The Ullanor Crusade

### Theatre

Ullanor Sector, culminating in direct Imperial assault on the Ullanor System and the world of Ullanor Prime

### Strength (Attackers)

Over 250,000 Astartes drawn from the Imperial Justicars, Blight Wardens, Star Guardians and War Bears Legions.
Millions (possibly billions) of warriors of the Imperial ArmyMillions (possibly billions) of Tech Thralls and Cybernetica constructs of the Mechanicum
Dozens of Titan Legios and Knight Households, Legio Mortis is known to have fielded 100 Titans.
Billions of reserve and support staff.

### Strength (Defenders)

Tens of Billions of Orks, outnumbering the Imperial Forces by a factor of 5-1

### Casualties (Defenders)

Near complete erradication, billions of Orks slain, hundreds of thousands more flee the Ullanor System

### Outcome

Ork population on Ullanor eradicated, overall Greenskin population in the Milky Way Galaxy devastated
 Imperial Triumph held on Ullanor marking high point of the Great Crusade
Almire is promoted to Imperial Warmaster
Emperor of Mankind withdraws from Crusade to begin secret Imperial Webway Project on Terra

> "*The Emperor protects. Kill every last one.*"
> ― Attributed to First Praetor Gobalt Asmodeus
>
>

The **Ullanor Crusade** was a vast Imperial assault on the Ork Empire of the Greenskin Overlord Urrlak Urruk during the Great Crusade of the late 30th and early 31st Millennia. Ullanor Prime, the capital world of this empire, and the site of the final assault, lay in the Ullanor System of the galaxy's Ullanor Sector.

The Crusade included the deployment of over 250,000 Space Marines, an unknown number of Imperial Army and Mechanicum troops, though it is presumed this number is in the millions, if not billions, along with heavy support from titans, knight households and vessels of the *Imperialis Armada,* as well astheir support personnel. The Ullanor Crusade marked the high point of the Great Crusade's vast effort to reunite the scattered colony worlds of humanity.

Following the defeat of the Orks of Ullanor, the Emperor of Mankind returned to Terra to begin work on His great, secret project to open up the Aeldari Webway for humanity's use. In His place to command the vast forces of the Great Crusade He left the Primarch Almire.

Almire was raised to the rank of Imperial Warmaster and given command authority over all of his fellow Primarchs and every Expeditionary Fleet of the Great Crusade.

But the Primarchs never came to terms with the Emperor's absence. Their feelings over his seeming abandonment of the Great Crusade to pursue a secret project whose purpose he chose not to reveal to his genetic sons laid the seeds of corruption that would ultimately add to other slights against the pantheon, leading to the great civil war that ended the crusade once and for all, the Almire Apostasy.

## History

### The Battle of Ullanor

In M30.999, a Harrying Fleet of the VIIth *Legiones Astartes*, the War Bears, encountered and begaun their pursuit of a sizable Ork migration, dozens of capital-class ships led by a mighty Space Hulk. Alone, such a force was a threat, but it was nothing even the small fleet of the VIIth could handle, and with that knowledge forefront in their mind, the War bears struck, unleashing the full spectrum of their fury upon the Orks.

Uncharacteristically however, the Orks did not turn in force to combat this new threat, instead slipping away from the VIIth with barely a fight. Enraged, the commander of the War Bears fleet ordered all ships to follow their prey, charging headlong into something no one would have believed the Orks were capable of. A trap.

As the War Bears fleet emerged into the as of yet un-mapped Ullanor system, and within moments, found themselves caught in a deadly crossfire. Few ships escaped those first moments, the commander of the fleet amongst those lost. Only a trio of frigates managed to jump back to the warp, heavily damaged as they limped back to the bulk of the War Bears legion, linking up with the Devouring Fleet. There the captains told of what they had seen, an Ork empire eclipsing anything that the Imperium had so far encountered, with numbers enough that even the full might of the VIIth Legion would not be enough to combat. Normally, Kodiak, the Bear of Skara, would have taken extreme offense at the insinuation that there was any foe his legion could not best alone, and yet coming from the mouth of one of his own sons seemed to soften the blow, and reluctantly, the War Bears called out into the void, speaking of what they had seen and drawing the might of the Imperium in to crash down upon the Orks of Ullanor.

Soon, a great muster had been arrayed, the Emperor himself standing in command, though the records of Imperial History do not record what role he played in the battle itself, if he played any, for all speak of another leading the charge. Indeed, many believe the Emperor purposely did not lead this most important of tasks, making the Ullanor the final test for one other who would soon be elevated beyond what many thought possible. Almire Leoric, Lord of the Imperial Justicars, first found of the Primarchs and ever favoured son of the Emperor.

Alongside the full might of the VIIth and XVIth Legions stood the IInd and IVth, the Blight Wardens and the Star Guardians. The Blight Wardens were ever the chemical masters, specialising in such ways of war, their battlefields flooded with toxic gasses and airborne pathogens, turning the very air against their foe, and in such a role, they would be perfect for combatting the Ork menace, their kind rarely if ever wearing sealed armour that could hamper the efficacy of the IInds chief weapon. The IVth on the other hand possessed the greatest war fleet amongst the legions, perhaps one of the finest single fleets outside of Segmentum Battlefleets. Time and time again they had proved their own skill in spearheading Imperial assaults and claiming void supremacy, allowing other Imperial forces to land upon the target world with minimal resistance from enemy orbital assets.

Alongside the assembled might of four legions, over a quarter of a million Astartes, stood the full wrath of the Imperium itself. Millions, if not billions, of soldiers from the Imperial Army, their numbers matched by the Tech Thralls and Cybernetica constructs of the Mechanicum. Standing alongside and above the other forces were dozens of titan legios and knightly households, Legio Mortis alone known to have fielded 100 titans of various classes. Billions more stood in reserve and support roles, the Ullanor Crusade representing the single largest concentration of Imperial Forces in history, eclipsing even those forces arrayed for the Great Crusades commencement. Nothing could stand before such a force, and yet, the Imperial Logisticians also showed that nothing could defeat such an empire as the one the recently identified Overlord Urrlak Urruk led. An immovable object would meet an unstoppable force, victory anything but assured as the order was given, M31.000 marking the beginning of this greatest of crusades.

The goal of the crusade was simple. Seize the Ork Capital world of Ullanor Primus, slay Overlord Urrlak Urruk and scatter this force. It was the standard tactical response to an Ork Waaaagh of any size, cut off the head and the rest would fall into chaos, fighting themselves as much as the Imperium. In such a state, a mop up operation would be simple, but before they could reach that goal, the Imperium had to fight through a unified force of some or the universe's greatest killing machines. Few Orks had ever matched those of the Overlords empire in size or ferocity, many of their number towering over even an Astartes, while the Overlord himself would be able to look a Primarch in the eye.

The Star Guardians struck first, hundreds of vessels of the Imperialis Armada alongside them, leading the way for the Imperium. The Ork Armada was ramshackle in the extreme, but it’s numbers eclipsed the Imperial Forces, just as they did on the ground. Dozens of Imperialis Armada flotilla’s and fleets commanded by anyone from a Commodore to Grand Admiral’s, and later joined by three other legion fleets, such a force should have been unwieldy, with commanders of the same rank vying to be placed in ultimate command. Under Shaaa’s Iron Grip however, none dared to falter, and just as Almire led the entire Crusade with matchless efficiency, Shaaa Hydrades commanded the void war with an iron grip on his own forces, and deadly efficiency against the Orks.

Striking hard, the Star Guardians and the supporting mortal fleets cut through the Ork fleet like a power sword through flesh, focussing their forces upon the planetary defences to create safe corridors from the system jump points to the worlds below that ground forces could exploit. The Ork fleet reeled at the sudden strike, unable to match the focused strength of the Imperial Fleet, and it was this that allowed the Imperium to claim the initiative. As the Star Guardians secured dominance around all worlds in the system, their fleets turned, facing outwards as they prepared to defend their newly captured territory, thousands of Nova Cannons, Lance beams and macrocannon shots slamming into the reforming Ork fleet,  Mechanicum engineering vying with Ork ingenuity. The Star Guardians had seized the void, they had turned the space above the Ork worlds into a fortress of their own, now they had to hold it as the rest of the Imperial Forces came on.

Here, the War Bears predictably led the charge, being amongst the first to land on every planet, tearing into their favoured prey with unrestricted savagery, the Orks responding in kind, both sides tearing each other apart in brutal close combat. The death toll for the VIIth was extensive, but by spending their lives, they gave other Imperial forces the chance to land with next to no enemy interference. Across every world, save the still untouched Ullanor Primus, warriors of the Imperial Justicars dug in, standing alongside warriors of the Imperial Army and the Blight Wardens, the IInd dropping gas bombs across the surface of every world. These bombs did nothing to fully formed life, even unaugmented humans being unaffected by its spread, but for new new life, fungal spores in particular, the virus set to work, slaughtering all microbial life it came into contact with. Though they did not know it, the Orks had lost one of their greatest weapons, their reproductive capabilities, no more would they replace their losses. The Infinite had become finite.

When the War Bears had finally spent their fury, forced to withdraw behind friendly lines, the Imperial Justicars stepped to the fore. With shields to the front, they met the Ork charge, absorbing it as all across the lines, battle was joined once more. Then, at an unspoken command that seemed to happen nearly simultaneously across the system, the Imperial Justicars took a single step back. Far from being a sign of retreat however, this was the precursor to something far more viscerale, Orks who had been pressed against a wall suddenly stumbling forward, losing their balance, and in that moment, the Imperial Justicars surged forward once more.

Bolter shell explosions rang out across the battlefield, thousands of Orks dying as the Imperial Justicars went from defensive to offensive in a matter of seconds, no other legion able to match them in such counter attacking tactics. With a roar they surged forward, the full might of Imperial Wrath behind them. The Orks had no counter to such a brutal assault, dying in droves to the guns of the Imperials, or crushed under the tread of Imperial Justicars boots and tanks.

It was in these moments that the newly developed Sicaran battle tank, devised by the three minds of Veratal Dharma, Galvarian and the projects initiator, Artellion Emerabron, as a replacement to the venerable predator design. So totally did they prove themselves upon that day, that when the time came for the final assault, Almire ordered that they would be amongst the first wave, forging a path for the Imperial forces for other, slower, assets to follow. Across half a dozen worlds, Orks were hunted to extinction, but the Crusade was far from over. Ullanor Primus still stood tall, and high above in the void, the Star Guardians still clashed with the power of the Ork Armada.

In bloody battle after bloody battle, the equal of any on the surface, the Star Guardians led the charge against Ork vessels, boarding and destroying countless ships before finally, after weeks of fighting on the ground, Shaaa slew the warlord in charge of the fleet, crushing him beneath his cybernetic tread, scattering the fleet across the system, their cohesion shaken, though not yet fully shattered, for the Overlord still drew breath.

Even scattered however, the fleet was far from toothless, supply convoys constantly coming under attack as they carried men and women of the Imperial Army to the corpse grinder, their slow moving, lightly armoured transports being prime targets for the Orks, forcing the IVth to spread themselves even thinner. Sometimes, Battleships of the IVth or the Imperialis Armada would be able to break off from their guard duty, moving close to a planet to provide orbital support where the fighting was thickest. Their guns were the largest the loyalists had, and their support was always gratefully received, but rarely could they stay beyond a few salvoes, the demand for their power always exceeding the supply.

Finally, Ullanor Primus was within striking distance, enough of the Orks strength spent that an assault on the world was within probably parameters of victory. Wasting no time, Almire withdrew all forces that he could from other fields, including the majority of his own sons, and with a single closed fist, slammed into Ullanor Primus.

Across the world, drop pods and dreadclaws slammed home, heavy landers following swiftly afterwards, ferrying armour to the surface. The Imperial Forces did not wait for the Orks to charge this time, a massed armoured charge striking the central Ork city. Once more the newly created Sicaran proved its worth, the Orks being drawn to the conflict like moths to a flame. Nowhere however was Almire found, nor were any of his terminator elite, the Adjudicae, despite the need for such warriors in the fight.

And then, when the Orks had fully committed themselves, Almire revealed his final card. Along with the Executions and his entire first Chapter, Almire teleported directly to the base of Urrlak's great central keep, the so-called “Tower of Ullanor”. While most of his sons turned to hold off any Ork counter attack, to come to the side of their master, Almire and his Executioners fought their way upwards, pushing to reach the pinnacle of that great edifice, First Praetor Gobalt Asmodeus, second in command of the XVIth and Master of the Executioners always a single step behind his lord, proving his skill in battle time and time again as he struck down any who slipped by his lord.

When they finally crested the mighty Tower, smashing their way into a vast throne Chamber, Almire finally laid eyes upon his prize, the gargantuan form of Overlord Urrlak Urruk leering at the Primarch, surrounded by the forms of forty of his biggest Nobz, each of whom would have been a warboss in any other situation.  With a roar, Almire charged, his sons alongside him, clashing with the Nobz as Almire ignored them entirely, his eyes fixed upon Urrlak.

The pairs duel was legendary, swiftly moving from the throne room to the balcony beyond. The Orks strength was beyond what should have been possible for any living creature save a Primarch, but Almire was undaunted, his spin stabbing into Urrlak again and again, slicing through armour, flesh and bone with each strike. Finally, after a titanic struggle that would be remembered for all time, or at least, it should have been, Almire crippled the Overlord, his leg soaring free as his spear finally found its mark, slicing the limb from the Warboss and sending him to the floor. Not skipping a beat, Almire stooped low, hauling the mighty form of the Overlord above his head, his armour screaming in protest at the great weight, Almire ignoring it as he walked towards the battlements of the balcony.

Holding Urrlak aloft, Almire let out a single cry of victory, proclaiming Imperial dominance on this world as upon all worlds, before pitching the Overlord from the tower, sending his screaming, bloody form down to the ground, ending the reign of Overlord Urrlak Urruk with a green-ichored splat.

With the death of their leader, the Ork forces surrounding the fortress-palace collapsed into infighting as was their wont. The battle for Ullanor Prime soon became a massacre, as the remaining Orks found themselves trapped between the two forces of the Imperial Justicars from the the great central Tower of Ullanor and those who had breached the perimeter walls of the tower complex. The Imperial Justicars slaughtered the Orks in the fortress-palace complex to the last Greenskin, but they were not the last Orks in the Ullanor system.

Soon, the rout was underway, Almire directing all remaining Imperial forces with a seemingly preternatural ease that none could deny, even Shaaa yielding to the First Founds will, ceding control of the orbital war that until that point had been his sole purview. Millions of Orks perished as they fled the planets, but even the Star Guardians cordon could not stop the sheer number of vessels entirely, many escaping from the system. The War Bears, never ones to sit on their laurels, vowed that they would hunt down these last holdouts, hunting them down and crushing them into the mud across hundreds of star systems, all the way to Chondax, the Kayvas Belt and beyond.

With Urrlak's termination, the Ork empire self-destructed, and with its passing, the threat of the Orks themselves diminished almost entirely. Never again, so it was said, would the Greenskins rise from such a defeat, the Emperor himself proclaiming that this was the single greatest victory of the Great Crusade thus far. And that victory, though it had been fought for by many, belonged to a single individual. Almire Leoric, the Hero of Ullanor, and soon to be elevated even higher, gaining a title that would one day ring throughout all of creation as both feared and reviled.

Warmaster.

### The Triumph of Ullanor

> "*You are like a son and together we have all but conquered the galaxy. Now the time has come for me to retire to Terra. My work as a soldier is done and now passes to you for I have great tasks to perform in my earthly sanctum. I name you Warmaster and from this day forth all of my armies and generals shall take orders from you as if the words came from mine own mouth. But words of caution I have for you, for your brother Primarchs are strong of will, of thought and of action. Do not seek to change them, but use their particular strengths well. You have much work to do for there are still many worlds to liberate, many peoples to rescue. My trust is with you. Hail Almire! Hail the Warmaster!*"
> ― The Emperor of Mankind, the Triumph of Ullanor
>
>

With the greatest victory of the Imperium to that date sealed in blood and iron, the call to an Imperial triumph was sounded, to recognise this highpoint of the Great Crusade and to honour all the warriors of the Ullanor Crusade, mortals and Astartes alike, for their extraordinary valour and service to humanity's cause. By the Emperor's command, Ullanor was remade as a trophy world, designated Mundus Tropaeum on all galactic maps and records of the Imperial Tithe.

It would be a site of glory and spectacle to cement not only this single conquest over the forces ranged against Mankind, but a greater symbol of the Great Crusade itself. For two hundred Terran years the Emperor's mighty endeavour had moved across the face of the galaxy to bring unity and illumination to the lost daughter-worlds of Old Earth. It had pushed back the night, reforged old links between human civilisations, battled alien threats -- and with regret, it had often punished those who refused to return to the Imperial fold.

A change was coming, though, a change that found its fulcrum on Ullanor. None who walked upon that world knew that the echo of that Triumph would sound for solar decades, for Terran centuries, for millennia. The glory of this triumphant spectacle as so many of the Imperium's scattered military forces gathered in one place for the first time in centuries was to remain in the mind of every Astartes as the high-point of the great endeavour that they had been engaged upon. It would prove to be a bright memory to recall in the dark days of the Almire Apostasy after Astartes had turned against Astartes and Primarch against Primarch.

To prepare the world for the Triumph of Ullanor, geoformer platoons from the Mechanicum brought world engines and mobile stone-burners to cut a massive swath across the broken landscape left in the battle's wake. Orkish dead were buried by the millions within their savage ruins, interred beneath transplanted rocks and the heads of crushed mountains. The Mechanicum eradicated every last remaining trace of the enemy and paved over them with a giant boulevard, a parade stage as wide as the footprint of some entire Imperial cities.

They built a highway and allowed only one structure to stand besides the great platform -- an ornamental pavilion of black marble and heavy granite that had been built piecemeal on Terra and then shipped across the void by special envoy. Marker posts decorated with the skulls of Ork commanders paced out the length of the road, and behind them great bowls of smokeless Promethium burned brightly, endlessly lighting the highway with their blue-white fire.

When the Mechanicum had finished their work, the honoured came to pay homage to the battle won, the Great Crusade's ideal of human unity and the Emperor who was father to all Mankind. The Imperial Army and the Titan Legions bracketed the gathering. Human troops were ranked in uncountable numbers, their host so wide they became a sea of battle armour and dress uniforms. Every common man and woman who stood on Ullanor Prime's soil that day had been selected for their valour and conduct, and until the day they died each would have the singular honour of wearing the onyx-and-gold Ullanor Triumph Bar upon their uniforms.

The award was forged from Bolter shells recovered from the field and melted down. Ranged around them, the great war machines of the Legio Titanica towered towards a sky cut to ribbons by the contrails of a thousand aerospace fighters; and above those, high over the thin white cirrus clouds of Ullanor Prime's day, Imperial warships moved as slow as they dared through the upper atmosphere, washes of interface heat rolling off their Void Shields as they showed their flanks in a gesture of renewed fealty.

A full fourteen of the nineteen active duty Space Marine Legions stood represented at the Ullanor Triumph, and with them came nine beings of superhuman power and majesty. Eight gods and angels made flesh, the Primarchs of the greatest armies ever created by human hands.

Shaaa Hydrades, the Breacher Lord and master of the Star Guardians, gargantuan in his grease caked armour, his ruined face twisted into a scowl as he was bidden to remove his helmet. Nautis Soltair, father of the Kraken Lords, a multitude of talismans covering his armour freshly re-carved for this mighty occasion. Bartosz, the Imperial Sagittarius of the Palatine Wings, stood within his centaurine warframe, standing as distant from the Emperor as was possible in such a confined space. Khnum-Anhuret, the Sunstone King, resplendent in his finery and handsome in aspect, surrounding himself with his brothers, making light of this monumentous occasion.

His polar opposite, Galvarian of the Ashen Crows, stood apart from the other Primarchs, still never truly forgiven for his crimes during the Blood of Angels. Gaius Augustus Caligula, present only with his closest sons as his legion continued the crusade, stood arrayed in his armour, his multitude of servo arms folded around his waist, the Auric Spider watching and seeing all, even without his multi-lenses helmet. Lu Yueh Zhi Zi, the Jade father of the Blight Wardens, still nursing minor wounds taken upon the fields of the Ullanor Crusade. Charon stood with his helmet in place, the only one of the Primarchs to do so. The Emperor had given word that he alone would be permitted to remain faceless, his fearsome visage a reminder that even on such a day, the Imperium still had its terrors.

Then, finally, came Almire of the Imperial Justicars, the Indominate, the Hero of Ullanor, liberator and first among equals. Almire, who was to be given the new honour of an Imperial title above and beyond any that had been bestowed before; a title, it could be said, that would forever carry the echo of his name.

As the parade finally ended, the arrayed soldiers now turned to face the dais, great vid-monitor screens showing the Emperor and the Primarch's, all waiting with baited breath for what came next after this, surely the High Point of the Great Crusade. They did not have long to wait, the Master of Mankind giving voice to His great plans that would one day shake the Imperium to its very core, though none yet knew it. Almire, undisputed hero of the Ullanor Crusade, was named as Warmaster, the commander-in-chief of all the Emperor's armies who possessed command authority over all of the other Primarchs and every Expeditionary Fleet of the Great Crusade, long regarded as the First among Equals, now unequivocally raised to such a position in name as well as spirit.

For a moment, the world seemed to stand silent, before Bartosz of the Palatine Wings moved, dropping to one knee, bowing his head before his brother, already first among equals, now raised to be equal no more. Like a damn breaking, the world erupted in cheers and cries of adulation. Millions of voices raised to celebrate the naming of the Warmaster, unnumbered warriors of the Imperial Army would be deafened that day, their eardrums rupturing with the sheer number of voices joined in chorus, but all who suffered said they would gladly do so again.

Eventually, the cheers died away, the Emperor making one more proclamation before moving for Terra. The Imperium’s heart was to be secured fully, against any interloper that would dare to believe itself the equal of the Empire of man. In this, there could be only one to oversee the defences, Shaaa Hydrades being named as the Praetorian on Terra. While Almire would have undisputed command of the crusade, Shaaa would be given unprecedented authority within the Sol system itself, the better to protect the Emperor’s secretive project.

The cheers were lesser this time, almost infinitely so, but they still deafened many who had preserved their hearing through the first round of cheers.

After declaring Almire as Imperial Warmaster and the new supreme commander of the Great Crusade and Shaaa Hydrades as his Praetorian, the Emperor, to the shock of those assembled, announced his intention to return to Terra to pursue a secret project intended to benefit all Mankind. He would not say more, and his announcement immediately drew great concern among the Primarchs -- and not a little bit of resentment.

It was this resentment, combined with each Primarchs' own flaws and hidden jealousies, that the Chaos Gods would use to worm their way into the hearts of eight of their number, turning them in time against the Emperor and unleashing a civil war that would scar the galaxy for millennia. The Triumph of Ullanor represented the high point of the Emperor's dream to reunite Mankind -- and also the beginning of its end.

### Aftermath

Following victory in the Ullanor Crusade, the Imperium believed that the Ork race had been forever broken and would never again present a credible threat to humanity. Though scattered groups of Orks would periodically attack the Imperial frontier, they were regarded as little more than troublesome pests for over a thousand years following the end of the Almire Apostasy.

Ullanor however would see another great muster however, a mockery of the great Triumph that came before it. It was here that Almire mustered his forces during the opening years of the Almire Apostasy, a dark congregation of the greatest traitors in mankinds history, their unparralleled might arrayed upon the world in a muster that eclipsed the first. This force would soon fall upon the Solar System, the entire galaxy at stake.