963.M41 A Hero Returns
The Shield of Valour re-enters normal space after being lost in the Warp for nearly a millennium, only to be disabled by the firepower of three Iron Warriors’ orbital fortresses above the world of Malodrax. Captain Lysander and his bodyguard are captured, taken back to the Iron Warriors’ citadel and tortured by the Chaos forces. It is several months before Lysander and two of his fellows, with no armour or weapons, manage to escape and find their way back to the Chapter, which had long since given them up for dead. Lysander spends nearly a year undergoing exhaustive and ruthless tests of his identity and purity.
966.M41 The Scouring of Malodrax
Reinstated as Captain of the 1st Company, Lysander’s first act of command is to lead the Imperial Fists to Malodrax and scour the Iron Warriors from the planet.
969.M41 The Taladorn Planetstrike
Lysander leads three companies to liberate the planet of Taladorn from the Sons of the Forge and his old nemesis, Warsmith Shon’tu. The captain is too proud to accept aid from the Ultramarines and Blood Angels, and his actions lead to unnecessary casualties for the Imperial Fists. Captain Vogen is killed, and his 3rd Company badly ravaged before Captain Sicarius’ Ultramarines override Lysander’s objections and intervene. Taladorn is freed, but Warsmith Shon’tu escapes.
970.M41 The Crusade of Thunder
As penance for his actions on Taladorn, Lysander is stripped of his 1st Company command, and assigned as Captain of the 3rd Company, the Sentinels of Terra. At the direction of the Chapter Master, Vladimir Pugh, Lysander launches the Crusade of Thunder against the Orks of the Magor Rift, freeing the Kalin and Viashan systems from greenskin control.
In their hour of triumph, the Crusade of Thunder is recalled to join the rest of the Chapter as it converges on Drashin to combat a Tyranid incursion. The 3rd Company fights valiantly and the Tyranids are defeated, but Vladimir Pugh is slain. Lysander is elected to lead the Chapter, but he refuses the honour, knowing that his temperament would lead the Imperial Fists to ruin. Vorn Hagan becomes the Imperial Fists’ Chapter Master, and Tor Garadon takes command of the 3rd Company.
971.M41 The Fall of Malodrax
Learning that Shon’tu had been responsible for the Tyranid incursion and the Ork predations on the Magor Rift, Chapter Master Hagan orders Phalanx to Malodrax to end the Warsmith’s threat once and for all. While most of the Chapter assail Shon’tu’s planetside strongholds, Captain Garadon, alongside Cato Sicarius’ Ultramarines and Erasmus Tycho’s Blood Angels, conducts a boarding action of the Chaos battlecruiser Tamunash. Together, the boarding parties manage to destroy enough critical systems for Phalanx to gain the upper hand. As Tamunash begins to break apart, Garadon is defeated by Shon’tu, but Lysander teleports aboard Tamunash’s command deck and gravely wounds the Warsmith. The Space Marines escape by Thunderhawk Gunship, and the dying Tamunash vanishes into the Warp, taking Shon’tu with it. Though the Crusade of Thunder is ended with Shon’tu’s death, Garadon maintains the strike force Lysander founded, a tradition that continues until the millennium’s end.
975.M41 Blinding the Eye
Eighteen worlds along the border of the Eye of Terror rise up in heresy. Vorn Hagan dispatches the 3rd Company to join the battle group sent to reclaim those worlds. During the reconquest of Endrion, Castellan Lucos Mrak is so impressed with the speed and accuracy of the Imperial Fists’ bolter drill that he requests that Garadon train his drillmasters. Though the Cadians are incapable of matching the Space Marines’ efficiency, the lessons are far from wasted, and Endrion is pacified almost twice as fast as any other world in the campaign.
Unfortunately, victory is soured after Veteran Sergeant Tynon’s body is discovered, the words ‘Shon’tu Lives’ carved into his chest. Garadon takes this as proof that the Warsmith not only survived the battle at Malodrax, but is also somehow present on Endrion. However, no amount of searching uncovers a trace of Shon’tu, and Garadon is forced to return to Phalanx with mere suspicions.
981.M41 Incursion at Torricas
Alerted that Shon’tu’s warband, the Sons of the Forge, are once again active on the border of the Torricas System, Darnath Lysander and Tor Garadon assemble a strike force. Upon assaulting the warband’s asteroid battle station, they find only dead Iron Warriors. Macabrion, the traitor who had taken command of the Sons following Shon’tu’s supposed death, is found disembowelled and chained to the deck of a storage bay. The words ‘Shon’tu Lives’ are smeared in blood near the corpse.
As the Imperial Fists depart the battle station, they trigger a psychic trap; a Warp rift tears open, loosing hundreds of Daemons into the fire-blackened corridors. The Imperial Fists fight their way clear of the battle station, destroying both it and the Daemons with concentrated volleys from the Storm of Wrath. Upon returning to Phalanx, Lysander instructs Darsway, now Chief Librarian of the Chapter, to make contact with the Blood Angels and Ultramarines, and warn them that the vengeful Warsmith yet prowls the galaxy.
982.M41 Vengeance Thwarted
In the years that follow, Lysander searches ceaselessly for some trace of Shon’tu. None is forthcoming, and his mood grows ever blacker.
984.M41 The Crusade of Valorous Steel
The Warp storm around Pharos finally recedes, allowing the Imperium to renew contact. Unfortunately, the world scarcely resembles the prosperous realm referred to by ancient myth, having been left on the brink of survival by millennia of Commorrite raids at midwinter’s height. Indeed, the Pharosians endure only because their tormentors wish them to provide further cruel amusements. Seeing little value in the blasted world, the Adeptus Terra refuse to send aid to Pharos. However, Vorn Hagan decrees that the Imperial Fists will reclaim the ravaged planet in the Emperor’s name – alone, if necessary.
The Chapter arrives at Pharos just as midwinter again draws nigh, with each company tasked to the defence of one of the world’s major cities. Arrogant even by the standard of their kind, the Dark Eldar think little of the newly-arrived defenders, but press their attack against the Space Marines as they would against their normal terrified prey. It is a decision that costs them dearly, and dozens of grav-craft are torn from the sky in the opening seconds of the raid. Fighting is thickest around the city of Tamashal, where the 3rd Company hold the line against Vhane Kyharc’s kabalite elites. At the battle’s height, Captain Garadon leads the charge that shatters Kyharc’s bodyguard, and sees the Archon himself taken captive. Desperate to survive, Kyharc pledges to withdraw his troops and leave Pharos unmolested forever. Though he knows the Commorrite to be treacherous, Garadon nevertheless agrees. However, as soon as the Dark Eldar have departed, the Imperial Fists begin to fortify the cities.
Next midwinter, Captain Monteith brings the Imperial Fists’ scout company to Pharos. Sure enough, Vhane Kyharc breaks his word. This time, however, his raiders do not encounter sparsely-defended settlements, but hardened fortresses, manned by 10th Company initiates determined to prove their worth. This is a tradition repeated in later years, and Pharos is soon designated an Imperial Fists recruitment and training world. Nevertheless, the Dark Eldar attacks continue, with the Commorrites now treating it as a twisted contest of daring.
988.M41 The Campaign of Fire and Steel
Fighting alongside the Salamanders, the Sentinels of Terra bring an end to the ten-year Alpha Legion chokehold on Magnas Prime.
994.M41 Triumph at Victorix
Upon receiving a request for assistance from Cato Sicarius of the Ultramarines, Captain Garadon leads the Sentinels of Terra to the eastern rim, where the remnants of Hive Fleet Kraken flail hungrily through the void. Their destination is the shrine world of Victorix, where Roboute Guilliman and Rogal Dorn stood shoulder to shoulder against the Orks during the Great Crusade.
Upon arrival, Garadon instantly recognises the Tyranids as the same strain that Shon’tu unleashed upon Drashin nearly thirty years earlier. Fighting as a single flawless unit, the two companies preserve the shrine world from destruction, shredding wave after wave of bio-monstrosities with massed boltgun and lascannon fire. Not one stasis field around the shrine’s treasured artefact – a chainsword supposedly wielded by Dorn during the
legendary battle – is breached.
995.M41 A Hero Reforged
Chaplain Markov is grievously wounded in battle against the Orks of Evertus. The 3rd Company refuse to leave the field until his body is recovered. Markov is interred within a Dreadnought, which does little to cool his ardour or improve his temper.
997.M41 The Defence of Miral II
Ordered to hold the world of Miral II against the onset of Hive Fleet Leviathan, First Captain Lysander requests that Captain Garadon’s 3rd Company be assigned to his battle group. The old comrades establish a series of strongpoints and tremor mines in time to meet the Tyranid onslaught. Under Garadon’s expert eye, Tactical and Devastator Squads rain fire upon the swarm whilst Lysander’s 1st Company Veterans bolster the battle line wherever the Tyranids are in danger of breaking through. Though the Imperium’s tacticae predict the Imperial Fists can hold out for no more than six days, they stoically fight on until the last Tyranid dies to bolter fire at the walls of Bastion XVII on the seventh, and final, day of the war.
998.M41 The Vigilance Crusade
Following the death of Captain Ton Helion, Captain Garadon assumes command of the 2nd Company. The newly-promoted Captain Eshara leads the 3rd Company on the Crusade of Vigilance – a campaign that sweeps the Necrons of the Trozokh Dynasty from the hive worlds of Hanorius. After driving the invaders from the system, Eshara joins forces with Garadon’s 2nd Company to perform a planetstrike that leaves the tomb world of Pharagaris in ruins.
999.M41 From the Ashes to the Fire
Whilst defending the world of Hydra Cordatus from the hated Iron Warriors, Captain Eshara is slain, and the Imperial Fists 3rd Company is wiped out to the last battle-brother. This tragedy echoes throughout the Chapter, but is felt most keenly by Lysander and Garadon – the captains who forged the Sentinels of Terra into the instrument of glory they became.
Determined to rebuild his old company, Captain Tor Garadon receives permission to leave the 2nd Company in order to rebuild the 3rd. This is a curious echo of Lysander’s task long decades ago, and the irony is not lost on Garadon, who seeks the First Captain’s advice on how to accomplish this monumental task. By this time, many of the Crusade of Thunder’s surviving veterans have become dispersed throughout the Chapter, and were therefore not present at Hydra Cordatus, but all readily return, giving Garadon a core of experienced sergeants around which to mould his hastily assembled intake. In the meantime, Lysander and Hagan gather the Imperial Fists’ fleet and lead five companies to the brink of the Eye of Terror, scouring the Iron Warriors from a dozen worlds in their Crusade of Vengeance. The 3rd Company recruits are considered too inexperienced for this campaign, and so Garadon is forced to remain behind in command of Phalanx whilst others fight what he sees as his battles.
As matters transpire, the 3rd Company does not stand idle for long. Warsmith Shon’tu and the Daemon Be’lakor, united in their desire to see Abaddon’s Black Crusade upstaged, launch an attack on Holy Terra itself. Emerging from a Warp rift that appears in the centre of Phalanx, the unholy allies aim to corrupt the mighty vessel to their purposes and use it to bombard the Emperor’s Palace.
Under Garadon’s direction, the newly-formed 3rd Company fight with a determination that belies their inexperience, and the accessways and halls are soon choked with the broken corpses of Daemons. Ultimately, Garadon delays the incursion long enough for Phalanx to rouse its engines and enter the Warp, thus ending the immediate threat to Terra. The mighty vessel hurtles through the Immaterium, and neither side is able to contact their allies in realspace. Garadon and his company gather beneath the Banner of Staganda’s tattered folds for one last effort, and Phalanx’s lower decks are consumed with raging fire as the spectral warriors of the Legion of Damned join the battle. Taking their arrival as a sign that victory may yet be theirs, the 3rd Company counter-attacks, but the battle’s outcome is far from certain…