Meles Astorum Lore Pt1 | Warhammer 40K Lore

In our Warhammer 40K lore dive episode 51, we pick up the story of the Meles Astorum after their supposed destruction at Uras’drekh. Far from gone, the Star Badgers dragged the wreck of Luna’s Vigil to the surface of their death world, Samarkand, and went underground – literally. For centuries they became a whisper, sustained only by scraps of relic-tech and a trickle of recruits from the planet’s cavern tribes and the return of their Deathwatch Heroes. We explore Samarkand and its inhabitants and what life looked like for the shadow-chapter: no more than two hundred warriors at a time, most little more than scouts, fighting xenos incursions and tribal wars with the tenacity of predators in the dark. This is the Badgers at their most mythic, isolationist, secretive, and driven by survival, their culture hardening into ritual silence and devotion.
Cover art by Modyer, inspired by the original Rogue Trader artwork.
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SHOW IMAGES
• Surface of Samarkand (layingdownthelore.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/…)

• Star Badger Scout (layingdownthelore.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/…)