Mark of Calth: 25 (The Horus Heresy)

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While the remnants of the Ultramarines and the Imperial Army were making their exodus to the caverns beneath Calth to escape the irradiation of the world's surface, the Ultramarines' 21 st Company, under the command of Captain Erikon Gaius, were dug in at one of the railway tunnels leading to Numinus City. Ventanus became a senior adviser to his Primarch, Roboute Guilliman, and helped to codify the strategies and dogmas of what would become the Codex Astartes. And in the 41st Millennium, his vengeful spirit assisted a certain Uriel Ventris to inflict a true death on the Word Bearers Daemon Prince M’Kar. Rubio, with little choice, then left Calth behind with Garro in his Stormbird. Rubio would become one of the Sigillites Knights-Errant and later one of seven Astartes drawn from both the Traitor and Loyalist Legions who would form the founding core of what became the secret Grey Knights Chapter of Space Marines. Just as bitter to the Ultramarines Legion was the damage inflicted on its fleet assets. Never renowned for the numbers of heavy combat voidcraft in its service, the losses suffered at Calth were crippling and hamstrung any effort to prosecute an interstellar war beyond the bounds of Ultramar. Aeonid Thiel, Sergeant, 135 th Company [marked] - Thiel's helmet was painted red to indicate that he was marked for censure for running theoretical scenarios for combating other Space Marines - at the time, this was to satisfy his own curiosity and a yearning to account for all possibilities. However, due to the substantial losses amongst the XIII command personnel, Thiel emerged as a proficient leader and resourceful fighter. When the time came to organise the shattered remnants of the XIII into fighting squads, the new leaders were marked with the red helmet. This pattern continues to the present day.

Yes, specified Horus, his expression hurt, nonetheless established. Our teamed think the Emperor to be the supreme personification of quality, Fulgrim, however we were incorrect. He is not excellent, he is just a male, as well as we make every effort to mimic his lie. As the Titans moved closer to the guildhall, the last Shadowsword accompanying the 4th Company fired and damaged one of the striding giants, but the pair of Titans returned fire in unison, destroying the super-heavy tank in a vast conflagration of Titan-grade weapons fire. Ventanus knew then that their attempt had all been for naught. The Traitors of the XVII th Legion had seemingly won the Battle of Calth. It reduced Traitor Titans, armoured vehicles, Chaos Cult auxiliary and Word Bearers infantry formations to so much ash within only seconds. However, the weapon strike occurred less than half a kilometre from where the Loyalists had taken shelter from the coming impact. Two solar hours into the orbital battle, the Master of Vox of the Ultramarines flagship reported to Roboute Guilliman that the Word Bearers flagship, the Fidelitas Lex, had opened a lithocast-hailing channel. The Primarch of the Ultramarines stepped onto the holocaster platform at the centre of his bridge as the hooded figure of his brother Primarch Lorgar manifested before him in grainy hard-light. For perhaps the first time in his life, the famously measured Guilliman was lost to fury. He raged at his brother for his betrayal and swore to exact merciless vengeance. Guilliman denounced Lorgar's very sanity and swore that he and all his sons would be punished. But the Lorgar that listened to all of this with a smirk upon his lips and the remainder of his face hidden in shadow was not the being Guilliman had once known. No longer was Lorgar the cerebral seeker after truth who had debated the nature of the universe with his brother Magnus for days on end, nor was he the over-zealous son who had brought upon himself the censure of the father-Emperor he had decalred a god. Neither was Lorgar the chastened warrior who alone of all the Primarchs sought not conquest, but enlightenment. Here instead was a transcended being radiating a newfound self-assurance, as if he and he alone was party to knowledge still hidden from others, but which they would soon learn whether they willed it or not. No longer cowed or eclipsed before a more overtly purposeful or assured Primarch, Lorgar was the very essence of phlegmatic defiance.

The vile Word Bearer stepped forth beside the wounded Primarch and put the blade of the Athame to Guilliman’s throat. The Primarch grunted through clenched teeth as the foul blade bit. Kor Phaeron attempted to cajole Guilliman into giving up and joining the blessed cause of the Dark Gods against the False Emperor. Guilliman only muttered in reply. Mark of Calth is the fifth compilation to appear in the series; it contains seven short stories and one novella, each by a different author. The stories further describe aspects of the rebels' Ultramar campaign, as close prequels or sequels of Know No Fear and Betrayer. The Traitors wanted to prove themselves against the Astartes who had been held up to them so many times as the models of what it meant to be Space Marines. The charging cobalt-blue warriors of the Ultramarines met the solid crimson line of the Word Bearers with a crash. The fighting proved both brutal and unforgiving with neither side asking for, nor receiving, any kind of quarter.

That’s a noble bearing right there. Ventanus sports a bolt pistol and power sword, and he carries a legion standard – which serves as a symbol of the bravery of those who fought and died on Calth. An instant later, the entire bridge erupted in an explosion of phantasmagoric viscera, blowing out its armoured viewing dome and blasting its occupants into the void. At a stroke, the Ultramarines were bereft of their beloved Primarch and their beleaguered fleet had lost its flagship. What occurred next had no known precedent in the annals of the Great Crusade, for while the scions of the great Navigator Houses of Terra had some inkling of what lurked beyond, such knowledge was denied to all others, even the Legiones Astartes. The thing that had manifested on the bridge had exploded in a fountain of gore and the force of the detonation had breached the hull. The Primarch, who had been standing at the very eye of the storm, had been blown upwards and outwards through the breach in an instant, the writhing remains of the monster into which Lorgar's lithic avatar had transformed snaring his mighty form in a thrashing mass of spiralling pseudopods and motile shadow. Legio Praesagius - "The True Messengers" - Long allied to the warriors of Ultramar, the Legio Praesagius deployed to Calth at full Legio strength, with nearly 118 god-engines landed in the southern continent of Ithraca prior to embarkation.Despite a few small victories, the onset of dusk over the capital city of Numinas appeared to herald the end of the Ultramarines Legion. In less than twelve hours, almost one hundred thousand Ultramarines had been slain and the Word Bearers controlled almost every major city and strategic target on Calth. With debris from the orbital massacre continuing to rain down on the besieged planet, orbital strikes obliterating vast swathes of the landscape and the catastrophic collateral damage caused by any battle between the Legiones Astartes, casualties amongst the civilian population were beyond nightmarish. Millions upon millions of Imperial citizens perished in fear and agony in the first few hours, and millions more continued to die as the fighting carried on. Indeed, the Word Bearers' intent seemed less to persecute the Ultramarines of the XIII th Legion than it was to cause as much death and destruction as was possible. House Vornherr - One of the largest Knight Houses in the Segmentum, House Vornherr was oathed to fight alongside the Five Hundred Worlds unto death. Aside from a small honour guard of squires and barons left on their home world of Luhnborg-IX, the entire Household, consisting of around five hundred Knights, were mustered at the Platia island-city in Calth's southern oceans. The Ushmetar Kaul, "The Brotherhood of the Knife" - Largest and most effective of the warp cults deployed by the Word Bearers to Calth. The cult force was, it appears, organised into between 10-20 sub-sects, each at least 10,000 strong. Recorded as engaging in the most violent rites before, after and even during battle.

Erebus, Dark Apostle of the Word Bearers Legion, takes the anathame that mortally wounded Horus Lupercal and initiated his conversion to Chaos, and hammers it in a forge, splintering eight shards from it, which are then "grown" in a vat of blood into daggers, similar in appearance to the athames carried by the Word Bearers and their cult auxiliaries, but these are imbued with staggering power. A miracle occurs, as Primarch Roboute Guilliman intervenes in the vacuum of space, slaying the treacherous Word Bearers The Ultramarines learned another hard lesson at Calth. The Calth Atrocity represented the Loyalist Astartes' first sustained experience with fighting the Warp entities later known as daemons in realspace. The Ultramarines realised that their decision to accept the anti- psyker dictates of the Council of Nikaea had led to their voluntary surrender of the one weapon that might have proved most potent against the horrors of the Warp. Veridian System's sun poisoned, making surface of Calth uninhabitable; Ultramarines bogged down in Underground War with Word Bearers, preventing them from reinforcing TerraSeven years after the Battle of Calth, a war weary Vakrah Jal, Kaurtal, journeys to the surface and remembers his rebirth at the hands of Argel Tal. Or is this the past telling of the future to be?