Mantis Warriors - Notable Campaigns: Hunt for Kharfra the Antipath (330.M39) - The Cardinal Kharfra, who had been corrupted by Chaos and founded a secret Chaos Cult within the Adeptus Ministorum, was discovered when his attempt to assassinate the Ecclesiarch Nyber Vasille failed, leading to a decades-long flight from Imperial justice for Karfra the Antipath and his cultists even as they unleashed a wave of destruction across the Segmentum Solar as they went. It was the Mantis Warriors who would eventually run the blasphemous priest to ground. Using intelligence taken from Maelstrom pirates by their Librarians, the Mantis Warriors learned that the Antipath had taken up refuge among the Chaos Renegades of the Golgothan Wastes. Over the course of a 5-year-long man-hunt, the Mantis Warrior discovered Kharfra's stronghold in the pre-Imperial ruins on the Death World of Parasis. The Mantis Warriors infiltrated the hideous fungal rainforests that surrounded the stronghold and defeated a force of mutants and Heretics five times their own size before capturing Kharfra himself, now a benighted Chaos mutant, in the sewers below the stronghold. The Antipath was turned over to the Inquisition's watch-hold on the world of Valsingam for judgment. For this action, the Mantis Warriors gained the great gratitude of the Ecclesiarchy.Battle of Centius Prime (897.M41) - The Ork Warlord known as Big Boss Gigabob led the invasion of the Feudal World of Centius Prime, searching for loot with which to arm his forces for a planned greenskin WAAAGH!. Finding the world had little technology more advanced than a crossbow, he indulged in a campaign of vengeful wrath, only to be halted by a combined force of Mantis Warriors and Space Wolves Space Marines answering the planet's astropathic distress call.Scourge of the Slave Lords (901.M40) - In the centuries directly before the High Lords of Terra ordered the creation of the Maelstrom Warders alliance to defend the region around that Warp rift, attacks from the Chaos Renegades and xenos of the Maelstrom Zone reached their highest levels in 2000 standard years. Faced with such overwhelming numbers, the Mantis Warriors were forced to fight with both creative tactics and great intelligence, luring foes into ambushes where they could and always seeking to fight only when they possessed the advantage. While this worked with great acuity against Orks and Chaos raiders, the Drukhari pirates known to the worlds they raided as the "Slave Lords" proved another matter. Vicious and sadistic beyond the imaginations of Mankind, the Drukhari were beings of shadow and mist, far too mobile and elusive to be easily trapped even by the Mantis Warriors' penchant for guile. The Drukhari loved to prey on undefended worlds, carrying off thousands of weeping, frightened people to a fate worse than death in their Dark City of Commorragh within the labyrinthine extradimensional corridors of the Aeldari Webway. The Slave Lords' favoured prey were undefended Imperial merchant convoys and isolated planetary outposts. After the deaths of 60 Mantis Warriors Astartes during a failed attempt to defend the Feudal World of Tranquility II's primary shrine-city from a Drukhari strike, the Chapter decided to devote all of its resources to the destruction of the Slave Lords. With the aid of their Librarians, famed for their skills in intrigue and misdirection, the Mantis Warriors hatched a costly plan to defeat the Slave Lords. They let word go out into the region that they would defend the Desert World of Tranquility II with all the resources at their disposal and they posted extra Chapter fleet vessels in the system and gathered most of the world's small population of about a million people into a single encampment defended by 2 Space Marine forces, one highly visible and the other concealed beneath the world's desert sands. When news reached the Mantis Warriors of Drukhari diversionary attacks upon the void mining colony of Sigard, the Chapter ordered its fleet to leave the Tranquility System for Sigard, leaving the world seemingly undefended. When the Drukhari predictably attacked Tranquility believing that the Mantis Warriors had taken their bait, the Space Marines made the hard choice to wait until the Drukhari were fully committed to the raid, killing or capturing hundreds of innocents before the Mantis Warriors sprang their trap. The hidden Mantis Warriors rose up from the desert sands to confront the foe at the same time that two Cobra-class Destroyers of the Chapter Fleet, buried solar months before, shook off their own blankets of sand and fired their torpedoes at point blank range at the Drukhari ships and skimmers above. The torpedoes' fusion warheads badly damaged the Slave Lords' lightly armoured vessels, which immediately fled the world, leaving their comrades on the ground to be slaughtered by the enraged Space Marines and the desert tribes of Tranquility. But the Mantis Warriors Chapter Fleet returned from Warpspace as the Drukhari vessels reached the outer system, having never left for Sigard and they destroyed what remained of the Slave Lords' fleet, forever ending this Drukhari Kabal's threat to the people of the Endymion Cluster.War of Quile's Folly (Unknown Date.M41) - An entire Battle Company of the Mantis Warriors, plus 600,000 allied Vostroyan Firstborn, fell to a prematurely-launched Exterminatus action during this conflict.Badab War (901-912.M41) - At the start of the Badab War, the Mantis Warriors were slightly below full strength because of the raids they had launched against the xenos on the outer edges of the Maelstrom and the resulting damage their 4th Company had taken in battle against the Genestealers of Verkruz. The Chapter possessed about 800 battle-brothers, 60-80 Scout Marines, their corps of servitors and Chapter bondsmen, as well as 1 Battle Barge, 3 Strike Cruisers, 2 Vanguard Cruisers, 6 armed transports and at least 19 escorts and attack craft. The Mantis Warriors' reason for entering the Badab War was simple: they valued their alliance with the other Maelstrom Warders highly and saw an attack on one of their number, even by the Imperium itself, as an attack on themselves. They had the dubious honour of becoming the first of the Secessionist forces to fire on their fellow Astartes when they attacked and captured the Fire Hawks Chapter's starship Red Harbinger in 904.M41 when it crossed into their territory and refused demands to be boarded. In 906.M41, tragedy befell the Mantis Warriors during the opening stages of the Badab War, when both Loyalists and Secessionist forces met under a flag of truce on the world of Grief. During the proceedings a deceitful Lufgt Huron and his Renegade Astral Claws Chapter launched a surprise attack against the Red Scorpions and both their Chapter Master Lord High Commander Verant Ortys and the Mantis Warriors' Chapter Master Yarvan Sartaq were slain during the melee. As the conflict progressed, the Mantis Warriors were involved with the Secessionist war effort on every level, fighting guerrilla campaigns against the numerically greater Loyalist forces and often employing hit-and-run tactics. The greatest of these ambushes was the one at the world of Bellerophon's Fall which shattered the Marines Errant Chapter. 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 mission to the Endymion Cluster was denied access to the Mantis Warriors' hidden bases, but was provided with samples of the Mantis' gene-seed for testing, which proved ultimately to conform within expected tolerances but with some gene-dissonance detected. As the war continued, the Mantis Warriors' strength was severely depleted fighting the Loyalists during the Tranquility Campaign to defend the Tranquility System and the Desert World of Tranquility II in the Endymion Cluster and following the Loyalists' retaliatory firebombing of Sacristan. There is some evidence to suggest that the Chapter had grown to have misgivings about the course of the war and the true goals and allegiances of Lufgt Huron and the Astral Claws by 908.M41, but too much blood had been spilled by that time for the Chapter's pride to allow anything but a violent conclusion to be found to the conflict. This was an end that came when the Loyalists, spearheaded by the forces of the savage Carcharodons Chapter, directly assaulted Tranquility II and finally crushed the Mantis Warriors' resistance. Yet the Secessionist Chapter gave as good as it got and 300 battle-brothers managed to survive the conflict to face the Emperor's justice. 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 were convened in judgement in accordance with Astartes tradition. The Consistorial Court found all of those Chapters who had taken part in the Badab Secession guilty of breaking with both the Codex Astartes and the ancient covenant with the Emperor that it represented. The Mantis Warriors were found to have rebelled against the Imperium not out of treachery but because they were misguided and had been manipulated by the Tyrant of Badab unknowingly. In the wake of the Badab War, the Mantis Warriors were sentenced to undertake a 100-year-long penitent crusade against the Emperor's foes during which they could not recruit neophytes to make good their losses. Their future survival would therefore be left in their own hands and subject to the grace and benevolence of the Emperor.Battle of Herodian IV (Unknown Date.M41) - The Mantis Warriors answered a distress call from the strategically important world of Herodian IV when it came under attack from a Tyranid splinter hive fleet. They managed to evacuate 270,000 people off-world but the 2nd Company was badly mauled defending an Adeptus Mechanicus station on the world prior to the arrival of a Deathwatch Kill-team and an Inquisitorial fleet, drawn to the world because of its location along a Warp route deemed critical to support Imperial efforts to defend against a Chaos attack from the Eye of Terror. Following the successful defence of the Herodian System from the Tyranids the Inquisition determined that the Mantis Warriors' actions had restored the Emperor's blessing to them and they were allowed to begin to recruit neophytes to replace their losses once more.