Iconography of the Graven Star Chapter
Hol Beloth was a prominent and very ambitious field commander of the Word Bearers Legion, serving as the master of the Graven Star Chapter during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras in the 30th and early 31st Millennia. Hol Beloth was a skilled battlefield tactician and a charismatic war leader within his Legion. He favoured direct, overwhelming assaults which counted on the faith and fervour of his Word Bearers to carry the field against any odds. Freshly incised on his skin before the Battle of Calth by the diabolic ministrations of his Dark Apostle Maloq Kartho, Hol Beloth believed that this ward gave him protection against the entities of the Warp over his life. Little did he know the ultimate price such ministrations would come to cost him.
History[]
Hol Beloth was one of the most prominent and certainly the most ambitious of the field commanders of the Word Bearers Legion, Hol Beloth was a seasoned warrior and decorated veteran of his Legion's lightning-swift Compliance camapign in the years after their censure on the world of Khur by the Emperor Himself. This was a period which saw the XVIIth Legion conquer more worlds in a confined period of time than any other, and Captain Hol Beloth, then a rising star within the ranks, was personally responsible for a score of broken and subjugated worlds. Of these Compliance actions perhaps the most infamous was that of the self-entitled Serenity Alpha, a human world of billions whose near-complete isolation had spared it the ravages of the Age of Strife. Its indigenous people had turned their technology into the creation of a live of mindless ease, their every need catered to by automata, and their freedoms suborned to the guidance of impassive thinking machines. Hol Beloth's condemnation for their sins was absolute, and after nine days not a single living being walked on Serenity Alpha.
The flames of his ambition fanned further by the honeyed words of Erebus and his Dark Apostle, Maloq Kartho, Hol Beloth took up a position of command at the forefront of the Word Bearers' attack on Calth, where he would meet his dark fate at last. During the Battle of Calth, Hol Beloth, master of the Graven Star Chapter, had been selected as one of the Force Commanders to lead the assault. He was charged with taking Lanshear City. Hol Beloth commanded a force of almost ten thousand Legiones Astartes and uncounted auxilia troops, reinforced by several maniples of Legio Suturvora Titans; were the Loyalists to engage such a force head-on, they would have had little hope of a conventional victory. When Ultramarines Captain Remus Ventanus led the 4th Company into Lanshear in order to secure a cogitator with a kill-code, Hol Beloth realised his enemies were trying to achieve some specific goal, therefore, he unleashed the Titans of the Legio Suturvora, Cataphractii Terminators and the daemonically-possessed Gal Vorbak against Captain Ventanus and his Ultramarines. But before his forces could finish off Ventanus and his warriors, they were suddenly reinforced by additional XIIIth Legion forces comprised of the 19th, 111th and 112th Companies commanded by Captain Aethon and Sergeant Anchise, as well as Titans of the Legio Praesagius and additional Land Raiders under Tetrarch Tauro Nicodemus. Their forces were further bolstered by the timely arrival of the Neride 41st under Tetrarch Eikos Lamiad and the Contemptor Dreadnought Telemachus. The overall strength and superior coordination of the vengeful Ultramarines fought a ferocious counter-strike, which stunned Hold Beloth's forces with two of his senior captains being killed by Telemachus. With his forces concentrated in one place, the tide quickly turned against the Word Bearers when Magos Meer Edv Tawren took control over Calth's Defence Grid, and utilised its orbital weapons platforms to obliterate Hol Beloth and his forces from orbit.
Wargear[]
- Artificer Armour
- Iron Halo
- Master-crafted Power Fist
- Tainted Weapon
- Shard of Erebus
- Plasma Pistol
- Frag & Krak Grenades
Sources[]
- The Horus Heresy - Book Five: Tempest, by Alan Bligh, pp. 51, 252
- Know No Fear (Novel) by Dan Abnett
- Mark of Calth (Anthology), "The Shards of Erebus" (Short Story) by Guy Haley