The 'Realm of the Reaper': The Death Guard's pocket empire in the galactic south
The ninth of the Black Books, Crusade, showed a map of the Horus Heresy’s different territories after the campaign in the Coronid Deeps by the Sons of Horus. One of its most interesting addendums lies in the southern fringes: the Realm of the Reaper.
A lot of the action the Death Guard saw in the Heresy had taken place besides the Sons of Horus. In the fourth Black Book they battle besides them in the Coronid Deeps, and so do they in novels like Vengeful Spirit. A cooperation even the sourcebooks take into account:
>Mortarion and the principal strength of the Death Guard spent much of the Horus Heresy at the Warmaster’s side, from Isstvan V to the conquest of Molech
>Campaigns of the Age of Darkness: The Siege of Cthonia, p. 115
This approach to warfare, supplied no doubt by Horus’ dark compliance in the northern fringes of the Imperium, fit the Legion, for the Death Guard was never one to keep territories in the manner of the Ultramarines or other Legions.
>They did not garrison, they did not build – they only tore down and slew, coldly, determinately and with the inexorable progress of a contagion or a tsunami wave, and worlds fell before them.
>Betrayal, p. 126
However, the weight of the Heresy quickly changed the tune to which the Death Guard waged war, and soon enough the remaining command at Barbarus began to take action to ensure their own hegemony in the southern parts of the Galaxy. The creation of the ‘Realm of the Reaper’ seems to have been Mortarion’s bidding, for the 3rd Edition Liber Auxilia explicitly mentions that the forces of the Death Guard had been commanded to expand the Legion’s domains.
An unusual command by Mortarion, but not that strange taking into account the Legion had already seen that the supply of recruits from Barbarus could not always be met, and despite Mortarion’s resistances to non-Barbaran blood there was precedent for it.
>With new recruitment at issue, Barbarus itself in a short span of years became little more than a factory of sorts to produce new recruits for the Death Guard Legion, and intake from other sources of recruitment dwindled to a mere handful – unless the pressure of fatalities in the field proved too great. Mortarion’s resistance to the use of bloodstock other than that of Barbarus wavered only because of the need to keep his Legion’s strength battleworthy in his eyes.
>Betrayal, p. 127.
White Dwarf 478 – July 2022, gives us a timeline of the Fall of Barbarus, and sets the years 011. M.31 as the start of Death Guard expansion in the region.
>011.M31: The Subjugation of Tyrinth
>Battle groups of the XIVth Legion (Death Guard) strike out from their home world of Barbarus to capture nearby star systems rich in resources and to carve out their own pocket empire in the region. The prosperous Tyrinthan Commonwealth is violently subjugated. Its principal hive world, Tyrinth Prime, is reduced to a smouldering wasteland of phosphex and rad storms as a warning to the other eight worlds of the Commonwealth. The wider campaign brings the Death Guard into contact with the Traitor-aligned stronghold of Luth Tyre. The Iron Warriors garrisoned there agree to supply the sons of Mortarion with war materiel, fuel and chemicals from the planet’s sprawling refineries in exchange for a share in the plunder taken from pillaged Loyalist worlds.
>WD 478, P. 103
It is a late date, but it seems to be deliberate, for it would not be until 013.M31 that the world of Barbarus would begin mass induction campaigns in preparation of the arrival of Loyalist fleets in the region.
>013.M31: The Warmaster’s Shadow
>With the bulk of the XIVth Legion (Death Guard) unaccounted for since their fleet’s departure for the Sol System, an emissary of the XVIth Legion (Sons of Horus) is sent to Barbarus to investigate the absence of Mortarion and his Legion. Justaerin Captain Arbras Haax arrives at the home world of the XIVth Legion accompanied by an elite contingent of Sons of Horus. There he finds the Barbaran garrison heavily engaged in a bloody campaign of enforced conscriptions, with the ranks of the standing Legionary force swelled by new inductees. Despite this, the fate of Mortarion himself cannot be ascertained, and the XIVth Legion command is far from forthcoming regarding the motivations for their heightened state of activity.
>WD 478, P. 108
These massive induction campaign late in the Heresy seem odd, especially taking into account that the ‘Realm of the Reaper’, apart from materiel, also wished to bolster the ranks of the Death Guard that were apart from the bulk of the Legion, its ultimate objective being the destruction of Inwit.
>Barbarus, home world of the Death Guard, became the centre of mass recruitment that bled the surrounding systems dry of their population and its resources. When Barbarus itself was destroyed by the Dark Angels, the tenacity of Mortarion’s Legion was proven once more, with warbands scattering across the galaxy to reap a deadly toll upon Loyalist worlds, reducing numerous planets to corpse-choked irradiated wastelands.
>Campaigns of the Age of Darkness: The Siege of Cthonia, p. 115
>From its home on Barbarus, the shadow of the Reaper covered the southern reaches of the Imperium too; the Legion harrying the scattered Raven Guard around Deliverance and uniting entire sectors in defiance of the Emperor and his praetorians – pushing towards the prize of the Imperial Fists’ home world of Inwit.
>Liber Hereticus 3^(rd) Ed, p. 200
For this task, the Death Guard seemed to rely on three tools specifically.
- The Inductii
>The Inductii of the Death Guard spent much of their training separated from the bulk of the Legion. Sent forth from smaller holdings and from Barbarus itself to fortify, endure and if possible, expand their numbers, these warriors spread through the galaxy like a pestilence. Many foes were destroyed upon stumbling across these hidden garrisons, unaware of the threat before it consumed them.
>Campaigns of the Age of Darkness: The Siege of Cthonia, p. 231
- The Legiones Auxilia.
>With Mortarion and the strength of the XIVth Legion fighting alongside Horus as the Warmaster laid his path to Terra, those elements of the Death Guard commanded to expand the Legion’s domain around Barbarus – the so-called ‘Realm of the Reaper’ would rely heavily upon the cohorts of the Barbaran Ambaxtoi in their conquests.
>Liber Auxilia 3^(rd) Ed, p. 73.
- Traitor Mechanicum forces.
>The individual forge-fanes would act as mercenaries of a sort, vacating Zhao Arkhad itself and granting those allied to their cause use of their aggressive capabilities in return for currency or gifts of materiels for their work. As the war progressed, some of these forge fanes allied themselves with the traitorous warbands of the Warmaster Horus, and particularly the Death Guard Legion of Barbarus.
>Inferno, p. 174
Interestingly enough, we can also observe that this Barbaran hegemony was far from unified, and we have textual evidence of elements of the Death Guard fleeing and trying to resettle other worlds in the wake of the Lion’s advance.
>013. M.31 THE FATE OF BARBARUS
>As the shadow of the coming Loyalist fleet falls over Barbarus, the integrity of the Death Guard garrison force, left stationed there after Mortarion’s departure, is strained. Fractures widen into outright division as commanders of the garrison companies disagree on how the XIVth should react to the unavoidable, crushing assault by both the Lion, Russ and their combined armies. Without the presence of their own Primarch, the viability of the defence of Barbarus is openly questioned, with some calling for a widespread retreat in the hope the planet itself will be spared from destruction. Others insist that a defiant stance should be taken, no matter the futility and inevitable result of such actions. In the absence of an overarching authority, these tensions soon escalate into hostilities, culminating in the 84th Company Barbaran Garrison opening fire on and bringing down several Death Guard gunships, piloted by renegade crews attempting to flee the planet with caches of toxicultures, chem-profiles and gene-stock, evidently intent on creating a facsimile of their home world elsewhere in the galaxy.
>Campaigns of the Age of Darkness: The Siege of Cthonia, p. 10
Some of these efforts would manage to be successful, though, and planets like Horstax would become petty kingdoms for survivors of Barbarus to recover their strength.
>014. M31 THE BLIGHT OF HORSTAX
>The densely populated world of Horstax is wracked by the sudden outbreak of a deadly contagion that reduces its victims to putrefied hosts, damned to a shadow-life beyond death, stripped of their minds and existing only to spread their infection. Over ninety-eight percent of the population are infected by the pathogen and those that possess some innate resistance die of thirst or suffocation within weeks, their water and air supplies tainted by the malfunction of filtration and purification systems that supply their shelters. While they had still lived, the people of Horstax remained ignorant that the blight was in fact a creation of chemwrights and biomagos specialists in the service of the Death Guard, who lingered intently in the proximity of Horstax’s orbit, observing the effect of their experimentations. The unleashing of their creation, the work of genetic manipulation and proscribed hybridisation, paved the way for a small fragment of the XIVth Legion to seize the planet as their own. They were the survivors of the fall of Barbarus and had fled to establish a new kingdom, stumbling upon blighted Horstax, a domain from which they could rebuild their strength and once again assail the galaxy in the name of Mortarion.
>Campaigns of the Age of Darkness: The Martian Civil War, p. 9
In the end it would not matter, for Barbarus would fall, and with it the ‘Realm of the Reaper’. As for the surviving Death Guard Inductii and the Barbaran Ambaxtoi, the former would join their Nurgle-tainted brethren to make up for their hasty induction, while the latter would die because of the horrors of the Plague God.
>Some Death Guard Inductii present in warbands fleeing Barbarus during the late-Heresy period are noted as lacking multi-lungs, running counter to the Legion’s legendary resistance; Imperial scholars theorise this drove many to accept the powers afforded to those Death Guard gathered around Mortarion.
>Campaigns of the Age of Darkness: The Siege of Cthonia, p. 125
>Most of these garrisons would eventually abandon their posts to reunite with various Death Guard warbands across the galaxy, though the corruption which had overtaken their Legion patrons on the eve of the Siege of Terra would condemn many to a cruel death from warp-spawned contagions and see others consumed as they attacked their erstwhile masters in horror.
>Liber Auxilia 3^(rd) Ed, p. 73.
As a little addendum, the Barbaran Ambaxtoi were descendants of the mortals that have fought under the banners of the Overlords, Mortarion forcing them to service the Legion but damning them to never be part of it (a mercy, in hindsight).
Thus, would the Realm of the Reaper die.
It represents a very interesting part of the lore, because as it is, it does not seem to be a very powerful, or even unified, Traitor territory, rather a hegemony of sorts that pressured the Loyalist holdouts in the south and that crumbled the moment it faced significant attacks by the Dark Angels, aided by the Space Wolves and the Raven Guard.
The Realm of the Reaper seems to have followed a very similar philosophy to Horus’ Dark Empire in the north, a place to syphon resources, in flesh and materiel, for the war effort, but with no significant way to capitalize them during the run for Terra, being a somewhat insular pocket empire.
Its late creation (seemingly during the year 011. M31) and the hastily inductions before its siege (013.M41) make it seem far less cohesive and influential than the map showing it would lead to believe, and show the limitations the Legion was going through with the absence of its Primarch.