Iben Purge

Void Paladins armorial.

The **Iben Purge** was the lamentable conflict that occurred to the Void Paladins Space Marine Chapter when they began delving too much into the forbidden knowledge in regards to the secular, atheistic philosophy known as the Imperial Truth that was once espoused by the Emperor and his forces during the Great Crusade era. Unwilling to let an upstart Adeptus Astartes Chapter learn the truth and spread lies about the Imperial Cult, the Ecclesiarchy and their allies in the Ordo Hereticus, launched a vicious pre-emptive strike upon the Void Paladins Chapter Homeworld of Iben, to silence them. The few remaining survivors fled the destruction of their homeworld and were later declared renegades *in absentia*.

## Background

### Revelations of Heresy

After several millennia of crusading for the Imperium, in the early 700s M36 the bulk of the Void Paladins found itself bogged down in a war of attrition against Aeldari forces on the backwater world of Putamn. Their Chapter Master of the time, Abba Milaro, was subsequently injured during the fighting and was seemingly taken by enemy forces. In fact he had been saved by them, and when he had mostly recovered their Farseer commander showed him a psychic vision that flashed to hundreds of moments, dating all the way back to before the Horus Heresy. Abba saw events such as when the Word Bearers where humbled on the world of Khur and forced to kneel by the Emperor for worshiping him, and another moment when the Master of Mankind was speaking to the last Terran holy man, Uriah Olathaire, about His vision of the Imperial Truth, as well as many other moments forgotten or suppressed over time. When he finally came back to reality, the Aeldari brokered a ceasefire with the Chapter Master and the other Aeldari forces and departed from the world. Once the planet was safe and the Chapter Master had returned to his own flagship, Abba called the entirety of his crusading forces across the galaxy to come to Iben as soon as they tactically could. When they all gathered at their Fortress-Monastery on Iben, he laid out the visions he had seen and endeavoured to discover why, at least, had the Emperor's original vision of the Imperial Truth had been altered. Abba planned to travel to Terra after visiting Macragge for council.

### The Purge

This fateful decision caused the Inquisition and the Ecclesiarchy itself to send a large strike force and attempt to silence them before he could reach Macragge, but instead they were cught entering the system and sparked a small war with the Void Paladins upon the surface of Iben as well as its orbit. The local population of Ibeni was utterly devoted to the Astartes and thus fought hard to protect them from what they saw as traitorous forces of the Inquisition. Millions of Ibeni died in the large scale bombing campaign against the few large cities on the planet. Most of the Imperial force is wiped out in the ensuing battle but most of its inner core escapes when the naval battle turns to the Paladins' favor. The chapter itself lost over half their number, a third of their fleet, their fortress-monastery, and most of the Ibeni population was wiped out. After this Abba decided that he had to protect the remaining Ibeni and made the decision to defect the Imperium to take them to a new home. Entrenched Imperial positions still on the planet were left alone during the defection so as to not provoke them and any prisoners were locked in a barracks with supplies and a vox. Afterwards the Inquisition used virus bombs to kill any Astartes and Ibeni that stayed behind, this also claims the lives of most of the surviving remnants of the disastrous first assault who had been assumed butchered in its aftermath. Currently the planet is a frozen deathworld with little atmosphere left but is used as a covert Armory world by the Inquisition.