Badab War - The Red Hour (911.M41): The Gift of Fire task force was unexpectedly struck by a powerful Warp squall and scattered en route back to Imperial-controlled space. Calamity was averted by the formidable skills of their lead Navigator, and only a single frigate was lost to the Immaterium, while the Salamanders' battle barge Pyre of Glory and the light cruiser Admiral Gregorius were turned back into the Maelstrom riding ahead of the stormfront and forced to ford into realspace in the relative stability of the Calah Shoals within the Maelstrom's boundary to repair and refit.The Loyalists' arrival had not gone unnoticed, for soon news of their presence was carried to the Secessionists. The Astral Claws strike cruiser Hyrcania was still in the region, having found its home base on Shaprias destroyed. Its master, Arch-centurion Carnac Commodus craved vengeance and atonement for his failings in the eyes of his lord. But Commodus knew that alone, his vessel stood little chance on taking on the wounded Loyalists.He sent an encrypted astropathic message seeking aid was received by an unexpected ally in the Phaeton's Wrath, flagship battle barge of the Executioners Chapter, and her accompanying Gladius-class Frigate escorts, which had been taking on supplies at the uninhabited Ocean World of Deluge on the edge of the Magog Cluster.Their combined battlegroup attacked the wounded Loyalist vessels as they moved toward the Warp transfer point at Calah to embark once again. The light cruiser Admiral Gregorius was blasted to atoms in the opening salvo of the Secessionists' guns. The Pyre of Glory quickly proved to be far less easy prey. The Salamanders' mighty battle-barge managed to repel the first boarding assaults against her and destroyed two of the attacking frigates.But after a three-hour-long running battle, the Phaeton's Wrath managed to entirely disable the Pyre of Glory's thrusters leaving it dead in space. High Mortiurge (High Chaplain) Thulsa Kane vox-signalled the Salamanders' vessel and offered them the chance for honourable surrender, vouchsafing passage for them from the war zone under oath not to take up arms again in the conflict.Captain Pellas Mir'san conceded to this demand, despite the misgivings of some of those under his command, knowing that to do so would risk his force being destroyed without being able to strike back at their foe. Having himself fought alongside the Executioners Chapter centuries before as a Scout Marine neophyte he trusted to their oath of offered surety.Both the Phaeton's Wrath and the Hyrcania drew alongside the battered Pyre of Glory and docked, Thulsa Kane personally leading the Executioners boarding party and accepting Mir'san's sword in surrender as the Salamanders stood down their arms. It was then elsewhere within the great ship, the unthinkable occurred.Thanks to the conditions of the surrender, Arch-centurion Commodus led his own boarding party to seize the Pyre of Glory's armouries nearly unopposed. Heedless of the consequences, Commodus sought to breach the ship's sanctum vaults and seize not only the recovered gene-seed from the caverns of Shapiras, but also the Salamanders' own recovered stock from the fatalities sustained during the conflict.When the Salamanders' Apothecaries resisted, Commodus cut them down. He then unleashed his unfettered wrath upon the Salamanders, ordering the massacre of the Salamanders they had taken prisoner. He then ordered his "Corpse Takers" to strip them of their gene-seed whether alive or dead. A pitched battle quickly broke out across the decks.As reports reached the bridge of what was happening, Thulsa Kane was incensed with murderous rage. Seeing this reaction, Mir'san wisely divined that the Executioners may not have possessed full knowledge of the heresy and blasphemy committed by the Astral Claws, perhaps having been deliberately deceived by the Tyrant of Badab. Controlling his own outrage, Mir'san poured deliberate scorn on the Executioners' leader, both for this breach of his word and the dishonour of standing by and allowing the Tyrant's sins to go unchallenged.With the reports of his Executioners' own eyes giving the gravity of truth to Mir'san's claims, Kane's wrath was terrible to behold. He declared that the blood oath binding his Chapter to Lufgt Huron's cause had been violated, and the dark stain of infamy the Astral Claws had brought upon them could only be washed clean by a river of blood.Those Salamanders battle-brothers that survived what was to come have since given witness that a bleak madness came upon the Executioners at Kane's pronouncement, and that they tore into the Astral Claws with a murderous vengeance, heedless of the risk to their own lives, satisfied only that their former allies would die by their hands regardless of the cost.Captain Mir'san rallied his surviving Salamanders brethren and mounted a defence of the battle barge's inner sanctum, unleashing the power of the mighty Ancients, the Dreadnoughts, led by Bray'arth Ashmantle upon the apostate Astral Claws. First the corridors and vaults of the Pyre of Glory and then the Astral Claws Hyrcania ran red with blood.This dreadful battle became known in the legends of war as "The Red Hour," as every single Astral Claw, Chapter serf and servitor present was relentlessly hunted down and slaughtered. The Hyrcania was left a charnel house of decapitated bodies, as the Executioners took more than 200 heads from their former allies. Thulsa Kane came alone before the Salamanders' commander, Captain Mir'san, and knelt in the light of the burning sanctum braziers. Offering him no words, he presented a single gory object which rolled at Mir'san's feet -- the head of the Astral Claws Arch-centurion Commodus.Without further comment, the Executioners withdrew, leaving the stricken Salamanders battle barge and the empty Astral Claws strike cruiser docked alongside. The Executioners' maddened desire for vengeance had not been satiated, and soon its message reached every corner of the Maelstrom Zone. From this point onwards, the Executioners Chapter became a rogue element in the conflict, not only seeking out and descending with suicidal fury on the Astral Claws and their agents wherever they could be found, but also refusing to surrender to Loyalist forces when encountered.The most notorious incident of this kind occurred when the Executioners' destroyed the Sons of Medusa strike cruiser Warspite in the Grief System in 911.M41. But there were other incidents as well. Beyond these lamentable incidents, the Executioners Chapter's attacks on wider Imperial shipping ceased almost immediately. These unusual developments were only explained some solarmonths later, when the badly wrecked Pyre of Glory finally limped into port at the Loyalist battle station at Surngraad with their strange and bloody tale to tell.For the Tyrant of Badab's cause there could have been no more bitter blow than that struck by these allies turned enemies. Not only had the severing of the Executioners from the Secessionist cause robbed Huron's forces of much of its remaining strength in warships and raider craft, but as foes the Executioners were both implacable and had the advantage of detailed knowledge of many of the Secessionists' hidden bases and deployments which they put to immediate use in destroying them.With first the Lamenters and then the Mantis Warriors shorn from the Secessionist order of battle, and now most bitterly the Executioners turned against him, Lufgt Huron and what remained of his once-mighty Astral Claws were truly alone before the Imperium's wrath, their dreams of dominion and eternal glory shattered.