Event · M41

Hunt for Voldorius

The Hunt for Voldorius was a pursuit of the Alpha Legion Daemon Prince Kernax Voldorius by Kor’sarro Khan, Master of the Hunt of the White Scars, which ended on the industrial world of Quintus in the Magulanox Sector. It is dated to 861–871.M41 and was Kor’sarro’s sixteenth Great Hunt. Voldorius, a Strikemaster of the Alpha Legion held responsible for waking the Bloodtide on the fane-worlds of Gan-Barak in 034.M38, was counted among the White Scars’ greatest enemies and had escaped several earlier Masters of the Hunt. The Great Khan Kyublai ordered Kor’sarro to return to Chogoris with Voldorius’s head or not to return at all. Kor’sarro led Task Force Nomad, formed around the Chapter’s 3rd Company and carried aboard the strike cruiser Lord of Heavens. Over roughly a decade Voldorius eluded the White Scars at Zoran, Modanna and Kavell. On Zoran Kor’sarro reinforced Blood Angels under Captain Metraen against an Alpha Legion rising, but Voldorius escaped. After an Alpha Legion attack on Sinopha Station, the White Scars Scout Sergeant Ultas Kholka tracked the raiders to Cernis IV, a penal world of promethium refineries, and Kor’sarro brought his company there in the belief that Voldorius was present. The installation proved to be a trap prepared by Voldorius’s lieutenant Nullus: the Daemon Prince was absent, the refinery’s convict workers had allied with the Alpha Legion, and seismic charges woke a great beast beneath the polar ice. The White Scars escaped with losses and learned that Voldorius was on Quintus. Quintus, one of the Imperium’s chief bulwarks against Ork warbands from the Jagal Stars, had been isolated by the warp storm Argenta, and Voldorius had corrupted its Planetary Defence Force and seized most of the planet. The Raven Guard 3rd Company under Shadow Captain Kayvaan Shrike was already waging a guerrilla war there; one account names Shrike’s opponents on Quintus as the Night Lords rather than the Alpha Legion. Despite the long rivalry between their Chapters, Kor’sarro and Shrike agreed an alliance at a council on the planet. Before dawn the next day Shrike seized an orbital defence complex, and when Voldorius committed half of his Alpha Legion forces to retake it, the White Scars, concealed in caves to the south, struck the over-extended traitor lines with bikes and Rhino transports, destroyed the Baneblade super-heavy tank Ironsoul and drove the attackers back. During the fighting on Quintus Kor’sarro killed Nullus with the help of the 3rd Company’s Champion, Kergis. The two companies then made a combined Thunderhawk assault on the capital, Mankarra. Voldorius fought Kor’sarro and Shrike together; Shrike pinned him to a fallen statue of the Emperor with his lightning claws and Kor’sarro beheaded him. Accounts differ on the place of his death: one sets it at the Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom, another in the streets of Mankarra outside. Quintus returned to Imperial rule a month later. Kor’sarro carried Voldorius’s head back to Chogoris, where it was set among the trophies lining the approach to the Chapter’s fortress-monastery, and the alliance with Shrike is held to have begun to ease the distrust between the White Scars and the Raven Guard. As a Daemon Prince, Voldorius is recorded as being beyond true death. Earlier actions of the hunt included the Purging of Modanna in 865.M41, in which Kor’sarro drove Voldorius from his foremost stronghold on that hive world, and a series of clashes with Nullus and his warband, among them the Lost Hope Incident, battles below the glass seas of Sagrifarri and the Third Siege of Ex Bellum.

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