Event · M30–M31

Nurthene Campaign

The Nurthene Campaign was a Great Crusade compliance war fought for the desert world of Nurth by the 670th Expeditionary Fleet under Lord Commander Teng Namitjira, with Alpharius and a force of the Alpha Legion fighting alongside though never formally entered on the expedition’s order of battle. Nurth was a lost human colony that had fallen to pre-industrial technology and refused the Imperial Truth; the war against the Echvehnurth and the Chaos-tainted Nurthene proved protracted and costly. Alpharius was present in person. As Imperial victory approached, the Nurthene activated a Black Cube, an ancient weapon of planetary destruction. Despite warnings attributed to Alpharius to evacuate, much of the Imperial force pressed the attack too late. The Cube scoured the world, boiled its oceans, and exterminated the Nurthene together with large numbers of Imperial troops, leaving Nurth a dead world. In related accounts the Nurth campaign, or its immediate aftermath, is also the setting of the first approach made to Alpharius Omegon by the xenos organisation known as the Cabal, roughly two years before the Horus Heresy. The Cabal is said to have shown the twins visions of the coming civil war and of Chaos, and to have urged a course that would shape the Alpha Legion’s choices in the war that followed. How far those visions determined Alpharius’s and Omegon’s later allegiance remains disputed.

See where Nurthene Campaign occurred on the galactic map during the Horus Heresy.

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