Betrayal at Ithraca
"He who partakes of the devil's works will be brought at length to wield the devil's sword."
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The Betrayal at Ithraca, also known as the Battle for Ithraca City,[4i] was a battle of the Horus Heresy, part of the wider Battle of Calth.[1] It was one of the most infamous clashes during the fighting on Calth, not just due to its vast scale but also its Warp-tainted ending.[4a]
Battle
Waged during the Battle of Calth, the battle saw the Word Bearers and their Legio Suturvora allies under Princeps Horgoth Nyr launch a surprise attack on the Legio Praesagius as they moved aboard the transport Arutan above Ithraca. The Arutan was shot down by traitor fire, and many loyalist Titans were lost. On the outskirts of the port city of Ithraca, thousands of Ultramarines looked up to the sky in horror as the colossal transport vessel Arutan came under fire from Word Bearers warships in orbit. Lances of killing energy took the Arutan apart and as the great vessel began to fall towards Ithraca, swarms of Word Bearers aircraft descended to rain fire among the closely packed ranks of the Loyalists.[1] At the same time, the Dark Mechanicum forces of Covenant Mormoth-Null targeted the veteran Taghmata "Xerxes" -a force loyal to Accatran and Terra- which was mainly stationed in Ithraca City's void docks.[4j]
The Traitors were met by the Ultramarines 85th Company's air assets, the 'Legatine Raptors', causing aerial combat to erupt among the debris of destroyed warships raining down from orbit. The pilots of the Ultramarines shot down dozens of enemy aircraft but ultimately it was a futile attempt to hold back the tide of darkness descending on Calth and almost all of the Legatine Raptors perish in the skies over Ithraca. As the survivors of the Legio Praesagius gathered on the other side of the Arutan the Legio Suturvora swept aside masses of loyal Imperial Army. The Legio Praesagius was joined by the Knights of House Orhlacc and Princeps Rhiko Trieste led a counterattack. Trieste led nine Warlord Titans in a delaying action, allowing their allies to reach the streets of Ithraca but losing all their engines in the process.[1][2]
Elsewhere, a surviving maniple of the Legio Praesagius known as Battlegroup Argentus sought out the wreck of the Arutan. There, the Titans of Argentus sacrificed themselves to free their brothers held within the hull, freeing allies including the Warmonger Titan under Princeps Maximus Arutis. As Ithraca burned all around them, the survivors of the Legio Praesagius spread out into the city to extract their revenge.[1] Meanwhile, Imperial reinforcements moved into the city, including remnants of the Ultramarines 17th and 18th Chapters and a stranded contingent of House Vornherr knights, while survivors of the 4th Chapter rallied under Sub-Captain Mantargo to restore some order among the Imperial defenders.[4d]
Yet the Traitors were already in retreat, not a full-fledged rout but rather withdrawing under a careful plan. For a brief moment the loyalists thought they had won, but the skies overhead darkened and all hell broke loose.[1] The first signs were a sudden silence of the vox interferences across the city, before a Legio Praesagius scout -Warhound Titan Lacardio- sent a desperate and garbled message from the fallout zone where the loyalist Taghmata "Xerxes" had previously made an extremely self-destructive last stand. Before all contact to it was lost, Lacardio reported the sudden emergence of a vast host of "impossible" creatures of moving blood. It was the eight hour of the Betrayal at Ithraca.[4d]
Of the following hours, "no concrete narrative" could be reconstructed by later Imperial historians. It is certain, however, that breaches to the Warp opened at several locations in Ithraca, probably in accordance with rituals conducted by the Word Bearers and their allied Chaos Cults of the Calaq War Host. Daemons then overran the city, with the Imperials being unprepared to face these kinds of horrors. Known incidents of this chaotic phase of the battle include the destruction of Legio Praesagius Reaver Titan Knossos by a storm cloud of giant serpents at the Avaris Plaza, the last stand of the 312th Solar Auxilia against "luminous beasts" and "bladed chariots", as well as the emergence of a Knight-sized monster from a captured Word Bearer at the 4th Chapter's headquarters. The Daemons also indiscriminately attacked most of the retreating Traitors, including the host of Covenant Mormoth-Null, though they avoided the few remaining Word Bearers.[4e]
Amid the general anarchy and butchery, Sub-Captain Mantargo assessed that the fighting was out of control and a loyalist victory no longer possible at Ithraca. By the battle's 13th hour, he ordered a general retreat. In the northern sectors of the city, where the Warp-madness was less extreme, this order could be carried out in a somewhat organised manner, with troops and refugees moving into the subterranean tunnels or fleeing out of the city with aircraft. In the southern and eastern areas, however, Mantargo's retreat orders either had little effect, possibly because there were few Imperial survivors left there or they were too concerned with fighting for their lives to respond. As for the few remaining Titans of the Legio Praesagius, these concluded that they had no realistic chance to retreat anyway and opted to keep fighting both the Daemons as well as the fleeing Legio Suturvora forces until their end. The Imperial Titans' last stand allowed for many loyalists -including 4,000 Ultramarines- to successfully retreat from the city.[4e]
One of the last, strange events of the fighting was the emergence of a dozen House Vornherr knights from the sea at Ithraca. These were the last survivors of a spaceship which had crashed into Calth's oceans at the start of the Battle of Calth; having cut their way out of the doomed vessel, they had trekked across the seafloor for hours, led by their Baron Sorvak Bhaevenwulf and ignorant of the wider war. Yet instead of finding salvation at Ithraca's shore, the group had emerged at a hotbed of Daemonic activity. The exact fate of Bhaevenwulf's group was never established, though they seemed to have made a last stand, as their dead Knight -now fused-together and blackened by empyrean fire- were later discovered, still standing in a defensive formation.[4h]
Aftermath
Overall, the loyalists suffered terrible losses at Ithraca. Of the Legio Praesagius, the survivors consisted only of a small number of wounded crew who had been evacuated during the fighting.[4e] House Vornherr was left effectively broken by its losses at Calth, the once-mighty Knight House reduced to a small number of elderly and young pilots, equipped with a few remaining ancient Knights.[4h]
Yet the traitors also suffered heavy losses at Ithraca, with the deployed Legio Suturvora contingent losing half their Titans. In the case of Legio Suturvora, the losses of Ithraca made them more dependent on their new Dark Mechanicum masters, furthering their descent into madness and alignment with Chaos.[4k]
Order of battle
- Ultramarines
- 4th Chapter ("the Aurorans")[4b]
- 17th Chapter elements[4d]
- 18th Chapter elements[4d]
- 24th Chapter[4b]
- 85th Company[1]
- 117th Company[4f]
- Imperial Army[1]
- 312th Solar Auxilia[4e]
- House Orhlacc[1]
- House Vornherr[4d]
- Loyalist Mechanicum
Traitors
- Word Bearers[1]
- Black Comet Chapter[4d]
- Unspeaking[4c]
- Traitor Excertus Imperialis
- Calaq War Host (c. 90.000 mechanised infantry, five companies of artillery, two cohorts of Super Heavy Tanks)[4b]
- Daemons
- Dark Mechanicum
- Traitor Ordo Reductor[4j]
- Legio Suturvora[1]
- War Maniple Mazzakim[4k]
See also
Sources
- 1: Adeptus Titanicus: Shadow and Iron, pg. 7
- 2: Horus Heresy: Aeronautica Imperialis, pg. 6
- 3: Honour to the Dead (Audio Drama)
- 3a: Cover
- 4: The Horus Heresy Book Five - Tempest
