Event · M31

Chondax Campaign

The Chondax Campaign was a protracted war fought by the White Scars under their primarch Jaghatai Khan in the Chondax System between about 001 and 007.M31, spanning the close of the Great Crusade and the opening of the Horus Heresy. Ostensibly a crusade to clear Orks led by Warboss Urlakk Urruk, a former follower of the Ullanor warboss Urlakk Urg, the campaign was arranged by Horus Lupercal to keep the Fifth Legion far from the Imperium’s core while his rebellion unfolded. Horus is recorded as wishing not to destroy the White Scars but to distract them, viewing them as possible future allies; unknown to the Scars, the system also sheltered hidden Alpha Legion assets ordered to prolong the fighting. Imperial vessels first swept aside Ork fleet elements, losing the light cruiser Forsworn to boarders over Chondax Prime. Planetfall followed against the Ork fortress Black-Blight, where White Scars Kharash Terminators struck in hit-and-run assaults while Imperial Army siege units of the Charonid Sentinels breached the walls. After a six-hour battle the Orks broke into the forests, yet the wider clearance of the system lasted some seven years and cost the Imperium heavily. Notable actions included the eradication effort on Shaln under Nogai Noyan-Khan, who afterwards fell to an Alpha Legion Headhunter ambush staged to resemble Ork work, and the Phemus Massacre, in which White Scars assaulting the gas giant Phemus were ambushed by Alpha Legion forces who then triggered volcanic landslides to hide the evidence. Communications with the wider Imperium remained sparse until the destruction of Tenebrae Station allowed garbled astropathic traffic to reach the Khan. He recalled his forces to Chondax Prime, whereupon Alpha Legion assaults erupted across the system: vessels hunted lone White Scars ships, and Alpha Legionaries in Scars colours attacked their allies. Disinformation reached high command claiming that Leman Russ had turned renegade on Prospero, alongside summons from Horus, even as messages from Rogal Dorn reported Horus’s treachery at Isstvan III. As the Khan weighed these accounts, an Alpha Legion fleet arrived over Chondax Prime. From the Swordstorm he executed the fleet formation called the Chisel, driving a wedge through the blockade and enabling escape, with multiple Alpha Legion ships destroyed in the brief void action that followed. Rescue and vengeance actions followed at outlying worlds — Herkon, Epihelikon, Phemus IV, Byfrust — before the fleet outran pursuit into the warp. Jaghatai set course for Prospero to learn the truth himself, declining to divert to aid the Space Wolves beset in the Alaxxes Nebula. Later commentary by Mortarion held that something had gone awry at Chondax: Horus’s original design had been for the Alpha Legion to recruit the White Scars, yet overtly hostile action, silence, and the delayed delivery of Dorn’s warning — made possible, in one account, by Omegon’s destruction of a pylon blocking Scars communications — left the Legion free to choose Terra. Scattered White Scars survivors were still fighting Alpha Legion remnants in the system a decade after the Heresy.

See where Chondax Campaign occurred on the galactic map during the Horus Heresy.

Open in universe