The Dornian Heresy - The Bolter and Chainsword

ground of Terra shook under
the bikes of White Scars
dedicated to Slaanesh.
At first Horus refused to
believe the reports which
reached his command post,
but once Jaghatai had
accepted the bounty of the
Imperial Palace from Dorn -
a prize which the Great
Khan saw as rightly his after
the promises of his father -
and began massacring the
citizens of Terra, the
Warmaster was forced to
accept that in these darkest
of days even one of his
closest friends could betray
him. Painting a single tear
drop in the corner of the Eye
of Horus which emblazed
his chest, he stood amongst
his Sons as they accepted
the charge of the White
Scars. The initial assault
devastated the loyalist line,
but to universal surprise the
second attack never
materialised. Having proved their
worth on the battlefield against their
Astartes brothers, and with the riches
of the Imperial treasury now secured in
their ships‟ holds, the White Scars
capriciously returned to the spaceport.
Ignoring the bitter threats from Dorn
and the other traitor primarchs, and
seemingly indifferent to the fate of the
Heresy that hung so precariously in the
balance, the Fifth Legion left Terra in
search of further plunder.
Since the Heresy
Whilst the victorious loyalists still
wept at the death of the Emperor, the
White Scars slaughtered world after
world and ransacked their riches. Relic
worlds, shrine worlds and forge worlds
all suffered from the lightning strikes
of the White Scars, with countless
treasures lost to the greed of Jaghatai
before he finally retreated into the Eye
of Terror.
Jaghatai never set foot upon Chogoris
again, seemingly forgetting his
childhood home. The fate of the planet
is, however, detailed extensively in the
Jaghatai Khan, wearing his prized gauntlets,
Mamonas and Avauras
chronicles of Abaddon‟s Crusades.
After stabilising what remained of the
Imperium; the First High Lord turned
his gaze to the homeworlds of the
Traitor Legions. A combined force of
Death Guard and Black Templars,
under the dead eyes of Mortarion, was
given the honour of reclaiming
Chogoris. The patchwork brotherhood
abandoned by Jaghatai fought like
wolves, alongside the endless tides of
tribal horsemen and Palatine infantry.
Still heeding the words of the Great
Khan, none dared to question the
righteousness of their cause. Their
hearts were full of sorrow, for the
coming of the enemy meant that
Jaghatai, and indeed the Emperor, had
failed, and that they were the last
warriors of his memory.
There would be only one result to this
war; a triumphant Imperium. The
tragedy of this conflict would only
come to light when the few surviving
White Scars were interrogated for the
location of their primarch. The
defenders believed themselves the final
guardians of the Emperor‟s dream, the
invading force, to them, were the
52
traitors. As the truth was
told, many refused to accept
that their primarch could
have discarded them. Others
wept as it struck chords
within them, their souls
telling them all they needed
to know. Those left behind
were the ones Jaghatai had
been unable to taint, those
too noble and pure of spirit.
For their virtues, they had
led their people into a
massacre. A remembrancer
of Abaddon‟s fleet penned
the words for this most
harrowing of events;
“Chogoris, burnt to ashes,
bloodied by war. Though
enemies, though foes; only
loyal sons of the Emperor
died that day.”
In the first few millennia
after the Great Betrayal, a
daemon-centaur claiming to
be Jaghatai led invasions
into the Imperium, striking
without warning and
seemingly without logic. During this
time, the beast commanded the legion
to such horrors as the Red Highway
Massacre, a feat which, even with their
bitter hatred of one another, the
Khornate Space Wolves respect as an
act of bloodshed almost without
comparison. As the centuries wore on,
Jaghatai became increasingly distracted
from his conquests, instead depending
upon his khans to fight in his name
whilst he lived in ecstasy surrounded
by treasures and pleasures. It has been
many millennia since the Daemon-
Primarch of Slaanesh has personally
made war upon the Imperium, and
many scholars doubt he truly still
commands the legion.
Homeworlds
Mundus Planus, or Chogoris as it was
once known, was a planet of two
worlds when Jaghatai rode across its
soils. The cities that had belonged to
the Palatine were built from white
rock, a shining beacon of humanity‟s
glory from horizon to horizon. The
ivory walls secured a life of peace and
prosperity for its inhabitants. Both