Today’s Top 30 Space Marine is the reason that Orks keep one eye on the sky during fights with the Imperium. Today we look at Kayvaan Shrike!
Chapter Master Shrike is a terror to the green skin Xenos all over the Imperium. His lightning strike tactics are a thing of legend. Let’s learn more about how he made the Black Library’s Top 30 list!
Via Lexicanum:
Shrike is most famous for his actions during the Targus VIII campaign against Waaagh! Skullkrak, which invaded the Targus system in 862.M41. The 3rd Company was originally detailed to eliminate the Orks’ orbital defenses, a task they accomplished quickly, but were stranded on the planet when the Thunderhawk gunship inbound to extract them was destroyed in orbit
Without a pause, Shrike led his company in a two-year guerilla campaign behind the Ork lines, striking without warning at vulnerable supplies and providing invaluable reconnaissance data for the naval vessels in orbit. Shrike’s mastery of guerrilla tactics was such that he and his men were all but untouchable, striking at the Orks with impunity and then disappearing without trace into the ruined Hive cities.
Thanks to Shrike and his company, the Targus campaign was brought to a close decades before the predictions of Imperial Tacticians. By the time the 3rd Company was extracted from Targus, the entire system hailed him as a hero.
The Hunt For Voldorius
Shortly after the Targus campaign began to swing in the Imperials’ favour, Shrike received word of the fall of Quintus, where the Daemon Prince Kernax Voldorius had corrupted the Imperial forces and turned the entire planet’s military to the service of the Alpha Legion.
Shrike and the 3rd Company were waging a guerilla campaign against the Chaos forces when unexpected allies arrived in the form of Captain Kor’sarro Khan and his men. Khan, as the White Scars‘ Master of the Hunt, had been ordered to bring Voldorius’s head back to the Chapter’s fortress-monastery on Chogoris. The rivalry between the White Scars and the Raven Guard was thousands of years old, but the two Captains forged an uneasy alliance. Their combined efforts led to victory, and Shrike and Khan fought side-by-side to defeat the Daemon Prince in close combat. Shrike returned to the Targus battlezone, parting from Khan on terms of respect.
Ascension
Shrike went on to conduct equally masterful actions against Orks in the Donara and Yakhee systems. He is now regarded as a near-mythical figure on many Imperial worlds; whenever Orks invade, desperate citizens offer prayers to the Emperor to send Shrike to save them. He and his men continue to war against Waaagh! Skullkrak. If Shrike is aware that his aid is constantly requested by senior commanders of the Imperial Guard and Navy,
in those theatres where the Orks press them hardest, he ignores them. He and his men save their efforts for those worlds that have already been abandoned to the greenskins, whose civilian populations are close to being entirely consumed by the invading Orks. Among these people, Shrike is a saviour angel, and a source of whispered terror among Skullkrak’s Boyz.
Shrike has also trained a special unit, known as Shrike’s Wing.
During the Prefectia Campaign, Raven Guard Chapter Master Corvin Severax along with much of the 3rd Company were slain by Commander Shadowsun. Shrike led a counterattack that recovered much of the company’s Gene-seed. For this and his other past actions, Shrike was elected by his fellow Shadow Captains as the new Chapter Master of the Raven Guard.
