Event · M31

Shadow Crusade on Nuceria

The purge of Nuceria, recorded as the Shadow Crusade on Nuceria and as the Nuceria Massacre, was fought in 008.M31, within the Shadow Crusade of the Horus Heresy dated to 007–008.M31. Nuceria was Angron’s home world. Its slave-lords had killed Angron’s former comrades and told the population that he had fled. Angron ordered the World Eaters and the Word Bearers to purge Nuceria’s population in response. Khârn was present for the purge and fought beside the Word Bearer Argel Tal. Roboute Guilliman’s Ultramarines arrived to intervene, and in space the Conqueror, Fidelitas Lex, and Trisagion faced roughly forty smaller Ultramarines ships; the Fidelitas Lex was brought down, and Ultramarines forces landed on Nuceria. Lorgar duelled Guilliman on the ground, and Angron then defeated Guilliman himself, after which Ultramarines carried Guilliman from the field. In the city of Meahor the fighting reached a pitch in which Lorgar completed a Khornate ritual that used Angron’s rage as a conduit, transforming the Red Angel into a daemon prince of Khorne and freeing him from the Nails’ slow destruction of his mortal brain. On the Imperator Titan Corinthian, beneath an aquila, Erebus killed Argel Tal; Khârn came close to killing Erebus afterwards in response. The Traitor fleet then withdrew from Nuceria. Khârn fought in the purge but did not command it. The Shadow Crusade return is a separate event from the later Destruction of Nuceria by Lion El’Jonson’s Dark Angels in the Passage of the Angels, when the Lion burned Traitor homeworlds on the road toward Terra.

See where Shadow Crusade on Nuceria occurred on the galactic map during the Horus Heresy.

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