The Solar Reclamation: The Birth of the Great Crusade (Warhammer 40K & Horus Heresy Lore)

the most devout amongst us consider the manifest destiny of humanity to be just that an inviolate end state assured by the onward march of chronology that the universe itself will ultimately bend towards the one true state human dominion their loyalty to the throne in this case is commendable but their naivety is inexcusable we are assured no such future no matter our righteousness such a conclusion if one such is even possible from this dark point in history would only ever be forged through the cataclysms of battle the endurance of suffering and the cost of uncountable millions of human lives even the delivery of the emperor's most holy imperium these self-same types would claim was inevitable once he revealed himself to his flock to so claim invalidates the efforts struggles works and indeed deaths of the uncountable billions who have labored to deliver the imperium as we know it and to strove with their every fiber to build it in the first place the god emperor provides yes but it is humanity who builds and humanity who bleeds the deliverance of the unification wars was wrought by the emperor's hand yes but those who raised his banners upon holy terror were his tools to do so we consider it to have been an inevitability at our peril and this should go doubly so for what followed no then this is a record of what came after unity but before the crusade the liberation of the birthplace of humanity itself the solar reclamation if acolytes have parsed my earlier records which by now i would expect any diligent students to have undertaken then one's audience must no doubt be aware of what a phenomenal task the unification wars had presented to the early imperium m27 had seen the final vestiges of united terran government finally collapse having somehow weathered the test of the perilous first millennia of the damnable age of strife such power that the planetary infrastructure wielded was shorn away replaced by petty warlords and tupany tyrants roving techno barbarian tribes and slaver clans unto this unholy crucible was delivered to the emperor yet even with his unparalleled genius it would be the work of centuries before the homeworld would ultimately be brought to heal some upon seeing the rough timeline we may establish given our degraded sources may be surprised by this surely the emperor beloved by all scientists and arcanist beyond compare could not have struggled so surely the delivery of the cradle of humanity was an assured thing buoyed by the might of his gene craft and super science to put it simply the imperium had to grow the early days were humble and the means by which the emperor first made his wars of unity were humbler still we consider the bolt gun the symbol of his warriors it was a lateral invention the product of conquest of the techno clans whose infrastructure was required for both their production and maintenance powered armor even the mark 1 plate was advanced by terran standards and was again a lateral invention made possible by the acquisition of lost technologies and more resources during the infamous maulan descen campaign to depose the warped priest king of the nordic the army of the emperor even then wielding its first formations of the legio cotages commonly known as thunder warriors prosecuted its operations in a panoply we would consider primitive in the extreme armor was made of boiled leather or steel plate if one was important enough blades were non-energized firearms were mainly auto rifles firing solid slug ammunition with certain elite battalions gifted archaic laz rifles the unification wars must be seen in such context terror was a wasteland of radiological plagues and mendicant nano phages populated by a race accustomed to little but violence and bloodshed ruled by sorcerer dictators who freely abused the worst of warp craft and gene craft in pursuing genocidal pogroms it was a fire in which the imperium was forged and one that had burnt sundry other pretender regimes to naught but ash in the winds of history in context the speed at which the emperor was able to turn his initial holdings to early victories to grand campaigns almost beggar's belief given the sheer range of opposition he faced and the technological and logistical barriers he would have to overcome to deliver his vision if one's message here has landed and i hope it has it should come to no one's surprise that the solar system represented an even greater challenge to the emperor's fledgling terran realm the age of strife had severed not just terror but all of its sister planets too from the wealth of the once expansive human stellar empire and that cutoff had come with the total collapse of many of the longest standing polities within the reach of saul's light arcologies and orbitals built upon the backs of food and resource shipments from outsystem suddenly had to fend for themselves in the dark much in the same way as terra had done the degree to which they fell to barbarity or ruin was a combination of the robustness of local authority quality of infrastructure and supply chains and sheer luck even regimes that managed to stave off the predations of mutant uprisings civil wars and resource riots found themselves the quarry of vicious and hateful xenos marauders who greedily extended their alien tendrils into the void of saul's inner and outer gulfs as they watched the might of mankind wither and die on the vine dozens of human settlements throughout the planetary volumes fell to the xenos destined now to be either subjects chattel or sustenance to their uncaring overlords for those that survived clinging to independence the threat of the alien became a way of life to be resisted with each new generation with no hope of relief ever entering into their minds on mars terrace twin the first planet to have been blessed with humanity's tread the only real emergent regime of the age of strife was in the process of consolidating its hold over the red deserts known as the mechanicum the theo-feudal polity centered upon the veneration and preservation of human science and technology it had done what no other had yet to accomplish within the system unified a whole world under one banner having spent the long centuries of the age of strife systematically purging mars of tainted machina and corrupted thinking machines the mechanicum had also been the first to send ships into the depths of deep space storm tossed basilicon astra flotillas grasping in the turbulent reaches of the galaxy for the red planet's long-lost forge domains clandestinely martian explorator teams would conduct tech raids upon terra itself both to recover technologies they deemed the terran populace too violent and deranged to retain ownership of and to purge those who they believed would corrupt what they saw as the machine god's sacred precepts but it would not be to mars to which the emperor's eyes would first turn even as the fires of the unification wars still burned across terra the first steps to the eventual solar reclamation began in terra's own orbit for decades the master of mankind desired the prize that was luna terra's only natural satellite far from being just a former grand fleet port or commercial staging ground the lunar jean cults now ruled and had been renowned for millennia as the finest flesh crafters humanity had ever produced a far cry from the base chromosomal meddlers of terra's more abhorrent regimes the cults had long perfected and long guarded their secrets of genetic modification hiding away in their lunar fortress and protected by an array of ancient and potent biomechanical technology to the clone matriarchy of the selenar the power that was rising on terror was the abomination they had long sought to stave off by maintaining an iron-clad grip on the secrets of gene craft the emperors to their eyes fumbling experiments in the field yielding the contagious first and more recently the legionnaires astartes were terrifying and to be denied by all possible means the resurrectionists of the selenar cloned each successive generation of theirs from archetypal stock and some whispered that even the memories knowledge and very minds of the previous embodiments were preserved creating not merely a genetic but living lineage to such creatures the long view of history was all that mattered as occluded in occultist shadows as the practices of the selenar were the lunar societies retained knowledge literally unparalleled with the emperor's own abilities only champing at their heels the facilities of the lord of lightning had developed quite well upon terror given the resources he had at hand they were impressive in any sense of the word and had delivered the first waves of legiones astartes troops to standing army size but they would ultimately be insufficient in meeting the demands of the coming era unification would arrive that was inevitable and once it did the stars themselves were next hundreds of thousands of astartes would be needed not merely the tens and hundreds delivered so far and all in a very short time frame for that the emperor needed luna and its genocides intact to deliver the knowledge he required to stabilize mass production and the facilities in which to do it imperial emissaries to the lunar cults were frequently dispatched and while all were received with courtesy marin treaties were ultimately met with either silence or stern refusal the selenar citing their ancient isolationist principles holding their terror in abeyance finally the imperium resorted to ultimatums to which the selenar responded by turning the final terran deputation into a fused mass of still living endlessly screaming flesh before sending it back to the planet with no further word the escalation in hostilities resulted in the selenar facing the operational end of that which they feared so utterly luna united for the first time in millennia under the threat of oncoming terran invasion girded itself for war activating long dormant defense protocols and prioritizing its flesh vats for production of hot housed war constructs and bio beasts the emperor needed luna intact so this was to be no purgation operation like many of his unification campaigns had been this was not an enemy he needed destroyed from existence but an incalculably valuable asset for his upcoming war efforts consequently the entirety of the 7th 13th and 16th legions of his astartes were selected for the task to be deployed in totality all would attack in one wave although the latter would not quite be part of it burning their crude rocket craft hard past their comrades the astartes of the 16th abruptly caught all engines and power to their ships allowing them to be carried forth through the void under inertia alone with all generators lying dormant the astartes aboard had no access to life support relying on their own enhanced biology and the systems of their crude powered armor to keep them alive during their frigid journey behind them surged the ships of their brother legions void shields bright and weapons hot for all the world the complete invasion fleet the selenar had feared as the legions made moonfall the skies of the satellite lit up with tracer fire and void flung munitions and battle was joined all the while however unbeknownst to the lunar cults the 16th had crept closer eventually docking in the dead silence of space and infiltrating key positions across the lunar surface the first diplomatic entourages the imperium had sent had been ordered to obtain as much intelligence as possible under the auspices of friendship and infosight operatives from the assassinorum clayed vanus had made good on their promise to gain access to critical selenar systems the 16th was readily able to identify not only primary defense batteries but also the location of select clone matriarchs nearly 100 of the latter died in the first hour of the engagement alone the oncoming craft of the 7th and 13th legions fell to the weight of defensive fire peel away as the 16th spear tip wrought its bloody but superlatively efficient work the starting's reinforcements flooding the hab domes and tunnels of luna even the selenar's ancient technologies could not stave off the inevitable imperial victory six hours after the first shots had been fired the gene cults sued for peace begging the emperor to call off his wolves luna had been delivered and the wolves of the 16th had earned their first cognamen in the process with the fall of luna the remainder of terror near orbital space was easily delivered with subsequent astartes engagements capturing the ancient orbital plates lumuria and its massive kin into imperial hands the last fires of unity were guttering out on the homeworld and the emperor's eyes were truly set to the next stage in humanity's manifest destiny the martian accords drafted in conclave between the emperor and the synod of the mechanicum gave birth to the treaty of olympus the full details of such negotiations and their social and political ramifications are elaborated upon elsewhere in my records but suffice it to say that the union of the twin planets was an act that quite literally changed the entire balance of power within saul the brewing war between terror and the red planet had been prevented and thus billions of human lives saved to say nothing of the material cost of such a conflict in much the same way the conquest of luna had solved the emperor's genome-modified manpower barrier mars granted unto the imperium an industrial manufacturing base of unprecedented scale the technologies of terra wedded with those of the mechanicum to outfit the legionnaires astartes and the exertus imperialis with the latest and best in human armaments the forges of olympus mons mondus oculum mondus gamma the magma city and scores of others ramped up to full production churning out weapons armor and vehicles by the hundreds of thousands while in the orbital birth of mars ring of iron the ancient starships of the navis imperialis and the basilicon astra were refitted alongside freshly laid keels of brand new vessels it is hard to understate what a watershed moment the treaty of olympus represented to the unification of saul and the history of the imperium and indeed the history of mankind while elements of potential conflict had been more set aside than resolved the mechanicum's right to practice its own religion being in direct contradiction to the imperial truth for example doing so had jumped the imperium forward decades if not centuries in terms of sheer raw progress the potential range of devastation of a war between the two planets was genuinely incomprehensible it's difficult to say whether the knowledge base of terror exceeded that of mars or vice versa and it is also beyond doubt that both sides hid their most treasured secrets from the prying eyes of the other but regardless of any of these concerns the union prevented the loss of sciences and learning that may never have been recoverable the great crusade would likely have looked quite different in the aftermath of such a conflict if it would have even been possible in the form we now know it took [Music] terra was providing the manpower luna the astartes and mars was outfitting both for war the supply chain was now locked in place the logisticians of the administratum ensuring the ready flow of resources both human and otherwise to whatever corner of the now interplanetary regime required at most inner system planets asteroids and space stations were next in line for pacification the remnants of the once great human empire littered near terran space in abundance and all were rapidly seized by lugiones astartes strike teams eager now to test their mettle against whatever saul's system could throw their way most were fairly simple affairs with the void tribes and raider clans clinging to piratical life easily swept away by terra's newfound might others were far more challenging records state the venusian campaign was especially punishing with the ironshot fourth legion enduring the gaseous climbs of that hell world to purges of its native war witches citational data concerning the psychana employed by these presumed mutates is not accessible under standard protocols or even my privileged ones if indeed it was even preserved outside of the archival stacks of the most arcane branches of imperial science divisions all that we know is that the witches of venus set their armies of lithogolams animated rock-like constructs against the corpse grinders of the fourth legion matching even that notably stoic astarte's formation for resiliency a campaign that garnered the highest death toll of all inner system engagements mercury was a somewhat easier affair its indifferent and scantily populated mining enclaves bending the knee to the imperium with little issue seeing the potential for demand the solar reclamation effort would create for the minerals of their radiation blasted world in honor of the now complete unity of terror and the inner system along with it the emperor ordered the construction of a memorial to those who had perished in its efforts to be built within the hollowed-out depths of a large artificial comet tracing its elliptical orbit around the sun a forgotten product of some dark age of technology void construction initiative the shrine comet would now take its place amongst the great works of unity as a monument to those who had sold their lives in its deliverance with the inner planets pacified the imperium faced its greatest challenge yet the outer system jupiter saturn uranus neptune pluto and sedna here dwelt not only polities millennia old but the foulest of the saul system's denizens isolated enclaves bereft of the touch of civilization as they clung to survival throughout the dark of old night the moons orbitals and wreckage fields of the volume were many and all held dangers terra had had to purge not years gone and some were still jupiter the first target was the largest campaign of the outer system in terms of sheer scale begun indeed before the inner system had been fully pacified or the treaty of olympus fully acceded to the complex web of moons and planetoids orbiting the gas giant was a solar system in miniature and throughout them the jovian void clans had fought millennia of desperate defenses against xenos slavers with many of the enclaves falling to the foul aliens and only a scant few clinging to what could be considered independence the coming of the imperium was a relief like they could have never imagined astarte's boarding action secured the hab domes of ganymede alongside martian liberation tag mata delivering ancient mechanicum facilities back to the red planet and in doing so affirming the now concluded treaty of olympus from the beachhead the remainder of jupiter's orbitals and moons were painstakingly freed from xenos hands the munitions factories of cadal proved a boon to the resurging void clans allowing them to re-arm and rise up against their hated masters while the once luxurious orbital of saros station was recaptured almost perfectly intact imperial forces were given strict instructions by the mechanicum the ship building facilities of the void clans be preserved as much as possible for both their expertise and infrastructure would represent an incredible boon for the emperor's war efforts with its near volume finally free of the taint of the alien jupiter became a shared realm codependent with the mechanicum whose manufacturer were rapidly raised on the surfaces of io callisto anki and europa saturn was an altogether different affair its moons were the home to the most successful polity of the outer system the saturnine ordo collating in the depths of the aegis strife from the scattered remains of the outer sol human realms the ordo had been a mutual defense compact forged out of desperation and a desire for the ringed planet to not suffer the same fate as once mighty jupiter well not a united realm in the same way the mechanicum was the ordo was nonetheless a collection of lunar colonies and orbital arcologies that had pooled their resources and combined their forces to create the largest army and largest navy within the solar system the title lost only once terra had unified and mars along with it ironically enough part reason for the formation of such an armada was to actually stave off the influence of the latter greedy as the mechanicum were for the technologies possessed by the saturnine in particular their unique sealed void armor and ship-mounted weaponry the saturnine ordos were said to have been initially wary of inner system in treaties but once witnessing the progress of the jupiter campaign and after many many meetings with the emperor's most talented iterators finally joined the imperium without incident with the securing of jupiter and saturn the process of reclamation was now almost assured the fleets of the saturnine ordo were bolstered by new flotillas being churned out from both the mechanicum and the jovian clans while the exertus imperialis incorporation of the saturnine rams granted to the imperium a deeply experienced force of void fighters experts in boarding actions and orbital operations saul was being scoured clean with each passing month but yet more resistance was met in the final push towards the edges of the star's light the azurite stations a linked crescent of habitats in the cold embrace of uranus was the site of a bloody engagement that typified the foulness that lurked in the dark a commune of artisan void dwellers the azurites were like those of the saturnine in that they willingly pledged themselves to the imperial cause having resisted the predations of euronight scavenger packs for centuries many were impressed into the crusade efforts to pacify the local volume and for the war effort in neptunian space ultimately and unfortunately leaving their home orbitals ill defend it a pack of piratical raiders descended on the stations intent on pillage their hunger for plunder overcoming the caution that had kept them clear of all reclamation fleets they wrecked great havoc upon the orbitals until a raid against the distant light of saul they aspired inbound contacts the imperium though occupied on other fronts throughout the volume was not about to leave a newly incorporated subject nation in distress and as such had sent the seventh legion the newly named imperial fists the battle would ordinarily have ended there the fists monitor craft tore the pirate flotilla to shreds with almost contemptuous ease and their boarding parties annihilated the scavy raiders menacing the poorly equipped azurites alas would that have been the victory but it were not so as the remaining pirate ships disengaged and fled into the void one hulk broke through the flak cordon the imperial fist craft were throwing up around the stations firing three boarding torpedoes two perished in the firestorm but one got through reaching the orbital contained within the mangled wreck of the ramshackle module was a single elderly man bereft of eyes fingers or ears he spoke one word before his vital signs collapsed silence the true account of what followed has been heavily redacted but serves in what remains as an ample illustration of the dangers the imperium was still facing even as the iterators of terror assured the now unified homeworld that the age of sorcery had passed into the fading pages of history this particular instance of polluted psychana is one thought destroyed within the pregation of terran arcanists in ages past it had been responsible per records for turning the hesentian basin to glass as it burned out the mines of lost idioth if any of one's acolytes know which nations this refers to i commend you for having better sources than i as they seem to have perished along with this it is known for those records as the screaming an especially malicious and wickedly corrosive memetic contagion and upon the azerite stations began roughly one hour after the eyeless man's passing militiamen present at the boarding torpedo size began to scream and scream and scream and scream in their delirium they set upon their fellows and from their hideous cries did the plague spread further and further tens of millions of souls dwelt within those orbitals and rapidly becoming cognizant of the sheer threat of a psychic pandemic the imperial faces aboard hastily killed their interpersonal vox channels and all audio intakes after a curt order for all ships in near space to withdraw out of communication range it is predictably unknown quite what transpired in the hours subsequent to this one more boosted message was sent from the orbitals from a lone imperial fist plainly explaining the detachments actions they're in and justifying what would happen next an hour after the transmission sensorium suites aboard the most distant monitor ships detected a reactor breach followed by the complete destruction of the azerite crescent [Music] while not widely broadcast the incident was one of several that no doubt startled some within the imperial chain of command for just how vicious a resistance the outer system was presenting and likely assured those within the higher knowledges that the corruption terra had so recently been freed from would be encountered again and again and further abroad across the stars if psy plagues thought vanished lurked within the bounds of saul itself what dangers would the galaxy at large present the great crusade the incident within the asia right stations forced the imperial hand regarding pacification of in-system raiders tolerated as an annoyance to be pacified at a later date dedicated resources from the seventh legion fifth legion and fourth legion were allocated to their destruction such an operation took only one month but it was now clear that other potential issues would arise and that all potentially rebellious enclaves within saul were to be given maximum priority over the compliance of human polities in good standing such policies had not been non-existent it must be said prior even to the unification with the ordo of saturn twelve thousand warriors of the ninth legion disappears into the depths of neptunian space as a bulwark against the rest of mutant hordes early imperial intelligence had marked as a potential threat to the stability of expansion into the jovian gulf and saturnine volume despite presuming heavy losses as the ninth were operating far outside imperial supply lines for an extended period against a foe with genuinely unknown capabilities the imperium was quietly stunned to discover when arriving in orbit of neptune in force the legion numbered almost the same as it had when resigned to its thankless task the uniqueness of the ninth gene seed had allowed them to elevate even the most hideously warped of mutant scum to astarte's genetic perfection scouring their twisted bodies of hated aberrations and recasting them as the emperor's angels even more obscured from history still the emperor's first legion were beyond the limits of imperial knowledge conducting a vigil in the depths of the oort cloud capturing any who thought they could simply flee saul as the light of the lord of lightning spread further from terror but the heliopause secured by the void black ships of the first populations with genetic deviancy being secured by the ninth and restive ones harboring seditious intent submitting their sons to the character shaping 13th legion warborn the reclamation was inching ever closer to completion the final act of the first steps of the great crusade came after the purgation of pluto and the establishment of communications and defense grids along its planetoid moons kiron nyx and hydra saul had in ages past long been rumored to possess a tenth planet in the darkness of the deepest reaches of the heliosphere the astronomers that posited it had no idea of the truth in those long-lost days and just how horrid the truth fully was the xenos war moon of sedna lurked there as a final barrier to humanity's wonderful intent a shadowed place far from the star it parasited itself to little is known about the artificial world in this day and age that it was built is beyond doubt but whether by alien hands or by humanity in some distant past or other we will never know that it was occupied by some now long dead zenos race in the days of unity is verifiable however and that this race was likely the same one that extended its rule over the jovian clans is highly probable in 803 m30 five-year standard after the launch of the crusade from terra eight whole astartes legions descended upon the nemesis world in fire and death battling the unknowable foe throughout its cryovolcanoes in a symphony of righteous imperial destruction through means redacted the legions deliver the day it is to this chronicler's eye likely the result of some means of psychic warfare given the presence of certain orders and hosts of the first legion but in those days such means of warfare were ill-understood and a highly secret branch of legiones astarte's combat doctrine the result however was nevertheless the same sedna was purged and purged utterly the last remnants of the recidivist kingdoms of radical raiders had been swept away merchant tenders now plied the inner and outer system gulfs as often as military craft did the twin eagle of terra and mars now flew on every surface within the light of saul from pluto to mercury and the system rejoiced the solar reclamation should be remembered as a colossal success in as many capacities as possible and proof if ever there was any needed of the might and genius of the emperor of mankind transforming rule over one world into that of an entire system may seem trivial to those of us ensconced within 10 000 years of comfortable galactic hegemony but it must be born in mind the triumph of the early imperium was far from assured and the steps the emperor took in those years were dogged with potential failure the treaty of olympus the seizure of luna the alliance with the saturn ordo the liberation of jupiter the neptunian campaign all posed serious risks to the early imperial war effort and failure at any one could have put paid to the great crusade that was to come it is a testament to the emperor's vision and the resolve he inspired within all under his manner that it were not so what lie ahead now was two centuries of the most magnificent period humanity has ever experienced tales of which i must return to at a later point in time until then ave imperator gloria excelsis terra this video and this channel were made possible thanks to the very kind donations and support from my patreon subscribers if you'd like to help support the channel head on over to patreon.com oculus imperia if you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos you can contact me or follow me on twitter at oculus imperia otherwise please like subscribe comment let me know your feedback and as ever thank you very much for watching [Music]

Channel: Oculus Imperia

Views: 200,540

Keywords: Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, Warhammer Lore, Warhammer 40k Lore, Warhammer 30k, Horus Heresy, Horus Heresy Lore, Forge World, Games Workshop, Astartes, Primarchs, Space Marines, Adeptus Astartes

Id: qMsSW10FSTg

Length: 37min 30sec (2250 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 15 2021