Banquet of Kiy-Buran
The Banquet of Kiy-Buran was a battle of the Great Crusade fought by the early IXth Legion.[1]
Overview
The war began when three companies of the IXth were dispatched to Kiy-Buran, a wasteland of irradiated sands and home to loathsome Mutants led by the barbarian warlord Ek'Lobia. Despite his armies consisting of little more than barely-human cannibal hordes armed with clubs and axes, Veradan Regulars Imperial Army forces on Kiy-Buran were trapped and unable to deal with the threat after three months of fighting. Finally, the Drop Pods of the IXth arrived and brought swift death to the enemy. Breaking through the Mutants hordes, the IXth ravaged the planet for an extended period without encountering any serious resistance. Word eventually reached Ek'Lobia, who swore an oath to eradicate the invaders. Under his command, he assembled a Mutant horde whose number was beyond count. The Mutants were held in line by fear of whatever horrors Ek'Lobia's enslaved Sorcerers could unleash upon them.[1]
Even the IXth found it difficult to deal with the unending horde of bodies thrown before them as they attempted to reach Ek'Lobia himself. As they reached his encampment after bloody slow fighting, the horrors of Old Night were unleashed and horrors beyond description delivered death onto the Space Marines. The pragmatic IXth quit the field of battle rather than be destroyed after already losing two companies. With only 380 Battle-Brothers remaining, the IXth was forced to change their structure and reorganize their Apothecaries into combat support formations. The IXth launched frequent raids and even forcibly conscripted local Mutants in order to create new Initiates, with the hardy Gene-Seed of the IXth able to transform even the most gruesome candidate into a splendid warrior. The IXth switched to a pattern of thrust and counter-thrust and soon the conflict dragged on for 12 years. In what became known as the Banquet of Kiy-Buran, the IXth frequently feasted upon the corpses of their foes as a form of sustenance without having any contact with the wider Imperium.[1]
After 12 long years of fighting, the IXth steadily took ground from Ek'Lobia, whose own cannibal food supply was running low due to the massive lives lost and consumed. Eventually, the starving forces inside his fortress were besieged by a replenished force of 1,000 Space Marines. The Mutant recruits were thrown against the enemy defenses while the off-world IXth Veterans conducted a surgical strike against Ek'Lobia's Sorcerers. Ek'Lobia attempted to flee in a primitive spacecraft, but was intercepted and destroyed by recently arrived Imperial Fists Cruisers in orbit. Upon inspecting the surface, Rogal Dorn scolded the IXth Legion and refused to accept the compliance of Kiy-Buran, instead seeing a charnel house of atrocities and misdeeds. The remaining cities of Buran were razed and the history of the campaign subsequently erased.[1]
See also
Sources
- 1: The Horus Heresy Book Eight - Malevolence, pgs. 132–133
