Event · M31
Vengeful Spirit boarding
The Vengeful Spirit boarding was the assault on Horus’s flagship in Terran orbit during the Siege of Terra, in which the Emperor confronted the Warmaster. It took place in the closing phase of the Horus Heresy, in the thirty-first millennium, while the Imperial Palace was still under assault from the Warmaster’s host and Rogal Dorn’s Imperial Fists held the walls, including the approaches to the Eternity Gate. Later tradition holds that Horus deliberately lowered the flagship’s void shields, an opening that allowed the Emperor and Sanguinius to teleport aboard with a following of Legio Custodes. The boarding party is recorded as fighting through the Vengeful Spirit towards Horus, who was accompanied by the daemonic forces bound to the Warmaster’s cause, among them the Bloodthirster Ka’Bandha. Sanguinius, Primarch of the Blood Angels, was separated from the Emperor and confronted Horus directly. He was killed by the Warmaster. Accounts differ on the details of the ensuing struggle, but it is agreed that the Emperor then met Horus, destroyed him, and was himself mortally wounded in the fight. The death of Horus ended the Siege of Terra as a coordinated assault, and the Warmaster’s remaining forces withdrew from the Sol System and fell back towards the Eye of Terror. The Emperor’s body was placed on the Golden Throne, beginning the state in which the Imperium has since endured. The Vengeful Spirit itself is recorded as escaping the system, later serving Ezekyle Abaddon as his flagship in the Black Crusades. On Orrery, the event is anchored to Terra’s orbit and to the climax of the siege on the timeline, and it is linked to the Siege of Terra, the Horus Heresy, and the Imperial Palace.
See where Vengeful Spirit boarding occurred on the galactic map during the Horus Heresy.