Saint Sabbat

Born on the pastoral world of Hagia around the year 500.M35, the child who would become Saint Sabbat was the daughter of a humble shepherd, and by every ordinary measure should have lived and died unremarked among her flocks. Instead she came forward claiming that the God-Emperor Himself had spoken to her in visions, commanding her to lead His people to war against the Ruinous Powers that gnawed at the edges of the Segmentum Pacificus. That a shepherd girl should make such a claim and be believed is itself a measure of the fervour she kindled in all who heard her.

What followed was one of the great crusades of the age. For more than a century Sabbat led her host from world to world, and over the span of that campaign more than a hundred planets were wrested from darkness and returned to the Emperor's light. Her banner drew warriors of the Adeptus Astartes to her side, among them the White Scars and the Brazen Skulls, alongside countless regiments of mortal soldiery and vast trains of pilgrims who followed her out of pure devotion. In her honour the reclaimed region was named the Sabbat Worlds, a name it bears to this day.

Martyrdom and Return

Her crusade ended at Harkalon, where amid a titanic battle against the hordes of Chaos she fell at last, struck down by nine grievous wounds. An honour guard of White Scars bore her body home to Hagia, and there she was laid to rest in the sanctuary that became known as the Shrinehold, her memory kept as one of the Imperium's most beloved saints. Yet her story did not end in the grave.

Millennia later, as a second great crusade to reclaim the Sabbat Worlds hung in the balance against the resurgent forces of the Archenemy, the Saint returned, reborn as a Living Saint, the Beati, to rally the faithful once more. In that dark hour she called upon Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt and the soldiers of the Tanith First to stand as her guardians, and through them the crusade that carried her name was set once again upon the road to victory.