Saint Celestine - Fall of Cadia and the Celestinian Crusade: As Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade raged on the Fortress World of Cadia in 999.M41, Saint Celestine suddenly appeared once more, claiming she had been resurrected by the will of the Emperor in the hour of His Imperium's greatest need.She appeared swathed in flame above the bloody Cadian battlefields of Kasr Kraf. But she did not come alone, for she brought with her some five companies of battle-sisters of the Order of Our Martyred Lady, thought lost in the Warp some fourteen hundred standard years before. Her radiant light had served as a beacon through the Empyrean, drawing the wounded vessel into the path of another Imperial craft and binding the two until realspace claimed them both once more.With their arrival, the battle for Cadia shifted for a time in the Imperial defenders' favour. Celestine immediately engaged the Daemon Prince Urkanthos with two canonesses of the Order of Our Martyred Lady he had recently slain. Celestine had used her power and their extraordinary faith to bring them back to life to serve as her honour guard.These were Genevieve and Eleanor, the Living Saint's Geminae Superia. Together, the Living Saint and her reborn warriors slew the over-confident servant of the Dark Gods. When they threw the Daemon Prince's broken body from the walls of Kasr Kraf, it helped to demoralise the Despoiler's forces, routing them and buying the Imperials some needed breathing space between constant Chaos assaults.It was during this respite that another newcomer to the fight on Cadia, the Adeptus Mechanicus Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl, explained that the Despoiler's real goal was to destroy Cadia and the xenos pylons that were scattered in concentrations across its surface. The pylons kept the Warp from bleeding into realspace and maintained the only clear passage out of the Eye of Terror known as the Cadian Gate.With their destruction, the forces of Chaos would be able to launch themselves out of the Eye and overwhelm the defences of the Imperium at the same time that they would be able to summon an endless legion of Daemons until Terra itself had fallen, the Emperor cast down from His Golden Throne.Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed, the commander of the Imperial forces on Cadia, ordered that the catacombs beneath the pylons under the Elysion Fields be reinforced to serve as a last line of defence to hold back the expected Chaos assault while Cawl worked to explore the pylons' systems and discover a way that they could be used as a weapon against Chaos.Unknown to Creed and Celestine, Cawl had secretly been contacted by the Necron Lord Trazyn the Infinite, who had decided to aid Humanity in its fight against their common foe in the Warp. With Trazyn's knowledge, Cawl was able to determine how to use the pylons to cut off the local area of space-time from contact with the Immaterium. But as he worked, the Archenemy launched its expected assault against the catacombs, and Creed and Celestine led the defence.What was not expected was that Abaddon the Despoiler, frustrated beyond reason by Cadia's continuing defiance, led that assault himself. As the ground battle between the Despoiler's invaders and Ursarkar E. Creed's defenders reached its climax, Cawl activated the pylons. The Necron technology operated precisely as had been expected, cutting off Cadia from the Warp, banishing the Daemons of Chaos, actually shrinking the Eye of Terror and giving Cadia's defenders a chance for yet another unlikely victory.However, the loss of access to the Immaterium also affected Celestine, whose own extraordinary powers of faith were also fuelled by the psychic currents of the Warp. Meeting the Despoiler head-on, in her weakened form she was defeated by the Warmaster of Chaos. Even as she sat at his feet, she promised him that Mankind would one day be free of his vile masters."There is no freedom," was his only reply.But Celestine was saved at the last moment when the Inquisitor Katarinya Greyfax of the Ordo Hereticus, recently freed from one of Trazyn's Tesseract Labyrinths, psychically assaulted Abaddon, forcing the Despoiler to back away. Before he could resume the advance, the pylons' strike upon the Immaterium intensified, banishing the Despoiler's Daemons and weakening his forces.A massed attack on the Despoiler by Creed and his 8th Cadian Regiment of Cadian Shock Troops failed when Abaddon and his Chaos Terminators broke the charge and badly wounded Creed, severing one of his arms. But just as the Despoiler moved to put an end to the Lord Castellan by cracking his spine, Celestine, though much diminished, managed to stab him from behind with the Ardent Blade."The Emperor protects," Celestine promised the wounded Despoiler.Abaddon lurched away from Celestine, her blade ripping free of his flesh. It had been millennia since he had last been so wounded, and his spirit boiled with vengeance. But as the remaining troops of the Cadian 8th surged to reclaim their beloved general, Abaddon realised he had no time for the luxury of pride.The last vestiges of the Warp were retreating before the pylons' arcane energies. If he were to depart, it would have to be now. Reluctantly, his eyes never leaving Celestine's, Abaddon gave the order to withdraw.As his flagship's teleport anchors engaged, the honourable warrior Ezekyle Abaddon had once been so long before acknowledged the feat Cadia's defenders had managed. They had lost, though they did not yet know it. But they had also won. He had sought to break Cadia's spirit, send the vanquished souls of its garrisons screaming into the Warp. He had not done so.Unfortunately, the Despoiler would not be denied the prize he had sought for millennia so easily. Foreseeing the need for a fail-safe, Abaddon had the damaged bulk of the Blackstone Fortress Will of Eternity, its systems disabled by an assault from the Imperial Fists' star fort Phalanx, hurled from orbit as an artificial meteor into the surface of Cadia.The massive kinetic strike destroyed what remained of the world's defences, ensuring its envelopment by the now rapidly-expanding Eye of Terror. Perhaps the only positive outcome was that the destruction of the pylons also restored Celestine's own strength and vitality as her connection with the Empyrean was re-established.The badly wounded Lord Castellan Creed ordered an evacuation of the dying world. The Imperial survivors of Cadia -- led by Cawl, Saint Celestine, Inquisitor Katarinya Greyfax and Marshal Marius Amalrich of the Black Templars -- now calling themselves the Celestinian Crusade -- used every voidship at their disposal, including Cawl's massive Ark Mechanicus, the Iron Revenant, to ferry the three million survivors off Cadia.Unable to enter the Warp because of the roiling instability of the Immaterium near the Cadian Gate, the Imperial fleet was forced to flee through the Cadia System at sub-light speed, and the Black Fleet gave chase. The largest and most powerful remaining Imperial capital ship, Cawl's Iron Revenant, heroically sacrificed itself in battle against Abaddon's flagship the Vengeful Spirit so that the Celestinian Crusade could escape to Klaisus, the nearby ice moon of the world of Kasr Holn.It was Celestine who explained that she had experienced a precognitive vision that their salvation -- and that of the Imperium itself -- lay on that barren, frigid planetoid.Celestine's vision proved prophetic, for the surviving Celestinians were rescued from Chaos attacks and the unforgiving arctic environment at the last by the arrival of the Ynnari through Klaisus' hidden Webway gate. Though his flagship was lost, Belisarius Cawl had rescued its most precious cargo -- the Armour of Fate, key to the resurrection of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman.