Event · M30

Wheel of Fire Campaign

The Wheel of Fire Campaign was a Great Crusade war fought by the Space Wolves under Leman Russ against Orks in the Wheel of Fire, a subsector of unstable nebulae and wandering stars also called Eastern Spiral Subsector 4. It belonged to the early Crusade, when only Horus, Russ and Ferrus Manus among the primarchs had yet been found, and the VI Legion still included many Terran recruits. Over about five years the Space Wolves annihilated Ork forces numbered in the billions within the subsector. The cost was severe: about a third of the Legion was destroyed, including the former Legion Master Enoch Rathvin, leaving the VI with roughly fifteen thousand legionnaires when the fighting ended. In the campaign’s aftermath Russ received two gifts: the construction of the Fang on Fenris by the Chamber Castellanis, and the Spear of Russ, presented by the Emperor on the world Seraphina, which had been cleansed of Orks during the same war. Survivors of the Wheel of Fire are recorded as having adopted Fenrisian culture and martial tradition more fully after their return, and the Fang became the Legion’s citadel for rebuilding. A later Space Wolves crusade into the same subsector in 982–987.M41, the 519th Crusade, is a separate M41 campaign and is not the Great Crusade action named here.

See where Wheel of Fire Campaign occurred on the galactic map during the Horus Heresy.

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