Blood Pact

‘After a promising period of advance, Warmaster Macaroth’s main battle groups were brought to an unexpected and complete standstill at the frontiers of the Erinyes Group.

Archon Gaur, the Archenemy overlord, managed to withdraw his forces from the Carcaradon Cluster with sufficient alacrity to construct a robust position of resistance along the Erinyes border.

For the Warmaster, no help was to be had from the Crusade’s secondary front. Comprising as it now did the Fifth, Seventh, Ninth and Twelfth Armies, the second battle group was operating trailwards of Macaroth’s principal strengths. Despite years of grinding struggle, the second battle group remained unable to dislodge the legions of Magister Anakwanar Sek, Gaur’s most capable lieutenant, from the Cabal Systems.

Between them, the Archon and his magister had created a line of defiance that was entirely frustrating both prongs of Macaroth’s crusade. An attempt to break the deadlock through the establishment of a third front ended in miserable disaster with the loss of the Second Army, under Marshal Aldo, at Helice.

However, far behind the front line, on Sabbat Worlds long pacified by the Imperial crusade, events were taking place that would have, though few recognised it at the time, fundamental consequences for the future of the campaign.

It was 780.M41, the twenty-fifth year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade.’

– from A History of the Later Imperial Crusades