Lamenters - Notable Campaigns: Siege of Corillia, 9th Black Crusade (537.M38) - The 9th Black Crusade was a Black Crusade led by the infamous Chaos Champion Abaddon the Despoiler and his Black Legion, launched out of the Eye of Terror in 537.M38. During this time, the Lamenters Chapter was recalled along with a number of other Crusading Chapters by the High Lords of Terra to help deal with the rising threat of incursions from the Eye of Terror. But the Lamenters' fell reputation for suffering bitter reversals and dark turns of fate worked against them during the Chaos attack on the Hive World of Corillia during this campaign. The superstition-bound Mortifactors Chapter refused to fight alongside the Lamenters, abandoning the planet rather than serving beside them. Unwilling to desert the Hive World's population, the Lamenters held out alone against the Black Legion's onslaught for six standard weeks, suffering horrendous losses until the Ultramarines and White Scars led a battle group that broke though the Chaos warfleet to relieve Corillia. Reduced to barely 200 surviving battle-brothers by their sacrifice, the Lamenters were deemed lost when their fleet disappeared in a Warp Storm soon afterwards, only to reappear more than a standard century later on the edge of the Segmentum Solar, having slowly battled their way back from the outer void.Charadon Campaign (698.M41) - In 698.M41 the Lamenters took part in a combined Space Marine force led by the Ultramarines under the command of Chapter Master Marneus Calgar, which also consisted of elements of the Angels of Absolution, Marines Errant and the Silver Skulls Chapters. During a seven-year-long Imperial Crusade, the force inflicted a series of major defeats on the Ork empire of Charadon which delayed the invasion of the Imperium by the WAAAGH! Argluk for thirty standard years.Corinth Crusade, The Liberation of Slaughterhouse III (701.M41) - At the outset of the Corinth Crusade, the Ultramarines called for allies to aid them in their holy task of scourging the mighty Ork empires of the Charadon region of the Eastern Fringes of the galaxy. The Lamenters answered the Ultramarines Chapter Master Marneus Calgar's call, mindful of the ancient debt they believed they owed the Ultramarines for their intercession many years before during the disastrous Siege of Corillia. They despatched a task force of 300 Astartes along with the Battle Barge Daughter of Tempests and her Escorts to serve with the Corinth Crusade. The Lamenters prosecuted the Crusade tirelessly, driving back the Greenskin menace in a series of campaigns and separate battles throughout the Corinth Sector. But it was the liberation of the world of Slaughterhouse III that proved the decisive turning point for the Chapter in the campaign. This Ork Mining World had hundreds of thousands of human slaves funnelled into its mines never to return. Moved by their plight, the Lamenters petitioned the Crusade Command for the task of attacking Slaughterhouse III, which Calgar reluctantly agreed to, with the proviso that he could grant no further support to the Lamenters' mission. The Lamenters slipped through the Orks' lines and quickly obliterated their orbital defences, and then swept away any organised Greenskin resistance in a remorseless assault. Seeing their brutal captors cast down, the prisoners rose up and joined the fray and in a few short solar hours the planet was in the Lamenters' hands. But their victory had unforeseen problems; they had liberated 3,000,000 human prisoners who now looked to their saviours to deliver them from the hands of their enemies. Reluctant to leave the prisoners behind and unable to transport them away from the planet, the Lamenters resolved to fight and if need be nobly die while any chance remained, their Techmarines desperately trying to restore the captured Ork starships to operational flight status. The single Battle Barge and less than 200 surviving Lamenters battle-brothers stood against the nightmarish odds as waves of Ork starships and Fighta-Bommers attacked, only to be beaten back by the Lamenters' savagery. Unprecedented numbers of the Lamenters succumbed to the Black Rage in the bloody struggle. The freed slaves took it upon themselves to end the impasse; after a last prayer of thanks to the Emperor they signalled the Lamenters' Battle Barge and requested a merciful death, knowing that at least they would die as free men and women rather than as the pawns of the bestial Greenskins. With another Ork fleet massing for the attack, the Lamenters had no choice and granted the former slaves the Emperor's Peace by detonating a series of hundreds of seismic charges that had been honeycombed through Slaughterhouse III's mines and collapsing the tunnels. The explosions laid Slaughterhouse III to waste within solar minutes, creating one of the largest planetary tombs in Imperial history. With fewer than 100 battle-brothers left standing, the battered but unbowed Daughter of Tempests escaped the Slaughterhouse System, trailing a handful of converted Ork slave transports, carrying with them less than a tenth of the liberated slaves. In operational terms the liberation of the Ork Mining World had been a resounding success; the destruction of the mines had set back the Orks' build-up of war materiel by years and caused internecine conflicts amongst the various Ork klanz vying for the star system's mineral wealth. The Lamenters' success was only marred by the unfortunate losses incurred in the battle's aftermath. Yet their "victory" tasted like bitter ashes to the Lamenters. When offered the honour of an Iron Halo in reward for their efforts from Marneus Calgar, the Lamenters took the almost unprecedented step of refusing this esteemed Chapter honour. This caused some of their Imperial allies to accuse them of deliberately insulting the Crusade's commander, further breeding suspicion and dark rumour among those already ill-disposed towards the Chapter.Jericho Reach (812.M41) - The Lamenters first became involved in the Achilus Crusade when the Chapter provided an escort to the Rogue Trader Kazandus Lan, settling a thousand-year old honour debt to the Lan dynasty. The four squads of the escort fought alongside the Rogue Trader's own vassal regiments for a decade, and undertook a number of highly effective boarding actions against Archenemy warships in the Outer Reach. In 812.M41, the vessel on which the Lamenters were travelling suffered a catastrophic drive failure during realspace translation, forcing it to be abandoned on the outskirts of the Falon's Lament System. Only a handful of the battle-brothers survived the accident. Learning of the tragedy and recognising the survivors' limited application as a conventional force, Watch Commander Mordigael of the Deathwatch sought them out and procured their service in the Long Vigil. The bulk of the surviving Lamenters in the Jericho Reach have formed a single Kill-team under Watch Captain Brand Mac Lir of the Storm Wardens Chapter, while several more serve in other cells alongside the battle-brothers of other Chapters.Badab War (901-912.M41) - During the final century of the 41st Millennium, the Lamenters became involved in the Badab War as allies of the Secessionist Astral Claws, Mantis Warriors and Executioners Chapters, who believed they were defending the Adeptus Astartes' traditional autonomy from incursion by corrupt Imperial officials. By 908.M41, the Lamenters had suffered significant losses through attrition. The continuous deployment defending the southern Badab Sector as well as serving as escort duty for many Secessionist supply convoys had taken its toll on this fleet-based Chapter. Yet they were still a force to be reckoned with, and so the Loyalists put a plan into action to isolate them and take them out of the war. The ferocious Minotaurs Chapter gathered its forces to strike where it would be most effective. Their opportunity finally came when the location of the Lamenters' Chapter Barge Mater Lacrimarum was discovered in orbit over the Feral World of Optera taking on supplies. The Minotaurs launched a lightning attack and succeeded in catching it and crippling its main Plasma Drive, preventing it from fleeing. The Lamenters were forced to defend their Chapter Barge at all costs, as it contained both their recovering battle casualties as well as their precious resource of gene-seed. With the continued attacks upon the barge, the majority of the Lamenters' fleet was drawn back to the Optera System. Once there, the Minotaurs laid bloody siege for 17 solar hours of brutal ship-to-ship fighting. Though the Minotaurs suffered heavy casualties, they eventually overpowered the Lamenters by virtue of their brutality and sheer weight of numbers. Their forces shattered, the few remaining Lamenters were forced to surrender rather than risk the annihilation of their precious barge. The majority of their fleet was left ruined or drifting in the void. The Minotaurs claimed salvage rights to the crippled Lamenters fleet and the wargear of the fallen to replace their own serious losses. The surviving Lamenters were incarcerated on a prison hulk orbiting the nightside of Sagan II amid rumours of their growing insanity in confinement. Only 311 Lamenters battle-brothers survived to be interned on the prison hulk orbiting Sagan II for the rest of the war. Less than 100 (estimated) Lamenters were deployed elsewhere during the fighting that still remained. The Chapter's severe losses effectively removed them from the Secessionists' order of battle. Not long after, Inquisitorial missions were sent to the homeworlds of the Mantis Warriors and the Executioners, but no separate mission was despatched to contact the Lamenters. Whatever findings the Inquisition uncovered from the Lamenters' Chapter Barge after the battle at Optera remained sealed, even from the knowledge of the Inquisitorial reports made available to the Segmentum Conclave at the time. One standard year after the death of Badab Primaris and the end of the war, in 913.M41, the remaining Secessionists from the Astral Claws, Executioners, Mantis Warriors and Lamenters Chapters were put on trial before a specially convened Consistorial Court of their peers in the Adeptus Astartes. The very existence of these Chapters was at stake. Despite the attempts of the Inquisitor Legate to have the matter placed fully under Inquisitorial remit, a conclave of five Space Marine Chapter Masters whose forces were not part of the conflict were convened in judgement in accordance with Astartes tradition. The Consistorial Court found all of the Chapters who had taken part in the Badab Secession guilty in breaking with both the Codex Astartes and the ancient covenant with the Emperor that it represented. The Lamenters had not rebelled against the Imperium out of treachery or following a turn to Chaos, but because of pride. They had believed the attacks by the Inquisition on the Astral Claws as infringing upon the traditional autonomy of the Maelstrom Warders and the Adeptus Astartes. The Lamenters were eventually granted forgiveness for their actions by the High Lords of Terra and were required like their fellow Secessionists to undertake a 100-year-long penitent crusade to atone for their transgressions. They would have to do so without the right to recruit Neophytes to replace their losses during this time of punishment. Their future survival would therefore be left in their own hands and to the grace and benevolence of the Emperor. After the Lamenters' participation in the Badab War, their Chapter Banner was a tattered remnant. When they were granted the Emperor's forgiveness, the banner was given to the Adepta Sororitas to be repaired and purified. The Sisters' handiwork was said to be inspired by the Emperor, and it is said that they wept as they wove, contemplating the Emperor's great sacrifice for humanity at the end of the Horus Heresy and the terrible sins of the Lamenters against Him. The banner became an artefact known as the Banner of Tears and was taken with the Lamenters on their subsequent crusade.Second Tyrannic War (992.M41) - Unfortunately, the Lamenters seemed to carry their bad luck with them, as their penitent crusade following the Badab War led them straight into the path of the Tyranids' Hive Fleet Kraken. Although they were instrumental in slowing the advance of this terrible alien menace, the Lamenters took devastating losses. In one particularly notable battle, a number of Lamenters Space Marines fought a heroic last stand on the planet Malvolion which was being rapidly consumed by Tyranid organisms. The actions of the Lamenters allowed for many Imperial civilians to escape the doomed world, but they lost their lives in the process. As a result of the horrific losses suffered in their many battles with the Tyranids, barely four whole companies of the Lamenters still remain, while they are prevented from recruiting new Neophytes because of their continuing Penitent Crusade. Whether the Chapter will survive long enough to begin recruiting once more or will have its banner and badge entered into the Hallway of Heroes in the Inner Imperial Palace on Terra remains to be seen.The Hunters Turned (993.M41) - After the Lamenters engaged Hive Fleet Kraken, there were barely three companies' worth of battle-brothers surviving. The Red Hunters Chapter suffered losses too, for the task force assigned to track the Lamenters on their century-long penitent crusade by order of the Senatorum Imperialis also had to make a stand against the hive fleet.War for the Aberrus System (Unknown Date.M42) - Captain Nikeras of the Iron Lords' 2nd Company led a strike force composed of elements from the 2nd, 8th and 10th Companies to the Aberrus System alongside Strike Force Latenzar drawn from the Lamenters, and elements of the Knights of the Raven and Scythes of the Emperor Chapters. There, the Adeptus Astartes served as crucial reinforcements in defending the system from an assault by a tendril of Hive Fleet Kraken. While the Space Marines helped to stabilise the ongoing conflict and raise Imperial morale, they did not realise that Inquisitor Shalisha Talaris of the Ordo Xenos had learned from her void watchers that a second tendril of the Kraken, twice the size of the first, was about to assault Aberrus. She feared that if the Tyranids could not be defeated, the hive fleet would sweep into the Grendl Stars and claim the genetic material of the hyperviolent Barghesi for themselves, putting the fate of the entire Eastern Fringe at risk.