The Devastation of Baal

In the last days of the 41st Millennium, the Blood Angels faced the gravest threat in their long history when the vast bio-fleet known as Hive Fleet Leviathan bore down upon Baal, their sacred homeworld. What followed was among the most desperate defences the Imperium ever mounted, a battle that came within a hair's breadth of extinguishing one of the Adeptus Astartes' proudest bloodlines forever.

The Blood-Red World

Baal is a harsh, irradiated planet orbited by two blasted moons, and from this unforgiving crucible the Blood Angels have drawn their recruits since the days of the Great Crusade. They are among the noblest of the Space Marines, heirs to the beauty and grace of their fallen primarch Sanguinius, yet they carry a terrible inheritance. The twin curses of the Red Thirst and the Black Rage gnaw at every warrior, threatening to drown the sons of Sanguinius in madness and a craving for blood.

For all their gene-flaws, the Blood Angels were a Chapter of legend, and their fortress-monastery upon Baal was a reliquary of ten thousand years of glory. It was this ancient heart of the bloodline that Hive Fleet Leviathan came to consume.

The Great Devourer Descends

Leviathan struck from beneath the galactic plane, and the tendril that fell upon the Baal system was the single largest concentration of Tyranids that humanity had ever recorded. Ahead of it rolled the Shadow in the Warp, the psychic pall that smothers communication and gnaws at the courage of defenders, isolating Baal from any hope of swift relief.

World by world the outer system was stripped of life, its biomass rendered down to feed the swarm. The two moons of Baal, cradles of the Chapter's recruits, were overrun and devoured. At last the great hive fleet turned its hunger upon the homeworld itself, and the sky above the fortress-monastery filled with a living storm.

The Gathering of the Sons of Sanguinius

Commander Dante, the ancient and revered Chapter Master of the Blood Angels, understood that his Chapter alone could not withstand the swarm. He issued a summons unlike any in living memory, calling every successor Chapter of the bloodline home to Baal. From across the stars they answered, the Flesh Tearers, the Blood Drinkers, the Carmine Blades, the Knights of Blood and more, gathering beneath the banners of their shared father.

It was the largest muster of Sanguinius's descendants since the Horus Heresy, tens of thousands of warriors united in a single fortress. Yet even this magnificent host was a fragile thing against the numberless tide of the Great Devourer, and every commander present knew they had assembled not to win, but perhaps only to die well.

The Siege of the Fortress-Monastery

The assault upon the fortress-monastery was a nightmare without pause. Waves of ravening bio-forms broke against the walls, and the defenders answered with bolter, blade and flame until the ramparts were slick with ichor. The Chief Librarian Mephiston, called the Lord of Death, worked feats of psychic devastation, while the cursed warriors of the Death Company spent their madness in glorious slaughter.

Step by bloody step the Tyranids ground the defence backward. Ammunition ran low, heroes fell, and the sheer weight of the swarm threatened to bury the sons of Sanguinius beneath a mountain of chitin and claws. The homeworld of the Blood Angels became a charnel house lit by burning skies.

The Duel with the Swarmlord

At the crisis of the battle the swarm birthed its supreme commander, the Swarmlord, a towering synapse-beast of unmatched cunning and ferocity. It carved through the Astartes lines as though they were nothing, and it seemed that no defender could stand against it. Commander Dante answered the challenge himself.

Bleeding from a dozen wounds, the master of the Blood Angels met the monster blade to blade beneath the burning heavens. With the Axe Mortalis he clove the Swarmlord down, decapitating the swarm's guiding intellect at the very moment the defenders' strength gave out. It was a feat of legend, yet even the death of the Swarmlord could not, by itself, turn back the endless tide.

Daemons and Deliverance

Salvation came from the unlikeliest of quarters. As the distant fall of Cadia tore the Great Rift across the galaxy, the Warp boiled over into the Baal system, and a daemonic host led by the Bloodthirster Ka'Bandha, ancient nemesis of the Blood Angels, spilled into realspace. The Chaos Daemons fell not upon the Astartes but upon the Tyranids, and the two horrors tore at one another while the exhausted defenders looked on.

Into this chaos arrived the true deliverance: the Indomitus Crusade of the resurrected primarch Roboute Guilliman. His mighty fleet broke the remnants of the swarm and delivered a gift that would preserve the bloodline, ranks of Primaris reinforcements grown from Blood Angels gene-seed. Baal was saved, though scarred beyond healing, and in gratitude Guilliman named Commander Dante the Lord Regent of Imperium Nihilus, guardian of the sundered half of the Imperium.