Event · M30

Discovery of Leman Russ on Fenris

The discovery of Leman Russ on Fenris was the reunion of the Emperor of Mankind with the primarch of the VI Legion on the death world Fenris, in the far north-west of the galaxy, during the Great Crusade in the closing centuries of M30. Russ’s gestation capsule had fallen onto Fenris; he was adopted by a Fenrisian she-wolf, raised among wolves with Freki and Geri, and later taken in by King Thengir of the Russ after a hunting party killed the she-wolf and captured the youth. Among men he learned speech and arms, took the name Leman of the Russ, and on Thengir’s death became king. Tales of the Wolf King reached the Emperor, who travelled to Fenris and entered Russ’s court under a disguise of confusion-runes. Russ refused homage and challenged the Emperor to three contests: eating, which the Emperor lost; drinking, which the Emperor also lost; and combat, in which, after a long fight, the Emperor felled Russ with a blow of his power glove. Russ admitted defeat and swore to serve. The first brother-primarch he met thereafter was Horus, then the only other of the Emperor’s sons yet found. Within weeks Russ was placed at the head of his gene-forged Legion, newly named the Space Wolves, and joined the Great Crusade from Fenris as his home world. Fenris remained a death world by Russ’s choice; he declined to have its orbit stabilised or its monsters purged, so that Legion recruits would continue to be drawn from its harsh tribes. The reunion on Fenris therefore fixed both the primarch’s personal origin and the Legion’s recruiting world for the wars that followed.

See where Discovery of Leman Russ on Fenris occurred on the galactic map during the Horus Heresy.

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