Horus Heresy · atlas

006.M31 · The Isstvan Massacre · date approximate

Battle of Magma City

Place: Mars · Segmentum Solar

Fig. 1 · Place on the map

Pyrrhic loyalist victory Legio Tempestus burns the Titans of Mortis, but Zeth blows up the city together with herself.

Magma City became the focus of the loyalist resistance in the Schism of Mars: Legio Tempestus and the Knights of Taranis came to Koriel Zeth’s aid. The Dark Mechanicum assault, led by Legio Mortis and the Imperator-class Titan “Aquila Ignis”, foundered when lava was brought down upon the traitors’ ranks, and Tempestus burned most of Mortis’s engines. Zeth’s last act was to blow the city’s reactors — to deny both the city and the Akashic Reader to Kelbor-Hal.

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Sides

Loyalists

Special forces

Commanders

Traitors

Special forces

Commanders

Type
Battle
Scale
2 of 5

Significance

A tactical victory for the loyalists on Mars, but the planet as a whole fell to the Dark Mechanicum.

Disputed in the canon

  • A sub-event of the Schism of Mars (005–006.M31). Zeth’s death was by detonation of the reactors (not a “lava cascade”: that version is deprioritised as unverifiable).

Sources

  1. Lexicanum: Schism of Mars
  2. Lexicanum: Koriel Zeth
  3. Mechanicum (G. McNeill)

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