Event · M41
Prefectia Campaign
The Prefectia Campaign is a border conflict between the Imperium and the T’au Empire on the world of Prefectia, following the Damocles Gulf Crusade. It belongs to the wider pattern of contact and confrontation along the Imperium’s eastern fringe as the T’au Empire pressed outward from the Damocles Gulf into space claimed by Mankind. Prefectia itself lies within the contested borderlands mapped by that earlier crusade, and its campaign is remembered chiefly as a continuation of the unfinished business the Damocles Gulf Crusade left behind when Imperial forces were recalled to counter the coming of Hive Fleet Behemoth. Astra Militarum formations and their Imperial allies held Prefectia against T’au forces advancing under the doctrine of the Greater Good, which sought to bring the world’s population and resources into the expanding empire rather than destroy them outright. Accounts of the fighting describe the familiar shape of T’au warfare in this era: mobile fire-warrior cadres, rail and pulse weaponry, and Kroot auxiliaries operating alongside orbital and aerial support, set against Imperial defence in depth. The precise course of individual engagements and the campaign’s ultimate resolution are not fully recorded, and later summaries differ on how decisively either side prevailed. The Prefectia Campaign sits alongside other border actions of the T’au Empire’s continued expansion in the decades after the Damocles Gulf Crusade, part of a slow contest for worlds along the frontier rather than a single decisive war. It is best understood in relation to that earlier crusade and to the T’au sept fleets operating beyond the Gulf, which give Prefectia its place on the map of ongoing Imperial–T’au friction. As with much of this frontier history, Prefectia’s status in the present era is not settled in accessible record, and it is recalled principally as a marker of how far T’au expansion reached beyond its original borders.
See where Prefectia Campaign occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.