Horus Heresy · atlas

Campaign · Davin · Segmentum Ultima · 004.M31

Davin: The Warmaster’s Wound

The uprising on Davin’s moon, the anathame’s blow, the Serpent Lodge. Horus returns “healed” — and already an enemy of the Imperium. By this point the Warrior Lodges have been prepared.

Outcome A Pyrrhic “victory” over the uprising. The strategic result is the fall of the Warmaster and the seizure of the XVI Legion by the conspiracy of the lodges.

Commanders

Loyalists

Commanders

Traitors

Commanders

Theatre
Davin · Segmentum Ultima
Period
004.M31
Legions
Systems

Analysis

Davin cannot be read as a field battle: it is a medical-and-ritual special operation by the XVII inside the XVI. Erebus had stolen the anathame from the Interex well in advance, had brought in the lodges well in advance, and had chosen well in advance the moment when the Warmaster was politically vulnerable — the Emperor on Terra, Nikaea behind them, his brothers envious. The fight with the Davinite separatists supplies the pretext; the temple supplies the substance. The canon does not claim that Horus was a puppet without a will: False Gods shows a choice — the humiliated, favourite son accepts the gods’ narrative of the Father’s lie. Davin is a tiny point with an enormous blast radius: after it, it is not the colour of one system that changes but that of the entire command network of the Crusade. The Auretian Technocracy immediately afterwards is already plunder in the name of a new war, not Compliance. If you count only “battles”, Davin is almost invisible; if you count causes, it is brighter than Isstvan.

Order of battle

The XVI Legion against the Davinite separatists, already fuelled by Chaos. On the surface: the companies of Loken and Torgaddon; in the temple: Erebus, the priests, the body of Horus. The III, XII and XIV are not here yet — they will be won over afterwards.

Turning points

  1. 004.M31 The Anathame’s Blow — Battle of Davin’s Moon

    A wound that the Legion’s Apothecaries do not close. Medicine yields to ritual.

  2. 004.M31 The Serpent Lodge — Battle of Davin’s Moon

    Visions, a bargain, a return. The Mournival can no longer speak to Horus alone.

  3. 004.M31 The Plunder of Auretia — Destruction of the Auretian Technocracy

    The first campaign of an already fallen Warmaster: not heresy in words but supply for the coming war.

Events of the campaign

  1. 000.M31 Murder and the Interex · theft of the anathame Atrocity

    Having wrested the prison-world “Murder” from the megarachnid xenos, Horus’s 63rd Expeditionary Fleet made diplomatic contact with the advanced human civilisation of the Interex, allied with the…

  2. 004.M31 Battle of Davin’s Moon Atrocity

    Quelling a Chaos-tainted revolt on the moon of Davin, the Warmaster Horus personally struck down the monstrously mutated governor Eugan Temba, but was wounded by the anathame — a xenos blade…

  3. 004.M31 Destruction of the Auretian Technocracy Traitor victory

    The already-fallen Horus contrived the destruction of the independent Auretian Technocracy, killing its Fabricator-Consul in order to seize the highly prized lost data of the Standard Template…

Significance

The point after which civil war becomes possible: the conspiracy acquires a lawful commander-in-chief.

How to look in the atlas
  • Time slider at 4.0…4.5, search → “Davin”. The point is tiny; look not at it but at how, after 4.2, the colour of the entire XVI network changes.
  • Press “Show on the map” — the atlas will set itself to t = 4 and show the whole theatre of the campaign: next to Davin, Murder and Auretia are visible — before and after the fall.

Show on the map

Open in the atlas

Sources

  1. Horus Rising (D. Abnett)
  2. False Gods (G. McNeill)
  3. Galaxy in Flames (B. Counter)
Open in the atlas

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