Event · M41

Fall of M’kar

The Fall of M’kar was the Talassar battle of the Invasion of Ultramar, dated 854.999.M41, fought while M’kar waited aboard the Indomitable in orbit. Chief Librarian Varro Tigurius judged that the greatest threat lay at Talassar, and Marneus Calgar went there; accounts differ on who accompanied him. A novel account names Captain Severus Agemman and the 1st Company, while a codex names Captain Cato Sicarius and the 2nd Company. The novel account also has the 2nd Company sent to Espandor, reaching Talassar only at the end, together with Uriel Ventris and the 4th Company. The battle barge Caesar was shot down and crashed into Talassar’s ocean in one account; another account has the Caesar destroyed over Macragge during the Battle for Macragge. Calgar and the survivors reached the fortress of Castra Tanagra on the continent of Glaudor, where the people of Talassar had taken shelter. For about a month Tigurius held M’kar’s daemons off the walls, until he was exhausted and M’kar took the field, killing nearly half of the 1st Company before the 2nd and 4th Companies arrived. Ventris spoke M’kar’s mortal name, Maloq Kartho, and gave Calgar the Shard of Erebus, which Calgar drove into M’kar’s throat, banishing the daemon. A relief fleet led by the battle barges Octavius and Severian then destroyed the Indomitable, which fell into the sea. M’kar had been imprisoned in the Indomitable since 935.M41, but other accounts place him at Solon V in 965.M41, at Sondheim V in 997.M41, and at Acralem in 999.M41; these accounts disagree. Calgar did not fight in person on Tarentus, Espandor, Calth, or Quintarn during the invasion, sending companies to those worlds instead. Tigurius’s own part at Castra Tanagra is recorded in detail. Each use of his powers against the daemons weakened him faster than his physiology could recover, and when the outer wall was overrun he marshalled a single great blast that drove the daemons back and raised a psychic barrier, allowing the 1st Company to fall back to the inner keep. He then lay comatose for weeks with no Apothecary to tend him. When the barrier failed and M’kar entered the fortress, wounding Agemman and holding Calgar helpless, Tigurius regained consciousness. Too weak to move his own limbs, he was carried to the fight by a dozen refugees and issued a psychic blast that drove the daemon from the fortress and severed its connection with the warp core of the Indomitable, buying Calgar and the surviving 1st Company the respite they needed to rally for the final charge. Sicarius’s own arrival at Talassar is recorded in the novel account. Having ended the Bloodborn threat on Espandor, he sailed for Talassar aboard the strike cruiser Valin’s Revenge with the 2nd Company, joined Captain Uriel Ventris and the 4th Company on the way, and on reaching the planet leapt with his warriors from their Thunderhawks into the battle against M’kar’s forces.

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