Event · M41

Battle of Vior’los

The Battle of Vior’los was a conflict on and above the T’au world of Vior’los between Commander Farsight and the Scar Lords Space Marine Chapter. Vior’los was later part of the Farsight Enclaves, and the Scar Lords were supported by Adeptus Mechanicus forces. Accounts differ on the setting of the battle. One dates the battle to 745.M41, at the close of the Damocles Crusade; another places the reclaiming of Vior’los within the Farsight Expedition that followed the crusade. The Scar Lords, led by the acting Chapter Master Caelos, sought revenge for an earlier humiliation inflicted on them by Farsight. Their battle barge, the Scabbard of Flesh, surprised the T’au fleet, and Farsight flew a battlesuit (piloted powered combat armour) into one of its macrocannon barrels and disabled its Gellar field, the field that protects a ship in the warp. He learned afterwards that the Ethereals, the T’au ruling caste, had deliberately scuttled the ship Dawn Pioneer and would send no reinforcements, leaving Vior’los to Imperial occupation. The episode shook his faith in the Ethereals. Under the occupation the T’au population was set to forced labour in the world’s geothermal plants, and civilians were thrown into volcanic calderas. Farsight returned with a few members of the Eight, his council of senior commanders, among them Bravestorm, Brightsword, Ob’lotai and O’Vesa, and joined the T’au resistance in a guerrilla campaign. A broadcast by the Water caste emissary Por’vre Malcaor set off a revolt of T’au and human slaves. Farsight fought Caelos at the energy farms while Earth caste engineers under O’Vesa triggered the volcanoes; Caelos was killed in the lava, and the Imperial forces were destroyed at the cost of much of the world’s surface. Caelos had ordered Exterminatus, the destruction of all life on a world, by virus bomb. Farsight had anticipated the order and sent Ob’lotai into the battle barge through a macrocannon barrel, where the bombs were detonated early and the ship destroyed. The Scar Lords lost over 90 per cent of their strength and were recorded as extinct. Malcaor was afterwards found to be possessed by a daemon, which Farsight banished.

See where Battle of Vior’los occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.

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