Balhaut

Balhaut is a world in the Sabbat Worlds, the ten-year objective of Warmaster Slaydo and the site of the battle of 765.M41 that ended his life. It is recorded as the stronghold of the Chaos Archon Nadzybar, and it was the goal towards which the first decade of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, launched in 755.M41, was directed. Its capture was intended to break the Archon’s power at its centre and open the way for the Imperium to reclaim the wider Sabbat Worlds.

The battle of 765.M41 was the early climax of the Crusade. Slaydo, who had led the Imperial forces from the outset, and Nadzybar, who had proclaimed himself lord of the region, were both killed in the fighting. Imperial forces held the field, and the Archon’s domain was broken. The loss of the Warmaster at the moment of victory left the Crusade without a supreme commander, and command passed to Macaroth, who emerged from Balhaut as the new Warmaster. Accounts of the last engagements differ in detail, but they agree on the two deaths and on the succession. The later Crusade, including the campaigns fought by regiments such as the Tanith First and Only under Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt, was conducted under Macaroth’s direction and not Slaydo’s. Gaunt is recorded as having served in Slaydo’s circle during this period, and the tradition that he was influenced by the Warmaster’s example is often linked to Balhaut.

On the Orrery map and timeline, Balhaut anchors the transition between the opening decade of the Crusade and the long campaign under Macaroth that followed. Its contemporaries in the graph are the Warmaster Slaydo, Archon Nadzybar and Warmaster Macaroth, and the interaction that defines the world is the battle of 765.M41. In the decades after the victory, Balhaut was used as a rear-area hospital world, which reflects how far the front had moved from it. It later became a hunting ground for the Blood Pact, the Chaos-aligned forces that came to dominate the Crusade’s later phase. The world remains significant to the Sabbat Worlds Crusade as the place where Slaydo’s campaign ended and Macaroth’s began.