Event · M41
Bloodtide
Bloodtide is the name given in Imperial records to a Chaos incursion of the forty-first millennium, its causes tied to the broader pattern of warp-driven assaults harrying the Imperium in that era. Surviving accounts describe a sudden escalation of daemonic and heretic activity that forced local Imperial commanders to call for reinforcement, and it is by that call for aid that the episode’s designation entered the archives kept on Terra, even though the fighting itself unfolded beyond the Throneworld. Chroniclers differ on the precise triggering event, and no single, undisputed account of the incursion’s opening moves has been preserved. The course of the Bloodtide drew Imperial Guard regiments, Adeptus Astartes detachments, and elements of the Imperial Navy into a protracted campaign against the Chaos forces contesting the affected region, with heavy losses recorded on both sides. Accounts describe a conflict of attrition rather than a single decisive battle, as Imperial forces worked to contain the incursion before it could spread to neighbouring systems. Because reports of the campaign were routed through Terra, the Bloodtide is remembered as one of the Chaos incursions whose record belongs to the Throneworld’s chronicles of the era’s military crises, even though command in the field rested with officers far from Terra itself. By its end, the Bloodtide is recorded as having been contained rather than decisively won, leaving the affected region garrisoned against renewed Chaos activity. Its status in the present era is not fully documented, and later tradition holds it among the numerous, lesser-chronicled incursions that punctuated the uneasy peace of the forty-first millennium. Within Orrery’s graph, the Bloodtide is anchored to Terra as the seat where its record was kept and to the timeline of Chaos incursions afflicting the Imperium, situating it among the contemporaries and crises of its age.
See where Bloodtide occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.