014.M31 · The Siege of Terra
Death of Sanguinius · the Emperor against Horus
Place: Terra · Segmentum Solar
Loyalist victory Horus kills Sanguinius, but is overthrown by the Emperor at the cost of his mortal wounds.
Horus lowered the shields of the “Vengeful Spirit”, luring the Emperor. Sanguinius reached him first — and was killed, refusing to betray the Emperor (thus the Black Rage was born). Then in a duel across matter and the immaterium Horus, full of the might of the “Four”, overpowered the Emperor, but at the decisive moment, sure of victory, he cast off his warp-power to finish his Father as a “mere primarch”; the Four would not give it back — and the Emperor destroyed Horus, incinerating his soul, at the cost of his own mortal wounds.
Sides
Loyalists
Special forces
- Type
- Battle
- Scale
- 5 of 5
- Casualties
- Sanguinius killed; Horus annihilated (soul erased); the Emperor mortally maimed.
Significance
The culmination of the Heresy: the death of the Warmaster and the fatal maiming of the Emperor.
Disputed in the canon
- Classically the Emperor is helped by the sacrifice of Ollanius Pius and the “breach” in Horus’s armour from Sanguinius; in “The End and the Death” — Ollanius Persson with the Anathame and Loken’s ruse. The legend of Ollanius was retconned from edition to edition: a rank-and-file guardsman → a Custodian → the Perpetual Ollanius Persson. Sanguinius’s killer is Horus on the “Vengeful Spirit” (not Angron at the walls).
Sources
- Lexicanum: Siege of Terra
- The End and the Death vol I-III (D. Abnett)
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