My dearest Colleague,
in my last letter I told you about the Founding Legend of my Chapter. Now it’s time to come back to the Facts, which is more appropriate for men like us. When the Chapter was founded during one of the early Foundings, Campus Actuarii was given to us as our Homeworld, because it had proved, that well suited Warriors were born on it. Today no one and nothing is born on Campus Acutarii except nightmares. But for two millennia it was my Chapters Homeworld and for countless Centuries before that, it was the home of my people. And even today more than seven thousand years after it’s destruction, it has an important position within our hearts.
Campus Actuarii was already an old world when the long night began, consisting only of few mountains and mostly endless plains, skies and woods. We hardly know anything of it before the long night, but when the great crusade found us, we had fallen back to a pre-modern state of life. Our people were nomads, living as hunters and gatherers within the vast ocean of grass and with the fauna it inhabited. Among the beasts of our world were giant Mammals, descendants of earthly mammoths, rhinos, buffalos and elks. And they gathered in herds that counted millions of animals. My people lived by and of the herds, which gave them everything they needed. But we weren’t the only hunters. Where large herds live, there are large predators, and lots of them, descendants of earthly bears, wolves, lions, tigers and even some reptilian predators. And so we also had to become defenders. It defined us even more than being hunters, as for Predators that are able to bring down a animal the size of a buffalo or even a Mammoth, a human is easy prey. And as the World didn’t offer us too many means of defence, we became masters in defensive combat, developing tactics and weapons that suited our way of fighting. The spear was the most used weapon back then, as it can be rammed into the ground and stop a much larger attacker. Still today spears are a important ceremonial weapon in our chapter and power lances are an often chosen weapon.
During the first decades and centuries of our chapters history, we embraced and adopted the imperial culture of the adeptus astartes and of the Imperial Fist. But the warriors that were born and raised on Campus Actuarii never forgot their tribal traditions. Of course the Megafauna of our long lost homeworld was an important part of our spiritual believes and although we lost our world millennia ago, it is still alive and a cornerstone of our identity as a chapter. I will explain some of our rites and traditions within a later letter. Now I will focus on the tragedy of the destruction of Campus Actuarii.
It was within the late 33rd or the early 34th millenlium … as we loved the plains, we hadn’t build our fortress monastery as many other chapters do: It wasn’t a castle or a palace. We started building it on the same ground that Rogal Dorn had held the tournament, I told you about last time. But above the earth, it consisted only of very few and small buildings. Most the of actual monastery was built underground, in order to keep the plains intact. During more than two millennia we constantly extended the underground monastery, building extensive halls, caverns, cathedrals, laboratories and factories, including natural ravines, underground canyons and mining for the rich minerals and metals that were to be found. Further and further we extended the ever growing monastery. At the same time a significant number of astartes lived above the earth in simple tents, together with the tribes, the way our ancestors did.
Then we received a request from the Mechanikum, to help defend the important forge world Ironclad against a crusade of several traitor legions and our chaptermaster sent eight of our ten companies to follow the request and fight alongside our brothers of the Imperial Fists. While the battle for Ironclad rage year after the year and the Imperial Fists, our own brothers and several other chapters held strong, the traitors sent a second force to our homeworld, hoping that we would remove troops from Ironcald and sent them to defend Campus Actuarii. When word of the attack on our homeworld reached our chaptermaster at Ironclad together with the the fact that the Death Guard had already corrupted vital parts of the planets ecosystem, he ordered without hesitation, that the monastery should be sealed, and the planetary assault of the traitors shall be wiped out with exterminatus torpedos and melter torpedos.
It was quite easy to seal the monastery as it had only few entrances and the main parts of the underground monastery were especially built to be self sustained and easily defend. Only two companies, and several thousand chapter servants were within the monastery and they evacuated as many of the civilian tribes people as possible before the the monastery was sealed. When the exterminatus was executed most of the traitors died in the flames, but not all of them. For months they besieged our monastery and the defenders died slow but constantly until the Chief Apothecary – who had taken over command after the Captains of both of the Companies had fallen – ordered to evacuate the civilians, the gene-seed and the most important artifacts and sources of knowlegde. As the Monastery had extensive factories and hangars, it was possible to rescue enough so that the future of the chapter was not in danger. But we left many things behind and most of all, our homeworld was a dead rock by then.
Later, when the Traitors abandoned their conquest of Ironclad the Chapter returned to Campus Actuarii, and the heretic attack force was purged from our world. But with the plains and the woods burned to ashes and stardust, and most of our people, which had lived on Campus dead, our Chapter decided to become fleet based. When word of our tragedy reached the Mechanicum they decided to donate a mighty star fortress to the chapter, in appreciation of our chapter masters decision to defend Ironclad, and sacrifice our homeworld.
Since then, we are a fleet base chapter and the star fortress we called “the mountain” was our home for millenia to come. On board of the mountain and the ships of our fleet we kept our culture and the memory of our homeworld alive: The descendants of the civilians that were rescued live and work in service of the chapter until this day, men an women, which keep our identity as a chapter together with us astartes. Of course we were forced to also recruite new neophyts from elesewhere, but the Thousand Fists are a defensive chapter – we die slower than many other chapters and so, we need less recruits.
What is known only to few inside the Chapter, and almost nobody outside of our chapter ist the fact, that the monastery is not abandonded anymore. During the millennia to come teams have been sent time and again into the deep caverns, to search for lost artifacts and knowledge, and – of course – to purge the sacred place from traitors and demons, which still roam the place. A few centuries ago, when the Tyranid-Thread emerged and the Inquisition got more and more suspicious about our ways, the apothecarion decided to transfer most of our fleet base laboratories to the ancient monastery and continue to conduct the experiments there. Looking back, I consider it very appropriate, even fateful: the Loss of Campus Actuarii and it’s flora and fauna to Death Guard, Iron Warriors, Thousand Sons and our own hand seems to me as the source of our obsession with genetic and other biological and medical experiments. Bringing back all those Specimen, Creatures an Creations we gathered in our fleet during the Millennia to the place that was once our home and the stage of our tragedy seems either logical or some kind of completion to our story.
I know that this secret is in safe with you, and I am looking forward to your visit of Campus Actuarii. My brother apothecarii made some remarkable progress, I can’t wait to discuss with you.
Lucas Lacertil
Continue the story with Letter No. 3 – Loss of the Mountain now …
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