Event · M42

War for Sangua Terra

The War for Sangua Terra was a M42 campaign fought for the Imperial war world of Sangua Terra, the Imperium Sanctus terminus of the Nachmund Gauntlet. Fought early in the Era Indomitus, it pitted the forces of the Imperium of Man, led locally by the Castellans of the Rift, a Space Marine Chapter raised in the Ultima Founding, against the Black Legion and other servants of Chaos under Abaddon the Despoiler. The conflict arose from the strategic value of Sangua Terra’s blackstone, or noctilith, deposits. These crystalline spears, aligned by ancient xenos technology towards a corresponding blackstone concentration on the world of Vigilus, generated an anti-Warp field that held back the Warp storms of the Cicatrix Maledictum. The resulting corridor, the Nachmund Gauntlet, formed the only known stable passage between the Imperium Sanctus and the region beyond the Great Rift known as the Imperium Nihilus. Abaddon sought to seize or destroy the blackstone at both ends of the Gauntlet, reasoning that its loss would allow the Warp storms to close the passage and abandon the Imperium Nihilus to Chaos. Lord Commander of the Imperium Roboute Guilliman despatched the Castellans of the Rift to defend the Gauntlet against daemonic war machines and Renegade Knights; two of the Chapter’s companies made planetfall on Sangua Terra to hold the world’s blackstone deposits. In 025.M42, Abaddon and the Black Legion were repelled from Vigilus during the War of Beasts, preserving the Gauntlet’s far terminus. Word soon reached the Imperial defenders that Sangua Terra itself was under attack, with reports describing a giant voidship in low orbit matching the description of the Planet Killer, a weapon of ancient and feared design. The subsequent course and outcome of the fighting on Sangua Terra are not firmly established in surviving accounts, though the world’s continued function as the Gauntlet’s Imperium Sanctus anchor suggests its defence was maintained, at least for a time. The War for Sangua Terra is closely bound to the War of Beasts fought concurrently at Vigilus, the two campaigns together deciding the fate of the Nachmund Gauntlet as the sole passage through the Cicatrix Maledictum in the opening years of the Era Indomitus. During the later Nachmund Rift War, Saint Celestine reappeared on Sangua Terra to rally its defenders against the Chaos hordes under Haarken Worldclaimer. As the situation became hopeless she was badly wounded, and she helped to initiate the evacuation of Urbanosprawl Alpha, the capital, which fell to Haarken together with much of the world.

See where War for Sangua Terra occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.

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