Event · M41
Valedor
The Battle of Valedor, also recorded as the Defence of Valedor, was the Hive Fleet Leviathan assault of 997.M41 that overran the Ecclesiarchy world of Valedor. The planet served as a centre of pilgrimage administered by the Adeptus Ministorum, and its population consisted largely of pilgrims and priests rather than a garrison. It is recorded as one of the early engagements in which the Tyranids of Hive Fleet Leviathan struck Imperial territory in the eastern reaches of the galaxy, shortly before the fleet reached Ultramar in 999.M41. The Tyranid attack is recorded as having overwhelmed the world within a matter of solar hours, and the entire population of pilgrims and Ministorum priests was slaughtered. A battle barge of the Iron Lords Space Marine Chapter was also overwhelmed in the fighting and lost. The only Imperial force recorded as surviving was a small detachment of Battle Sisters of the Order of the Sacred Rose, who fought their way clear of the carnage and thereby became the sole human witnesses to the planet’s fall. Accounts do not describe a coordinated defence, and the name Defence of Valedor reflects the resistance of those present rather than any prepared stand. Aeldari are associated with Valedor in the wider record, notably in Biel-Tan material depicting an Aeldari warrior engaging a Carnifex there, but the principal accounts of the battle do not detail an Aeldari role. The immediate consequence was the destruction of Valedor’s population and the loss of an Iron Lords capital ship, a setback the Chapter went on to absorb: its Devastator Squads later answered the call of Marneus Calgar in the Zeist Campaign of 999.M41. The Sisters of the Sacred Rose carried word of the Tyranid advance away from the world, and their testimony forms much of what is known of the engagement. On the Orrery timeline, Valedor sits at the opening of the Leviathan invasion in 997.M41, preceding the fleet’s assault on Ultramar and the wider defence of the Eastern Fringe, and it stands alongside the Iron Lords and the Order of the Sacred Rose as a point where all three histories intersect.
See where Valedor occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.