At the beginning of the thirty-first millennium, as the Great Crusade was nearing its end, the Emperor bestowed the title of "Warmaster" upon Horus. He himself immediately departed from the Great Crusade fleet and returned to Terra to carry out some unknown plan.
However, it was at this very moment!
As Warmaster Horus led his own XVI Legion—the former Shadowmoon Wolves, now renamed the Sons of Horus—in a campaign to put down a rebellion on the moon of Davin, something utterly unbelievable happened: Horus, the immensely powerful Primarch reputed to wield almost as much power as the Emperor, fell because of a small wound inflicted by a sword.
The event that caused such a tremendous shock and upheaval in Horus's fleet had begun sixty years earlier, near the end of the thirtieth millennium...
The planet Davin was the eighth world conquered and reclaimed by the Warmaster Horus's 63rd Expeditionary Fleet during the Great Crusade, in the year 945 of the thirtieth millennium. Thus, it was recorded in the Imperial government's archives under the designation "63-8."
At the time, the planet was inhabited only by Abhumans who had barely progressed beyond tribal society. As expected, the tribal warriors, who could wield only primitive weapons, were swiftly defeated by the Shadowmoon Wolves, and the planet was brought back into Terra's fold in a very short time.
After the battle was over, Horus naturally continued leading his fleet on the Great Crusade, leaving behind only his mortal friend, Eugen Temba, to serve as governor, and Kor Phaeron, captain of the Word Bearers' First Company, to oversee the reconstruction of the planetary government and the subsequent spread of the Imperial Truth.
All of Horus's arrangements were entirely reasonable and proper. There was nothing to criticize, since most reclaimed planets and colonial worlds were dealt