The Damnos Campaign

The Damnos Campaign began when the deep-core mines of an Imperial ice-world bit too far into the frozen crust and stirred what should have slept forever. Beneath Damnos lay a tomb of the Necrons, and the metallic legions of the Sautekh Dynasty rose from their aeons-long dormancy to reclaim a world they remembered as their own.

The awakening was a massacre. The living metal warriors emerged across the planet, their gauss weapons flaying the population and the planetary defence force alike. When the Space Marines of the Ultramarines answered the distress call, they found a world already half-consumed by the tireless, deathless advance of the Necrontyr. Captain Cato Sicarius led the initial counterstrike, but the Overlord Thanatos and his phalanxes proved a foe beyond the Ultramarines' first reckoning, and the Space Marines were driven back with grievous loss.

Only a second, far larger campaign, waged with the full weight of the Chapter and hard-won knowledge of the enemy, turned the tide. The Ultramarines fought through the frozen wastes to strike at the heart of the tomb complex, breaking the Necron command and forcing the survivors back into slumber. Damnos was reclaimed, but the cost in Astartes lives was bitter, and the campaign became a grim lesson in the patient, implacable menace of the Necrons.