Event · M42

Season of Blood

The Season of Blood was fought in M42 on the hive world of Armageddon. No narrower year is recorded. High Marshal Helbrecht led the Black Templars’ Helbrecht Crusade, also called the Armageddon Crusade, back to the planet to prevent its fall to a Chaos horde under the daemon primarch Angron. At that time the crusade had 263 battle-brothers and 53 armoured vehicles. Helbrecht often disagreed with Logan Grimnar, Great Wolf of the Space Wolves, because of earlier grievances and because Grimnar feared a purge of Armageddon’s civilians of the kind that had happened during the Months of Shame. Helbrecht ordered only limited purges, and those were around Hive Infernus. The two commanders later fought together in the final assault on the Red Angel’s Gate. During the wider season Angron manifested on Armageddon through that gate. Grey Knights, Black Templars, Space Wolves, the Mechanicum and the Imperial Guard took part. Angron was driven back through the gate as it was sealed. The world was not wholly given over to Khorne, but fighting there continued. One account of the final assault on the Red Angel’s Gate on Armageddon has Logan Grimnar and Helbrecht fighting there together. Another account gives a different role: the Space Wolves and Black Templars were to bolster a westward withdrawal, so that a second force under Grey Knights Grand Master Rothwyr Morvans could strike north across the Boiling Sea toward the gate. Both accounts belong to the wider fighting on Armageddon, dated no more narrowly than M42; they differ on whether Grimnar and Helbrecht reached the gate or held a line behind it. Reclusiarch Grimaldus, who had crossed the Rubicon Primaris and become a Primaris Space Marine, returned to Hive Helsreach with Helbrecht’s approval and led the successful defence of the hive. His presence is recorded as inspiring the population there to fight with resolve. The Space Wolves landed near Hive Volcanus in Armageddon Prime, where Grimnar took command of the remaining Imperial forces against cultist uprisings in the hive and the Volcanus Mountains. When the Bloodthirster Zhul’korr led repeated daemonic assaults on the outer defences, Grimnar and his Wolf Guard rode out as Thunderwolf Cavalry, and he banished the Bloodthirster with the axe Morkai. Under the plan agreed at Morvans’ council of war, Grimnar and Helbrecht drew Angron’s host into prepared killing grounds on the slopes before the Diabolus Forge Complex and then fell back into the forge, where Brother-Captain Tauros Hendron of the Grey Knights banished the daemon primarch with a hexagram of Vortex warheads at the cost of most of the Imperial force there.

See where Season of Blood occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.

Open in universe