First Siege of Perlia
From Lexicanum
Somewhere in the 920s.M41, the planet Perlia came under attack by an Ork Waaagh led by Warlord Gargash Korbul. Perlia was a desert backwater that was considered somewhat unremarkable, but once the Orks attacked, the Imperium sent a response.
Among the regiments sent to the planet was the Valhallan 12th Field Artillery and its commissar, reluctant hero Ciaphas Cain. During what became known as the "Battle of the Halo", Korbul used the power of his "Weirdboyz" to damage the incoming Imperial craft before they came out of the warp, killing a dozen Navigators on the spot, including the Navigator on the troopship carrying Cain and the 12th Artillery. The majority of the Imperial forces managed to make it onto the planet's surface to engage the Orks, but Cain became separated from his regiment and - along with his everpresent, malodorous aide Ferik Jurgen - crash-landed somewhere on the eastern continent in one of the ship's escape pods.
Cain and Jurgen commandeered an ork buggy and used it to find their way back to civilization. (The closest Imperial forces - as they found out later - were on the western continent.) Along the way, they encountered a squad of the Perlia PDF near a damaged hydro station. Near the town of Prosperity Wells, they engaged elements of the Waaagh, and in the process liberated a group of civilians (one of whom was an enginseer and sister to the sergeant leading the PDF contingent - the reason why the civilians were freed in the first place). The addition of numbers led the Orks to believe that they faced an army, and the actions undertaken that day had consequences that would determine the campaign. Before departing from the town, Cain ordered the prometheum tanks - used to fuel the Orks' vehicles - to be destroyed.
Encountering other Perlia PDF, including several tanks, Cain led his ragtag group of troopers and civilians on their way towards the Imperial lines. Towards the end of their journey - having picked up supplies necessary for their survival from caches hidden in the desert - they inadvertently blundered onto Korbul's command post. In what became the pivotal moment of the entire siege, Cain and Korbul became locked in single combat, a combat which ended with Cain pulping the Warlord's brain with his laspistol. The green horde began to come apart, the other warbosses fighting amongst each other for supremacy - a fact the Imperial forces took advantage of. Cain was found by a Valhallan infantry regiment, the 362nd, and then reunited with his own regiment.
Cain's actions on Perlia - along with picts taken of his duel with Korbul - made him a hero to the people of Perlia and the entire subsector it was in, and they would also follow him in the decades to come. The people of Perlia called Cain "the Liberator", and his journey through the desert to the final confrontation with the Ork Warlord became known as the March of the Liberator. The town of Prosperity Wells, which had been considered the turning point in the siege, was rebuilt and renamed Cainstead in Cain's honour - a fact that the commissar reportedly found hilarious. Of the ragtag army that followed him, Cain managed to reach the Imperial lines with roughly 70% of his force intact. As for the Orks, they were eventually cleansed entirely from the planet by the early 950s.M41.
In 999.M41, Cain - by that time an old man teaching at a Schola Progenium on Perlia - would defend the planet once more during Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade.
