Event · M41
Years of Blood
The Years of Blood is the name given to the grinding middle years of the Badab War, fought across the Maelstrom Zone before the war’s decisive close on Badab. Between the Astral Claws’ secession under Lugft Huron and the final siege of his stronghold, close to a decade of campaigning ranged across the fortress-worlds and void stations of the Badab sector without either side achieving a lasting breakthrough. The term marks this attritional span of the conflict rather than any single battle, and is anchored on the Orrery map to Badab, the sector capital and seat of Huron’s power. Loyalist command passed through a succession of officers as the fighting dragged on: High Marshal Bannus of the Star Phantoms opened the campaign, Lord Commander Verant Ortys was killed pursuing it, and Carab Culln of the Red Scorpions eventually took overall charge. Ranged against the Astral Claws were their allies in secession, the Mantis Warriors, the Executioners and, under duress, the depleted Lamenters, while the Loyalist order of battle grew through the defection of the Fire Hawks and reinforcement from the Salamanders, the Novamarines, the Sons of Medusa, Asterion Moloc’s Minotaurs, Tyberos’s Carcharodons, and a company of Space Wolves under the young Ragnar Blackmane. No engagement of these years proved decisive; each side traded fortress-worlds and void stations for losses that accounts describe as heavy on both sides, prolonging the war rather than resolving it. The years of attrition ended only when Loyalist forces closed on Badab Primaris itself for the Siege of the Palace of Thorns, the assault that broke the Astral Claws as a Chapter and left Huron so grievously wounded that he was later remade as Huron Blackheart. In the sector’s later history, the Years of Blood are recalled less for any single victory than for the cost they imposed on Loyalist and secessionist Chapters alike, a cost that shaped the harsher settlement subsequently imposed on the Mantis Warriors and the Executioners, and that left the Badab sector marked long after Huron’s survivors regrouped as the Red Corsairs beyond the Maelstrom.
See where Years of Blood occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.