019.M31 · Epilogue — The Great Scouring · date approximate
The Iron Cage
Place: Sebastus IV · Segmentum Obscurus
Pyrrhic loyalist victory Perturabo grinds down the Fists in the “Eternal Fortress”; Guilliman rescues Dorn.
On Sebastus IV Perturabo raised the “Eternal Fortress” — a trap of bunkers and trenches in the shape of an eight-pointed star, to lure and bleed the hated Imperial Fists. Dorn, who had sworn to drag his brother to Terra “in an Iron Cage”, led the Legion to the assault; for three weeks and six days the Fists fought in flooded trenches with knives, until Guilliman’s Ultramarines arrived and drove the Iron Warriors off. Both sides suffered cruel losses.
Sides
- Type
- Siege
- Scale
- 3 of 5
- Casualties
- The Imperial Fists suffered the heaviest losses; 400 fallen were never carried from the field.
Significance
Pushes Dorn to adopt the Codex Astartes and to split the Legion into Chapters; the root of the feud between the Fists and the Iron Warriors in the M41.
Disputed in the canon
- An event of the Great Scouring, long after the Siege (the Lexicanum infobox gives 019.M31); often described simply as soon after the Heresy. It is here that Perturabo later ascends to a daemon prince.
Sources
- Lexicanum: The Iron Cage
- WH40k Fandom: Iron Cage
- Index Astartes: Imperial Fists
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