Macragge

They've maybe had to consider, like, oh no, are we doing collateral damage to, you know, the humans that we're liberating? But, like, eh.

And this impending battle is also completely morally unambiguous, because the Furious Abyss, on its maiden voyage, drops out of warp right by the Fist of Macragge, and a very brief space battle ensues.

The Furious Abyss refuses to respond to Hales and charges up its big guns and just obliterates the Fist of Macragge with all hands aboard.

yeah okay cool 500 ultramarines dead in space chapter two i am getting the impression from this that like rogue one was probably a good touch point in terms of like the battle lines of good and evil are very firmly drawn yes they are this is anything that's going to be interesting about this story is not fretting about that this is just there are goodies and there are baddies and how do they best each other is the interesting question not

why are they fighting exactly There's a bunch of fun little just scene setting details here where it does feel very much like a Star Trek space battle where you've got the descriptions of, you know, the lances hitting the ship and, you know, throwing crew members across the bridge and things like that.

And Cestus is kind of like our sensitive blue boy about it.

Okay, yeah.

And he's here waiting for the fist of Macragge with a bunch of his guys who he's been off on campaign for three years, and he's supposed to be making his way back to Ultramar, back to, I think, just straight up Macragge, where he's from.

It's just, it's really funny.

For those of you that don't understand the joke, Celestine is seen in all of the art with Belisarius Call during the events of Cadia and even in the return to Macragge and then the crusade to Terra.

Celestine is there the entire time and is fighting alongside both Belisarius Call and Giliman, even giving her Iron Halo to Giliman And they never

have a conversation.

He could not tell a lie, even when doing so might have helped his cause.

This quality earned him a rare place of honor on Macragge, where his statue stands beside that of Reboute Guillemin, as one of only four ever erected there.

In command of the Seventh Legion and its expeditionary fleets, Dorne brought a disciplined military intellect to the Great Crusade.

He was counted among the finest strategists of the Primarchs.

Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists, discovered fortifying a planet he had claimed as his own with the methodical thoroughness of a mind that expressed itself most naturally in the language of walls and defenses.

Roboute Guilliman found on Macragge, where he had already built from the ruins of an existing polity a functioning state of remarkable administrative sophistication.

A primarch who had arrived on his adopted world as an infant and had, by the time the Emperor's fleets reached him, created something that looked less like a conquered territory and more like a model for everything the Imperium was trying to become.

Lion El'Jonson of the Dark Angels, found in the impenetrable death world forests of Caliban, a world so hostile that its native megafauna were creatures of warp-touched horror, and where the Lion had survived alone for years before being discovered by the knightly order that would become the foundation of his legion.

Within this shadow, warp-based communication becomes impossible or deeply unreliable, navigation is compromised, and psykers experience the presence of the Hive Mind as a suffocating pressure that ranges from disorienting to lethal, depending on the individual's sensitivity and proximity.

The shadow silences worlds before the fleet arrives.

Macragge, the homeworld of the Ultramarines, stood in the path of Hive Fleet Behemoth, and the battle for it was among the most costly engagements of the late 41st millennium.

The Ultramarines under Chapter Master Marneus Calgar held in the manner of warriors who had no alternative to holding, and Behemoth was eventually broken.

This planet was a paradise world.

It's not that far off from Macragge, except Macragge had technology.

So there's no reason why we can't all survive here.

So he does that.

And I'm Kerry.

And this is Warhammer 40K Book Club, where we read for Macragge.

This is episode number 180, and our book is Ghosts of Cadia by Rob Young.

It is the continuing story of Daria Nevik, our favorite Cadian sniper.

[laughs]

... uh, basically Guilliman was on Macragge, Cadia fell-

Resurrected, by the way

...

in a coma 'cause he was stabbed by Fulgrim.

He's been there for 10,000 years.

Black Legion destroyed Cadia, they got well chuffed, so they attacked Macragge as like a victory lap.

Then the Ynnari and, uh, even, uh, the Warden of the Librarius, Aldrik Voldus, who's like the most powerful Grey Knight ever, they were like, "Oh, we're just gonna like go and something's going on in Macragge.