 If one had begun one's chronicle of the terrible and hateful Badab war, with a statement that it had been fundamentally caused by the taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems being in dispute, one's acolytes would have scoffed and powered off their archived cogitators in search of a more serious explanation upon the subject. For how indeed could something so simple as tithe be involved in one of the most vicious civil wars to ever rend the Imperium asunder? How indeed, but I tell you that it is just so. Would that it were simpler, but as with all things surrounding the events of the war, it was far from direct. The fall of the astral claws was no quick thing, no one act that precipitated catastrophe, and if we are to understand, we must be granted the fullest of accounts possible. In one's previous record, you were introduced to the Maelstrom, the imperial claims to the sectors surrounding that hideous warp anomaly, and an account of the early days of the Brotherhood of Astartes chapters, collectively known as the Maelstrom Warders, up to the ascension to chapter mastery of the astral claws by Lugft Huron. Then, this is a further record of the events leading up to the outbreak of hostilities in the Badab sector, covering the rise of the Tyrant, the rebuke of the High Lords, and the schism of Badab. As noted in one's previous record upon his rise to power, Chapter Master Huron had vastly increased the space-faring capabilities of his warriors through the incorporation of non-Codex vessels, and it expanded the chapter's armory significantly through the addition of often prescribed and even exterminatis' great weaponry. All was done on the young Chapter Master's claims of necessity, harshly rebuking any who would question his non-standard practices, which, it must be said, often skirted and outright broke the strictures of the Lex Imperialis. To Huron, or so he claimed in the years following his appointment in 715 M41, all this expansion of the Claws was done because the Maelstrom Zone had been abandoned by the High Lords of Terra. While Terra was in dereliction of its duty, he claimed the Maelstrom Warders and the Astral Claws specifically never would be. All he did, he did for the good of the Zone, and its loyal, imperial citizens. In 512 718 M41, three years after Huron's ascension to Chapter Mastery, Bedap Primaris, the capital world of the Maelstrom Zone, suffered a failed coup d'état against its aristocratic rulers, leading, ultimately, to an abortive civil war that threatened to fully consume the High of World. Unwilling to see the jewel of the Zone fall to the fires that Cygnax had, the Astral Claws intervened to crush the rebels. Under heavy interrogation, several ringleaders revealed their ties to off-world smuggling rings, that themselves had connections to the piratical raiders that plagued the Zone. The same smuggling rings had been flooding the underworld of Bedap with cheap arms and narcotics cut with industrial chemicals, with the intent to not only profit from the sale, but the hope that tensions would boil over into an even more profitable open war. Huron, enraged at such widespread corruption occurring on the most populous planet in the Zone, responded with overwhelming force. The rebels and their cells were annihilated, with extreme prejudice, but the Astral Claws did not stop there. Civilian protests at the destabilizing effects of the coup were similarly crushed, and the Claws became renowned for dragging members of the aristocracy from their high-high manners to execute them very messily and very publicly. Connections between the ruling class and the smuggling operations were quickly established, and all those found even moderately involved were slaughtered at the hands of the Claws. Unwilling, he claimed to let a power vacuum form in the aftermath of the destruction of the majority of the planet's rulership class, Huron took to many a surprising step. He assumed direct control of the entire Bedab sector. Personally. Styling himself as the tyrant of Bedab, a name he claimed was only appropriate as a designation for one who was there to bring the harshest of the Emperor's justice, Huron took the worlds of Bedab as his chapter's fife, and Bedab primaris for his new seat of power. Claiming the precedent of distant, glorious Ultramar, Huron spoke proudly of ushering in a new era for the Astral Claws, the maelstrom warders too, and indeed the entire zone. No longer, he claimed, would rot, be let fester in the hearts of these worlds. The purges continued, unabated for years. All elements within the zone deemed morally unworthy, or worse, morally recidivist, or excised, brutally and visibly, by the Astartes of the Astral Claws. The centralization of power around Bedab was the work of decades, but it only increased in rapidity as the years wore on. The armories and fleets of the Claws and their fellow warders' chapters continued to expand as Huron brought more and more elements of the Imperium within the zone under his personal purview. The Claws' squads established watch bastions throughout the entire Bedab sector, staffed fully by Astartes from the Claws, and unaugmented humans fully loyal to Huron. Political allies amongst the local Mechanicus, Ecclesiarchy, Munitorum, and Administratum offices had the power vastly increased by the tyrant's patronage, but all would ultimately pay heed to his will. Huron became a pocket empire in all but name, Huron even going so far as to completely reorganize the entire defense force within the zone, cutting through the usual chains of planetary and sector command by establishing the Tyrant's Legion, a unified structure for the entirety of the Astro-Militarum and planetary defense forces of the Maelstrom. This was intended to deny the usual isolationism that was common amongst regiments stationed in Borger regions, such as the zone, but was nonetheless quite unprecedented. The Militarum and planetary defense forces are siloed in the Leximperialis, often for a reason. Command flowed down to the Legion from Huron alone, and while there were many detractors to the move, those who sought to cite precedent or law or simple expediency, they were simply removed from the equation, and all knew by whom. By 790 M41, the Tyrant's reforms, if such a massive power seizure can be called such, had apparently succeeded. The Tyrant's Legion had held its own against a dozen major pirate raids, something no unaugmented imperial force had actually managed for years. With the necessity of defense now handled by baseline human regiments, the Astral Claws were freed from their protective stance to go on the offensive, crushing numerous pirate worlds and Xenos warrens in stunningly brutal lightning raids that utilized the expanded capabilities of the chapter's fleets with a plumb. It was, as emerged in the dreadful aftermath of what was to come, around this time that Huron and the Astral Claws began to cease their shipments of gene seed to the Magi Invigula of the Adeptus Mechanicus. An arm of the wider Mechanicus biologis, the Invigula is a subset of the machine cult, responsible for the monitoring and preservation of the genetic purity of the Adeptus Astartes. Under their remit, they are granted shipments of Astartes gene seed from every single chapter, the genetic template from whence the chapter develops all the biological enhancements that are acquired in the creation of one of the Emperor's Angels of Death. This is a vital part of the process that ensures the survival of a chapter. Should some capitalism or other befall them in battle or otherwise, the stocks of the Magi Invigula can restore them to operational strength. Should an unforeseen Genophage ravage their stocks, the Invigula can, with the Emperor's blessing, discover its source. It is not uncommon for these shipments to be less than routine. The Adeptus Astartes are few, and their foes are many. The chapter may be on campaign for over a century. The exigencies of warfare forcing them to retain their gene seed reserves, should it be needed. The vagaries of warp travel, the bureaucracy of both Imperium and Mechanicus, any number of reasons besides can delay or interrupt the flow of the precious genetic material. At first, lack of stock from the Astral Claws was claimed by the chapter as the former. It prerequisites for their expansion of Imperial control in the Bedab sector lest they suffer some mighty setback. After years, petitions by the Invigula simply began to go unanswered. Some within the Mechanicus wondered if an altogether more sinister motive was at play, that the stymying of the Claws' gene seed was, in fact, a deliberate act. It would, in many ways, be one of the first major tenets of Astartes' traditions Huron and the Astral Claws would break. But it would not be the last. Huron, however, was buoyed by the successes of the 700s. His star was in ascendancy, his regime becoming unshakable, his chapter and his brethren and his realm actively prospering. No longer constantly playing defensive against all that the Maelstrom could throw at them, the Astral Claws were actively expanding the Emperor's domain and permanently ending the threats posed by the sundry enemies of humanity. Seeing opportunity, he bade a delegation of petitioners to make the long and arduous journey from the Maelstrom Zone to Holy Terra itself, to present a lengthy document to the Senatorum Imperialis and the High Lords of Terra, outlining Huron's most audacious move yet, the complete subduing of the Maelstrom itself. Such a thing had not even been deemed accomplishable in the Halcyon days of the Great Crusade, when the Emperor himself led the legions of Astartes abroad across the stars. Yet Huron claimed it was possible, his petition outlining warp corridors into the storm, to ensure Xenos, arch-enemy and recidivist holdfasts, the incalculable resources the Imperium would gain by obtaining so many warp-tossed planets, celestial bodies and space-hulks, and perhaps, most tellingly, the sheer amount of military material and manpower Huron would need to accomplish it. The chaptermaster of the Astral Claws, deemed that nothing short of a new founding would be needed to bolster the number of Astartes included within the Maelstrom Warders, and that he, as the protector of the Badab sector, should be the one to spearhead this. The petition was rejected outright by the Senatorum. It had long before its mere hearing already been dismissed by the High Lords, whose judgement deemed the resources demanded far better spent elsewhere within the Imperium. The presentation had been permitted, as an acknowledgement of the work the Maelstrom Warders and the Astral Claws had done in the previous century of expansion, but the ruling of the High Lords remained, that if they had managed to accomplish all that they had, with the resources at hand, then they were fully accomplishing their original remit as wardens of the Maelstrom Zone, not crusading warriors. To Huron, it was a betrayal of all that he and his chapter had ever accomplished, and he responded with the only means at his disposal. Since the foundation of the Imperium, the Great Tithe, terraced you, the Grand Harvest, whatever your name for it, has ever been a point of contention between the Administratum and his Imperial Majesty's subject domains, for when in our history has taxation ever not been so? Regardless, it is and always will be a facet of life within our Imperium. The reaping of human lives and material resources from every subject world within his borders. Per the remit of the Lex Imperialis, this is intended to be assayed based on a world's measure and ability to pay it, at least in theory, as often the records of the Administratum are less than complete. Some worlds may be subject to extortionate taxation because they share the same name as another, more prosperous planet, or because an acolyte misplaced a line upon a ledger, or a zero in a number, millennia beforehand. The system, as with all systems within the Imperium, is imperfect and brutal, but it is relentless, direct, and inviolate. Should those who break their obligation do so visibly, and by means that can be discovered, the long arm of the Lex Imperialis will bend towards retribution. Huron's termination of his domain's tithe was a deliberate act of protest against what he stated was the blindness of the High Lords, to both the Zone's plight and to the achievements of the Astral Plaws. Withholding of their Jews was just about the only means of protest available to anyone within the Imperium that can actually achieve anything, but often that achievement comes at the end of an Arbites Power Mall, or worse, an Inquisitor. Had a chapter of the Adeptus Astartes was responsible for it, an organization usually completely removed from this particular wheel of the Administratum was quite unprecedented, and it certainly achieved in drawing eyes to Huron's worlds. The tyrant had additionally stymied all trade that passed through the Zone, cutting the Imperium off from the ore and minoring operations in the Pale Stars. All the resources once claimed by Terra were now Hurons, and he diverted them fully to shoring up and expanding the Zone's defences and fleets. This took the form, in the Badab sector at least, the construction of gigantic void-faring defense platforms, dubbed by the tyrant the Ring of Steel. On Badab Primaris Huron demolished the old palace of the deposed oligarchy, erecting in its place a fortress of his own design, the soon-to-be-infamous Palace of Thorns. The Imperium did not immediately notice the sudden halt of all material from the Zone, because the Imperium does not immediately notice anything. Rather, as more and more broken contracts, delayed shipments, and missing resources piled up upon worlds that had come to expect them, word spread further and quicker that the tyrant of Badab had reneged upon his word. Astopathic messages shot between the Adeptus Terra, the Adeptus Administratum, and the segmentum court's temporal, as did the blame for letting the situation get to where it had. Ponderously, the Imperium would come to realize that it had arrived at a situation completely unprecedented, a disparity between the rights of the Administratum to collect the Great Tithe and the rights of the Adeptus Astartes to defend the Imperium by any means necessary. The tyrant was asserting his claim over the full resources of the Maelstrom Zone in order to defend it and the Imperial citizens within, and doing so, under the ostensibly same auspices the Ultramarines had always managed their own domain of Ultramar by, while the Sons of Gilliman had always paid their tithes to the very letter of their requirements. There was nothing in the Lex Imperialis that stated they had to, if military exigencies forced them to deem such an act a threat to the sanctity and security of their fife. Officers and chroniclers of the Lex engaged in a war of words with petty bureaucrats, mining cartels, shipping conglomerates, Mechanicus Magi, adepts of Terra, and representatives of the Tlaws themselves in a legal dispute that would become known as the Schism of Badab, and one that would last for over a century and a half, 150 years of lexographical feuding during which time the Badab Sector and the power of Huron continued to wax. Every victory the Astral Claws, the Maelstrom Warders, and the Tyrants Legion delivered during this period is stained with the shadow of misappropriated arms and armor, all taking place under the backdrop of significantly worsening tensions between Huron and not only segmentum authorities, but the Adeptus Administratum and the High Lords too. The sudden drought from a previously deep wellspring of resources was felt nowhere more keenly than in the Carthago Sector, where for over a millennium the Carthan Lords had held a monopoly on the distribution of all Maelstrom's own industrial goods. Buffered by far more war-torn regions, these oligarchs had grown fat upon the work and sacrifice of their fellow humanity, content to reap the benefits of their transit corridor existence. They were however still answerable to an authority, that of the segmentum and its procurators general, and these Tithe officers had little care for the reasons their tithes were suddenly stymied, only that they flow again. The Tyrant and his realm cared not for the fretting of the Carthan Lords, if even they knew of them. Freed from the comparative ignominy of their garrison duties, the Astral Claws began to take their skills abroad across the galaxy, foraying beyond the borders of the Maelstrom Zone for the first time since their assignment there centuries before. During the final days of the Fourth Quadrant Rebellion, Huron was elected as overall theatre commander by the combined assent of elements from the Astral Claws, Firehawks, White Scars and Celestian Guard chapters. He led his warriors into the very depths of the fighting, supported by Imperial Guard regiments drawn from the Death Core of Krieg and God Engines from the adeptus titanicus legiovenitor. The task force annihilated all arch enemy forces arrayed against them, a huge win for Huron who won widespread praise for his leadership, if said did ultimately lead to a grudge of honour from the Firehawks, whose own chapter master felt spurned by the appointment of the younger Huron as overall commander. Returning to the Zone, buoyed by his success, Huron, through machinations and calls for aid, instigated a crusade, but the zealous black Templars astart his chapter, into the eastern reaches of the Maelstrom in 869 M41. While their brethren were covering their flank, the Astral Claws led the Lamentors and the Mantis warriors from the Warpstorm's southern and northeastern corridors. What had been expected by most to be a failure in line with that of Huron's predecessor had been pivoted to a stunning victory, thanks in large part, it must be noted, to Huron's own tactical planning and knowledge of the intricacies of Maelstrom's own warfare. Fully 23 Xenos and arch enemy fortress worlds were scoured clean of taint, their hated inhabitants put to the torch and the sword. These included several fringe planets that had come under the thrall of heretic astarties from the ancient Wordbearers Legion, a coup for any Imperial force, and one Huron and his Claws took deep pride in. Encouraged by such pivotal successes, the Warders pushed further into the Maelstrom than any Imperial force in history had managed, with the Astral Claws and Mantis warriors directing a massive invasion against the last remaining stronghold of the flesh ghouls of the Howling Jire. Huron personally led the veteran first company of his chapter against the hateful creatures, detonating exterminators grade life eater virus capsules within their skin fortress and purging from the galaxy a foe that had menaced the Imperium for thousands of years. The Crusade of Wrath should have been counted amongst one of the greatest Imperial victories of the age, had there been anything in the way of justice in this pitiless universe. But for all their later downfall that would condemn them unforgivably, the Astral Claws succeeded where none before them had ever done so. Their actions undeniably made the Maelstrom zone and the Imperium as a whole safer, and they had visited the most righteous of Imperial justice upon the most hated of alien and heretic foes. They were poised to deliver yet more, but as ever with their tale, outside forces intervened. The Black Templars were forced to direct their crusading Fuhrer elsewhere to provide aid to devastated Ultramar, that realm having suffered so dreadfully under the just concluded first tyrannic war against high fleet behemoth. Having already sustained losses in excess of what would be considered advisable, and with stable warp corridors once overseen by the Templars now entirely unguarded, the Maelstrom Warders were forced to pull back, quitting the theatres within the warp storm for more defensible areas outside it. The Quran was, it is recorded, incandescent with rage, railing against an Imperium that had once more denied him not only the glory of completing his greatest work yet, but also one that was seemingly intent on acting against its own best interests. Matters were only worsened. In the wake of behemoth's staggeringly massive invasion, Ultramar's segmentum was in utter disarray. The tyrannic war had drawn in massive amounts of the segmentums available military forces, and everywhere the enemies of man sought to press their advantage against suddenly undefended marches. An Orc invasion larger than any seen in generations rampaged seemingly out of nowhere into the Maelstrom Zone's Endemian Cluster, the bloodshed of this invasion combining with the turmoil of distant Ultramar to swell the great storm of the Maelstrom itself into violent squalls and surges. Warprutes considered stable for centuries were rendered impassable. Doomsday cult uprisings in their hundreds racked the worlds of the Zone from its core to its fringes. The world of Fargos Hex simply vanished without a trace, considered by Imperial record to have been devoured by the Immaterium. Its true fate, likely, will ever remain unknowable. Their authorities seemingly slipping through their fingers, their forces scattered across sectors piecemeal to stymie invasions and purge rebellions and combat warp-tossed space hulks and gas ships. The Warders, and more importantly, the Tyrant of Badab himself, were watching their precious Zone collapse in real time. Records of Huron subordinates speak of him during these darkening days of the 800s of M41 as being unusually silent. The rage he felt in the aftermath of the Crusade of Wrath had seemingly vanished, replaced with an uncharacteristically dour and melancholic mien. He gave perfunctory orders for Astral Claw's interventions, be they against recidivist pogroms or Xenos purgations, withdrawing often to his own chambers or the chapter's archives for days on end. His reveries did not go unnoticed, for the chapter master had always been a font of incredible vigor and energy, igniting those around him to action. The captains of the chapter conversed upon the worrying state of affairs, as had it not been Huron's leadership under which they had accomplished so much. Much has been made by scholars of this particular chapter in the history of the coming conflict, for it shares much in common with the fall from grace of other great traitors in imperial history. What did Huron find in the archives or in the Panopticon Solar, in those ancient records or those floating data hollow myths? What indeed was he musing upon? Was a canker beginning to fester within him, spurred and as he had been by the Imperium at just about every turn of his leadership? Was resentment long building, finally budding, beginning to bury, terrible fruit? Or were still? Was this the culmination of a seed that had long, long been germinating, when deep in the maelstrom raging against its tides, had the chapter master gazed into that hateful abyss, only to have it open its many, many eyes and smile back at him with a mouth full of impossible teeth? It is possible, indeed, that the seed of corruption that had been planted in Huron's heart occurred long before his eventual rebellion, but it is likely we will never know the truth, as is so often the case with those of my order, all we may do is recount the terrible cost such downfalls have wrought, until such a time as the Chronicle of the Bedab War may continue. Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. Please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.