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At a glance
The Megarachnids were the native xenos of Urisarach, a jungle world catalogued by the Great Crusade as One-Forty Twenty. The Imperial soldiers who fought there gave it another name: Murder. The Megarachnids were huge, spider-like creatures, about three metres tall, with four upper limbs ending in blades longer than a man's arm. Those blades could cut through ceramite. The creatures moved fast, attacked in swarms and showed no fear.
The world was the site of one of the bloodiest campaigns of the Great Crusade. An entire Imperial expedition, including Blood Angels Astartes, was wiped out there before the Luna Wolves under Horus Lupercal, the Emperor's Children and the Blood Angels under Sanguinius arrived to finish the job. The war lasted for months and cost many lives. It also led to the Imperium's first contact with the Interex, a human civilisation that knew far more about the Megarachnids than the Imperium did.
Anatomy
Warrior clade
The warrior clade was the most commonly encountered type. Warriors were about three metres tall, with a body like that of a spider and four upper limbs held up and forward. These limbs ended in long, sharp blades of chitin, more than a metre long, which the creatures used like swords. The blades were strong enough to cut through ceramite. Warriors were fast and agile, and they attacked in waves, using their numbers to overwhelm defenders.
Flying clade
A second clade could fly. These creatures resembled giant wasps, and they attacked from the air, swooping down on their victims with stings and blades.
Milk-white blood
Megarachnids bled a milk-white fluid when wounded. Soldiers who fought them remembered battlefields slick with it.
Murder
Urisarach was a jungle world. Its forests were filled with strange crystalline formations, stone "trees" that rose above the canopy. These structures interfered with vox communications and seemed to cause electrical storms. They were also covered in thorns. Imperial soldiers would later find the bodies of Astartes impaled on these thorns, displayed like trophies.
The world was dangerous even without the Megarachnids. Its atmosphere was humid and oppressive, and the jungle was dense and difficult to navigate. Vox interference meant that units could easily become isolated and lost. The Megarachnids used these conditions to their advantage, ambushing isolated units and attacking from the jungle.
The war for Murder
The 140th Expedition
The first Imperial forces to reach Urisarach belonged to the 140th Expedition Fleet. The world was marked with warning beacons, but the expedition ignored them and landed. The Megarachnids attacked. The expedition was wiped out, and its Blood Angels contingent was destroyed. The last message from Blood Angels Captain Khitas Frome was simple and chilling: "This. World. Is. Murder."
The 63rd Expedition
Horus's 63rd Expedition was diverted to Urisarach to find out what had happened. The Luna Wolves joined a force of Emperor's Children under Lord Commander Eidolon, which had already begun the attack. Among the Emperor's Children were Captain Saul Tarvitz and the swordsman Lucius. Sanguinius and the Blood Angels joined the campaign, eager to avenge their lost brothers.
The war lasted for about six months. The Imperial forces fought their way through the jungle, battling wave after wave of Megarachnids. The losses were heavy, and the campaign was one of the hardest of the Great Crusade.
Legions in the jungle
The campaign on Murder was also a test of relations between the Legions. The Emperor's Children under Eidolon had already been fighting for weeks when the Luna Wolves arrived, and Eidolon was reluctant to admit that his Legion needed help. The Luna Wolves, led in the field by captains such as Garviel Loken and Tarik Torgaddon, brought a blunter, more practical style of war. The two Legions eventually fought side by side, but the friction between them was a small sign of things to come. When Sanguinius joined the fighting, his presence lifted the spirits of every warrior on the planet, and the Blood Angels fought with a fury born of grief for their lost brothers.
Lucius and the blade
Accounts of the campaign say that during the fighting, Lucius took one of the Megarachnids' sword-limbs and used it as a weapon. He was so eager to prove his skill that he cut his own hand on its edge. The episode was small, but it said much about the vanity that would later define him as he fell to Slaanesh.
The Interex
The war on Murder led to the Imperium's first contact with the Interex, a human civilisation outside the Imperium. The Interex had encountered the Megarachnids before and had exiled them to Urisarach. They had placed the warning beacons that the 140th Expedition ignored. The meeting between the Interex and the Imperium was cautious at first, and ultimately ended in tragedy.
A prison world
To the Interex, Urisarach was a prison. They had fought the Megarachnids long before, defeated them and confined the survivors to a single world, marked with beacons to warn others away. The warnings were not threats. They were a kindness. The 140th Expedition, convinced that the Imperium need answer to no one, ignored them, and paid for that pride with every life aboard.
The Interex were a remarkable people: a human civilisation that had survived the Age of Strife without the Emperor, and that lived in peace with several xenos races. Their contact with Horus's fleet began with genuine hope on both sides. It ended in war, after the theft of an Interex relic, the Anathame, by the Word Bearer Erebus. That blade would later wound Horus himself on Davin, setting him on the road to damnation. In this way, the war against the Megarachnids sits at the very beginning of the chain of events that led to the Horus Heresy.
Significance
The war on Murder is remembered as one of the defining campaigns of the Great Crusade. It brought together three Legions and three of the Emperor's sons, and it showed how dangerous the galaxy could be even to the Emperor's finest. It also offered early glimpses of the flaws that would lead to the Horus Heresy: the pride of the Emperor's Children, the rivalries between Legions, and Horus's charisma and ambition.
For the Megarachnids, the war was the end. The Imperium's victory left them broken. Whether any survive on Urisarach today, or elsewhere, is unknown. The Imperium's archives say little more about them, and the veterans who remembered the jungle of Murder are long dead or long fallen to Chaos.
Trivia
- The Megarachnids' world was catalogued as One-Forty Twenty and nicknamed Murder.
- Blood Angels Captain Khitas Frome's last message was "This. World. Is. Murder."
- Lucius took a Megarachnid blade as a weapon and cut his hand on it.
- The Interex had exiled the Megarachnids to Urisarach.
- The war led to first contact between the Imperium and the Interex.
- The stone trees of Urisarach jammed vox signals and seemed to breed electrical storms.
- The flying clade of Megarachnids resembled giant wasps.
