 From the entirety of the Ultramarine's legion, only five complete chapters were not present at Calth during the Betrayal. Several detachments from other chapters were simply unable to join the conjunction. Elements from the 7th and 22nd chapters, for example, were deemed too embedded in combat against Fra'al crucible worlds to have their commitment to that purgation withdrawn. Similarly, the 10th chapter was almost as far from Calth as it was possible to be in galactic terms, committed to compliance operations in the galactic northeast. Nevertheless, as it stood, some 80% of the Ultramarine's legion had been gathered for the muster, and that number was now rapidly diminishing as the atrocities of the word-bearers unfolded. In the years to come, those that had been there, or rather those that had survived, formed a sort of in-group within the 13th legion. Just as how the members of the shattered legions, who had somehow emerged from the fires of the Istvan 5 drop-site massacre, were astartes apart from what Inductii were raised to their legions hence, and just how indeed great crusade veterans looked down upon Inductii recruited after the outbreak of the heresy, so too did those that bore the so-called Mark of Calth physically and psychologically come to simply embody a separate group within the Ultramarines. This was, of course, completely unofficial. Gilliman ordered no such division between his warriors, nor even did these warriors petition for one. The rift was unspoken, perhaps the inevitable result of an experience one simply had to have been a part of to fully comprehend. The wound of such base betrayal was a deep one. Marked tendencies towards distrust and paranoia were observed amongst many of Calth's survivors. Those that were now unmarked, through no fault of their own, were gathered in the majorities of the 7th, 10th, and 19th chapters, as well as the 24th and 25th chapters of Evocatiii, stationed as the latter two were around Ultramar for garrison duties and initiate training. None, of course, were untouched by the passage of the Horus heresy. All paid their dues and conducted themselves with honor and courage. But they were not at Calth. In the years of the scouring, this separation would remain unofficial, but become more pronounced. Gilliman was a verse to the company of the unmarked and their council. Unmarked assignments habitually removed them from their brothers by substantial galactic distances. They were the first wave of Astartes to be split from the legion during the reforms of the 2nd founding. They were the first chapters of the Adeptus Astartes, born of Gilliman and the Ultramarine's line. The veterans of Calth, those that had somehow survived the torment of the heresy, were retained within the new Ultramarine's chapter, that the legacy of that day live on and not merely pass into dusty recorded chronicle. By Mark 02.02.33, the majority of the surviving Ultramarine elements on Calth existed upon its surface. The void was ablaze with the wreckage of Viridian anchor and uncountable ships of the legion murdered by still hunting word-bearer attack craft. Even the McCraggs honor had any beheld her, sported visible damage to her bridge, the result of an arcane attack by Lorgar Aurelion. Gilliman was uncontactable. He had been on the bridge of the flagship when the explosion wrought by his traitor brother's warpcraft had blown out the viewing ports. There was no accurate mark for when the killing on the surface of Calth began. As one's own record has shown, there exist at timestamps previous moments of significant damage inflicted to the Ultramarine muster sites by calamities falling from orbit, but as to when the first bolter was fired by the first word-bearer, that is far more unclear. Necrocortical analysis of corpses recovered from the irradiated wastes of Calth point to instances of attacks occurring before ships like the Destiny's Hand began their orbital murder. In the most isolated of conjunction sites, far from major population centers, it appears small units of Ultramarines were set upon by, usually, far greater numbers of word-bearers and their cultic Auxilia in acts of homicide as base as they were opportunistic. At the edge of the Satric Wastes, the corpses of Ultramarines and Imperialis Auxilia alike were transformed into grotesque mockeries of their former forms, arranged in gory tableaus in devotion to the Dark Pantheon. Initially believed by scholars to have been simple outpourings of blood, mad, and lunacy on behalf of the 17th Legion, laterally it has been posited that such ritualism in proximity to Erebus' own grand workings deep in the Wastes tied these murders into the eventual ushering-in of the Ruin Storm. The attack of the Campanile had, of course, marked the beginning of open slaughter on the surface of Calth with the birth of what looked like a new star in the planet's skies. As in orbit, this period is marked by punishing losses and little in the way of retribution. Assassination cadres of word-bearers infiltrated into Ultramarines' command positions under the guise of friendship, committed first strikes on 13th Legion leadership, casting the rigid command structure into utter disarray. With the Mechanicum Newsphere in utter ruin, rampaging scrap code caused lethal biofeedback to any mages who attempted to access it. The 13th Legion was scattered, rudderless, utterly at the whims of the word-bearers in these first few hours. At the Komesh, must recite, the 9th Chapter was almost entirely wiped out by the 17th Legion forces under the command of Fodral Fel. Out of 20,000 Ultramarines present at the site prior to the attack of the Campanile, barely 5,000 were able to retreat from the slaughter under the command of the tetrarch of Ultramar Toro Nicodemus. Further north, the Ligio Sertivora punished the first, second, and third chapters at the Erudmuster, the Ultramarines bearing almost nothing in the way of weaponry that could harm God-engined-class machines. It was only by a quirk of timing that the armoured company of the First Chapter had not completed its embarkation, allowing the 13th to rally several Shadow Sword and Falchion super-heavy battle tanks against the attacking Titans. Through ambush operations, the First Chapter was able to inflict some measure of recompense against the invaders, grievously wounding several God-engines, but such fighting cost them the majority of their number, escaping Erud with only a single badly damaged Falchion and two Shadow Swords under the command of Captain Sidance. On Cal's night side, Ultramarines in charge of munition resupply were assaulted by hordes of cultic fanatics. Succeeding and barricading themselves into ammunition-manufactoria, the 13th held the rabble of Lorgar at bay until their own firearms began to run dry. Much like in the orbital volume, tales of loyalist victories amongst the slaughter are few, but there are some. In Thracias, close to the planet's northern polar regions and Erebus' ritual site, the isolated arcologies and research stations of that area were preyed upon by large numbers of word-bearer Galvor back, the demonically possessed shock troops of the 17th Legion. The fate of the innocents amongst the population are unknown, but given the speed at which the so-called blessed sons tore through the region, the established fate of captives who fell living into the clutches of the 17th, we can surmise their deaths contributed to the enactment of the ritual, and in many ways that were quite likely extremely slow and painful. However, given the Galvor back obsession with the collection of baseline human prisoners, the possessed Astartes somehow neglected to account for the presence of the Ultramarine's 22nd chapter, also mustering in the Polar Climes. Essentially, pariahs within their own Legion, the 22nd formed the so-called Nemesis chapter, bearers of destroyer-grade weaponry, phosphax, alchem, and radiological rounds. Annihilation class munitions meant for purgation operations. They were supposed last-resort weapons, publicly scorned by Gilliman, but nevertheless stalked by his Legion should their use be necessary. As a byproduct of their role, the Nemesis chapter had long since become enured to the fowl and the fallen, having fought Xenos abominations galaxy-wide for centuries. Thus, the assumption on their part was that the Galvor back represented some form of hitherto unknown alien corruption or infection that had overtaken the word bearers. Whether simply a part of the 17th or its entirety had succumbed was not within the minds of the 22nd to discern, merely to act upon. The destroyers of the Ultramarines immediately came to a war footing, and the conflict in the Thracian wilderness rapidly became unto hell itself, the region bathed in crawling phosphax torrents and howling radiological storms. At Mark 04.55.34, the seizure of Zetsunvered Yard by Sorot Chur and Kor Faran was given great and terrible purpose. At this time stamp, it was recorded that the Dock's systems were restored to full operation by Tagmata of the so-called True Mechanicum, allied to the word bearers. The data engines, unable to communicate with the Mechanicum server long since perished, scryed the newsphere for any authorities greater than themselves. Finding none, standard protocol was engaged and server authority granted to the Zetsun central engine. As part of Mechanicum redundancy initiatives, Zetsunvered Yard was always to be designed to act as an emergency backup, and now under the stewardship of the word bearers, the planetary weapons grid was slaved to its concertators. By Mark 05.05.22, the senior Majos in command reported to Kor Faran that full manifold capabilities had been restored, and that targeting solutions were present for the first captain's approval. Kor Faran immediately ordered discretionary fire. At Mark 05.05.47, the Kaoth orbital weapons array began to kill the Viridian system. The grid had been designed by the Mechanicum under Gilliman's express orders to fortify Kaoth against a threat equivalent to an imperial expeditionary fleet, and to operate independently of any starship support. The firepower it wielded was simply astonishing. Its first target was an asteroid once named Alamasta, the remnant of a planet that had eons before suffered a catastrophic exterplanetary impact. Now reborn as Viridia Forge, it was a massive hub of Mechanicum industry, the most significant manufacturing center in the local galactic volume. It had been helpless since the attack of the Campanile, lacking its shields, and of course possessing no means of evasion. In four prolonged strikes, Viridia Forge was murdered. The first two strikes incinerated the surface rock layers of the asteroid, piercing the adamantine shell of the inner habitations. The third strike popped the main fabricatory hub like a bubble, exposing thousands of square kilometers internally to hard vacuum. The fourth strike ruptured its internal reactors and created a new star in the ensuing nuclear explosion. The death of Viridia Forge, aligned as it was, caused Calth to have no night side for the next 18 minutes. At Mark 06.59.59, Chapter Master Marius Gage regained consciousness in the upper reaches of the McCrags honor conning tower, or rather what was left of it. Lorgar's final transmission had ended in what was one of the first historical examples of an aggressive incarnation of a lesser demonic emanation to be successfully deployed against loyalist forces. The sheer force of its impact and subsequent detonation had blown out the main viewing ports of the flagships stratigeum, venting the space to the icy grip of the void. Gilliman had been claimed by the howling winds of explosive decompression before the blast shuttered had been able to activate. The Primarch's whereabouts, or even whether he was alive or not, were utterly unknown. Over a dozen senior Legion officers and support staff had died in the process. The Shipmaster had been eviscerated by a hail of shattered glass. Chapter Master Varad had bodily thrown himself into space in an attempt to rescue his Primarch. He was never to be seen again. Gage himself had only survived by bodily hauling himself through the emergency hatches prior to closure, doing so on one arm, the demon thing having claimed one of his limbs. The flagship was in utter disarray. The lithic avatar of Lorgar's transformation was not the only manifestation of Ward. Entire Gloriana-class battleship was now a playground for the never-born. Demon things of material shadow cavorted and slaughtered their way through her entire superstructure, dancing between dimensions as a terrified mortal crew attempted to fight or flee equally in vain. A few of the more veteran Lugionez-Starte's personnel were privy to, on the most basic level, the existence of the violent predators of the Imitarium, assuming them as even some of the most learned of the Imperium had to be an unknown extra-dimensional breed of alien. These veterans were also aware of the effects of localized warp breaches and the mass psychosis and realistic disruptions that they could cause. However, the flagship was not in the warp. It was firmly in real space, and the Ultramarine's aboard had been plunged into combat with an enemy unlike anything they had ever fought. Any hope of a coordinated defense simply never existed. The very minds of the human crew broke at the mere sight of even the most lesser of emanations, if even they had managed to survive the encounters with incarnated clouds of malice and knives. Gibbering corpse things of swollen, rotted flesh capered chaotically while burning demonia whose skins flowed like lava split crewmen in half with swords as tall as they were. Yet others split and fused and split again, belching multicolored fire through too many eyes while lithe things in mockeries of human form slowly peeled the skin off howling mortals with chitinous claws. The McCrags honor became a scene unto some ancient grimoire, a lurid tapestry of travesties drawn from the most polluted of minds. Marius Gage, recovering from the envenomed wound that was forcing even his Astartes physiology to struggle, attempted to place what order he could upon the situation. Ordering Ultramarines to link up with their brothers wherever possible and for human crew members to barricade themselves in place. Even this proved nigh impossible. The mangled Intraship Vox was subject not only to blackouts but warp corruption and time dilation. Witnesses spoke of receiving the Chapter Master's orders hours after he issued them, alongside other localized phenomena. Angles of bulkheads stretching beyond the possible, corridors reaching into infinity. Ragtag squads of Ligionnes Astartes, naval armsmen, and desperate crew formed by circumstance, haphazardly but nevertheless admirably responding to the invasion with standardized and well-drilled Ligion counter boarding protocols. In all cases, however, these measures had been designed to fight the enemies the Imperium had waged war against for two hundred years. They were never meant to account for the never-born. Evacuated and sealed off sections of the ship were subject to rad purges, toxic gas deluges, hard decompression or temperature cascades, and simply nothing worked. The demonic were impervious to things meant to combat mortals or even Xenos bodies. The dire state of the communications grid and the loss of so many Ligion officers meant that such discoveries could not be efficiently transmitted to other Ligion elements, forcing mistakes to be committed again and again and again to dire results. The famed abilities of ultramarine analysis, their dedication to theoretical and practical was sundered, through no fault of their own, by attacks from beings utterly unbeholdened to the rules of fundamental reality. Despite horrific losses, these hours of combat aboard the McCraggs honor gave way to pockets of concentrated resistance. Stoic defense cordons centered around specific warriors and groups of warriors, who by dint of circumstance or skill were able to navigate the increasingly desperate situation. Captain Hutonicus of the Ultramarine's 161st company had taken command of a group of Astartes initiates, only recently raised to full legionary status. With next to nothing in the way of actual combat experience, it fell to Hutonicus to rally and lead them amongst a foe unlike anything the Imperium, let alone he, had the ability to coordinate a fight against. That a mere quarter of the initiates under the captain's charge survives, is less a tragedy and more a miracle. Those that did, bloodied in extremis against otherworldly foes, almost universally went on to become warriors of profound renown in the lives they would lead thereafter. Chaptermaster Empian of the 9th chapter had survived the initial wave of incursions, while inspecting a large contingent of his subordinates, and was thus perhaps best placed to lead any resistance. Coalating defense around Deck 35, Empian was able to gather to his command yet more Astartes, as well as Solar Auxilia, Exertus Imperialis, and Navus Imperialis troops that had managed to survive. The robust fighting force at his disposal, Empian became one of the few legion elements aboard to mount a determined advance through the McCrags honor in an effort to establish connections with the rest of the legion. By far the most famous combatant of this particular phase of the atrocity was, however, an individual, Sergeant Aeonid Thiel of the 135th company. Thiel's presence aboard the flagship has entered record as one of history's greatest ironies. The sergeant had been marked for formal censure, to be delivered by the Primarch himself, for the outrageous breach of standards of applying the concepts of theoretical and practical thought exercises towards the combating of fellow space marines. When the incursions began, Thiel had been awaiting Gilliman's rebuke in the Primarch's private quarters, and had been forced to defend himself with the first weapons he was able to lay hands upon. Display pieces retained by Gilliman, an electromagnetic longsword, and a Kelatai friction axe. Both armaments were incredibly rare. Relic weapons kept as historical artifacts from long exterminated species as a testament to the skill and creativeness of their long past weapon smiths. Fighting his way through the demon things that beset him to recover his personal firearms, Thiel quite immediately noticed that the axe and sword were significantly more effective in combating the Neverborn than his bolt pistol was, despite the gun being, ostensibly, a far more potent deterrent on paper. He has been credited, at least in heresy-era hagiography, as being one of the first astartes of allegiance to happen upon the revelation that the demonic require combating within the realm of the conceptual as much as the physical. That, to the emanations of the warp, the simple savagery of flame and sword bears a narrative heft lacking in the technology developed over millennia, an element of story that is profoundly lethal to them. Yened Thiel, an oddity amongst his legion for his unique approaches to the practical, reasoned that the looting of the Primarch's personal weapons archive was a perfectly sound option amongst his circumstances. Soon, the sergeant was leading a band of fellow astartes alongside solar auxilia and even several abhuman bondsmen, all armed with relic weapons of absolutely priceless rarity. His advance permitted him to link up with chapter master Empion and captain Hutonicus, the combined force pushing out the remains of the bridge where they encountered first chapter master Gage. In an act of admirable humility for one of his station, Gage recognized that out of all three leaders, Thiel's methods had achieved the most success, and that his information and experience should be as rapidly disseminated amongst the legion as possible. Against these inexplicable invaders, melee weaponry should be utilized. The first chapter master withheld judgments on Thiel's more apparently fanciful summations, that the demons, as he referred to them, were susceptible to arcane and ancient human practices specifically. Nevertheless, Gage appointed the sergeant as overall tactical authority in the field, superseding even Empion and Hutonicus by dint of merit and ability. Thiel's task initially was to recover the shipmaster Homed of the craft Sanctity of Saramath, whose salvation pods had been recovered by the flagship immediately prior to the loss of her bridge. While this was ongoing, chapter master Empion led a strike upon the Sharship's auxiliary bridge. With the knowledge and skill of the shipmaster, as well as control over a command center, the wounded Marius Gage hoped to rest some measure control over the situation. At Mark 11.40.02, Marius Gage's forces had claimed control over the auxiliary bridge of the McCraggs honor. The efforts expended to do so had cost many ultramarine lives, but had saved the fate of shipmaster Homed from certain death and rescued senior members of the Mechanicum from the besieged Forge Fane at the vessel's heart. A full systems purge was completed within minutes, and for the first time in nearly 12 hours, senior legion leadership was able to raise voxelinks with ultramarines on Calth's surface. The situation unfolding through rebooted sensorium suites was beyond catastrophic. While upon the surface, remnants of the legion could be established as continuing to mount resistance within the orbital volume, barely a fifth of the 13th ships could be considered battle worthy. Worse yet, the Osbeck sweeps picked up several word bearer cruisers in close formation with the flagship, telltale signs of external boarding operations being launched. While the 17th legion had not launched torpedoes, the ultramarine surmised that even now their astartes would be attempting to gain ingress through airlocks, clearly in an attempt to capture the flagship as a prize with as little damage as possible. Chaptermaster Empion was assigned the task of leading a counterboarding assault, to draw upon every ultramarine's legionary the command staff could muster at this point in the battle for the flagship. 40 distinct groups, each numbering up to 30 astartes, exited the airlocks of the McCraggs honor, entering the cold embrace of the Void as they made their way towards carefully designated targets of priority. The foes docking towers, extended from line cruisers, were primary amongst these. Astartes were additionally assigned to detaching Void grapples, sabotaging the enemy's fusion drill heads, and to simply killing as many word bearers infesting the ship's hull as possible. Wearing Void harnesses to speed their passage through the paper-thin atmospheric shell around the honor's superstructure, legionaries advanced rapidly across the hull, navigating through a cyclopean city-scaled landscape of brutal ceramite constructions unfit for the passage of any, yet now the battlefield upon which the fate of all aboard would be decided. It was not long before the word bearers were encountered, and Astartes moves with inhuman speed under normal circumstances, and in the almost gravity-less environments their speed was truly astonishing. All pretense of stealth was disposed of out of hand. The possibility that such an environment, even providing for it, was discounted by Gage and Empian foreign advance of the actual engagements. The slate grey hull did nothing to hide the brilliant blue of ultramarine power armor. Their approach was quickly smotted by word-bearer borders, and soon bolter rounds sped through the void, rupturing armor and transhuman bodies in perfect, horrid silence. The power of space marine physiology was on full display in this unique environment. Bolter rounds, which cracked Astartes' battle plate, caused partial armor decompression before the automated inner system seals worked to contain pressure loss. Even Astartes, whose limbs had been exposed to the cutting nothingness of hard space, could retain their use, maimed as they were, dependent only on rapidly diminishing oxygen reserves. Melees sent victims tumbling away into the vacuum, trailing chains of beaded frozen blood like tiny asteroids. It was as brutal as any fight had ever been that dreadful day, yet all the more horrific for the total silence in which it unfolded. At mark 12.42.16, the tide of one such engagement had turned upon the strike force led by Aeonid Theel. A counterattack down the docking tower by the 17th Legion had been committed in far greater numbers than the Ultramarines had anticipated, and had come from an entirely different axis in the three-dimensional nature of space battles, to merely add to the punishment. As the Ultramarines clung to whatever cover they could upon the hull, Bolterfire reigned at them both along the superstructure and from above it. Such was the nature of the desperate attack in the first place, that Theel and his Astartes reckoned with their destinies that they must sell their lives as dearly as possible in the face of overwhelming odds. Yet an entirely new miracle made itself manifest at this mark, one free of the dark blasphemies of word-bearer Warpcraft. Rebut Gulliman plunged out of the void like a comet in cobalt, an inaudible howl of rage painted across his astonishingly hell-less face. Bereft of full atmospheric armor, the Primark's physiology had somehow allowed him to survive in the trace atmosphere that persisted around the McCrags honor's massive form. For ten hours, the Primark had fought and survived without any air supply, exposed to near absolute zero of hard vacuum. A feat of survival that, to be perfectly frank, is without all precedent in records of and research into the mysteries of Primark genetic biology. It is of course accepted that the body of a Primark was able to withstand the effects of hypocapnea, ebullism, extremes of temperature, even pressure-driven body mass expansion for potentially extended periods. That a Primark's body could continue to function without oxygen for such a span of time is utterly beyond the comprehension of even the most learned of gene rights. It can only stand as a testament to the dreadful genius of the Emperor and the constitution and sheer overwhelming will of Gulliman himself. The Lord of McCrag hit the word-bearers with the force of a juggernaut, demolishing them in an outburst of pure fury, the likes of which none of the surviving ultramarines had likely even believed their Primark to be capable of. Their mission accomplished. It fell to Thiel and his men to convince Gulliman to return with them to the captured strategium. His prowess in combat had saved them, but his mind and genius were now desperately needed in the greater battle yet to be waged. And as ever, thank you very much for watching.