Event · M31

Battle at the Eternity Gate

The Battle at the Eternity Gate was fought upon Terra in 014.M31, a climactic engagement within the wider Siege of Terra. The Eternity Gate stood within the Inner Palace, the gateway before the Sanctum Imperialis where the Emperor of Mankind kept His vigil upon the Golden Throne. During the Horus Heresy the gate also housed part of the void shield generatorium whose continued operation was essential to the defence of the Imperial Palace, itself fortified extensively under the direction of the primarch Rogal Dorn. As the siege lines of the Traitor primarch Horus Lupercal closed upon the Palace, the gate became one of the last positions capable of denying the enemy direct access to the Emperor. Sanguinius, primarch of the Blood Angels Legion, took personal command of the gate’s defence during the later stages of the siege, rallying the Blood Angels and allied forces gathered there. Among the attackers was Ka’Bandha, a Bloodthirster of Khorne, whose assault upon the gate left Sanguinius grievously wounded even as the void shields faltered under sustained bombardment. Horus thereafter psychically goaded the daemon primarch Angron toward the Gate to finish the Angel. At the feet of the Eternity Gate Angron and Sanguinius met in single combat; after a climactic airborne duel Angron impaled Sanguinius upon the Black Blade, yet Sanguinius tore the Butcher’s Nails from Angron’s skull, and the daemon primarch was banished into the Warp. The World Eaters, their fragile sanity broken, turned upon their own allies and the Traitor advance stalled short of the Gate. Accounts of the siege’s closing hours also record that Sanguinius later left the gate in the charge of his remaining Blood Angels and flew to intercept Horus aboard the Traitor’s flagship. Already weakened, he fought Horus in single combat and was struck down, his death occurring only moments before the Emperor Himself, attended by Constantin Valdor and the Legio Custodes who held the Sanctum Imperialis beyond the gate, reached the same vessel. The loss of Sanguinius ranked among the gravest suffered by the Imperium during the Heresy, yet the defence of the Gate—including the banishment of Angron and the Angel’s subsequent death aboard the Vengeful Spirit—directly preceded the final confrontation between the Emperor and Horus that ended the rebellion, recorded separately as the death of Horus.

See where Battle at the Eternity Gate occurred on the galactic map during the Horus Heresy.

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