Clan Morragul
Clan Morragul was a Clan Company of the Iron Hands Legion of Space Marines during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy. Iron Father Autek Mor was its Lord at the time of the Horus Heresy.[1a]
Overview
The Morragul Clan was founded by Autek Mor after he took over the outlaw Ra'Guln Clan's Leviathan Crawler in a bloody night of violence and made himself its lord, imprinting on it his name and will. In the years to follow, The Morragul Clan became a sink for the outcasts and most unstable elements of the Iron Hands Legion; those who, like Autek Mor himself, could not fully integrate into the Legion and its rigid codes, ended up fighting and dying under Mor's merciless command.[1c][3a]
During the Horus Heresy, Clan Morragul was not counted amongst the force that Primarch Ferrus Manus chose to stand by his side in the first wave of the assault on the Traitors at Isstvan V. Indeed, Lord Manus reserved that honour for his favoured clan, the Avernii, and thus it was that when the hammer of betrayal descended upon the Iron Hands, Raven Guard and Salamanders, the bulk of the tenth legion were deployed as orbital reserves, yet to unleash the full fury of their wrath upon the Traitors. Mor's flagship, the Red Talon, had yet to assume its allotted position in the line at the moment of the betrayal.[3a]
When at last the Red Talon arrived at Isstvan V, it came upon a scene from hell itself. The massed warships of the orbital reserve were burning and the vox-net was drowned in bellows of rage and denial. Through it all one fact was repeated over and over, a fact few gave credit to yet which Mor accepted with bitter finality, Ferrus Manus was dead; the father of the Iron Hands had fallen to the blade of his own brother-Primarch. Though he ordered the Red Talon to break through the Traitor fleet that had already sent dozens of Loyalist vessels to their doom, there was nothing that the master of the Morragul Clan could do to avert the massacre being inflicted on the surface or in orbit.[3a]
At the last, the Red Talon's flanks aflame and her armour crawling with Traitor boarding claws, Autek Mor ordered his flagship and any other vessels within range to fight their way clear and to break Warp that they might regroup and perhaps later return to exact vengeance upon the Traitors.[3a]
Unlike other Shattered Legions warbands which coalesced around the Warleader Shadrak Meduson to wage a guerrilla war that would bleed the traitor forces by a thousand cuts, Autek Mor rejected such ploys as unworthy and beneath him, and instead formulated a strategy of his own. He would gather what forces would rally to his banner and lead his clan into launching a series of full-scale assaults upon worlds that the Traitors had captured or turned, allowing them to expend their strength and then destroying what remained with overwhelming force. He would thus create a firebreak across the void, dividing the sectors that had fallen under the Warmaster's heel from those still loyal to Terra.[3a]
It was a brutal strategy in which entire populations were to be allowed to fall while the Iron Hands stayed their wrath, yet it was one that made full accounting of the relentless calculus of war. With their force blunted by their invasion operations, the Traitors could be attacked at the moment of their supposed victory whilst at their weakest and obliterated without mercy. There were plenty more worlds that were to fall beneath the Traitors' power with not a drop of blood being spilt, and for these Mor would reserve the greatest measure of his boundless wrath.[3a]
Notable Battles
- ???.M30: The Fall of the Lords of Gardinaal.[4]
- 006.M31: The Dropsite Massacre.[3a]
- ???.M31: Destruction of the Traitor mining world of Saria Major — The Red Talon unleashed an orbital bombardment that scoured the hive-refineries from the planet's surface and condemned the surviving population to a slow death in the poisoned aftermath.[3a]
- ???.M31: Battle of Locurtar Station — Autek Mor and his personal forces counter-attacked a Sons of Horus-led company poised at the moment of victory over a holdout Loyalist garrison and routed it.[3a]
- ???.M31: Kvalgron — A powerful fleet ambushed a heavily escorted Traitor-aligned supply convoy heading to the staging grounds at Paramar, capturing or destroying the entire convoy in twelve hours of bitter void warfare.[3a]
- ???.M31: Nashe's World — A Death Guard extermination detachment was destroyed by the Clan's forces amidst the cyclopean xenos ruins that towered over the deadly jungles.[3a]
- ???.M31: The Gethsamaine Raid[2][3a]
- 008.M31: The Battle of Bodt[3b]
Clan Elements
Known Vessels
- Red Talon — Grand Cruiser. Flagship of the Clan Company.[3a]
Known Members
- Autek Mor — Iron Father.[1c]
- Calen Oberas — Contemptor Dreadnought.[2]
- Khalon — Leviathan Dreadnought.[3d]
- Veur — Ironwrought.[1b]
- Viton Tahn — Veteran Pilot.[3c]
