Event · M41

Pale Stars campaign (Badab War)

The Pale Stars campaign was a theatre of the Badab War (901–912.M41) fought in the Pale Stars, a region of the Maelstrom Zone in Ultima Segmentum. The region was rich in resources but had a long history of piracy and weak Imperial control, and because its value lay in supplying the warring parties rather than in any single strategic world, the campaign consisted chiefly of raids and void battles rather than set-piece sieges. In 904.M41 the Secessionists launched an offensive to take the Pale Stars, led by the Lamenters Chapter, whose Chapter Master, Malakim Phoros, is listed among the Secessionist commanders. The Loyalist defence fell to the newly arrived Marines Errant. The two Chapters had been bound by honour-bonds since the Corinthian Crusade of 698.M41, and although now opponents they granted each other quarter and declined to press their advantages, to the displeasure of their respective allies. The pattern favoured the more numerous and better-supplied Secessionists, who dominated the region from 905.M41, the year in which the depleted Marines Errant left the war zone on the order of the High Lords. Secessionist control was broken after the Minotaurs entered the war in 907.M41, opening with an attack on the mining world Kyro IV and continuing with a campaign of destructive raids that denied the region’s resources to the rebels; civilian losses in the Pale Stars reached about a fifth of the population by the end of that year. The Minotaurs’ principal opponents were the Executioners, and garrisons of the Tyrant’s Legion fell on Crows World and Larsa II. Lugft Huron then turned again to the Lamenters, whom the Minotaurs defeated at the Battle of Optera in 908.M41. The Executioners continued to raid across the region, including a tank duel with the Minotaurs on the moon Uzeal in the Crows World system, until their break with the Astral Claws in the Red Hour of 911.M41. By 912.M41 Crows World served as the staging point for Loyalist hunter-killer operations by the Imperial Navy, the Carcharodons, the Exorcists and the Sons of Medusa, and the campaign closed when the Salamanders persuaded the Executioners to surrender.

See where Pale Stars campaign (Badab War) occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.

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