Purgation of Melchahim

The Purgation of Melchahim was an Imperial castigation campaign conducted by the Golden Seraphs Space Marine Chapter against a large Chaos warband comprised of various surviving Death Guard Traitor Legion formations, which was fought in the isolated Harrowgrim Marches in the Melchahim Sub-Sector, located in the Segmentum Obscurus. This was the first officially recorded campaign conducted by the newly formed Golden Seraphs Chapter.

History
Following the sundering of the Legiones Astartes into separate Chapters and the subsequent Second Founding, the newly formed Golden Seraphs quickly established themselves upon the isolated world of Esau. After the completion of their fortress-monastery, the Chapter was immediately despatched to the nearby Melchahim Sub-Sector, which experienced a resurgence of Chaos activity by several remaining Traitor Death Guard warbands. Led by the brutal Captain Bronn Vurtak, his fleet had been cut off from the rest of their Legion following the formation of the great warp storm known as the Ruinstorm.

Isolated from the rest of the galaxy, the cunning Death Guard captain took his forces to the foreboding Harrowgrim Marches region and began raiding and destroying several major Imperial outposts. He quickly gathered a coterie of renegades, mutants and heretics that still believed in the Arch-Traitor's lost cause, and took the name 'Grim Desolation'. Vurtak's fleet took refuge within the debris fields and nebulas of the Harrogrim Marches, and successfully ambushed and destroyed several Imperial punitive expeditions and established a reign of terror within the Melchahim Sub-Sector for several decades.

Following their arrival in 026.M31, the Golden Seraphs launched an all-out assault, striking like a thunderbolt, and catching the Traitors in an elaborately-laid trap devised by Ikisat Sammael Bludhaven. Caught between the hammer of the Space Marine Chapter and the anvil of their Adeptus Mechanicus allies, the Grim Desolation suffered an ignominious defeat at the hands of Scions of Sanguinius, though Vurtak eluded capture.

Over the following year, the Golden Seraphs continued to seek out, harry and purge any remaining forces loyal to Vurtak. Eventually the Death Guard captain was found and slain by Bludhaven himself during a boarding action, and the remainder of the Grim Desolation forces were subsequently wiped out. This campaign marked the first official battle honour of the newly created Chapter.