Celestial Heralds

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## Celestial Heralds

Emblem of the Celestial Heralds Chapter

Celestial Heralds Primaris Intercessor of the 4th Company, 6th Battleline Squad.

## Space Marine Chapter

### **Allegiance**

Imperium of Man
(*Fedelitas Constantus*)

### **Allies**

Zhonghua Astra Militarum Regiments, Great Purity Government in Huaguo Subsector

### Successor Chapter(s)

None

The **Celestial Heralds** are a Loyalist Successor Space Marine Chapter created during the 15th Founding from the proud and noble lineage of the White Scars. The history and character of the Celestial Heralds is inseparable from the sub-sector they call home and have defended for the past five millennia.

The Huaguo Sub-Sector has a long and proud history of culture and productivity under the Imperium of Man. Though obscured by warp storms for an extended period, when they made their first contact in a centuries following the opening of the Cicatrix Maledictum, Terra came to realize that Huaguo sub-sector was reeling from blows it may never be able to recover from.

Rebellious elements of every stripe have begun to pick apart the once peaceful region, with one having been so successful they even forced the sub-sector's Great Purity government into signing a treaty handing over worlds and establishing heretical embassies on loyalist planets. The Tau empire has taken advantage of the sub-sector's weakness to employ both trickery and violence in taking a whole swathe of northern mining worlds and are now worryingly close to the capitol hiveworld, Jingxing.

But worst of all is the decadent decay that has struck at the very highest levels of the sub-sector. The civilian government is run by a group known as the Eunuchs, once able administrators who have now devolved into almost comically nepotistic and corrupt bureaucrats. Compounding the issue, the chapter master of the Celestial Heralds is deeply involved with these Eunuchs and through personal loyalty, political blindness, and a complete loss of touch with the situation in his old age, has allowed his control of the situation to completely deteriorate.

Reinforcements and Primaris Space Marine upgrades were sent to the sub-sector as soon as contact was made, but further assistance has since been put on hold. It is as yet unclear whether the Huaguo Sub-Sector should be considered fully loyal, or if measures should be implemented. The High Lords of Terra have placed the matter on their docket for consideration with high priority, and we expect a decree on the topic in only a few more centuries.

## Chapter History

### Founding and Early History (M36)

#### Chapter Master Aisin Gioro (Late M36)

The Huaguo sub-sector has a history stretching far back into the mists of the Dark Age of Technology, but the genesis of the current situation begins in M36. With the fifteenth founding, the situation around the galaxy was reviewed by Terran High Command, and places requiring assistance had astartes chapters founded to provide it. The Huaguo and neighboring Panoy sub-sectors had both been completely consumed by a chaos rebellion, led by the Huaguo sector governor, Lord Yongning. And so three chapters were founded and dispatched to pacify the two sectors. From the sons of Dorn were born the Earthscorchers, and from the sons of the Khan were born the Celestial Herald and Xiongnu chapters.

The Earthscorchers and Xiongnu headed first to Panoy sub-sector and cleansed the once populous region in fire and blood, while the Celestial Heralds came first to Huaguo. There they quickly discovered that this had been no popular uprising, but one lead by the decadent leadership of the sub-sector, with the sector governor himself sitting at the head of a chaos cult that abused the regular citizens, most of whom still retained their piety towards the true Emperor. The Celestial Heralds were sons of Jaghatai Khan, descendants of the White Scars Legion, and Aisin Gioro, the first chapter master, saw how they could use their speed to cleanly excise this chaos cult from the region.

In a brilliant maneuver still studied by the chapter to this day, Aisin Gioro deployed high velocity kill teams to all twenty eight major hive worlds in the sub-sector, and at the exact same moment across the system each dropped hard into the palace, struck precisely the lead administrators and chaos agents in each senior administration, and occupied the planetary governance offices, declaring themselves interim rulers of the system. So quick was the changeover that many high ranking cultists believed it to be a scurrilous rumor until the purge reached them personally.

The people, who had labored under chaotic overlords for 150 years, only remembered the quietest tales of the Emperor who had once protected them, and their new superhuman overlords brought those secret stories to life in the heart of each loyal man and woman of the sub-sector. For ten years, those who had evil in their hearts lived in fear until they were cut down by the Celestial Herald Astartes interim governors, while those with innocence and loyalty in their hearts felt the first true joy to ever shine upon their life. Those who caught a glimpse of these brightly armored giants as they sped across world after world repeated and magnified the stories until they were angels from the long mythic Emperor, angels who had come to rule over the Zhonghua and bring the sub-sector to a state of perpetual harmony. And the man who stood at the top of these angels, the brilliant and powerful chapter master Aisin Gioro, well, if he wasn't the Emperor himself, something vehemently denied by the angels, then surely he was an emanation of His might and deliverance.

The surgical purges of the old leadership ended after a decade. They weren't finished, and given the nature of chaos probably never would be, but at this point a new threat arose. Warp storms were not uncommon in this sub-sector, often isolating it from the wider Imperium for centuries at a time, but just as the storms became impenetrable, out popped the ragged fleet of the Xiongnu Chapter. They weren't clear on the specifics, but the cleansing of the neighboring sub-sector, through fire and blood rather than wisdom and surgical strikes, had cost them nearly a hundred battle brothers and left their ships and armor battlescarred.

The Xiongnu sent a message upon arrival, friendly in tone though weary as well, asking for a situation report. They then sent a message the following day, announcing that the Celestial Heralds chapter was heretical, had disobeyed its orders from the Emperor, and declaring the initiation of mass purgation throughout the sub-sector, including the fallen chapter. They then severed communications and never again spoke to anyone outside their chapter.

The fire and death that followed the Xiongnu's arrival would cause the word Xiongnu to become synonymous with demon in the local language. Before anyone knew what hit them, the lightning fast sons of the Khan had decimated three dozen worlds on the western edge and were pushing hard towards the central agri-worlds. The Celestial Heralds, meanwhile, were scattered across a hundred systems, and with their force so dispersed, even harassment and delaying tactics were too costly against their brother chapter.

Aisin Gioro faced a strategic and tactical challenge. The enemy knew thier playbook and had the advantage of initiative and ferocity. But the last ten years had not seen the chapter master focused exclusively on traitor hunting. Hoping to rebuild the government that he had uprooted, Aisin had studied the great political theorists of the Ultramarines, with their millennia of experience integrated into the 500 worlds of Ultramar, as well as those of the long civilized Zhonghua people. He realized that he would only be able to defeat this threat by employing the advantages unique to the Huaguo sub-sector- manpower and organization.

The local PDFs had been corrupted into chaos militias and been disbanded almost immediately, but the armories were still full of imperial guard standard equipment and the planets were full of recruits eager to defend their newly liberated sub-sector from a threat that was never clearly explained to the masses. The only thing missing was leadership, and so the Celestial Herald squads on each planet took command at Aisin Gioro's order, forming impromptu regiments around the core of each space marine squad. Ships were requisitioned and bureaucrats re-tasked to make it all work out, and one month and one hundred and twenty five burnt planets later, the 1st Zhonghua Provisional Regiment was assembled at strategic locations along the fanatic loyalists' path.

Each battle in the Xiongnu's crusade went much the same as the others. Deploying virtually unlimited hordes of newly raised guardsmen, enough that their sheer bulk came to act as a terrain feature restricting the enemy's movements, and dropping saturation bombardments along the enemy's path from ancient and poorly maintained Basilisks, the few Celestial Herald space marines attached to each regiment, all mounted on bikes, only had to herd the enemy forces in a direction of superior forces. If the Celestial Herald's initial shots drew the enemy forward in a killing rage, there was an ambush they could be pulled to, and if it pushed them back the Xiongnu could be herded into another great bulk of guardsmen. With artillery dropping mountains worth of ammunition on them, standing still was never an option even if the Xiongnu had been inclined to try. While the Celestial Heralds may have been outnumbered in each engagement, purely in terms of Astartes, they were merely the bait while the killing blows were struck by the guardsmen defending their homeworlds, a fact played up in later propaganda. Indeed, chapter records show that not a single Xiongnu Astartes was slain by anyone from Celestial Heralds, and the only man who still survives from the initial founding, the venerable dreadnought Sun Zhanglao, refuses to state otherwise.

Whoever struck the final blow, the Xiongnu chapter was wiped out to a man only fifteen years after their maiden deployment by a chapter of fellow loyalists. Though this weighed heavily on the hearts of the Celestial Heralds, the Zhonghua people celebrated. The people of the sub-sector had secured their freedom from what they thought were warp-spawn, and kept the purges from reaching into any major hive worlds. The people now turned to their new saviors for leadership, and hoping to erase the stain of what he had ordered done, Aisin Gioro took up informal leadership of the sector as the Representative of the Emperor. Aisin's reforms were sweeping, altering the civilian government, properly reforming the sub-sector's imperial guard regiments, and formalizing the system of integration between the squads of Celestial Heralds chapter, the Astra Militarum regiments, and the planetary governors.

All this was accompanied by propaganda, something Aisin had a particular knack for. While the people needed no help in realizing who were the good guys and who were the bad, by carefully controlling the messages that went out to the planets, he reinforced the people's belief in the sanctity of the Adeptus Astartes, and through them the Emperor. He noted that anyone beneath the Emperor could be corrupted, and used this line as an excuse to replace the once monarchical planetary governorship with a council of highly trained and chemically castrated bureaucrats. This Ministry of Eunuchs ruled over planetary eunuch councils and oversaw the administration of the sub-sector with professionalism and even-handedness. While the chapter master himself had no formal role in this government, everyone knew that he carried a veto over any plans that might disrupt the harmony of the sub-sector, and more importantly stood watch over the administrators to guard against corrosive factionalism and to assassinate any who stepped off the path of the Emperor's Light. This new, purified government form came to be known as The Purity, and as time went on and multiple generations of Eunuchs legislated impartially under Aisin's watchful eye, the people came to call their government the Great Purity.

A century of this had passed when the warpstorms that had isolated the sector abated, and as M37 dawned, the very first contact that Holy Terra recieved from Huaguo sub-sector was a shipment of one hundred years of back taxes, four imperial guard regiments, and a request for an ecclesiarch to come rule over a shrine world newly established to renew the Zhonghua people's bond with the Holy Emperor. Very few questions were asked, and the claim that the Xiongnu had fallen to chaos was accepted without investigation.

### Middle Period (M37-M40)

The next three millennia saw seven chapter masters come and go, a Necron awakening, Commorite raids, Ork incursions, a peculiar incident involving Ad Mech and Harlequins that nearly blew up a hive world, and the persistent warpstorms that would cut off space lanes and bring hordes of demons and heretics. There is no downplaying each of these crises, but the Great Purity government under the close supervision of the Celestial Heralds always stayed on top of Imperial tithes, delivering on time whenever the warp lanes were open and paid back logs promptly after disruptions. This success was blamed principally on good governance, and that in turn was blamed on the vigilant watch the chapter masters of the Adeptus Astartes kept over the Eunuchs.

#### Drukhari Raids (Early to Mid M37)

With the end of the Xiongnu crusade, the Celestial Heralds returned to their project of clearing chaos out of the planetary governments of the sub-sector. However, it soon became apparent that during the period of chaos rule, another threat had almost invisibly been looming over the Zhonghua people. People vanishing in the dead of night, stolen away by fast moving hovercraft. It took years for enough reliable images to trickle back to the fortress monastery, but eventually they were identified as a class of eldar pirate, hauling away the loyal people of the Imperium to dark fates on their unknown home world.

Aisin Gioro pulled the first and second companies together on the battle barge Zuidabao, but the enemy was elusive. Nothing strong enough to try and engage the pirates ever saw even a hint of them. On defenseless planets they could appear without warning and be gone before the alert signal was even transmitted. Defenseless transports would be attacked, but never well guarded ones. It was two Celestial Heralds from 3rd squad, 7thcompany that first made direct contact. It was later assumed that the eldar simply hadn't known that the Celestial Heralds were there, but the two astartes had the good sense to disable the engines on the xenos transport right away. A number of smaller escort vehicles escaped, but without slaves in tow, and leaving behind the bodies of numerous fallen eldar.

Immediately Aisin Gioro saw that his previous dispersal of the chapter was not, in this case, a strategic liability. Rather, it was their best chance to defend isolated worlds and settlements from the dark eldar. Each individual astartes had a small enough footprint to be impossible for the raiders to detect in advance, but was also hard enough defensively to reliably defend the immediate area from small raiding parties. Larger raiding parties could be detected and engaged by the 2nd chapter and the battle barge Zuidabao. And by parading the corpses of aliens taken in local defensive actions by the Celestial Heralds, the people still recovering from generations of chaos overlords could see clearly the power and divine righteousness of their new protectors.

The raids continued for hundreds of years. Sometimes they would hit undefended towns, and sometimes the raiders would managed to take down the Celestial Herald they engaged with. But the space marines won more battles than they lost, and with each victory the people's faith in them grew. The void became safer for unarmed travelers, and shipping volumes grew steadily. The raiders adapted, changing tactics and composition continuously, but Aisin Gioro was able to keep up with them by collating the data collected by his thousand scattered Celestial Heralds with his genhanced intellect.

The temporary situation of individual astartes watching over worlds ruled by semi-independent eunuch councils was gradually turned into the new permanent governing structure. The councils remitted taxes to the sub-sector, but maintained local control in most matters, with the council's decision nominally audited by the garrisoned Celestial Herald. Even at this early stage, though, very few of Aisin Gioro's battle brothers shared his vision, and while they made attempts to match his efforts at governing, they did manage to root out the last traces of chaos corruption and put up a good fight against the eldar slavers.

Despite the efforts of the 2nd Company to hunt down the source of the xenos slavers, no breakthrough was ever made during Aisin Gioro's lifetime. In 511.M37, an unusually massive eldar fleet was spotted, and the Zuidabao, along with elements of the Imperial Navy, engaged in close range void combat. The full strength of 1st and 2nd companies were aboard the battle barge when the eldar attempted a boarding action on the astartes battle barge. The enemy boarding was spearheaded by elites, xenos on a level not yet seen in the petty raids, and despite two companies of Celestial Heralds, the battle in the corridors of Zuidabao was hard fought. The space marines took less than 30 casualties, but as they swept the ship in the aftermath they found to their horror that Chapter Master Aisin Gioro was one of them, bisected by a massive eldar Klaive sword in what the security pict-feeds later revealed to have been a furious duel between two expert warriors. The dark eldar who had cut down the chapter master had later been clipped from behind, a lucky shot from a chapter serf with a shotgun that had finished off the injured warrior as he made his retreat.

With Aisin Gioro's death, control of the chapter, and with it effective control of the sub-sector, passed smoothly to his designated successor, the 8th company captain Shunzhi. Generally regarded as a levelheaded and paternal figure, the death of his beloved predecessor lit a fire in his soul and while little changed directly as a result of the new chapter master, everyone could feel a strengthened drive to find some material way to hurt the slavers who had given them so much trouble.

#### Assault on Maiden World Fantian (620.M37)

The world designated Fantian was a natural paradise. And yet, despite attempt after attempt to colonize it, it still remained unconquered. It had gained a reputation as a haunted world in the public imagination, but it wasn't until a failed expedition in the middle of M37 that the new Celestial Heralds chapter master Shunzhi began to suspect that these ghosts were actually the eldar who had been raiding Huaguo sub-sector. Intensive scanning was barely able to detect anything intelligent on the surface, but knowing what they were looking for the Imperials were finally able to trace the few life signs to a sizable yet primitive colony of xenos. There could be no mistake, this was the same race that had been raiding human colonies for millennia, and if the aesthetic of these villagers seemed a bit different from the pirates, well Space Marines looked different from human civilians as well.

The Guard elements that went down to the world first were well briefed, but it was judged that their superstitious fear would be more useful than overconfidence, and so they were told little about their foe. Their job was only to support in this battle, for the Celestial Heralds had gathered in force for the first time since their maiden crusade. Nine hundred and eighty super human warriors dropped in the only full chapter operation in the history of the Celestial Heralds. They knew it was a trap, the wily eldar had surely detected the human forces as soon as they had landed, but Shunzhi hoped that against a fragile foe, speed and ceramite would manage to blast through whatever the enemy had planned.

And it worked. The Aeldari village was well defended with a variety of conventional weaponry and traps, and they also had some sort of previously undetected giant lizard species aiding them. But the chapter master had put in plenty of margin for the unexpected, and the village was small enough that no amount of preparation could have readied them to face the full might of a space marine chapter dripping hard into their midst. Celestial Herald firepower was maximal and their casualties were minimal, less that two squads lost in the furious six minute assault.

At the same signal that launched the Celestial Heralds in their drop pods, the guardsmen surrounding the xenos village burned a ring around it, creating a dead zone impossible to cross without being spotted and gunned down. A few stragglers tried it, but within days the xenocide was declared complete. A triumph was declared on the capitol world of Jingxing that was broadcast around the sub-sector, and for the first time in millennia, Huaguo sub-sector was wholly clear of threats. The Celestial Heralds had freed the Zhonghua people, and religious fervor reached an all time high.

The monitoring stations remained on alert, but as far as the Imperials were concerned, the eldar homeworld in the region had been annihilated, and thus the subsequent lack of eldar raiders was no surprise. If they had known the difference between Commorite and Exodite eldar, the sudden disappearance of the former would have been a dire portent. But then again, if they could tell the two apart, they wouldn't have attacked an Exodite world hunting the Dark Eldar.

#### Biel-Tan Retribution Strike (633.M37)

(Certain historical records still being transferred from the data vaults)

### Recent History (M41-Present)

#### The Rise of Chapter Master Bimawen (412.M41)

The modern phase of the chapter begins with the acession of chapter master Bimawen circa 400.M41. Under his predecessor Puyi, the growing politicization of the chapter master position reached its logical conclusion, with Puyi appearing before his chapter only for the most special occasions every decade or two, leaving the company commanders completely unsupervised. The Eunuchs, despite their condition, were now the sponsors of powerful families who controlled the government across generations. Efficiency was unimpaired, and prosperity remained general, but classes began to stratify and low level decay had begun to infest the impoverished classes. Puyi had spent his life with generations of these Eunuchs, and some among his chapter whispered that he considered himself part of the Great Families more than the Astartes Brotherhood.

The Eunuchs greatest coup was getting one of their own, a nephew of one of the most powerful administrators, not only through the profoundly difficult transition into becoming Astartes, but also into the personal care of chapter master Puyi. Taking the name Bimawen after his transition was complete, meaning Master of the Horses, the young space marine was trained rigorously, but separately from his brothers, under the watchful tutelage of Puyi. Bimawen was never assigned to a scout squad, nor did he do time in the tenth company. When he wasn't training, often before an audience of fascinated courtiers, he was navigating the political world he had been born into. So close were the ties that he maintained with the ruling families that he arranged the marriages of his nieces while still in training, and would later serve as matchmaker for his extended family, keeping the incestuous politics of the Great Families in balance. His brothers in the chapter may have had doubts about his military competence, but none doubted that he was an appropriate successor to what had become a deeply political position.

When chapter master Puyi fell in combat defending Sha'anxing system from a dark eldar raid, Bimawen celebrated his accession to chapter master, with all the civilian authority that entailed, with a massive, public coronation. All thousand battle brothers of the Celestial Heralds were present in spectacular polished armor of light yellow, blue, and white, the first time Bimawen had actually seen most of his chapter in person. Each Astra Militarum regiment assigned to the sub-sector paraded down the wide central corridor of the capitol hive before a crushing joyous throng of humanity. And as Bimawen's gauntlets clasped the master crafted power sword that had been passed down since Aisin Gioro, he stood from his throne. Addressing the uncounted trillions watching both in person and through voxcast images, he proclaimed, "For the Emperor!". He was greeted by the cheers of ten billion voices, a literally deafening roar which permanently damaged the hearing of a generation of children on Jingxing hive. When the roar had subsided, he turned to his chapter, removing his helmet and ordering the thousand astartes standing at attention to remove theirs as well. As they obeyed, the crowd fell silent in awe. They knew, in theory, what was under those helmets, but seeing the human faces of a thousand of the Emperor's avenging angels, and their new effective monarch's, inspired religious awe in the Zhonghua people who had lived their entire lives under the mighty shadows of their protectors. For over a thousand years before this, there had been a general cult reverence of the Celestial Herald warriors, but now they not only revealed their faces, but habitually operated without them, each man of the thousand attracted his own cult following, with fanatic devotees recording stats and deeds of each man, an army of remembrancers trailing each brother as much as possible.

The reactions of the battle brothers to this new development was mixed to say the least, but the truth is that none of them were strangers to being around humans, and the most irked were soon mollified upon discovering that their new, individually exalted status caused many to keep even more distance from them than normal. And the order was obeyed universally, since though Bimawen had yet to truly prove himself in the role, every Celestial Herald had been drawn from the Zhonghua people for thousands of years, and they each revered the role of chapter master as profoundly as the ordinary civilians, even if they had a slightly different relationship to him.

#### The Jingxing Popular Front (415.M41)

It wasn't long before Bimawen's first crisis. He was sitting in the Eunuch council chamber, conferring as usual, when the entire planet shook. A servitor entered, bowed, and reported that an Ork rok had materialized from warp space immediately above the planet and slammed into the flatlands south of Jingxing hive. Flipping the edict in his hand upside down, Bimawen sketched out a plan of action on the back side of the legislation and handed it to his Eunuchs without a word. He activated the citywide voxcaster and walked out of the council chambers at the upper spire level and began to walk down the stairs, talking all the while.

No one was conscripted that day. Chapter Master Bimawen, the divine emblem of the Holy Emperor on Terra, simply asked everyone he saw in the hive to please run south and follow the instructions they received there. Floor by floor, he repeated his message, appearing personally before those lucky enough to be in his path, with his by now familiar voice echoing across the hab blocks. "To the south!", he repeated, and four hours later he found himself in the deepest underhives of Jingxing, filthy places where the corroded metal matched the corroded hearts of the gangers who rotted the place out. But even here, his even and regal tones drove the scum of the Zhonghua out to the surface, with crude sluggers and illegal laspistols in hand. Eight hours after the rokk had landed, not a single living human of the 26 billion hivers remained inside the city. All had been driven by faith and devotion to follow the Chapter Master's request. All except the eunuchs, who politely exempted themselves from onerous physical duties.

By the time Bimawen stepped out of the city and mounted his blue and gold bike, a seventy kilometer line was forming, a mass of billions of humans. Only the first few rows were handed guns, but the entire mob of men, women, and children alike were ready do whatever the sacred chapter master asked of them in defense of their homeworld. It took Bimawen an hour to reach one end of the line on his bike, then another four hours to bike across the entire front of the 70 kilometer line before men galvanized by his presence. The civilians at the front of the mob had been given their weapons and orders, and with Bimawen's ride they had been given their inspiration as well, and so the chapter master rode off to war, leaving the civilians behind.

Three squads of first company had been in at the fortress monastery deep within the capitol hive when the deployment call had sounded, and on their bikes they had reached the ork rokk much faster than the herd of civilians. Long experience had proven that the first seventy two hours were critical in responding to an ork incursion. Striking while they were still disoriented and damaged from the impact of landing and before the newly released spores had a chance to grow into new orks could make the difference between fighting a battle and fighting a campaign. Despite the relative weakness of the freshly impacted rok, three biker squads was far from enough to put this threat down by themselves, even with the chapter master now riding alongside them.

Rather, their job was simply to harass. The fourth, eighth, and ninth squads of 1st company killed orks when they could, mostly with chainblades to preserve ammunition, but their main task was to prevent the recovering horde from organizing. As bosses began to present themselves, the bikers zoomed in to pick them off while they were still small, then sped away far faster than anyone on foot could hope to catch them. Those with Meltas did the same, bombing mek workshops as they sprung up, then pulling out in a flash, always fleeing north to draw the horde towards the mass of civilians. But each biker knew they were only playing for time. They could only catch the targets on the edges of the budding ork society, and in the middle the constant ork infighting was building a series of more massive warleaders who would be emerging soon to challenge the capitol world. Bimawen took heads that day, and the day after, since the bikers drove relentlessly for sixty hours straight before being relieved, never once pausing, never once letting the orks get a clean shot off.

While their noble guardians were buying time for their world, the people of Jingxing walked. An array of servitors guided them, bending the front line in an arc, keeping the closest civilian never nearer than 35 kilometers from the epicenter of the ork invasion. Even civilians untrained in martial strategy could start now to see the outlines of the chapter master's plan as they saw themselves forming a huge encirclement around the orks, with five rows of armed humans acting as an unbroken fence of lasfire to contain the invasion. Few among them were very good shots, but with this many lasbeams and such a simple formation, the people began to gain confidence that the kilometers before them would be so saturated with death that no ork could dare hope to approach.

Naturally, orks being orks, some stragglers did approach. There were a mere handful of guardsmen compared to the billions of civilians surrounding them, but when the order was given, or even when a likely smudge was spotted on the horizon, a blinding red blaze of fire spread down the line for as far as anyone could see. One man's shot triggered his neighbor to shoot, whether he could see anything or not, and the sickly smell of ionized air would send those behind into coughing fits. Confidence increased and the first grumbled complaints about this enterprise soon turned to proud boasts that humanity could accomplish anything against the weak and vile greenskins.

At sixty hours the first relief arrived. Forces both Marine and Guard came into low orbit from the moon of Jingxing, Tianyue. The guard was shuttled down to participate in the encirclement and relieve the exhausted though still enthusiastic civilians. But it was the Astartes landing that proved to be a mistake. Perhaps it was due to Bimawen's lack of practical experience against Orks, and perhaps it was the sort of over-agression any space marine could fall victim to, but the drop pod landing zones were sighted in the very middle of the slowly growing ork horde that now swarmed around their cooling rok like a green tide. The blast of fifteen iron meteors launched orky bits for kilometers and out of the craters sped three more squads of elite first company bikers, speeding out through thin spots in the ork horde that had been cunningly created by Bimawen and the squads already on the ground. They left behind a trail of blood, blasted bodies, and orkish rage.

To the invading orks, this drop pod landing was a call to action, the ringing of the bell to open hostilities. Whereas Bimawen's previous raids had left the orks more confused than anything and done little practical damage, this solid blow was a clear statement in the orkish language. As one, the cry went up from feral throats, infesting the pointlessly milling mass, "WAAAAAAGH!!!!" and like an ocean current they detached from the rok that had brought them there and followed the bikers northward.

The crisis was immediately obvious, but the solution was not. The bikers slowed, firing into the crowd of orks, but they were not sons of Dorn, pointless last stands were not in their nature. As they reached the firing line, now guard reinforced but still mostly civilians, the Celestial Heralds threw everything they had at the orks and sped in a different direction, making one last play to change their course. But the orks had all the momentum of a star in its orbit around the galaxy.

As the green tide appeared on the horizon, the great mass of citizens did as they had been doing for two days and opened fire in an unnecessarily massive barrage, cooking the air for the three kilometers between the guns and their targets. With this many millions of beams, it hadn't previously mattered that many of them went wide over their target or had fried the steppe grasses well in front of the enemy. The chapter master had been counting on the fact that if you roll infinite dice, you will get infinite sixes. As long as it was just small squads and stragglers, the outer perimeter was unbreachable. But now the numbers were far more even, and Bimawen knew what would happen even before first lasgun crack, this was the failure state he had feared from the start.

At first the people fired much as they had been, fearlessly confident. But in between poorly organized volleys, the green tide in the distance didn't seem to grow any smaller. For fifteen minutes they fired, but it wasn't clear to the humans that it was doing any good. Were they even killing orks? Were these lasguns any more use than flashlights? Unbeknownst to the civilians, there was a trail of dead orks cut down by crack after crack of lasbeam, but each ork took dozens of poorly aimed, low powered shots to take down. While there were some twenty six billion people participating in the Popular Front, only the first few rows were actually armed, and only a small fraction of the total circle was being engaged by the WAAAAGH!. Lasguns still outnumbered orks, but only by about four to one, and the accuracy of the untrained civilians was about as poor as the orks themselves.

Still, the civilians of the north edge didn't try and run right away, even as they were beset by doubt seeing the green horde barreling towards them and none of their divine Celestial Herald protectors in sight. It wasn't until the orks were close enough to start putting shoota slugs into the humans that panic began to set in. They couldn't flee, the vast population behind them blocked their return to the hive, and most of twenty six billion people to their sides and rear had no idea what was happening, but they could still panic. Some panicked by freezing, others by shooting ever more furiously and screaming in harmony with the orks' gutteral roars. Neither response mattered much, and in a flash, a million human civilians were cut down in the crash of orkish weight, orkish muscle, and crude orkish choppas.

Bimawen hadn't wanted this to happen, he had hoped for a zero casualty operation, but now that the orks were enmeshed in an anvil that would take them hours to hack through, he decided it was high time for the hammer. The Celestial Heralds were down to fifty three bikes after taking a handful of casualties, and their bolters were all dry. But not a one of them, the chapter master included, hesitated for a second to plow into the orkish mass from the rear, severing green limbs with ever swing of the chainblade and crushing orks under their massive tires. At the same time, orders were handed off to the guardsmen on either flank of the ork mass to fold in and create a smaller encirclement, shooting at the unprotected back end of the enemy. Those farther afield, well clear of the main thrust, were sent marching inwards, picking off stragglers and killing anything they saw.

But under the main impact of the ork advance, humans did nothing but die. Men, women, children, the same people who had come out with nothing but devotion were torn apart without hope of resistance. They died in droves and they died in fractions of a second, but their total bulk, the sheer weight of lives pressed, so hard that the orks were still kilometers and hours from a breakthrough. Even those who tried to flee were held fast by the press of bodies who, far away, had no idea what the fuss was all about. The space marines and encircling infantry killed from the rear, but it was an opportunistic attack, not a decisive one.

In three hours, the orks dug through a billion lives and despite their caution the Celestial Herald bikers had lost eight more battle brothers in the melee. But finally Bimawen's vox-reciver dinged. The people of Jingxing had bought enough time for 10th Company Devastator captain Shi Hou and the 313th Zhonghua Artillery to deploy. The orks were pinned in a single location, and the Zhonghua artillery, famous throughout the galaxy for sheer quantity of fire they can put downrange, was cleanly sighted in. In thirty minutes, the central mass of greenskins became a red and green paste, and once the flanking and encircling guardsmen had caught most of the stragglers, the rest of the division was tasked with emptying the rations warehouses and trucking them to the great masses of people.

No one had eaten for three days, water had been scarce, and sleep hard to come by. Faith alone had sustained the people of Jingxing hive, a millions of the elderly and infirm had perished when this wasn't enough. But finally the fasting was over. The fittest of men and women were fed and asked to stay on site for a while longer, while the children, elderly, and infirm were sent back on the long walk to Jingxing hive with an extra ration each. Supplies meant to feed a regiment for years were chewed through in days, but the suffering only heightened the afterglow of victory. To those who stayed behind, the admech divisions who arrived too late for the main action fashioned an array of improvised flamethrowers to supplement the guard's stockpile, and another kilometers long human wall was formed, this one only one rank deep. In a seventy kilometer wide square, the flat steppelands south of Jingxing were torched to prevent ork spores from becoming established in the soil.

Three days after the unexpected arrival of an ork rok, the sub-sector's capitol world was again safe from the greenskin menace. For now.

#### Tianming Period (415.M41 - 636.M41) and a New Closure (636.M41-999.M41)

The next two centuries would later come to be called the Tianming period. Though there were troubles in nearby sub-sectors, the Celestial Heralds Chapter and Astra Militarum regiments stationed in the sub-sector would see very little action within the planets of the Zhonghua. At times individual Astartes squads and Militarum brigades would be lent out in response to particular incidents, and new regiments were formed and sent out across the galaxy continuously as part of the Imperial Tithe. But as the Eunuchs closed their fist tighter around their puppet Bimawen, the Great Purity government became paradoxically more insular as they grew more prosperous, as if jealously guarding their peace lest it spread out into the wider galaxy.

As the sixth century of M41 arrived, the Eunuchs' prognosticators began to see the signs of rising warp activity and a new period of closure. By 636.M41, it had come to pass, but with thirty years of warning, and plenty of experience of being an isolated sub-sector, there was no great panic or catastrophe that followed. The leading edge of prosperity dulled with the end of interstellar trade, but for the most part people looked forward to much the same lifestyle as they had previously enjoyed. For many common people it was a difficult and profoundly unfree life, but typically far less difficult than in many ways that afflicted those in many other parts of the galaxy. The Zhonghua were proud of their sub-sector, devoted to their government, and happy that their frequent isolation spared them from the worst the Imperium had to offer.

#### White Lotus Dispute (839-860.M41)

With the new closing after a period of unprecedented prosperity, complacency had grown quite widespread. Had chaos chosen this moment to launch a massive invasion, it probably would have gone quite badly, at least until the united Zhonghua regiments and Celestial Herald chapter managed to muster their forces. But Chaos, for all its madness, can be far subtler than that.

The eastern portion of the sub-sector was bordered by a great galactic void, sometimes called the eastern ocean. By chance, many of the largest hive worlds lay in systems directly bordering this void. It was from the maw of this great void that human ship would occasionally arrive in the eastern hives, in ones and twos at first, bringing strange new entertainments and strange new ideas. Both seemed harmless enough at first, those few who dared challenge the Imperial Creed did so behind very securely closed doors and these visitors still brought many things to discuss that were interesting and novel while still fitting cleanly within religious orthodoxy.

No one was sure where, exactly, it came from, but one petal of the white lotus flower was enough to give hope to a slave in the harshest of conditions or the darkest parts of the underhives. Though the Zhonghua of Huaguo sub-sector typically enjoy more prosperity than their counterparts on many worlds of the Imperium, the realities of production in the 41st millennium mean that many are stuck in grueling and thankless manufactorum positions. Additionally, the Great Purity system may be robust in general, but if even a fraction of a percent fall through the cracks, that still leaves untold millions homeless, migrating to the wretched underhives and taking up criminal lives, either from dire necessity or a defect in their character.

The introduction of white lotus wasn't even marked by any but a few among the underworld who already dealt in narcotics of their own. It took a hundred years until, in 729.M41, the flower was added to the list of banned substances, and by then it was being grown in underhives across a dozen systems. The drug was banned again in 799.M41, then again with edicts in 814 and 831, but the flow of white lotus only increased over time as more and more of the strange vessels came to offer credits and drugs for pretty much whatever knicknacks people had laying around. Among the merchants, it was widely wondered what sort of business model the strangers were operating under, as well as where they got the strange substance, but such questions never filtered up to any planetary governing board. The sub-sector government wanted the drug, a detriment to productivity and piety, stamped out, but it was left to individual planetary eunuch councils to manage the enforcement.

In 839.M41, the matter reached a head, thanks to the lobbying of the academic and bureaucrat Lin Zexu. In a report that made it all the way to the sub-sector council and the chapter master, Lin calculated that should the rate of spread of white lotus continue at the same rate, then they were only decades away from a complete collapse of many planetary labor forces and a paralysis among the Guard and PDF regiments in the east portion of the sub-sector. The eunuchs panicked and realized that the situation had spiraled well out of their control. A fresh ban was enacted, and an open letter distributed to all the strange merchants that they were able to contact urging them to stop trading in the lotus. None even bothered to respond, and the trade continued unabated.

It was 7th Company Captain Yang Guang, upset at the blatant defiance of Imperial authority, who decided to finally do something about it. He recalled the entire seventh company to the major trading system of Zhu Jiang and began to confer with the system's Imperial navy and guard commanders. No one thought to go up the chain. No one thought that the Eunuchs or chapter master, as revered as he was, would have anything valuable to contribute to the effort.

It was decided that a naval blockade would be established in high orbit above Guangxing, the major hive of Zhu Jiang system, and no vessel without a Great Purity authorization code would be allowed to approach. These strange vessels had never yet produced a valid authorization code, and so would be unable to dock on at least one planet. Yang wasn't certain what would come of this small defiance, but the message had to be sent.

And soon enough, one of the strange vessels approached. Upon being hailed by the navy, the strange ship insisted that they were operating under a valid trade warrant, and that interfering with peaceful exchange would be punished by "greater powers". The admiral was of the same mind as the 7thcompany captain, and fired a warning shot at the vessel. The vessel, outnumbered five to one, didn't open vox and didn't withdraw. Moving towards the planet, the strange ship fired at all five blockading vessels at once, the small cruiser matching the five larger vessels gun for gun. Both sides took enough damage that the unknown merchant ship was forced to withdraw, and the five blockading ships were too injured to pursue. It was a wake up call for the navy, and a shifting into alert status for the Zhu Jiang system.

More ships were brought in from neighboring systems, and the suspicion that this attack would see a follow up was proven in short order. Another strange vessel emerged from the cold emptiness of the eastern void, but this one outclassed the entire imperial navy stationed around Guangxing. This one however, while not responding to hails, kept its distance, and the imperial forces were too cautious to approach. It would turn out that this massive battle-cruiser was part of its own blockade, when a native trader carrying parts from the local forge world moved to land at Guangxing hive. At a range that the imperial officers couldn't even dream of firing accurately at, solid slugs were placed clean through the trader vessel, and carried through to the planet below, impacting hard.

With this provocation, the fleet launched as one. The Imperial fleet was outranged and outgunned, but pinned their hopes on the Celestial Herald 7thcompany. The navy took what shots they could, but their main focus was to distract from the modified carrier that held twenty boarding torpedoes, each carrying five Astartes, as it dive bombed closer and closer to the Gloriana class monster. No one said the word, but no one doubted that this was the work of Chaos, and taking such a powerful ship before traitor Astartes were able to show up could end the war before it truly began. The troop carrier came within a kilometer of the enemy, point blank range in terms of a space battle, and particularly close considering that the whole thing had a length of perhaps ten times that. But the escorts had all been shot out of the void and it was time to launch the payload.

Acceleration hit as all twenty pods were launched at speeds that would liquefy an unaugmented human. Each man among the 7thcompany knew the range they had been launched at, and counted down silently in their minds until the moment of impact. And just as each space marine reached two in their heads, the entire ten kilometer long vessel was suddenly not in front of them any more. It had moved. Ten kilometers long, outweighing and outgunning the entire imperial navy, and it simply moved without inertia or acceleration. And just like that, one hundred of humanity's finest warriors were on a collision course with the cold and endless void of space, locked into a missile that held no maneuvering capabilities and fifty seconds more of acceleration in the fuel tanks.

The massive invading vessel destroyed twenty nine major Imperial vessels that day, as well as countless fighters and escorts. There was simply no one left to ever retrieve the 7thcompany. It isn't clear if the torpedo ran out of air, froze in the dark void, or simply drifted through the empty nothing for weeks before the transhuman physiology of the Celestial Herald warriors starved to death. But to this day it is known that their bodies are still out there, cold, abandoned, and lifeless in the great eastern void.

The invading vessel massively outranged the planetary defenses, and it was only hours before Guangxing hive was under new leadership, rechristened the Planet of Fragrant Harbors. Shock paralyzed the sub-sector for weeks following. The chapter master himself initially refused to believe the reports that 7thcompany has been lost in its entirety.

But while the upper echelons of the Great Purity were in disarray, the local commanders took charge. What elements of the guard and navy that were able to escape the rapid conquest of Guangxing made their way across the system to the outer fortress world of Chuenpi. Along with guard and PDF divisions from a neighboring system, the guard began to dig in for what they expected to be a hard fought engagement over the valuable strategic location. It took only a week for the mysterious battleship to set out from the newly rechristened Planet of Fragrant Harbors, and both orbital and ground defenses were made as ready as they would ever be. The brave guardsmen doubted they would win against the sort of force that could be deployed from a vessel of that size, but they were ready to make the unknown enemy pay in blood for every patch of Zhonghua dirt.

The fleet commander instructed his subordinates to wake him when the enemy was in firing range and went off to a sleep he never woke from. The mysterious ship so badly outranged the Imperial vessels that no one had even raised shields yet. From an unfathomable distance, weapons fire rained down on both the fleet and the fortress world, crippling both before retreating. Only a third of the Imperial vessels were able to limp out to neighboring stars, and the men on the ground, those who hadn't been turned to paste by the unexpected bombardment, lived on the nearly barren world for four months before rations ran out and they succumbed to the inhospitable environment.

With the Imperial presence chased completely out of the system, the Guangxing Eunuch council sent administrator Qishan as their representative to a group of white lotus merchants. The two sides negotiated a surrender wherein the Planet of Fragrant Harbors and Zhu Jiang system would be handed over the the Lotus Consortium. Qishan signed on behalf of the sub-sector government, hoping to spare the rest of Huaguo from what looked to him like an unstoppable force. When a copy of the treaty reached Bimawen, with a forgery of his own signature at the bottom, the chapter master erupted in an uncharacteristic rage. The traitor Qishan was to be hunted down and executed, and a the imperial navy was to assemble a full fleet, with the only ship capable of matching the chaos warship ton for ton, the flagship Amoy, at the head.

It was in the nearby Jiulong sub-sector that the two armadas met. The Amoy was flanked by eighty cruisers and escorts, with hundreds of attack craft parked in the various hangars. But the enemy flagship had not come alone either. Trailed by fifteen smaller vessels recognized by the scanners as merchant vessels of the Lotus Consortium and newly painted in the Consortium's offensively bright pink and purple livery, the enemy again opened fire long before the imperial ships were in range. But this time, the hailstorm of enemy fire could not punch through the reinforced armor of the Amoy at such long distances. Amoy servitors registered over 12,000 hits in that engagement without devastating damage, and as the much larger Imperial armada closed in, they were able to destroy five of the overpowered escorts.

Boarding actions had been prohibited until a way to catch the mysteriously maneuverable vessels was discovered, but the same rules didn't apply to the enemy. Coming to near ramming range through a blizzard of destruction, the enemy flagship began to send soldiers to the few holes they were able to punch into the Amoy. Four squads of the 9thcompany assault specialists had been dispersed through the fleet to prevent the total loss of another chapter, and already six Astartes on two destroyed vessels had been lost, but the rest rushed now to the Amoy to counter the boarding actions. In the tight corridors, facing an endless stream of humans and mutants, the Celestial Herald finally had the upper hand for the first time in the whole war. The Amoy was held, and the enemy flagship withdrew. With twenty four imperial ships lost to the enemy's five, it could only barely be counted as a victory, but the Celestial Herald was willing to take what they could get.

The next few years were tense. The navy, guard, and Celestial Heralds all had rebuilding to do, and despite spies, scouts, and long range studies, no solution to the problem of the invincible ships was found. Each passing day, though nothing militarily occurred, was another defeat for the Imperium and the Great Purity government, which had prided itself on keeping the sub-sector free from the taint of chaos for five thousand years. Unrest spread throughout the sub-sector, and the most notable uprisings have their own entries in this database, but with all eyes on the threat from beyond the eastern void, only so much could be spared to pursue the traitors and xenos in other parts of the sub-sector.

It was 856.M41 when the war again turned hot. While the imperial authorities had closed the ports to Consortium registered vessels, white lotus smuggling continued without pause in vessels indistinguishable from standard Zhonghua merchant freighters. Some were caught from time to time, but the volume of trade, at least judging by the increasing numbers of workers disciplined for lotus addiction, only increased. It was one such interdiction, at the port of Nanyue, that happened to catch an actual representative of the Lotus Consortium, a vile mutant hiding in the cargo holds, that triggered the next round of fighting.

A message from the Consortium to return the prisoner was joined with the arrival of a second battleship, this one bright blue and with constantly shifting hull, in orbit above Nanyue. Demanding the release of the hostage, the new warship sat just beyond the range of the orbital defenses and fired a single mass driver round at the planet every ten minutes. The hostage couldn't be returned, he had already been executed by the zealous customs inspectors who had found him, and the bombardment continued for eighteen days.

After eighteen days of bombardment, a live voxcast was transmitted across Nanyue and broadcast to the attacking vessel. Two obese eunuchs from the planetary governing council, with dark rimmed, haggard eyes from lack of sleep, began to announce the surrender of Nanyue when four other eunuchs from the pro-Imperial faction, who had snuck onto the platform, charged the speakers. The ensuing brawl, though not physically damaging due to the poor strength of all the fighters, was re-broadcast across the sub-sector by the attacking battleship and by hidden cultist relays in many key sectors. The scattered Celestial Heralds were able to use the resources of their individual planetary governments to hunt down and destroy many of these relays, but the damage had already been done.

The warship above Nanyue finally changed attack pattern, disabling the primary orbital defenses and sending drop ships to the planet below. Nanyue, having been taken by surprise, had only two Celestial Heralds on planet and a PDF garrison. The two space marines were able to track down and execute the disloyal eunuchs, but many of the human defenders defected at the sight of their planetary leadership disgracing themselves. Unable to hold the city on their own, the two Celestial Heralds led a core of the most dedicated servants of the Emperor down into the underhive, where they would begin an underground resistance that was still active at the end of the war, though contact was lost after that point.

The Consortium warship, however, was already moving out of orbit before the first drop ships had hit Nanyue's surface. Simultaneously, the other warship, which had sat quietly above the world once named Guangxing until now, also began to move. It was this southern warship that the long gathered forces of the Huaguo sub-sector Imperial Navy, along with Zuidabao, the battle barge of the 2nd company, moved to intercept.

The second battle of Zhu Jiang system, however, was just as disasterous as the first. The vagaries of the warp saw the Amoy enter real-space far to the rear of the main force, while the Zuidabao appeared well ahead, already in weapons range of the enemy battleship. Of the nine 2nd company squads on board the Zuidabao, barely a third were recovered from escape pods in the general retreat called and covered by the Amoy.

In the north of the sub-sector, the battleship that had just devastated Nanyue was making no secret that it was headed towards Jingxing, the sub-sector capitol hive. With the whole of the Imperial Navy's efforts focused on the disaster in the south, the chapter master was forced to confiscate civilian transports to bring as many troops in as possible. Given the situation, Bimawen had written a void war off as pretty well unwinnable, but he managed to assemble the majority of 1st, 3rd, 5th, 8th, and 10th companies, as well as the Zhonghua 2nd Infantry, 4th Penal, and 588th Artillery regiments. 440 Celestial Heralds, 1,200 Basilisk artillery pieces, millions of guardsmen and conscripts, and improvised weapons hand crafted by civilian volunteers would make the cultists bleed hard, and could likely hold the world against most ground threats even without void superiority.

The enemy battleship appeared low in the skies above Jingxing, hanging there larger than a thundercloud. The orbital defenses had been nothing before it, but this was expected. The Imperial ground forces lay in wait for the orbital bombardment that was sure to come, and soon enough it came. A single, high velocity, high impact, ground penetrating blast into Yiheyuan, tearing through the Celestial Herald fortress monastery in the heart of the hive city.

Bimawen, from his vantage point atop the hive spire, felt his stomach drop. Looking at the burning hole in the city, he was already tallying the damage. The histories of the chapter, gone. The trophies from five thousand years of battle, gone. The specialized tactical equipment and the spare parts for repairs, gone. Bimawen didn't think about them, but the thousands of chapter serfs and servitors were also gone. His one consolation was that at least half of the gene-seed bank was stored aboard the Zaidabao. He hadn't heard the results of the battle in the south yet, or perhaps he would have made different choices in this battle.

With the fortress monastery of the single greatest military force in the sub-sector destroyed, the battleship hung in the air for what seemed like an hour. The ground forces had nothing that could touch the enemy, and slowly the realization dawned on most of the warriors that they had no idea if the enemy actually wanted to take the hive city or not, and that there was really nothing stopping them from totally annihilating the entire city from space. But after a while, the ship pulled back out of the atmosphere and returned to the warp from whence it had come.

In the aftermath, Bimawen learned that the enemy vessel had not just left behind the hole in the middle of Yiheyuan. It seemed that Astartes in terminator plate, visibly mutated from Chaos corruption, had teleported into the eunuch council chamber and forced them at gunpoint to sign a treaty. Bimawen's fury mixed with his paternal feelings for the eunuchs, many of whom were by now distantly related to his birth family, and upon reading the terms outlined, it became clear that the enemy had demanded nothing but what they had already won. As word came in that the sub-sector now had essentially no void capable battle craft, and certainly none that could stand up to the mightiest of the enemy battleships, Bimawen knew that the Celestial Heralds now had no real way to prevent the Consortium from taking whatever they wanted, and so long as the warp storms held Huaguo sub-sector in isolation.

Four systems, in addition to the already held Guangxing system, were to be handed over, and indeed had already been taken with minimal resistance during the rest of the campaign. And all Consortium trade vessels would have unlimited landing and trade privileges in all planets of the sub-sector, with the edicts prohibiting white lotus trade rescinded. There were numerous minor provisions as well, but the chapter master of the Celestial Heralds knew as he held the tainted document in his hands that Tzeench and Slaanesh now had a firm hold on a chunk of his territory, and he had no way to dislodge them. As humiliating as it was, the Great Purity government which he had been entrusted by generations of chapter masters before him was tainted for the first time in five thousand years.

#### Huangdi and the Warlords (850-864.M41)

Even before the White Lotus dispute had ended, the people of Huaguo sub-sector saw something very clearly. The corrupt and inefficient system of eunuch councils had badly mismanaged or completely abandoned their responsibilities in the wake of a true conflict. Eunuchs signed over their planets to the enemy, eunuchs misallocated funds meant to go to the people or to the war effort, and eunuchs lorded over their worlds, flaunting their decadence before a people making sacrifices for their Zhonghua cousins suffering in the active warzones.

In theory, part of the reason that the Celestial Heralds were scattered across hundreds of worlds was as part of the Great Purity government. The first chapter master, Aisin Gioro, had charged every single Celestial Herald with the duty of overseeing the government on their planet, but the truth was that this had never meshed well with the duties or temperament of most space marines. Only the later chapter masters had ever taken this duty seriously, while the individual astartes, even at the level of company captain had neither the skill nor inclination to follow the politicking of aged planetary bureaucrats. Most individuals assigned to planetary oversight carried out their duties with one man crusades against underhive gangs, bandit groupings, and the eldar raids.

And so in the panic surrounding the later years of the white lotus dispute, charismatic individuals began to propose a new way of doing things, a government form that more closely emulated the divine Emperor's singular rule over the galaxy. In many cases there was no Astartes on the planet to negotiate with, as so many of them had been redeployed for the war, and in other cases the planet's Celestial Herald was as disgusted with the eunuchs as the new rising warlord was. Nearly all of these men presented themselves as profoundly loyal to the empire and claimed that they were merely restoring the purity of the Great Purity government. But since none of them were willing to work with the central Eunuch council on Jingxing, the practical effect was the complete breakdown over the next decade of any semblance of political unity within Huaguo sub-sector. Thus began the age of warlords, ruling over mostly independent planets. While they continued to respect the divinity of the Celestial Heralds, and the nominal authority of chapter master Bimawen, the many more important tasks that the chapter master had to attend to and the tacit approval of many locally garrisoned Celestial Heralds enabled these warlords to rule as singular monarchs with minimal opposition.

With more important things to deal with, Bimawen was content to mostly ignore these rebellions. A few planets saw disputes grow particularly bloody, and he dispatched orders to the local Celestial Heralds to put a stop to it when that happened, but these orders were typically re-interpreted as authorization for the astartes to aid the warlord against the eunuchs. With his hands full, he simply ignored the warlords, promising that there would be time for them later.

For the most part, there was nothing at all wrong with this. The new warlords were typically loyal to the Emperor, even if they spanned a range from good, moral, and faithful, to power hungry opportunists, and most managed to clear up the worst abuses of the old eunuch councils. But as the first chapter master Aisin Gioro had said, "When you ignore an evil thing, the evil only grows". And it was in Jinsha system where this evil grew strongest.

Jinsha was a fairly minor system, home to a single small civilized world which governed a few agri-worlds which fed it's neighboring systems, Nanyuan and Zhe Jiang. Thus it was sandwiched between two worlds which were chaos infested and soon to be taken over completely by the Great Adversary. The warlord who rose up here once the two stationed Celestial Heralds had been sent off to fight in the battles of the White Lotus dispute appeared from the outside to be wholly unremarkable. When he slaughtered the ruling eunuchs in a popular revolt, his name was put on a list for later action, but nowhere near the top of that list. It was only when he loaded up his new militia and landed on the shrine world of Huashan that the chapter master was forced to make him a priority.

Using the transmission equipment of the shrine world, the warlord issued a terrifyingly heretical statement. He announced that he was Huangdi, meaning "Younger brother of the Emperor" in the Zhonghua dialect. He declared that for supporting the corrupt eunuchs, the Celestial Heralds had lost the Mandate of Holy Terra, and the still ongoing White Lotus dispute and warlord uprisings were the inevitable result. "But my brother, the Emperor of Mankind, still loves the Zhonghua people, and has send me to enact His Will. Our divine protectors have been corrupted by the foul eunuchs, and must be made to see the true light of the Emperor in the shadow of our victory."

Even in the middle of a losing war against chaos, this level of direct heretical challenge could not go unanswered. Bimawen had been holding 6th company in reserve, but it was time for a decapitating strike against this Huangdi. Thus far, the fanatic had taken only four systems, but kept his own location well hidden, and so the newly raised 8th Zhonghua (Inf.) regiment was also dispatched, to have more bodies on the ground holding territory and searching. Finally, a junior officer of the 8th regiment tortured the right rebel, passing credible information up the chain where it was confirmed by other sources. The 6th company, aboard a small Imperial Navy vessel, landed two squads at the entrance of a bunker on the fifth world of Jinsha system. It was well defended, but three Celestial Herald casualties later, the man identified as Huangdi and every other living human in the bunker was confirmed dead.

The two squads reported back that the mission was accomplished, but initially the only reply was static. An hour after leaving the lifeless bunker, contact was restored with the rest of 6th Company, though over a static-y and badly damaged vox link. The vessel that had transported the Celestial Heralds had revolted as soon as the kill team had entered the bunker, attempting to stealthily discharge the space marines into the void. When this failed, the fanatics had tried to scuttle their own ship, but the 6th company had managed to prevent this and recover the vessel, though it was now badly undermanned.

As the 6th company limped back out of the system, word reached them that it wasn't just their vessel that had been convinced by Huangdi's heresy. Most of the 8th regiment had been turned against the Emperor-sanctioned rulers of the sub-sector, and were already spreading out to capture nearby systems, reinforced by the militia, now calling themselves the "True Imperials". The claim that the 6th Company had killed the so-called Huangdi was rebuffed by voxcasts from a new voice claiming the same title.

The 6th company fought ferociously, splitting into squads in smaller vessels to cover more ground, but systems fell faster than the relatively few Celestial Heralds could punish their blasphemy, and two systems were able to fortify their capitol cities enough to force attacking space marine squads into retreating. It wasn't until the tragic end of the White Lotus dispute that more forces could be spared, but Bimawen wasted no time before pushing the Lord General to dispatch the 77thArmored and 9thInfantry regiments to the Huangdi warzone. The eunuchs urged him not to, fearing the risk that these two companies would also turn to the heretics, but in an uncharacteristic rage, the chapter master overruled the council, convinced of the loyalty of these two regiments in particular.

The ensuing war was bloody, mostly guardsman against guardsman. By the year 860.M41, deaths had exceeded thirty million just among the armed combatants. Four years later, the war was won, but at massive cost to the military readiness of the Imperial Guard and Navy. Even the Celestial Heralds were now travelling almost exclusively in commandeered commercial vessels with minimal protection. The only thing strengthened in the Huaguo sub-sector was the conviction of most worlds that they had to get out from under the increasingly corrupt and ineffective eunuch governments. Warlords promising to protect the local system became increasingly popular, and there were ever fewer Celestial Heralds to prevent them from taking over.

Revolt followed revolt, but it was in the wild and uncivilized southwest that the crippled chapter was finally broken.

#### Dungan Disagreement (862-877.M41)

The people in the southwest portion of Huaguo sub-sector had never really been quite like the Zhonghua people who made up most of the sub-sector. Most of the inhabitable worlds in the region happened to be either high gravity or fairly arid, neither of which suited the temperament of the Zhonghua majority, and so these worlds were left to a slightly different breed of person. The high gravity worlds, as high gravity worlds tended to do, developed Ogryn over the years, a common type of abhuman noted for both their unintelligence and tremendous strength. Among the arid worlds there was less uniformity, some were allowed to keep their primitive feudal traditions, some were civilized but populated less densely by the outcasts of Zhonghua society who preferred a bit more freedom in their lifestyle. These latter were often both condemned and romanticized in equal measure as bandits, though in truth most were law abiding. And some of the marginally inhabitable worlds were transformed into penal colonies for the vast numbers of heinous criminals that the underhives of Huaguo sub-sector could produce. All of these types of worlds mostly produce some of the rarer minerals and elements needed for advanced fabrication, as well as copious amounts of conscripts for the penal legions and abhuman brigades that Huaguo subsector exports.

The 9th company of the Celestial Heralds is tasked with overseeing this unpleasant backwater, and the uncivilized rowdiness has helped the 9th company preserve the edge of their natural ferocity. Of course, being in the politically least favored sector has put them at the back of the list for supplies and upgrades, but wielding nothing but chainblade and power armor rather suits the assault company's more brutal approach.

It was two years after the end of the White Lotus dispute, and two years before the end of the Huangdi rebellion that the planets of the southwest put their barbarity on full display. It began with a small thing, a seed planted in the mind of a single Ogryn, a particularly large brute of a miner named Dungan. The entire district had been restless for months, and three particularly aggressive brothers of the 9th Assault Company were sent to the mining district where Dungan worked. The Celestial Heralds discovered signs of deliberate sabotage, theft, and malingering among the workers, but these were not brothers interested in bureaucratic niceties like investigations and evidence. Out on the rough and tumble frontier, these sorts of issues were too common bother spending much time on, and all that was usually needed was a few cracked heads to set things right.

And so the three 9th company Heralds picked a few Ogryn at random to run chainswords through. To the others, they announced that this was the vengeance of the emperor upon those who did not follow the rules. But the Ogryn miner Dungan had personally seen that the human miners from the penal division were responsible for these crimes. Once the Celestial Heralds had settled the colony down and moved on, Dungan began to talk to his fellow Ogryn. He explained that the eye of the Heralds had missed the true criminals, and soon had a good number of his fellows excited for their own chance to emulate the Emperor's Angels and do right for the Imperium.

In dead of night, the hulking abhuman miners grabbed makeshift weapons and lumbered over to the penal colony barracks. The automated defenses had not been built expecting assault from this direction, and the few guns were soon silenced. The prisoners, standard human Zhonghua from around the subsector who were all unused to the high gravity, stood no chance and were slaughtered in their bunks. But though the Ogryn chanted the name Dungan! Dungan! as they slew, it soon became obvious to imperial observers that there was someone operating behind the scenes. Soon, in Ogryn and penal colonies across the western fringe, Ogryn were rising up and murdering their prisoner brothers. Though the work camps were kept in lockdown, somehow the prisoners, too, heard that the Ogryn were running rampant, and began to plot breakouts, defenses, and pre-emptive strikes against the abhuman menace.

In only days, far quicker than even the fastest of communications could have gone out from the original site of Dungan's attack, the quasi-feudal structure of the uncivilized western fringe had broken down. Where the 9th company had Heralds stationed, the fight changed from a two way battle between rogue Ogryn and prisoners into a three way struggle with the poorly equipped and badly supported Imperial elements taking on both sets of troublemakers at once. For the scattered elements of 9th company, who had long suffered under constraints imposed by their more civilized brothers, the Ogryn were the perfect enemy. Some 9th company would throw aside their chainswords to battle Ogryn champions hand to hand, while others would ride their bikes, gleefully picking off anyone who looked like they could be on the wrong side of things.

For fifteen years, a state of total anarchy prevailed in the west. Only a handful of 9th Company Heralds even tried to hold things together, with about two squads coalescing around brother Dou "Zhansheng" Fo, a relatively junior assault brother who managed to keep his head and assemble a mish mash of imperial assets under confused attack from multiple directions. In 877, when Bimawen finally had the time and resources to send aid, Zhansheng finally got a message from Shi Hou, venerable 10th Company Devestators captain, who had brought what was left of his famously level headed company.

By this point, there was little to do but slaughter the prisoners and rebels who had been running wild. The Ogryn, despite being the instigators of the insurrection, loudly and genuinely proclaimed their loyalty as soon as sizeable numbers of Celestial Heralds appeared, and the region went surprisingly quickly from an anarchic conflict of all against all to a unified front of Heralds, Ogryn, and Imperial Guard against a relative handful of prisoners and rebels. Nearly all of the rogue 9th company members had vanished without a trace. A few were found having fallen into a chaos influenced bloodlust, and news of these brothers was quietly sent to the Chapter Master after they were discreetly annihilated. As for the rest of them, no one would ever find out whether they had simply died in the fighting or if they had been taken by some darker outside force.

The quick resolution of the Dungan Dispute by the 10th Company caused many throughout the subsector to underestimate the degree to which the foundations of the Great Purity government had been eroded. Not only was the unity of the Imperial presence in the subsector shattered, with unquenchible rumors that even Celestial Heralds had joined in the chaos, but the loss of mining sectors of a subsector still isolated by warp storms damaged the prosperity of a fragile economy.

#### Eight-Gods Alliance vs Militia of Rightiousness (900-901.M41)

With the quick final battle of the Dungan Dispute, the Eunuchs were quick to announce that a new era of peace had come over the Huaguo subsector. Few failed to notice that the central authority actually controlled very little of the subsector by this point, with many warlords giving only nominal submission to the rightful agents of the Imperium. Even worse, major hive worlds had been given over by treaty to agents who were loyal in all but name to the powers of the warp. With little the battered Celestial Heralds could do to reverse this course, Chapter Master Bimawen ordered his company captains that they were prohibited from launching new assaults on planets no longer answering to the Eunuch council and were instead to focus on rebuilding their numbers.

This order was put to the test when news of loyalist revolts came out of the chaos occupied eastern hiveworlds. Word of a band of outcasts among the underhive loyal to the Emperor calling themselves the Militia of Rightiousness sounded almost too good to be true. They stated publicly that if the Eunuchs lacked the balls to kick the heretical lotus traders off of their worlds, then the Zhonghua people of the hives would do it themselves. Commanders among both the Heralds and the Imperial Guard petitioned the Chapter Master and the Eunuchs to allow them to enter into the Zhu Jiang system and support this popular movement, but the final word was that both treaty obligations and severe military weakness meant this was unworkable.

How, exactly, this Militia of Righteousness was spreading was unclear to the Imperial observers. While the broad base of pro-Imperial sentiment in the treaty worlds was heartening, how those rebels were organizing when every attempt by Imperial agents had been detected and eliminated was debated endlessly among the Eunuch councils. It seemed to arise almost overnight, and already there were masses of regular hivers and underhivers wearing the distinctive loose clothing of the Militia, and even more startling, it seems they began a campaign of punching people associated with the White Lotus Consortium in the streets in broad daylight. An individual troublemaker would be caught and punished, but there always seemed to be more young hotheads willing to strike out where the Eunuchs had failed to.

It was late in the year 900.M41 when sporadic acts of violence turned en mass into a full scale revolt. On the planet once known as Guangxing, called the Planet of Scented Ports ever since it fell into Consortium hands, Militia members from all around the world woke up that morning, and without apparent coordination, converged on the Consortium warehouses, breaking in and destroying the stockpiles of White Lotus planet wide. The ensuing battle against the Consortium guards saw the Militia members doing surprisingly well, despite being apparently unarmed, bare fists of the mob seeming to be as effective as the las-rifles of the lackeys of chaos. What had been a coordinated arson soon became a mass move to expel by force the traders and traitors of the Consortium, well known by now among the locals as a front for Chaos corruption.

And for a few weeks, it seemed effective. The planet was re-christened Guangxing by the rebels, and Imperial Guard forces from a nearby system arrived unbidden to reinforce and re-establish local control. Sha Wujing of the 4th Company pleaded with the chapter master, flying to Jingxing to literally beg, in person, surrounded by the Eunuchs before his Chapter Master to be allowed to send in his men. But Bimawen could not see beyond the threat of violating the previously established treaty, and was unmoved by the passionate plea of his subordinate. It seemed, at this point, that no Celestial Herald would be setting foot on Guangxing.

But it was with the arrival of scattered, and order disobeying, Guard forces in system that the Imperials began to suspect that something was amiss with the Militia of Righteousness. Many individuals who approached the rebels simply ceased to report further, though long range scans indicated that they all appeared to be willing partners with the militia. Of those who did report back, reports were strangely inconsistent, and the most disturbing of reports claimed that abhumans and mutants were common among the rarely seen leadership of the movement.

The first successful blow was followed up very soon after by similar uprisings among other treaty planets, but those did not have as much of a chance to establish themselves. Before two months had passed, a massive fleet appeared out of the warpstorms that were still isolating the subsector. Whereas the character of the Consortium had always been politely veiled, there was no doubting who had sent the massive ships sporting the eight pointed star of chaos. The Planet of Scented Ports shook so violently that the movements could be seen on long range auspex from nearby systems. From the air itself, an announcement rang out, "We are the Eight Gods Alliance! We Serve the Four!" And from every grain of ash from every burned lotus, horrible demons of the warp emerged.

They were each minor demons, the least that the Four possessed, but they swarmed through the hive in such numbers that the human population, including many Consortium collaborators horrified to see the true nature of what they had served, were hard pressed to hold them back with their improvised weapons. For twenty four hours, the beasts of the warp enjoyed nearly unchecked slaughter through the hive, killing two thirds of the population, a figure rising into the billions of souls released into the warp in the span of a day and night. The great ships of the Eight Gods alliance needed only drift into the system and hunt down what remained.

This, however, proved to be a tougher task than expected, for the ones who had survived the main purge were either members of the Militia, or soon found themselves inducted into their ranks and armed. Having the home field advantage, as well as the mysterious abilities of the mutants in the upper echelons, proved to be enough to stymie the more blatant chaos forces. And so, the greatest humiliation was heaped upon the Great Purity government when a message was delivered to the council of high Eunuchs that the treaty they had formerly signed required that they send military aid to support the Consortium and their allies, the Eight Gods alliance against the Zhonghua civilians who resisted in the name of the Emperor.

Even Bimawen, who had been fed carefully controlled information for decades by now, was unable to countenance this. In the public session of council he raged against the circumstances that had reduced the Huaguo subsector to this black hour. He decried the failures of nearly everyone, finding only himself blameless, and even castigating the Eunuchs of the civilian government's Great Houses. But once his tirade was over, the stony faced Eunuchs motioned to bring the council into closed deliberation, beyond the eyes of any outsiders. There they stayed for hours stretching into days, stopping only once to demand that food be brought in, and dismissing all other reports or business for the duration.

Finally, Chapter Master Bimawen stepped out of the council chamber, looking tired in a way no gene-hanced astartes ever should. Behind him, four politically powerful Eunuchs lay dead, beaten bloody to match the mess upon Bimawen's fists. Quietly, he voxed for the first squad of first company, who were on assignment at the construction site of the rebuilding fortress monastery, to join him, and they took a fast personal craft, leaving behind even the standard equipment beyond what they could carry with them. This was the first time since the ork assault on Jingxing that Bimawen had donned power armor.

They landed on the Planet of Scented Ports one week later, finding that only one hive still held out against the siege efforts. He made no attempt to communicate with the chaos forces he was reinforcing. For that matter, no member of the first squad spoke for the duration of the battle. When they penetrated deep into the underhive, covered in the blood of men, women and children who had believed they were here to save them, they found the secret of the Militia of Righteousness. It had been a genestealer cult, hoping to use the weakness of the Huaguo subsector to foment revolution for whatever twisted purposes the xenos infiltrators had in mind. But this gave them no comfort as they purged the xeno on behalf of the traitors.

The attack of Bimawen's squad was purged from all official records, but too many people saw and heard of it to remove from everyone's mind. Bimawen returned and no official communication was received from their chaos worshipping treaty partners for decades after. While many Zhonghua citizens still had faith in their local Celestial Herald assigned to their own systems, faith in the Eunuch government and Bimawen himself was to be found no where outside the Jingxing palace. Even Bimawen's Heralds were disgusted, but the idea of betraying the chapter master, who had been seen as the Emperor's own manifestation within the Huaguo subsector for thousands of years now, was still a leap that the Heralds were unable to take.

#### Muk'Den Sept (930-945.M41)

The ever expanding T'au Empire noticed the disorganization of the Huaguo sub-sector, and had for quite some time been using the chaos to sneak in  water caste traders and proselytizers. Plans had been made shortly after the close of the White Lotus dispute, but due to the low speed of interstellar travel with tau vessels, the main force did not arrive until shortly before 930.M41. By then, the groundwork had been laid, and local warlords in the sparsely inhabited northern systems of the sub-sector had come to enjoy the benefits of using advanced tau mining technology to produce far in excess of their mandated tithes, allowing the warlords to sell the rest to private traders and in quiet deals with nearby forgeworlds and live luxurious lives.

When the great Mantas appeared overhead, these wealthy warlords were quite happy to switch to selling to the newly arrived tau. They received more protection and a greater share of the profits than the corrupt sub-sector eunuchs provided, and the idea that the Imperial government still held the true Mandate of the Emperor was a belief now held only by backwards fanatics. But despite the general disillusionment with the Great Purity government and the disastrous century that had seen most of the peace of prosperity of the Huaguo subsector fall apart, many were still uncomfortable embracing such an openly xenos way of life, and so a joint strike of the water and fire castes was planned.

Gue'vesa, humans loyal to the T'au Empire, were smuggled into one of the larger forge worlds of the north. Dressed as chaos cultists, they blew up the major rail line connecting two great foundries and left chaos glorifying graffiti before being gunned down by the world's skitarii. Though the situation was contained in the end, the t'au diplomats demanded that t'au garrisons be installed in all major worlds of the north, and even before a reply could be sent by the northern warlords the region was occupied for its own protection by the fire caste. Muk'Den sept was established almost overnight in Huaguo sub-sector, taking some of the wealthiest mining colonies and raw resource exporting planets that the Zhonghua people had ever established.

The Celestial Heralds had been badly battered, and with the loss of their gene-seed stocks in the previous century had not even reached half strength. Though his captains complained bitterly, Bimawen followed the cowardly advice of the Eunuch Council, insisting that the chapter remain dispersed throughout only those planets that were still governed by eunuchs. The northern worlds had already abandoned the Great Purity government long ago when they opted for warlords rather than eunuchs, and would be left to face the xenos threat on their own.

The newly raised Lord General Jiang Jieshi, feeling the need to assert himself more than his predecessor had, sent what tattered remains of his regiments he could spare to enact an ill-supplied campaign against the invaders. The campaign mostly served to highlight the ongoing logistical issues faced by those who still remained loyal to the Imperium, a fact trumpeted and twisted by the pernicious propagandists of the t'au water caste. The battle lasted 15 years, but by 945.M41, the enemy had only pushed deeper into the sub-sector while the Zhonghua resistance, both militia and guard units, merely exhausted their lives and resources.

It was, in fact, nothing that happened within the Huaguo sub-sector that finally stopped the expansion of Muk'Den sept. Messenger drones crossing the great expanse between the t'au home sectors and distant Huaguo finally arrived with the urgent news that Hive Fleet Gorgon had destroyed two planets and were threatening to destroy another. The main body of fire caste was to be recalled immediately to participate in Ketsu'go Sak'sen, the great defense of the home septs against a massive ground invasion. Only token garrisons, low level colonies, and a handful of low ranking Aun were to be left behind to maintain Muk'Den.

It would be a number of years before anyone in the Great Purity government could be convinced that this apparent withdrawal wasn't a trap, but when the Celestial Heralds finally assigned a few squads of 4th company to retake some outlying planets, they found that the once loyal Zhonghua resisted the imposition of a new eunuch government, revolting back into the t'au fold once the space marines had gone. The astartes who spoke with the people of that world were shocked to find that most understood the political situation quite clearly, and begged their blessed protectors to turn against the eunuchs. For Celestial Heralds, however, rebelling against their chapter master, even if they agreed with the citizens, was simply a step they couldn't take. Their chapter, like the sub-sector as a whole, had very nearly fallen into complete disunity with each battle brother becoming ever more isolated from his unit. Bimawen, despite his flaws, was the only thing holding the chapter together, and those civilians who articulated the Celestial Herald's own hidden fears too eloquently would usually find a bolt round running through their well informed brains.

4th Company Captain, Sha Wujing, soon had enough. A few resource worlds were taken peacefully, as per the Chapter Master's orders, but it was with the revolt of the first well populated world in favor of the xenos invaders that Sha Wujing was forced to choose between the chapter and the Zhonghua people. He chose the chapter, declaring a purge of the principle hive complex of the planet. 45 Celestial Heralds over eighteen tireless days, using mostly chainswords, killed forty million Zhonghua men, women and children. Fifty thousand lethal swings per man per day. There were survivors, the city was simply too big for a full purge without substantially more ammunition, but the message was sent.

The message was also sent to Bimawen, the message that his company captain had disobeyed a direct order in spectacular fashion. Surrounded by the carefully filtered reports and calm opulence of the eunuch's council, Bimawen had completely lost touch with the deteriorating situation. Each new report of disaster could be smoothed away with the silken tongues of his eunuch companions, all of whom Bimawen had known for their entire lives, and for the lives of many generations of their ancestors. When things seemed bad, Bimawen was either told that it was not all that bad, or that there weren't the resources to handle it properly. For the eunuchs, it was crucial that the Celestial Heralds be kept as much as possible on assignments protecting the lives of eunuchs and the great families, only space marines as personal bodyguards had proven effective against the hordes clambering for regime change. But the purge of a city that Bimawen still thought of as loyalist was a step too far.

The protocol was known to every initiate, a step originally planned by Aisin Gioro but never in five thousand years enacted. It was time to recall every single Celestial Herald to the makeshift structure near the ruins of their old fortress-monastery and initiate Neiqing protocol.

#### The Inner Cleansing (958-962.M41)

Codes that had never been seen by any Celestial Herald, but were recognized by the oldest and most revered protocol manuals transmitted to every system, colony, and vessel in Huaguo Subsector. Only a small number of brothers even thought to refuse this order, for most of them assumed that it was a sign that the revered chapter master had finally come to his senses. Many battle brothers had at that point been so far out of contact from the fortress monastery that they did not even have official transport back to the capitol, and were forced to hitch rides from commercial haulers, or even from the new private navies of the warlords who increasingly ruled over individual systems after having abandoned the central authority of the Eunuch councils. But most Zhonghua still loved their individual protectors, even if they were impotent as an organization to stop the corruption in the Da Qing government, and were happy to help the Heralds follow the mysterious and urgent orders.

As the Heralds filtered into Jingxing in ones and twos, they were escorted by specially trained serfs all the way from the spaceport to the fortress monastery, which was still undergoing reconstruction after its destruction in the recent wars. More than a few began to wonder if they had made a mistake at this point, but the handful who bolted and went into hiding were noted by Bimawen and kept in official records for later handling. The rest of them allowed themselves to be shown to what they were told would be temporary residence chambers for the duration of the Inner Cleansing, the Neiqing protocol intended to purge the chapter of the elements that were causing it the most trouble.

A Herald, once in his temporary quarters, soon found himself handing over his armor and weapons to another serf, receiving a distinct set of robes and body glove to wear instead. Those who tried the door after this soon found that it was sturdy enough to resist even enhanced Astartes strength. Each cell held a bed, a food depository, a waste receptacle, and a book written by the chapter master himself, one written to remind each battle brother of the importance of order, of duty, of chain of command, and filled with fictional morality tales. Each tale featured two Heralds, one who did what seemed right to him and caused a disaster as a result, while the other obeyed even while ignorant or when the order seemed distasteful and created a better, more prosperous subsector as a result. Along with the food each day would come new pamphlets, each with a poem in the flowing, beautiful Zhonghua language about the glories of the Imperium and the Da Qing government, as well as another tale of the two Heralds, each written in Bimawen's elegant, precise calligraphy.

Each brother was kept caged for years, in a cell barely larger than they were, with no stimulation except for the tracts, and little need for sleep. They were watched remotely by serfs who kept count of how much time each brother spent reading, or exercising, or how many of the pamphlets they tore up in rage, how many times they banged on the walls of their cells, how many times they shouted curses at anyone they could think to blame. But a space marine was not created to stand idle, and the extended confinement pulled nearly all of the Heralds into a blank state of timelessness, with no sense of how long they were to remain and no sense of what was expected of them. Many began to long for the next pamphlet, and though they could all at the beginning see the blatant propaganda for what it was, having nothing else to focus on for years put the messages deeper into the back of their mind than any hypnolearning program could manage, subtly reshaping the minds of the Heralds.

In Bimawen's chambers the chapter master confined himself, as much as prisoner as the three hundred seventy seven battle brothers who still survived within the chapter. Writing the daily pamphlets and silently observing his men took all his time, leaving the increasingly dire work of government to the ever more decadent and corrupt eunuch council. Finally, four years after initiating the Neiqing protocol, Bimawen decided that it was time to begin the cleansing.

Having watched and kept a list, he first went to the chamber of the Herald he believed to be most loyal to him personally. Entering the small chamber with a chair for himself in hand, he sat, bidding the 1st company sergeant to sit on his bed. By now the room smelled unbearably foul, but the imprisoned brother was inured to the odor and Bimawen was too disciplined to let it show on his face. He spoke to the man about loyalty, about obedience to the chapter chain of command, and about ideological purity. After a long discussion, the first human contact the brother had had in years, Bimawen was satisfied enough to let him out, but the test was not complete. The next day, the freed sergeant was taken to the chamber of the next man on the list, though only the chapter master knew of the list, the rest only knew of the orders.

This sergeant was ordered to evaluate the next man in the way that Bimawen had evaluated him. As had the sergeant, this man passed, and the two of them went together to evaluate the next man. Next the two freed men evaluated a third, with Bimawen standing in the doorway, a silent sentinel over the proceedings. The first two Heralds declared this third to be satisfactory, but Bimawen disagreed. It was the Chapter Master's order that this man be killed on the spot. There was hesitation in the two loyal men's eyes, and Bimawen clarified that this, too, was a test, and only a certain kind of Herald could prove that he possessed the Neiqing, the Inner Purity. He was beaten to death, two unarmored space marines pummeling their confused and submissive brother into pulp.

After the most loyal few had been released, he began to divide them up in groups of three or four, the maximum that could squeeze in to the tiny chambers, and more than that, Bimawen began to exert pressure on the cadres that some number of the men they evaluated should be failed. He suggested that if they don't figure out who is disloyal, then it would be evidence of their own disloyalty. And those who were found to be disloyal were, at Bimawen's quiet command, beaten to death by their former brothers. And so a pattern set in through the chapter. One of self-inflicted terror, where each man had to be perfect in the eyes of his brothers, and where each man, knowing there was no clear standard for guilt or innocence here, began to watch his brothers more warily, hunting for the smallest deviation that could be reported and remove the chapter master's suspicions from the reporter. It began to be said that those who resisted their execution must have been disloyal, which is why they resisted. It was also said that those who did not resist must have known that they were disloyal, which is why they failed to resist. This was not something Bimawen taught explicitly, just a rationalization that the Heralds themselves came up with as they girded themselves to the bloody tasks they were assigned.

At the end of the process, three hundred and seventy seven Celestial Heralds had become two hundred and five, and not a man among the survivors hadn't felt a brother's breaking bones beneath his bare, brutal fists, all remembered that the ones they had condemned could just as well have been them, and only through elaborate and continuous displays of loyalty could the remaining men ensure their own survival, which had become their priority above and beyond the things they had once held dear. As far as Bimawen was concerned, loyalty through virtue was less reliable than the more cynical loyalty for the sake of self-preservation that he had inculcated. An outsider, had there been any privy to the process, might have wondered why no one rebelled against this thing that was so universally hated, but the trap of it was that the first one to suggest it would have put the brothers around him at risk for failing to immediately denounce him. Conspiracy cannot take root in an environment of such profound paranoia and brainwashing.

The Heralds were sent back out into the Huaguo subsector after eight years of re-training, both political and tactical, as twenty full squads. The five that the Chapter Master trusted the most were put in charge of rebuilding the chapter with a new stock of loyal recruits, ones educated to a different standard than before. Meanwhile, the twenty squads were each sent to report directly to a world with a still loyal and functioning Eunuch council, to act as the personal hands of the local civilian governments. In each squad, the rumor spread that three men had been selected as spies to report any loyalty failures back to the chapter master. But in truth, each man had, in secret, been quietly charged by Bimawen himself to act as a secret police, with each man too afraid of the other two unknown spies to fail to report even the slightest irregularity.

And so, armed with deadly loyal squads and a new ideology, the various systems that the Eunuch councils still had control over managed to stabilize themselves, and over the next few decades expand to crush many of the internal warlord states who had begun to break free of the Da Qing government. The Chapter Master no longer oversaw the Eunuch councils, allowing the corrupt body to sink into ever deeper levels of complacency and malfeasance. Instead, he focused his attention fully on the chapter, the first time a chapter master had done so in thousands of years. The Heralds and the Huaguo subsector chafed under this new regime, but it only had a few short decades to establish itself before events outside the subsector would impose themselves on the long isolated region.

#### Fall of Cadia and Reopening of Space (999.M41)

By the end of the 41st millennium, the chapter had shrunk even further, down to one hundred seventy loyal Heralds, with each of the twenty squads having seen at least one internal purging in the decades since the Neiqing protocol. There was no warning when the situation changed completely, but unbeknownst to the Huaguo subsector, which had been isolated within warp storms for centuries, Cadia had just fallen and the Great Rift had just split the galaxy in two. While this was a disaster for the galaxy, the swirling warp currents were blown away at the same time, clearing the warp lanes out of the subsector and finally allowing travel in and out of the subsector.

But not only that, it seems that the forces of Chaos were no longer able to hold some of their outposts after this, and an inexplicable letter from the Eight Nations Alliance arrived on the very same day, announcing that they were returning control of the Planet of Scented Ports, as well as a few others that had been handed over in the greatly hated treaties, back to the Da Qing government. There was however, a single stipulation, that the people of these formerly chaos held systems be allowed to continue the practices they had become used to, many of which were banned as heretical within the rest of Huaguo subsector. Seeing no alternative, the Eunuch council accepted control of the systems, allowing them to maintain what they called their distinctive practices, though even at the very beginning plans were put in place to control these before deviant attitudes were allowed to spread to the rest of the subsector.

The very first contact that the Da Qing subsector government made with Terra was a payment of all back taxes and tithes owed for the period when they were cut off from the wider Imperium. Of course, paying a tithe meant for a fully held and peaceful subsector with the remnants of a terrorized and battle scarred one strained the Zhonghua people disastrously, and the food tithes alone led to massive famines that nearly depopulated whole hive worlds. But when the High Lords of Terra saw what Bimawen and the Eunuch council had sent them, there in the darkest hours of the 13th Black Crusade, the official report which told of a subsector besieged but held strong by the might of the Zhonghua people and their strong subsector government, very few questions were asked. The only thing Bimawen requested was resupply for his badly battered legions, and the descendants of Zhonghua envoys who had integrated themselves into the bureaucracy of Terra expedited the request, sending the tools to make and equip a full chapter of White Scar Primaris Astartes.

Bimawen was beside himself at the sudden influx of capacity, and over the next century, while trade and relative security allowed the Huaguo subsector to grow faster than nearly anywhere else in the otherwise besieged Imperium Sanctus, the Celestial Heralds busied themselves with recruiting hundred of new and eager aspirants, ready to undergo the traditional trials of the Heralds as well as the new, advanced education programs of the Chapter Master to become the first crop of Primaris Celestial Heralds.

By the end of the Indomitus Crusade, the Celestial Heralds have a nominal strength greater than any they have enjoyed since the beginning of Bimawen's service as chapter master, and Huaguo subsector, while still in many ways impoverished, is rebuilding itself into one of the few remaining lights of Imperium Sanctus. However, buried within this seeming success story are deep scars, questions about behaviors and histories that are beginning to attract the attention of those with the time and means to investigate. Already, the Eunuch's requests for more support from Terra are falling on deaf ears, and the very real possibility of conflict with the wider Imperium has been raised should the actions of the Celestial Heralds and the Eunuchs who compromised in their darkest hours be judged by unforgiving arbiters.

## Huaguo Sub-Sector

### Stellar Geography Overview

One of the most densely populated sub-sectors in the Ultima Segmentum, the Huaguo Sub-Sector features twenty eight hive worlds with over 20 billion human inhabitants each, and nearly a thousand agri- and minor forge worlds. There is a prominent stellar void along the eastern edge, with many of the largest hive worlds situated on what is often called the "Space Coast". It is these coastal cities that came under attack most heavily in the recent fighting, and a few of the worlds on the southern end have been lost to rebel groups as so-called "Legation Hives". In the much less populated north end, Tau encroachment has reached unbearable levels, with reports of physical xenos occupation of parts of these worlds. These worlds, mostly mining colonies and medieval worlds, have begun to employ tau tech and expelled their Adeptus Mechanicus branches. Both chaos cultists and genestealer cultists are known to operate with impunity throughout the sub-sector.

The sub-sector is ruled from the capitol hivewold, Jingxing. Members of the dominant culture call themselves Zhonghua, and the government apparatus of the sub-sector is called The Purity or The Great Purity, to contrast it with the corrupt former regime.

### Major Planets and Systems

#### Jingxing System

Located in sub-sector northeast. Contains Jingxing hiveworld, on which Jingxing hive is located, population approximately 28 billion as of 001.M42. Jinxing planet is orbited by hivemoon Tianyue. Three minor forgeworlds are present in system as well, mostly taking parts mass produced in the Jingxing and Tianyue manufactorums and creating finished products. The largest of the three minor forge worlds is Daxing forge world, famous for their export of motorbikes throughout the galaxy.

#### Sihe System

Located in sub-sector southwest. Contains thirty inhabited bodies, and over bodies of planetoid size or greater. Four hive worlds, one middle-class forge world, one shrine world, twenty four agriworlds. Still a net importer of foodstuffs.

#### Zhu Jiang System

Located in sub-sector southeast. Four inhabited worlds. The hiveworld once known as Guangxing is currently under rebel control, under the name Planet of Scented Ports.

#### Sha'anxing System

Located in sub-sector south central. Home to hive world Sha'anxing and one of the five major shrine worlds.

### Ecclesiarchy and Adepta Sororitas Presence

Five shrine worlds have been established in the sub-sector. Taishan, Hengshan, Hengshan, Huashan, and Songshan. Of these, the general favor that the sub-sector's skilled diplomats have been able to curry among the administorum and ecclesiarchy mean that currently four of the five are headed by Zhonghua Ecclesiarchs. The Adepta Sororitas recruits as normal throughout the sub-sector and provides services to the faithful, but given the relative security of the sub-sector, their militant arms maintain only a very small presence here.

### Forgeworlds and Adeptus Mechanicus presence

Perhaps the only major foreign presence that the Zhonghua tolerate without too much grumbling is the Adeptus Mechanicus. There are manufactorums on every planet, six major forgeworlds, with numerous affiliated minor forge worlds scattered throughtout the sub-sector. There is no level of the great hives where the red robes of Mars are an unfamiliar sight, and while the tech adepts aren't celebrated like the Astartes who keep them safe, all are conscious of their vital role in the Great Purity system.

The Eunuchs believe that, due to the general safety of the sub-sector, the major forgeworlds maintain only token skitarii forces for self-defense. This is only partially true, the scions of mars only keep a token force active at any one time, but do maintain in secret vaults very large personal defense forces that can be activated quickly should the forge come under direct invasion.

### Integration with Huaguo Sub-Sector

Forces stationed in Huaguo Sub-Sector include the Celestial Heralds Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes, the Zhonghua 3rd (Infantry), 4th (Infanty-Penal), 6th (Infantry), 77th (Armored), 313th (Artillery), and 588th (Artillery) Regiments. Nominally, the Celestial Heralds maintain a force disposition in compliance with the Codex Astartes, with a disproportionate quantity of biker troops, but in practice they are heavily integrated with the Astra Militarum, dispersed as small shock squads embedded in the larger army.

Formally, the sector is governed by an advisory council of Eunuchs, but informally they rule in close consultation with the chapter master of the Celestial Heralds. The Lord General of the Astra Militarum in the sub-sector has a seat in sub-sector governance as well, but his voice has been neutered for centuries by reliance on the Eunuchs' supplies and reverence for the Astartes chapter master.

This system has raised more than a few eyebrows among outsiders visiting the sub-sector, but as they have been consistently Tithe-paying and export imperial regiments on a regular basis, the diplomats who represent the Great Purity sub-sector government to the Administratum have managed to keep most major offices filled with Zhonghua natives. The recent troubles may see and end to this, however, and a long look into the internal affairs of a people who are by now quite used to doing things in their own idiosyncratic fashion.

## Chapter Organization

### Company Specializations

Though much of the chapter is relatively decentralized, and it is common for a Celestial Herald to operate completely independent from his brothers, integrated into mortal hierarchies for an extended period of time, the chapter remains at least nominally codex-compliant in command structure, and some of the companies bear particular marks of specialization.

* **1st Company** - Protects the home system, particularly the hiveworld Jingxing, its hive moon Tianyue, and the three minor forgeworlds of the capitol system. That doesn't mean the whole company is always present, but one squad at least must be present in or around the fortress monastery even during a full deployment of the chapter. The genebanks, chapter records, and defense of the capitol hive are simply too important, and being the most famous building in the heart of the sub-sector's largest hive, the chapter can't rely on secrecy for protection. Still, the political value of the most elite company for the chapter master's machinations in the council of Eunuchs means that they don't get bored, and individual squads are often sent on relatively minor missions throughout the sub-sector as a way of placating distressed or potentially disloyal nobles. The men might not care much about the details of how they are pawns in Bimawen's political game, but they do quite like the idea that they are deeply influential within the sector, giving 1st company a particular sense of importance.

* **2nd Company** - This company is in many ways the most unified and coherent company in the chapter, and for that reason holds the senior librarius and secondary backup of the chapter archives, as well as an offsite genebank on their battle barge, the Bao Chuan. With effective control of the battle barge, it is second company who is most responsible for being the rapid response force for disasters in system and assisting the imperial navy in the endless struggle against interstellar piracy. Every major world can expect to see them on parade at least once in a lifetime, proudly displaying the full armory of a space marine company as well as trophies collected over the chapter's long history. The fact that they lack a particular home base means they have come to be shared among all the Zhonghua people, heroic figures not just for one planet but for the sub-sector as a whole. As a result, there are no battle brothers among the 2nd Company who hate fame.

* **3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th Companies** - All carry approximately the same remit. These five hundred battle brothers are the ones most closely integrated with planetary defenses, civilian government, and the Astra Militarum regiments permanently assigned to Huaguo sub-sector. They are rarely assigned on a permanent basis in groups larger than five to a planet, and many only have a single space marine from the middle companies on hand at any time, but this makes each member of these companies a local hero, recognized and celebrated wherever he goes.

* **7th Company** - Traditionally considered one of the middle companies along with the 3rd through 6th, but following captain Yang Guang's disastrous error at the battle above Guangxing, it is in the process of rebuilding under Li Yuan. Even while rebuilding it has been sent into the recent wars, currently only fields 43 Astartes, though this number grows regularly. The particular privileges granted to the 7th company captain by his patron Bimawen are a source of suspicion among other companies, but the members of the 7th walk like they carry some secret pride with them.

* **8th Company** - The first stop for new battle-brothers recently raised from the scout forces, and losses from other companies are filled where possible through transfers out of 8th company, making it in many respects the rookie company. Led by the compassionate and wise captain Xuanzang, 8th company is assigned to the Sihe system, an absolutely massive solar system featuring no fewer than thirty inhabited worlds and four major hives. Being so concentrated allows the new space marines to integrate with the system like they will be expected to in the other companies, but also still be close enough for reinforcement and support should inexperience lead to error. Each man of the 8th Company is receiving their first moment of adulation from the mortals they protect, and most are still young enough to remember freshly how they viewed space marines when they were aspirants themselves, imbuing each member with a sense of superiority.

* **9th Company** - Structured much like the others, but rather than being stationed on the primary worlds populated chiefly the sub-sector's dominant Zhonghua people, they patrol the fringe worlds of the sub-sector. The west and south of the sub-sector are home to a number of feudal Ogryn worlds. The gravity is too high to be worth colonizing permanently with baseline humans, and so it falls to the 9thcompany to keep order and a semblance of civilization on these backward systems. The mere appearance of an Astartes is usually more than enough to keep the dimwitted and fanatically religious Ogryn abhumans when it comes to collect the tithes on their mining worlds. They are also assigned to the penal worlds that are kept around the same area and oversee the tournaments that produce the penal legions. Being assigned to the chapter's least glamorous duties and usually being last on the requisitions list has caused the ninth company to edge towards more brutal melee combat and away from the high velocity hit and run favored by their brothers. They are convinced that this makes them truer and more pure Celestial Heralds than the more civilized companies.

* **10th Company** - These are the Chapter's fire support specialists. For a minority of Celestial Heralds in the other nine squads, their study of Zhonghua philosophy during frequent periods of calm lead the last vestigal speed lust remaining from their White Scars gene seed to decay completely. The idea of mounting a bike and fighting from the saddle suddenly seems like a pointless vanity. It is far more efficient for a bulky and powerful space marine to hold the largest weapon he can possibly carry, use his genhanced mind and laser sharp eyesight to target that weapon at the enemy, and fling projectiles carrying nothing but fuel and payload towards the target while the marine himself stands still from an advantageous position. To think like this is to request a transfer into the 10th company, and because of this characteristic oddity it is typically two or three squads under-strength. The 10th company rotates through joint exercises with the artillery and armored regiments, and patrols the empty, lifeless worlds of the sub-sector, activities which give their minds plenty of time for contemplation. Though they have almost completely rejected the ferocity of their genefather in deference to calm serenity, they can't help but feel a certain moral elevation over their faster and more violent comrades.

### Chapter Recruitment

The Astartes of the Celestial Heralds are idolized among all the Zhonghua, and so it is no surprise that young boys from across the sub-sector dream of being accepted into their ranks and ascending to semi-divine status. The riding traditions of the Celestial Heralds have evolved in the context of the great hive cities, and nearly every young boy considers himself an expert in the miniature bicycles that zip through the streets. Training agility, endurance, and speed from the earliest age, the disorganized efforts of street children and the dedicated training of ambitious boys from rich families all culminate every three years in public, planetary tournament festivals presided over by an actual Space Marine on every major world, with traveling events hosted in smaller systems less frequently. The boys compete in trick riding courses, long and short distance racing, high speed target shooting, and a bike mounted general melee. While of course winning is the goal of each young boy who enters these massive tournaments, there is no formal scoring, and the Astartes presiding over the event can select any three children who catch his eye for one reason or another, or declare no final winners if he deems the contestants sub-par.

Though the Planetary Tournament of the Emperor seems to the boys like the pinnacle of a winner's life, the truth is that for those selected, it is only a preliminary round. As soon as they leave the adulation of the winner's circle, they are transported in the strictest silence to the Celestial Herald fortress monastery on the sub-sector capitol Jingxing. No instructions are given, but if they speak they are beaten, if they fail to follow the battle brother who selected them they are beaten, and if they cause serious problems they are simply killed and left on the floor of the transport for cleanup later.

When the aspirant reaches the fortress monastery, he is led to an individual room and locked inside. A special servitor is already inside, specifically calibrated to break the child's arms, legs, and ribs without inflicting lethal injury. After two days laying locked in the room with broken bones and no food, they are given instructions to make their way through a long and labyrinthine series of corridors, at the end of which they will receive food and medical care. The suffering is necessary, the aspirants are later informed, because they were born Zhonghua-- soft and rich-- and to be a space marine they must first be transformed into a Celestial Herald-- hard, strong, and dedicated. Those who don't reach the room with food and medicine are given no time limit, but after three weeks chapter serfs go through and collect their bodies for disposal.

Because of the relative homogeneity of the sub-sector's Zhonghua population and a general comparability with Chogoran genetics, as many as one in twenty aspirants pass the preliminary genetic screenings for gene seed compatibility, and of those who pass one in eight can expect to survive the subsequent series of procedures for transformation into a Primaris Space Marine. Those who fail the initial screening are inducted as chapter serfs, and those permanently crippled during the twenty two surgeries are re-purposed as servitors, but for the lucky and determined few who survive, they will spend the rest of their unnaturally extended lives as Celestial Herald Space Marines, bearing the hopes and faith of Huaguo sub-sector on their massive pauldrons.

As they go through the multi-year process of gaining the 22 organs of a Primaris Space Marine, the new initiate learns the tactics and customs of the chapter in the fortress monastery Yiheyuan. As a part of the decades long training process, they are naturally passed through extensive indoctrination and educational curriculum, and by the end of it, each battle brother has mastered four languages, speaking their native Zhonghua, the High and Low Gothic of the Imperium, as well as a chapter specific code language known as Han Battle Cant, used only among the brothers of the Celestial Heralds. Once they are physically ready, the join the scouts and are seconded to veterans scattered around the system to learn about operating independently. Once it is time for them to join the chapter as a full Astartes they are inducted into the 8th company and typically deployed to the densely populated Sihe system where the 8th company captain can keep a closer watch on his new space marines. Celestial Heralds do not begin as devastators or assault marines as in many other companies, but are issued bike and bolter right from the start. Those who demonstrate the particular temperament will later be transferred to the 9thassault or 10th devastator companies, or they will be moved along to the other, standard companies as replacements are needed.

## Chapter Gene-Seed

The Celestial Heralds'  gene seed, like most White Scars successors, is quite stable and free of aberrations. Additionally, the Chogoran savagery often linked to the seed of Jaghatai Khan has been largely bred out of the chapter through long integration into Zhonghua culture. However, it is unclear whether the stereotypical Celestial Herald preference for independence and distaste for operating long term in groups larger than a demi-squad is a result of genetics or simply a peculiarity of the chapter's culture.

## Traditions, Beliefs, and Customs

### Chapter Customs

Though the Celestial Heralds are a White Scars Successor Chapter, long integration with the settled and cultured Zhonghua have robbed them of most of that legacy. They still ride, but the raw need for speed has largely been bred out of them, and now they ride mostly for show. From the earliest days, an aspirant rides as a means of winning a place among the chapter, and many of their battle tactics revolve around swift movement among the brothers to manipulate a foe into crashing into the much less mobile Astra Militarum regiments each squad is attached to.

But there are also advantages to living among a settled society. Nearly all their aspirants come to them literate and at least somewhat educated, and the value of study and debate allows them to learn in ways that give them an edge in battle that can often overcome the lost edge of raw ferocity.

Being bound up in mortal affairs has given the chapter a much stronger sense of responsibility towards those they protect than many other chapters. While an outsider can clearly see the military drawbacks that much of the chapter is blind to, the intangible benefits to the sub-sector during their frequent outbursts of peace may outweigh those. Higher contentedness and greater faith lead to more industry and responsibility among the civilians, boosting economic output, tithe revenues, and general prosperity. And in the extreme, seeing their guardians working for them day in and day out leads even the dregs of society to feel a debt in kind, to the chapter and the Imperium they represent. No other chapter could have produced the miracle of Bimawen's Popular Front, when the entire capitol hive walked out with no weapon but faith to defeat an ork incursion.

### Strengths of Character

Independence

Scholarship / Intelligence

Pride

Commitment to the Zhonghua people

### Weaknesses of Character

Arrogance and complacency are rampant among the Celestial Heralds. Surrounding themselves with adoring fans takes a toll on even the most strong willed, and since all the modern battle brothers grew up among the Zhonghua worshiping the thing they have now become, it is those who fail to develop a massive god complex and a swollen, preening ego that are viewed as deviant.

The chapter as a whole is also very disunified relative to most Astartes chapters, and in some cases the opinions and lives of the mortals under their care can matter more to a Celestial Herald than his own brothers in the other chapters. There is still a sense of brotherhood, but it is not one that requires conformity, uniformity, or obedience across companies.

## Notable Members

### Officers and Heroes

* **Bimawen** - *Current Chapter Master* - Bimawen was always compassionate and brilliant, and it didn't hurt that he came from a high administrative family. The previous chapter master, already well integrated into the Eunuch council, took Bimawen under his wing soon after surviving the transformation into a Space Marine and groomed him from command from the very beginning. Already at that time, the Celestial Heralds chapter master's job involved far more civilian governance than interaction with his own chapter, but this was accepted since for centuries now the Chapter Master had served as a surrogate emperor to the isolated sub-sector. By the time of the Huangdi Rebellion however, Bimawen was nearly a thousand years old, and his sedentary lifestyle was as destructive to Astartes physiology as a strenuous life is for a mortal. It is no secret that he is now completely incapable of leading either the chapter or the sub-sector, but his value as an icon for the people and the reverence his chapter holds him in means no one dares replace him. He has no clearly selected successor.
* **Shi Hou** - *10th Devastator Company Captain*
* **Mei Houwang** - *2nd Company Captain* - Wields Qinglong Yanyue Dao, a factory stock power axe with lengthened handle that he hopes to transform into a storied relic through his heroic deeds.

* **Sun Wukong** - *Champion*
* **Qitian Dasheng** - *1st Company Captain* - Preening, boisterous, and undeniably skilled, Qitian Dasheng has never walked off the battlefield a loser in his four hundred years. For these victories, Qitian is second only to the chapter master in fame among the people of Huaguo sub-sector, and as his superior spends all his time absorbed in Great Purity politics, the actual command of the chapter falls primarily to the first company captain. There are few people in the company less suited to the role. While he has never lost in a tactical sense, he has no head at all for strategic maneuvering, and no patience for directing the actions of those around him. To distant companies he gives terrible orders based off only a cursory understanding of their situation that are usually ignored promptly by the commanders on scene. The companies and squads being deployed so distantly has fostered a fair degree of independence even among the usually independent space marines, but Qitian's recklessness has damaged large scale coordination even more in the centuries that he has been in effective control of the chapter's regular operations.
* **Xingzhe** - *Senior Librarius* - No one hates what Bimawen has done to the chapter more than Xingzhe, and no one is more certain to remain silent about it. As a youth he had been a braggart, standing proud beneath the adulation that being a Celestial Herald of Huaguo sub-sector granted him. He even gave interviews with vox programs, a step too far that was harshly punished, though only caused him to be more circumspect. Though qualified for the librarius and watched over for his latent psychic potential, he was judged unfit for advancement within that sub-brotherhood. Fortunately for him, he got word of the neiqing early, and realized that the seeds of slaaneshi corruption lay in his arrogance. Fleeing into a hidden cave that only he knew of, he took a vow of silence, fasting, and meditation for six months, emerging with a new name and a new resolution. This asceticism was tested harshly by his company commander and the senior librarius, but they found that indeed he had found his own neiqing during the purges. His advancement as a psycher and librarius officer was swift following this, and by the catastrophic Huangdi rebellion he fought as the most senior librarius of the chapter.
* **Dou "Zhansheng" Fo** - *9th (Assault) Company Captain* - One of the few brothers who maintained composure during the Dungan Rebellion, collecting scattered imperial elements and preserving peace on the few worlds he could hold on to. Though only a brother of the rank and file, so few were left following the various attacks and the Neiqing that Do Fou was selected as new 9th Company Captain. Seen by others in the 9th Company as the "safe" choice, he is scorned by many of his own brothers for his insistance that they tamp down thier ferocious independance. He lacks the force of personality to maintain control over his own company when brothers are scattered across multiple planets.
* **Lingming Danhou** - *Chaplain* - Carries the Ruyi Jingu artifact
* **Sun Zhanglao** - *Dreadnought* - By far the oldest member of the chapter, Sun Zhanglao is the last surviving astartes of the original thousand in the Celestial Herald's founding. A native of Chogoris, Sun had just completed his trials to be a White Scar when he was transferred as part of the 15th founding. As a battle brother, he was a model of Chogoran ferocity that others sought to emulate, and during the Xiongnu crusade he not only slew but then mutilated the body of a Xiongnu space marine, a fact which he has kept to himself in the millennia since. That ferocity served him well during the great Necron awakening, but also saw him killed. He awoke after near total destruction at the hands of the Necron Lord entombed into a dreadnought. He should have raged against this, no battle brother before him had been tamed into the indignity of a metal shell, and all his Chogoran instincts raged against this cage. But somehow there was no heat to his fury. The cold shell of the dreadnought had excised his former passions. However, his nearly unlimited time to study tactics and war simulations and his much slower speed has made him the premier infantry commander in the chapter, and he often leads guard regiments in large scale battles accompanied by only an honor guard of Celestial Herald brothers. He still feels a twinge of longing and despair when he sees them zoom out ahead of him on the battlefield, but he fights for the Emperor, the chapter master, and the Zhonghua people.
* **Xuanzang** - *8th Company Captain* -
* **Zhu Bajie** - *3rd Company Captain* -
* **Sha Wujing** - *4th Company Captain* -
* **Bailong Ma**  - *5th Company Captain* -
* **Yang Guang** - *Former 7th Company Captain* - Committed boarding torpedoes in the disastrous battle at Guangxing. Lost with whole company.
* **Li Yuan** - *7th Company Captain* - Building 7thcompany back from scratch. A distant relative of Bimawen who was personally sponsored by the chapter master to join the chapter, though he still had to pass all the relevant trials. He was in the scout corps, ready for his final Primaris surgeries when 7th company was destroyed by Yang Guang. Using his personal connections, he convinced the chapter master to elevate him to 7th company captain and to build his entire force from trainees and recruits that he selected personally.
* **Aisin Gioro** - *First Chapter Master* - Appointed master of the Celestial Heralds during the founding of the chapter in late M36, he led the charge on the purification of Huaguo sub-sector, and skillfully managed the defense against the fanatical Xiongnu crusade that threatened to destroy his hard-won territory. A political genius, Gioro was not afraid to use unconventional tactics to make the most of the situation he was presented with. It was he who dispersed his chapter onto hundreds of worlds, and it was he who decided that the best way to keep the new Great Purity government free of chaos was to involve space marines in the government. Even in his own time, no one could really keep up with his unorthodox vision, but it served the sub-sector well in the dark eldar raids that consumed the later centuries of his life. Killed in a sword fight with a dark eldar Incubi during a boarding action on the battle barge Zuidabao.
* **Shunzhi** - *Second Chapter Master* - Aisin Gioro had designated the 8th Company captain as his heir a number of years before his death. Shunzhi had a markedly different style than the first chapter master had, far more paternal and compassionate, but his eye for politics and keeping the sub-sector cleansed of chaos was no less keen. Just as he had built up new astartes in the 8th company scout squad, so too was his guiding hand key for the chapter's development in the centuries following the founder's death.

## Chapter Fleet

The Celestial Heralds never maintained a very large dedicated fleet, just a single mid-sized battle barge, the Zuidabao, meaning "Greatest Treasure" in standard Low Gothic. However, the battle barge and the chapter's few other assets were destroyed during the White Lotus dispute, when the warships of the chaos-aligned Lotus Consortium gained total void supremacy over the entire sub-sector. In M42, the chapter relies entirely on Huaguo's tiny Imperial Navy presence and conscripted civilian vessels to move men and equipment across the void. Chapter Master Bimawen has requisitioned the Administratum for assistance, including new voidcraft, but these have been put on hold until the questions surrounding the Celestial Heralds' loyalty have been resolved.

## Chapter Relics and Equipment

* The chapter masters have all carried the master crafted power sword wielded originally by the first chapter master Aisin Gioro. The attractive and serviceable blade was presented as a gift from the White Scars at the founding of the chapter from the skilled blacksmiths of Chogoris.
* The chapter has very little terminator armor, almost none was originally requisitioned and very few suits have been produced since. Including spares, the chapter can equip two squads of terminators total, and currently only a half squad of the 10th Company and a half squad of 9this permanently assigned as terminators.
* The forge world of Daxing in Jingxing system mass produces motorbikes and is famous for mass exporting them around the galaxy. As tribute to their space marine overlords, Daxing ensures that the chapter armory always has enough bikes for every marine to have two. They aren't the fastest or best, but they are reliable, sturdy, and easy to maintain.
* The dreadnought chassis that currently holds the remains of Sun Zhanglao is now four thousand years old and has acquired the status of venerable. The chapter has since interred a number of other dreadnoughts over the centuries, but only Zhanglao's is considered to be a sacred relic.
* In a secret vault in the fortress-monastery is kept the original writ of founding, blessed by the Terran Ecclesiarchs in a room less than a mile from the Emperor's Golden Throne. In the same room, on the opposite wall, is preserved the chapter standard of the Xiongnu, so that the stain of that war is never forgotten by the secret memories of the chapter.
* ***Qinglong Yanyue Dao*** - This is the personal weapon of 2nd company captain Mei Houwang. A slightly modified and lengthened power axe, the blade itself has no special characteristics and was requisitioned through the chapter in the standard fashion. However, Mei Houwang has begun to call it a relic of the chapter and hopes that through his glorious deeds the name of the Green Dragon Crescent Moon Blade will live forever and continue slaying enemies far into the future.
* The *Ruyi Jingu bang* is carried by Chaplain Lingming Danhou. It is a special Crozius Arcanum, slightly larger than standard, that allows him to make "bigger dick" jokes incessantly.
* The chapter used to maintain a single mid-sized battle barge, typically under the command of the 2nd company. However, it was destroyed during the White Lotus Dispute in 860.M41 and has yet to be replaced in the current era.

## Relations

Though the Celestial Heralds get on decently well with fellow loyalists when they encounter each other, the relative isolation of Huaguo sub-sector means that they don't have close bonds with anyone in the wider galaxy.

### Allies

The Celestial Heralds are beloved by the Zhonghua people of the many worlds of Huaguo subsector, and the numerous Zhonghua regiments consider it the deepest honor to participate in integrated operations with the chapter. In fact, the preferred battle formations for both the regiment and the chapter involve space marine spearheads operating in conjunction with a mass of guardsmen and supporting artillery.

### Enemies

The entire Huaguo sub-sector remembers the days before the arrival of the Celestial Heralds and the purging that established the Great Purity government. The forces of chaos, particularly Slaanesh and Tzeench, are watched with careful eye. However, recent events have seen numerous defeats against the ancient foe, and the Celestial Heralds fight with greater fury than ever to restore the Great Purity and expel the taint of chaos.

Additionally, the Celestial Heralds hold a particular spot of hatred for the Eldar, the subfactions of which they are unable and uninterested in differentiating between. The ceaseless Dark Eldar raids in the early years of the Chapter, followed by the aftermath of the assault on Fantian, were instrumental in shaping the modern chapter's current combat doctrines and the reason for their strategic dispersal throughout the sub-sector. With the current breakdown in order within the sub-sector, long dormant webway gates on obscure worlds have begun to re-activate, and combating slave raids is a particularly favored target for the Celestial Heralds' need for vengeance.

## Notable Quotes

### About the Celestial Heralds

 White Scars Successors
 Space Wolves Successors
 Imperial Fists Successors
 Blood Angels Successors
 Iron Hands Successors
 Ultramarines Successors
 Salamanders Successors
 Raven Guard Successors
 Unknown Lineage

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