Event · M30

Imperial compliance of Davin

The Imperial compliance of Davin brought Davin into the Imperium as the eighth world conquered by the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet, commanded by the primarch Horus of the Luna Wolves, and the world was for a time catalogued under the fleet designation Sixty-Three Eight. Davin, prime world of its system in the Ultima Segmentum, had once supported a civilised culture, but during the Age of Strife its population had regressed into feral tribalism, organised into warrior lodges that venerated totemic beasts — among them the Lodge of the Bear, the Hawk, the Serpent, the Crow and the Hound — each guided by priest-like monastic figures. Resistance to the fleet was brief. The native warriors offered an initial defence but, hopelessly outmatched, surrendered before the campaign could develop into a protracted conflict. Horus is recorded as having been impressed by the courage and adaptability the tribesmen showed in the face of overwhelming odds, and he permitted their lodge structures to remain largely intact rather than dismantling native society outright. The Luna Wolves departed Davin not long after compliance was declared, carrying away with them an admiration for the warrior-lodge tradition that would later take root within their own legion. Responsibility for instructing the Davinites in the Imperial Truth was left to a detachment of Word Bearers under Kor Phaeron, while governorship of the world passed to Commander Eugen Temba, a close confidant of Horus. Davin returned to significance decades later: the garrison Temba maintained on Davin’s moon fell to the forces of Chaos, and when Horus came back to the system some sixty years after compliance, drawn by the urging of the Word Bearers’ Erebus, he was grievously wounded there. He was borne to the temple of the Serpent Lodge on Davin itself, where his corruption began.

See where Imperial compliance of Davin occurred on the galactic map during the Horus Heresy.

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