Huron Blackheart: Master of the Maelstrom (Warhammer 40,000)

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These articles also called for a full investigation into the Karthago Sector, asserted the historic and lawful sovereignty of the Space Marine Chapters involved from outside interference by the lower adepta and stated again their willingness to defend the Maelstrom Zone from any who would threaten it. Once there, the Minotaurs laid bloody siege for 17 solar hours of brutal ship-to-ship fighting. Though the Minotaurs suffered heavy casualties, they eventually overpowered the Lamenters by virtue of their brutality and sheer weight of numbers. Their forces shattered, the few remaining Lamenters were forced to surrender rather than risk the annihilation of their precious barque. The majority of their fleet was left ruined or drifting in the void. A lull descended upon the region following these tumultuous events as the Secessionists consolidated their gains and the Karthans retreated in disarray. Soon the Fire Hawks, heavily outnumbered and outgunned, were forced into a long period of retreat to the Maelstrom Zone's fringes which lasted until late 904.M41, when the Marines Errant Chapter answered the call of the Fire Hawks for reinforcement. Only the warships and strike forces of the Executioners seemed able to halt the Minotaurs' progress within the region, the two Chapters seemingly relishing the battle between them as a kind of bloody sport. For the remainder of the year, the Minotaurs gained several important victories for the Loyalist cause, destroying the Tyrant's Legion force on Crows Word and Larsa, and forced the Astral Claws to withdraw or risk having their worlds isolated and ravaged one-by-one. Within one third of a standard year of the Minotaurs' arrival in the region, the direct and collateral damage caused by their forces reduced the Human population of the Pale Stars alone by more than 20 percent.

Both the Sons of Medusa and the Marines Errant Chapters then agreed to his selection for reasons of their own. Despite some continued minor dissent, Carab Culln was acclaimed as the second magister militum of the Imperial Crusade to retake the Maelstrom Zone from the Secessionists. Spurred by this success, Huron had his servants deliver a formal and lengthy petition to Terra, making a detailed case for completely subduing the Maelstrom and the surrounding area, which would greatly benefit the Imperium in the long term. Gargathea III was a Feral World of poisonous fens and corrosive jungles. This heavily contested world soon turned into a savage battleground as the Raptors, Salamanders and Fire Angels Chapters clashed against the Astral Claws and Mantis Warriors amid the tangled and often lethal vegetation.

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Given the inherent dangers in dealing with conflicts between Space Marine Chapters and their relative autonomy from direct Imperial control, Inquisitor-Legate Frain had little choice but to go along with the decision of the gathered Space Marine commanders. Yet he obviously would have preferred a commander from a more "tractable" Chapter, as the Red Scorpions were famously independent-minded and an occasionally fractious Chapter in their own right.

The formation of the Tyrant's Legion was far from Huron's only deliberate move to concentrate all military power within the Badab Sector in his own hands and that of his Chapter, as through a system of patronage, charisma, might and political skill he also inveigled the noble houses and commercial interest of those worlds he protected under his direct control, and even suborned the local officers of the Imperial Navy's Maelstrom Fleet squadron under his personal authority.The strike cruiser Wolf of Fenris dove into the burning core of the Imperial fleet and launched boarding torpedoes into the hull of the battleship Chosen of Thor. A hundred Red Corsairs, with Huron at their head, cut their way to the battleship's reactors and quenched them. The Chosen of Thor became dark and silent as the rest of the muster was ripped apart beside it. At last, Captain Zhrukal Androcles of the Star Phantoms fatally wounded Huron with a melta blast. The Tyrant fell, and the Badab War ended. The Astral Claws were no more. The fears of Huron, that they would die a forgotten death on the edge of the Imperium, had been replaced by extinction at the hands of the Imperium. Matters worsened once again, not only within the Maelstrom Zone but the wider Imperium as well, as the threat of Hive Fleet Behemoth left the defences of the Segmentum Ultima in disarray, and wars and rumours of wars as far as the Eye of Terror and the Ghoul Stars threatened to erupt, as well as galaxy-wide revolts and other strange phenomena.

The Minotaurs had come in answer to the direct summons from the acting Legate Inquisitor for more Space Marines to join the Loyalist cause against the Secessionist Chapters. Though the arrival of this savage Chapter was cautiously welcomed by the Loyalists, they undoubtedly couldn't deny the considerable strength that would be added to the Imperium's cause. The conflict was in its fourth standard year of open warfare, and the Minotaurs committed their entire strength to the war; ten companies and eleven capital ships of various types. Lord Commander Ortys' next viable target of opportunity presented itself in the form of the Vyaniah System. Vyaniah was an important world and served as the gatehouse along one of the secondary Warp routes around the rim of the Maelstrom. Furthermore, its defences and garrison were weaker than the heavily reinforced Sagan System. Culln's ascension had been contested primarily by the Fire Hawks Chapter Master, Stibor Lazaerek, who demanded that he instead should be granted overall command of the Loyalist forces in the conflict as magister militum due to his seniority and long, honourable service to the Imperium.Beyond the difficulties posed to the Imperium by the ongoing Badab War, the safety of the Ultima Segmentum was also threatened at this time by massive Ork incursions after multiple WAAAGH!s erupted across the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy. With the Secessionists having been judged sufficiently contained after the victory at Sagan III, the Loyalists redeployed the Chapters that had suffered battlefield attrition to some degree to deal with the Greenskin threat. The Executioners Chapter in contrast were granted a measure of comparable clemency, and their twin Chapter worlds were given over in trust to the Salamanders Chapter and their own successors rather than forfeited entirely, to be returned to them should they endure their hundred year act of contrition and survive. The Astral Claws were one of a series of Space Marine Chapters tasked with watching over the blighted region of space known as the Maelstrom. An open wound in reality as a semi-permanent Warp rift, the Maelstrom is a place where Daemons walk the worlds drowned in its depths, where aliens swarm like carrion feeders, and the outcasts of Humanity gather and grow strong. Corrupted Terminator Armour: As former master of a well-resourced and equipped Space Marine Chapter, Lugft Huron had access to a plethora of arms and wargear of the highest quality, included among which were a number of suits of armour of various types. Perhaps most famous of these was what was known as his Armour of Pride - a heavily customised set of Terminator armour adapted and augmented for him by the former Astral Claws Master Artificer Armenneus Valtex. Since his fall to Chaos, his armour has changed drastically due to long exposure to the warp as well as displaying the usual Chaos iconography and fetishes. The Armor is said to be durable enough to withstand anti-tank missiles with ease as well as high-powered energy weapons such as plasma rifles (which fires bolts of superheated energy as hot as a sun) and is all but immune to small-arms fire. The successful Loyalist invasion of the Sagan System proved to be a major turning point of the war. After the system fell under Loyalist control it became the primary Imperial base in the Maelstrom Zone, affording the Loyalist offensive greater access to the primary stable Warp routes into the region while denying those routes to the enemy.

The outcome of such vicious fighting was uncertain and a high amount of casualties were sustained on both sides. Gargathea remained a contested world of vital strategic importance due to the planet being one of the few life-sustaining worlds in the region. The Secessionist forces were finally displaced from the planet at the end of 907.M41 and the system reclaimed for the Loyalists.

In pursuing this strategy across a broad front, hoping to reveal a weakness in the Secessionist defences, the Loyalists soon discovered, quite remarkably, that no such weaknesses were apparent. Thus, the Loyalists were forced to change their strategy. With the Khymara System's defence platforms and listening stations destroyed, the Executioners had achieved their primary objective. They could have pressed their advantage and utterly destroyed the Howling Griffons' outpost but instead withdrew suddenly from the system, leaving the Howling Griffons garrison with more than 70 percent casualties. As father of his Chapter Huron had not only failed, but brought about the doom he had tried to avoid. Scoured from Imperial records, the honours won by the Astral Claws in their long service became ash, their domains given to those who had cast them down. But the Tyrant of Badab yet lived.