Event · M31

Battle of Skalathrax

The Battle of Skalathrax, also called the Skalathrax campaign, was the last action fought by the World Eaters as a single Legion. It was fought on the daemon world Skalathrax, in the Eye of Terror, during the Legion Wars. The recorded date is M31, with no narrower year recorded. The Emperor’s Children had claimed the Skalathrax system, a relatively calm system within the Eye, and were building fortresses among ancient xenos ruins there, supported by Chaos Knight houses and Traitor Titan legions. Their assembled force was larger than the World Eaters fleet that arrived, although the bulk of the World Eaters were present for the confrontation. The Emperor’s Children sent an ultimatum demanding that the World Eaters leave the system or fight. Among the World Eaters, Goghur, then the de facto head of the Legion, argued for attacking outright, while Argus Brond and Solax argued instead for withdrawal or negotiation. Khârn, who had been comatose and had woken only hours before, persuaded both sides to a parlay on a moon of Skalathrax. The moon is not named. He did not want a settlement. He wanted a battle that would make the Legion fight as one, and he took about 300 World Eaters, including moderate officers, to that moon. The Emperor’s Children delegation was led by Lord Emissary Tiberius Angellus Anteus, accompanied by a daemon known as the Hedonarch. They thanked the World Eaters for the return of Palatine Blade Egil Galerius. When Anteus declared that the system belonged to the Emperor’s Children, Khârn provoked the talks to collapse, and Captain Dreagher opened fire on the delegation. The parlay cost the World Eaters most of the moderate officers who had travelled to the moon. Lord Emissary Anteus, of the Emperor’s Children, was killed in the fighting. Other World Eaters officers recorded present at the battle included Master Shellsmith Jareg, Captain Rokgur, Captain Hans Kho’ren, Captain Zhârkhan, Apothecary Kargos, Tarugar, and a warrior known as the Red Centurion. Once the parlay collapsed, most of the World Eaters on the moon tried to withdraw before the Emperor’s Children fleet could bring it under bombardment. Khârn seized a shuttle, boarded the Emperor’s Children battle cruiser Golden Absolute, killed its lord admiral, and set the ship on a collision course with Skalathrax. He and his party escaped the ship in pods and landed on the planet, and by vox he told the World Eaters fleet that the Legion would fight as one. In the assault that followed, Lucius the Eternal, present on the planet, killed a great many World Eaters champions, yet the World Eaters came close to overrunning the Emperor’s Children altogether. Losses on both sides were heavy. The battle broke off when the lethal cold of Skalathrax’s night forced both sides to take shelter at once; Noise Marines held their positions through it. The cold was deadly enough to kill warriors who remained in the open, and many World Eaters tried to keep fighting despite it; Khârn judged the search for shelter to be weakness. He took up a flamer and burned World Eaters who had taken cover from the cold, set fire to the nearest building, and then walked into the night, killing those he found. Centurion Gruner’s World Eaters tried to stop him and were killed. By the end of that night, since called the Night of Madness, the Legion had broken apart into hundreds of separate warbands, and Khârn has been known as the Betrayer ever since. The World Eaters have seldom, if ever, fought again as one Legion.

See where Battle of Skalathrax occurred on the galactic map during the Horus Heresy.

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