Event · M41

Avenging of Berek Thunderfist

The Avenging of Berek Thunderfist describes the campaign Ragnar waged against the Chaos champion Ghorox in the years following the disaster at Bhakhar, a pursuit that carried his hand-picked pack across half a dozen systems before intelligence gathered by the Chapter’s Rune Priests placed Ghorox on the blighted world of Perfidium, conducting rites within a desecrated shrine the locals called the Templum Incarnadus. Ragnar petitioned Logan Grimnar directly for leave to settle the matter outside the Chapter’s usual campaign priorities, a request the Great Wolf granted on the understanding that the debt Ragnar believed he owed Thunderfist’s memory was, within Fenrisian custom, his alone to discharge. The assault on the Templum Incarnadus was fought without the broader support a Great Company muster would normally command, Ragnar judging — as he had argued since Bhakhar — that stealth and speed served the hunt for Ghorox better than weight of numbers that might again scatter under the champion’s favoured tactics. His pack breached the shrine’s outer defences under cover of a volcanic storm native to Perfidium’s unstable crust and fought through two rings of cultist guards before reaching the inner sanctum, where Ghorox waited, apparently unsurprised that his old adversary had finally found him. The duel between Ragnar and Ghorox lasted, by the account of the Wolf Guard who stood witness at the sanctum’s threshold, the better part of an hour, ranging across collapsing stonework as the Templum’s foundations gave way beneath the volcanic tremors wracking Perfidium’s surface. Ragnar killed Ghorox as the shrine began its final collapse, delivering what the Chapter’s sagas record as a killing blow struck in Berek Thunderfist’s name, and extracted his pack from the ruin moments before the Templum Incarnadus was swallowed entirely by the fissure opening beneath it. Ghorox’s death closed the account Bhakhar had opened and did much to repair Ragnar’s standing among the Wolf Guard who had held him responsible for Thunderfist’s fall. In recognition of the feat, and of the broader record of service that had preceded it, Ragnar was elected to lead his own Great Company shortly afterward, becoming — at an age the Chapter’s own chroniclers noted as exceptional even by Fenrisian standards, where youth is prized over caution — the youngest Space Wolf raised to Wolf Lord in generations. He named his new command the Blackmanes, and the avenging of Berek Thunderfist remained, for the rest of his career, the saga by which that company’s founding was measured.

See where Avenging of Berek Thunderfist occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.

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