Exorcists - Notable Campaigns: Aschen War (300-307.M40) - The Aschen War was a series of brushfire revolts and Chaos incursions that erupted across the Aschen Sub-sector in 300.M40, after a bloody Chaos Cult-inspired revolt on the Cardinal World of Dimmamar exposed how overstretched Imperial control over the surrounding region had become. Slowly stripped of much of its defences over the course of several generations to provide for the needs of other pressing conflicts nearby, this border region was ill-equipped to stave off catastrophe when it came. Very rapidly a three-way war developed between the beleaguered Imperial protectors of the Aschen worlds, Chaos Cultists who had subsumed several planetary defence garrisons to their cause and Ork marauders pouring across the border from the adjacent Blood-Maw Cluster. The Imperial counter-invasion was led by the combined forces of two Space Marine Chapters -- the Exorcists and the Dark Hands, backed by the Necromundan 54th and 60th Imperial Guard Rifles and the Battle-Sisters of the Order of the Valorous Heart. The Exorcists quickly realised that one of the keys to victory would be locating and destroying the single dark master of many names that lurked behind the divergent Chaos Cults in the region, a Daemonic creature that on Dimmamar was known as the Horned God. A thing of shadow and malice, the Horned God was a master of hellish pacts who had become engorged on the souls its servants had slaughtered. When the Exorcists finally cornered the Daemon Prince in the maze-like pre-human ruins of the Dead World of Belphago, it was attended by a guard of thousands of its fanatical followers and several warbands of Night Lords Chaos Space Marines it had bound to its will. What followed was one of the hardest-fought and costly actions in the Chapter's history, as the Exorcists, with the aid of a hastily composed Ordo Malleus strike team, fought their way through suicidal attack waves of cultists and the skillful ambushes and vicious assaults of the Night Lords before confronting the blackly-burning Daemons that served the Horned God. In the final, titanic struggle amid the fallen ruins of a xenos temple to the Dark Gods older than the history of humanity, the Exorcists' elite Enochian Guard and a handful of surviving Inquisitors and their Acolytes confronted the Lord of Shadows in all its blasphemous and unholy glory. Shrugging off shot, shell and energy blast, the darkling beast slashed through the Exorcists' ranks, shearing Terminator Armoured warriors in half with contemptuous ease and ripping asunder the Daemonhosts of Inquisitor Grey before devouring their master whole. The Exorcists refused to retreat from the horror that confronted them despite their losses, and slowly the weight of their attacks began to take their toll. The turning point of the battle came when one of the Chapter's Dreadnoughts, the Venerable Sybra, sacrificed himself to rip a great chunk of the Daemon Prince's smouldering body away and exposed its blazing heart. This noble act allowed the Exorcists to press their attack while the Daemon reeled in agony. With a daring lunge, Librarian Malachite pierced the foul heart with his Force Spear, and with the utmost exertion of his powers and adamant will through the weapon severed the Daemon's connection with the mortal plane, finally vanquishing it. As the Daemon Prince's cries of rage and frustration echoed into eternity, all across the Aschen Sub-sector, those who had bartered their souls for a measure of the Horned God's power paid the price and were consumed by black flames, shattering the power of the Chaos revolt. A full third of the Exorcists Chapter had perished, but the tide of the war was now in the Imperium's favour, and within a year, the sub-sector was brought back under Imperial control.Gothic War (12th Black Crusade) (139-160.M41) - The Chapter participated in combating the invasion of the Gothic Sector by Abaddon the Despoiler and the encroaching forces of Chaos during the Gothic War that ravaged the Gothic Sector in the early days of the 41st Millennium.Relief of Stonekraal (740.M41) - The Relief of Stonekraal was the defence of the minor Frontier World of Stonekraal within the Realm of Ultramar in the Ultima Segmentum from a small incursion by the Tyranids of Hive Fleet Behemoth. In 740.M41, a scheduled trader vessel, the Nostros Vex, appeared three weeks overdue and drifting, seemingly lifeless, on the edge of the Stonekraal System, and it was investigated by vessels sent out from the small Imperial colony in the system. This heralded the beginning of a nightmare for the colonists of Stonekraal. Soon a rapidly multiplying infestation of Hive Fleet Behemoth Genestealers broke out, and in an ever-growing plague, the horrific creatures hacked through the scattered, hardscrabble settlements of Stonekraal like a butcher's cleaver through raw meat. Alone, and realising their astropathic distress calls were unlikely to be answered, the remaining Stonekraal colonists did their best to gather their few weapons together and mount a defence, determined to sell their lives dearly if they could. When all seemed lost and only the last major settlements remained, all that was left for the terrified men and women cowering behind futile barricades was to pray for deliverance to the God-Emperor. Yet that deliverance came as deep crimson Thunderhawk gunships descended on plumes of fire above them. The Exorcists Space Marine Chapter's 3rd Company, driven off-course by the Tyranids' psychic shadow in the Warp, had heard the colony's cries for help. Their Strike Cruiser Hand of Glory, having already slain two encroaching Void Kraken in the outer system, now off-loaded its complement of Space Marines to make a stand on Stonekraal's broken ground. The battles that followed were swift but furious; the Genestealers first seeking to infiltrate by stealth only to be met by the firepower of the Exorcists Astartes waiting for them. The Tyranid broods quickly shifted tactics and sought to overwhelm their foes in a whirlwind of fang and claw. Inured as they were to the terrors of the Warp, even these nightmarish xenos, although deadly beyond measure, held little fear for the Exorcists Space Marines. With near-clinical efficiency the Space Marines set up interlocking fields of fire to trap their attackers into prepared killing zones in order to blunt the Genestealers' advantage in speed and numbers. Meanwhile the Exorcists' potent Librarian, Castor Machen, sought out the synapse creatures present within the brood and scourged them to ashes with coruscating soulfire. The people of Stonekraal survived thanks to the Exorcists' efforts; a small victory, perhaps, in the grand scheme of the greater battle against the Hive Fleets, but a victory nonetheless. After-action testimony taken by Ordo Xenos investigators record the fearful awe the surviving colonists felt for their saviours, and many spoke of how the sound of the baleful litanies the Exorcists chanted during battle still echoed in their dreams.Badab War (908-912.M41) - The Exorcists Chapter participated in the latter stages of the Badab War led by Silas Alberec, the famed Exorcists 3rd Company Captain and heir-designate to the command of the Chapter. The Exorcists intervened in the conflict once the Secessionists had been declared Excommunicate Traitoris in 908.M41. Alberec, huge in stature even for a Space Marine, gained great fame and recognition for himself in the Badab War, leading his Space Marines in several noteworthy engagements. The first of these was the taking of the armed merchantman Soyuz-Maru during the Second Battle of Sagan, and the last was the bloody attack on the vital and heavily defended Sentinel-Sigma station during the Fall of Badab Primaris. In this latter battle, Alberec wielded the Hellslayer Power Mace to great effect, rapidly smashing his way through armoured bulkheads while under heavy fire from the Astral Claws. Alberec slew the Astral Claws' Chaplain Arkil Lionsmane in personal combat despite still suffering from grievous wounds earned in prior battles. The Exorcists' otherwise exemplary role in the Badab War was tarnished, however, when their blockade of the Badab System failed in the confusion of the final hours of the siege, as anarchy reigned on the surface of Badab Primaris after the Carcharodons fired the reactors of the world's hive cities and started a chain reaction that would doom the planet. In the scramble to flee the surface, both Loyalists and Secessionists struggled to escape in any spacecraft they could commandeer. In the confusion that followed, the Exorcists fired on and in some cases destroyed any vessel that could not prove itself to be an ally, unfortunately slaying many fellow Loyalists in the process. Worse, a vessel containing many Astartes from Lufgt Huron's inner circle escaped the blockade in the confusion carrying the badly wounded but still-living form of their master into the Maelstrom, who would return to plague the Imperium once more as Huron Blackheart, the Chaos Lord who commanded the piratical warband of Chaos Space Marines who called themselves the Red Corsairs.Cleansing of Opridia (972.M41) - Inquisitor Lord Torquemada Coteaz of the Ordo Malleus led the planet-wide exorcism of Opridia, casting out a million Daemonhosts and slaying the Daemon Prince Karpathi the Occludor. Crucial to the Inquisitor's victory was the deployment of the 2nd Company of the Exorcists Chapter, whose Librarians enacted Rites of Detestation unknown outside of their Chapter Cult.Third War for Armageddon (998.M41) - The Exorcists deployed 12 companies -- the entire strength of the Chapter -- during the Third War for Armageddon.The Black Sun (672.999.M41) - The Exorcists Chapter rushed to confront the Daemonic incursions around the sun Sirie.13th Black Crusade (999.M41) - The Exorcists also participated in the defence of the Cadian Gate against Abaddon the Despoiler and the forces of Chaos during the 13th Black Crusade. The Exorcists are also one of only four Space Marine Chapters to have both fought in the Third War for Armageddon and against the 13th Black Crusade.Indomitus Crusade (ca. 999.M41 - Present) - The Exorcists strike cruiser Wraith of Thenna under the command of the Librarian Bael Vordhane of the 2nd Company joined the crusade's Tertius Fleet's Battlegroup Haephestus. The Exorcist forces participated in the Drennox Cleansing campaign during the crusade.