Event · M30

Discovery of Sanguinius on Baal Secundus

The Discovery of Sanguinius on Baal Secundus was the reunion of the Emperor of Mankind with the primarch of the IX Legion on the irradiated moon that had raised him. The infant Sanguinius’s capsule came down upon Baal Secundus among the deserts that kill unprotected flesh in moments. The tribe called the People of the Pure Blood, or simply The Blood, took him in because his form was unmarked by the mutations that ruined so many Baalites. He grew with unnatural speed, slew a Baalite Fire Scorpion before even being fully adopted into the tribe’s wars, and bore angelic wings whose origin—Imperial design or radiation-born mutation—remains unsettled in the record. He led The Blood against the numerically superior mutant hordes of the moon and was worshipped as a god by those he saved. The Emperor arrived in disguise at an address Sanguinius gave his followers on Mount Seraph; Sanguinius, who had foreseen the meeting, recognised his father at once. He demanded an oath that the Pure of Baal be left in peace, and asked what would follow if he refused the Emperor’s offer—the only primarch recorded as putting that question. The Emperor agreed to the terms and stated that Sanguinius would not refuse, for he yearned to save the galaxy as he had saved Baal. Sanguinius pledged himself; the best warriors of his tribe were inducted into the preexisting IX Legion, which took the name Blood Angels. The discovery thus joins Baal Secundus’s irradiated tribal wars to the Legion’s rebirth under a winged primarch whose foresight and humility shaped Imperial memory of the Angel long after his death in the Siege of Terra. Baal itself, with its twin moons, remained the Legion’s home world and later the site of his tomb.

See where Discovery of Sanguinius on Baal Secundus occurred on the galactic map during the Horus Heresy.

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