Star Phantoms - Notable Campaigns: The Massacre of Kormarg (718.M39) - The Star Phantoms responded en masse to the pleas of the Fortress World of Kormarg II on the edge of the Sakkara Sector that had been besieged for more than two centuries by the foul xenos known as the Khrave Marauders in the campaign that became known as the Massacre of Kormarg. Kormarg had held out against the odds and had not fallen, but the world had been laid to waste in the process. Taking it upon themselves to answer the defenders' long-standing plea for help, the Star Phantoms' Chapter fleet attacked en masse, swiftly encircling the Khrave nest-webs in orbit and blasting them apart with concentrated fire from their Bombardment Cannons. Once they had scattered the remaining enemy snare-ships, the Star Phantoms launched a full drop-strike against the Khrave feasters on the surface, crushing them between the anvil of the extensive Kormarg bastion fortress network and the hammer of the Chapter's Drop Pod onslaught, swiftly annihilating the xenos. As the defenders threw wide their gates to their liberators, however, it quickly became apparent that in their years of struggle against the alien, the human garrison had become genetically and spiritually corrupt. The Chapter Master of the Star Phantoms was swift in his judgement. With their defences already open to the Space Marines, the Kormargan bastions which had held out for centuries against the xenos became blood-drenched killing chambers as the Star Phantoms purged Kormarg II of its tainted people. After the massacre, the Star Phantoms used the macro-shell craters from the planet's long war as giant pyre-pits for the liquidated population, and the Chapter's Chantry Servitors sang solemn hymns to honour their martyrdom as the Star Phantoms consigned the bodies to the flame. Shortly after the Star Phantoms' actions, Kormarg II was re-garrisoned as a Departmento Munitorum penal colony.Death of Haakoneth (101.M40) - The entire Star Phantoms Chapter's forces were recalled to their homeworld of Haakoneth in 101.M40 due to a sustained attack by Ork Freebooterz. Ork Ramships and Roks invaded the system in a systematic assault with waves larger than anything encountered by the Star Phantoms previously. The Ork attackers at first took heavy losses in the initial blundering waves through the interlinked orbital defences and minefields defending the Star Phantoms' homeworld. When the Star Phantoms' Chapter fleet arrived, Ork warships were shot down by the hundreds and entire clusters of Roks were boarded and destroyed by the Astartes. The furious orbital battle lasted sixty solar days, and only then did the Ork forces break and scatter. The Star Phantoms sensed victory was near, but at that point the true nature of the threat manifested. A vast temporal Warp rift opened up, and at its vanguard came a massive Hrud migration. Realising that the invading Orks had been fleeing this anomaly, the Star Phantoms mounted a valiant defence against the tides of the Warp and the Hrud, but as reality buckled in on itself and their fleet was destroyed in cascading Warp Storms it became clear that their cause was hopeless. The Hrud soon landed on Haakoneth itself, defiling the planet and creating earthquakes and tremors wherever they seemed to pass. One by one, the Star Phantoms were swallowed up by the coalescing shadows that revealed Hrud. Rather than face certain destruction at the hands of the Hrud, the Star Phantoms' Chapter Master Omadon Tiresias ordered his remaining brethren to flee the planet. The Chapter's last remaining Battle Barge, the Memento Mori, led the ragged remains of the Star Phantoms' once-proud fleet and escaped from the rift-vortices lashing the Haakoneth System. Many of the Star Phantoms' remaining warships were destroyed in the desperate retreat and Tiresias himself was blinded when a rogue time-eddy speared the deck of the Momento Mori. In the aftermath of the battle, little more than a third of the Star Phantoms' Chapter strength remained. Now without a homeworld, the Star Phantoms began the long and arduous process of rebuilding their strength. The battle at Haakoneth earned the Star Phantoms the honour of being one of only a handful of Chapters in the Imperium's history to face a full-scale Hrud migration and survive.Macharian Crusade (392-399.M41) - The Star Phantoms took part in the massive Imperial campaign known as the Macharian Crusade, participating in many of the most deadly engagements, and despite having proved themselves time and again, they garnered little respect as they saw matters, and are known to have had a troubled relationship with the Crusade's commanders as to strategy and deployment. After the death of Lord Commander Solar Macharius they became swiftly embroiled in the Macharian Heresy -- the civil war and factional division that followed among his generals and war leaders -- clashing directly with those Astra Militarum forces who in the Chapter's view had betrayed the Imperium. The Star Phantoms are listed in certain suppressed sources as being directly responsible for the annihilation of the 17th Terrax Guard on Thoth, and are known to have engaged in a bloody and protracted conflict with their former allies, the Marines Malevolent, resulting in that Chapter's near-destruction at their hands. The Star Phantoms became subject to Inquisitorial investigation as a result of their actions and were ultimately cleared of heresy, but received censure from the Ordo Hereticus. They were bound into the thankless and dangerous task of partly forming the spearhead of the Imperial interdiction campaign in the 070s.M41 to end the Macharian Heresy. In the aftermath of this short and brutal campaign which involved elements from over 100 Space Marine Chapters, the Star Phantoms, once again badly reduced in strength, undertook a self-appointed crusade alone in the southern Segmentum Tempestus attacking isolated Ork and Chaos-held worlds as they saw fit. Much of their activities afterward remained hidden both from the official record and the eyes of the Imperium until their participation in the brutal closing stages of the Badab War.Badab War (912.M41) - The Star Phantoms would play a vital role in the closing stages of the Badab War. The Chapter was brought in to relieve the other Space Marine Chapters fighting in the conflict who were recalled to their normal service duties in 912.M41. The Star Phantoms brought with them the full and substantial strength of their Chapter, and were willing to commit it entirely to the cause. Soon, they were assigned the key task of performing the final assault on the Palace of Thorns, Lufgt Huron's capitol on Badab Primaris. Spearheaded by the venerable Battle Barge Memento Mori along with a second Battle Barge, the Pale Wrath, the Chapter undertook its role in the battle with a powerful force of seven Strike Cruisers and twenty-five Escorts and assault vessels of various classes. The Star Phantoms attacked without falter or relent, and neither gave nor expected quarter from their foe. They were victorious in their task, shattering the last ring of defences that protected the Tyrant of Badab, Lufgt Huron. It was an assault group led by the Star Phantoms' Captain Zhrukal Androcles that cornered Huron, and it was Androcles himself whose Melta-blast felled the fleeing Tyrant of Badab, although he was slain in the combat by Huron's elite bodyguard. Although suffering terrible losses in the final apocalyptic engagement themselves, the Star Phantoms' success was honoured by the granting of overlordship of the now ruined worlds of the Badab Sector by the Imperial Inquisitor-Legate of the Badab Crusade, and the Chapter chose the ice-moon of Jahga in the Archean System upon which to found its new fortress-monastery.The Karthago Crusade (914.M41 - present) - Following the wholesale destruction of its armies during the Badab War, the Karthago Sector was severely weakened and unable to fend off the rampaging Orks that had assaulted it. To bring stability to the region, a new Imperial Crusade was called in, the Karthago Crusade, which would rage for more than a standard century. Still recovering from their severe losses against the Astral Claws during the Badab War, the Star Phantoms could only spare their 5th Battle Company to join elements of the Black Templars and Libators in the prosecution of this Crusade. It was while engaged in the Karthago Crusade that the Star Phantoms participated in the closing phase of the Scourging of Kerrack.The Scourging of Kerrack (926.M41) - The Agri-World of Kerrack had long exported the processed root of the Cholam trees that cover most of its surface to feed the Astra Militarum regiments prosecuting the Karthago Crusade. When the primitive harvester clans turned their hand-scythes against their Imperial overseers, the world fell to anarchy and war. Warlord Malhaur the Harvester and his Khorne-worshipping Slaughterkin were found to be behind the Charnel Cults that sprang up across Kerrack. The ensuing war was fought on foot beneath the dense canopy and air-to-air in the skies above. Large numbers of the native defence militia turning Traitor and fell to the worship of the Dark Gods. Deliverance only came when the Star Phantoms' 5th Battle Company under Captain Calphax arrived in system to resupply, and launched an immediate and devastating attack upon the rebel stronghold of Calder's Ark, slaying the Harvester and driving the Slaughterkin from Kerrack.