Horus Heresy - Triumph of Ullanor: The Ullanor Crusade was a vast Imperial assault on the Ork Empire of the Overlord Urrlak Urruk during the late 30th Millennium. This massive undertaking would mark the culmination of the Great Crusade's expansion.Ullanor, the capital world of this Greenskin empire, and the site of the final assault, lay in the Ullanor System of the galaxy's Ullanor Sector. The crusade included the deployment of 100,000 Space Marines, 8,000,000 Imperial Army troops, and thousands of Imperial starships and their support personnel.The Ullanor Crusade marked the high point of the Great Crusade's vast effort to reunite the scattered colony worlds of Humanity. The Orks of Ullanor represented the largest concentration of Orks ever defeated by the military forces of the Imperium of Man before the Third War for Armageddon began during the 41st Millennium.With the great victory sealed in blood and iron, the call to a triumph was sounded, to recognise this highpoint of the Great Crusade and to honour all the warriors of the Ullanor Crusade, mortals and Astartes alike, for their extraordinary valour and service to Humanity's cause. By the Emperor's command, Ullanor was remade as a trophy world, designated Mundus Tropaeum on all galactic maps and records of tithe. It would be a site of glory and spectacle to cement not only this single conquest over the forces ranged against Mankind, but a greater symbol of the Great Crusade itself.For two hundred Terran years, the Emperor's mighty endeavour had moved across the face of the galaxy to bring unity and illumination to the lost daughter-worlds of Old Earth. It had pushed back the night, reforged old links between civilisations, battled alien threats -- and with regret, it had often punished those who refused to return to the Imperial fold.A change was coming, though, a change that found its fulcrum on Ullanor. None who walked upon that world knew that the echo of that triumph would sound for solar decades, for standard centuries, for millennia.The glory of this triumphant spectacle as so many of the Imperium's scattered military forces gathered in one place for the first time in centuries was to remain in the mind of every Astartes as the high-point of the great endeavour that they were engaged upon. It would prove to be a bright memory to recall in the dark days of the Horus Heresy after Astartes had turned against Astartes and primarch against primarch.To prepare the world for the Triumph of Ullanor, geoformer platoons from the ancient Mechanicum brought world engines and mobile stone-burners to cut a massive swath across the broken landscape left in the battle's wake. Orkish dead were buried by the millions with their savage ruins, interred beneath transplanted rocks and the heads of crushed mountains.The Mechanicus eradicated every last remaining trace of the enemy and paved over them with a giant boulevard, a parade stage as wide as the footprint of some entire Imperial cities. They built a highway and allowed only one structure to stand besides the great platform -- an ornamental pavilion of black marble and heavy granite that had been built piecemeal on Terra and then shipped across the void by special envoy.Marker posts decorated with the skulls of Ork commanders paced out the length of the road, and behind them great bowls of smokeless promethium burned brightly, endlessly lighting the highway with their blue-white fire.When the Mechanicum had finished their work, the honoured came to pay homage to the battle won, the Great Crusade's ideal of Human unity and the Emperor who was father to all Mankind. The Imperial Army and the Titan Legions bracketed the gathering. Human troops were ranked in uncountable numbers, their host so wide they became a sea of battle armour and dress uniforms.Every common man and woman who stood on Ullanor's soil that day had been selected for their valour and conduct, and until the day they died each would have the singular honour of wearing the onyx-and-gold Ullanor Triumph Bar upon their uniforms. The award was forged from bolter shells recovered from the field and melted down.Ranged around them, the great war machines of the Collegia Titanica towered towards a sky cut to ribbons by the contrails of a thousand aerospace fighters; and above those, high over the thin white cirrus clouds of Ullanor's day, Imperial warships moved as slow as they dared through the upper atmosphere, washes of interface heat rolling off their Void Shields as they showed their flanks in a gesture of renewed fealty.A full fourteen of the Space Marine Legions stood represented at the Triumph of Ullanor, and with them came nine beings of superhuman power and majesty. Nine gods and angels made flesh, the primarchs of the greatest armies ever created by Human hands. Mortarion, the reaper of men and master of the Death Guard, cowled and lethal in aspect, matched by the warrior-guardians of his Deathshroud honour guard.The Phoenician, Fulgrim, resplendent in his finery and handsome in aspect, lit by the reflection of gold and platinum.Magnus the Red, the Crimson King, the lord of the unknown, his soul as much a mystery to the common world as the workings of the Warp and the ghosts within it.Lorgar Aurelian, the quiet and brooding zealot who burned with such intensity and buried it all deep in his heart, saying little and standing watchful.His polar opposite was Angron, the gladiator-lord and son of grief, never able to settle or moderate his seething, endless fury, always on the verge of outburst and violence.Rogal Dorn, the stalwart man of stone, the Imperial Fist with his unswerving manner and unbreakable focus, the one who would always obey, would always be ready for duty.Jaghatai Khan, his fur-trimmed robes and ornate armour detailed with a thousand narratives of the White Scars Legion, his every step across the land a challenge to the galaxy.Then Sanguinius of the Blood Angels, flanked by the gold-armoured honour detail of the Sanguinary Guard, his mighty wings folded back across his battle-plate, his face turned to the sky to welcome the impossible, majestic sight before him.Then, finally, came Horus of the Luna Wolves, the Hero of Ullanor, liberator and first among equals. Horus, who was to be given the new honour of an Imperial title above and beyond any that had been bestowed before; a title, it could be said, that would forever carry the echo of his name.After declaring Horus as Imperial Warmaster and the new supreme military commander of the Great Crusade, the Emperor to the shock of those assembled announced his own intention to return to Terra to pursue a secret project intended to benefit all Mankind.