Bodt

Bodt was a volcanic barracks-world of the World Eaters Legion near the galactic core, destroyed by the Iron Hands in 008.M31 during the Horus Heresy. It had no native population other than the Numen gun-clans, and the Legion used it as a live-fire proving ground. Its principal significance in the wider story lies in the three functions it served for the World Eaters: a training ground, a repository of proscribed weaponry, and, after Isstvan, a source of new recruits.

The world’s volcanic terrain suited the Legion’s emphasis on close, sustained combat, and the planet is recorded as a place where warriors were tested under live fire rather than in simulation. Sarum’s Crimson Priests maintained forbidden weapon-vaults on Bodt, which made the planet a store of arms that the Legion did not openly acknowledge. The Numen gun-clans remained the only recorded inhabitants, and accounts do not describe them as a settled civilisation in the Imperial sense.

After the events at Isstvan, the World Eaters turned Bodt to a further purpose. The Legion raised rage-born recruits there in bio-vats, that is, vats in which new warriors were grown rather than drawn from existing populations. This ties Bodt to the Legion’s replenishment of its ranks in the early years of the Heresy, when its losses and its allegiance to Warmaster Horus shaped how it gathered and trained its warriors. In the Orrery timeline, the World Eaters’ mustering on Bodt is the principal event attached to the world.

In 008.M31 Autek Mor’s Iron Hands razed the planet. The Iron Hands were then fighting the traitor Legions, and the World Eaters’ facilities on Bodt were a natural objective for them; the destruction of the world ended its use as a training ground, an arsenal and a recruiting site alike. Bodt is not recorded as having been resettled or restored, and its present status is that of a destroyed world. Readers following the wider campaign may compare its fate with other Legion strongholds attacked during the same period, using the map anchor for Bodt and the 008.M31 entries on the timeline.