The Dornian Heresy - The Bolter and Chainsword

farewell and good luck. As much as he
desired to return to Terra and help free
his father from the malign forces that
surrounded Him, Ultramar was still
under attack from two full legions of
Astartes. Every marine, indeed, every
citizen of Ultramar Segmentum, would
be needed to defeat them.
Fortress Ultramar
Ultramar mobilised to defend itself,
with travel, trade and communication
cut off with the Imperium. What news
did leak in told of all-out civil war, and
as Dorn had predicted, his forces were
portrayed in lurid terms. They were
accused of having perpetrated acts of
gross excess, torture and genocide.
There were even fanciful stories of
sorcery, magicks and daemons, which
only reinforced their belief of the
desperation of Dorn's enemies.
Within their own borders, the fleets of
the Word Bearers headed arrowstraight
for the heart of Ultramar
Segmentum. Thanks to Dorn‟s
warning, the Ultramarines were able to
assemble sufficient forces to intercept
their ships before they reached
Macragge. Denied their primary target,
Lorgar‟s fleet turned its fire on any
planet they could find. They seeded
Calth's star with arcane minerals that
quenched its celestial fire and plunged
the planet into eternal, icy night.
Quintarn fared little better. With the
zealots‟ threat of exterminatus hanging
over them, the entire population were
forced to pluck out their eyes. Even to
this day, Quintarn is known as the
„World of the Blind‟. What Lorgar‟s
legion lacked in tactics it more than
made up for with religious fury and a
fanatical determination never to give
up, whatever the cost. They did
horrendous damage, and the
Ultramarines had to expend great effort
simply to prevent the Word Bearers
from massacring entire civilian
populations.
The Alpha Legion‟s approach to
warfare was radically different, yet just
as deadly. Where Lorgar‟s assault was
a battering ram, destroying all in its
path, Alpharius was a debilitating
poison that spread insidiously through
Ultramar Segmentum. The enemy were
seemingly everywhere, disrupting the
command structures of each world they
touched through assassination,
disinformation, terrorism and sabotage.
Worse, they were like ghosts: working
through networks of human agents and
maddeningly difficult to bring to the
field of battle. In any realm other than
Ultramar such an approach would have
caused widespread paralysis and
thrown every world into selfish
isolationism, but Guilliman‟s
organisational teachings saw them
weather the worst of the storm.
Eventually, Guilliman ran Alpharius to
ground on the world of Eskrador. To
throw his brother primarch off-balance,
Guilliman forewent his usual tactical
caution and instead attempted to beat
Alpharius at his own game. Taking the
enemy by surprise, Guilliman‟s force
hit them from multiple directions at
once, overwhelming them and cutting
off all chance of escape. With no other
option, the cornered Alpha Legion had
no choice but to engage in a
conventional battle, and though they
fought fiercely, they could not stand
against the Ultramarines.
After a duel that seemed to last for
hours, Roboute Guilliman finally
executed Alpharius for his crimes at
the foot of the Amanthi cliffs. Rather
than being a catharsis, Eskrador proved
to be a pyrrhic victory for the
Ultramarines. Many great heroes of
Ultramar, such as Captain Orar and
Lord Kharta, Regent of Talassar, died
to achieve it, yet the loss of their
primarch did not stop, or even
42
The Librarium
Coordination of a realm as large as Ultramar Segmentum is a monumental task,
but it is one to which the rigidly organised sons of Guilliman are equal, and none
are more vital to this than those of the chapter‟s Librarium. With no access to the
„soul-binding‟ ritual required to produce astropaths, only the powerful Astartes
psykers of the Librarium have the ability and resilience to the Warp to
communicate across the length and breadth of the segmentum.
Strong psykers are particularly valued in Ultramar, and the danger of „wild‟ or
even weak psykers is well known. Most are weeded out, but some still lurk on
the fringes of society. It is the responsibility of the librarians to sniff out the
spoor of these misguided fools, as whole cities have been lost to daemonic
incursion because of the unguarded mind of a single rogue psyker.
significantly slow the insurrectionist
cancer the Alpha Legion had spread
throughout the segmentum.
Better news came when the Word
Bearers broke off their attacks on
Ultramar‟s core worlds and set course
back towards the Imperium. It seemed
that the zealots‟ will to fight had been
broken. In time it became clear that
this had been sparked by the death of
the Emperor, although it seemed that
Dorn and his side of the civil war had
also been defeated. Despite all that had
happened, Guilliman still grieved for
his father, but he knew that this was
merely a pause in the larger conflict.
Wounded and bleeding though the
Imperium was, it was only a matter of
time before their vengeful gaze turned
back towards them. War production
was redoubled, and a metaphorical
“Curtain of Steel” was thrown around
the Ultramar Segmentum.
For decades the only contact they had
with Imperial forces was in the form of
the insidious insurrections and guerrilla
actions inspired by the Alpha Legion,
and some dared to hope that they
would be left largely in peace.
Guilliman, though, remained adamant
that they must stay vigilant. He was
proven right when the hammer-blow
came in the form of massed Imperial
crusades. Through meticulous
planning, skill and bravery they turned
aside every attack. The death-toll was
horrendous, with whole planetary
populations lost in the fighting, but
Ultramar, as ever, endured.