The Devastation of Baal

The Devastation of Baal was the darkest hour in the long and noble history of the sons of Sanguinius, the moment their ancient and dying homeworld was marked as a feeding ground by one of the greatest Tyranid swarms ever to reach the galaxy. Hive Fleet Leviathan, a tide of ravening bio-horror beyond all counting, bore down upon Baal with the singular purpose of consuming every last scrap of its life.

Summoned home to the defence, the Blood Angels and their many scattered Successor Chapters gathered upon their home soil as they had not done in long millennia, mustering the full and combined strength of their bloodline for what many among them privately believed would be their final battle. Against the endless Tyranid swarm they fortified the red world and its two moons, grimly resolved to sell their sacred fortress-monastery at the very highest price in xenos blood.

The war that followed was nothing short of apocalyptic. Wave upon relentless wave of bio-forms crashed against the defenders, and the Blood Angels held on only through unimaginable sacrifice, their transhuman nobility and their hidden inner curse both blazing to the surface as the fighting reached its terrible crescendo. Even as ammunition ran dry and proud lines finally broke, the sons of Sanguinius refused utterly to yield their ground. Chapter Masters fought and fell as common battle-brothers, and the ancient halls of the fortress-monastery itself ran red with blood.

Deliverance came only at the very brink of annihilation, as the spreading shadow of the Great Rift and the wider convulsions of the galaxy disrupted the hive mind and broke the swarm's terrible momentum. Baal endured, bled almost to ruin but unbowed and unbroken. The full account is told in the chronicle of the Devastation of Baal.