Event · M31

Perditum Incursion

The Perditum Incursion was a covert raid conducted in 007.M31 by elements of the Raven Guard and the Legio Custodes against the Perditum Incendor, a prison-fortress on Traitor-held Mars. By that year the forge world had fallen wholly under the control of the Traitor Mechanicum, and intelligence reaching Terra held that the gene-wright Kephram Unguor was being kept within the Incendor, compelled to labour upon a project built from genetic samples drawn from fallen Custodians. Malcador the Sigillite and Constantin Valdor judged that the work might yield a weapon turned against the Emperor’s own guardians, and before Corax quit Sol bearing fresh gene-stock of his own, Malcador prevailed upon him to divert aid towards Mars. The assault was launched from the Raven Guard vessel Avenger and the Custodes vessel Sojourn, stationed at Deimos. More than a hundred drop pods and assault claws were cast towards the ruin of the Ring of Iron, and a Raven Guard force together with Custodians under Shield Captain Arcas rode a severed docking arm down onto Mars near the Solis Planum, reaching the surface undetected. From there some nine hundred Raven Guard, ninety-six Custodes and three hundred and forty loyalist Skitarii under Ordinal Theta Gao marched for days, much of it underground, towards the prison. Corax himself led a jump-pack assault into the control bastion, the Hypocastum, only to find Unguor and the other prisoners already dead, their bodies arranged in occult display: the raid had been anticipated. Daemon engines and corrupted automata rose to meet the attackers, and the Traitor overlord Lukas Chrom himself appeared. Corax drove at Chrom but could not close with him; Arcas wounded the overlord, who escaped through a warp portal before he could be slain. Kaedes Nex, a Raven Guard Moritat who had reached Mars independently, led the surviving loyalists out through hidden tunnels while Gao’s Skitarii razed the complex behind them. More than a hundred Raven Guard and dozens of Custodes were lost in the fighting, though Corax himself escaped.

See where Perditum Incursion occurred on the galactic map during the Horus Heresy.

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