Blood Angels - An Age of Golden Glory, M30-M40: Praxil Rebellion (Unknown Date.M30) - When the worlds of the Praxil System were first discovered, the Imperium was pleased by the prospect of adding them to the Emperor's realm. Though bringing Praxil into Imperial Compliance would bring the Imperium great renown, this formidable civilisation refused to bend the knee to the light of the Imperial Truth, and instead was prepared to fight to maintain its independence. Its warfleet was formidable, and managed to push back the initial invasion of the Imperial Expeditionary Fleet. The Imperium wanted Praxil's wealth and resources to harness to the needs of the Great Crusade, and so the securing of Praxil fell to an army-group-sized force of the Emperor's Children, supported by selected elements of the Imperial Army and the forces of the Mechanicum. But the initial campaign did not go well, as the Imperial forces sustained severe casualties and faced opposition at every turn, despite changing their tactics. When the Emperor's Children proved too prideful to ask for help, the War Council of Terra sent a force of Blood Angels and Imperial Fists, under the command of Chapter Master Raldoran, to assist the beleaguered Imperial forces. Despite his misgivings and slight to his personal honour, the Lord Commander Iddinam in command of the Emperor's Children accepted his cousin Legions' assistance and immediately drew up plans for prosecuting the second offensive against the Praxil. With their combined strength, the Imperial forces launched a successful second offensive against the Praxil that soon saw an Imperial victory. When the Imperium claimed its victory, however, Iddinam refused to acknowledge his brethren's role in effecting the Compliance of Praxil.Compliance of Melchior (ca. 999.M30) - The Imperial Compliance of Melchior was a joint campaign that was carried out by both the XVIth Legion, the Luna Wolves, and the Blood Angels Legion. The world was the last bastion of the xenos known as the Nephilim -- hulking entities of roughly humanoid shape who were smooth like carvings of soapstone, with abstract shapes approximating arms and legs. Their dome heads emerged from their shoulders without a neck, and an array of olfactory slits and eye-spots ringed the surface of their skulls. In the light, the Nephilim looked like objects crafted of blown glass, their semi-transparent flesh glowing in the bright day. The Nephilim possessed an unhurried, careful agility like that of sea-going creatures seen through the walls of a glass tank. They moved deceptively slowly through air as if they were swimming in water, but they could move fast if they wished, darting and spinning, becoming difficult to hit. The alien giants, mocking humanity's great dream of peace and unity, had left a trail of destruction behind them that had claimed a hundred worlds before they had come to rest upon Melchior. Sagan, the DeCora Spine, Orpheo Minoris, Beta Rigel II; each of these planets had been denuded of all human life, populations herded into empath-chapels as big as mountains and then slowly consumed. Even their name, Nephilim, the name of the fallen seraphs, was a name taken from ancient human mythology -- that of Terra, Caliban and Barac. The true horror of it was that the Nephilim used those they preyed upon to do their soldiering for them, snaring the pliant, the lonely, the sorrowful with their ideal of an attainable godhood. They plied their victims with stories of eternal existence for the faithful, of endless sorrow for the agnostic; and they were very good at it. Perhaps the xenos really believed that what they were doing was somehow taking their victims closer to a form beyond flesh, to an afterlife in an eternal heaven-state; it did not matter. With their advanced technology they implanted bits of themselves into their thralls to further their communion. They cut their own flesh and made living masks to mark their devotees. The Nephilim controlled minds, either through the transmitted power of their will or through the weak character of those they chose. They were an affront to the Emperor's hope for the creation of the rationalist, secular galaxy outlined by the Imperial Truth. They represented not only an offence to the purity of a precious human ideal but in their insidious cuckoo-nest displacement of those who foolishly gave them fealty. For what the aliens fed upon, what the Scout Marines of the Blood Angels and Luna Wolves had seen and reported back, were the very lives of those who cherished them. The empty chapels were piled high with stacks of desiccated corpses, bodies that had been aged years in only hours as all living essence was siphoned from them. The Primarchs of the Legions were disgusted as the true understanding of the enemy they faced was revealed. The Nephilim fed on adulation. In the strategium of his flagship, the Vengeful Spirit, Horus showed his brother Sanguinius, the Primarch of the Blood Angels, the plan that he had conceived to break the will of the Nephilim. Horus wanted the Blood Angels to march shoulder-to-shoulder with their cousins, cowing the aliens with the sight of an army of thousands of powerful Astartes rolling without pause to the gates of their last bastion. And then through those gates, over the battlements, not stopping, not pausing to parley or hesitate. "Like the ocean these things sprang from," Horus had said, "we will roll over the aliens, drag them down and drown them." The sheer bombast of the plan was its greatest strength, but Sanguinius had not been easily swayed to it. This blunt, brute-force approach was better suited to their more intemperate brother Primarchs, to Leman Russ or to Angron. Sanguinius felt that neither he nor Horus were so artless, so focused upon the target to the detriment of all else, but in the end he agreed. When the time came to enact their audacious plan, Horus and his Luna Wolves met the xenos army on the sparkling white plains of the Silver Desert. Before open hostilities began, Horus attempted to parlay with the Nephilim one final time, but the overconfident xenos refused to capitulate, casually informing the humans that they could not win. Horus informed the xenos commander that it had made a grave error, for it would be the Nephilim who would fall. The Luna Wolves would be the anvil upon which the xenos would break, and the Blood Angels would be the hammer. With lightning speed, the heavens screamed as a rain of ceramite Drop Pods tore through the outer atmosphere of Melchior and fell like flaming meteors towards the Silver Desert. Falling with them were Stormbird and Thunderhawk assault gunships that turned and wheeled through the air towards the gargantuan Nephilim encampment, carrying company upon company of the IXth Legion. The speed of their assault was the key to victory; the alien invaders and their zealots had successfully been drawn out to confront the massed forces of the Luna Wolves, leaving the defences on their flanks thinned and permeable. But the xenos giants were not slow in their thinking, and the moment they understood that they had been duped, they would attempt to regroup and fortify. The Blood Angels did not allow that to happen. The Nephilim were broken and cut down, their cohesion shattered by the brutal deep strike. Caught between the brutal fury of two Space Marine Legions on Melchior's shining sands, the Nephilim were finally put to the sword.Compliance of the Fraemium Moons (Unknown Date.M31) - A genetically enhanced Imperial Army unit known as the G9K Division Kill was assigned to fight alongside the Blood Angels Legion during the Imperial Compliance action fought on the Fraemium Moons. This conflict was against an unknown adversary not mentioned in official Imperial records. What little is known is that the G9K was surrounded and on the verge of being annihilated, when the Blood Angels launched a massive planetary assault using Drop Pods and Stormbirds. With their help, the planet was successfully conquered and brought into Compliance.Compliance of 140-20 (Urisarach/"Murder") (ca. 001.M31) - The Death World of Urisarach (officially codified as One-Forty-Twenty but unofficially dubbed "Murder" by the Astartes who fought there) was the twentieth world encountered by the 140th Expeditionary Fleet, lead by a contingent of the IXth Legion of Astartes, the Blood Angels, commanded by Captain Khitas Frome. Unable to translate the warnings from the orbiting satellite beacons placed in orbit of the world by the advanced human civilisation known as the Interex that warned approaching starships to stay away from Urisarach as a dangerous xenos species had been quarantined there, Captain Frome ordered his fleet's entire contingent of three companies of Space Marines to begin landing operations to investigate and bring the planet into Imperial Compliance. Due to the extreme atmospheric turbulence present on the world, all of the Blood Angels' assault craft attempting to land on the planet became scattered and were thrown far off-course, leaving the Imperial landing parties isolated from one another. The turbulent atmosphere also affected Vox communications and made it difficult for the Imperial forces to coordinate their movements. Ground teams soon started sending garbled transmissions to the fleet's vessels in orbit, reporting that the planet was inhabited by an extremely hostile intelligent arachnoid species, later dubbed the Megarachnids. The Megarachnids were an old enemy of the Interex civilisation, who had exiled the surviving members of the species to the world they called Urisarach as an act of mercy rather than committing xenocide as was standard policy for the Imperium. The Interex stripped the Megarachnids of their interstellar travel capabilities. To keep the aliens isolated on their new homeworld, the Interex constructed weather control devices that created powerful atmospheric disturbances and interfered with radio communications in the shape of large "trees" across the planet to deter vessels from landing on the Death World. As reports of horrific combat from the surface continued, the xenos were described as too numerous and formidable to defeat without reinforcements. Not long afterwards, the Blood Angels made urgent distress calls requesting immediate reinforcements and extraction. The last transmission received by the fleet of the 140th Expedition came from Captain Khitas Frome himself, who noted through clenched teeth, "This. World. Is. Murder." This name stuck, becoming the Imperium's informal appellation for Urisarach. A company of Astartes from the IIIth Legion, the Emperor's Children, arrived in response to the Blood Angels' distress calls. They made the same mistakes during the initial assault as the Blood Angels, and their landings were scattered by the planet's powerful atmospheric disturbances. The company took heavy casualties but managed to create a breach in the atmosphere. Just as the Emperor's Children were about to be overwhelmed, a relief force of newly-arrived Luna Wolves Astartes from the Warmaster Horus' own 63rd Expeditionary Fleet began to land through the breach in the atmosphere. The Megarachnids assaulting the Emperor's Children were scattered and a full-scale Space Marine assault on the hostile xenos of Murder began in earnest. Ten companies of Luna Wolves, the remnants of the Emperor's Children's company, tens of thousands of Imperial soldiers drawn from the Imperial Army's Byzant Janizars, and several Legio Mortis Titans proceeded to level entire swathes of the grass stalk forests and destroy every one of the atmosphere-altering "trees" they encountered, which steadily eroded Murder's atmospheric barrier. The Warmaster Horus, who commanding the Imperial assault from his flagship Vengeful Spirit in orbit, was very pleased with the progress being made. Some consideration had been paid to initiating a withdrawal from Murder now that a proper landing zone was available to allow an easy extraction of the troops, when an unexpected visitor suddenly arrived. The Primarch Sanguinius had come to Murder to inspect the dead of his original Blood Angels' landing force that had been wiped out early in the campaign. With tears in his eyes Sanguinius asked his brother Horus if he would join him in a campaign of vengeance against the foul xenos. The Warmaster replied: "Yes, let us murder Murder." Adding 5 companies of Blood Angels to the Imperial invasion force, Sanguinius fought alongside the Warmaster against the aliens. Thousands of Megarachnids poured out of the forests and canyons of Murder in an endless wave. Despite never retreating from the Imperial assault, the Megarachnids only continued to lose ground. By the sixth month of the campaign it seemed the Megarachnids would soon face extinction, when a fleet deployed by the Interex arrived in-system to determine who had assaulted the Megarachnids' reservation world. Finding contact with the highly-advanced humans of the Interex to be a more pressing issue that needed to be dealt with, the Warmaster ended the campaign against the xenos of Murder. The Megarachnids had been saved from extinction for a second time by their old enemy. Imperial records do not indicate the final fate of this savage species once the Horus Heresy began.Kayvas Persecution (002.M31) - Many tribes of Orks, scattered and leaderless after the hammerblow they had suffered at Ullanor during the Ullanor Crusade, had fled to the points of the etheric compass -- and many had come to rest in the Kayvas Belt, where they carved new outposts out of the drifting, mineral-rich rocks and licked their wounds while they re-armed. The Greenskin xenos soon began to strike out at nearby Imperial star systems and newly Compliant daughter colonies, and it was the duty of the Space Marine Legions to reinforce the lesson of Ullanor again. The Alpha Legion had tracked them to their lair and petitioned the Warmaster Horus for the reinforcements required to prosecute their plan of annihilation, but after the war at the world called Murder and the disastrous engagement with the civilisation known as the Interex, the Luna Wolves had been reluctant to commit ships to Alpharius' new campaign. In the end, it were the Blood Angels who agreed to assist their cousins in the XXth Legion, with Sanguinius himself marshalling a sizable intervention to support the efforts of the 88th Expeditionary Fleet. The mission, Alpharius said, would be five standard years in execution. The Angel rejected that premise and promised it would be over in one, and he committed vessels from every active Blood Angels expeditionary fleet to the cause. Sanguinius was proven right -- more or less. Just over thirteen months after the commencement of the Kayvas initiative, the Orks were almost totally annihilated, but like animals backed into a corner they fought harder than they ever had before. The 88th Expeditionary Fleet took their warships into the Kayvas Belt and vanished from the sensors of the IXth Legion's fleet, leaving the Blood Angels flotilla at the edge of the system to wait. Soon it became clear that the mission Alpharius had been so eager to secure support for was little more than picket duty. First one at a time, then in squadrons and finally in fleets, the Orks began to flee from the Kayvas System. Each time they bolted for open space beyond the mass shadow of the supergiant sun and its asteroid belt, the Blood Angels were waiting for them. Imperial starships and Ork cruisers engaged in deadly games of cat-and-mouse that lasted for weeks on end, threading in and out of the dense dust clouds at the periphery of the star system, mercilessly hunting each other. Mighty vessels clashed again and again, but months of protracted ship-to-ship engagements and naval warfare made the Sons of Baal restless. They had been bred for battles where they could face their foes, not ranged conflicts conducted over huge spans of empty vacuum. However, the chance to fight blade-to-blade did come. The behaviour patterns of the Ork crews began to change. They eschewed what little animal cunning they had and made mistakes. Instead of showing the brutish slyness they were known for, the xenos exhibited conduct that more closely resembled panic. They would take chances, running the gauntlet of the Blood Angels' blockade when the odds were stacked against them. It was almost as if there was something at their backs that they feared far more than the guns of Sanguinius' Legion. No one within the IXth Legion knew what the Alpha Legion had done to make the Orks run. All that was certain was that the Alpha Legion had gone dark, only rising to send regular communiqués out to the Blood Angels' blockade fleet that contained little more than a message to "maintain the line". Finally, Sanguinius tired of Alpharius' evasive manner and sent a frigate in past the outer marker, in defiance of the rules of engagement the two Legions had agreed upon. When the frigate returned weeks later, the crew reported that they had come across no signs of their allies, only the wrecks of Ork vessels and the bodies of dead aliens. The Alpha Legion's 88th Expeditionary Fleet comprised hundreds of warships, and yet no trace of them was sighted. The tempo of the Kayvas campaign had finally reached a terminal pitch. The final remnants of the Ork forces took flight from the belt in a disordered exodus, and perished in the flashes of Lance cannons and torpedo barrages as they crossed the sentry line. At last, the Alpha Legion's starships appeared at the very edge of scanning range, apparently moving in a wall, herding the enemy towards the fringes of the system. The Alpha Legion stated they had fully exterminated the alien infestation in the Kayvas Belt, and were grateful to the Blood Angels for their co-operation. The blockade was finally over, and with the death of the final monolithic Ork wreck at the hands of the Blood Angels fleet, the campaign came to a successful conclusion, though relations between the IXth and XXth Legions remained somewhat strained.Signus Campaign (004-009.M31) - In the midst of the darkness of the Horus Heresy, the Blood Angels never wavered, but held true at the Emperor's side, and nowhere was this more true than during the events of the Signus Campaign. It is said that Horus hated and feared Sanguinius more than any of his brothers and wove many strategies to ensnare or slay him, though all failed. In an effort to weaken and divide the Loyalist forces, the Warmaster charged the Blood Angels Legion with the arduous task of cleansing the Signus Cluster -- a triple star system of the Segmentum Ultima near to the galactic centre. Sanguinius' Legion was ordered to cleanse the 7 worlds and 15 moons of Signus of xenos invaders and release the humans there from their xenos-overlords. Unaware of the Warmaster's perfidy, Sanguinius willingly obeyed his brother Primarch and immediately set out for this volatile region of space. Unbeknownst to the Blood Angels, they were blindly walking into a deadly trap, for the Signus Cluster had fallen prey to agents of the Ruinous Powers and become a veritable Realm of Chaos -- a system of hellish Daemon Worlds under the rule of a Greater Daemon of Slaanesh known as Kyriss the Perverse. When the Blood Angels arrived in-system, their fleet was ambushed by the malevolent forces of the Warp, crippling or killing many of their Navigators and Astropaths in the initial onslaught. The Blood Angels now faced the fury of Chaos for the first time. Kyriss sent an image of himself to Sanguinius, declaring his lordship over the system in the name of Slaanesh and taunting the Primarch into taking it back from him. Though they had never faced such a foe, the Blood Angels prepared their counterattack, sure that they would prevail. Rising to the challenge of the vile Greater Daemon, the Blood Angels Legion attacked the daemon host of Kyriss, launching a series of attacks across the seat of the daemon's power, the world of Signus Prime. Sanguinius faced the vast hordes of human cultists and packs of monstrous daemons as an Angel of Vengeance. Soon the planet was awash with the blood of both loyal Space Marines and thousands of slain cultists of Kyriss. The Primarch spearheaded the Blood Angels' assault on the Greater Daemon's seat of power, known as the Cathedral of the Mark, to confront and destroy Kyriss and reclaim the planet in the name of the Emperor. But soon Sanguinius came face-to-face with a new nightmare known as Ka'bandha, a Greater Daemon of Khorne. Within the pantheon of the Blood God, Ka'Bandha is regarded as one his most prolific killers. He is a murderous engine of destruction, slaughtering in exalted joy for his lord Khorne. The daemon taunted the Primarch, and revealed Horus' treachery. Enraged by the daemon's mockery and fearing his claims to be true, the angelic Primarch fought the brutal Bloodthirster in single combat. Seizing the initiative during the battle, he surprised the Bloodthirster with his frenzied assault, stabbing his sword into the daemon's chest, ripping open a gaping wound. The massive creature roared in fury and pain, lashing out with his whip at the Primarch's legs. Sanguinius was momentarily unbalanced as his legs were crushed in the whip's coils. The daemon then smashed Sanguinius to the ground with the flat of his axe. The winged hero was stunned, helpless before the daemon's wrath. As his vision cleared he looked up at the mighty monster towering over him. The Greater Daemon taunted him one final time, let out a mighty bellow and then struck out across the battlefield, slaughtering 500 Space Marines with huge swathes of his mighty axe. They psychic backlash of the deaths of so many of his sons blasted Sanguinius into unconsciousness. It would not be until the closing days of the Horus Heresy that Sanguinius would once again be confronted by the savage Daemon Lord during the Siege of Terra. With the fall of their Primarch and the slaughtering of their brethren, the Blood Angels Legion was consumed by a black rage that drove them into a berserker's fury as they charged into the daemonic horde and in their madness they smashed the horde of daemons asunder. Yet the brutal violence of the daemon Ka'Bandha had unleashed something dark within the psyche of the Space Marines, a thirst for blood that would not be slaked until every taint of Chaos had been erased from the planet. Even the mighty Kyriss was banished back to the Immaterium. Only when the planet was cleansed did the rage of the Blood Angels finally subside. Though Signus had been freed from its thrall to the forces of Chaos, the cost of victory was far higher than any could have wished. The berserker rage the Blood Angels had experienced had left a brooding shadow on their souls that would manifest in the centuries to come as the great curse that would afflict the Blood Angels and their successors. Following the end of this long, grueling campaign, the Blood Angels attempted a Warp jump towards the Throneworld. Despite the impassable torrential Ruinstorm that had been conjured by the Word Bearers during the Battle of Calth, the fleet's Navigators were able to pinpoint a shining beacon, which they initially assumed was the Astronomican. Desperate, the IXth Fleet's navigators followed it. Sensing "safe harbour", the fleet immediately executed a warp translation back into realspace. When they finally exited the Warp, they found themselves hundreds of light-years off course, nowhere near their targeted destination. It was by no accident that the Blood Angels had arrived at the current, unknown destination, as Sanguinius had ordered his navigators to strike for the strongest telepathic signal. They had inadvertently detected the shining beacon of the alien artefact, known as the Pharos, on the distant planet of Sotha. Unknowingly, the Blood Angels had traveled clear across the galaxy, and ended up in the Realms of Ultramar. Soon they were approached by a skirmish line of unidentified starships. They were hailed by the bright cobalt-blue vessels, trimmed with white and shining gold. The Blood Angels were greeted by the master of the XIIIth Legion himself, Roboute Guilliman, who welcomed his brother Primarch to the Five Hundred Worlds.Second Battle of Paramar (008 or 011.M31) - Ground assault units of the Blood Angels participate in the failed Loyalist attempt to retake the strategically vital world of Paramar V from Horus' Traitors.The Imperium Secundus (009.M31) - With the Imperium severed in two halves, isolated and ignorant of each other as a result of the raging tumult of the Ruinstorm, the light of the Astronomican was no longer visible from Ultramar and no word of the Emperor had been heard for several years. Ultramarines Primarch Roboute Guilliman declared the foundation of the "Imperium Secundus" as a means of continuing the fight against the Traitors and securing the Emperor's great work. When the Blood Angels arrived at Ultramar having escaped the Signus Cluster, Guilliman proclaimed Sanguinius as the rightful heir to the Emperor. Not long after, the Dark Angels also followed the guiding beacon of the Pharos and arrive in the Five Hundred Worlds. Lion El'Jonson was declared the Lord Protector of the realm and supreme master of all its military forces, a title equivalent to that of "Warmaster". Unfortunately, the foundation of Imperium Secundus was marred when Night Lords Primarch Konrad Curze, who had been hiding within the bowels of the Dark Angels flagship, escaped from the Invincible Reason and rampaged across Macragge, intent on spreading as much terror and chaos as he could. Eventually, both Guilliman and the Lion confronted the cornered Curze. Their attempts to kill him were unsuccessful as the Night Lords Primarch had laid a cunning trap. He brought down an entire chapel upon the two Primarchs through the use of planted explosives and fled the scene. Guilliman and the Lion were only saved through the direct intervention of the Loyalist Iron Warriors Warsmith Barabas Dantioch, who was communicating with Guilliman at the time of the attack, through a portal that was opened by the Pharos. On instinct, the Warsmith reached through the portal and pulled the two Primarchs to safety on Sotha.Capture and Trial of the Night Haunter (ca. 011.M31) - Continuing his obsessive hunt for the elusive Night Haunter over the following two years, the Lion and Guilliman continuously clashed over policies, especially in regards to the security of Imperium Secundus, and how best to deal with rebels on Macragge, that the Lion was certain Curze had something to do with. Following a suicide bombing of an Astartes convoy, the Lion used the Ist Legion to establish martial law on Macragge. Certain that Curze was hiding within the rebellious Illyrium region, the Lion advocated the use of a massive orbital saturation bombardment of the region to ensure Curze's death. Facing resistance from both Emperor Sanguinius and Guilliman, the Lion instead, opted to deploy his Legion's Dreadwing in order to flush out Curze and the rebels. During an attack on the city of Alma Mons, the Lion finally cornered the elusive Night Lords Primarch and the two came to blows. After a brutal confrontation, the Lion eventually emerged victorious, and questioned his brother why he had turned away from the Emperor, in which Curze simply replied, "why not?". Curze went on to explain that there was a monster in his head that he could not stop. Though he finally had Curze at his mercy, the Lion couldn't bring himself to kill his brother, and instead pummeled him again. He then ripped off Curze's backpack from his battle-plate and lifted him over his head, and then brutally brought him down across his knee, breaking Curze's spine and paralysing him. The Lion brought the grievously wounded Curze before Sanguinius and Guilliman to stand trial. A Triumvirate was later held, where Curze defended his actions, but refused to admit his guilt. Since each of the Primarchs had been created to perform a specific function, Curze was merely acting according to his own nature, and therefore had committed no crimes. The Night Lords Primarch then further divided Guilliman and the Lion by accusing the latter of secretly ordering orbital bombardment in direct violation of Guilliman's orders. Enraged, the Lion sought to kill Curze, but was halted by the words of Sanguinius and Guilliman snatched El'Jonson's Lion Sword and broke the blade across his armoured thigh. El'Jonson was furious, but Sanguinius dismissed the Lord Protector, ending the Triumvirate. The Lion was then banished from Imperium Secundus. Taking his leave, the Dark Angels withdrew from Macragge only hours later. Standing in the chamber of the Tuchulcha Engine aboard the Invincible Reason, the Lion brooded over recent events, he questioned his actions over the course of the last few decades and many of the decisions he had come to regret. As the Dark Angels made their final preparations to depart back to Caliban, the Lion went back to the Tuchulcha Engine's chamber. He then ordered the device to teleport himself and Holguin, "Deathbringer", the voted-lieutenant of the Deathwing, back to Macragge. As Sanguinius was preparing to execute Curze for his crimes, both the Lion and his lieutenant teleported directly into the chamber and told Sanguinius to halt the execution. As troops entered the room, demanding the Lion to surrender, El'Jonson explained his reasons for the intrusion. He reasoned that Curze had the ability to see precognitive visions of potential futures, and repeated the Night Haunter's claim that his death would one day come at the hands of an assassin sent by the Emperor. If this was true, the Lion reasoned, than it was proof that the Emperor was still alive. Sanguinius knew the Lion's explanation rang true, as he recognised that his own precognitive visions of his inevitable death at the hands of the Warmaster would also eventually come to pass. When Guilliman demanded to know what would become of Curze, the Lion knelt before his two brothers and promised that he would be Curze's gaoler.Siege of Terra (014.M31) - The Blood Angels' finest hour would take place during the closing days of the Horus Heresy. Known in Imperial records as the Siege of Terra, this campaign was the climax of the Heresy that raged on Terra itself between the Forces of Chaos led by the Warmaster Horus and the Loyalist armies of the Imperium of Man led by the Emperor of Mankind Himself. Many of the Loyalist Astartes Legions had been waylaid by the forces of the Traitor Legions loyal to the Warmaster and were unable to make their way towards Terra. The Imperial Fists had already returned to the cradle of humanity and under the stern gaze of their Primarch Rogal Dorn had adequately prepared Terra's defences as best they could. Jaghatai Khan, Primarch of the White Scars Legion, had also managed to make his way to Terra with his Legion to help with the defence of the Imperial Palace. Meanwhile, in the Signus Cluster, the Blood Angels, granted new and terrible power by a mysterious mass rage (that would resurface again during the Siege of Terra) had triumphed, smashing the hordes of Chaos daemons to be found on Signus Prime asunder. They were also able to make the Warp jump to Terra in time to meet the oncoming invaders. Of the nine remaining Loyalist Space Marines Legions, only the White Scars and the Blood Angels were able to join Rogal Dorn and his Imperial Fists in the defence of Terra before the arrival of the Traitor Legions in the Sol System. Three entire Titan Legions of the Mechanicum and close to 2 million soldiers of the Imperial Army stood alongside them to face the hosts of Chaos in a battle that would determine the fate of Mankind for the next ten millennia. Yet for all the might of the Emperor, for every effort of Sanguinius and the remaining Loyalist Primarchs, the forces of Horus drove all before them. In too short a time, the Emperor of Mankind was assailed within His great palace on Terra. The Blood Angels led the defence of the Imperial Palace, never once losing heart, despite the terrible odds stacked against them. Alongside their Battle-Brothers of the Imperial Fists Legion, the valorous yet overmatched soldiers of the Imperial Army and the grim Legio Custodes, the Blood Angels manned the walls of that final bastion. Sanguinius single-handedly held the crenellations from the tides of daemonic filth attempting to wash into the holy chambers of the Emperor's abode. Many accounts of the time praise the Blood Angels' valour and unceasing efforts in their defence of the Eternity Wall spaceport. Although hundreds of Blood Angels died, they stemmed a sea of foulness the like of which had never been seen before. During the Siege of Terra, the vile Bloodthirster Ka'Bandha once again confronted Sanguinius atop the Eternity Gate before the Emperor's throne room. The Greater Daemon struck Sanguinius, casting the angel upon the broken stone. Preparing to strike a killing blow, the Blood Angels' Primarch called upon his last reserves of strength and power. With a massive effort, he leapt upon the Bloodthirster, seized it about the wrist and ankle and rose up high into the air, smashing the daemon's form across his knee and breaking the creature's back with a powerful crack. He then swung the body of Ka'Bandha around and hurled the broken behemoth into the midst of the daemonic host, slamming the Eternity Gate shut against the ravening hordes. And yet, it would be upon Horus' flagship, the Battle Barge Vengeful Spirit, that Sanguinius was to fulfill his greatest duty. In a desperate gambit, the Emperor took the fight to Horus aboard his flagship after the Warmaster dropped the vessel's Void Shields, teleporting into the heart of the enemy stronghold with squads of the Blood Angels and Imperial Fists at His side. Sanguinius was separated from his comrades during the teleportation and, so the legend tells, was brought through artifice before the treacherous Horus. In evil cunning, the Warmaster offered Sanguinius one final chance to renounce the Emperor, to join with Horus in the inevitable victory of the Forces of Chaos -- yet the Primarch of the Blood Angels held true, and refused. Rejected, Horus flew into a rage and attacked. Even at the peak of his powers, Sanguinius could not have hoped to prevail against the embodiment of Chaotic power Horus had become, and the Primarch was weary and wounded from his travails on Terra. When the Emperor at last entered Horus' sanctum, He found the rebellious Warmaster standing above Sanguinius' broken, bleeding corpse. In the battle that followed, Horus was finally vanquished, though the Emperor too was cast down near to death. There are many tales told of this final battle and, though the exact facts are long lost, one detail holds through all the recitations of the millennia since. Despite the Emperor's great power, He could never have bested Horus had not the blade of Sanguinius wrought a chink in the Warmaster's armour.A Troubled Succession (014-021.M31) - In the Heresy's wake during the Great Scouring, Roboute Guilliman's Codex Astartes was implemented throughout the Imperium. It fragmented the Space Marine Legions that remained, scattering their strength wide for the sake of the Imperium's continued safety. Under the guidance of Azkaellon, Sanguinius' one surviving Sanguinary Guard, the Blood Angels Legion was broken down into the Blood Angels Chapter and their Second Founding successors. After ensuring that the traditions and identity of the Blood Angels would be safeguarded in perpetuity, Azkaellon disappeared from all Chapter records. It soon became clear that the deepening flaw within the Blood Angels' gene-seed had also beset their successors among the Sanguinary Brotherhood; the curse claimed more battle-brothers with each passing Terran year.Blackstar Liberation (344.M33) - Warpstorm Korinthus finally abates, revealing the vast Blackstar System firmly in the grip of Chaos. More than half of the Blood Angels Chapter deployed to liberate the Imperial citizens of these worlds. The war that followed lasted two full Terran years and pitted the Blood Angels against a lethal coalition of Night Lords, Death Guard and Word Bearers. Eventually, the Blood Angels bested their foes amid the nuclear fires of the Battle of Neverwish, driving them back to the Warp in tatters. The cost was great, but the Sons of Sanguinius recovered a huge and populous star system for the Imperium.Shield of Sanguinius (400.M35) - Tectonic upheavals on the backwater world of Ironcel V trigger a massive Ork WAAAGH!. Dispossessed Greenskins flooded into space in their billions, led by a bellowing beast known as Warboss Starsmasha. The WAAAGH! overran the maiden world of Ledrith, smashed aside the renegade warfleet of Lord Borvashik, and descended upon the Redhaven System. However, here it was stopped dead by a combined force of Blood Angels, Astra Militarum and Imperial Knights of House Griffith. The defence was coordinated by the Blood Angels Chapter Master, Leonid Castivarus, and was masterful in its conception and execution. The war raged for many solar months and several Imperial worlds were overrun, yet finally the WAAAGH! spent its fury against the so-called Shield of Sanguinius and was utterly destroyed.A Gathering of Heroes (266.M37) - A combined force of Blood Angels, Angels Encarmine and Blood Drinkers engages with Traitor forces on the archeotech world of Hell's Hollow. Though the cultist hosts were swiftly put to death, the attack came too late to prevent their completion of a heretical ritual. The veil was pierced, and a tide of daemons spilled through into the macrocities of Hell's Hollow. The Blood Angels and their brethren reacted to this new development with typical courage and resolve. The main strength of the strikeforce was deployed in a series of holding actions, stemming the daemonic tide long enough for the Death Company to be hurled against the ritual site itself. Amid an orgy of violence, the black-armoured Battle-Brothers slaughtered everything in their path, closing the rift at the price of their own lives.The 7th Black Crusade (The Ghost War) (811.M37) - The 7th Black Crusade was a Black Crusade launched against the forces of the Imperium of Man, led by Abaddon the Despoiler and his Black Legion, that erupted out of the Eye of Terror in 811.M37. The Forces of Chaos spewed forth from the great Warp rift past Cadia and then disappeared. This circumstance is what earned this conflict its informal name of the Ghost War. The following years saw a game of hide-and-seek played between the Forces of Chaos and the Imperium of Man which spread confusion, paranoia, disinformation and deceit across the galaxy. Raids became commonplace in far-flung areas but eventually the servants of the Dark Gods returned to the Eye of Terror, having caused great difficulty for the Emperor's Loyalists but proven unable to significantly degrade Imperial defensive capabilities at that time. During this conflict, when the Blood Angels battled against the Forces of Chaos at Midian, Abaddon singled them out with implacable fury. He led a band of Khornate Berserkers into the teeth of the Blood Angels' Devastator positions. Even the Blood Angels' own Assault troops could not dislodge the frenzied warband and recapture the bodies of their comrades. But there is an obscure reference to the Blood Angels being saved by an unidentified Space Marine Chapter of mysterious origin. Written within the The Canticle of Cassandria Lev - Vol. CVI, the eponymous Sainted Sisters' highly mythologised and oblique account of the wars of the 7th Black Crusade, is found mention of a "grey-clad" Space Marines Chapter who came from "the outer night" to aid the Imperium, and whose "jagged maw did swallow the stars ... and whose ... black gaze did mirror the void of oblivion." In the course of the canticle this Chapter's ships set upon Abaddon's forces following the disastrous defeat and routing of the Blood Angels at Midian and attacked the pursuing forces as Saint Lev writes: "...fell upon the servants of the skulled-one with great fury from the darkness, unseen as the beast that lurks beneath the black waters, death for death, blood for blood...thus were the Sons of Sanguinius bought respite, and did turn back upon their pursuers and so were the damned traitors of the false gods driven unto their ruin." Images of these events can be found upon the walls of the Cemetery World of Hypasitis created to house the honoured dead of that war, depicted in repeated fresco and bar relief. Curiously, the faces of the intervening Space Marines depicted there are obscured with featureless disks of black obsidian. Given the largely unknown history of the star-faring Carcharodons Chapter, accounts of their activities can only be constructed from recorded historical incidents and fragmentary records that are believed to have involved the Carcharodons on balance of evidence. This notable engagement is listed by Imperial savants as a "[Special] Probable Encounter/Recorded Sighting" of this notorious and mysterious Space Marine Chapter. After their rescue at Midian, the full might of the Blood Angels Chapter fell upon a vast Black Legion warband on the world of Mackan. Although the conflict ultimately ended in the near-extinction of the Blood Angels at the hands of Abaddon the Despoiler and his primary lieutenants -- the Sorcerer Lord Iskandar Khayon and the swordmaster Telemachon Lyras -- the Blood Angels Reclusiarch Thalastian Jorus became one of the few Imperial heroes to ever land a blow against the Warmaster of Chaos. With his Chapter devastated, the Chaplain endured solar weeks of hardship in the wilderness and the constant trials of keeping his crazed warriors undetected on Mackan. When the time was right, Jorus led his Death Company in a lightning raid behind enemy lines, butchering the unprepared sworn warriors of the Despoiler's honour guard, and allowing the Reclusiarch to lock blades with Abaddon himself. It is said the Chaos Warmaster still bears the scars of that battle, even three standard millennia later. Whatever the truth of the matter, it is known that the Despoiler honoured Jorus once the war was over -- perhaps in mockery, or perhaps with nothing but sincerity. After Mackan, thousands of Blood Angels corpses were desecrated, their gene-seed ruined beyond recovery. Of all the Chapter, only a handful of bodies were left undefiled: Reclusiarch Jorus and his Death Company, clad in their battered and broken black ceramite, seated in makeshift thrones made from the armour of those Black Legion warriors they had killed on that fateful night.Kallius Insurrection (Unknown Date.M40) - The Blood Angels, once again, tasted the risk of annihilation, losing nine out of every ten Space Marines, and almost the entire Chapter Council. Three full Companies -- including the young Brother-Captain Dante and his 8th Company -- launched a devastating assault on Kallius' Landing and its dependency worlds, in support of their overwhelmed successor brethren, the Angels Numinous (more commonly known, because of their symbol, as the Blood Eagles). World after world rose up in rebellion, insurrections spreading across the region and blanketing the sub-sector. Entire populations and ragtag fleets were led into battle by chanting Traitor Marines, clad in a panoply of colours, drawn from countless warbands. The Blood Angels found themselves tied up in protracted conflicts and trench wars, caught in a cobweb of a much wider heresy. As the weeks became months and the months became years, more and more of the Chapter arrived to punish, cleanse, and reclaim the rebellious worlds. The Rolls of Honour run black with the ink of millions of enemies slain, but the Blood Angels suffered casualties beyond their ability to sustain a fighting front. With dozens of Imperial Guard regiments arriving alongside several relief Chapters, the Blood Angels withdrew from the conflict with their heads held high. Yet the bitterest blow was yet to be struck: it came as the remnants of their fleet mustered above Kallius' Landing itself, when a Traitor armada broke from the Warp, hungry for the chance to wipe the Angels from the face of the Imperium. The battle that followed lasted for three days of void war and vicious boarding actions, during which Dante and his warriors were responsible for the taking and scuttling of seven capital-class vessels. When the Blood Angels at last stood victorious and took stock of their losses, fewer than two hundred Space Marines clad in red still drew breath. The last surviving Sanguinary Priests and Chaplains came together in communion, electing the last-living Captain as the next Chapter Master. Dante accepted the mantle of Lord of the Angelic Host, while still wearing his bloodstained, broken armour. It would be the last day he ever wore red, forever after to be clad in sacred gold. Not because he was the best or the brightest, but purely because he was the last man standing. Such an ascension should have heralded a grim rule, but fate would tell a different tale.A Bloody Reversal (676.M40) - During fierce fighting on the mountainous moon of Tytus, the Blood Angels of Strike Force Alenso succumb to the Red Thirst en masse. Though they smash into their greenskin foes with unstoppable fury, the Blood Angels are swiftly engulfed. Buried beneath the relentless green tide, it appears that Strike Force Alenso is lost. Yet at the last moment, a heroic drop-offensive by the Elysian 46th Airborne rescues the Blood Angels from disaster. In the battle's wake, Captain Alenso personally honours the Elysians' Colonel Vandegrahst, displaying a humility that leaves the Astra Militarum officer speechless.A Bounty Denied (187.M41) - For almost a decade the gloom-shrouded worlds of the Shadowblight system have suffered the uncontested predation of Dark Eldar raiding bands. This cruel fate has been long concealed by a shield of flickering illusions thrown up by Commorrite mirrorbeacons. However, upon detecting this barrier of bewilderment and misdirection, a triumvirate of Blood Angels Librarians bend their formidable mental powers to break through. This they did, laying bare the miserable worlds beyond along with their surprised tormentors. Led by the trio of Librarians, an outraged force of Blood Angels descended to punish the arrogant xenos. The campaign that followed was bloody in the extreme, the fury of the Blood Angels pitted against the skill and contempt of the Commorrites. Casualties were high on both sides; the Dark Eldar possessed the edge in speed and stealth, the Blood Angels in resilience and determination. Finally, after the destruction of Archon Sybralath's Palace of Torments, the Dark Eldar lost their will to fight and retreated to the Webway in disgust. Victory belonged to the Blood Angels, and to the Shadowblight survivors they liberated.