Event · M31

Night Lords assault on Crucible

The Night Lords assault on Crucible was a major engagement of the Thramas Crusade, fought for control of the eighth planet of the Gharn System, a world on the border of the Thramas and Triplex sectors lying close to the Thramas Exclusion Zone, a cluster of more than a dozen black holes whose gravitic disturbances disrupted warp travel and gave the region its names of the Crucible Field and the Graveyard of Stars. A Mechanicum research station maintained there by the Ketriox Taghmata of Triplex had turned against the Imperium, and the planet changed hands repeatedly as the wider campaign progressed. Earlier fighting had already tested the garrison severely: Nightwatch Captain-General Mordhe held the world against sustained Night Lords raids by conscripting the entire citizenry, and Bastion 19 withstood siege for six months before the Dark Angels broke through to find Mordhe and a handful of survivors still resisting. The decisive assault came in the last days of 008.M31, when Konrad Curze committed roughly 100,000 legionaries across simultaneous strikes on half a dozen worlds. The second wave of this offensive fell on Crucible, where six Night Lords chapters, a sub-Legio of the Legio Victorum and 50,000 conscripted troops confronted a Dark Angels armada built around two Gloriana-class battleships. During the combat drop Curze abandoned the agreed plan, breaking from the main body and compelling Sevatar and the Atramentar to follow him; this unravelled the Night Lords’ intended manoeuvre to split the Dark Angels line. Curze’s subsequent rampage inflicted heavy losses but secured no lasting bridgehead, while the Deathwing withdrew in good order and Ordinatus engines were turned against the traitor Titans supporting the attack. As Night Lords commanders fell to celebrating and then quarrelling among themselves, Lion El’Jonson intervened directly, unleashing his seven remaining Excindio engines against Curze; these could not overcome him but held him long enough for the Lion and his Deathwing Companions to strike the disorganised Night Lords command. At this juncture the White Scars Brotherhood of the Shattered Shield, until then allied to the Night Lords, turned on their erstwhile partners. Curze himself had to be physically dragged from the field, still calling for the Lion to meet him in single combat. The retreat proved ruinous: of the twelve thousand Night Lords committed to Crucible, some three quarters were lost. Curze withdrew to his citadel on Tsagualsa and fell into a morose fugue.

See where Night Lords assault on Crucible occurred on the galactic map during the Horus Heresy.

Open in universe