Event · M41

Third War for Armageddon

The Third War for Armageddon was an Imperial campaign fought on Armageddon from 998.M41 against the Goff Warboss Ghazghkull Thraka. Armageddon is a hive world in Segmentum Solar, within the Armageddon System, and its ash wastes have hosted successive large-scale campaigns since Angron’s First War. The Orks conduct such invasions as Waaaghs, a term for an Ork war host on the march, and this was the largest yet mounted against the Imperium, opposing Commissar Sebastian Yarrick’s Armageddon Steel Legion alongside the Blood Angels 3rd Company under Captain Erasmus Tycho, the Black Templars under High Marshal Helbrecht and Reclusiarch Grimaldus, and the Salamanders under Chapter Master Tu’Shan. Commander Dante did not take the field in this war: the bulk of the Blood Angels Chapter was already committed against Hive Fleet Leviathan elsewhere, and Dante deployed only the 3rd Company in response to the invasion. Tycho succumbed to the Black Rage and died fighting with the Death Company at Hive Tempestora in 998.M41; Brother-Captain Galan Machiavi succeeded him in command of the company. The war began fifty-seven years to the day after the Second War for Armageddon. In that earlier war Yarrick’s defence of Hades Hive was recorded as the turning point, and a Space Marine offensive, which he did not command, drove the Orks from the planet. In the years between, Ghazghkull tested Imperial defences with smaller raids while gathering allied Warbosses and mastering tellyporta technology, and at the Battle of Golgotha he captured Yarrick before releasing him, judging his old rival too valuable an adversary to kill. Ghazghkull returned to Armageddon with a fleet that outnumbered the planet’s Imperial defenders roughly six to one. Ork Roks bombarded the surface, and an asteroid launched from an orbiting space hulk obliterated Hades Hive, which Yarrick had evacuated rather than defend, the site of Ghazghkull’s earlier defeat, while Grimaldus’s Black Templars held Helsreach against sustained assault in what is remembered as the Battle of Helsreach. Tellyporta technology let Titans and Gargants land directly from orbit, and Feral Orks descended from the equatorial jungles to overrun further hives. Hive Acheron fell through treachery when the former governor Herman von Strab, disgraced during the Second War, allied with Ghazghkull and seized it, before Penal Legion troops hunted him down and killed him. Yarrick forged the planetary defence forces and Steel Legion regiments, who fight the ash wastes from sealed tanks, into a disciplined counter-attacking force, and the onset of the Season of Fire drove combat to a stalemate. Armageddon lies closer to Terra than Cadia does, and the Imperium continued to funnel reinforcements to the world throughout the war, using its name as shorthand for industrial attrition. Together with Angron’s First War, the Second War for Armageddon, and the Battle of Helsreach, the Third War forms part of the broader Wars for Armageddon that made the planet the standard example of a war of grinding, sustained cost. High Marshal Helbrecht’s part in the Third War was fought in space. On arrival he took command of the space fleet and worked with Admiral Parol to storm and destroy Ork Roks and ships that were carrying reinforcements. He ordered Marshal Ricard of the Dimaris Crusade and Marshal Amalrich of the Tiberior Crusade to the surface. Reclusiarch Grimaldus commanded the Black Templars at Hive Helsreach, and Helbrecht is not recorded as having fought in that hive. When a ship suspected to be Ghazghkull Thraka’s command ship was seen leaving, Helbrecht swore to pursue him and allowed Commissar Yarrick to accompany that pursuit. After Helsreach, Grimaldus’s next assignment was to have been to return to the Eternal Crusader and stand with Helbrecht and Commissar Yarrick in the pursuit of Ghazghkull. He remained on Armageddon instead to investigate the attrition of the Celestial Lions near Hive Volcanus, fought with them in the Second Mannheim Siege in the Mannheim Gap, and later departed Armageddon alongside Helbrecht in that pursuit. Tu’Shan was among the first commanders to answer the invasion, bringing six companies of the Salamanders, including the Firedrakes; one account says all seven companies came. His Salamanders attacked the Rok fortresses that had landed along the Hemlock River and destroyed at least three, and Yarrick welcomed his return. Tu’Shan rebuked Captain Vinyard of the Marines Malevolent before the assembled Armageddon command staff after that Chapter shelled a refugee camp breached by Orks, killing nearly four thousand refugees; one account records that the two came to blows. At Hive Tempestora he kept the Orks from overrunning the Khatrin Water Purification Plant, so that most of the hive’s population escaped before it fell. Two companies of Salamanders stayed on Armageddon through the Season of Fire after the main force departed. Five companies of Flesh Tearers also took the field on Armageddon in 998.M41. Chapter Master Gabriel Seth was present on the war-torn world during that campaign: in Blood in the Machine he and his command squad accompanied an Imperial inquisitor on a mission of vital importance that took them to an abandoned Imperator-class Titan in the Ephesus Ore Mine, where the inquisitor’s hidden agenda turned the expedition into an attempt against Seth and his Chapter. His personal presence on Armageddon in the Third War is attested by that account, separate from the Chapter’s wider fighting in the Fire Wastes. White Scars under Great Khan Jubal Khan also took the field in the Third War for Armageddon. The Chapter operated both on Armageddon and on surrounding Ork-held worlds, disrupting Ork advances so that Imperial garrisons could prepare. On Armageddon the White Scars were assigned the Deadlands, where in one recorded action they destroyed an entire Ork brigade without taking losses or firing a shot, by isolating the Orks from supply and reinforcement. Jubal was still commanding White Scars forces on Armageddon when Huron Blackheart’s Red Corsairs invaded Chogoris in the last year of the forty-first millennium, and he afterwards returned from that war zone to take part in the defence of the Chapter home world.

See where Third War for Armageddon occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.

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