Black Crusade of Jihar the Lacerator
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The Black Crusade of Jihar the Lacerator was one of the Black Crusades of Chaos against the human Imperium, occurring in 599.M37, shortly before the 7th Black Crusade initiated by Abaddon the Despoiler.[1]
History
Invasion
Unusually, this Black Crusade was not led by Abaddon but rather by Jihar the Lacerator, a Slaaneshi Champion whose Chaotic blessings included causing the very cosmos to groan, wail and keen in discordant anguish at his passing - anyone in his presence would immediately have their sanity shattered by the piercing, penetrating pitch of these unreal shrieks, leaving a gibbering loon irrevocably bound into Jihar's service.[1]
Jihar's Crusade was a relatively small one - not the sector-spanning total war of Abaddon's great Thirteenth. Indeed, although their passage was detected by scout ships, Jihar's actual fleet was so small it managed to slip through the Cadian Gate without being brought to battle at all. Instead, Jihar was relying upon stoking discontent and instigating revolt amongst the populations of the worlds of Ardida's Gloom to provide the bulk of his manpower.[1]
The Gloom Worlds are a clutch of thirty inhabited planets to the galactic south-west of the Eye of Terror, and notable for possessing substantial abhuman populations, unfortunately afflicted with debased bloodlines that resulted in quite endemic mutations.[1]
"Not least amongst these were their disturbing facial features, for some sported tiny, sucking, leech-like mouths, others had small, slit-like and entirely black eyes, while some were missing their nose, with just a pair of hissing nostrils visible... all were pallid of colour, their skin ranging from a sickly pinkish-grey to a translucent albino white, their veins just visible beneath the skin".[1]
The mutants naturally suffered from severe repression and deprivation by the authorities, such that Jihar - who had spent several years' preparation dispersing agitators and subversives amongst the mutants to accentuate tensions - had little difficultly in aggravating widespread uprisings and mutinies.[1]
Imperial Response
Forty-three Imperial Guard regiments formed the Imperium's initial response to widespread rebellion across the Gloom Worlds, but, after several weeks' heavy engagement, Jihar and his mutant hordes were pushing loyalist forces back on a dozen different worlds. Jihar then abruptly landed on the embattled world of Hyrik V, where the Guard detachment "Brigade Zero" was already fighting against the mutant rebels.[1] In their initial landing, Jihar's personal retinue easily wiped out the Cadian 17th.[1c] However, Jihar's warband was then confronted directly by the 13th Mordant regiment. They had already suffered terribly from the spiritual pollution and Chaotic corruption that they had been veritably swimming in for weeks, but despite their ragged spiritual integrity and heavy fatigue the 13th Mordant successfully defeated and killed Jihar in a confrontation.[1]
"The dark skies, it is said, were torn asunder by fire and lightning, the heavy weapons of the 13th contesting with the sorcerous blasts unleashed by the Lacerator against them. At the height of the battle, onlookers over six miles distant were forced to turn away lest the conflagration blind them, so intense was the fury unleashed."[1]
Without Jihar's direction and with the sudden dispersal of a distinctly embarrassed Slaanesh's favour, the Black Crusade rapidly petered out to nothing. The survivors of the 13th Mordant, though, did not enjoy the victory celebrations - they were deemed to have been too exposed to the horrors of Chaotic malignancy and were annihilated as a precaution by orbital bombardment, although the regiment enjoyed posthumous praise, laurels and honours.[1]
Sources
