Unification Wars Chronology

Presented below is the **Unification Wars Chronology**, an exhaustive listing of all known campaigns that occurred during the deverstating wars to reclaim the cradle of mankind waged by the Emperor of Mankind.

This conflict saw numerous tribes rise and fall at the hands of the Emperor's armies, at this point comprising not of Astartes, but of their forebears, the mighty Thunder Warriors. Due to the nature of the conflict, much of the information of the campaigns has been lost or purposly surpressed, what little remains is presented here as best as possible.

## Chronology

Presented below is the most comprehensive list of events that took place during the fragmentary Unification Wars, collected and catalogued at the express orders of Malcador the Sigillite, and carried out by agents of the Adeptus Terra over the course of the Great Crusade.

## Events with Unknown Dates

* **Battle of Gaduare** - Havuleq D'agross, the last independant ruler of the Franc territories, leads a rebellion against the recent Imperial rulers of his one time home, killing the Emperor's appointed territorial governor and declaring Franc free once more. His rebellion began in the city of Avelroi, but rapidly spread until he could muster a force of 50,000 rebels, which was largely composed of unskilled militia. Eventually the Emperor responds, sending a small force of a mere 5,000 Imperial Army troops and a contingent of Proto-Astartes, their heritage lost to time. In the hills outside the ruins of Guaduare Bastion, Havuleq's 50,000 were wiped out, the man himself being cut down as he turned to flee, Franc secured for the Emperor once more.
* **The Conquest of Albia** - Under the Emperor’s command, an army of Thunder Warriors met the forces of Unspeakable King to secure the powerful continental nation. Time and time again, the Thunder Warriors clashed with the Unspeakable Kings armies, comprising of Ironside Clad soldiers, and even hulking armoured sarcophagi that bore many similarities to the Dreadnoughts later used by the Astartes Legions. Each time the two forces clashed, the Albians would emerge the victor, repulsing the Emperor’s forces, though only at great cost. As a result, this state presented a considerable challenge for the forces of the Emperor during the Unification, so much so that the Emperor, impressed by the determined brutal resistance of the state's defenders, decided to end the fighting and take Albia through negotiations. Admitting the martial temper and indomitable spirit of His foe, the Emperor called for a ceasefire and sought a diplomatic solution. The Emperor appeared before the Albian Clan Lords unarmed and clothed in white and crimson, speaking of His vision for a unified Mankind. He offered them glory among the stars and redemption. To the shock of many, the warlords of Albia, seeing the Emperor as different from past tyrants, accepted His terms and soon became one of the most zealous supporters of Unification. The first batch of recruits for the IVth Legion is known to have been taken from here, though little else is known of the legions founding.
* **The Battle of the Red Frost** - A few thousand proto-Astartes of the newly created Thunder Legion and a companion guard of thirty Custodians bearing Guardian Spears, clad in augment-armour and personally led by the Emperor Himself, participated in the assault against the formidable Maullan Sen Confederacy. Despite being outnumbered seven-to-one and suffering several thousand casualties, the Emperor's forces ultimately triumphed over the horde of genetically-altered warriors, witch-marked men and zealots that followed the Priest-King of Maulland Sen. The Priest-King was captured by the Custodians, and after the battle the Emperor carried out his execution and held aloft his severed head to the baying cheers of His Thunder Warriors. In the aftermath of this campaign's climactic ending, it came to be known as the "Battle of the Red Frost." Crushing the last resistance within this region, Nordyc was soon brought into Imperial Compliance.
* **The Coming of the Crimson Walkers** - The people of Vhnori, long known as reluctant members of the Imperium, finally rises up against the Imperium under the lead of the Crimson Walkers, a cabal of psykers, gene-splicers and warlords who had once served the last great Terran tyrants of the Age of Strife. When the Emperor heard of the rise of this reborn threat, He is said to have spoken four words: "Send in the Eightheenth." The XVIIIth Legion did not respond right away, as its force within the Sol System at that time only numbered a little over 500 warriors: a large force of Astartes but not one that could overwhelm a city of millions. When the XVIIIth Legion began their campaign of fear, it started with an orbital bombardment falling from the night sky which lasted for six solar hours. Following the bombardment, the artificial darkness remained. Soon a heavy downpour thick with chemicals rained upon the millions of fearful inhabitants from the seeded clouds above. The XVIIIth Legion arose from the abyss on jets of flame, butchering any who crossed their paths. The screams of terror and battle echoed through their drug-weakened minds. The Crimson Walkers responded by unleashing an army of mutant monstrosities, but still the XVIIIth Legion came on, slicing abominations apart with lightning-sheathed claws. They screamed with the voices of the dead as they fought, their speaker grills shouting out the recorded sounds of suffering, pain and loss. When the chasms were blazing like the mouth of a mythical hell, the Drop Pods fell. The reinforcements converged on the chasms, cutting their way through the city sprawl, killing any they found. Soon, the remaining Crimson Walkers faced their doom fragmented, harrowed and cut-off from one another, until they were cornered by the warriors of the XVIIIth. Those who reached the blasted border surrounding the city found themselves hunted by the XVIIIth Legion's Seeker Squads. It is said that the XVIIIth Legion allowed many to run, before hunting them down through the long hours of the artificial night, maiming but never killing, until dragging their broken quarry back to the chasm. With Vhnori screaming and burning, the XVIIIth Legion performed their last duty. Alive, and healed so that they were conscious, they threw the Crimson Walkers into the chasm. Then they detonated charges along the cliff edge, severing the hanging city from the cliff face, the screams of the ten millions who had sheltered from the fighting in the cliff-bound buildings reaching up to the sky as they followed the Crimson Walkers into the black depths of the Earth. The XVIIIth Legion left the decimated city before dawn came again, cementing their reputation for the use of fear and terror as effective weapons of Imperial retribution and control.
* **The Purge of Orioc** - During the Unification Wars, when the Emperor's eye finally turned to the mountain city of Orioc, He seemed to have known that soft words and diplomatic overtures would be of little use. The XVII Legion, the [REDACTED], came to the city and gave it a choice -- kneel and accept the Imperial Truth, or be destroyed. The Priest Kings of Orioc did not even hear the message before they gave their answer. Fire met the Imperial Heralds' transport and as it fell to the ice plains, the XVII Legion began their attack. Macro bombers came out of the snow-filled sky and the mountain cracked under a rain of seismic charges. On the mountain's flanks, siege tanks coughed shell after shell into fractures in the rock, breaking them wide open. Behind the wind came the grey armoured warriors advancing in a relentless drum roll of gun fire and the hiss of flame. After three solar hours of battle, the remaining populace was a huddled flock, crammed intro the central cavern. With every other tunnel and cavern district wiped clean of life, the XVII Legion halted, sealing the ways in and out of the central cavern. As the survivors waited in fretful silence, they wondered what fate awaited them. Their answer came in a rain of shattered stone and red fire, as the XVIIth descended on the last idolators like comets flung from a destroyed heaven. All burned, none were spared, and when it was done, the XVII Legion overloaded the geothermal power plants beneath the mountain, causing lava to fill the caverns, swallowing the stone idols, and exploding the city-state from the wounds in the mountain's flanks. So fell Orioc, and the message of its death carried across Ancient Terra and beyond: faith in false gods would bring only ruin and ashes.
* **The Last Tyrant of Hy Brasil** - Ruled by the despot Dalmoth Kyn, Hy Brasil was one of the  last territories to hold out against the Emperor's forces. When Dalmoth finally fell to the Thunder Warriors, Lord Pherom Sichar, a direct descendant of Kyn, was placed in command by the order of Malcador the Sigillite, as well as being granted a a seat on the Council of Terra that preceded the establishment of the Senatorum Imperialis as the rulers of a united Terra and the Imperium. In so doing, Malcador ensured that Hy Brasil would forever remain loyal to the Imperium.

## Events with Known Dates

* **M30.790 The Pacification of Luna** - The Pacification of Luna is one of the few battles of the Unification Wars that took place away from Terra's soil, instead seeing the warriors of the Emperor take flight, bringing war to the Selenar Gene-cults of Luna. This attack was waged purely by the Astartes, elements of all legions taking place, but it was the IVth Legion, as then unnamed, who took the lead role, this being their first recorded sighting and combat action. Using a technique later refered to as 'Tomb Ships' to slip past the Selenar defence grid undetected, the IVth Legion took Luna in a short but brutal skirmish. In the wake of the conflict, the IVth Legion gained their name, the Dark Watchers.
* **M30.790 The Assault on the Tempest Galleries** - One of the largest battles of the Unification Wars end, the Assault on the Tempest Galleries was the most pivotal part of a larger campaign; The Conquering of the Caucasus Wastes. Mere weeks after their victory at Luna, the Dark Watchers were redeployed to take part in the conflict, being sent on a near suicide mission using untested termite burrowing machines. 20,000 Warriors went below Terra's surface, clashing with the automated defenders of the Caucasus Wastes power generators, generators that were creating shields utterly impenertrable to the Emperor's forces. These defenders were terrifyingly potent, all but immune to anything, save for extreme blunt force trauma, forcing the Dark Watchers to revert to hastily jury rigged thunder hamers and power fists. When the shields finally went out, the Caucasus Wastes fell in hours, most believing the Dark Watchers had perished to a man, until a single, battered Terminte hauled itself from the earth, a mere 1,000 warriors held within its holds, the only survivors of the Assault.
* **M30.790 The Battle of Mount Ararat/The Culling** - Officially the final battle of the Unification Wars, the Battle of Mount Ararat was waged against the final upstart nation of Old Earth, Urartu, and comprised the entire might of the Thunder Legion, ten thousand Thunder Warrios fighting atop  a mountain that had once been flooded and lay underwater. The chronicles recorded that the famed Thunder Warrior Arik Taranis, known as the "Lightning Bearer," raised the Banner of Lightning at the final declaration of Unity which established the rule of the Emperor of Mankind over the entirety of Terra before dying of his wounds. The battle saw the deaths of every single thunder warrior present, the records stating that they died to a man to forge the final victory. However, the truth is far darker, an event refered to simply as 'The Culling', if it is refered to at all. The Emperor's personal guard, the Legio Custodes, alongside the largest of the proto-legions of Astartes, the Ist, turned their guns on the survivors of the battle, gunning down their onetime allies in their moment of triumph.
* **M30.892 - The Boeotian Conflict** - The state of Boeotia, long regarded as the last holdout of unification, is finally brought to heel by the Emperor’s forces. For over a century it had resisted true unification, using diplomatic means to hold onto any power they could, with the intention that they would integrate themselves into unified Imperial Terra at their own speed and with as much dignity as possible. Eventually however, the Emperor’s patience ran dry, and a sizable force of Tupelov Lancers were assigned to quash the truculent little state. However, after six weeks and the loss of the refinery fields - both seen as critical errors - the Imperial Army officer in charge was removed from command and control of the campaign assigned to the Palatine Wings Legiones Astartes for a quick finish. Soon, the nation state was brought to heel, the Yeselti bloodline wiped out, and finally, over a century after the Great Crusade had begun, the Unification Wars of Terra were brought to a final and indisputable end, the campaign being the only one in history to exist in both theatres of war simultaneously.

## See Also

* The Unification Wars
* The Great Crusade
* Great Crusade Chronology
* The Almire Apostasy
* Almire Apostasy Chronology