Executioners - Notable Campaigns: Invasion of Nova Sulis (302.M36) - During the wars that marked the beginning of the Apostate Cardinal Bucharis' Plague of Unbelief, the Executioners were amongst the first Space Marine Chapters to take up arms against the power-mad Cardinal at Galthamor, notably fighting alongside the Space Wolves, Angels of Absolution and the Raven Guard at various points during the conflict. For their role in combating the apostates and traitors of the Plague of Unbelief, the Executioners were granted the rare honour of having a new Chapter, the Iron Champions, raised from their gene-seed in a later Founding.Siege of Darkenvault (Unknown Date.M39) - In what is now a largely forgotten episode of the Imperium's history, the southern fringe of the Segmentum Tempestus was assailed by wave after wave of Ork nomad fleets, xenoform migrations and strange psychic phenomenon which themselves caused a near epidemic of witch cults, alien infestations and daemonic incursions. Seen now by some sources within the Ordo Xenos as a precursor to the coming of the Tyranids, these events were largely unrecognised at the time as forming a pattern, as the eyes of the Imperium were focused on threats elsewhere. Suffering severe attrition in a series of campaigns defending the Imperium's borders against invading Orks, Enslaver outbreaks and worse, the Executioners Chapter had been reduced to less than 300 Battle-Brothers when its own twin Chapter worlds of Stygia-Aquilon came under siege. The attackers were a nightmarish xenos species of worm-ridden, writhing charnel-feasters never before encountered by Mankind. Again and again they struck without warning, their strange disk-like ships all but undetectable to the defences of the Executioners' fortress-monastery, the Darkenvault, until the last moment of their attack when their ghostly energy rays seared through tens of metres of ferrous asteroid mass in an instant to spill a tide of horror into the fortress' lower levels. The resulting battles in the catacombs at the heart of the Executioners' fortress-monastery were unceasing and terrible, and in a short span of time few Space Marines remained to defend the inner sanctum and the Chapter stood on the brink of extinction. It was the Astral Claws, supported by the Cruisers of Battlefleet Tempestus, that broke the siege of Darkenvault; their arrival came just as the last of the Executioners were gathering for a final stand. Many Astral Claws died in breaking the siege, and among their losses they counted their Chapter Master, Acas Seneca. The handful of Executioners that endured owed a blood debt to the Astral Claws for the salvation of their Chapter, and swore that should the Astral Claws ever be so threatened they would respond in kind. It would be almost a Terran century and a half before the Executioners returned again to full strength as a Chapter, and they would never forget their oath. When the time came over two thousand standard years later, they would heed Lufgt Huron's call, siding with the Tyrant of Badab and the Secessionists during the infamous Badab War.Pursuit of Hektor Revvokan (137.M40) - The last in a withered but still powerful line of Rogue Traders stretching back to the Age of Apostasy, when death came for him at the end of an unnaturally long life eked out through forbidden xenos lore and dark science, Hektor Revvokan turned to the Dark Gods to grant him immortality and in doing so was forever damned. Turning his guns on the Imperium's frontier worlds in order to satiate his masters' appetite for sacrifice he became a curse upon the southern sectors of the Segmentum Tempestus. This fifty-seven standard year reign of terror lasted until his ramshackle fleet was finally chased down and cornered in the Myr System by a combined force of Adeptus Mechanicus Explorators, the Imperial Navy and the Executioners Chapter. In the middle of a grand and thunderous star battle, the Executioners assault rams managed to land boarding parties on Revvokan's flagship, the Night Hag, before it escaped to the Warp. The Executioners on board, cut off with no hope of rescue or help, were heavily outnumbered and forced to confront both Revvokan's ghoulish slaves and a warband of World Eaters Berserkers sworn to his service. With no option of retreat the Executioners fought with insane zeal, and chamber by chamber they brought the ancient warship under their control until they finally slaughtered Revvokan and his cannibalistic get and crashed the ship back into realspace in a blaze of aetheric fire. In the aftermath of the battle, the Executioners took the Night Hag as their prize. With the assistance of the archmagi masters of Gryphonne IV they successfully purged the mighty warship of Chaos taint and refitted it to the Chapter's purposes. In return the magi were allowed to remove certain relic-technologies from the vessel and were granted free access to the ancient and unique lore stored in its data-tabernacle.Battle of Carrion Deep (899.M41) - Responding to a series of frantic astropathic distress calls from several Imperial deep-range outposts, the forces of the Executioners' 2nd Company, led by the High Chaplain Thulsa Kane, found themselves in a desperate struggle against an awakened threat stirring on the Dead World of Carrion Deep, near the Veiled Region on the edge of the Segmentum Tempestus. Upon investigation the Executioners discovered nothing but a trail of shattered ruins and empty bastions where Imperial watch posts should have been. The 2nd Company was ambushed in the wreckage of the frontier base on Carrion Deep. Surrounded and outnumbered by metallic foes that would not die, it was only by the dauntless leadership and wise cunning of Kane that they were able to survive. Leading the 2nd Company in a furious counter-assault, the Executioners came to grips with their foes, taking advantage of their inherent speed and ferocity only possessed by an Astartes. Kane himself sought and confronted the enemy leader, and after a titanic clash of arms, he struck the metallic creature down, though the battle left Kane's Crozius Arcanum broken and his right eye withered in his skull. Though his Battle-Brothers wanted to fight on to the bitter end, the High Chaplain's will prevailed. Less than a third of the Executioners' force succeeded in breaking out of the deadly trap of their undying foes. The Battle of Carrion Deep represents one of the first confirmed and detailed Imperial battle reports against the ancient alien menace later identified by the Ordo Xenos as the Necrons.Badab War (904-911.M41) - The Executioners Chapter was one of four Astartes Chapters that rebelled against the authority of the Imperium during the Badab War. Their involvement in Lufgt Huron's cause was the result of a blood debt the Chapter owed the Astral Claws from more than a millennium before. By 904.M41 the Executioners had fully joined the rebellion on the side of the Astral Claws and the Secessionists. Soon after the discovery of the heretical intent of Lufgt Huron and his Chapter, Inquisitorial missions were despatched to the homes of the Mantis Warriors and the Executioners Chapters to examine them for any evidence of complicity in the heresy, as well as genetic tampering and moral deviance of any kind. The Inquisition's mission to the Executioners' binary homeworlds of Stygia-Aquilon was allowed full access when it finally arrived after a five-solar-month-long journey fraught with peril to the southern fringe of the Maelstrom Zone. Despite some concerns over the individualistic and somewhat fractious tendencies of the Chapter, the Inquisition's investigation found both their gene-seed and faith uncorrupted, and the visit also shed some light on the causes of their involvement in the conflict on the Secessionist side. During the war, the Executioners steadfastly refused to operate under the direct control of the Tyrant of Badab, operating only as the Astral Claws' uneasy allies and never as subordinates. While nominally allied with the forces of the Tyrant, it became immediately apparent that the Executioners fought on their own terms, and apparently looked at their allies with contempt. The Chapter refused to garrison troops, claim territory, or attack non-military targets. Despite this, its forces soon gained a fearsome reputation, especially among the Howling Griffons, to whom the Executioners dealt catastrophic damage at Khymara's lunar outposts in 907.M41, and the supply convoys of the Loyalist forces, whom they mercilessly hounded with their powerful Cruiser, the Night Hag. This resulted in much ire within the ranks of the Secessionists during the war. The Chapter had a tendency to leave survivors of their attacks behind once their military objectives were met, even allowing the surrender of defeated foes with honour. This incensed Lugft Huron to no end. Because of the Executioners' perceived lack of resolve, the Tyrant of Badab instituted the policy of having his forces shadow theirs "to do what must be done" and to keep the Executioners Chapter as distant from his own machinations and actions as possible, particularly as he fell ever further into heresy and Chaos corruption. But as the war worsened for the Secessionists, Huron was forced to rely heavily on the Executioners' forces to contest the Maelstrom Zone. This would prove disastrous and resulted in the Executioners turning on the Astral Claws after the events surrounding the surrender of a Battle Barge of the Salamanders Chapter. The forces under Astral Claws Arch-Centurion Commodus attacked the Salamanders Battle Barge Pyre of Glory, intent on pillaging its gene-seed stores and armoury, despite the fact that it had peacefully surrendered to the Executioners. Incensed at this breach of honour, the Executioners turned on the Astral Claws, not stopping until all the oath-breakers were dead. This furious battle was named the "Red Hour" for the vast amount of blood shed in such a short period of time. From that point on, the Chapter would become a rogue element in the war, attacking both Loyalist and Secessionist forces alike, although supply convoys were surprisingly left alone. The Executioners would conduct their own private war with their former allies until they negotiated a surrender to the Loyalist forces and a withdrawal from the war zone in 911.M41. Through the intercession of Captain Pellas Mir'san of the Salamanders, who felt that he owed the Executioners a debt of gratitude for their intervention during the attack on the Pyre of Glory, the Chapter was allowed to peacefully exit the hostilities, despite some misgivings from the Loyalists. The entirety of the Executioners force in the Badab conflict, led by Chaplain Thulsa Kane, was escorted back to the Salamanders homeworld of Nocturne, where they would remain until the end of the war. Of all those that were caught up in the Secessionist cause, the Executioners Chapter emerged from the conflict the least scathed and the least tainted. They had fought honourably and had lived and died by their oaths. One Terran year after the destruction of Badab Primaris, 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, was convened in judgement in accordance with Astartes tradition. The Consistorial Court found all those Chapters that 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 Executioners had not rebelled against the Imperium out of treachery but because of a preexisting blood-debt between themselves and the Astral Claws Chapter, a debt they had felt that they no longer needed to honour due to the Tyrant's dishonourable actions during the conflict and turn towards the Ruinous Powers. Because of their honourable conduct throughout the conflict, the Salamanders themselves stood as guarantor of the Executioners' compliance and conduct, although there remained those on the Loyalist side who, though bound to obedience in the matter, would never forget the bad blood between them. The Executioners were granted a measure of comparable clemency by the court of their peers. Granted the Emperor's forgiveness by the High Lords of Terra, the court determined that the Executioners had mistakenly sided with the Traitors as a result of deception, though they remained subject to undertaking a hundred-year-long penitent Imperial Crusade to atone for the Loyalist blood spilled and were forbidden from recruiting new Initiates during that time, much like their fellow penitents, the Mantis Warriors. The Executioners' twin Chapter worlds were given over in trust to the Salamanders Chapter and their own successors rather than forfeited entirely, to be returned to them should they endure their hundred standard year act of contrition and survive. Their future survival or destruction was left then in their own hands, and subject to the grace of the Emperor.The Corcyran Massacre (910.M41) - This is considered by some as a "lost tale" of the Badab War whose true facts will never be known. What became known as the Corcyran Massacre was discovered by a Loyalist naval patrol in 910.M41. The wreckage of a smugglers' base was discovered in the dust wastes of the forlorn world of Corcyra II. What was found within the base was a nightmarish scene of carnage and destruction never before witnessed. A bloody battle had been fought between sub-company-sized forces of Space Marines composed of the Executioners and the Carcharodons Chapters. These two Chapters, both famed in their own right for being savage and unyielding, had fought each other to mutual annihilation. The base around them was ripped apart, trampling its former inhabitants into the dust. Many of the bodies of both sides showed signs of having fought on despite suffering horrendous wounds, severed limbs and massive trauma that should have felled even an Astartes, and several were found locked in deathly, gore-splattered embraces, striking at their foes with their last ebbing strength. It is not known which Chapter's sole-remaining fighter breathed last to claim a bitter victory. Neither Chapter has acknowledged any survivors of the massacre living to tell of the battle.Steel Unbound (919.M41) - Following their alliance with Lufgt Huron during the Badab War and their subsequent voluntary internment under license to the Salamanders Chapter, the Executioners were released to begin their century long penitent crusade. In the first solar decade of the crusade, a dozen recidivist cults were purged from the Telamon Cloud and three minor xenos strains infesting the Garya Rifts were exterminated. The most glorious of many action fought during the opening years of the crusade was against a previously unknown pocket empire deep within the galactic core, entirely in the sway of the Ruinous Powers and maintaining pacts with at least three Traitor Legion warbands and one Traitor Titan Legion. The Executioners earned countless honours far from the gaze of the Imperium, the only witnesses the agents dispatched by the High Lords of Terra to track the penitent Chapter's progress through the lawless void.Sire of Methusa (965.M41) - Fifty-two standard years into a one-hundred year long penitent crusade imposed upon them for their part in the Badab War, the Executioners Chapter encountered a region near the galactic core no Imperial force was known to have visited for many millennia. In an area of high stellar density, the Executioners encountered a compact empire seemingly entirely isolated from the Imperium and ruled by a caste of leaders descended from a Rogue Trader dynasty thought long dead. The Executioners made war upon what they declared was a Secessionist enclave -- a heresy punishable by death. It was during the fighting for the pocket empire's capital world that a Land Raider Achilles was fielded against the Chapter's warriors, costing the lives of several of the Executioners' 1st Company Veterans. When at length the Executioners defeated the secession they claimed the Achilles as a spoil of war, renaming it the Sire of Methusa and granting it pride of place in the Chapter's fleet-borne arsenal.Death Quest (998.M41) - Over eight solar decades into their century-long penitent crusade and having battled relentlessly across vast swathes of the Imperium and beyond, the Executioners Chapter came upon the ruins of the Orpheus Sector. Discovering a realm decimated by war, the bones of countless heroes being picked over by the verminous Necron xenos, the Executioners vowed that their death quest will be completed upon the battlefields of Orpheus. Unheralded, the Imperial task force assigned to track the Executioners on their crusade arrived in the region several solar days later, and a series of high level astropathic transmissions were directed at Terra and the Inquisitorial Representative on the Senatorum Imperialis.