Event · M30

Fall of the Lords of Gardinaal

The Fall of the Lords of Gardinaal was a Great Crusade campaign of 869.M30 in which the primarch Ferrus Manus subdued Gardinaal, a single-system dominion in the region known as Astrid’s Necklace. Gardinaal had survived the Age of Strife in isolation, forsaking warp travel, and comprised eleven worlds together with hundreds of moons and orbital colonies, home to more than one hundred billion people. Its rigid caste society, administered from the capital Gardinaal Prime, was ruled by the High Lords of Gardinaal, who were held to stand outside death itself, while the old and infirm were killed and their matter reclaimed. The dominion fielded gene-engineered warriors, some capable of operating in void conditions, armed with gamma-radiation weapons, alongside particle-beam warships and great walking tanks. Negotiations with the Imperium stalled, and war began after a Thousand Sons detachment escorting Imperial envoys perceived psychic coercion being used against them by Gardinaal diplomats and killed the delegation. The 413th Expeditionary Fleet, under Ulan Cicerus of the Ultramarines, broke the system’s orbital defences but suffered severe losses in its landings, including half a Titan demi-legio and some 500,000 Imperial Army troops, and was forced into blockade. Ferrus Manus arrived with reinforcements of Iron Hands and Emperor’s Children and assumed command; one account describes the Ultramarines, Thousand Sons and Emperor’s Children whom he took under command as a leaderless host. He ordered the bombardment of Gardinaal’s primary cities, and when the Lords sued for peace he refused terms and razed the capital with artillery and Titans. In the fighting that followed, a Dark Age superweapon was disabled by a boarding party led by the Emperor’s Children swordsman Tesserius Akurduana, who died in the attempt, while Cicerus was killed in a final counter-attack by the Lords’ walking tanks before Ferrus Manus personally led Terminators of the Iron Hands to destroy the war machines and break the last of the Lords in close combat. Ferrus Manus declined to order the extermination of the survivors, declaring only that it was done, and left the stricken world to Imperial administration. Famine followed, but Gardinaal’s surviving industry made its worlds a valuable acquisition for the Imperium.

See where Fall of the Lords of Gardinaal occurred on the galactic map during the Horus Heresy.

Open in universe