to realspace adjacent to his lost homeworld of Prospero, and now to confront his former brother. The Thousand Sons primarch cast a potent sorcerous ritual that flung the Terran Crusade Fleet into the Maelstrom, with no apparent way for it to escape from the labyrinthine clutches of that wound in reality.With time in the Warp indeterminate, the Terran Crusade wandered from Daemon World to Daemon World, taking steady casualties from the constant Daemonic assaults. All during this time Roboute Guilliman's guilt and frustration began to grow, weighing down his psyche as the Loyalists found it impossible to escape the Maelstrom's clutches.But a beacon of hope came when on one such world Guilliman received a psychic message from the Aeldari Farseer Eldrad Ulthran, now an ally of the Ynnari, which laid out a series of landmarks for the Imperial fleet to follow to escape the Warp rift. But when the much-diminished crusade reached the starship graveyard which marked the passage back to realspace, it was met by another massive Chaos fleet, this time of the piratical Chaos Space Marines known as the Red Corsairs, led by the Lord of Change Kairos Fateweaver.The Chaos forces assaulted every voidship in the Imperial fleet, and Kairos ultimately succeeded in defeating Guilliman by using his psychic powers to wrap the primarch in chains literally crafted from his own guilt. Threatening the immobilised primarch's life, the Greater Daemon forced the rest of the Imperial fleet to surrender.The Terran Crusade found itself in dire straits, brought by Fateweaver's command to a Blackstone Fortress hidden in the Maelstrom by the Red Corsairs, a secret gift from Abaddon the Despoiler. There the primarch and his remaining followers would have rotted for eternity were it not for intervention from an unexpected source -- the Aeldari Harlequins led by the Shadowseer Sylandri Veilwalker and Cypher, the mysterious Fallen Angel who was a sometimes enemy and sometimes ally of those loyal to the Emperor.In return for a promise to bring the Fallen Angel before the Golden Throne, Cypher freed the primarch and his compatriots. With their starships lost to them, their crews sacrificed to the Ruinous Powers, Veilwalker offered another path to Terra -- through the Webway gate that lay at the heart of the massive xenos star fortress.The Terran Crusade passed successfully through the Webway towards Terra, only to discover that the Labyrinth Dimension was already haunted by Magnus the Red and the forces of the Thousand Sons. As Veilwalker explained that there had long existed a secret exit of the Webway on Luna, the moon of Terra, Guilliman realised that his Daemon brother had been waiting for them. As soon as they opened the Webway exit in the Sol System, the Thousand Sons would rush through behind them, unleashing a major Chaos invasion right on Terra's doorstep, allowing Magnus to gain the glory ahead of the Despoiler.But with aid from the Harlequins and other Imperial forces such as the Sisters of Silence and the Imperial Fists, Guilliman and his Terran Crusade survivors managed to overwhelm the Thousand Sons and cast Magnus back through the Webway portal, permanently sealing it so that it could never be used again to threaten the Throneworld of the Imperium.At long last, Guilliman was escorted by the awed defenders of Terra to the Imperial Palace, where the survivors of the Celestinian and Terran Crusades at last went their separate ways. There, he finally met for one full solar day with his father, the Emperor of Mankind, for the first time in millennia. None know what was said between them, but when the primarch emerged from the Inner Palace, he declared that he was taking up the mantle of the lord commander of the Imperium and Imperial Regent once more.Now the first among equals among the High Lords of Terra just as he had been after the Horus Heresy, Guilliman promised the people of the galaxy that he would assemble the greatest fleet and armies seen since the Great Crusade to take the fight to Chaos...and revive the Emperor's lost dream of a better future for Humanity. |
Ultramarines - Battle of Lion's Gate: In the wake of the 13th Black Crusade, the Imperium had been plunged into the nightmare darkness of the Noctis Aeterna by the opening of the Great Rift, yet even this did not stop the Avenging Son.Guilliman at last gave Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl the order for ten thousand years of labour to cease. So began the Ultima Founding and the awakening of the first waves of Primaris Space Marines. It was a decision made not a moment too soon, for even as the new generation of Space Marines emerged from beneath the stasis they had been kept in for over ten thousand standard years beneath the Martian surface, a great host of Daemons swept down upon Holy Terra, temporarily no longer protected by the psychic light of the Astronomican during the Blackness.Unleashed by Khorne, the Blood God, ever impatient to see the blood flow, this onslaught of empyric abominations sought to claim the Emperor's skull. Opposed by Guilliman and the armies of Terra, they would be destroyed to the last at the Battle of Lion's Gate. |
Ultramarines - Fleet Avenger and the Coming of the Primaris Space Marines: While the resurrected primarch Roboute Guilliman organised what was to become the Indomitus Crusade in ca. 999.M41, the Great Rift tore the galaxy asunder. Fearing for Ultramar, Guilliman sent to safeguard his realm much of the remaining task force of Ultramarines and their Successor Chapters that had accompanied him to Terra during the Terran Crusade.With them went the first Primaris Ultramarines, for Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl had begun to open his secret vaults. The small armada -- commanded by Captain Cato Sicarius and dubbed "Fleet Avenger" -- ran into Warp storms the like of which had not been seen since the Age of Strife. With the fleet battered and split apart, Sicarius signalled for each voidship to make its own way back to Macragge, the interference growing so bad he feared many would not receive the message.Sicarius' own strike cruiser, the Emperor's Will, was still in the Warp when the Astronomican faded and then went black, marking the onset of the Noctis Aeterna. Amidst the tidal waves of psychic energies that cascaded randomly across all star systems of the galaxy, one last transmission was received from the Emperor's Will. The fragmentary astropathic message was accompanied by disturbing images, and only one sentence could be made clear: "They have breached the hull, they are here."Fully half of Fleet Avenger ultimately reached Ultramar, bringing with them their precious cargo, but of the Emperor's Will there remained no sign. In Sicarius' absence, command of the Ultramarines 2nd Company was handed over to Captain Sevastus Acheran. |
Ultramarines - Indomitus Crusade: Near the end of the 41st Millennium the Imperium lay broken in two. The Great Rift, or Cicatrix Maledictum in High Gothic, had torn the galaxy asunder. The Emperor's realm was split by a seething belt of Warp storms that waxed and waned as they spewed armies of unholy Daemonic abominations into realspace in numbers previously undreamed of. Time itself distorted in the grip of impossible forces so that to read the linear progression of war across the galaxy became the toil of madmen and fools.Warp travel was more hazardous than it had ever been since the Age of Strife, leaving many thousands of Imperial worlds virtually isolated and forced to look to their own defence. The issues were even worse beyond the Great Rift in the Imperium Nihilus, where the light of the Astronomican was permanently reduced to the most distant and infrequent of glimmerings.Despite all of this, the Ultramarines did not falter in their defence of the Imperium. Their duty had always been the defence of not only Ultramar but of the whole of the Emperor's realm, and it was not one that they would shirk now.Many Imperial forces chose zeal and aggression over simply cowering behind their defences. Crusading fleets struck out into the void with fire in their hearts. Some won great victories, but the vast majority were engulfed by nightmarish phenomena and tides of malefic foes and were never seen again.There was one undertaking that overshadowed all others, however: the Indomitus Crusade. Launched from Terra and led by Roboute Guilliman, this vast military undertaking echoed the Great Crusade of old. Spearheaded by the newly founded Primaris Space Marines who fought beneath Guilliman's banner, and supported by the Adeptus Custodes, the Adepta Sororitas, the Sisters of Silence and vast battlegroups of the Astra Militarum and Navis Imperialis, the Indomitus Crusade fleets spread out from Terra to take the fight to the foe.With them they brought not only waves of Primaris Space Marine reinforcements for the embattled Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes scattered across the galaxy, but also the technology and Magos Biologis adepts required for each Space Marine Chapter to fashion their own new Primaris battle-brothers as the war raged on.Roboute Guilliman led one fleet of the many that comprised the crusade, Indomitus Crusade Fleet Primus, accompanied for much of the time by the mighty Zar-Quaesitor, Belisarius Cawl's Ark Mechanicus flagship within whose capacious holds thousands upon thousands of Primaris Marines slept in readiness for battle. Yet the Indomitus Crusade consisted of many fleets that travelled in short and perilous Warp jumps, spreading slowly out across the Segmentum Solar and then further, into the fringes of the Segmentum Tempestus, Segmentum Pacificus and Segmentum Obscurus.Ultramarines and Ultramarines successor forces both existing and new-founded accompanied many of these crusading fleets; some fought with them from Terra itself, either veterans of the Terran Crusade or Primaris Space Marines. Others were gathered up along the way, strike forces of Guilliman's gene-sons who had already been investing war zones across the galaxy when the Great Rift opened.Thus as the Indomitus Crusade pushed out ever further across war-torn Imperial space, the Ultramarines and their successors fought on many hundreds of disparate galactic battlefronts, against myriad terrible foes. |
Ultramarines - War of Beasts: It was a powerful prophetic vision that saw Marneus Calgar lead a force of Ultramarines to the world of Vigilus. The planet lay at the mouth of the Nachmund Gauntlet, a rare stable channel through the fury of the Great Rift between the Imperium Sanctus and the Imperium Nihilus.Chief Librarian Varro Tigurius of the Ultramarines had foreseen that, should this Fortress World fall, the repercussions of its loss could be terrible indeed for those who defended the Emperor's realm. When the Chapter's greatest psyker spoke prophecy, the wise listened.Calgar was already en route to the world of Vanantis IX when Tigurius' astrally-projected form came to him with its dire warning. So alerted, Calgar immediately gathered a substantial Ultramarines strike force and changed his course for Vigilus. It was through the combined psychic guidance of the Ultramarines Librarius that this journey would be achieved, an incredible leap through the dark turmoil of the Imperium Nihilus that cost the Ultramarines psykers dear and saw several slain outright. Yet it proved successful, and the Ultramarines arrived upon Vigilus in time to take command of the planet's defence from the compromised and self-interested ruling Aquilarian Council.Vigilus was a world beset. A great Ork Speedwaaagh! had descended upon its arid dust-oceans and assailed its hivesprawls. Their arrival, in turn, had triggered the uprising of the Cult of the Pauper Princes, an infestation of Genestealer Cultists that spread through every strata of Vigilus' population. It was a vast and sprawling war fought across hundreds of individual fronts, and until the arrival of Marneus Calgar it had been a fight so fragmented by politicking and incompetence that the forces of the Imperium teetered upon the brink of defeat.Calgar swiftly purged the world's ruling council, retaining only those members he deemed trustworthy to aid his newly installed senate. He sent Vanguard Marine forces to each of the neighbouring worlds to gather intelligence and secure vital assets. Meanwhile, the Ultramarines he had led to Vigilus rallied the planet's defenders and led the fight back. They arrived not a solar day too soon, for worse threats still were moving upon that vital world.Unsettling phenomena were reported across Vigilus. Bat-winged figures were seen haunting the tallest spires of the hivesprawls, rumours grew of abductions amongst the upper echelons of society, and in the skies above, the Great Rift appeared to blacken around its edges. Readings of the Emperor's Tarot produced the same results over and over -- the Daemonblade, crossed with the Herald of Darkness and the Knight of the Abyss. All signs pointed to an imminent Chaos invasion.That invasion ultimately came in the form of the Black Legion and its terrible master, the Chaos Lord Abaddon the Despoiler. The Despoiler was determined to seize Vigilus and eliminate the innate properties that allowed it to hold open the Nachmund Gauntlet with the aid of the altered blackstone deposits located in its crust and that of its counterpart on the other side of the gauntlet, the world of Sangua Terra.Yet the forces of the Imperium held firm despite these challenges, and ultimately maintained the Emperor's grip on the planet. Though various xenos and Chaos factions remained among Vigilus' myriad hivesprawls, the locus of conflict between the Imperium and the Archenemy moved elsewhere in the galaxy.Though Vigilus suffered appalling destruction and loss of life, in the wake of the so-called "War of Beasts" it took its first step on the long road to recovery. It remained a key route of resupply and communication with the Imperial forces fighting to take back the Imperium Nihilus. |
Ultramarines - The Plague Wars: One aspect of the Ultramarines Legion that survived the Second Founding was the close relationship between its Astartes and the populations of the surrounding planets.Even before the coming of the Noctis Aeterna with the birth of the Great Rift in ca. 999.M41, Ultramar faced a series of dire threats. Tendrils of several Tyranid hive fleets drifted inexorably towards Roboute Guilliman's realm. The Arch-Arsonist of Charadon, one of the greatest Ork warlord in the galaxy, led a monstrous WAAAGH! from his anarchic domain with the intent of overrunning the Ultramarines' eastern defences.Yet the greatest threat of them all was that posed by the dark servants of Chaos. A vast horde of Traitors, Renegades, mutants and madmen fell upon Ultramar under the leadership of the foul Daemon Prince M'kar the Reborn during the Invasion of Ultramar.And then came the Noctis Aeterna, and with it wave after wave of Daemon-filled Warp storms. In the wake of these disasters, some of the greatest servants of Nurgle, the Chaos God of plague and decay, fell upon the Ultramarines' stellar realm, seeking to corrupt the bucolic beauty of its worlds. The Plague Wars, as they came to be known, saw some of the greatest battles the Imperium had ever endured, with every inhabited planet of Ultramar suffering a staggering number of casualties.There is some debate amongst Imperial circles as to precisely when the Plague Wars began, or indeed which war zones they encompass. As with all the great works of Grandfather Nurgle, this sprawling conflict has waxed and waned, undergoing periods of festering incubation and temporary remission before flaring to life again just as the warriors of the Imperium believed that victory was finally theirs. Even the origins of the Plague Wars are debated by the historitors of Ultramar, with the earliest accounts of hostilities claimed to have taken place even before the Great Rift split the stars.Whatever the truth, it is known that the Plague Wars as the Imperium understands them have stretched across not only Ultramar -- where the forces of Nurgle have assailed the sons of Guilliman time and again -- but also the star systems to the north of the Ultramarines' stellar realm now known as the Scourge Stars.It was amongst these formerly prosperous worlds that supernatural diseases such as the Crawling Pustulence, Eyerot, the Plague That Walks and the Oozing Pox erupted in riotous profusion after the Great Rift opened. Imperial defence lines were overrun by wave upon wave of trudging plague Daemons and fanatical Chaos Cultists. Corrupt demagogues spewed filth and falsehoods that saw defence regiments turn upon their former comrades before joining the pestilent throng.Everywhere, the droning tally of misery and despair was felt. Corpse mountains burned as Imperial authorities strove in vain to stem the tide of corruption that was drowning their worlds, until at last each planet in turn fell wholly into the grip of Grandfather Nurgle. It was these pox-riddled systems that Mortarion, Daemon Primarch of the Death Guard, claimed as his staging post for the invasion of Ultramar, and from here that he launched his initial veiled sorties before his final offensive commenced.The Plague Wars, too, encompass the conflict known as the "War of Flies." This was the stop-start war of attrition that the Death Guard and their allies fought against the worlds of Ultramar in the wake of the Noctis Aeterna. From Talassar to Iax, Circe to Laphis, the Plague Marines launched their strikes. Some were little more than squad-level actions intended to seed contaminants onto Loyalist worlds or enact ritual sacrifices to destabilise the Imperial defences.Others were full-blown offensives by entire vectoriums of Death Guard warriors, instigated to erode the defences of Ultramar and spread destruction and dismay. Against all these actions the Ultramarines stood strong, rallying swiftly to battle the minions of Nurgle wherever they raised their horned heads.Often outnumbered, typically fighting alongside beleaguered battalions of the mortal Ultramar Defence Auxilia, the scions of Guilliman threw back one attack after another and burned out the corruption of Chaos wherever they found it. Macragge, the Ultramarian capital world, saw fighting across its bleak, rocky uplands as well as in its populated cities. The Ultramarines' sprawling fortress-monastery -- including the shrine in which Roboute Guilliman had lain in stasis for over 10 millennia -- came under concerted attack.The Bubonicus Legions, led by a favoured Great Unclean One known as Ku'gath Plaguefather, seized the nearby Tartella System before descending upon the planet of Iax, a Garden World rich with life. The Espandor System suffered beneath the "Creeping Doom" offensive of Mortarion and his Death Guard forces. On Parmenio a great armour battle took place, and throughout the sub-sector a naval battle raged, with defensive battle stations engaged by a Plague Fleet led by the Death Guard Lord known as Typhus.Even the disciplined tactics and heroic sacrifices of the defenders were only enough to stave off defeat rather than claim victory. Nurgle's followers pushed their befouling offensive forward, contaminating all they touched.Breaking apart his fleet of the Indomitus Crusade after completing the first phase of the operation following over a Terran decade of combat intended to stabilise the Imperium Sanctus, Roboute Guilliman returned to aid his home system. Seeing that his only chance lay in seizing the initiative, the primarch masterminded a brilliant counteroffensive campaign known as the "Spear of Espandor."Rapid counter-strikes and a series of daring boarding actions clawed back many of the foe's gains. Where the disparate Chaos armies fought separately, the defenders of Ultramar supported each other in every way they could, allowing Guilliman to slowly reverse the course of the war and put Nurgle's favoured commanders on the defensive.Utilising their superior numbers, the Chaos forces amassed for a final confrontation upon Iax. There they fought to a standstill, with Guilliman countering every ploy. Ultimately the Chaos forces were forced to retreat back to their staging grounds in the Scourge Stars, making the move off-planet under the cover of the destruction wrought by the dropping of a massive virus bomb.With little time to spare -- for the galaxy remained riven with war -- the lord commander of the Imperium organised the rebuilding of Ultramar, beginning with the defence networks, before leaving once more at the head of a retributive strike force to continue the counteroffensive against the forces of Chaos. |
Ultramarines - Notable Campaigns: The Ultramarines are justifiably proud of their long history, a glorious past replete with unmatched battle honours. For ten thousand Terran years their valour and loyalty have remained impeccable. The Sons of Guilliman are equally proud of their stellar realm, for Ultramar is a rare gem of enlightened Human civilisation nestled in a savage galaxy of tyranny and harsh repression. |
Ultramarines - Dawn of the Imperium, M30-M31: 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. The Unification Wars were still raging across the surface of Mankind's birth world. Luna was the bastion of a conglomeration of resurrectionist gene-cults whose members believed that Human nature was both fractal, fractured and transcendent. Each of these Selenar gene-cults clung to a different set of archetypes. Every cult member was a product of creation by the Selenar gene-wrights according to formulae crafted in the Dark Age of Technology. Resurrected in body time and time again they sought to distill the true personification of a single Human archetype. In their subterranean complexes the Selenar cults were powerful, insular and resistant to the Imperial Truth. The Imperials would have normally dealt with these insular cults in the usual matter they handled all of the other Terran factions and techno-barbarian states that refused to accept the rule of the Emperor of Mankind -- by obliteration. The fact that the Selenar gene-cults had something that the growing Imperium needed complicated that position. The Selenar returned the Imperial entreaties for alliance with silence. As the threats of the Imperium soon began to outnumber its offers, the Selenar cults began to gird themselves for war. So it was that the Emperor finally ordered Luna to be pacified by the sword, their superstitious beliefs cast down before the Imperial Truth and their gene-craft yoked to the needs of the Imperium. To this task the Emperor set the three of his newborn Space Marine Legions most suited to this purpose on what some Imperial chroniclers name as the first true battle of the Great Crusade to come. The combined forces of the VII Legion, XIII Legion and XVI Legion (later named the Imperial Fists, Ultramarines and Luna Wolves) 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. Cutting power to their assault craft, the Astartes of the XVI Legion drifted silently towards Luna through the void like arrows fired into the night. As the smaller wave of assault craft belonging to the VII and XIII Legions approached the airless world, the Selenar defensive weapon systems embedded in Luna's surface lashed the oncoming Imperial force. The XVI Legion's assault craft, unlooked for and unseen, struck their targets like a dagger in the night. Within six solar hours of the first shot being fired, Luna had been pacified and brought into Imperial Compliance, the first off-world conquest of the newborn Imperium. Faced with annihilation, the surviving Selenar cultists bent the knee instead, their surrender communique transmitted to Terra calling for the Emperor to "call off his wolves." Broken and humbled, the enslaved gene-wrights of Luna would help forge the next generation of Space Marines who would carry out Mankind's conquest of the stars. As for the XVI Legion, they had earned their name -- the Luna Wolves.Compliance of the Osiris Cluster (806.M30) - In the eighth 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 Legion themselves had a hand.Osiris Rebellion (833.M30) - For unknown reasons, the eleven star systems of the Osiris Cluster declared independence from the Imperium almost thirty standard years after the original conquest. The XIII Legion sent its 12th Expeditionary Fleet to put down the rebellion. But failures in intelligence turned what was intended to be a swift victory into a battle of attrition against a previously unknown xenos threat -- the Osirian Psybrid xenoforms. The vile aliens drove the Osirian Human population through the use of their psychic abilities 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 flagship Sethaln's Thunder, was lost. Command fell to First Captain Marius Gage. The Osiris Cluster was then blockaded. The 12th Expeditionary Fleet returned a standard year later with a force heavily augmented from the Solar Armada, elements of the XVIII Legion and specialist Sisters of Silence anti-psyker cadres from Terra. They found worlds either left as wastelands of unburied dead or locked in turmoil and civil strife.Discovery of Primarch Roboute Guilliman (837.M30) - After a five-standard-year-long sojourn across the Realm of Ultramar, the Emperor's expeditionary fleet, the Principia Imperialis, came to the "Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar" and its capital, Macragge, to reunite with His lost son Roboute Guilliman. Impressed with His gene-son's superlative organisational skills and strategic planning, as well as the well-ordered realm he had established, the Emperor quickly passed on command of the XIII Legion to Guilliman, who reforged it into his own, as the newly renamed Ultramarines. The Ultramarines' forward base was relocated to Macragge. The primarch quickly assimilated the many wonders and advanced technology of the Imperium, and set about his new role with dutiful vigour.Xenocide of the Osirian Psybrids (899.M30) - A sub-fleet of the XII Legion, under the command of Praetor Erad Krüg, was fighting on the south-western 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 beset upon by a mysterious third party -- the deadly xenoforms known as the Osirian Psybrids. As nightmarishly powerful xenos teleported aboard the War Hounds' vessels, only their savage tenacity allowed them to survive, as they lost dozens of their own voidships and hundreds of Ork vessels were shattered. When Primarch Roboute Guilliman received word, he ordered the War Hounds to hold at all costs, 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 Human slave armies. The two Legions 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 to finally gain vengeance and restore their honour after the defeat they had suffered at the xenos' hands nearly six solar decades earlier.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. It was a stellar empire which 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 was 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 413th Expeditionary Fleet, commanded by Master Ulan Cicerus of the XV 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 home system was employed. The stalemate was soon broken by the arrival of 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 the entire world. The Ultramarines requested to lead the final 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.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, 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, covering 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.Victories Beyond Count (Unknown Date.M30) - Led by their incredibly efficient primarch, the Ultramarines recorded more triumphs and liberated more Human-settled worlds than any other Space Marine Legion during the decades of the Great Crusade after Guilliman is rediscovered by the Emperor. Those planets captured by the Ultramarines benefit from Roboute Guilliman's genius for establishing a self-supporting defence system and government, ensuring that industry and trade are set up to prosper.Razing of Monarchia (964.M30) - Nearly six solar decades after being brought into Imperial Compliance and some forty-three standard years before the start of the Horus Heresy, the XIII Legion, the Ultramarines, utterly destroyed the city of Monarchia on the world of Khur on the order of the Emperor as an example to both Primarch Lorgar and his Word Bearers Legion that violations of the Imperial Truth through the encouragement of the continued error of religious faith and the spread of idolatrous doctrine would not be tolerated. This action, against a living monument to the worship of the God-Emperor the Word Bearers had called "the Perfect City," crushed the morale of Lorgar and his Space Marines and led them to seek out new gods more worthy of their worship -- the Ruinous Powers of Chaos.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.Ullanor Crusade (999.M30-000.M31) - 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 at that time. The crusade included the deployment of 100,000 Space Marines from various Legions, including the Ultramarines, 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. Following the defeat of the Orks of Ullanor, the Emperor of Mankind returned to Terra to begin work on His vast project to open up the Aeldari Webway for Mankind's use. In His place to command the vast forces of the Great Crusade He left Primarch Horus Lupercal, whom He raised to the rank of Imperial Warmaster and gave command authority over all of his fellow primarchs and every expeditionary fleet of the Great Crusade.Tesstra Compliance (ca. 000s.M31) - Tesstra was at that time part of a close alliance of totalitarian Human colonies resistant to the Imperium's authority. This alliance, known as the "Conservation", had survived the Age of Strife through a mixture of relative good fortune and rigidly imposed eugenic controls. This divided its population into highly stratified castes enslaved to their civilisation's greater needs. For the Imperium, the Conservation's worlds represented an addition to the Great Crusade's conquests; a prize that would liberate a Human population of nearly eleven billion, but in order for this to be the case, the abhorrent civilisation created by the Conservation would have to be systematically dismantled. Once the Imperium's emissaries made their desires known they were fired upon and driven away, while the Conservation geared its worlds to violent defence against the forces of the Great Crusade. The Warmaster Horus, whose own Luna Wolves forces were at the time engaged in battle elsewhere, diverted the forces of two other expeditionary fleets, commanded by Roboute Guilliman and Alpharius respectively, to bring the Conservation to heel. The Ultramarines began to immediately conduct a campaign to engage and conquer the outer worlds of the Conservation, whilst pinning down its mobile military assets in an ever constricting noose. Alpharius and his Alpha Legion did not immediately attack, but instead circled, launching probes and raids without seeming rhyme or reason. Increasingly infuriated by the Alpha Legion's lack of progress and co-operation, Roboute Guilliman is known to have openly berated Alpharius in council, demanding that the Alpha Legion learn from his own Ultramarines' method of warfare and emulate it to achieve the victory that the Great Crusade demanded of them both. Further, that if Alpharius were to place his Legion under Guilliman's full command, the Conservation could be made to fall in a matter of solar months. This demand Alpharius ignored. Through the tactical brilliance and strategic genius of Alpharius Omegon, the XX Legion employed its well-known deceptive tactics of infiltration and the gathering of intelligence by their Human non-Astartes agents on the ground. To the Tesstrans they appeared to be delaying their invasion, appearing only as threatening spectres as more and more Tesstran forces were deployed to Tesstra Prime's defences in preparation for the inevitable attack. When the assault finally came, it sent the Tesstrans reeling, striking from a hundred vectors at once yet leaving whole swathes of the defensive lines untouched. Soon sabotage ran amok, causing severe supply shortages and Alpha Legion strike forces began to appear inside the capital city, making red slaughter of government facilities and security stations with impunity. Sheer anarchy reigned as the Tesstran commanders were unable to redeploy their forces from the defences not under attack back to the city. Supply lines collapsed or were cut, orders were redirected or simply failed to arrive, and entire divisions were stranded trying to cross bridge networks that had been blown apart by sabotage before they could reach them. It was then that the Harrowing of Tesstra Prime truly began. Beset on all sides by Alpha Legion forces, the Tesstran forces were subsequently torn apart by the Legion's super-heavy armour columns, and their own forces were advanced directly into the teeth of a vicious trap already laid for them. The battle was short-lived and effectively over, but the killing continued. As the Alpha Legion withdrew from Tesstra Prime, their task done, they left an anarchy of riot, fire and ruin in their wake. The Tesstran regime and infrastructure had collapsed, and the dead and dying were everywhere in the streets, with pestilence and famine soon to follow. It is estimated that 90% of Tesstra Prime's population, both military and civilian, would not survive the battle and its aftermath. The rest of the planet capitulated in a matter of solar days. Alpharius Omegon's conduct invited censure from many quarters, especially from Primarch Guilliman, who declared the Alpha Legion's tactics dishonourable and unworthy of Astartes in a formal protest to the Warmaster. Horus was the only primarch who openly praised his brother-primarch and the way in which his Legion had conducted a truly masterful campaign, but the Ultramarines would not serve directly alongside the Alpha Legion for the rest of the Great Crusade.Council of Nikaea (001.M31) - There was an increasing concern as the Great Crusade progressed about the use of psychic abilities. More and more often during the progress of the Imperial conquest of the galaxy, the Imperial Army and Space Marines would make planetfall only to find that the populace was in thrall to mysterious powers and unnatural mystics and so-called "sorcerers". These powers were also very akin to those used by the Thousand Sons Legion of Primarch Magnus the Red. The Thousand Sons had come under criticism for their use of sorcery by some of their fellow Legiones Astartes. The schism grew so great that it threatened the very stability of the fledgling Imperium and so the Emperor Himself had called for an Imperial conclave to resolve the issue once and for all. This conclave was held upon the world of Nikaea, which was intended to determine whether or not the use of psychic sorcery represented a boon or a grave danger to Mankind and the newborn Imperium of Man. The Council of Nikaea was also the trial of Magnus the Red, primarch of the psychically-talented Thousand Sons Legion -- for he was accused of sorcery and of introducing sorcerous practices to the Space Marine Legions through the earlier institution of the corps of Librarians among the Legions. Ultimately the existence of psykers like Navigators and astropaths in the Imperium was allowed by the Edicts of Nikaea but tightly restricted under centralised Imperial control, while the potent and unrestricted use of psychic abilities that was defined as "sorcery" was officially banned. This included the use of Librarians within the Legiones Astartes despite a notable effort by the Chief Librarians of several Legions, including the Ultramarine Promus, to sway the Emperor to let the Librarians continue their work. The psychically powerful Magnus and his Thousand Sons would continue to study such powers in secret on their homeworld of Prospero, which would ultimately lead them to their damnation by the Ruinous Powers during the early days of the Horus Heresy.Pacification of Arkenath (ca. 004-007.M31) - Captain Hektor of the Ultramarines, commanding 500 of his battle-brothers, helped prosecute the Emperor's Great Crusade to bring enlightenment to the galaxy and repatriate the lost colonies of Humanity by fighting the Vektates of Arkenath. The Vektates were a deviant Human culture, controlled by an alien overmind that had enslaved the Human populace of Arkenath. Hektor and his warrior brothers had shattered the yoke that bound their unfortunate Human kin and in so doing had destroyed the Vektates. The Human populace then owed fealty to the Imperium, and demonstrated it gladly when they were free of psychic tyranny. It had been a grim war. Captain Hektor's voidship, the Fist of Macragge, had been involved in a brutal ship-to-ship action against the enemy, but had prevailed. Repairs had been conducted on Arkenath, as well as the requisitioning of a small tithe of the natives, eager to venture beyond the stars, to help replenish elements of the ship's crew. Once the war was over, Hektor and his battle-brothers had been summoned to the Veridian System and the region of space known as Ultramar in preparation of the massive joint campaign of extermination with the Word Bearers XVII Legion against the Greenskins' Ghaslakh xenohold, a common mission for the Astartes during the final days of the Great Crusade. It would be on the Veridian System's primary world, Calth, that Lorgar Aurelian would launch a surprise attack on the Ultramarines, later known as the Calth Atrocity, whilst they were gathered for the campaign against the Orks of Ghaslakh. The XIII Legion would be caught completely unaware while the Word Bearers attempted to use the advantage of surprise to utterly annihilate their hated rivals. The Fist of Macragge would never arrive, as it was completely obliterated by the Word Bearers' secretly-constructed warship, the Furious Abyss, while en route to Calth.Cleansing of Ariggata (ca. 004.M31) - This was an Imperial Compliance action that was carried out jointly by the Ultramarines, Sons of Horus and the World Eaters Legions against the world of Ariggata. A technologically advanced planet, the world of Ariggata had been isolated from the rest of Humanity for many centuries, and when Imperial envoys arrived bearing word of the Emperor and the Imperial Truth, they were executed in a bloody gesture of independence. The military might of Ariggata was formidable, and thus the honour of its pacification fell to the Warmaster Horus and two other Space Marine Legions under his command. Most of the planet was quickly conquered, except for the massive fortress within which most of the leaders of the planet cowered. Eager to be on his way, Horus commanded Angron, primarch of the World Eaters, to take the citadel and kill only the leaders. Eagerly, Angron led the assault. However, the fortress was heavily defended and the casualties were horrendous, a dozen World Eaters falling for every metre of land. Eventually, a ramp of corpses led up to a single breach in the wall, and the Astartes of the World Eaters Legion plunged in. Filled with rage over their fallen brothers, they were merciless. By the time the Ultramarines arrived, the battle was all but over. The inside of the fortress was filled with the dismembered and mangled corpses of the defenders, for not one soul had been spared the vengeful fury of the World Eaters. It was an absolute slaughter, the fortress having been transformed into an abattoir of Human blood. The Ultramarines were disgusted by this savage behaviour and by the time the appalled Sons of Guilliman left the citadel, the Sons of Horus and the World Eaters had already departed, leaving the Ultramarines to garrison Ariggata until the Imperial Army arrived. Before Guilliman was able to confront his brother primarchs regarding the massacre on Ariggata, the Horus Heresy erupted, both Horus and Angron spitting on their oaths of loyalty to the Emperor, and Guilliman's worst fears were confirmed.Destruction of the Furious Abyss (007.M31) - Following the destruction of the Auretian Technocracy and securing of their rare STC templates, Lorgar Aurelian, primarch of the Word Bearers, secured a secret alliance with the traitorous Fabricator-General Kelbor-Hal. He commissioned the Dark Mechanicum to construct a trio of mighty vessels built for the service of his Legion. The Furious Abyss was the first such vessel of its kind. The Word Bearers had been secretly ordered by the rebellious Warmaster Horus to bring their unfettered wrath down upon their hated rivals, the Ultramarines Legion. The Furious Abyss was to play an instrumental role in the Battle of Calth and the Traitor Legion's destructive campaign that intended to see the Ultramarines capital world of Macragge destroyed. But before the mighty voidship could reach its destination, the secret of its existence had been discovered. The Word Bearers' vessel was secretly infiltrated by a small ad-hoc Loyalist strike force, led by Ultramarines Captain Lysimachus Cestus, of Legionaries from various Legions, who proceeded to sabotage the ship's plasma generatorium, which began a chain-reaction that resulted in the destruction of the massive vessel. Through these Legionaries' valiant sacrifice, the destruction of the Furious Abyss ensured that the Traitors' plan to cripple the Ultramarines Legion and destroy Macragge was for naught.Battle of Calth (007.M31) - The Battle of Calth, also referred to as the Calth Atrocity, was the name given by later Imperial historitors to the treacherous campaign conducted during the early stages of the Horus Heresy by the traitorous XVII Legion, the Word Bearers, on behalf of the Warmaster Horus against their hated rivals the Ultramarines. The campaign was launched by the Word Bearers' Primarch Lorgar Aurelian with the goal of tying down the XIII Legion and preventing it from reinforcing its fellow Loyalists as the Traitor Legions marched relentlessly on Terra itself. Kept far from Terra by the Warmaster's machinations, the Ultramarines were mustering on the Agri-world of Calth -- a key world in the Realm of Ultramar intended to be a staging post to cleanse the Eastern Fringe of Orks -- when they were attacked by the Word Bearers, their supposed allies. The Traitor Legion wreaked havoc on Calth's orbital shipyards and set in motion a disaster that caused the system's sun to emit deadly solar storms that scoured the nearby planets, and led to the complete destruction of Calth's atmosphere and once-verdant biosphere. Additionally, the Word Bearers' First Chaplain Erebus used the death and destruction his Legion rained down upon Calth to empower a sorcerous ritual that summoned the Ruinstorm, a vast Warp storm that cut half of the galaxy off from communication with Terra for several standard years. The resulting battle on Calth was forced underground, into the planet's sprawling subterranean caverns. It raged on for many standard years even after the end of the Heresy and across dozens of different theatres of war. After the Word Bearers' attack, future generations of Calth's people were required to live deep underground in massive, subterranean hive cities to escape their world's radiation-scorched, airless surface. While both the Ultramarines and their primarch Roboute Guilliman survived the Word Bearers' assault, the campaign's outcome and the birth of the Ruinstorm greatly contributed to the XIII Legion's inability to participate in the Siege of Terra as Horus had planned.Underworld War on Calth (007-017.M31) - Its surface ravaged by the slow death of the Veridia star, the battle for Calth between the trapped forces of the remaining Ultramarines and Word Bearers remained locked in a death-struggle that descended into the extensive arcologies beneath the world's surface. The Underworld War would grind on for ten Terran years before the last of the Traitors were finally hunted down and slain.Shadow Crusade (007-009.M31) - Enraged beyond the capacity for speech by the Word Bearers' betrayal of the Imperium and assault upon Ultramar, Roboute Guilliman gathered what vessels he could spare after Kor Phaeron's ambush of the Legion fleet at Calth, drew additional numbers from the first Ultramarines relief fleet bound for Calth after the massacre above that world, and tracked Lorgar directly through the use of the XIII Legion's own astropathic choirs. In the wake of the Battle of Calth, the Word Bearers Legion, led by Primarch Lorgar Aurelian, linked up with Angron and his World Eaters Legion to launch a Shadow Crusade against the Realm of Ultramar's Five Hundred Worlds in an attempt to spread the massive Warp storm known as the Ruinstorm that had been conjured by the Word Bearers' First Chaplain Erebus at Calth across the Eastern Fringe. This prodigious Warp storm would effectively split the galaxy in half and deny needed reinforcements to the Loyalists as Horus drove on Terra in an attempt to overthrow the Emperor of Mankind. The Shadow Crusade laid waste to 26 Ultramarian worlds until Guilliman's retribution fleet finally caught up to the Traitors above Angron's homeworld of Nuceria, which the World Eaters Legion were preoccupied with wiping clean of all life in vengeance for the treatment the Nucerians had merited out a Terran century before to Angron as one of their slave-gladiators. The XIII Legion's warship Courage Above All, Guilliman's temporary flagship, broke from the Warp at the system's edge, at the head of a large void armada consisting of 41 vessels. In their wrath, the Ultramarines destroyed the Word Bearers' flagship Fidelitas Lex during the furious void combat. Eventually, the Ultramarines managed to take the fight to the surface. The first Ultramarines poured forth from their Drop Pods but the World Eaters were waiting for them. The XII Legion crashed against the XIIIth in rabid packs, showing why Imperial forces had feared to fight alongside them for solar decades. Uncontrolled, unbound, unrestrained, they butchered their way through Ultramarines strongpoints, enslaved to the joy of battle because of the Butcher's Nails cortical implants sandwiched within the meat of their minds. The XVII Legion also met their enemy cousins, replacing ferocity with spite and hate. The Ultramarines returned it in kind, hungry for vengeance against the vile Traitors who had defiled Calth and damaged its star. Eventually Guilliman confronted Lorgar, and the two primarchs came together in furious combat as their warriors killed each other around them, and neither primarch spared their gene-sons a glance. But in the midst of their life-and-death struggle, the Word Bearers' primarch, Angron, intervened and confronted Guilliman. Guilliman held his own against the pair of Traitor primarchs, but took multiple wounds for his efforts. Eventually Angron managed to plunge his chainsword up under Guilliman's breastplate, leaving him with a serious wound. Despite the strife raging around them, Angron still fought Guilliman, standing above the kneeling Ultramarine primarch. Guilliman was beaten and down. His wounds bled profusely, a palette of proud defeat. Guilliman's warriors fought desperately to retrieve him. Fortunately they were granted a brief reprieve, as Lorgar used the opportunity to unleash a sorcerous incantation that he had long intended to unleash to save Angron from the death all but guaranteed by the Butcher's Nails in his brain. The incantation locked up Angron's muscles, and began to transform the Red Angel into a new form as an immortal Daemon Prince of Khorne. Guilliman took the opportunity to escape into his gene-sons' defiant phalanxes, retreating in enviable unity. Lorgar saw the expression of disgusted awe on his brother's face as the wounded Ultramarine primarch stared at the transformed Angron atop the mound of dead Astartes from all three bloodlines of Space Marines. The XIII Legion continued to fire even in retreat, leaving the world of Nuceria battered and bloody. Their campaign against the two Traitor Legions had ended at Nuceria...for a time.Establishment of the Imperium Secundus (009.M31) - With the Imperium severed in two halves, isolated and ignorant of each other as a result of the raging tumult of the Ruinstorm, the light of the Astronomican was no longer psychically visible from Ultramar and no word of the Emperor had been heard for several standard years. Ultramarines Primarch Roboute Guilliman declared the foundation of the "Imperium Secundus" as a means of continuing the fight against the Traitors and securing the Emperor's great work. When the Blood Angels arrived at Ultramar having escaped the Signus Cluster, Guilliman proclaimed Sanguinius as the rightful heir to the Emperor. The Dark Angels arrived in the Five Hundred Worlds shortly thereafter, guided by the artificial beacon from the alien artefact known as the Pharos, on the distant world of Sotha. Lion El'Jonson, primarch of the Dark Angels, was proclaimed Lord Protector of the Realms of Ultramar and supreme commander over all its military forces, an equivalent rank to that of "Warmaster", which he had once so coveted. Unfortunately, the foundation of Imperium Secundus was marred when Night Lords Primarch Konrad Curze, who had been taking refuge in the bowels of the Dark Angels flagship, Invincible Reason, escaped and rampaged across Macragge, intent on spreading as much terror and chaos as he could. Eventually, both Guilliman and the Lion confronted the cornered Curze. Their attempts to kill him were unsuccessful as the Night Lords primarch had laid a cunning trap. He brought down an entire chapel upon the two primarchs through the use of planted explosives and fled the scene. Guilliman and the Lion were only saved through the direct intervention of the Loyalist Iron Warriors Warsmith Barabas Dantioch, who was communicating with Guilliman at the time of the attack, through a portal that was opened by the Pharos. On instinct, the Warsmith reached through the portal and pulled the two primarchs to safety on Sotha.Battle of Sotha (009.M31) - The far-flung world of Sotha lay close to the edge of the galaxy's Eastern Fringe, almost at the limits of both the fiefdom of the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar and the span of all Imperial territory. Upon this world the Ultramarines had discovered beneath its tallest peak, named Mount Pharos, a massive aperture constructed by an unknown xenos species (later determined in the Era Indomitus to be the Necrons). This device functioned both as a beacon and route-finder, and it also permitted instantaneous communication across unimaginable distances, even penetrating the raging tumult of the Ruinstorm. Following their defeat at the hands of the Dark Angels at Tsagualsa, remnants of the Night Lords Legion followed this beacon in the Warp, which guided them safely to the world of Sotha. Over many solar months, the Night Lords secretly gathered intelligence on the suspicious activities of the Ultramarines, and soon discovered the nature of the arcane device, named the Pharos, upon the restricted planet. The Night Lords launched a surprise assault upon the lightly garrisoned world, intent on seizing the Pharos in order to use it to determine the location of their flagship, the Nightfall, as well as the whereabouts of their missing primarch Konrad Curze. In the ensuing battle, the Loyalist Iron Warriors Warsmith Barabas Dantioch sacrificed himself by overloading the Pharos, so that the Night Lords would be unable to utilise the device's powerful empathic abilities. What far-reaching consequences this had for the galaxy, would not come to pass for another ten millennia.Capture & Fate of the Night Haunter (ca. 011.M31) - While continuing his obsessive hunt for the elusive Night Haunter, Lion El'Jonson and Roboute Guilliman continuously clashed over policies, especially in regards to the security of Imperium Secundus, and how best to deal with rebels on Macragge that the Lion was certain Konrad Curze had something to do with. Following a suicide bombing of an Astartes convoy, the Lion used the I Legion to establish martial law on Macragge. Certain that Curze was hiding within the rebellious Illyrium region, the Lion advocated the use of a massive orbital saturation bombardment of the region to ensure Curze's death. Facing resistance from both the Regent Sanguinius and Guilliman, the Lion instead opted to deploy his Legion's Dreadwing in order to flush out Curze and the rebels. During an attack on the city of Alma Mons, the Lion finally cornered the elusive Night Lords primarch and the two come to blows. After a brutal confrontation, the Lion eventually emerged victorious, and questioned his brother on why he had turned away from the Emperor, to which Curze simply replied: "Why not?" Curze went on to explain that there was a monster in his head that he could not stop. Though he finally had Curze at his mercy, the Lion couldn't bring himself to kill his brother, and instead pummeled him again. He then ripped off Curze's backpack from his battle-plate and lifted him over his head, and then brutally brought the Night Haunter down across his knee, breaking Curze's spine and paralysing him. The Lion brought the grievously-wounded Curze before Sanguinius and Guilliman to stand trial. A Triumvirate of the three Loyalist primarchs was later held, where Curze defended his actions, but refused to admit his guilt. Since each of the primarchs had been created by the Emperor to perform a specific tactical function, Curze was merely acting according to his own nature, and therefore had committed no crimes. The Night Lords primarch then further divided Guilliman and the Lion by accusing the latter of secretly ordering orbital bombardment of Macragge in direct violation of Guilliman's orders. Enraged, the Lion sought to kill Curze, but was halted by the words of Sanguinius and Guilliman who snatched El'Jonson's Lion Sword and broke the blade across his armoured thigh. El'Jonson was furious, but Sanguinius dismissed the Lord Protector, ending the Triumvirate. The Lion was then banished from Imperium Secundus. Taking his leave, the Dark Angels withdrew from Macragge only solar hours later. Standing in the chamber of the Tuchulcha Engine, the Lion brooded over recent events, he questioned his actions over the course of the last few solar decades -- the banishment of Luther, the death of Nemiel as well as other decisions he had come to regret. As the Dark Angels made their final preparations to depart back to Caliban, the Lion went back to the Tuchulcha Engine's chamber. He then ordered the device to teleport himself and Holguin, "Deathbringer", the voted-lieutenant of the Deathwing, back to Macragge. As Sanguinius prepared to execute Curze for his crimes, both the Lion and his lieutenant teleported directly into the chamber and told Sanguinius to stop. As troops entered the room, demanding the Lion surrender, El'Jonson explained his reasons for the intrusion. He reasoned that Curze had the ability to see precognitive visions of potential futures, and repeated the Night Haunter's claim that his death would one day come at the hands of an assassin sent by the Emperor. If this was true, the Lion reasoned, than it was proof that the Emperor was still alive. Sanguinius knew the Lion's explanation rang true, as he recognised that his own precognitive visions of his inevitable death would also eventually come to pass. When Guilliman demanded to know what would become of Curze, the Lion knelt before his two brothers in humility and promised that he would be Curze's gaoler.Second Siege of Cthonia (013.M31) - A fleet of the Sons of Horus known as the True Sons and Traitor support elements separated from Horus' vast armada and bypassed Sol to attack Cthonia, the XVIth Legion's homeworld. The Imperial Fists garrison, with a small detachment of the Ultramarines' 4th Chapter ("Aurorans") stationed at the Astagar Garrison, were outnumbered and isolated, with nowhere to retreat to, and were forced to rely on the hope of a relief force from Terra to break the siege. However, they were left to fend for themselves as the Siege of Terra, the epic final confrontation between the Traitor and Loyalist forces, took place a standard year into the brutal campaign on Cthonia, forcing both sides to fight a protracted and grinding war of attrition. Only with the timely arrival of a large Dark Angels Legion fleet were the Loyalists able to achieve victory; however, it was pyrrhic at best. Cthonia was destroyed and rendered into a Dead World, serving as a stark reminder of the rewards of treachery, though this action marked the start of the unit cohesion that would lead the 4th Chapter of the Ultramarines Legion to be split off during the Second Founding as the Aurora Chapter.A Return to Honour (013.M31) - Arcaes Odenathus, a captain-praetor of the Ultramarines Legion's 10th Chapter, rallied the scattered survivors of his own brethren and those other Loyalists fighting across the Dominion of Storms in the galactic north-east and led them to Honourum. Unexpected and unlooked for, this Loyalist assault struck the Word Bearers garrison of Honourum like a thunderbolt. Three solar weeks of desperate fighting ensued, and as all the Word Bearers' urgent requests for reinforcements were ignored by the Warmaster, focussed now on his push toward Terra, the sons of Lorgar resorted to the most heinous of tactics. Daemons, Warp-tainted infiltrators and terrors of the wars of Old Night were unleashed, with both sides driven on past mortal endurance by hatred. When the last Traitor finally fell, there was nothing left of the grand cities of Honourum but blasted ruins; ruins whose very substance was so contaminated by the fell powers and terrible weapons unleashed that they would blight Honourum longer than the memory of the wars which spawned them. |
Ultramarines - Age of Rebirth, M31-M33: In the aftermath of the Horus Heresy, it is the consummate strategist Roboute Guilliman, named lord commander of the Imperium and Imperial Regent by the consent of the other surviving Loyalist primarchs, who directed the majority of the counterattacks to drive back the traitorous Chaos forces. The Ultramarines primarch also oversaw the political and military reorganisation of the Imperium to learn and respond to the lessons of the Heresy, which included the Second Founding of the Adeptus Astartes into 1,000-warrior Chapters to ensure no treacherous commander could ever again unleash the full power of a Space Marine Legion; the division of the Imperial Army into the Astra Militarum and the Navis Imperialis to create an interservice rivalry that would constrain both forces, and the granting of autonomy to most of the Five Hundred Worlds of the Realm of Ultramar, which was reduced in size to a single sub-sector.The Ultramarines were the most numerous of the Loyalist Space Marine Legions at this time, with the others badly depleted, and Guilliman himself was everywhere, rallying the Imperial defenders and reinforcing them with his own augmented warriors before moving on to the next battle zone. Not once did the Space Marines take a step back, so strong was their faith in the Imperium, the Emperor and the Ultramarines primarch.Great Scouring (ca. 014.M31-Unknown Date.M31) - As one of the largest remaining Loyalist Legions that emerged relatively unscathed from the Horus Heresy, the Ultramarines played an instrumental part in the Great Scouring. This was the Imperium of Man's great counter-offensive against the Traitor Legions of the slain Warmaster Horus, following the end of the lamentable civil war after the Siege of Terra. Before actually being confined within the life support mechanisms of the Golden Throne, the Emperor had pronounced judgment on the Traitors: declared Excommunicate Traitoris, they were to be driven into the hellish region of the Warp rift called the Eye of Terror, which would hold them for all eternity. All records and memory of the Traitor Legions were to be expunged from Imperial archives. Worlds such as Isstvan V and Davin were scoured clean of all life because of their corruption by Chaos. The Traitor Legions' associated troops from the Dark Mechanicum or the regiments and starships of the Imperial Army that had turned to Chaos were to be destroyed or driven into the Eye. It would be as if the Traitor Legions had never existed to sully the Imperium with their betrayal. The fighting would continue for solar decades longer. The Loyalist Space Marine Legions destroyed at the Drop Site Massacre on Isstvan V were slowly reestablished using what little gene-seed the survivors had managed to escape with, though the Legions were refashioned as 1,000-Space Marine Chapters rather than full Legions as Primarch Roboute Guilliman's Codex Astartes now required after the Second Founding at the dawning of the 31st Millennium.Battle of Eskrador (Unknown Date.M31) - After the death of Horus at the end of the Horus Heresy during the Great Scouring, the Alpha Legion and the Ultramarines Legion met in battle on the world of Eskrador, where Roboute Guilliman faced his hated brother primarch Alpharius (unaware that it was actually his twin brother Omegon, who had assumed his twin brother's identity following Alpharius' death at the hands of Rogal Dorn during the Battle of Pluto) in bitterly contested close combat. Both struck one another in an instant, each power sword making a single stroke. For a second the two primarchs stood facing one another, than Alpharius slumped to the ground. Exalted by their primarch's victory the Ultramarines renewed their attack and cut down every last Alpha Legionary. But their exaltation was short-lived, as over the next few solar days the Ultramarines were harried from all sides by the Eskrador natives as well as remnants of Alpha Legionaries hiding throughout the mountains. After another solar week of futile combat against their shadowy opponents, Guilliman ordered his Ultramarines to evacuate the planet's surface. He then used his Legion's voidships to bombard the Traitors from orbit. Despite Guilliman's protests that he had no wish to fight such dishonourable foes, it seems hard to dispute the fact that the Ultramarines were soundly beaten by the Alpha Legion at every turn, despite the apparent loss of Alpharius.Creation of the Codex Astartes and the Second Founding (Unknown Date.M31) - Roboute Guilliman creates his magnum opus, the Codex Astartes, which will become the sacred tome of the new Adeptus Astartes' military organisation, strategy and tactics. The long process of breaking up the Loyalist Space Marine Legions into individual 1,000-warrior Chapters takes many Terran years to be fully enacted. So begins what is remembered by historitors as the "Second Founding."Green Hordes of Talassar (Unknown Date.M31) - A great horde of Orks ravage Talassar, threatening to utterly destroy civilisation upon the Ultramarian world's single continent of Glaudor. Testing his Codex Astartes, Guilliman deploys his army with minimal direct guidance. His forces follow protocol with a series of rapid strikes that lead to victory.Castigation of Colchis (ca. 032.M31) - Following the end of the Horus Heresy, the Imperium launched a massive retribution crusade, known as the "Great Scouring," to drive out the remaining Traitor Legions and those forces still loyal to them. Following this period of bloody vengeance and violence, around 032.M31 the Ultramarines finally took the fight to the Word Bearers' Legion homeworld of Colchis, in retribution for what the Word Bearers had done to Calth during the early years of the Horus Heresy. When they arrived they found a devastated world, its industry in ruins and its people clinging desperately to civilisation. Given Lorgar's treachery and the Imperium's fear that his Chaos taint had spread throughout the population who had converted to the Word Bearers' heretical faith in the Ruinous Powers, the newly-formed Inquisition ordered the planet to undergo Exterminatus, and following a planetary assault, the Ultramarines' battle barge Octavius bombarded Colchis with Cyclonic Torpedoes. The geological structure of Colchis was highly unstable and the resultant seismic activity caused by the torpedoes' detonations split the planet apart. Nothing now remains of Colchis and where it once existed in the galaxy is still a closely guarded secret of the Inquisition.Battle of Thessala (121.M32) - Roboute Guilliman continued to serve with the Ultramarines Chapter and its successors after the Heresy, leading them for another standard century after the Second Founding well into the campaigns of the Great Scouring. It was Guilliman's actions subsequent to the Horus Heresy that made him the figure of adoration for the people of the Imperium that he would become. With the Traitors scattered and the Emperor to all intents and purposes lost to Humanity, the Imperium stood at the precipice. It was the genius and leadership of Roboute Guilliman that saw the Imperium through its first century after the Heresy, as he kept invaders at bay and saved the scattered worlds of Humanity from collapsing into utter anarchy once more. Yet the primarch of the Ultramarines was dealt a mortal wound by his traitorous brother Fulgrim, primarch of the Emperor's Children, during the Battle of Thessala. The monstrously serpentine Fulgrim, gifted with great powers by his patron Chaos God Slaanesh and elevated to the status of Daemon Prince, stabbed Guilliman in the neck with one of his many poisoned blades. The loss of their primarch was crushing to the Ultramarines, who bore their gene-father away from battle and interred him inside a stasis field in the centremost temple within the Fortress of Hera upon Macragge. There he remained for over ten thousand Terran years, until he returned on the eve of the Great Rift's birth to defend the Imperium he strove so hard to build.Reunited (646.M32) - A one-hundred-standard-year period of anarchy in the wake of the War of the Beast and The Beheading was ended by the intervention of the Space Marines. Agnathio, Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, united over fifty Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes and arrived upon Terra. Agnathio held a locked council with the squabbling noble "rulers" of Terra. What was said has never come to light, but when the Space Marine fleets returned to their homeworlds, there once again sat twelve High Lords of Terra on the Senatorum Imperialis, and unity was restored to the Imperium. |
Ultramarines - Ultramar Ascendant, M34-M40: Expansion of Ultramar (ca. M34-M35) - The civil unrest of the Nova Terra Interregnum that spilled out of the Segmentum Pacificus in the 34th Millennium had little effect on the Ultima Segmentum. Indeed, while the Ultramarines waged war constantly during this period, the truncated sub-sector of the Realm of Ultramar grew in strength and stature. Largely free of the political grip of the Ecclesiarchy that was tightening across the majority of Mankind's worlds at this time, and guided by Guilliman's teaching of ensuring the predominance of rational thought over superstition, Ultramar was spared much of the turmoil of the Imperium's power struggle and civil war in this period.Eastern Fringe Campaigns (Unknown Date) - The deepest forays into the unexplored Eastern Fringe are launched by the Imperium, but meet disaster in the form of assaults by the Hrud, Orks and other xenos. The Ultramarines and several of their Successor Chapters are sent to provide aid to stranded Imperial colonists.Blood Storms (Unknown Date) - Major Daemonic incursions wrack star systems adjacent to Ultramar, including Tartella. Although three Chapter Masters of the Ultramarines are lost in succession during the solar decades-long battles that take place, the corruption of Chaos is prevented from spreading into Ultramar. |
Ultramarines - The Age of Redemption, M37-M38: 9th Black Crusade and the Corillia Relief (537.M38) - The 9th Black Crusade was a Black Crusade led by the infamous Chaos Lord Abaddon the Despoiler and his Black Legion, launched out of the Eye of Terror in 537.M38. During this time, the Lamenters Chapter was recalled along with a number of other crusading Chapters by the High Lords of Terra to help deal with the rising threat of Chaos incursions from the Eye of Terror. But the Lamenters' fell reputation for suffering bitter reversals and dark turns of fate worked against them during the Chaos attack on the Hive World of Corillia in this campaign. The superstition-bound Mortifactors Chapter refused to fight alongside the Lamenters, abandoning the planet rather than serve beside them. Unwilling to desert the Hive World's population, the Lamenters held out alone against the Black Legion's onslaught for six solar weeks, suffering horrendous losses until the Ultramarines and White Scars led a battle group that broke though the Chaos warfleet to relieve Corillia. Reduced to barely 200 surviving battle-brothers by their sacrifice, the Lamenters were deemed lost when their fleet disappeared in a Warp storm soon afterwards, only to reappear more than a standard century later on the edge of the Segmentum Solar, having slowly battled their way back from the outer void.Justice-bringer Crusade (Unknown Date.M38) - An Ultramarines company moves to end the tyrannical rule of the despot Ullrex, who has usurped control of the Phoebes System. Behind the power-mad leader, however, is found a trail of Chaos corruption. The ensuing Imperial Crusade scours nine star systems, culminating in a final battle atop the floating fortress of Xentar, in which the entire Ultramarines Chapter leads an army of over a dozen Space Marine Chapters to finally overthrow the oppressor.Rise of the T'au Empire (ca. M38) - The Ultramarines begin to fortify the eastern bounds of their realm against the emergent forces of the upstart xenos T'au Empire. It is a testament to the tenets of the Codex Astartes that, though this foe wields technologies never before encountered by Humanity and fights in a remarkably fluid and skilful fashion, the Ultramarines are able to swiftly adapt and fight back. |
Ultramarines - Time of Ending and Era Indomitus, M41-M42: Note: All dates from this point forward are provisional due to errors in the Imperial Calendar, meaning these events could actually have occurred at any time from the early 41st Millennium to the early 42nd Millennium.Jorun Retaliation (143.M41) - En route to service in the Gothic War, an Astra Militarum battle group, the 15th Heraklion Ironclads, turned on their Commissariat detachment and went Renegade, becoming Traitoris Militarum. Investigations into this turn of events uncovered the foul xenos taint of the Drukhari, who had managed to ensnare and corrupt General Jorun and his command structure. The Traitor Jorun and his attached former Navis Imperialis battlefleet raided planet after planet, enslaving whole populations for their foul xenos masters. The full Howling Griffons Chapter was given command of a strike force to deal with the Traitors, with support from the Ultramarines and Sons of Orar Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes for a campaign that became known as the Jorun Retaliation. The Traitoris Militarum force was intercepted as they made planetfall on the Feral World of Asturia. Caught unprepared for such a fierce counter-assault, over 5,000 Traitoris Militarum died in the first solar hour of the ferocious Space Marine attack, torn apart on their landing zones with much of their heavy armour yet to be unlimbered. General Jorun eventually met the Emperor's judgement at the hands of the Howling Griffons Chaplain Armand Titus. The Traitors' morale collapsed with the death of their leader and the swift desertion of their foul xenos allies. The disordered and panicked Heraklons were ruthlessly hunted down and slain in the aftermath; the Renegade forces were completely wiped out within only six solar hours of the battle's opening salvos.Space Station Ghould (565.M41) - The Ultramarines loosed their Siegebreaker Cohort upon the pirate-infested Space Station Ghould. Determined to keep the element of surprise, the Centurions boosted out from the airlocks of the Guilliman's Oath to carve their way through the void station's dense plasteel hull. The resultant decompression killed nine-tenths of the pirate base's inhabitants, and the Centurion warsuits eradicated the rest with pitiless efficiency.Charadon Campaign (698.M41) - In 698.M41 the Ultramarines took part in a combined Space Marine force led by their Chapter Master Marneus Calgar, which consisted of elements of the Angels of Absolution, the Lamenters, the Marines Errant, and the Silver Skulls. During a seven-standard-year-long Imperial Crusade the force inflicted a series of major defeats on the Ork empire of Charadon which delayed the invasion of Imperial space by the WAAAGH! Argluk for thirty standard years.Battle of Macragge (745.M41) - The Tyranids' main force enters the galaxy and the Tyrannic Wars begin. Hive Fleet Behemoth was spearheading a large Tyranids invasion force into Imperial space and were making unprecedented progress towards the Realm of Ultramar. Upon learning of the threat posed to Ultramar by the vicious Tyranids from Ordo Xenos Inquisitor Fidus Kryptman, Chapter Master Marneus Calgar at once drew up his plans. Calgar declared that the hive fleet would be halted at Macragge before it consumed more of Ultramar or drove deeper into the heart of the Imperium. Deeming Macragge to be the star system most immediately threatened, Calgar ordered its formidable defences to be further improved. Scant solar weeks later, the outrider vessels of the Tyranid fleet attacked Macragge. With the hive fleet destroyed after the sacrifice of an Imperial battleship which created a Warp vortex that destroyed the majority of the hive fleet, Calgar's surviving starships came about and roared back to Macragge to try to save the beleaguered polar garrisons. Calgar, feeling that the situation was becoming critical, sent the 3rd and 7th Ultramarines Companies ahead in their fast strike cruisers while his remaining damaged warships limped back to Macragge. Despite horrendous losses inflicted upon the Tyranid fleet from the orbital and polar defence grids of Macragge, many Tyranid organisms were able to reach the surface of the planet. The Tyranid swarm swept across the world with the most intense fighting in the region of the northern polar defence installations. Despite the Ultramarines fleet's ability to destroy the Tyranid bio-ships, horrific casualties were suffered by the planet's population as well as the Chapter. Calgar went down to the planet's surface, leading the 3rd Company against the ravenous hordes of the Great Devourer. The entirety of the elite 1st Company was wiped out to a man whilst defending the northern pole's defence grid. The Ultramarines 1st Company was gone and the 3rd and 7th sorely diminished. It would be many long Terran years before the Chapter could properly replace its losses from the Battle of Macragge, but replace them it would.Strife in the Darkness (746.M41) - The underground tunnels of Calth are infested with Tyranid burrower-organisms after the attack of Hive Fleet Behemoth. The Ultramarines, fearing that the snake-bodied terrors could remain a blight for solar decades to come, mobilise several Siegebreaker Cohorts and send them to war deep underground. Using omniscopes to detect the vibrations made by the Tyranid burrow-beasts, the Centurion sergeants and their warriors use siege drills to carve their way into the Tyranid tunnels just as the burrowing creatures pass by. A series of ugly and claustrophobic battles erupt under the planet's crust, as often fought in total darkness as in the wan light of the Centurion sergeants' omniscope arrays. Though it takes the best part of two standard years before the Centurions are returned to normal service, the burrower-beasts are believed to be eradicated.Purge of Thrax (762.M41) - Chapter Master Marneus Calgar led the remnants of his Chapter against the Daemon-corrupted Adeptus Mechanicus Forge World of Thrax in 762.M41. Under the leadership of their Chapter Master, the Ultramarines banish countless thousands of Daemons and recover crucial Imperial data-records from the twisted manufactoria complexes. With the mission complete, Calgar issues the order for Exterminatus of the corrupted world.Siege of Zalathras (797.M41) - Marneus Calgar, Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, holds the gate alone against an Ork horde for a solar night and a day.A New Power Rises (799.M41) - The Ultramarines begin to fortify the eastern bounds of their realm of Ultramar against the emergent forces of the upstart T'au Empire.Forgoil Campaign (805.M41) - WAAAGH! Gutshredda rampages through the Forgoil System. Marneus Calgar leads 3 companies of the Ultramarines to the assistance of the Forgoil Planetary Defence Forces. In a little more than three solar weeks, the Ultramarines destroy the tellyporta ships and Stompa factories that provided WAAAGH! Gutshredda with much of its momentum. In the final battle of the war, Calgar and his Terminator-armoured retinue board and destroy Gutshredda's flagship, Da Supadestructa.Luxor Uprising (812.M41) - An Alpha Legion-inspired and supported uprising amongst the indentured workers of the world of Luxor threatens the supply of war materiel across the entire northern Ultima Segmentum. With time of the essence, the Ultramarines launch a daring counter-invasion and, having decimated the untested rebels, finally corner the Chaos Space Marines at the planetary capital's starport. The Traitors are slain and the few surviving loyal workers rallied. The Space Marines and mortal Loyalists then join forces to hunt down and destroy the last vestiges of the rebellion over the coming solar months.Ironblood Campaign (822.M41) - Warpsmith Grathax descends upon the world of Ironblood with an army of Daemon Engines laying waste to everything in their path. They are soon met in open battle by several Astra Militarum tank regiments and over a hundred Ultramarine main battle tanks under the command of Brother-Sergeant Antaro Chronus. The ensuing battle lasts for three solar days, and enough ordnance is expended to flatten several cities, before the last Warp-forged machine is finally destroyed. Over a thousand smoking wrecks litter the scarred landscape, creating a tank-graveyard so vast that it is visible from orbit.The Chapter Endures (841.M41) - The Ultramarines' Veteran 1st Company's operational strength exceeds fifty percent for the first time since the Battle of Macragge.Hallowed Stars' Scouring (848.M41) - Chief Librarian Tigurius' mysterious insights lead to the Hallowed Stars' Scouring.A Hero Honoured (849.M41) - Captain Cato Sicarius is appointed as High Suzerain of Ultramar.Battle for Black Reach (855.M41) - WAAAGH! Zanzag invaded the Hive World of Black Reach. By the time Captain Cato Sicarius and the 2nd Company of the Ultramarines arrived in orbit, the Orks, using devastating new weapons, had already overrun much of the planet. Sicarius and his battle-brothers immediately deployed to reinforce Ghospara, the besieged capital hive city of Black Reach. The Ultramarines' Drop Pods landed hard on the heels of an orbital bombardment and in a brief but bloody battle, cast the Orks from Ghospora's walls before setting off in search of Zanzag himself. Captain Sicarius prosecuted a deadly search-and-destroy mission, razing several Ork forts along the Blackwallow River, but Zanzag continued to evade him. When Sulphora Hive came under attack from a massive Ork horde, Sicarius handed the hunt over to Veteran Sergeant Toria Telion and his Scout Marines. Telion soon discovered that the Orks were transporting warriors and weapons across the Blackwallow River by means of crude submersibles and tracked them to a vast natural cave -- Zanzag's base of operations. Sicarius immediately gathered what forces could be spared and boarded a Thunderhawk gunship to assault Zanzag's lair. The Orks were taken completely by surprise by the speed and ferocity of the attack; Heavy Bolter shells and Hellstrike Missiles tore into their formation before they even realised they were under attack. Within moments, the Thunderhawk's front ramp slammed open and Captain Sicarius led his Space Marines into the heart of battle, striding forwards with bolters blazing. Scores of Orks fell, their bodies heaped around the shattered stalagmites of the cavern floor, before they could mount a counter-attack. Zanzag directed the firepower of his Boyz' supa-weapons, but their shots proved nearly worthless against the inviolable armour of the Terminators marching at the fore of the Ultramarines' assault. It took a solar hour of bloody fighting to secure the cavern, but the Orks were finally defeated when Sicarius cut their warlord's head from his shoulders and ended the threat of WAAAGH! Zanzag with a strike from his Power Sword.Assault of M'kar (878.M41) - Chaos pirates, led by the Daemon Prince M'kar the Reborn, claimed several uninhabited worlds on the borders of Ultramar. In a decisive battle in the Halamar Rift, Captain Cato Sicarius destroyed much of the pirate fleet, but M'kar the Reborn escaped into the Warp.Battle of Orar's Sepulchre (888.M41) - An Asuryani emissary from the Biel-Tan craftworld was sent to the Imperial world of Commrath to enter negotiations with its planetary governor for the return of an ancient eldritch artefact from the tomb of one of the Ultramarines' most-lauded heroes, Captain Orar, known as the Sceptre of Galaxian. When the Imperial noble refused his request, the Asuryani emissary grew angry and soon his pleas turned to threats of violence. The planetary governor refused to be cowed by the arrogant xenos and had the Asuryani executed on the spot. However, the governor had the foresight to heed the Asuryani's threats and requested aid from the Ultramarines. Asuryani from the Alaitoc and Iyanden craftworlds then proceeded to assault Commrath to recover the Aeldari artefact within Orar's Sepulchre. Orar was a great Ultramarines hero in the aftermath of the Horus Heresy, and Chapter Master Marneus Calgar vowed not a single alien would breach the sanctity of his tomb. For the first time since the Battle of Macragge, Calgar led his entire Chapter to war. The Asuryani descended upon Orar's Sepulchre to find it held against them by the Ultramarines. Asuryani Aspect Warriors and Guardians darted towards the main gates of the great edifice that was Orar's tomb as grav-tanks and artillery engines battered the Imperial defenders. On Calgar's command, the Ultramarines emerged from cover and scoured the invaders from the Sepulchre's steps with disciplined bolter volleys. The Asuryani fell back, only to find their lines of retreat cut off by Assault Marines and Land Speeders. Asuryani leaders emerged from cover and rallied the trapped first wave, only to fall to sniper fire as the Ultramarines' Scout Marines made their presence known. The initial Asuryani assault faltered but, for an entire solar day and night, they continued to attack. Though they mustered every arcane science at their command, they could not overcome the tactical brilliance of Marneus Calgar and his Ultramarines. The following day, a fresh assault swept onto the great stairs of the sepulchre, led by a colossal figure wreathed in flame -- an Avatar of Khaela Mensha Khaine, the Aeldari god of war. Heavy weapons fire seemed only to anger the creature, and the Ultramarines' battle line buckled beneath its onslaught, so Calgar issued a challenge himself. The fiery god bellowed with fury, its first blow missing the Ultramarines' Chapter Master by a hair's breadth. The second tore plates from Calgar's armour. A third bit deep into his shoulder, driving the Chapter Master to one knee. But the fourth slammed into the armoured palm of Calgar's left hand. Rising up, Calgar struck with all his strength, bringing his other gauntlet around in a mighty arc that punched clean through the molten ichor of the Avatar's torso. With the fall of their war god, the Asuryani lost all heart and retreated. Some fled without heed while others fell back in good order, but all of the xenos retreated into the darkness. Despite overwhelming odds, once again the Ultramarines had emerged victorious, but in his wisdom Calgar knew that the Asuryani would return for the Sceptre of Galaxian. So it was that Calgar informed Commrath's governor that the Galaxian Sceptre would be removed from Orar's Sepulchre to Macragge, where it could be properly defended.Liberation of Graia (Unknown Date.M41) - The Forge World of Graia in the Segmentum Tempestus, home to the Titan Legion known as the Legio Astraman ("The Morning Stars"), was assaulted by the Ork WAAAGH! Grimskull, over a million Greenskins strong. The Astra Militarum's 203rd Cadian Regiment was diverted to Graia and made a combat drop, but was unable to stem the green tide and the Adeptus Mechanicus feared that the world and its extremely valuable Battle Titan-manufacturing facilities would fall into the Orks' hands, representing a major threat to the Imperium. To deal with this threat, the Ultramarines despatched the 2nd Company, at this time under the command of Captain Demetrian Titus, to assist the guardsmen. After launching an assault on the Ork flagship in orbit of the world in the hope of slaying the Ork Warboss Grimskull outright, Titus and two members of his company's Command Squad were forced to land on the planet itself. They proceeded to engage the Ork forces and ultimately to unmask a plot of the Chaos Sorcerer Nemeroth and his warband of Chaos Space Marines, the Chosen of Nemeroth, to seize experimental technology on Graia that would allow Nemeroth to ascend to become a Daemon Prince with Graia as his Daemon World. In the course of the Graian campaign, Titus successfully slew Grimskull in single combat, thus ending the Ork threat as the Greenskins withdrew from the world as their various tribes began fighting for control of the WAAAGH! Titus also faced Nemeroth as he began his ascension to Daemonhood and slew the foul sorcerer, banishing his soul to the Warp and ending his plans for Graia. Detachments of the Blood Ravens and Black Templars Chapters then arrived to aid the Ultramarines and the remnants of the Astra Militarum in securing the Forge World. However, during the crisis on Graia, Titus had displayed both a disregard for the strictures of the Codex Astartes and had been curiously unaffected by Nemeroth's Chaos sorcery. Fearful that his commander had become tainted by Chaos, his subordinate Leandros made his concerns known to the Inquisition. Inquisitor Thrax, who had arrived on Graia with the Black Templars, took Captain Titus into custody for interrogation and the determination of his purity. The Liberation of Graia took place at a time when Demetrian Titus was the captain of the 2nd Company, solar decades before Cato Sicarius took up the role.Morix Assault (900.M41) - The heavily-defended T'au outpost on Morix Prime is eliminated in a rapid strike by the Ultramarines 4th Company.Six Hour War (913.M41) - Captain Severus Agemman demonstrated why he was captain of the Ultramarines Veteran 1st Company when he led a Strike Force Ultra in the destruction of a substantial T'au garrison in just six solar hours. In a sublime execution of the teachings within the Codex Astartes, Agemman invaded the sun-scorched Desert World of K'ail close to the edge of the Damocles Gulf, where the disputed territories of the Imperium and T'au Empire collide. Though the garrison was well-equipped with Battlesuit and armour support, Agemman's twenty Veterans performed a coordinated strike that crippled the T'au's central defence network. Whilst Stormraven-borne battle-brothers made a series of diversionary attacks on munitions caches around the garrison's perimeter, Agemman personally led a teleport assault directly on the T'au command node previously identified by elements of the 10th Company. Thinking they faced a much larger force, the surviving T'au retreated into the void rather than be destroyed.Darkhold Ambush (921.M41) - Marneus Calgar was ambushed by the Night Lords whilst en route to the Darkhold war zone. The Chapter Master's crippled vessel made planetfall on the sparsely-settled Imperial Feudal World of Barathred. Several hundred Night Lord Chaos Space Marines made landing shortly thereafter, but Calgar rallied the planet's feudal population to defeat them.Great Bastion of Andraxas (922.M41) - Chief Librarian Tigurius led an Ultramarines strike force to rescue a delegation of Tech-priests from the Ork invasion of the world of Andraxas. Within the towering mega-fortress known as the Great Bastion, the Adeptus Mechanicus Tech-priests had unearthed a Force Staff that bore the electoo recognition codes of none other than Malcador the Sigillite. The Ultramarines struck with pinpoint accuracy and great fury, only to find that the Ork forces upon Andraxas had such a high degree of aerial supremacy that they could scramble a dizzying amount of reinforcements to the Great Bastion. Given that the Bastion was the only part of the planet that had not already been subjugated by the Greenskins, the Orks flocked to the fight in impossible numbers. Tigurius and his men were outnumbered fifty-to-one, and were about to commend their souls to the Emperor when the air shimmered and the Legion of the Damned burst into realspace. The slaughter that followed is nothing short of inspirational. Flaming volleys of bolter shells blasted Orks to bloody scraps on every wall and gulley. Tigurius renewed his attack, only to find the morale of the xenos invaders has been devastated by the sudden and inexplicable strike. The Great Bastion was secured and used as a base for the subsequent evacuation of the world's surviving Imperials. The Force Staff of Malcador the Sigillite was recovered and examined by the Mechanicus and then by Tigurius himself, yielding secrets about the Golden Throne's construction and a greater understanding of the sacrifice its master made in the name of the Imperium. It is still in the Chief Librarian's hands to this day.Trenor Uprising (929.M41) - Three dozen Ultramarine Scout Marines, under the expert direction of the famed Sergeant Telion, put down a rebellion against the Imperium on Trenor in less than a solar day.M'kar's Revenge (935.M41) - A Daemonic horde under the direction of the Word Bearers Daemon Prince M'kar the Reborn seized control of the star fort Indomitable in Calth's outer orbit. Under the command of Marneus Calgar, Terminators from the Ultramarines' Veteran 1st Company boarded the star fort. M'kar was slain by the hand of the Lord Macragge, who tore the upstart Daemon Prince limb from limb.Second War for Armageddon (941.M41) - WAAAGH! Ghazghkull descended upon the Imperial Hive World of Armageddon in the Segmentum Solar, initiating the Second War for Armageddon. The Orks were defeated only by the extreme stubbornness of the defenders and the combined might of the Blood Angels, Ultramarines and Salamanders Chapters. Thought dead by his foes, the wily Ork Warlord Ghazghkull Thraka escaped into space.Cleansing of Malbede (963.M41) - The Ultramarines clashed with a T'au expeditionary fleet for control of the cursed planet of Malbede. When the conflict on the surface awakened the Necrons hidden on Malbede, the Ultramarines and the T'au joined forces to defeat the emerging Necrons. In the wake of the battle, Marneus Calgar initiated an Exterminatus action on Malbede, but allowed the T'au to evacuate before the planet and its undying horrors were destroyed.Dark Rain at Vallenin (967.M41) - Despatched to free the enslaved population of the Agri-world of Vallenin from the Drukhari Kabal of Lethal Guile, the Ultramarines' 3rd Company was sorely pressed by the sadistic xenos' grav-craft, until their Hunters deployed to reap a great tally amongst the swift craft.Damnos Incident (974.M41) - The Ultramarines 2nd Company under the command of Captain Cato Sicarius rescued survivors from the doomed world of Damnos, an Imperial Civilised World and Mining World that was also a Necron Tomb World. The Necrons awakened and launched a massive assault upon all life on the planet's surface, while Damnos' Planetary Defence Force and Astra Militarum regiments proved unable to defeat the hideous cybernetic xenos. The Ultramarines made a defiant stand at the planetary capital city of Kellenport, holding the Necrons back as the evacuation of the planet's Imperial population proceeded during what became known as the Damnos Incident. Chief Librarian Tigurius is found wherever the Ultramarines are hardest pressed, shattering the advancing Necrons with the fury of his mind and summoning psychic telekinetic shields to cheat the machine lifeforms of their prey. The actions of Venerable Dreadnought Agrippan are just as heroic, and for three solar hours he holds Kellenport's western gate alone and unaided, obliterating all who oppose him. By the time Kellenport's defenders are driven back to their last bastion of defence, only forty Space Marines and twenty guardsmen remain planetside. Agrippan is lost in these last few solar minutes, his frame pinned between a dozen streams of Gauss Weapons fire. As Thunderhawks speed Tigurius and the last survivors to safety, Agrippan's fusion reactor explodes, obliterating the spaceport and every Necron within it.Skirmish with Hive Fleet Perseus (976.M41) - Hive Fleet Perseus is detected by the Ultramarines in 976.M41. Spearheading an assault, Chapter Master Marneus Calgar was severely mauled, losing all four limbs as well as large areas of body tissue and his left eye. He underwent extreme augmetic surgery and has had most of his missing body parts replaced with bionics.Liberation of Lagan (989.M41) - The Ultramarines 3rd Company liberates the Lagan System from the T'au Empire.Second Tyrannic War and the Battle of Ichar IV (993.M41) - The Ultramarines quash a rebellion on the Industrial World of Ichar IV, only to find themselves at the forefront of a desperate defence against Hive Fleet Kraken. Accompanied by Chaplain Ortan Cassius and Tyrannic War Veterans from the First Tyrannic War, Calgar launches a daring assault that severs the Tyranids' synapse creature control through the Hive Mind, a battle won in no small part due to the fury with which Cassius leads his brothers into the fray. In a replay of history, Marneus Calgar, having narrowly escaped death at the hands of the Swarmlord during their confrontation on Macragge, faces the genetic reincarnation of the same beast on the blood-soaked fields of Ichar IV. This time, however, Calgar triumphs, slaying the beast with his bare hands. However, the Space Marines' victory comes too late to save the planet itself, for the Tyranids had already reduced it to a smoking charnel house of death and destruction. Perhaps worse for the Imperium, the Hive Mind re-absorbed the Swarmlord's consciousness yet again, and having learned from its defeat, the beast's next reincarnation would prove to be more cunning and dangerous than ever before. Elsewhere, the Asuryani Craftworld Iyanden is ravaged by other tendrils of the Kraken. Two Space Marine Chapters -- the Scythes of the Emperor and the Lamenters -- are all but wiped out and hundreds of Imperial worlds are lost to the Tyranids before the incursion is blunted.Taking of Bridge Two-Four (997.M41) - At the Battle of Bridge Two-Four on the planet Thracia, Sergeant Uriel Ventris succeeds Captain Idaeus as the acting commander of the Ultramarines 4th Company. Idaeus passes on his Power Sword, a symbol of his office, then valiantly sacrifices himself against an overwhelming force of Chaos Space Marines in order to capture a vital objective.Third Tyrannic War and the Defence of Tarsis Ultra (997.M41) - Elements of the Ultramarines and Mortifactors Chapters, led by Chaplain Ortan Cassius, make a stand against one spur of the Tyranids' Hive Fleet Leviathan on the world of Tarsis Ultra. The defenders defeat this tendril of the Leviathan with an engineered anti-Tyranid biological plague, but the remainder of Hive Fleet Leviathan rampages on unabated.Second Battle of Damnos (999.M41) - Despite the Inquisition's efforts to suppress all knowledge of the Necrons' reemergence into the galaxy and the end of their Great Sleep, the Imperium's faith in its military supremacy was shaken by the news that spread across the galaxy after 974.M41 that these xenos had overcome both the Astra Militarum and the Ultramarines at Damnos. Eventually, reports of the loss of Damnos made their way to Terra, where both the fabricator-general of the Adeptus Mechanicus and the High Lords of Terra decreed that the Ultramarines must return to Damnos and eradicate the Necron threat once and for all. Twenty-five standard years after the Damnos Incident, in 999.M41, this Imperial order was brought to Macragge by the experienced Deathwatch strike team led by Squad Lazarius. Chapter Master Marneus Calgar was not pleased with the Imperium's decree, for he knew that his 2nd Company had faced only a fraction of the awakened Necrons on Damnos a quarter of a standard century before. Once they returned to Damnos, the Ultramarines would face the entire strength of a Necron Tomb World and risk the deaths of hundreds of the Chapter's Astartes. Yet, Calgar knew that the High Lords of Terra were right and that the Necrons on Damnos must be defeated if the Imperium was ever to know peace in the face of the growing Necron threat. With the record of the Ultramarines stained by the earlier action on Damnos, it was their duty to banish the ghosts of the past. Upon hearing Calgar's announcement that the Ultramarines' 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th Companies, accompanied by elements of the 10th, would return to reclaim Damnos for the Emperor, Cato Sicarius smiled for the first time in decades. It is said that during the preparation for the assault, Sicarius trained so hard that he fought with the fury of a man possessed and even slept in the cage-vault. Before the solar month was out, Calgar's armies and fleets had been assembled and over 500 Space Marines stood ready for war. In addition, Sicarius was granted a Vortex Grenade by the Deathwatch Sergeant Davian Imocles, who was rumoured to be an old friend and former squad mate. The journey to Damnos was a perilous one, with Calgar relying on various ruses and distractions to get his warriors safely to the planet's surface. By the time the Necrons had spotted the true location of the Ultramarine warships, the Astartes fleet was in a position to launch their Drop Pods. The first wave consisted of unmanned variants designed to draw the fire of the Gauss Pylons. The second wave, however, represented the true assault, which brought hundreds of Space Marines as well as a number of vengeful Astra Militarum regiments to the heart of the Necrons' subterranean tomb complex. Their objective was to destroy the pyramidal complexes that controlled the Necron power grid and to do it before the Imperial forces were overwhelmed. However, one factor that they did not account for was the physical incarnation of a C'tan Shard held within a Tesseract Vault. It was determined that this vault was the true source of the Necrons' power and must be neutralised if the Imperial forces were to have any hope of victory. Despite the power brought to bear by the Imperial assault on Damnos, Marneus Calgar felt like a duelist being taken apart by a superior foe in the battle-cage. The xenos' battle logic proved impeccable, with its master intelligence anticipating the Ultramarines' every move and neutralising each tactic they employed. Thanks to an energy shield emitting from the vault, every plasma volley and melta blast employed against the Necron Monoliths dissipated harmlessly or detonated prematurely before it could harm the constructs. Since the xenos had managed to analyze the Ultramarines' battle doctrine, Calgar realised he must attempt a completely unexpected stratagem. Assaulting the ranks of the Necron Immortals, the Chapter Master jumped onto the metallic base of a malfunctioning Gauss Pylon and slowly pushed the war engine's crescent back until its viridian beam hit the energy shield of the floating necropolis. With a blinding flash of light, the energy shield protecting the tomb complex collapsed and the Tesseract Vault was broken wide open to reveal the enraged demigod imprisoned within. A giant cruciform of pure light rose above the Necron army, the remnants of the C'tan's energy cage still crackling around it. Roaring in exultation at its newfound freedom, the booming sound threw Ultramarines and Necrons alike to the icy ground and cracked the planet's crust. Its first victim would be the Necron Overlord, the Undying, which the star god crushed with ease by transforming the earth around his metallic form into an oversized fist. The Overlord phased out of reality, seeking to escape back to his subterranean lair. But deep underground, the surviving members of the Deathwatch's Squad Lazarius had reached their own objective. The Undying teleported back to his cabled sarcophagus right in front of the Deathwatch's eyes. Unfortunately for the Necron, the crack team of Astartes had replaced his revivification engines with Melta Bombs and entropic destabilisers and proceeded to blast the Necron Overlord into atoms. Back on the surface, the xenos reeled from the loss of their leader and the artificially intelligent command programs that had governed their warriors' every action. Meanwhile, the unleashed C'tan lashed out in fury at both its Necron enslavers and the Ultramarines as Captain Sicarius duelled a Flayed Ones lord. After ramming his Power Sword into the powerful Flayed One's torso, Sicarius summoned twenty-five standard years of anger and frustration into a final burst of strength. He unclipped the Vortex Grenade that had been given to him earlier by the Deathwatch and activated the weapon before throwing it at the enraged demigod hovering overhead. The grenade detonated and formed a spiralling orb of nothingness as its unstoppable force sucked the C'tan Shard into the Warp before collapsing and winking out of existence. Sicarius felt a great weight lift in that moment, as he realised both he and the Ultramarines had been redeemed for their original failure on Damnos in the sight of the Emperor. Over the next few solar days, the Imperials eliminated the surviving Necrons with grim efficiency. Empty tomb complexes were collapsed or detonated under the guidance of the Deathwatch and the citizens of Damnos whom Sicarius had rescued solar decades before were restored to the world to reclaim it for their own.Zeist Campaign (999.M41) - Captain Cato Sicarius leads an army to halt the T'au's Fourth Sphere Expansion. An Imperial Crusade later known as the Zeist Campaign, drawn from 30 Space Marine Chapters, drives the T'au back from dozens of Imperial worlds, but is recalled before its work can be completed to deal with the much greater threat of Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade.Invasion of Ultramar (854.999.M41) - In the midst of the oncoming 13th Black Crusade, the Realm of Ultramar comes under renewed assault from the forces of Chaos during the campaign that becomes known as the Invasion of Ultramar. The Daemon Prince M'kar the Reborn, clad in mortal flesh once again within the body of a former Ultramarines Dreadnought, leads the onslaught against the world of Talassar. Other Chaos warlords under the control of the Iron Warriors Warsmith Honsou attack Calth, Espandor and Tarentus, while Quintarn is invaded by the armies of the Bloodborn. Marneus Calgar recalls all Ultramarines forces to defend Ultramar, dispatching a reinforced Battle Company to each threatened planet. Calgar himself accompanies the 2nd Company to defend Talassar, determined to slay M'kar a hundred times over if need be. Calgar once more faces M'kar, this time destroying the Daemon forever with the use of a sacred relic of the Ultramarines dating to the Horus Heresy. During this war, many Ultramarines successors send aid to their beleaguered gene-sires, proving that the bonds of honour between Guilliman's gene-sons remain as strong as ever.Eye of Vengeance (870.999.M41) - In an exemplary display of his abilities, Scout Sergeant Telion single-handedly changes the balance of the war on the world of Quintarn.Ultramar Campaign (999.M41) - Strange events, the appearance of the ancient Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl and a cryptic alliance with a mysterious Aeldari kindred known as the Ynnari conspire to awaken the Ultramarines primarch Roboute Guilliman from his millennia-long slumber in a stasis chamber in the Fortress of Hera on Macragge during the Ultramar Campaign of the 13th Black Crusade. The primarch is immediately embroiled in battle as a Chaos assault by the Black Legion as Abaddon attempts to prevent his return. Guilliman and the Ultramarines successfully throw back the Despoiler's forces even as a more insidious assault by the servants of Nurgle begins to infest Ultramar. Determined to return to the Throneworld despite the instability growing in the Warp, Guilliman departs Macragge with a fleet of supporters to make his way to Terra and stand once more before the Emperor's throne.Terran Crusade (999.M41) - Despite multiple attempts by his brother the Daemon Primarch Magnus the Red of the Thousand Sons Traitor Legion to derail his journey, including a detour into the Maelstrom Warp rift and a battle on the surface of Luna, Roboute Guilliman arrives at the Imperial Palace on Terra with a small remnant of the forces who began the crusade with him. After his first meeting with his father in ten standard millennia, Guilliman declares himself the lord commander of the Imperium and Imperial Regent once more and announces the start of the Indomitus Crusade to stabilise the Imperium and defeat the forces gathering to cast Mankind into the darkness.The Great Rift Opens (ca. 999.M41) - The Warp storm-riven galaxy is cracked asunder by the Great Rift. The Noctis Aeterna sweeps over Ultramar. The last message sent from Macragge to each nearby planet commands it to batten down and look to its own defences.Screams of Hadyn III (Unknown Date.M42) - Responding to broken and horrified astropathic signals from several Astra Militarum regiments emanating from a single system, the Ultramarines strike cruiser Circe's Halo finds it uninhabited. The cries fade.Indomitus Crusade (Unknown Date.M42) - Detachments of Ultramarines forces play a major role in the fleets of the Indomitus Crusade throughout its course. An Ultramarines strike force is known to serve with the crusade's Fleet Primus Battle Group Erastus during the Ispolin Sub-sector Offensive.War of Beasts (001.M42-025.M42) - Ultramarines Chapter Master Marneus Calgar is guided to the world of Vigilus by the prophetic powers of Chief Librarian Varro Tigurius. There he forges a new senate to lead the planet's defence against xenos and Chaos attacks, and rallies the Imperial forces in the face of overwhelming foes. The Imperial forces prove successful in repelling a concerted assault by Abaddon the Despoiler and the Black Legion, who seek to claim Vigilus and put an end to its ability to hold open the Nachmund Gauntlet between the Imperium Nihilus and the Imperium Sanctus.Nemendghast Raid (Unknown Date.M42) - During the War of Beasts, Marneus Calgar ordered Captain Sevastus Acheran to take a force of Vanguard Space Marines designated Strike Force Shadowspear to the Industrial World of Nemendghast to investigate the sudden silence of this strategically vital world for Vigilus' defence. They discovered that the world had been claimed by the Black Legion and was being used to produce Daemon Engines and Possessed Chaos Space Marines for Abaddon the Despoiler's coming invasion of Vigilus. Acheran successfully stopped the infernal production at the cost of the lives of most of the Vanguard Marines under his command and managed to warn Calgar of the Chaos assault to come.Third War for Damnos (Unknown Date.M42) - The Third War for Damnos began when an invasion force of the Necron Szarekhan Dynasty descended upon Damnos during the Era Indomitus. The world sent out a plea for aid once more to the Ultramarines, who at that time were engaged in a number of major conflicts of the era, including the Indomitus Crusade, the Plague Wars and the War of Beasts. With most of their strength utilised elsewhere, the Chapter had few Astartes to spare to help the besieged world. Nonetheless, the Chapter had given too much previously in Damnos' defence to abandon it and a small strike force of Ultramarines and several regiments of the Ultramar Auxilia were sent to aid it. The Chapter knew that the forces that had been deployed to Damnos would be insufficient to defeat the Necrons and so requested aid from their allies in different Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes. Their requests were answered and when the Ultramarines arrived at Damnos they were joined by contingents from several Successor Chapters, including the Iron Hounds, Brazen Consuls and Libators. The combined might of these Adeptus Astartes, however, was not enough to defeat the invading Szarekhan Dynasty, whose forces were numberless. This was due to the undying xenos arriving in their thousands by Tomb Ships and through a Dolmen Gate to ensure they reconquered Damnos. When the Mandeville Point for the Damnos System once again flared as it opened to the Warp, the Ultramarines feared that another foe was about to join the conflict, but instead it marked the arrival of reinforcements sent by the Salamanders and White Scars Chapters. They had received the Ultramarines' request for aid and proceeded to join the battle to retake Damnos once more for the Emperor from the Szarekhan Dynasty.Plague Wars Begin (Unknown Date.M42) - To the galactic north of Ultramar, the followers of the Chaos God Nurgle establish dominion in the Scourge Stars. From this hive of corruption, armies of Nurglish Daemons pour forth, accompanied by the traitorous Death Guard Legion along with Renegades and Nurglite Chaos Cultists beyond count. Three loathsome spearheads push into Ultramar, attacking along a hundred fronts during what is known as the "War of Flies" and bringing with them unnatural pestilence. The defenders of Ultramar fight bravely, but lose ground. Ultramarine Primaris Space Marines of the Ultima Founding arrive from Terra to reinforce their brethren, but they can only slow the attackers.Guilliman Returns to Ultramar (ca. 012.M42) - All across Ultramar, the Imperial defenders are depleted in dozens of ground campaigns, while a Plague Fleet systematically destroys the realm's defence fleet and star fortresses. Guilliman returns from the Indomitus Crusade after over a solar decade of campaigning to stabilise the Imperium Sanctus after the opening of the Great Rift, and his deft and defensive manoeuvres buy time to launch the Spear of Espandor counterattack. The combined plague armies are eventually fought to a standstill amongst the ruins of Iax, before the Death Guard Daemon Primarch Mortarion escapes under cover of a Virus Bomb attack.Into the Darkness (Unknown Date.M42) - In a brief respite following the end of the Plague Wars, Guilliman orders the rebuilding and decontamination of the worlds of Ultramar, as well as the establishing of new procedures for creating further Ultramarines of Primaris Marine stock. It is not long before new crusades call the lord commander of the Imperium away from Ultramar and back out into the dark galaxy.The Vengeance Campaigns (Unknown Date.M42) - The Ultramarines led a coalition of their Successor Chapters and Loyalist Knight Houses across neighbouring star systems. While attempting to free seven worlds from Daemonic enslavement, Chapter Master Marneus Calgar simultaneously masterminded a hit-and-run campaign to break a vast Ork force before it could reach the Forge World of Metalica. Using rapid strike attacks, the Space Marines won hundreds of battles, but only managed to slow the rampaging Greenskin hordes as they focused the majority of their efforts on the more dangerous Daemonic legions. Three of the targeted seven planets are saved, but the bulk of the Tartella System remains in the hands of Daemon overlords.Nachmund Rift War (Unknown Date.M42) - The Nachmund Rift War is an ongoing conflict being waged by the Imperium in the Nachmund Sub-sector. Closely related to the recent battles of the War of Beasts and War of Nightmares on the Sentinel World of Vigilus, while Vigilus itself continues to remain largely in Imperial hands the greater Nachmund Gauntlet finds itself under constant siege by the forces of Chaos. Elements of the Ultramarines served in the conflict.Arks of Omen Campaign, Battle of the Malak (Unknown Date.M42) - The Ultramarines participated in the disastrous battle in the Malak System against the assault of the forces of Chaos led by the Daemon Primarch Angron. Unfortunately, the battle resulted in the destruction of the relic Choral Engine, a psychic beacon which might have acted as a temporary replacement for the Astronomican in the Imperium Nihilus, the world of Malakbael and the loss of most of the Indomitus Crusade Fleet Quartus to a spreading wave of Khorne-inspired Chaos corruption and insane berserker rage.Fourth Tyrannic War (Unknown Date.M42) - The Ultramarines take part in the defence of the Sanctus Line as First Captain Severus Agemman commanded a force of Ultramarines in the Battle of Bastior to defend the Bastior Sub-sector from an assault by Hive Fleet Grendyllus, a tendril of the larger Hive Fleet Leviathan which sought to open a new front against the Imperium after its losses at the Battle of Baal in the relatively undefended western Segmentum Pacificus.Recidious Campaign - The Ultramarines 2nd Company, with the aid of Lieutenant Demetrian Titus who returned to the Chapter from the Deathwatch after being rescued from the Jungle World of Kadaku and forced to cross the Rubicon Primaris, purges the Recidious System of a splinter fleet of Hive Fleet Leviathan. In the course of the campaign an attempt is made by the Thousand Sons Traitor Legion under the command of the Sorcerer Lord Imurah to claim the Warp-based weapon known as Project Aurora that was being developed by the Adeptus Mechanicus on the worlds in the system and use its power to ascend to Daemonhood with the aid of a Tzeentchian Lord of Change. With the arrival of reinforcements led by Chapter Master Marneus Calgar, Titus and his brothers are able to defeat the Thousand Sons during a battle within the Warp itself and destroy the power source of Project Aurora before any lasting damage can be done. |
Ultramarines - Realm of Ultramar: One aspect of the Ultramarines Legion that survived the Second Founding was the close relationship between the Space Marines and the populations of the surrounding planets. During the Great Crusade the worlds around Macragge provided young recruits for the Ultramarines. They also supplied raw materials, armaments and spacecraft.Although the need to recruit from these worlds diminished almost to the vanishing point with the reorganisation of the Legion into Chapters during the Second Founding, the tradition continued. To this day, the Ultramarines recruit not from a single world, but from the whole of their local space. This area around Macragge is called Ultramar, the stellar empire of the Ultramarines.Ultramar is unique amongst the demesnes of the Adeptus Astartes. Where other Chapters rule over a single planet, asteroid or, in some cases, a mobile space fleet or orbital fortress, the Ultramarines have a larger demesne.Before the Horus Heresy the Realm of Ultramar consisted of more than five hundred worlds, and was commonly referred to as "the 500 Worlds of Ultramar" or the somewhat heretical "New Empire". These 500 worlds were all themselves divided into fiefdoms. The largest was the Ultramarines' homeworld of Macragge, with the fiefdoms of the worlds of Saramanth, Konor, Occluda, and Iax all varying in size. Before the Word Bearers' surprise assault on the world of Calth during the Heresy there was talk of Calth gaining its own fiefdom due to its industrial output nearly rivalling that of Macragge before the Traitors destroyed its biosphere.The fiefdoms of Ultramar were ruled by a Tetrarch, who was an Ultramarines captain or Chapter Master chosen for this position by Roboute Guilliman, the primarch of the Ultramarines Legion. The Tetrarch would then choose both a military governor, an Emperor's Champion and his honour guard.After the Horus Heresy, when the Space Marine Legions were broken down into smaller 1000-man Chapters, the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar were divided up, granted political autonomy and many were given over to serve as the Chapter planets of the many Successor Chapters of the Ultramarines.The Ultramarines Chapter kept control of the original centre of Ultramar, a sub-sector consisting of 13 local star systems, each with its own worlds and planetary governments loyal to the Chapter. All the worlds that once comprised the larger Realm of Ultramar share a common cultural heritage with Macragge, so it is not surprising that their styles of architecture, government, and societal traditions are similar.After the Horus Heresy all the worlds of Ultramar benefited from the improving reforms of Roboute Guilliman during the Time of Rebirth and its citizens are disciplined, productive and loyal. As a result, Ultramar is a wealthy stellar empire within the larger Imperium that knows little unrest and no rebellion -- a somewhat unique distinction in the increasingly desperate days of the 41st Millennium.The population lives in sprawling cities, but these cities are surrounded by extensive farmlands and seas that teem with fish. Each of Ultramar's worlds is self-sufficient in raw materials and food. Trade between the planets is active, and each planet has its specialties and delicacies.Each Ultramarian world is balanced as a society and also as an ecosystem -- although composed of primarily Industrial Worlds, Ultramar has none of the nightmarish toxic wastelands that are common phenomena throughout the Human-settled galaxy. It is therefore little wonder that many system governors and planetary lords across the Imperium regard Ultramar with an envious eye.Ultramar is the feudal realm of the Ultramarines within the greater realm of Humanity that is the Imperium of Man. Its worlds do not pay the Imperium's tithes. Instead they contribute directly towards the upkeep of the Ultramarines Chapter. The rulers of the individual worlds of Ultramar are feudal lords in service to the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines. This is why the Ultramarines leader is also the Lord of Ultramar, with all the rights and responsibilities that such a title entails.Just like other worlds in the Imperium, each world of Ultramar raises regiments for its own defence. Most worlds in the Imperium are obliged to provide regiments for the Astra Militarum when required, but Space Marine homeworlds are an exception. In the case of Ultramar, however, the Ultramarines rule so efficiently and are so prosperous that they maintain several hundred regiments ready and willing to join the Astra Militarum when the need arises.As a result, regiments from Ultramar have fought all over the galaxy, often in campaigns alongside the Ultramarines themselves. Each world of Ultramar also provides Space Marine recruits for the Ultramarines Chapter itself. Throughout Ultramar, proud citizens point to public statues of famous Ultramarines who were born to local families. Amongst the older aristocratic dynasties it is a matter of considerable esteem to send recruits to the Ultramarines. For a family to have provided a renowned hero, perhaps even an actual Master of the Chapter, is a great honour that brings considerable fame and status for many generations.The capital of Ultramar is Macragge, a cold and rocky world with large, inhospitable polar regions, though certainly capable of sustaining Human life. It is home to the Fortress of Hera, the Ultramarines' fortress-monastery. Macragge itself is mostly bleak and rocky, with more than three-quarters of its land mass formed from mountainous upland almost entirely devoid of life. The people of Macragge do not live in this inhospitable region, but the fortress-monastery of the Ultramarines is built here upon a craggy peak surrounded by impenetrable mountains.Within this mighty fortress, inside the vast Temple of Corrections, was once the shrine of Primarch Roboute Guilliman himself. This is where his body sat upon a huge throne of ornately-carved marble for more than 10,000 standard years. He was preserved at the moment before death by a stasis field impervious to the decaying effects of time. This was one of the holiest places in the Imperium, and millions came from all over the galaxy to look upon the face of the ancient primarch before his resurrection during the Ultramar Campaign of the 13th Black Crusade.Since Guilliman returned to Ultramar during the Plague Wars he has reestablished the Tetrarchy and commanded the new Tetrarchs to begin the process of restoring Ultramar to its original size of 500 worlds, believing that his decision to shrink the realm after the Second Founding had been an error.Ultramar is located in the galactic southeast of the Eastern Fringe near the galactic rim. The Aeldari Craftworld Iyanden has been sighted in this sector and the expanding T'au Empire is also nearby. Twice Ultramar has stood in the path of a Tyranid hive fleet and the Tyranid threat in the Eastern Fringe remains strong.The other worlds of the original Ultramar Sub-sector are:Calth - Cavern World - Calth is an airless world whose inhabitants live in underground cities where the deadly light of Calth's poisoned blue sun cannot reach them. The caverns of Calth are constructed on such a huge scale, and with such grandeur, that they are as light and airy as any city of Macragge. Calth was once a verdant world whose people lived on its surface until the Word Bearers Traitor Legion launched a massive assault against the Ultramarines early in the Horus Heresy while the XIII Legion was gathering on the world for a joint campaign with the Word Bearers against the Orks. The aftermath of the resulting Battle of Calth led to the destabilistion of Calth's sun and forced the surviving civilians to flee underground. Of all the local worlds, Calth is the most specialised, for although its people grow vast quantities of food in nutrient vats, they prefer to import most of what they eat from the neighbouring system of Iax. Calth is famous for its orbital shipyards, which provide the spacecraft used by the Ultramarines as well as civil and military craft for wider use in the Imperium.Espandor - Frontier World - Most distant from Macragge is the world of Espandor, a planet of extensive forests whose major cities are confined to the westernmost of its two continents. Espandor is a secondary settlement whose people are the descendants of explorers from Macragge and hold considerable pride in their rugged existence. Tradition has it that Espandor was settled during the Age of Strife by merchants blown off-course and subsequently stranded by Warp storms. It is the least densely populated of all the worlds of Ultramar.Iax - Garden World - Iax is sometimes described as the Garden of Ultramar. Its climate and fertility have made it one of the most naturally productive worlds in the Imperium. The inhabitants have harnessed the planet's inherent verdancy, covering its surface with well-ordered farms and cultivated woodlands. There are no large cities on Iax, but many small towns dotted over the landscape, connected together by an efficient system of fast hydroways. The oldest and most urbanised area of Iax is the ancient city of First Landing, whose citadel has withstood the barrages of invaders over the centuries. Legend has it that Guilliman came to Iax many times, and that he treasured the world almost as much as his beloved Macragge. Iax was devastated during the Plague Wars, and suffered a Virus Bomb attack unleashed by Mortarion and the Death Guard.Konor - Forge World - Konor is an Adeptus Mechanicus Forge World. Konor shares a common culture with the rest of Ultramar but technically is independent of the Lord of Ultramar's rule as it owes allegiance instead to the fabricator-general of Mars. However, Konor often relies upon the Ultramarines for its defence and the products of its manufactoria are mostly intended for use by the Chapter.Parmenio - Parmenio is an Ultramarines Training World used largely for increasing the tactical and strategic skills of the Chapter's neophytes.Prandium - Dead World - Prandium once teemed with life. Settlers from Macragge established a colony on the planet after the Horus Heresy. Thanks to a mild climate and fertile, virgin environment, the people of Prandium prospered. The planet soon become the most beautiful jewel of Ultramar, a planet of remarkable prosperity and possessed of an incredibly rich native fauna. Prandium was destroyed by Hive Fleet Behemoth in the First Tyrannic War. The lifeless planet is now reduced to bedrock, its atmosphere blown into space by the ferocity of the Tyranid attack.Talasa Prime - Talasa Prime is an Inquisition Fortress World and a major watch fortress of the Deathwatch.Talassar - Ocean World - Talassar is a planet of storm-tossed seas and rocky islands whose single continent is known as Glaudor, which was the site of a major battle between the Ultramarines and invading Orks immediately after the Horus Heresy.The Triple Worlds (Quintarn, Tarentus and Masali) - Agri-worlds - These small planets form a triple world combination orbiting around a common centre of gravity much like Terra and its moon Luna. Gigantic horticultural cities cover hundreds of square kilometres, capturing precious water in wind traps and storing it in massive underground tanks. The cities of the Three Planets are enclosed by gigantic domes under which flourish forests and gardens as lush as any in Ultramar. |
Ultramarines - Legion Organisation: From its earliest incarnations, the XIII Legion had remained true to the strictures of the Principia Bellicosa, as laid down by the Emperor and His advisors at the beginning of the Great Crusade. The warriors of the Legion were organised into standardised companies of approximately a thousand warriors, then into chapters, each of ten companies.Unlike many of their brother Space Marine Legions, they made little attempt to re-codify the structure or vary the size of individual units. Instead, the War-born enshrined the basic strictures of this system as an honoured tradition of the Legion, one that was to see little modification even in its later years after the rediscovery of Roboute Guilliman, who expanded and elaborated on this structure, seeing in it great virtue, rather than replacing it.Roboute Guilliman also expanded on the XIII Legion's practice of observing how others fared in battle and adopting modified versions of their comrade Legions' tactics where efficacious. This spoke to Guilliman's own predilection for analysis and observation, and in this case what the primarch saw, he studied with a relentless precision, always seeking to distil and improve upon success and exceed the originator's accomplishments by the application of his intelligence and the diligence of his Legion. Such improvement was something he always believed a possibility, an attitude which at times brought the ire of some of Guilliman's peers.The operational doctrines of the XIII Legion favoured tactical diversity and the application of overwhelming force. As a reflection of this, the Legion maintained relatively few tactically specialised companies, instead choosing to spread those units which maintained large stocks of non-standard equipment and munitions evenly throughout the various companies of the Legion.It was intended that every Ultramarines company would be individually capable of meeting the enemies of Mankind on any terrain and in any theatre of war with equal ability and emerge victorious, magnifying this power in combination with the Legion's other chapters almost geometrically. To this end, each chapter featured a proportionate mix of tactical and assault units, armour and artillery as well as gunships and transports.With the sub-division of the massed ranks of the XIII Legion that occurred in the later years of the Great Crusade, reforming it into more individual crusade expeditionary fleets than any other single Legion, the value of the doctrine was quickly re-established and built upon. The Legion attempted to standardise much of its equipment base and supplement it where needed with local patterns, which if not the most potent or advanced of their type required lesser resources to mass-produce, in order to optimally meet the ever-expanding needs of its warriors. This factor itself would have great impact on the latter day development of Space Marine forces beyond the wars of the Horus Heresy.While this doctrine of structured adaptability was to become deeply ingrained within many of the Legion's chapters, there were some notable deviations from this pattern. Some few individual chapters, through long-held preferences or some quirk of supply, maintained notable strengths of non-standard equipment or personnel.The Ultramarines 4th and 22nd Chapters are the most noteworthy example of this, with the 4th, known within the Legion as the "Aurorans", operating roughly five times as many armoured vehicles as a standard chapter, while the 22nd, the so-called "Nemesis" chapter -- long a hold-out of the XIII Legion's Terran-born contingents -- maintained large numbers of Space Marines equipped as Destroyer units, and was one of the few Ultramarines formations to routinely be deployed especially to Exterminatus operations by the Legion.Roboute Guilliman was known to hold something of a distaste for such horrific weapons as fundamentally self-defeating; they destroyed the very ground on which they were used, which was to his doctrines a poor way to conquer or liberate a world. But this having been said, Guilliman held no outright ban upon such weapons of mass destruction's use in his Legion as Vulkan did, realising that in certain cases their use was all that would suffice, and strategically he would not let his Legion be without the ability to deploy phosphex, oxygen destroyers and even carbosilic cascades in extremes.Some few chapters retained and employed variations of the older XIII Legion's sub-structures and heraldry, marking achievements of the Terran first generation of the "War-born" or the disparate origins of their warriors, but these had faded somewhat over the standard years as the body of the Legion's demographic changed to favour the sons of Ultramar. By the closing solar decades of the Great Crusade all Ultramarines, regardless of origin, followed the same detailed organisational scheme, with only minor variations allowing for personal heraldry and honours among its highest echelons.All twenty-five chapters of the Legion -- a vast notional strength of around 250,000 Legionaries by the time of the Horus Heresy -- comprised then a single cohesive force with a fully integrated command forming together for grand strategic assaults or operating flawlessly in smaller detachments to carry out individual actions under this flexible arrangement. |
Ultramarines - Legion Command Hierarchy: The XIII Legion operated under a strict hierarchy where each warrior's responsibilities and duties were known at all times. As primarch and Legion master, Roboute Guilliman had overall command of the Legion, deciding its disposition and strategic objective, as well as taking command of whichever fleet or war zone he was present in.Beneath the primarch were the officers known as chapter masters, each of whom led approximately 10,000 warriors and a contingent of Ultramar's void fleet. Assisting them were the cadre of senior officers and commanders, the Legatii.Each chapter of the Legion contained ten companies each in turn of 1,000 Legiones Astartes commanded by a captain, who was responsible for the tactical deployment, efficiency and training of his warriors.While the captains and chapter masters of the XIII Legion governed the crusading armies of the Legion, it was the parallel system of trenches and their own Legatii who governed the many military institutions of the Realm of Ultramar and were entrusted with its defence.Each Tetrarch was a military dictator of one of the five "king worlds" of Ultramar, and ruled over a sub-sector of that realm.The Tetrarchs were appointed by the primarch, who was himself Lord of Macragge and the core worlds of Ultramar -- though his duties as governor of these worlds often fell on his seneschal in practice, while he led the armies of the Emperor's Imperium on crusade. |
Ultramarines - Lords of Ultramar: The Lords Martial of the domain of Ultramar in 007.M31 included:The Tetrarch CouncilRoboute Guilliman - Lord of Macragge, Primarch of the XIII Legion and Lord of the Five Hundred Worlds of UltramarEikos Lamiad - Tetrarch of KonorTauro Nicodemus - Tetrarch of SaramanthEben Frain - Tetrarch of OccludaStolos Amyntas - Tetrarch of IaxLegion and Senior Commanders of NoteMarius Gage, "First Master" - Chapter Master Primus of the XIII Legion and Master of the 1st ChapterOrfeo Cassandar - Legatus of the Evocatii and Seneschal of ArmaturaValentus Dolor - Legatus of the Vigil Operatii, Provost-Magistratus of UltramarDrakus Gorod - First Legatus of the Invictarus Assembly and Fief-commander of the Primarch's Guard |
Ultramarines - Specialised Ranks and Formations: Alongside the conventional order of battle with which the Ultramarines operated described above, several unique formations stood wholly apart from the traditional structure:Evocatii - The earliest of these non-standard formations to emerge were the Evocatii chapters, first introduced by Lord Commander Gren Vosotho and later reorganised, expanded and renamed by Roboute Guilliman. The Evocatii was the training ground of the XIII Legion; comprising two double-strength chapters composed of both raw recruits from across Ultramar and beyond, as well as a core of war-hardened veterans. Where the late lord commander had once blooded these neophyte warriors at the forefront of his campaigns, Guilliman assigned them first a tour of defensive operations within the borders of Ultramar in conclusion to a rigorous training regime which favoured both practical battle experience and more rigorous and more lengthy cerebral conditioning and memetic implantation than most other Space Marine Legions undertook.Suzerain Invictarus - The most famed and potent of the XIII Legion's elite sub-formations were the Suzerain Invictarus. Known also as the Invictarii, this was a Veteran cadre who served both as a Legion elite and as a pool of warriors who through their actions had singled themselves out for potential future high command, not simply by bravery or skill at arms, but also for displaying a talent in governance, organisation and administration. Their ranks formed the core outside the usual Legion structure devoted in no small part to the control and order of the Ultramarines writ of domain, and increased in number as the Legion itself expanded and the Realm of Ultramar with it. The Invictarii formed the retinues of the five Tetrarchs of Ultramar, and functioned as both military force for the defence of that fiefdom, arbiters of law for the population and an honour guard for their commanding Tetrarch in battle. The individual forces of these Suzerain Invictarus varied in size, with Tetrarch Amyntas maintaining a force of several thousand as feared peacekeepers in the troubled worlds around Iax, while Tetrarch Lamiad had but one hundred in his guard, partly in deference to the potency of the Mechanicum warriors who stood in Konor's defence and did not need aid in doing so. Outside of the Suzerain forces, members of the Invictarii could also be found in limited numbers spread through the Legion's Veteran units and various sub-stratas of command (although by number only a fraction of all Veterans, officers or sergeants ranked amongst them) gaining further battlefield experience and honing their skills by field command.Fulmentarus Terminator Strike Squad - Created by Roboute Guilliman after observing the Iron Warriors Tyrant Siege Terminator squads in battle, the primarch judged the tactic worthy of refinement. He immediately ordered the creation of a number of similar units in his own Legion so that he might study and improve upon Perturabo's innovation, proving himself once again the master of all of the myriad disciplines of war. The warriors of the Fulmentarus are equipped with Cataphractii Pattern Terminator Armour, enhanced to carry an array of targeting systems that make it possible for each to combine their fire in a highly coordinated fashion. When combined with a heavy weapons system such as a Reaper Autocannon, or the Cyclone Missile Launcher first utilised by the Tyrant Siege Terminators, these sensors make the Fulmentarus a fearsome heavy assault unit and one that, were it not for the outbreak of the Horus Heresy, might one day have entered service across the Legiones Astartes.Locutarus Storm Squad - The Locutarus Storm Squads are elite units maintained in small number by the majority of chapters within the Ultramarines Legion, and deployed particularly in vanguard and strike formations. Each warrior of the Locutarus had been selected from the line assault squads having proven themselves the most skilled, courageous and ferocious of their brethren. Where the assault units of many other Legions were known for their savagery or even their outright bloodthirstiness, the Locutarus were universally iron-disciplined and exacting of mien. They practiced the arts of sword and pistol play with precision, their strikes perfectly timed and placed to maximum effect. In battle, Locutarus Storm Squads were often held in reserves, their commanders waiting until the perfect moment to commit them to the battle, unleashed in one single charge to tip the outcome in favour of the Ultramarines. The Locutarus were superbly equipped to fulfil this role, each bearing an artificer-wrought power sword which served as a mark of honour and courage as much as a lethal tool of war.Vigil Operatii - Though rarely spoken of, there existed another agency of the XIII Legion at work within the borders of Ultramar. The Vigil Operatii, an organisation whose roots stretched back to the early days of Ultramar's founding, operated as a shadow arm of the military government of Ultramar, silencing those threats uncovered within the Five Hundred Worlds and holding custodianship over the various defence militias of its standing Human armies. Little is recorded of their internal organisation, save that the warriors who made up their forces were at their core a body of augmented Humans -- those aspirants whose minor deficiencies of mind or body barred them from joining the ranks of the XIII Legion, but not from service to the primarch and the Emperor. This organisation reported to the Invictarus and went where a transhuman Legiones Astartes could not go covertly or easily, and in its manner may have been patterned at least in some part on the similar operatives of certain other Legions of more insidious mien such as the Alpha Legion, although with an assuredly ironclad code of conduct set for their operations. |
Ultramarines - Ultramarines Armoured Forces: The Ultramarines Legion was able to draw upon the wealth and resources of Ultramar and as such possessed extensive strategic reserves of munitions and materiel amassed over many standard years. Not least among these assets was a mighty fleet of warships, many of which were constructed within the Five Hundred Worlds or, in the case of the very heaviest of classes, among the Forge Worlds of Thramas.Of equal importance to the Legion's ongoing operations were the large numbers of armoured vehicles which its chapters were able to call upon, and the Ultramarines were well-versed in the many doctrines of armoured warfare. Each of the Ultramarines Legion's chapters maintained its own stocks of armoured vehicles, allowing individual formations to deploy as befitted tactical and environmental conditions.All of the Legion's chapters possessed large numbers of Rhino armoured carriers, used for the rapid conveyance of massed squads across open terrain, while many maintained sufficient numbers of Land Raiders to prosecute armoured spearhead assaults directly into the teeth of enemy positions. These transport vehicles were bolstered by armoured support echelons of Predator and Sicaran battle tanks, with long range bombardment being supplied by batteries of Whirlwind missile tanks and other patterns of mobile Legion artillery.One body within the Ultramarines Legion maintained especially extensive numbers of armoured vehicles -- the 4th Chapter, known with increasing formality as the "Aurorans". This formation operated a wide range of tanks, but was especially well-known for its expertise in the deployment of super-heavy vehicles including the Fellblade, Falchion and Glaive as well as other, far less well known or prototype classes. |
Ultramarines - Specialist Armoured Vehicles: The Ultramarines Legion's armoured forces included a wide range of vehicle classes, patterns and types, including the very earliest patterns of war machines which were subsequently deployed in large numbers across the entire Legiones Astartes.Some of these had been kept operational by constant field repair and had not received the attentions of the Legion Forge for many solar decades at the time of the Heresy. Conversely, the Legion's forces included vehicles only just beginning to see use, one of which was the Damocles pattern armoured carrier modified by replacing most of its troop carrying capacity with a suite of sophisticated communications equipment.Following the Ultramarines' example, this command and control platform was beginning to enter service across the Legions by the close of the Great Crusade, the sons of Guilliman leading by example and sharing their hard-won battle doctrines with their brother Legions. |
Ultramarines - Ultramarines Legion Fleet: In contrast to the vast numbers of Space Marines in the Ultramarines Legion, the naval assets of Ultramar were more limited. Historically, Roboute Guilliman had made a virtue of close alliance with the Imperialis Armada fleets of the Ultima Segmentum, and relied upon them closely when a particular campaign called for a powerful capital ship contingent to be employed or extensive orbital bombardments to be undertaken.The primarch himself was known to have been observed in spheres of combat other than the impersonal long range clash of voidships many kilometres apart in the deep void, and greatly favoured his own Legion fleet to be optimised for close assault and maintained ships designed for invasion operations for this reason. As a result, the XIII Legion had never operated large numbers of the heaviest capital ships, retaining less than 30-35 of such craft at various points, having lost several in battle over time, notably the Legion's flagship among them during the disaster at the Osiris Cluster.Of those heavy capital ships which remained, most had served since the Legion's inception at the beginning of the Great Crusade and had been heavily refitted over time. Only a handful of the newer models of heavy capital ships had been assigned them since Roboute Guilliman's command tenure over the Legion had begun, although of these notably two were of the extremely powerful Gloriana class.The main body of the Legion's voidcraft fleet was then made up of mid-scaled cruisers and smaller battle barges of various classes, along with substantial numbers of lighter pattern purpose-built strike cruisers, frigates and fast patrol cutters, all which could be produced by the orbital shipyards of worlds across Ultramar.Although this fleet structure did allow the XIII Legion a great deal of flexibility and range in how it deployed its many Space Marine chapters, its combined overall tonnage and firepower ranked the Ultramarines fleet in the mid-tier of the Space Marine Legions, considerably behind the Imperial Fists, for example, and behind the Death Guard in terms of the number of heavy capital units. |
Ultramarines - War Disposition: Prior to the orders to assemble on Calth for the expected Ghaslakh Crusade, the majority of the XIII Legion had been distributed across the southern and eastern sectors of the galaxy in numerous crusade expeditionary fleets.Of these, Guilliman recalled fully twenty chapters to Calth, with fourteen of them rendezvousing at Saturn in the Sol System to take on supplies before making the onward voyage. This meant that somewhere in the region of 200,000 Legiones Astartes -- alongside uncounted mortal auxiliaries of the Imperial Army -- were deployed to Calth.Such was the death toll during the Battle of Calth, that while exact figures are impossible to obtain, it is estimated that no more than 40,000 Ultramarines were to escape Calth's system in the aftermath of the fighting, many of whom were casualties, with an indefinable number trapped beneath the surface of that ruined and radiation-wracked world engaged in the Underworld War.The Ultramarines recorded their casualties at the moment when Guilliman and the remains of the XIII Legion fleet departed Calth at 119,422 Legiones Astartes fallen in combat, with a further 28,392 rendered combat-incapable by battle injuries and trauma. Few of the Ultramarines chapters committed to Calth could muster even a quarter of their nominal strength after that campaign, and some were so decimated that they faced being reorganised into other chapters and their old designations removed from the XIII Legion's order of battle.Most of the injured were evacuated to the surviving voidcraft of the Legion fleet and swiftly returned to combat duties in the crisis that was unfolding across Ultramar, a crisis that forced Guilliman to order the prioritisation of military assets over the stranded civilians of Calth in the brief evacuation effort. Almost 40,000 Ultramarines, both wounded and combat-ready, were forced to remain on Calth, some as volunteers, set to the protection of those civilians who could not be evacuated, and others due to the brutal dictates of circumstance.Of the forces of the Excertus Imperialis, the Imperial Army, details are more vague, but it seems likely that at least half a million men-under-arms perished during the fighting, alongside the entire fighting complement of the Legio Praesagius.Of those Ultramarines chapters that were not recalled for the Ghaslakh Crusade, the following details are known: The 7th Chapter was embarked on a costly campaign sweeping the Eastern Fringe of a splintered Khrave infestation that threatened to overwhelm Imperial colonies established in the region and could not be spared for the muster, while the 10th Chapter was scattered across the north-eastern limits of Imperial expansion and was simply too far away to have been considered for recall.The 24th and 25th Chapters, elements of the Evocatii, alongside the 19th Chapter, were dispersed across the most important worlds of Ultramar to remain as Guilliman led the bulk of his Legion to war, unaware of the coming storm that was to follow, but spared at least initially from its ravages.Alongside a great many bonded voidships of the Imperialis Armada, and hundreds of military and Mechanicum transport vessels, the bulk of the Ultramarines fleet was at Calth for the muster, and caught ill-prepared for the Traitors' attack and suffered savagely for it.Many of the Ultramarines capital and cruiser class voidcraft were hammered into burning hulks, were simply missing or were sorely damaged and in need of repair. This state of affairs left the Legion, and Ultramar, dependent primarily on smaller voidcraft for their defence and strategic transport, and military ship-building became a priority for those worlds which were left able to do so.Guilliman sought to improve his position by adding to his few remaining heavy warships (a handful had not been present at the muster and so were spared the ambush), with additional warships appropriated from the Imperialis Armada if they were available and modified for Space Marine use. Where possible Guilliman made capturing enemy warships by boarding action a priority. The rapidity and efficiency with which this was done was nothing short of phenomenal and would have great import on the battles of the Horus Heresy to come. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.