Event · M30–M31
Flight of the Eisenstein
The Flight of the Eisenstein was the escape of the frigate Eisenstein from Isstvan III, bearing warning of Warmaster Horus’s treachery toward Terra. It followed the massacre at Isstvan III, in which Horus and the primarchs allied to him turned upon loyalist elements of their own Legiones Astartes and destroyed them with outlawed virus weapons. Battle-Captain Nathaniel Garro of the Death Guard, having survived the atrocity and slain a fellow officer who had already fallen to corruption, commandeered the vessel with a small company of loyalists to carry proof of the betrayal beyond Horus’s reach. The voyage proved perilous, as the ship’s passage through the warp exposed its crew to the predations of the immaterium and to further discord among the survivors, several of whom did not live to see its end. Garro himself was gravely wounded before the Eisenstein could be brought to Terra, where agents of Malcador the Sigillite and the Sisters of Silence intercepted the vessel to verify the loyalty of those aboard before granting them access to the Imperial Palace. The warning carried by the Eisenstein constituted the first confirmed intelligence reaching Terra of Horus’s rebellion and the Legiones Astartes’ descent into civil war. Its arrival prompted the Emperor and his household to begin preparations for the defence of the Throneworld and is traditionally associated with the founding of the Knights Errant, an order of agents tasked with countering the Warmaster’s schemes.
See where Flight of the Eisenstein occurred on the galactic map during the Horus Heresy.