+++LORD COMMANDER+++
+++SOLAR MACHARIUS+++

Macharius was one of the greatest war leaders the Imperium has ever known: a military genius of the highest calibre, a ruthless and ambitious commander whose dreams of conquest reshaped the Imperium at the beginning of the forty-first millennium.

After millennia of disorder the Imperium was finally united in more than name. At the Conclave of Gathalamor held in the shadow of Mount Amalath at the tomb of the Great Confessor, on the Day of Ascension itself, over eight hundred Masters of the Space Marine Chapters gathered to reswear their oaths of loyalty.

The old power of the Ecclesiarchy was waning and with it the introspective and self-destructive habits of mind that had divided the Imperium over the previous centuries. The schism of the Apostasy was fading from memory and few remained to champion a cause that seemed increasingly irrelevant. The hard-core of Bucharan dissenters had fled far and wide into the Eastern Fringe away from the Imperium and the persecutions of the Ecciesiarchal Confessors.

Mars and the Empire of the Tech-Priests, for centuries divided from Earth by religious wars and intolerance on both sides, reforged its old alliance at the Treaty of Ceres. In the past the Tech-Priests had found good reason to distrust the Adeptus, and had wisely remained aloof from the turmoil that had enveloped an unstable Imperium. Yet even the Techno-Magi could see that the Imperium had emerged more strongly united than ever. From the Forge Worlds poured armaments and ships to equip the Imperial armies and carry them to new worlds.

Onto this stage strode Lord Commander Solar Macharius and behind him marched the greatest armies of conquest the galaxy had ever seen. The growing anarchy of the previous centuries had left many old worlds abandoned by the Imperium. Some had fallen to Orks, others to enemies unknown, whilst hundreds had simply stopped paying tithes and had effectively slipped beyond the control of the Adeptus. It was these worlds that felt the first blow of the new armies of reconstruction.

New Imperial Guard armies swept down upon the enemy without warning or mercy. Planets were laid bare, invaders destroyed and human worlds swiftly brought under the Imperial yoke. Inquisitorial teams which followed in the wake of the conquering forces reported scenes of devastation and suffering worse than that caused by rampaging Orks. Missionaries from the Adeptus Ministorum set about restoring the faith amongst the survivors, but so appalling were the conditions left by theconquering armies that many millions died from hunger and disease.

However, it was years before rumours of Macharius' uncompromising campaign reached the Adeptus of Earth. At first all the Adeptus Terra had were reports of worlds newly liberated and alien hordes defeated and of ancient human communities rediscovered and brought back into the light of the Emperor. Many fierce battles had been fought and at each encounter the new Imperial Guard armies of reconstruction had performed brilliantly. Macharius' strategy of sudden and decisive attack was working better than could have been imagined. A hundred worlds fell to him in one year, three hundred the next, and in the third year of the campaign nearly seven hundred planets were taken by the combined forces of the fleets of the Segmentum Solar and the Imperial Guard.

It seemed that nothing could stop Macharius. Within five years his armies reached the old borders of the Astronomican. They found planets which had not seen an Adept for over five thousand years, where tales of the Emperor, of Space Marines, and the dark days of the Horus Heresy were treated as myths. They found worlds where humans hadturned to the dark certainties of science, and created many new and wondrous machines. There were worlds which welcomed Macharius with open arms and others which resisted the forces of the Imperium in vain. The Adeptus Mechanicus long lamented the destruction of Adantris Five whose hyper-technology kept the Imperium at bay for two years before it was destroyed in the conflagration of a re-directed comet. Of its secrets nothing now remains.

At the edge of the galaxy Macharius' armies stood undefeated. But the long battles had taken theft toll. His troops had suffered years of constant warfare and had travelled so far from home that communication and supply were no longer practical. It was as if they had left human space altogether, so dimly did the Emperor's light shine at the fringes of the Astronomican. Even the ships' Navigators could sense only darkness around them. Macharius pressed forward, into the thin halo of Old Stars that surround the galaxy. These are ancient worlds where men have never known the Emperor. Their ancestors left Earth over thirty thousand years ago at the dawn of human history.

At this point Macharius' generals wavered. They pleaded for him to reconsider. His men, tired and ageing, hesitated. The halo was dark and forbidding. Navigation was slow without the guiding beacon of the Astronomican. The Astropaths were virtually beyond range of psychic communication. There was a sense of growing unrest amongst the armies and fleets. Macharius knew that the end was come. His armies had simply run out of energy at the moment of his greatest challenge. To make matters worse, some of the exploratory teams had failed to return from theft missions, whilst others reported mysterious phenomena. The troops whispered that the Old Stars were haunted, that the worlds which orbited them were inhabited by ghosts, and that the halo was not a place for living men.

Macharius locked himself in the state rooms of his capital ship and drank himself into a stupour. His generals waited. They had shared in their commander's dreams. For years his ambition has carried them across the depths of space and to the edge of the galaxy. But now they would not go on. Could not go on. Drunkenly Macharius accused his men of betraying him and now he brooded in silence over his maps and charts, reports of new civilisations, and tales of the greater mysteries that lay amongst the Old Stars.

When he reappeared it was to order the fleets back into the Imperium. His soldiers cheered their hero. His generals sighed with relief. But Macharius was a broken man. He had dreamed of boundless conquest and had awoken to find human fear and frailty. On the return journey Macharius died. The apothecaries said it was a fever contracted in the jungle fighting on Jucha. Those closer to him said he had died so that he could be with the heroes of old who never balked at danger or shunned the unknown. His troops wept openly at the news of their leader's death, for though they had refused to follow him into the void, they revered him almost as a god.

Macharius' body was carried in stasis to the supply base he had created at the launch of the campaign decades before. Over the interim the world had grown into a busy port through which poured Adepts, ministers of the Imperial Cult, Tech-Priests, and many others all journeying to the new worlds that Macharius had unveiled. The base had been named Macharia by the captains of the fleet. Now the Lord Solar's body returned to Macharia and was interred in a great sepulchre that had been prepared for it. At his funeral march a million men filed past his tomb and a hundred generals laid their swords upon his sarcophagus.

It is said that the whole Imperium wept for the fallen commander, though it is doubtful if the populations of some of the worlds he conquered ever felt so kindly towards him. In truth he was a brutal conqueror and a ruthless soldier, though he was often generous towards his troops and even to conquered worlds whose defenders had impressed him in some way or other. He was certainly a charismatic man, and one for whom others proved willing to lay down their lives. No-one has led the Imperial Guard to more victories or greater conquests, nor won so many worlds for the Imperium, nor taken armies beyond the edge of the galaxy and the light of the Astronomican.

After his death Macharius' old generals could not hold his conquests together. Their own rivalry erupted into civil war, and the conquered territories found themselves divided into warring military empires led by Imperial Guard generals. Some of the newly assimilated planets took the opportunity to secede from the Imperium altogether believing that with the death of Macharius the Imperium's power had been broken. The Macharian Heresy, as this period of struggle is called, was finally ended by a Crusade in which almost a hundred Space Marine Chapters took part. It lasted for nearly seventy years after Macharius' death, a testament to the astonishing speed and wide extent of the Lord Commander Solar's conquests. Though many of Macharius' most distant conquests were lost to the Imperium forever, the majority were pacified successfully. Today these worlds form a substantial and prosperous part of the Imperium.