Event · M41

Purge of the Charnel Shrine

The Purge of the Charnel Shrine was a Dark Angels Deathwing campaign aboard the space hulk Charnel Shrine, fought after Grand Master Gabriel had been killed there during the 13th Black Crusade in 999.M41. No year is recorded for the purge itself. The hulk is a conglomeration of dozens of vessels extending over more than twenty cubic kilometres, inhabited by a Genestealer brood and an Ork tribe at opposite ends. Gabriel’s attack had located the Orks but was undone by the unexpected Genestealers. Belial, Gabriel’s successor as Grand Master of the Deathwing, asked to lead the company back to the hulk. Azrael offered him any resources he needed, and Belial refused the help of any other company. He set aside Gabriel’s plan for a single strike to overload a plasma reactor and ordered a systematic cleansing instead, corridor by corridor and chamber by chamber. The fighting lasted seventy-three days. The Deathwing drove the Genestealers out of their brood-nests towards the Orks while purging the Ork settlements, so that the two xenos fought each other. Once the survivors had been driven onto the vessel that held Gabriel’s chosen reactor, Belial led a strike team with several Techmarines that forced the reactor into overcharge. Dark Angels ships bombarded the hulk to prevent any escape, the Deathwing teleported clear, and the explosion destroyed the hulk. Belial sent search-and-destroy teams into the wreckage for eighteen more days before declaring the enemy wiped out.

See where Purge of the Charnel Shrine occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.

Open in universe