Jinsha Heresy

Armorial of the Celestial Heralds.

The **Jinsha Heresy** was a lamentable castigation campaign carried out by the Celestial Heralds Space Marine Chapter against secessionist forces in the Jinsha System during the latter centuries of the 41st Millennium.

## Background

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.