Event · M41

Battle of Helsreach

The Battle of Helsreach was the defence of the hive city of Helsreach, Armageddon, against an Ork invasion during the Third War for Armageddon. Fought in 998.M41, it formed part of the wider Wars for Armageddon and ranks among that war’s fiercest engagements. The city’s garrison, chiefly the Armageddon Steel Legion under Colonel Sarren, was reinforced by a hundred Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes Black Templars chapter, led by Reclusiarch Merek Grimaldus and deployed under the name of the Helsreach Crusade. Helsreach owed its strategic value to its refineries and port facilities, which supplied promethium fuel to much of Armageddon Secundus, so that its loss threatened to cripple the planet’s capacity to resist invasion. The assault formed part of the great WAAAGH! summoned by the Ork Warlord Ghazghkull Thraka, whose armadas broke the Imperial blockade and put ashore millions of Orks together with over a hundred Gargants, towering war engines of the greenskins. High Marshal Helbrecht committed Grimaldus’s Templars to the city despite the Reclusiarch’s own foreboding, judging the port too vital to abandon. As the Ork host pressed the walls, Titans of the Legio Invigilata, Imperial Navy air wings, and Sisters of Battle of the Order of the Argent Shroud joined the defence, while efforts were made to reactivate an ancient Ordinatus war engine buried nearby. The walls fell after weeks of siege, and the loss of Hel’s Highway, the roadway binding the hive together, let the Orks pour into the city; a second landing to the south nearly severed Helsreach’s docks before reinforcements from the Salamanders chapter arrived by drop pod. When the Ork Mega-Gargant Godbreaker advanced on the last defenders, an Imperial Titan was lost destroying it, and Grimaldus led the final stand at the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant, where the building’s collapse buried attackers and defenders alike.

See where Battle of Helsreach occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.

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