Battle of Elhenor

The Battle of Elhenor was an Imperial campaign carried out by the New Dawn Space Marine Chapter against the Forces of Chaos upon the shrine world of Elhenor.

History
The Battle of Elhenor took place on the shrine world of Elhenor a bastion of imperial faith serving the fringe worlds of the Imperium. The world was attacked by a huge warband of the traitorous Battle-Sister of the Order of Our Martyred Lady - Miriael Sabathiel - and a fleet of hired Chaos forces. A sub-order from the Order of Our Martyred Lady had been ambushed by a sizeable contingent of Chaos forces - including endless streams of cultist, corrupted sisters a sizeable contingent of Chaos Space Marines dedicated to Slaanesh and daemons - which had launched a surprise attack on the small convent of sites left to defend the world. Being the nearest possible source of relief, Chapter Master Ergo Marchez responded personally with his elite 1st Company, the bloody 3rd and 6th Companies and brought all the might of his capital ship the Dawnalithe, to respond. Though the Dawnalithe was not the largest nor the most destructive ship in his fleet, it was the most advanced a latest design that combined the speed and agility of a light cruiser with the firepower of a much larger ship.

Unfortunately the information on the situation was incorrect where the reports had indicated that there was only a single chaos ship in orbit, the Chaos Champion Miriael Sabathiel had hidden the rest of her fleet behind the planet's sun where the solar flares and background radiation would hide here ships from detection. This allowed her to send huge numbers of those loyal to her to engage the marines planetside, while her larger fleet outflanked the Dawnalithe. On the planet's surface the New Dawn's assault had bogged down due to the shear volume of cultists, blunting their attack.

Although out-gunned in space, the Chapter Master was forced to order the withdrawal and extraction of the remaining Adepta Sororitas and the priceless relics and artifacts they defended. But by doing so, Lord Ergo Marchez was left with but one course of action - a choice that turned his stomach - the death of the world and everything on it. Reluctantly he ordered Exterminatus of the doomed planet, then ordered the retreat back into the warp, but not before his ship was severely damaged by the fleet of the Sister-Superior of Slaanesh. Though Marchez was able to escape their clutches, his ship trailed wreckage across the warp, the damage causing the Geller fields to flicker and die several time during the trip, the worst of which occurred three months into the journey back to his fleet. This time the psychic backlash from the exposure to raw warp stuff killed his remaining navigators and much of his support staff, forcing him to drop out of warp and back into realpsace right then and there. Worst still, when the ship entered realspace it entered within the gravity well of the lost world of Istraughtium IV. Here, Ergo evacuated all he could from the ship and had the vessel put on automatic pilot so that it would fall into the soft dunes near the planet's equator, which kept the ship largely intact, but permanently grounded. The Dawn would later convert the ruin of this mighty vessel into their Chapter's fortress-monastery and the primary shrine on the planet.