Event · M32

Defence of Caldera

The Defence of Caldera was a battle of the War of the Beast in which the primarch Vulkan defended the world of Caldera against an Ork invasion. Fought during the war of 544–546.M32 on an Imperial hive world and death world, it marked Vulkan’s reappearance after some 1,500 years of absence. Fighting almost alone with the hammer Doomtremor, Vulkan appeared at engagements across the planet, died repeatedly and regenerated each time, and drew much of the Ork host away from the Imperial defenders in pursuit of him. When the Inquisitorial Representative Veritus reported the sighting, Lord Commander Koorland of the Imperial Fists led a task force from Terra to Caldera, drawn from the Last Wall Chapters, Imperial Guard regiments including the Lucifer Blacks, the Imperial Navy and the Adeptus Mechanicus. The Orks were draining the planet’s surface and core into orbit through a gravitic generator to build a new Attack Moon, a planetoid converted into a weapon of war. Vulkan refused to leave until Caldera was saved, citing the vow he had made during the Great Crusade never again to let the world fall to flame. The combined Imperial force of Space Marines, Guardsmen and Skitarii fought its way to the generator, where its advance faltered at the gates. Vulkan threw himself into the gravitic beam and hurled his hammer into the generator’s core, destroying both the installation and the infant Attack Moon in orbit; he regenerated shortly afterwards. He then returned with Koorland to Terra to lead the Imperial counter-offensive against the Beast.

See where Defence of Caldera occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.

Open in universe