Huaguo Raids

Armorial of the Celestial Heralds.

The **Huaguo Raids** was a xenodical purgation campaign conducted by the Celestial Heralds Space Marine Chapter. During this period of history which took place between the early-mid 37th Millennium, the Chapter's home system was constantly besieged by periodic raids from the nefarious and murderous xenos known as the Drukhari. Though the Chapter eventually emerged victorious and drove the vile xenos from their home system, it was not without great sacrifice, as their Chapter Master and patriarch, Aisin Gioro, was killed during the epic final battle of the campaign.

## Background

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 Drukhari. 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 Aeldari 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 Drukhari 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.