Event · M41
Exile of the Mantis Warriors
The Exile of the Mantis Warriors was the penance imposed on the Space Marine chapter after its part in the Badab War of the forty-first millennium. The Mantis Warriors are recorded as having sided with the secessionist cause led by Lugft Huron, the Tyrant of Badab, and his Astral Claws. That cause set a group of chapters against the authority of the Administratum and the High Lords of Terra in the Maelstrom and its surrounds. The Mantis Warriors’ own grievances and motives are held to have differed from those of Huron, and accounts differ on how far the chapter’s leadership shared his aims. When the war ended, the Imperium did not destroy the Mantis Warriors. Chapters that had rebelled were judged individually, and the authorities on Terra are recorded as having weighed the chapter’s strength against its guilt. The Mantis Warriors were instead required to atone, and the sentence took the form of penitent service that removed the chapter from its former standing and placed its future conduct under scrutiny. The sentence was decided at the centre of Imperial government but carried out across many sectors. That is why the event is anchored to Terra on the Orrery map, while its effects are spread over the regions where the chapter later operated. The exact terms, and the extent to which they were enforced, are not recorded consistently. The exile places the Mantis Warriors among the chapters whose histories divide into a period before the Badab War and one after it. Their fortunes are usually read alongside those of other Badab participants, and in particular the Astral Claws, whose fate was far harsher. The penance also serves as a precedent for how the Imperium treats a rebel chapter that is still useful to it. Whether the chapter has fully regained the trust of the Imperium is left open in the surviving record. On the timeline, the event follows directly from the Badab War and continues into the later forty-first millennium.
See where Exile of the Mantis Warriors occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.