Anarch

‘In the opening months of 792.M41, the thirty-seventh year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, Warmaster Macaroth’s prosecution of the Anarch Sek, focusing on the contested forge world of Urdesh, reached a critical pass. The Imperial victory at Ghereppan, led by Saint Sabbat herself, had broken the Archenemy’s main strength and exposed the callow ruthlessness of his intended strategy – to behead the Imperial high command even if it meant sacrificing the precious forge world. Sek’s decapitation strike at Eltath had been repulsed, and many tacticians believed that a tide had turned. The Anarch was spent, and the crusade force, now focused under Macaroth’s chosen Lord Executor, Ibram Gaunt, would deliver the Urdeshi theatre in a matter of months, if not weeks. After that, the Archenemy Archon Gaur would be alone. At last, a credible end-point to the crusade seemed within reach.

‘But the war on Urdesh was not done, nor was the Anarch as disarmed as many supposed. Then began the bloodiest and most astonishing period of the campaign thus far, a sequence of events that many history texts have reported with the utmost credulity. Whatever the fine truth of it, it is no exaggeration to say that the fate of the entire sector hung in the balance, to be determined by just a handful of the Astra Militarum. Failure at Urdesh during those few, bleak weeks would end the crusade, wipe out thirty-seven years of Imperial gains in the Sabbat Worlds, and hand the victory to the enemy of mankind…’

– From A History of the Later Imperial Crusades