Characters / Warhammer 40,000: Astartes Chapters First Founding

Warhammer 40,000 Main Character Index
Imperium of Man: Founders, The Primarchs, Adeptus Astartes (First Founding Chapters, Other Chapters, Characters, Primaris Marines), Astra Militarum, Adepta Sororitas, Inquisition, Mechanicus, Other factions
Forces of Chaos: Chaos Gods, Chaos Primarchs, Chaos Marines
Xeno Races: Aeldari (Asuryani, Drukhari) | Leagues of Votann | Necrons | Orks (Characters) | T'au Empire | Tyranids (Genestealer Cults)

Dark Angels

"Repent, for tomorrow you die!"

A moment of laxity spawns a lifetime of heresy. Never forget, never forgive.

The Dark Angels were originally the First Legion. Their Primarch is Lion El'Jonson and their current Supreme Grand Master is Azrael. They are based on the massive space-fortress Angelicasta (The Tower of Angels), more commonly known as the Rock, built from the remains of their destroyed home world Caliban.

As the first Space Marine Legion founded, the Dark Angels are blessed with advanced plasma and anti-grav devices in their armory, technological relics from the Great Crusade. However, the chapter is better known for its secrecy, and for pursuing an agenda it keeps hidden from Imperial authorities. It is rumored this is related to the destruction of their home world at the end of the Horus Heresy, the small role the Legion played during that conflict, as well as why they and their successor chapters refer to themselves as the Unforgiven.

The Dark Angels have been present in the Warhammer 40,000 game since its 1st Edition with the Deathwing being the subject of one of the first short stories that Games Workshop published for the game. During 2nd Edition the Chapter was detailed in Codex: Angels of Death alongside the Blood Angels while 3rd Edition saw them receive an expansion codex for Codex: Space Marines. The Dark Angels received their first full solo codex in 2007 during the 4th Edition of the game. The Dark Angels were the protagonists of the Storm of Vengeance campaign set for 2nd Edition^note later updated for 4th Edition and were the Imperial half of the Dark Crusade starter for the 6th and 7th Edition rules. The 8th Edition rules for the Dark Angels can be found in Codex Adeptus Astartes: Dark Angels released December 2017 while additional rules were included in the January 2020 supplement Psychic Awakening: Ritual of the Damned. For 9th Edition, the Chapter uses a combination of the rules published in October 2020's Codex: Space Marines combined with the Index Astartes: Dark Angels download, available free from the Warhammer Community website.

To delve further into these warriors' secrets, see the Dark Angels novels and the Horus Heresy - Loyalist Legions page.

---

• Ace Pilot: The greatest pilots of the Dark Angels are awarded with the Order of the Silver Talon and have their names engraved onto the Gate of Angels, the entrance to the Rock's largest launch bay. Only those pilots who have performed nearly impossible feats are awarded this honour, such as the lone Nephilim pilot who fought off wave after wave of Necron Doom Scythes for six hours.
• The Alcatraz: The Rock has an extensive network of dungeons. One cell accessible only to the Grand Master contains Luther, the heretic who led the Fallen into treason. In another chamber, known only to the Emperor and the silent Watchers in the Dark, is the slumbering form of the Dark Angels' Primarch, Lion El'Jonson.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Soon after the opening of the Great Rift, an army of Daemons invade the Rock while most of the Chapter was away. The fight between Dark Angels and Daemons takes up every dock, the most sacred halls and the deepest dungeon but soon the forces of Chaos disappear. The majority of Dark Angels celebrate it as a hard-fought victory that saved their base, but in the aftermath Grand Master Azrael learns that the true purpose of the attack was to free the traitor Luther.
• Aloof Ally: The Dark Angels have gained a reputation for being capricious allies, arriving in a battlezone and assisting those Imperial forces present before disappearing again with no warning or explanation, whether victory has been assured or not. In many cases, unless involved in particularly important campaigns, the Dark Angels won't even openly communicate with their supposed allies, let alone coordinate on joint operations.
• Arch-Enemy: Lion El'Jonson's legendary feud with Konrad Curze was passed down to his Legion. The Dark Angels absolutely despise the Night Lords and will be particularly bloodthirsty when going after them.
• The Atoner: It's pretty much taken for granted that the Dark Angels are an entire Chapter of these, but what (or whose) actions they're trying to redeem themselves for is, like pretty much everything about these guys, a closely guarded secret.
• Badass Long Robe:
  • Dark Angels veterans and members of the Inner Circle stand out for wearing bone-colored robes over their power armor, often with large hoods. This is said to represent their shame over the actions of the Fallen.
  • The Dark Angel Relic known as the Shroud of Heroes is a sombre robe created from the death shrouds of some of the greatest heroes of the Chapter. Those who wear this revered robe claim that the spirits of these heroes protect the wearer from harm, something the 8th Edition rules represent with a negative hit modifier against any attacks targeted at the bearer.
• Berserk Button: Any other Imperial forces investigating the Fallen, or even coming into contact with them, is known to extort extreme reactions from the Dark Angels. In one instance a Dark Angels fleet even went so far as to briefly engage a Black Templars Strike Cruiser who had captured the mysterious "Voice of the Emperor"^note One of the aliases of the most sought after Fallen, Cypher.
• Black Knight: Back during the Great Crusade, their armor coloration was primarily black and they acted as the Emperor's loyal strike force against targets that needed to be taken out swiftly regardless of collateral damage. They were effectively allowed to annihilate whole civilizations, species, and even planets if it meant accomplishing their mission, and enjoyed a lack of oversight from anyone who wasn't the Emperor or Lion El'Jonson. In the present day, they chafe against the restrictions placed upon them by the Codex Astartes and have to be much more careful in their operations now that they are without the allowances afforded to them by the Master of Mankind.
• Black Swords Are Better: The Heavenfall blades borne by highest-ranked leaders of the Dark Angels are master-crafted power swords that are some of the Chapter's most prized relics. Each has a blade cut from a block of obsidian said to have been part of an asteroid that struck the Tower of Angels shortly after the destruction of Caliban.
• Brain/Computer Interface: The Master of the Rock is the most honoured Techmarine of the Dark Angels and it is his duty to maintain the ancient technology of the Chapter's fortress monastery. To do this the Master of the Rock is permanently wired into the Rock's control nave where his mind merges with the machine spirits of the Tower of Angels.
• A Commander Is You: Elitist/Unit Specialist. The Dark Angels have a preferance for units in Terminator armour and on bikes, making them powerful and flexible. However they lack certain standard Astartes units and have a subpar aerial game.
• Cool Helmet: The Angel's Ambit^note introduced by the late 8th Edition book Psychic Awakening: Ritual of the Damned is an impressively crafted winged helm that has been fitted with superior vox units that allow them to deliver orders to their brothers with greater clarity, increasing the range of their in-game abilities.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: The Horus Heresy novels have shown that there were members of other loyalist legions that sided with Horus and the Great Scouring purge of all Chaos aligned marines following the Heresy is implied to have targeted these traitors alongside the traitor legions. One Fallen rebuked his Dark Angel captors by pointing out they could have simply outed their own traitors and joined the hunt, but instead they chose to try and cover it all up, leading to their current difficulties.
• Dark Secret: The Dark Angels and their successors have engaged in a ten-thousand-year effort to conceal the fact that a faction of their Legion rebelled out of confusion or jealousy, causing the loyalists to destroy their own home world in a fury. A warp rift scattered these Fallen Angels across time and space, and the Dark Angels are obsessed with capturing them, both to hide their shame and to grant the Fallen absolution through vicious torture, thereby restoring the chapter's honor. Ironically, there are a few tantalizing indications that the Inquisition or the Grey Knights knows about the Fallen, and simply don't blame the Dark Angels for their forebears' shortcomings. This would imply that those within the Inquisition who might be on the know are less concerned with the Dark Angels' secrets than they are about the Angels' actions to avoid their secrets from getting out (which are rather concerning).
  • There are also some hints that this Dark Secret is itself a cover story and the real Dark Secret is something a whole lot worse and largely unnamed.
• Determinator: For ten thousand years the Dark Angels have hunted down the Fallen in secret without giving up nor swaying from their course, even when it brings them into conflict with other Imperial agencies. They're all but guaranteed to have a rule by the name of "Grim Resolve" in each edition to reflect their unrelenting nature, and their 10th edition Unforgiven Task Force detachment rules allow them to resist the drawbacks of Battle-shock and even gain bonuses when Battle-shocked.
• Electronic Eyes:
  • The Eye of the Unseen is an ancient relic of the Dark Angels that is bequeathed to heroes of the Chapter by the mysterious Watchers in the Dark. Those fitted with this bionic eye are able to fix their opponent with a malevolent gaze so unnerving that they can do nothing except drop to their knees and confess their sins.
  • The Arbiter's Gaze is a special-issue bionic eye^note introduced by the late 8th Edition Psychic Awakening: Ritual of the Damned book powered by a fragment of the eldritch Stone Guardians of ancient Caliban. The piercing gaze of this artificial eye makes the wearer far more likely to hit its target, no matter how difficult the shot.
• Fantastic Racism: In older editions the Dark Angels were known to be extremely intolerant of non-humans, even by Imperial standards, and were one of the few Imperial fractions who couldn't ally with the Squats or the Eldar. Later editions have downplayed this.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
  • Caliban (while it lasted) had a similar culture to medieval Europe during the height of chivalry, with the local population living in cities fortified with stone walls and protected by orders of knight-like warriors against the hostile beasts that lived in the wilderness and forests.
  • After Caliban's destruction, the Dark Angels went about recruiting from other worlds, including a feral world populated with Badass Natives who had a culture resembling the first nations of the great plains of North America. After repelling a genestealer invasion of that world, the Dark Angels' Deathwing company took to adopting some of their rituals and iconography, coloring their Terminator armor after ash and decorating it with crafts. This was actually dropped from later editions, opting to focus on the Dark Angels as Knights.
• Honor Before Reason: The pursuit of the Fallen trumps virtually all else in the Inner Circle's eyes, and thus they will regularly abandon campaigns and other objectives to hunt them down, along with performing arguably more dishonorable acts in the pursuit of retribution. This fact isn't lost on their current Chapter Master Azrael, who admits that what they're doing is wrong, but that they have a millennia-old oath to fulfill.
• Humble Hero: While other chapters parade around in Bling of War and speak proudly of their deeds, the Dark Angels shun such ostentatious and grandiose armor and prefer to let their actions speak for themselves.
• Irony: The Dark Angels will go to extreme length to prevent Imperial authorities from discovering the truth about the fracturing of their Legion at the end of the Horus Heresy, yet some material suggests that the Grey Knights (and therefore presumably others in the highest levels of the Inquisition and Imperial government) know about the Fallen but don't care as long as the rest remain loyal to the Emperor.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: Much of the Dark Angels' actions are questionable, potentially treasonous even. Their obsessive need to keep the secret of the Fallen from getting out is at the root of all of it, and the few Dark Angels who know the truth are heavily burdened by it.
• Knight Templar: Obsessed with hunting the Fallen above all else, and have been known to abandon their allies or even whole planets if it means recovering a priority target.
• Lies to Children: While the truth of the Fallen is kept concealed until one earns the trust of the Inner Circle, the Dark Angels prepare their brothers so that when the truth is revealed, it is not as devastating as it might be. The teachers, chaplains, and heroes of the chapter tell stories to the more junior members filled with allegory about how important loyalty is, how reprehensible disloyalty is, and how important it is to bring traitors to atonement. The higher they raise in esteem, the more detailed the stories become, describing how a great host was betrayed by traitors they came home to, and how they must strive not to let that happen in the future. By the time a Dark Angel finally learns the truth, they will have been indoctrinated thoroughly against revealing it.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Anyone the Inner Circle deems unable to keep its secrets will never rise to join its ranks, no matter how skilled or experienced he may be. Entire units and companies may be held back just to avoid exposing anyone deemed untrustworthy to the Fallen. These brothers who are perceived to have divided loyalties, such as the Techmarines with their secondary allegiance to the Mechanicus or the Primaris Marines who many within the Inner Circle perceive as outsider, are also routinely kept in the dark about the true history of the Dark Angels. Any regular battle-brother who somehow learns of Chapter's hidden past will be made to join the Deathwing or Ravenwing immediately, mind wiped or simply killed depending on how they take the revelation.
• Loophole Abuse: The Dark Angels follow the Codex pretty closely, keeping to Chapter-level strength. However, they maintain close links with their successor Chapters, often go on coordinated campaigns with them, and the Supreme Grand Masters of all the successor Chapters acknowledge the Dark Angels' Supreme Grand Master as their leader. This is so they can more efficiently hunt the Fallen, but it's drawn the Inquisition's gaze because it looks like they're subtly trying to build a Legion.
• Lost Technology: The Dark Angels' armoury contains archaeotech that is unavailable to other Chapters and even the Adeptus Mechanicus. These relics of past ages include a wide variety of plasma weaponry, unique patterns of Land Speeder and aircraft, and enough Terminator armour to equip their entire 1st Company.
• Meaningful Name: In keeping with the chapter name being a play on the poem "The Dark Angel", many characters' names are based on angels and demons from Judeo-Christian lore.
• Mind Rape: The Mind Worm psychic power essentially turns the target into a shambling, drooling idiot. In-game, a unit targeted by this power takes a mortal wound and is forced to be the last unit chosen to fight until the end of the turn.
• Mystery Cult: Whereas other chapters are proud of their history, the Dark Angels parcel out information about themselves as their members rise through the ranks. It isn't until a member joins either the Deathwing or the Ravenwing's special Black Knights that they learn of Luther's betrayal and the Fallen Angels, and even then there are several more levels of trust to go through until they're told the entire story.
• Named Weapon:
  • Foe-Smiter is a highly ornate storm bolter forged during the Great Crusade and was wielded by the first Grand Master of the Deathwing. The weapon is considered to be the finest master-crafted weapon created by the Martian weaponsmith Fedorovich the Great with a rate of fire comparable to that of an assault cannon.
  • The Lion's Roar is a master-crafted combi-plasma gun that got its name from the distinctive sound it creates when fired. The Lion's Roar is traditionally gifted to those Dark Angels leading assaults on fortified positions or boarding actions due to its superior ability to be fired on the move.
  • The Mace of Redemption was specifically crafted to be the bane of the Fallen. Former Supreme Grand Master Raphael once used this sacred power maul to capture a Fallen Daemon Prince who ruled over the Daemon World of New Caliban.
  • The Monster Slayer of Caliban is an ancient power blade once gifted to the greatest warrior of the Order. Unfortunately, the weapon has become incredibly unreliable over millennia of use, its power systems having degraded beyond the ability of the Chapter's Techmarines to fix. In-game the battlefield effectiveness of the Monster Slayer of Caliban is determined randomly each turn.
• Ominous Floating Castle: The Rock, an asteroid bearing the Dark Angels' fortress monastery, is a type II. It was the only part of Caliban tough enough to survive the planet's destruction, so the Dark Angels hardened their fortress for void travel and added engines. Unlike a lot of other examples, it qualifies as Dark Is Not Evil... mostly.
• The Order: The Inner Circle is this within the chapter, recruiting those who show promise in tracking down the Fallen.
• Plasma Cannon: One of the Dark Angels' specialties is arming themselves with ancient weaponry from the dawn of the Imperium, especially plasma weapons. To represent this the Dark Angels had a number of unique plasma weapons added to their arsenal during the 6th Edition of the game, while 8th Edition includes the 'Weapons from the Dark Age' unique Stratagem that increases the power of a unit's plasma weapons for a phase.
• Properly Paranoid: There were a modest percentage of the Fallen who were bonafide traitors and worshippers of Chaos from even before the Breaking, and their belief that their Primarch would approve of their frenzied hunt for these renegade Dark Angels is retroactively given some ground when the Lion's first instinct upon seeing a Fallen in The Lion: Son of the Forest was to attack him for his supposed treachery.
• Pyrrhic Victory: The Dark Angels defeated the Fallen but destroyed their home world in the process, and the Fallen escaped through a warpstorm that occurred right as their home world was destroyed, making sure the Dark Angels would have to work long and hard at making sure their old shame never got out.
• Secret Weapon: For the privilege of being the First Legion, the Dark Angels had an arsenal of forbidden tech that not even the Adeptus Mechanicus possessed. These included the secret cache of captured A.I. rebuilt into the Excindio Battle-Automata which Lion used to slaughter an early Dark Mechnicus cult and a xenos infestation of the Khrave.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The Dark Angels will go to great, sometimes objectionable, lengths to hide the existence of the Fallen but it's been hinted the Inquisition already knows and doesn't even care.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: After the battle with their traitorous brothers, destruction of Caliban and the apparent death of their Primarch in the Horus Heresy, the Dark Angels changed their colors from black to green, with only the Deathwing and Ravenwing retaining the original black. The Dark Angels are the only loyalist first founding chapter to have changed their colors.
• The Stoic: Even among Astartes, the Dark Angels have a reputation for being stern and grim. Most units in their army get the Stubborn special rule, but can never voluntarily fall back either.
• The Strategist: Lion El'Jonson was a brilliant strategist and had one of the highest victory tallies of any of the Primarchs. Many of the Lion's gene-sons have inherited a measure of the Primarch's strategic genius, something represented in-game by the Brilliant Strategist Warlord trait that, in the 8th Edition rules, grants the Dark Angels player a once per battle re-roll and the chance of paining additional Command Points.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: In 8th Edition, one of the Dark Angels Psychic Powers is 'Engulfing Fear'^note known as 'Seed of Fear' in previous editions where the Librarian heightens the fears of his enemies to make it more likely for them to fail a Morale test.
• Telepathy: To assist with the interrogation of the Fallen, the Librarians of the Unforgiven have developed their own unique form of telepathy, Interromancy. This sinister mental discipline sees a Librarian insidiously invade their victim's mind to weaken their psyche, manipulate their fears and exploit the gaps opened in their mental defences. In all the versions of the game where the discipline is included, the Psychic Powers available to those proficient in Interomancy focus mostly on inflicting penalties to the opponent's abilities in addition to, or instead of, causing direct damage.
• Too Dumb to Live: One covert group of Dark Angels did an extremely stupid rogue action of deciding to assassinate an Adeptus Custodes jailer (this was during the time when Cypher was hanging around Roboute Guilliman, until latter decided to arrest Cypher who later escapes). This group decided this on their own, not bothering to consult Azrael or other senior members. Additionally this wasn't the only Custodes on the job, a general alert had gone out and jailers are elite warriors even among the Custodes. So when the Dark Angels attack, the Custodes easily kills 6 of them in a few seconds. They only win because the Librarian in the group nearly melted his own brain trying to paralyze the jailer and only succeeded in slowing him. But this was enough time to fire a pair of Krak missiles into the Custodes.
• Treachery Cover Up: The Dark Angels have gone to extreme lengths to hide the treachery of the Fallen, mercilessly hunting down their former brothers and taking radical measures to ensure that the wider Imperium knows nothing of their ancient shame. Another theory suggests that the "loyal" Dark Angels were also traitors, in that they reportedly sat out the Horus Heresy to see who would win.
• Trigger Phrase: One of the ways in which the Dark Angels safeguard the secret of the Fallen is the use of layers of brainwashing on those not yet initiated into the Inner Circle, with the brainwashing including responses to pre-set phrases that often erase problematic memories and cause the subject to remember whichever sequence of events is suggested to them. In one novel, Asmodai even employs this on Belial, suggesting that even those who are initiated are still susceptible should the need arise.

The Deathwing

Where they stand, none shall pass.

— Grand Master Belial

The Deathwing are the Dark Angels' First Company. Clad exclusively in bone-white Terminator Armor, they have the distinction of not only being the chapter's most elite veterans, but the key to admittance to the Inner Circle and thus becoming fully aware of the Dark Angels' most hidden secrets, including knowledge of the Fallen.

---

• The Artifact: While the Deathwing are no longer heavily-themed after Native Americans in contrast to the European monks and knights that Dark Angels are modeled after, some parts of their current visuals still reference this past theme with their bone-white armor and sparsely-used feather decorations.
• Badass Long Robe: Deathwing Knights, the company's most elite members, wear hooded green robes over their armor.
• Carry a Big Stick: The traditional weapon of the highly experienced Deathwing Knights is the mace of absolution. This highly ornate power mace has a censor built into its head that emits an eerie mist and is said to increase in power when in the presence of heretics. Some editions of the game represented this by giving the mace a bonus when used against Heretic Astartes.
• Difficult, but Awesome: It's possible for a Dark Angel player to field an all Deathwing army. Such an army is difficult to play because its small size means it can't afford to take many losses, but it's very impressive when used right.
• Elite Army: Due to the secrecy surrounding the hunt for the Fallen, the Deathwing are far more likely to operate independently than the veterans of other Chapters. In some editions of the game this was represented by special army selection rules specific to the Deathwing that allowed a player to take an entire strike force of elite choices while in 8th Edition the Vanguard Detachment, one of the default Detachments available to all armies, allows the player to do the same.
• Epic Flail: Deathwing Knight Masters are equipped with a flail of the Unforgiven, multiheaded, barbed flails that are capable of stripping both armour and flesh from the bodies of the Master's foes. In game these weapons increase the wielder's Strength characteristic and can cut through all but the thickest armour. Additionally, in the 8th Edition rules, the wounds caused by the flail are able to affect multiple models in the target unit as the Master attacks with great sweeping swings.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Deathwing Knights are trained to link their storm shields together to form an impenetrable wall against their enemies' attacks. In previous editions of the game, this was represented by a special rule that boosted the Knight's Toughness characteristic while in base contact with other members of their squad. The 8th Edition rules meanwhile has the 'Fortress of Shields' Dark Angels Stratagem that makes it more difficult for enemy attacks to wound a Deathwing squad equipped with storm shields, something Deathwing Knights are equipped with as standard.
• More Dakka: Deathwing Terminators are trained to take maximum advantage of the surprise of their arrival when deploying via teleporter by unleashing a massive storm of firepower against their foe.
• Reforged Blade: The Halberd of Caliban, wielded by the Company Champion of the Deathwing, was created from one of the Blades of Caliban^note ancient power swords dating from before Lion El'Jonson came to Caliban that was shattered many years ago. The Halberd is inscribed with the names of every Champion to wield it and incorporates a censer that burns the ground finger bones of the Fallen.
• Token Minority: In some versions of the background material, the Deathwing will be the sole Native American-themed company of the Dark Angels, even though their actual members still have the appearance to the European monks they're based off of. Contrast with the Raven Guard who have the theme AND look the part (aside from chalk white skin).
• Uniqueness Decay: Being able to field an all Terminator army was initially something unique to the Dark Angels, but as new editions came on, other Space Marine armies gained the ability to field an all Terminator army as well, the Grey Knights being infamous for having Terminators as troops as a standard without requiring any special characters to unlock them.
• Wrecked Weapon: Invoked with the Deathwing's company badge, which is a red variant of the Dark Angels' symbol with the sword's blade broken to symbolize the fracturing of the Legion.

The Ravenwing

The enemy have been sighted. I am going to engage. In the name of the Emperor: Ravenwing — attack! Attack! ATTACK!

— Grand Master Gideon

The Ravenwing are the Dark Angels' Second Company, specializing in mobile warfare revolving around bikes and unique versions of planes and Land Speeders. Their true purpose is to hunt the Fallen, working in tandem with the Deathwing.

---

• Badass Biker: The bike mounted battle-brothers that make up the majority of the Ravenwing are incredibly highly trained assault troops who use their speed and skill to tear the heart out of an enemy force and then fall back before their foe can retaliate.
• Born in the Saddle: Ravenwing outriders are known for leaving the saddle of their bikes only when they need to use the latrine or to participate in chapter rituals. They otherwise spend virtually all their time there, either fighting, hunting the Fallen, or training to do those things.
• Death from Above: The Dark Talon and the Nephilim Jetfighter are jet planes unique to the Ravenwing that are used for targeting ground-based and airborne enemies, respectively. The Dark Talon is also equipped with a stasis crypt which is used to transport captured Fallen back to the Rock.
• Magitek: The Ravenwing Darkshroud is equipped with statues from the Rock that have become enchanted through exposure to the Warp. The Dark Angels found that they can weaponize the statues by mounting them on land speeders and connecting cables that siphon the magical energies from them.
• Still Wearing the Old Colors: The Ravenwing is the only company in the Dark Angels that has retained the Legion's original black armor scheme to the present day, as the Deathwing changed from black to their current bone white at some point after the other companies went to their current green.
• Symbolic Wings: Ravenwing bikers typically sport one or two ornamental wings attached to their saddles, giving them a visual appearance similar to the historical Polish Winged Hussars. These wings often incorporate the biker's teleport homer so that they can call in the Deathwing once their quarry has been run to ground.
• Target Spotter: Introduced in the 8th Edition of the game, Talonmasters are the Ravenwing's version of a Lieutenant and ride in specially adapted Land Speeders outfitted with advanced auspex scanners and vox-links. The Talonmasters use these targeting mechanisms to direct the fire of his fellows, ensuring that there is nowhere for the Ranvenwing's quarry to hide. In game terms the Talonmaster increases the accuracy of nearby Dark Angels and allows Ravenwing to ignore any cover their targets are sheltering behind.
• Time Stands Still: In order to take their prey alive, the Ravenwing use a number of stasis weapons, such as the stasis bombs dropped by Dark Talon aircraft and the stasis shells fired by Ravenwing Grenade Launchers, that freeze time in the area that they hit. How this works in game depends on the edition with the 7th Edition rules reducing the close combat abilities of units hit (representing them being briefly frozen in time) while the 8th Edition rules deal mortal wounds to represent the model being frozen for the rest of the battle.

The Watchers in the Dark

Mysterious robed beings who were native to Caliban, the Dark Angels' lost homeworld. Little is known about their origins, nature or appearance save that they oppose Chaos, and that they appointed themselves as aides and guides to the Dark Angels. After the destruction of Caliban during the Horus Heresy, they continued to inhabit the Rock, the planet's last surviving fragment. They were the guardians of Lion El'Jonson during his long slumber, and now aid him however they can.

---

• Anti-Magic: The Watchers in the Dark exhibit a mysterious ability to counter the powers of daemons and enemy psykers. In the Legacy of Russ series of short stories the presence of a single Watcher was enough to force the Changeling to give up its plans to free those imprisoned in the bowels of the Rock while in the 8th Edition of the game some Deathwing Squads can be accompanied by a Watcher who gives the squad the once per battle ability to stop an enemy power from effecting them^note previous editions attributed this ability to the relic that the Watcher carried.
• Expy: Though they make lack their Sticky Fingers, the Watchers being tiny hooded figures whose faces are always concealed by shadows makes them dead ringers for Jawas.
• In the Hood: Their faces are perpetually concealed by deep, shadowy hoods.
• The Quiet One: They never speak aloud. They can if they so wish, as they speak to Lion El'Jonson as they guide him after his return, but just never speak to anyone on the Rock.
• The Spook: The Watchers in the Dark are diminutive, perpetually-robed-and-hooded figures who never speak and are immune to psychic probing. It's hypothesized that they might be aliens or even non-daemonic natives of the Warp, all that's certain about them is their almost guaranteed to not be human. All that is known about them is that they aid certain Dark Angels as weapon bearers, but never directly contribute in battle, until the return of the Lion, whereupon they assist him in battle in a supportive role.
• Undying Loyalty: Implied to be the case towards the Lion. They watched over him for 10,000 years while keeping him alive and in shape, all the while assisting the Dark Angels as much as they could. When the time came to awaken the Lion, they acted as his guides, then as his support.

White Scars

"For the Khan and the Emperor!"

Warriors of Chogoris! Brothers of the Great Tribe! The star hunt calls you, do you not hear it? The battle's red edge is your home, the respect of your kinsmen your hearth. Plunge into the enemy's breast like a blade, cut out his heart, and you will know fulfillment. The Emperor has given us strength. In return, we give him victory!

— Jaghatai Khan, the Last Charge of Galathamar

The White Scars, originally known as the Star Hunters in some sources, were the Fifth Astartes Legion and their Primarch is Jaghatai Khan. The Chapter's home world is Chogoris, known as Mundus Planus to the Administratum, and their fortress monastery is the mountain fastness of Quan Zhou. At the dawning of the Era Indomitus, the Chapter Master of the White Scars, known as the Great Khan, is Jubal, a once great warrior now confined to a life support cradle in his inner sanctum due to the injuries inflicted upon him by the Red Corsairs.

The White Scars draw their recruits from the fierce steppe horsemen of their home world, and have adapted their traditional method of mounted warfare to a modern mechanised army. The Chapter is famous for their use of bikes, aircraft and armoured transports to perform lightning-fast offensives that leave the foe outmanoeuvred and striking at shadows, while the White Scars pick them apart at range or crush them in decisive close combat. The barbaric look and brutal tribal traditions of the White scars have resulted in many in the Imperial bureaucracy and military considering them to be nothing but savages but those who have fought alongside the Chapter greatly respect them for their ruthlessly methodical style of warfare and their noble spirit.

Immediately prior to the opening of the Great Rift, the Yasan Sector came under massive attack from a massive Red Corsairs armada with the White Scars' Chapter Planet itself being invaded. After much bloodshed, the piratical renegades and their daemonic allies were driven from Chogoris, but not without the Chapter suffering horrendous casualties. After being reinforced by Primaris Marines brought to them by an Indomitus Crusade Fleet, the White Scars have made it their mission to purge the Yasan Sector of the heretical forces that infest it and they will stop at nothing until they have succeeded in this task.

The White Scars have been a part of the Warhammer 40,000 games since 1st Edition where they received rules in the Warhammer 40,000 Chapter Approved — The Book of the Astronomican sourcebook. From 2nd Edition onward the White Scars were mainly counted as a regular Astartes Chapter with a focus on bikers but have receive supplemental rules in a number of editions, such as in 3rd Edition's Index Astartes I and 7th Edition's Codex Supplement: Angels of Death. The Chapter also played a large role in 7th Edition's War Zone Damocles campaign books against the T'au Empire. In 8th Edition, the White Scars used the basic Astartes rules printed in Codex: Space Marines, released in August 2019, alongside the Chapter specific rules in Codex Supplement: White Scars released at the same time. For 9th Edition, the Chapter uses a combination of the rules published in October 2020's Codex: Space Marines along with the previous edition's Codex Supplement^note with free downloadable errata.

---

• Abnormal Ammo: Designed to kill the monstrous predators of the mountains of Chogoris, the rare stormwrath bolts used by the White Scars and their Successor Chapters are unique bolt shells that are laced with the electrified fulgurite. When such a bolt penetrates its target, the shell releases the energy of Chogoris' lightning storms within the target itself. The 8th Edition rules represent this by allowing the model with these bolts to upgrade a bolt weapon to have superior Strength and Armour Penetration. The bolts also give the weapon a greater Damage characteristic when used against Monsters.
• Amplifier Artifact: The Mantle of the Stormsteer is a relic of the White Scars' Librarius. This ancient psychic hood is able to channel storm spirits that enhance the Stormseer's psychic abilities, represented in the 8th Edition Codex Supplement: White Scars rules by giving the wearer a bonus when attempting to manifest a psychic ability.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • Of all the xenos they have fought, the White Scars have a particular loathing for the Aeldari raiders known as Drukhari. This enmity dates back to the Drukhari slave raids that plagued Chogoris and the Yasan Sector while the majority of the Legion was away fighting in the Great Crusade, the Horus Heresy and the Scouring. In addition to this, the role that the Drukhari played in the disappearance of the Primarch Jaghatai Khan inflamed the White Scars' hatred of the xenos breed even further.
  • Since their invasion of Chogoris and the surrounding systems at the end of the 41st Millennium, the White Scars have harboured a cold hatred for the Red Corsairs, and their leader Huron Blackheart. Those warriors recruited in the aftermath of the invasion are particularly eager to fight the piratical raiders and enact vengeance for the despoilment of their home world.
• Badass Biker: The White Scars have combined the savagery and tactics of their home world's barbarian Horse Archers with the discipline, technology and superhuman abilities of the Adeptus Astartes to become the some of the most talented bike-mounted troops in the Imperium. Their 8th Edition rules reflect this by giving them a number of different abilities, Stratagems and Tactical Objectives that are particularly useful for, if not exclusive too, bike mounted units.
• Battle Trophy: The White Scars continue the tradition of taking trophies from defeated enemies that they originally learned as members of the barbaric tribes of Chogoris. Severed heads are a particularly prized trophy; the roads to their fortress monastery are lined with the silver-covered heads of the Chapter's greatest enemies. The 8th Edition rules represent the practice of trophy taking with the Headtaker's Trophies Special-Issue Wargear, a trophy rack of grisly trophies that reduces the Leadership characteristic of nearby enemies.
• Born in the Saddle: The native tribes of Chogoris, which the White Scars draw their recruits from, are nomadic horsemen with a strong Mongol theme. As with many Chapters, the White Scars have inherited many elements of their home world's culture including a preference for mobile warfare, only replacing horses with bikes and transport vehicles.
• Car Fu: The White Scars are masters of using their bike's weight and momentum to cause damage to their enemy when they charge into combat. How this is represented in-game depends on the edition with those rule sets that use the Hammer of Wrath rule often giving the White Scars bonuses when using that rule, while the 8th Edition Codex Supplement: White Scars includes the Chogorian Thunderbolts white Scars Stratagem that gives White Scars Bikers a chance of causing mortal wounds against an enemy when they charge.
• The Chooser of the One: The Librarians of the White Scars, known as Stormseers, are responsible for overseeing the recruitment of each new generation of aspirants from the hardy Chogorian tribes. Every ten years these warrior-mystics observe the battles of the nomadic tribesmen, choosing those who show exceptional skill and bravery and taking them to the fortress monetary of Quan Zhou where that are given the chance to join the Chapter. In addition to this, the Stormseers also choose who shall serve as Chapter Master after the death of the previous Great Khan, putting those who wish to take on the role through a series of mysterious challenges that few survive.
• Cool Bike: The unique Space Marine Bike Wrath of the Heavens is a relic of the White Scars created for the former Master of the Hunt Khantak Khan. Faster than any other Bike in the Chapter's Armoury, Wrath of the Heavens is fitted with grav-impellers that allow it to make short gravitic hops across the battlefield. In all editions of the game, wrath of Heaven has superior speed to a regular bike and special rules that allow it to cross terrain, and other models, with ease.
• Covered with Scars: The White Scars have inherited a culture of scarification from the nomadic horsemen that they draw their recruits from and have numerous rituals, rites and customs that leave numerous scars upon their bodies. The Chapter's members also wear the scars they receive in battle, and during duels with their battle-brothers with pride, seeing them as honour scars and signs of bravery.
• Cultured Badass: Despite their reputation as barbaric Horse Archers, the nomads of Chogoris have a deep and rich culture that includes beautiful craftsmanship, poetry and calligraphy, and even after they join the Chapter, White Scars battle-brothers continue such pursuits. The White Scars' fortress monastery of Quan Zhou is a good example of the Chapter's dual nature. A city-sized fortress of beautifully wrought marble that contains forests filled with game, glistening streams and vast libraries of lore, Quan Zhou still sports near impregnable armour, immense weapons batteries and its approaches are lined with the severed heads of the Chapter's greatest foes.
• Electronic Eyes: One of the White Scars' relics is the Hunter's Eye, a highly advanced bionic eye constructed in honour of the horse archers of Chogoris, which allows its wearer to pinpoint the weak spots in his enemy's defences. The 8th Edition rules for the Eye represent this by allowing the wearer to direct the fire of a nearby model so that their ranged attacks ignore enemy cover.
• Fast as Lightning: The White Scars are famous for their speed and Lightning Bruiser style of warfare. The Chapter is also closely associated with lightning by incorporating a lightning bolt into their iconography, having lightning-based psychic abilities and Special-Issue Wargear, and lightning named Stratagems.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • Many White Scars consider the idea of being interred within the sarcophagus of a Dreadnought to be truly horrific due to their wish to remain free, to feel the wind as they hunt and to travel in the afterlife when it is their time. At best the fate is considered to be a noble self-sacrifice, while at worst a living hell. As such the White Scars field far fewer Dreadnoughts than many other Chapters. This was taken to the extreme during the 3rd Edition of the game where the Chapter's Index Astartes: Lightning Attack rules barred White Scars armies from taking Dreadnoughts entirely.
  • Since his capture and torture at the hands of the Red Corsairs Jubal, the Chapter's Great Khan, has been confined to a life-support cradle within the inner sanctum of his quarters. While Jubal continues to command the Chapter with his prodigious intelligence and tactical skill, many White Scars believe that it would have been better for the Great Khan to have succumbed to his wounds as even those confined within the shell of a Dreadnoughts, a fate many within the Chapter are loathed to experience, are still able to experience the thrill of battle.
• Fictionary: The White Scars speak Korchin, the language of Chogoris, a language consisting of various words taken from Chinese, and other Asian languages, with the addition of a number of vaguely East Asian sounding words. No full sentence structure or syntax for Korchin has been revealed, just a few words to add to the White Scar's East Asian/Mongolian theme.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: While in lore the White Scars are vaunted masters of bike combat, matched only by the Dark Angels Ravenwing reconnaissance company, some editions of the rules fail to represent this on the tabletop, with their early 8th Edition rules actually benefit their Jump Pack infantry the most. The Codex Supplement: White Scars sourcebook attempted to rectify this by giving the Chapter a number of Stratagems and a Warlord Trait specifically intended for Bike mounted troops.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: The White Scars are masters of mobile warfare, striking with vicious, lightning quick attacks and then withdrawing before the enemy can retaliate. How this is represented in-game varies depending on the edition with their 3rd Edition Index Astartes: Lightning Assault rules allowing White Scars Bikers to choose to retreat from combat (something that wasn't allowed normally at the time), while the second version of their 8th Edition Codex: Space Marine rules, and their supplement, gives them the means to Fall Back and still charge or shoot respectively.
• Initiation Ceremony: The 2nd Company of the White Scars, the Firefist Brotherhood, get their name from their initiation ritual that involves a prospective battle-brother descending, unarmoured, into the crater of the burning pit known as the Mouth of Fire to retrieve a pearl of molten crystal with their bare hands. The ritual inevitably leaves the battle-brother with a permanent scar that marks them as a Firefist for the rest of their lives.
• Lightning Bruiser: The White Scars preferred battle doctrine focuses on speed, fluidity and lightning assaults that hit the enemy as quickly and as hard as possible. Unlike some forces that focus on speed, however, the White Scars are no more fragile than any other Chapter of Astartes as their equipment, enhanced physiques and natural ferocity make them as tough as their more conventional brethren. The White Scars’ focus on this style of warfare is one of the reasons that they adopted the lightning bolt as their Chapter symbol. The 8th Edition Codex Supplement: White Scars rules represent this by giving the Chapter a number of unique Stratagems that revolve around movement.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Some Khans go into battle carrying a small buckler. Not as large as the more common combat shields and storm shields, those skilled in the use of a buckler can, nonetheless, use it to deflect enemy melee attacks. The 8th Edition represents these small shields by giving those equipped with them a bonus to their armour save while fighting in close combat.
• Master Swordsman: The lore for the Chapter mentions that the warriors of the Tulwar Brotherhood, the White Scars' 4th Company, are renowned for their skills with the traditional Chogorian blades after which they are named, with their leader, Joghaten Khan, being one of the greatest swordsmen in the entire Chapter. Despite being a combined-arms Battle Company, the brotherhood prefers rapid and bloody assaults that allow them to utilise their combat prowess to the fullest. This isn't reflected in the rules, however, where the 4th Company is no different from any other White Scars force.
• More Dakka: The Equis-patter bolt pistols are a variant of the standard bolt pistol created by the Techmarines of the White Scars and their Successor Chapters. These pistols have had their rate-of-fire dramatically increased so that they can unleash a flurry of bolts at the enemy. The 8th Edition Codex Supplement: White Scars represents these pieces of Special-Issue Wargear by giving them one of the highest rates-of-fire of any Pistol type weapon used by the Adeptus Astartes.
• Multinational Team: The people of Chogoris live in separate tribes that regularly war against each other for resources and honour. While this high level of conflict produces ideal recruits for the Chapter, old grievances and tribal enmity can linger, even after the modifications and indoctrination that Astartes initiates go through. To combat this, the White Scars attempt to organise their squads so that individuals from many different tribes serve together as brothers once they become full-blooded Marines.
• My Horse Is a Motorbike: As modern motorised Mongols, the White Scars' traditional method of warfare and visual style can be described as motorbike-riding Horse Archers, using their speed and manoeuvrability to surround and wear down their enemy, before charging in to deliver the killing blow.
• Named Weapon:
  • The power lance known as the Glaive of Vengeance is an ancient relic of the White Scars once wielded by the Great Khan Kyublai. Many within the Chapter believe that the former Chapter Master's spirit still resides within the weapon, enhancing its power with his desire for vengeance against the enemies of the Imperium. The 8th Edition Codex Supplement: White Scars rules represent this mighty spear by giving allowing it to use the Strength, that a normal khan's spear gives only when charging, to all its attacks
  • Forged in the style of the tulwars used by Chogorian tribesmen, the Scimitar of the Great Khan is said to be the greatest power sword ever created by the Chapter's artisans and was blessed by the Primarch himself during the Purging of Daikeos. In-game, the 8th Edition rules, the Scimitar a superior profile to a regular power sword and gives the wielder a chance to cause double Damage.
• Space Romans: The White Scars draw primarily on the look, history and culture of the Mongol Hordes from the East, with some additional influences from other historic East Asian cultures. Their Primarch was even named Jaghatai^note an alternate spelling of Chagatai, one of Genghis Khan's sons, while he and all subsequent leaders hold the title of Great Khan while Captains are known as Khans.
• Pirate Ninja Zombie Robot: The White Scars are a cross of Hordes from the East and Badass Biker.
• Speed Demon: The White Scars adopt this attitude as a matter of doctrine. Moving fast, hitting hard, and back to moving fast are how they wage their campaigns, and if they're not moving fast then they're not maximizing their effectiveness.
• Straight for the Commander: A favoured tactic of the White Scars is to take out enemy commanders and champions to destroy their foes' morale and strategic coordination. The 8th Edition Codex Supplement: White Scars rules encourages this on the tabletop with the Claim Their Heads White Scars Tactical Objective that gives the player bonus victory points when they take out enemy Characters.
• The Strategist: Although the current Great Khan is no longer able to take to the field of battle himself due to his injuries, Jubal is still a masterful general with great tactical skill, issuing commands to the Chapter through his closest battle-brothers. Some amongst the Chapter even believe that Jubal's strategic abilities have been enhanced by his confinement to his quarters as, now that he is freed from the distraction of personally leading warriors in the field, he is able to plan campaigns on a Segmentum-wide level.
• Target Spotter: The Cyber-Eagle Helms used by the White Scars and their Successor Chapters links its wearer to a cybernetic hunting bird that circles high above the battlefield. Fitted with advanced auspex scanners, the bird transmits everything it sees back to the Helm where it is projected onto the wearer’s field of vision, giving them enhanced targeting data that can be past onto their battle-brothers. In the 8th Edition Codex Supplement: White Scars rules for this piece of Special-Issue Wargear, this extra targeting data allows a unit close to the wearer a greater chance of hitting when firing Overwatch at a charging enemy.
• Token Minority: With their Mongol Horde theme, the White Scars are the only one of the nine loyalist First Founding Legions not to be strongly based on a European culture.
• Trial by Combat: While rare, the fiery passions of the White Scars can lead to bitter arguments between battle-brothers. When such instances happen, some background material indicated that the White Scars involved may petition their Khan to be allowed to duel with ritual tulwar combat blades in order to settle the dispute.
• Weather Manipulation: The shamanic Librarians of the White Scars are known as Stormseers and use their psychic abilities to manipulate the elemental forces of nature and alter the weather itself. While most editions of the game treat Stormseers the same as the Librarians of any other Chapter, the 8th Edition Codex Supplement: White Scars sourcebook allows them to take powers from the Stormspeaking Psychic Discipline so that they can invoke a windstorm to slow down their enemies, strike foes with lightning or even surround himself with the fury of a hurricane.

Space Wolves

"For Russ and the Allfather!"

Listen closely Brothers, for my life's breath is all but spent. There shall come a time far from now when our Chapter itself is dying, even as I am now dying, and our foes shall gather to destroy us. Then my children, I shall listen for your call in whatever realm of death holds me, and come I shall, no matter what the laws of life and death forbid. At the end I will be there. For the final battle. For the Wolftime.

— Leman Russ, final words

The Space Wolves were originally the Sixth Legion. Their Primarch is Leman Russ, their Chapter Master, known as the Great Wolf, at the time of Abaddon's 13th Black Crusade is the long-serving Logan Grimnar, and their home world is the death world of Fenris.

The Space Wolves (also known as Sky Warriors to the natives of Fenris and, in some background information, the Vlka Fenryka^TranslationWolves of Fenris) are a prideful and anti-authoritarian chapter that has always refused to adopt the tenets of the Codex Astartes, stubbornly maintaining the customs and force organization instituted by their Primarch. Highly aggressive warriors and cunning hunters, the Space Wolves fight like heroes of legend to defend humanity and to add to their own epic saga. Despite their barbaric appearance, the Space Wolves also maintain a highly developed code of honour, leading them to reject the methods of the more uncompromising Imperial organisations such as the Inquisition and the Ecclesiarchy. Towards the end of the 41st Millennium, the Space Wolves suffered both joy and sorrow in equal measure, with the return of the lost brothers of their 13th Great Company being quickly followed by an all-out invasion of Fenris by the hated Thousand Sons that caused massive death and destruction. Despite their losses, the Space Wolves remain unbowed and remain some of the fiercest and most loyal warriors in the Imperium.

The Space Wolves have been a part of Warhammer 40,000 since the 1st Edition of the game and in 1994 they were the first ever faction to receive a codex sourcebook. In 2016, the Chapter were the focus of the War Zone Fenris^note consisting of the Curse of the Wulfen and Wrath of Magnus books campaign as part of the material that advanced the setting's background considerably in the lead up to the release of the game's 8th Edition. The 8th Edition rules for the Space Wolves can be found in Codex Adeptus Astartes: Space Wolves released in August 2018, with additional rules published in March 2020's Psychic Awakening: Saga of the Beast.For 9th Edition, the Chapter uses a combination of the rules published in October 2020's Codex: Space Marines combined with the Codex Supplement: Space Wolves book, released November 2020.

For the Black Library series of novels, see the Space Wolf page.

---

• 13 Is Unlucky: The Space Wolves' 13th Great Company had a disproportionate number of warriors suffering from the Curse of the Wulfen, and disappeared at the end of the Horus Heresy when they pursued the fleeing traitors into the Eye of Terror. They were considered lost and became a taboo topic among the Space Wolves, only to make a surprise reappearance hounding the heels of Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade.
• Abnormal Ammo: The rare Morkai's Teeth Bolts^note introduced by the late 8th Edition book Psychic Awakening: Saga of the Beast are tipped with strange unmelting Fenrisian ice that, it is believed, draw the eye of the death wolf Morkai to all those that they strike, dealing a mortal wound and making it more likely for subsequent attacks to cause damage.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Chapter Relic known as the Krakenbone Sword is a mighty blade carved from the sternum of a great aquatic monster by Fenrisian tribesmen and reforged by Arjac Rockfist. The weapon has never required sharpening an is able to carve through armour as easily as a multi-melta.
• Arch-Enemy: The Thousand Sons legion, a grudge dating back to the Horus Heresy and the Space Wolves' sacking of Prospero.
• Animal Motifs: Wolves, referencing the Savage Wolves that roam their homeworld and the themes of ferocious Germanic barbarism the chapter evokes.
• Anti-Magic: The talismans and charms worn by the warriors of the Space Wolves are said to ward against the Evil Eye and protect their bearers from malign sorcery. The 8th Edition rules represent this with the "Talismanic Shield" Space Wolves Stratagem that give a Space Wolf Character a chance to stop enemy Psychic Powers. The Hounds of Morkai, specialized anti-psyker troops, use runic totems to protect themselves fro psychic powers — in-game, enemy psykers can only target a unit of Hounds if no other possible targets are closer — and vocal amplifiers known as Morkai's Howl, which scramble Warp currents and impair the use of Warp-craft in targeted enemies.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: Space Wolf Librarians or Rune Priests believe their power comes from Fenris because anyone who draws their power from the Warp is bad. Wrath of Magnus confirms that they were both right and wrong. Their power still comes from the warp, but the spirit of Fenris further augments it.
• Barbarian Tribe: While countless Chapters recruit their warriors from barbaric tribes, most become more civilized after their recruitment and training. The Space Wolves, however, retain their barbarian mentality and aesthetic, and are based on Vikings, sporting wild hair and beards, coupled with a reputation for reckless courage and ferocity. The Chapter is also considered to be one of the more heroic factions in the setting, considering things like shooting civilians and needless cruelty to be dishonourable.
• Beard of Barbarism: The Space Wolves are one of the few chapters where facial hair is commonplace, usually as full beards which can get quite long. They owe it to their Fenrisian heritage, as a full beard provides another protection against the cold on the planet and the Space Wolves tend to keep their beards long and thick out of habit.
• Berserk Button:
  • Suggest shaving or haircuts, or, if you're an Inquisitor, declare Exterminatus within earshot. Much like the Salamanders, murdering innocent civilians is a huge no-no for the Space Wolves, as Chapter Master Seth of the Flesh Tearers found out the hard way. Treachery and breaking oaths will also enrage them, as chapter master Joros of the Grey Knights found out in an even harder way.
  • There is a Chaos Space Marine warband called Skyrar's Dark Wolves that is rumoured throughout the Imperium to be traitor Space Wolves. As you'd expect, if a Space Wolf hears anyone mention Skyrar and his warriors, they're liable to go hunting.
• The Berserker: Some Space Wolves fight with a bestial fury, tearing apart their enemies like a Fenrisian Wolf ripping apart its prey. The 8th Edition rules represent this with the Saga of the Savage Warlord Trait for the Space Wolves Stalker Pack Specialist Detachment^note introduced in the Imperium Nihilus: Vigilus Defiant campaign book that increases the Warlord’s Attacks characteristic and gives him a chance of increasing the Attacks of nearby Space Wolves.
• Blood Knight: There are two reasons why the Space Wolves will ignore an Exterminatus order: one such reason is that it would deprive them of a chance to fight an enemy strong enough to justify such an extreme order.
• Body-Count Competition: Space Wolves will often compete with the other members of their pack see who can score the most kills in a particular battle.
• Boisterous Bruiser: As Belial of the Dark Angels put it, "Fenris breeds heroes like a bar breeds drunks — loud, proud and spoiling for a fight."
• Braids of Barbarism: Whether it's by choice or a side effect of their geneseed, the Space Wolves generally have very long hair, which is often partially or fully braided. Their 7th edition codex◊ gave a good depiction.
• Canis Major: The Fenrisian Wolves that accompany some Space Wolves into battle are the size of tigers, while the ones that serve as Thunderwolf cavalry are even larger.
• A Commander Is You: Elitist/Brute. The Space Wolves hhave access to powerful HQ choices, unique wargear that no other Astartes chapter can use, and fast and powerful Thunderwolf Cavalry, deadly in close assault.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: During the Great Crusade, the Space Wolves were used when the Emperor generally wanted something completely crushed. They (and especially Leman Russ) were so good at this that the Legion became known as "the Rout".
  Thar Ariak Hraldir, Wolf Priest: We were made to destroy. Our whole being is destruction. Such was the will of the Allfather. He made us not to construct empires, but to murder them. We were bred to perform the tasks that no other Legion could, to fight with such extravagance that even our brother warriors would shrink from treachery in the knowledge of what we, the Rout, would do to them.
• Death Seeker: Lone Wolves are the Sole Survivors of their packs, and hurl themselves at the most formidable of foes in an attempt to either redeem themselves or join their brothers in death. The ones who survive are generally elevated to the Wolf Guard.
• Death World: Fenris is a world that is exclusively Grim Up North, with a very elliptical orbit that takes twice as long as Terran standard. Its long winters freeze almost the entire planet, while its summers bring lava flows and tidal waves. The land is constantly changing, making permanent settlement impossible, and its resources are so meager that its population must war amongst itself to survive. Other claims to fame include kraken, dragons, and wolves the size of tanks. The Space Wolves are quite proud of their home world's lethality and warlike population.
• Depending on the Writer: One of the most egregious non-retcon examples in the setting. The authors at Games Workshop can't seem to decide if the Space Wolves are a chapter of headstrong Boisterous Bruisers who love fighting, particularly against worthy opponents or a chapter of grim, battle-hardened warriors who look at fighting and protecting the weak as their solemn, sworn duty. The Horus Heresy books have thrown yet another layer of confusion into the mix by painting the Space Wolves as the Emperor's executioners, to be dispatched to kill off anyone who needs killing, regardless of whether they are ally or friend (which seemingly goes against the Space Wolves' long-established love of honesty and honourable fighting). Different sources also either paint the Space Wolves as fanatically loyal to the Imperium, or as having little tolerance for the Imperium as an entity, but still believing in their duty to humanity. Also, in the novels they tend to be honorable barbarians with Nordic titles that happen to use Wolf totems a lot in their heraldry; in their codexes and campaign books they use the word wolf in the names of absolutely everything and lead packs of wolves into combat while riding bigger wolves.
• Dwindling Party: Packs are never reinforced when they take losses or when Blood Claws are reassigned, so their numbers go down as they evolve from Blood Claws to Grey Hunters to Long Fangs.
• Dying Race: With their civilian population ravaged by the combined attack of Magnus and purging by the Grey Knights, the Wolves have almost no recruitment base anymore. They may very well go extinct. Even with reinforcements from the Primaris Marines, their survival is still up in the air.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • During 3rd Edition the Space Wolves were able to take Leman Russ Exterminators as Heavy Support Choices, explained as being in honour of their Primarch who the tank was named after. These vehicles never really fitted with the rest of the Space Wolves armoury and were dropped for later editions.
  • In their original appearance during 1st Edition (Rogue Trader) they were almost unrecognizable apart from their chapter symbol, colours, and trademark fangs. Their units had different names and were almost identical to their Codex marine equivalents. What would eventually become Grey Hunters were known as Howlers, the predecessors of Long Fangs were called Snarlers, while Tearers were the rough equivalent of the Wolf Guard. They also had a unit called Trackers, marines mounted on Jetbikes. Their characters had very different, more generic names (Enoch, Storm, Greylock, Inferno, Edrigar) and ranks (Commander, Captain, Librarian). The chapter name was written as a single word: Spacewolves.
• Fangs Are Evil: Subverted, despite their borderline bestial appearance.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Werewolf Horny Vikings. Early on there were attempts to bring in other European barbarians like the Celts, but nowadays the Wolves are pretty Norse.
• Freeze Ray: Their 7th edition codex introduced Helfrost weapons, powerful lasers focused through a rare glimmerfrost crystal that instantly freezes the target area to near absolute zero.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In the 5th Edition, despite being a chapter noted in lore for close combat, the Space Wolves functioned better as a shooting army due to their cheaper source of special and heavy weapons than vanilla Space Marines.
• Glory Seeker: Blood Claws are reckless young warriors out to make a name for themself through feats of battlefield daring. In-game, unless a Wolf Guard squad leader or other character is around to keep them in line, they're obligated to charge any foes they can reach, and get so excited that they can't shoot in the Shooting Phase beforehand.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Space Wolves avoid wearing their helmets whenever they can, partly because their hair and/or beards make it awkward and partly because the helmets muck with their senses, especially smell and hearing. If a Space Wolf is wearing his helmet, you can bet he's grousing about it.
• Hiding Behind the Language Barrier: In the novels, Space Wolves have a habit of talking amongst themselves in Fenrisian, even while amongst other Imperium members. Most of the time it's for planning and/or discussing chapter secrets, other times it's to insult incompetent allies.
• Hot-Blooded: The aptly-named Blood Claws, the youngest of the full Marines who are bounding with aggressive energy, eager to earn their place among the chapter. They are almost all full on enthusiasm and light on discipline.
• Hypocrite:
  • An odd case regarding psykers. The Space Wolves supported the banning of librarians at Nikaea, but kept their own afterwards. Their Rune Priests insist that they are not psykers at all, and instead of seeing their powers as coming from the Warp, they hold that their powers come from the world spirit of Fenris. This is a painfully thin excuse (when Ahriman observes a Rune Priest he sees no difference between him and a librarian) and in the face of the battle with the Thousand Sons, a few Rune Priests admitted to each other that they were psykers and little different from the Sons. The Battle of the Fang revealed that the world spirit of Fenris does actually exist all along, making the truth about the Rune Priests' claim ambiguous.
  • The modern Wolves are fiercely opposed to the harming of civilians, nearly getting into a war with the Inquisition over the matter, but they actively keep their home world of Fenris in a state of constant tribal warfare, where plenty of innocents will inevitably be killed in the battles meant to produce skilled recruits for the Wolves.
  • The Wolves were disgusted at the Thousand Sons' Flesh Change mutations, with the bad blood between legions only really kicking off after Russ ruthlessly gunned down one afflicted Son for mutancy and nearly coming to blows with Magnus over it. The Wolves have an extremely mutation-prone geneseed, with the "Wulfen Curse" crippling any attempts at producing successors.
• An Ice Person: The Rune Priests' Tempestas psychic discipline utilises a psychic ice effect and mixes that with a bit of Telekinesis to spin that ice around or shape it into giant killer wolves.
• Internal Affairs: Just prior to the Burning of Prospero, squads of Space Wolves (called "Watch Packs") were assigned by Malcador to all Primarchs, who were explicitly ordered to murder the Primarch if they showed signs of treachery. This proved an extremely unwise move, as several Primarchs along with their legions saw their very presence as an implied slander on their loyalty. Moreover, the Watch Packs were hopelessly outmatched by any individual Primarch (leaving aside entirely their attendant honor guards and legions), and in the event did not manage to stop a single Primarch from joining Horus. Those Packs unlucky enough to be assigned to traitor Primarchs were summarily murdered, having accomplished nothing.
• Just Following Orders: The Heresy era Wolves were not only willing, but prided themselves on how they would do anything the Emperor told them too. And then Horus changed an order from the Emperor to apprehend the Thousand Sons to one that said to annihilate them instead and things went to hell quickly.
• King in the Mountain: The Wolves believe that Leman Russ will return to them for an apocalyptic final battle — after all, he promised as much.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The Horus Heresy Book VII — Inferno states that the Space Wolves use psycho-memetic obliteration on their own battle brothers to keep their own history shrouded in myth and legend (they despise remembrancers, so nobody else gets to record their history), keep secrets from their own rank and file, and preserve their sanity from the really nasty stuff they've seen and done.
• Mage Killer: The Hounds of Morkai are Space Wolf Reivers specialized for hunting down psykers. They use runic totems to protect themselves from psychic powers and vocal amplifiers that scramble Warp currents to impair the use of Warp-craft.
• Military Maverick: There are a lot of Chapters that don't completely abide by the Codex Astartes. Then there are the Space Wolves, who won't even use it for toilet paper. They do things the Space Wolf way, and to hell with anyone else's rules.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: It's suspected that the Wolves play up their "boisterous barbarian" image when convenient. There's a reason Logan Grimnar ends up running most of the wars he's involved in, even from the sidelines.
• Old Shame: In-universe, the Wolf Brothers, their ill-fated attempt to found a successor chapter.
• One-Hit Kill: For each unsaved wound taken from a Helfrost weapon, the target has to pass a Strength test or be removed from play, even if he has Eternal Warrior. Their potential to screw blobs and armoured targets alike is all but certain to make them a considerable threat, especially to units reliant on multi-wound models.
• Pirate Ninja Zombie Robot: The Space Wolves combine elements of Vikings and Werewolves.
• Spanner in the Works: Every time the Thousand Sons try to hatch a grand scheme, the Space Wolves find a way to wreck it.
• Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder: Skyclaws are Blood Claws who are too reckless even for Blood Claws, or who survive their expected Leeroy Jenkins phase without learning the discipline needed to be Grey Hunters. They're reassigned to a Skyclaw pack, given jetpacks and used for suicide missions like "drop in on the enemy leader and take his head", and they wouldn't have it any other way.
• Token Minority: The background material for the Great Company known as the Seawolves notes that its Wolf Lord, Engir Krakendoom, and his men are primarily recruited from the dark-skinned inhabitants of Fenris’ southern islands, adding some diversity to the otherwise northern European look of the Chapter.
• Took a Level in Kindness: The Horus Heresy novels reveal that in their early incarnation, the Vlka Fenryka prided themselves as being absolutely unfettered executioners willing to do anything the Emperor commanded. Ten thousand years of Character Development later and the Space Wolves are independent but honourable warriors willing to fight the Administratum for ordering the same brutal actions they used to execute.
• Translation Train Wreck: In-universe this is how the Jarls of the Wolves of Fenris chapter became known to the wider imperium as the Wolf Lords of the Space Wolves chapter.
• True Companions: Unless he is promoted to the Wolf Guard or laterally-promoted to the Swiftclaws or Skyclaws, a Space Wolf typically spends his entire life in the same pack. Unlike other chapters, in which Marines are assigned to different squads as their abilities dictate, a Space Wolf pack evolves from an impetuous Blood Claw assault squad to an even-tempered Grey Hunter squad to a veteran Long Fang fire support team. This pack will shrink as casualties accrue over the centuries, which helps explain Long Fangs' typical grim and dour demeanor.
• Use Your Head: The Mountain-Breaker Helm^note introduced by the late 8th Edition sourcebook Psychic Awakening: Saga of the Beast is a relic helmet that has been specially modified to increase the power of its wearer's headbutts. Fitted with micro-accelerators and thicker than normal armour around the faceplate, those wearing the helm can make a special headbutt attack during combat to inflict multiple mortal wounds against an enemy.
• Weather Manipulation: The Rune Priests of the Space Wolves chapter practice a unique psychic discipline called the Tempestas discipline. This discipline allows the Rune Priests to call out lightning storms that strike at their foes or invoque blizzards that obscure the enemy's sight.
• Wolverine Claws: The Space Wolves use a unique pattern of lightning claw known as wolf claws. Often designed in imitation of the claws of the Fenrisian Wolf, cutting power of these power weapons is enhanced by the addition of powerful mystic runes. In-game this enhances the strength stat of a model wielding the wolf claws.
• Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Nowadays they are very much against it. It's the second reason why they are against Exterminatus; it would kill all of the civilians on the planet. Their hatred of the Flesh Tearers was provoked by the murder of civilians at Honour's End. When they were a legion they were decidedly not this, doing things like bombing Prospero from orbit, reducing everything that wasn't shielded by Thousand Son fortifications to ash and rubble. Angron even compared the Wolves to his World Eaters in terms of indiscriminate destruction.

Wulfen

The gene-seed of the Space Wolves contains a unique gene sequence known as the Canis Helix, a dangerous and powerful enhancement that causes those who receive it to transform into an animalistic monster. Through the long and perilous Test of Morkai, an aspirant must learn to tame this primal state, or he will become one of the Wulfen, feral beasts that are left to roam the snowfields of Asaheim or captured and released in battle by their former brothers. Those aspirants who overcome the Test of Morkai receive treatment to stabilize the Canis Helix and continue their training to become Space Wolves, but even these warriors can slip into a bestial state while under great stress, something known as the Curse of the Wulfen.

In the closing years of the 41st Millennium, mysterious feral warriors, wearing the remains of archaic armour in the colours of the Space Wolves, were discovered fighting in warzones threatened by the forces of Chaos. Investigations by the Chapter discovered that these monstrous beings were Space Wolves of the 13th Great Company who had been consumed by the Canis Helix and lost to the galaxy since the outbreak of the Horus Heresy. Despite suspicion from other Imperial organisations, these Wulfen have been reintegrated into the Chapter where they have fought with loyal savagery.

---

• The Berserker: As stated above, they are in a constant state of animalistic rage.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge: Though they lack almost any ranged weapons, they sure know how to rip, tear, and smash anything they can get close to.
• Godzilla Threshold: Because of the threat they pose to allies, they are only ever let out in the most extreme circumstances, such as invasions against Fenris itself. Even then, the Space Wolves are reluctant to do so. In Battle of the Fang, the Wulfen are kept in isolation within the Fang, the Wolves' fortress.
• Infectious Insanity: It's bad enough that the Curse of the Wulfen is hanging over every Space Wolf's head, but it got worse with the fluff changes to the Wulfen in the campaign book that introduced them to the game proper, as they can now accelerate the chance of the Curse afflicting Space Wolves around them. In-game, Wulfen models have the Curse of the Wulfen rule which affects Space Wolf models within certain distances of a squad of Wulfen, giving them special bonuses determined by die rolls.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: The Wulfen are slavering, bestial monsters reminiscent of the Wolfman.
• Taking You with Me: When mortally wounded the Wulfen tend to go into a frenzy as they try to bring down their attackers before they fall. The 8th Edition rules represent this with the "Death Frenzy" ability that allows a Wulfen model to attack before being removed.
• Unstoppable Rage: The only thing that can seem to calm them down is death itself.

Fenrisian Wolves

Fierce and cunning predators native to the icy wastes of Fenris. Fenrisian wolves are of great cultural significance to the Space Wolves, who often tame the beasts to use as companions. An especially large variety, the immense and savage Thunderwolves, is native to Fenris' inhospitable pole and prized as steeds by the Marines.

---

• Beast of Battle: Space Wolves often lead packs of common Fenrisian wolves into battle to chase down and harry enemies.
• Canis Major: The Fenrisian wolves that accompany some Space Wolves into battle are the size of tigers, while the ones that serve as Thunderwolf cavalry are the size of rhinos.
• Food Chain of Evil: Thunderwolves sit firmly at the top of Fenris', and habitually prey on other monsters and megafauna such as giant bears, trolls, and mastodons.
• Hellhound: Thunderwolves are the size of rhinos, have fur like steel wire and several rows of regenerating teeth, can chew through steel, and hunt trolls, mastodons and giant bears as their primary food source.
• Horse of a Different Color: The immense, ferocious Thunderwolves are sometimes tamed and used as war steeds by especially daring and fierce Space Wolves veterans.
• Savage Wolves: They're the biggest, fiercest wolves in the galaxy, are infamous for their aggressiveness and tenacity, and rule the frozen wastelands of Fenris as unquestioned alpha predators. Besides the regular horse-sized variety, there are blackmane wolves, a bigger, nastier variety that live in desolate wildernesses and only enter settled lands in the dead of winter to hunt, and Thunderwolves, rhinoceros-sized monstrosities found only in the northernmost reaches of the planet.

Imperial Fists

"Primarch-Progenitor, to your glory, and the glory of Him on Earth!"

Discipline. Duty. Unyielding Will. These are the measures by which every warrior is judged. Unarmed, a warrior with these qualities will still find victory, no matter how long or arduous the path. When girded with the sacred armaments of the Adeptus Astartes, such a warrior becomes truly indomitable.

— Rogal Dorn, during the Grand Muster of the Imperial Fists

The Imperial Fists were originally the Seventh Legion. Their Primarch is Rogal Dorn, their current Chapter Master is Gregor Dessian, and their official home world is Terra^note formerly Inwit but they are based on the space-fortress Phalanx.
The greatest siege experts in the Imperium, the Imperial Fists are functionally fleet-based, but can claim Holy Terra itself as their home world in honor of their defense of the Imperial Palace during the Horus Heresy. Stoic and self-disciplined, the Imperial Fists' drive to conquer pain and their culture of self-sacrifice allow them to fight on through the worst of trials, even when other chapters would consider retreat.

Although they have been a part of the Warhammer 40,000 universe since the game's 1st Edition, as a strict Codex Chapter the Imperial Fists are generally treated as regular Space Marines with a focus on stubbornness and siege warfare. The Imperial Fists were the focus of the Ian Watson 1993 novel Space Marine, one of the first full length novels ever released by Games Workshop that is still counted as the source for some of the Chapter's background. During 6th Edition the Chapter received the Codex Supplement: Sentinels of Terra sourcebook, the rules for which were later updated and reprinted in 7th Edition's Codex Supplement: Angels of Death. In 8th Edition, the Chapter uses the basic Astartes rules from the August 2019 release of Codex: Space Marines with additional Chapter specific rules released in October 2019's Codex Supplement: Imperial Fists. For 9th Edition, the Chapter uses a combination of the rules published in October 2020's Codex: Space Marines along with the previous edition's Codex Supplement^note with free downloadable errata.

The Imperial Fists also make major appearances in the novels Sons of Dorn and The Beast Arises.

---

• Amplifier Artifact: The scrimshawed remains of a legendary Chief Librarian, the Bones of Osrak^note introduced in the 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Imperial Fists are a relic of the Imperial Fists' Librarius that still resonate with the power of the great historic psyker. A skilled Librarian is able to tap into this latent power, granting them a re-roll when they attempt to manifest a Geokinesis psychic power.
• Anti-Structure: Gatebreaker bolts^note introduced by the 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Imperial Fists are special bolt rounds used by the Imperial Fists and their Successors. Designed to smash enemy defences, these bolts contain a hyper-dense liquid that turns each bolt into a battering ram. In-game, they are particularly good at damaging fortifications as they allow multiple wound rolls for each hit and have a high Armour Penetration characteristic.
• Arch-Enemy: The Iron Warriors, their Evil Counterpart siege experts. The two Legions had always had a bitter rivalry that only intensified during the Horus Heresy as the Iron Warriors took revenge against the Imperial Fists for the perceived slights they had suffered over the years. For their part, the Imperial Fists didn't start to truly hate the Iron Warriors until the Battle of the Iron Cage that took place during the aftermath of the Heresy, where the Iron Warriors caused overwhelming casualties to the Seventh Legion over the course of a brutal four week conflict.
• Berserk Button: Along with their hate of the Iron Warriors, mentioning the Soul Drinkers near any of the other Imperial Fists' successors will at best earn you a session with a Pain Glove.
• Boring, but Practical: The Imperial Fists embody this trope. They specialize in mounting defensive sieges with a combination of architectural skills and marksmanship with the standard bolter, winning battles by essentially whittling down opponents from inside their fortress. The Great Crusade also showed that they built bases and recruited heavily from reclaimed worlds, effectively reinforcing the planet while bolstering their own ranks.
• Brought Down to Badass: Downplayed. The Imperial Fists and their successor Chapters can no longer spit acid or hibernate due to flaws in the Betcher's gland and Sus-an membrane. However the Imperial Fists still retain all the other superhuman powers and organs of a Space Marine.
• Determinator: The Imperial Fists have a genetic predisposition towards stubbornness and self-sacrifice that causes them to fight on in situations where other Chapters would disengage and regroup.
• Dishing Out Dirt: The Imperial Fist Librarians practice geokinesis, a psychic discipline specialized in affecting stone and metal. Thanks to geokinesis, Librarians can cause localized earthquakes by punching the ground, superheat metallic objects with a thought, or create chasms on the battlefield.
• Due to the Dead: Imperial Fists who distinguish themselves are honored with the bones, particularly the skeletal hands, of their fallen battle-brothers, which are then meticulously scrimshawed and worn as ornamentation. This has been viewed as both a cultural practice and as a pathological compulsion resulting from the Fists' gene-seed; Ian Watson's 40K novels feature one Imperial Fist who stripped his own hand to the bone so he could scrimshaw the names of his fallen squadmates into his fist.
• Enemy Scan: The Eye of Hypnoth^note from the 8th Edition Imperial Fists Siegebreaker Cohort Specialist Detachment is an advanced auspex array that can detect the weaknesses in any enemy armour or fortification. In-game terms, the Eye allows a Siegebreaker Cohort unit close to the bearer a chance to re-roll to wound rolls.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Imperial Fists follow the "Junker model of behavior" and continue Terra's "ancient Prussic codes".
• Fatal Flaw: The Imperial Fists' stubbornness can cause the Chapter trouble when they've refused to back out of a losing battle. One such example is the Iron Cage Incident, where the entire Imperial Fists Legion deployed in order an attempt to capture the Iron Warriors' Primarch Perturabo on the highly fortified world of Sebastus IV. The Imperial Fists soon discovered that the entire battlefield was an intricately designed trap and suffered extremely heavy casualties as they refused to retreat until they had completed their impossible goal. After three weeks of constant fighting the Imperial Fists were only saved by the intervention of the Ultramarines.
• Friendly Rivalry: After the Second Founding Rogal Dorn established The Feast of Blades, a tournament between the Company Champions of the Imperial Fists and its successors for the right to possess the Dornsblade, a simple adamantine blade used by the Primarch during the Battle of the Iron Cage. Dorn established this tournament to strengthen the bonds of honour and brotherhood between the now scattered Chapters of the former Legion.
• Gangbangers: After saving the planet from an Ork Waaagh!, the Imperial Fists have maintained a Chapter Fortress on Necromunda that they use as a base for recruitment. The Chapter has found that with the right training and indoctrination, members of the planets' many gangs prove to be high quality recruits.
• Honor Before Reason: Though almost all Space Marine Chapters disdain things like camouflage and stealth, the Fists are noteworthy for also viewing retreating as an unacceptable act of cowardice. Thankfully, they are somewhat self aware of this following the Iron Cage incident and most marines that rise to leadership positions have learned to curb this impulse.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Their modern color scheme gives them ice blue lenses for their eyepieces, which match well with their stern and stubborn personality.
• In-Series Nickname: Due to their actions during the Horus Heresy, the Imperial Fists have gained the title Defenders of Terra.
• Macho Masochism: Genetic degradation has amplified the Imperial Fists' determination and drive for self-sacrifice into something masochistic, hence their appreciation for dueling scars as well as the Pain Glove device detailed below.
• More Dakka: In game more than in the background. The Imperial Fists' special rules make taking a high number of rapid-firing bolt weapons very advantageous, resulting in their armies being able to put out a very high volume of fire.
• Order Reborn: The Imperial Fists suffered terrible casualties during The War of the Beast, finally being driven to extinction during the second invasion of Ullanor. In an attempt to prevent knowledge of this event from devastating the morale of the war-ravaged Imperium, Chapter Master Maximus Thane of the Fists Exemplar convinced the Imperial Fists' Successors to secretly rebuild their parent Chapter with members of their own brotherhoods. In a Call-Back to one of the earliest pieces of Imperial Fists fluff (the 1993 novel Space Marine), the Successor Chapters unanimously chose Thane to lead the refounded Chapter.
  • With the dawn of the Era Indomitus and the dispensation of Primaris Marines to every Chapter throughout the galaxy the Imperial Fists have truly been reborn, as they now have Marines in their ranks again with gene-seed directly derived from Rogal Dorn as opposed to the various Second Founding successors they'd been using since the War of the Beast.
• The Perfectionist: Imperial Fists have a strong tendency toward fastidiousness with detail in almost everything they do, and are harshly self-critical of any failure.
• Planet Spaceship: The Imperial Fists' headquarters is the Phalanx, a mobile space fortress the size of a small moon. It's so large that its interior spaces have distinct ecosystems and biologists can track the evolution of its unique animal lifeforms.
• Praetorian Guard: During the Great Crusade, the Imperial Fists fulfilled this role, alongside the Legio Custodes, and were known as the Emperor's personal praetorians accompanying him everywhere and being used to strike the decisive blow against his enemies.
• The Rival: The Imperial Fists consider themselves to be the rivals of the Ultramarines and one of the reasons that they fold so strongly to the dictates of the Codex Astartes is to prove that they can outdo the sons of Guilliman at their own game. This rivalry was born due to many Imperial Fists believing that Rogal Dorn should have been made Lord Commander of the Imperium in the wake of the Horus Heresy.
• Sacrificial Lion: Vladimir Pugh had been listed as the Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists since 1st Edition, having appeared in Ian Watson's novel Space Marine, one of the first two full length novels Games Workshop ever released. The 6th Edition codex supplement Sentinels of Terra however saw Chapter Master Pugh killed battling the Tyranids and replaced with Vorn Hagan. This was the first instance of a Chapter Master from a well-known Chapter being killed during the game's contemporary timeline and was an indication of the company's change in policy regarding the setting's Status Quo Is God.
• Self-Harm: The Imperial Fists believe that pain is both a penance and a philosophy. To this end, they make frequent use of the Pain Glove, a bodysuit-like device that stimulates pain nerves without actually causing damage. This is both to strengthen their self discipline and, through mediation on Rogal Dorn, help them become more closely attuned to their Primarch.
  Pain is...a lesson that the universe teaches us. Pain is the preserver from injury. Pain perpetuates our lives. It is the healing, purifying scalpel of our souls. Pain is the wine of communion with heroes. It is the quicksilver panacea for weakness — the quintessence of a dedicated existence. Pain is the philosophic vitriol which transmutes mere moral into immortal. It is the Sublime, the golden astral fire!
• Storming the Castle: Siege warfare is a specialty of the Imperial Fists, whether it is holding a strongpoint for an indefinite time against great odds, or penetrating hardened installations the Chapter will carry out the action with meticulous care, skill and precision.

Blood Angels

"By the blood of Sanguinius!"

Because as long as one single Blood Angel lives and breathes, he will be master of his spirit. He will not let the abyss that lies in the hearts of us all take him into darkness. That is the truth you did not understand, the truth that Horus has forgotten. It is not the descent toward the shadow nor the rise toward the light that makes us superior. It is the endless struggle between the two that greatness of character lies. We are tested, and we do not break. We will never fall!

— Sanguinius, during the Battle of Signus Prime

The Blood Angels were originally the Ninth Legion. Their Primarch is Sanguinius and their Chapter Master at the end of the 41st Millennium is Luis Dante. The Chapter's fortress monastery, Arx Angelicum, is on the world of Baal and their new recruits are drawn from the planet’s two moons Baal Primus and Baal Secundus.

Though the Blood Angels have inherited the nobility of their angelic Primarch, they also bear a terrible curse. A flaw in their gene-seed drives them to seek blood in the carnage of close combat, and in the worst cases can consume a Blood Angel's mind. Despite this, the Blood Angels maintain their founder's idealism, and the knowledge of their defects gives them unusual humility for Astartes. The Chapter has fought in defence of the Imperium through many important campaigns, including the War of the Beast, and both Second and Third Armageddon Wars. As the 41st Millennium drew to a close, the Blood Angels suffered one of the worst crises in their history as the Baal System came under attack from a tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathan. Despite the help of their Successor Chapters, the Sons of Sanguinius would have been overrun by the Tyranid hordes if not for the opening of the Great Rift that scattered the Hive Fleet and unleashed a legion of Daemons who massacred the extra-galactic xenos. The arrival of Roboute Guilliman's Indomitus Crusade struck the final blow against the Tyranids and the new Primaris Marines that accompanied the Crusade were welcome reinforcements for the much depleted Chapter.

The Blood Angels have been a part of the Warhammer 40,000 game since its 1st Edition, appearing on the cover of two of that edition's sourcebooks^note  Warhammer 40,000: Compilation and Warhammer 40,000: Battle Manual. In 2nd Edition the Chapter were the Space Marine forces included in the starter set and their rules were included in Codex: Angels of Death alongside the Dark Angels. The 3rd Edition of the game saw the Chapter receive a codex supplement for Codex: Space Marines while their 4th Edition rules were released as official Chapter Approved rules in White Dwarf. During 7th Edition the Blood Angels were the Imperial forces involved in two campaign supplements^note Shield of Baal and Black Crusade: Angel's Blade that expanded on their codex rules. The 8th Edition rules for the Blood Angels are included in the Codex Adeptus Astartes: Blood Angels book released in December 2017 with additional rules published in the November 2019 sourcebook Psychic Awakening: Blood of Baal. For 9th Edition, the Chapter uses a combination of the rules published in October 2020's Codex: Space Marines combined with the Codex Supplement: Blood Angels book, released December 2020.

For more about the Sons of Sanguinius, see the the Blood Angels novels.

---

• Amplifier Artifact: The Biomantic Sarcophagus^note from the late 8th Edition Psychic Awakening: Blood of Baal supplement is a relic fitted with psychically sensitive filaments and crystal wafers that enhance the psychic abilities of a Librarian confined to the shell of a Dreadnought, allowing the Librarian to project his powers at a far greater range and make it easier for him to Deny enemy powers.
• Arch-Enemy: The Blood Angels reserve a great hatred for the Black Legion, due to Horus killing Sanguinius at the end of the Horus Heresy.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: The Blood Angels are very aggressive, their strategies typically involve getting into close combat as soon as possible, and on the battlefield their forces are frequently pulled forward by their Assault Squads, keeping their tactical initiative going by never giving their opposition a chance to regroup. They can be just as tactically flexible as any chapter when they need to, but playing offense offsets the damage done if any Blood Angel falls prey to the Red Thirst.
• Beneath the Mask: Generally, few outside the sons of Sanguinius know of their flaw, and they like to keep it that way. The air of sophistication they cultivate, while genuine, is also a facade they use to help keep their inner rage under the appearance of control.
• Bling of War: The Blood Angels believe that their wargear should be both deadly and beautiful, ornamented with gold and exquisite designs that are the equal to many works of art. The armour of many Blood Angels officers in particular is often highly ornate, incorporating Sculpted Physiques, gilded angelic halos, and gemstones carved into the shapes of blood drops. Early editions of the game also always depicted all Blood Angels Captains wearing armour of shining gold.
• Bloody Murder: Some Blood Angel Librarians are able to boil the blood in their enemy's veins and cause it to explosively burst from their pores. In-game this is represented by the Sanguinary Discipline Psychic Power Blood Boil that could instantly kill the target^note in 7th Edition or cause multiple mortal wounds^note in 8th Edition.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Rather than use the traditional symbols ascribed by the Codex Astartes for squad designation, the Blood Angels and many of their successors use a system of colour-coded helmets with red representing battleline units, yellow for close support, blue for fire support and gold for veterans.
• Combat Clairvoyance: Some Blood Angels inherit a small portion of their gene-father's prophetic gifts, receiving visions of the immediate future that allow them to avoid or deflect enemy's attacks. The 8th Edition Warlord Trait 'Gift of Foresight' represents this in the game, giving the Blood Angels Warlord a chance to ignore wounds they have received.
• A Commander Is You: Brute. These are the blitzkreig Astartes. They are fast and slightly reckless, fearless and deadly in the melee, especially their dreaded Death Company.
• Cultured Badass: The Blood Angels enjoy long lifespans by Astartes standards, allowing them the time to practice and master art as well as war. Combined with their refined aesthetic, this sharply contrasts their more...iconic image.
• Death World: The Blood Angels' home world of Baal, as well as its two inhabited moons Baal Prime and Baal Secundus, are irradiated, mutant-infested, post-apocalyptic hellholes, making them perfect recruiting worlds for the Adeptus Astartes. Special mention to Baal Secundus as its Thirstwater was so bad and memetic that not even the Tyranids wanted to touch the damn thing with a five meter pole during the Devastation of Baal.
• Due to the Dead: The background material for Blood Angel Primaris Hellblaster Squads states that, after a Hellblaster martyrs themselves by overloading their plasma incinerator, the Chapter's Techmarines will recover their weapon and inscribe their name upon it in microscopic lettering to honour their ultimate sacrifice.
• Dynamic Entry: Something of a Blood Angel specialty with a number of their unique Formations allowing their elite assault troops to engage the enemy on the same turn that they arrive on the battlefield.
• Elite Army: Although they usually support other Blood Angel forces in small numbers, the veterans of the Blood Angels' 1st Company, known as the Archangels, will sometimes form together in order undertake the most dangerous and important missions. This was represented in the 7th edition rules by a number of unique Formations^note such as the Archangels Formation, the Archangels Sanguine Wing and the Archangels Demi-Company that allowed a player to field an entire army drawn from the Blood Angels elite.
• Fangs Are Evil: The Blood Angels' geneseed causes their upper canines to lengthen and sharpen into the classic "vampire fangs" appearance. Whether or not the trope itself is subverted depends on whether a particular Blood Angel is in the grips of the Red Thirst or not.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Blood Angels have notable Renaissance Italy influences, as most members of the chapter/Legion have Italian names common to that time and their officers and leaders make use of Power Armor that is molded to look like sculpted muscles.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Blood Angels are well-known for using flame weapons, rivaling the Salamanders in this aspect. In-game, along with the standard flamer, Blood Angels are the only chapter whose Tactical Squads can take heavy flamers as a heavy weapon option and which can take hand flamers as a replacement option for bolt pistols. Also, Baal Predators can be equipped with flamestorm cannons as their main turret weapon and heavy flamers as their sponson weapons.
• Flaying Alive: Invoked by the armor of certain characters (Mephiston and Astaroth in particular) and the Chaplains who lead the Death Company, whose armor is sculpted and painted to resemble a completely flayed body with exposed musculature on their chest, arms and legs.
• Genetic Memory: The Blood Angels bear what is sometimes called the Curse of Horus, the blood-memory of their Primarch's death at the Arch-Heretic's hands. Those lost to the Black Rage will forget their own identity and hallucinate Sanguinius' final moments.
• Growing Wings: The Blood Angels psychic power Wings of Sanguinius creates a pair of blood-red wings of psychic energy that allow a Librarian to move and fly as if he was wearing a jump pack.
• He Cleans Up Nicely: The nomadic scavenger tribes of Baal generally suffer from cankers, lesions, and melanoma as the outward symptoms of the harshness of their existence. If they are inducted into the Blood Angels and survive their year of wakeless sleep in a life-support sarcophagus, they emerge transformed into perfect-bodied beings with a trace of Sanguinius' own beauty, purified of both their literal and metaphorical humanly imperfections.
• Horror Hunger: The Blood Angels and their successors are afflicted with a vampire-like craving for blood called the Red Thirst, which can grow stronger as they age, to the point that it drives them to a level of madness comparable to the Black Rage.
• It's Raining Men: The Blood Angels are masters of high altitude and orbital deployment of jump pack-equipped troops. In the 7th edition rules this was represented by the "Descent of Angels" Warlord Trait, while the special rules for the some of the Blood Angels' unique Formations made such tactics easier to perform and/or more effective. Older editions even allowed the airdropping of Land Raiders directly into battlezones.
• Jump Jet Pack: The Angel's Wing is an ornate jump pack that is a relic of the Bloodblades, the Blood Angels' 8th Company. This ancient jump pack incorporates multiple collision-avoidance devices and counter-ballistic systems that allow the wearer a greater chance of avoiding enemy fire while travelling at full speed. In the 8th Edition rules, the Angel's Wing allows its wearer to avoid all Overwatch fire as well as giving him a greater chance of making it into combat.
• Lightning Bruiser: They are a Chapter with a heavy focus on mobility and hitting really hard in close combat.
• Magic Staff: The Blood Angels Relic Gallian's Staff is a powerful force staff created by the famous Librarian to control his Red Thirst. The staff is able to absorb the fury of the Flaw and channel it to enhance the wielder's psychic abilities, represented in the 8th Edition of the rules by granting a bonus to a Librarian attempting to use the 'Smite' Psychic Power.
• Mini-Mecha:
  • While they still use standard Dreadnought patterns, the Blood Angels are particularly known for the Chapter-exclusive Furioso Dreadnought, a close assault variant of the most common Castraferrum-pattern Dreadnought that can take a number of unique weapons, such as blood talons and frag cannons.
  • The Blood Angels are known to be one of the few chapters to have dreadnoughts piloted by Librarians. These Librarian Dreadnoughts are a variant of the Chapter's Furioso Dreadnoughts that allows the pilot to continue to channel their Psychic Powers and mounts a force weapon alongside one of the Furioso's more traditional armament.
• More Dakka: They are known for the Baal Predator which steps up the total amount of firepower from a normal Predator by being able to take a twin assault cannon on its main turret rather than a single autocannon or twin lascannon.
• Nerf: Got hit with this after the 5th Edition due to criticisms that they were an overpowered army. One of the most notable were the Blood Talons, weapons for Furioso Dreadnoughts that, while they lacked the punch against vehicles a Dreadnought's normal fists did, could generate new attacks every time they scored a wound. This allowed a Dreadnought equipped with them to wipe out entire units.
• An Odd Place to Sleep: In keeping with their vampire theme, Blood Angel battle-brothers have a habit of periodically resting in the sarcophagus used for their creation. One of the reason they do this is because it is actually a kind of Auto Doc, extracting their blood, subjecting it to osmosis, and re-integrating it into the body. Through this ritual they purify their blood in the hope of keeping the Flaw at bay. The older a Blood Angel gets, the longer and more frequent such purification sleep tends to be.
• Our Vampires Are Different: The Blood Angels make extensive use of blood in religious ceremonies, and as part of their transformation process spend a year in a blood-filled life-support sarcophagus. They commonly fly (with jump packs), are eternally youthful, drink blood, and sleep in coffins. They are also noted for naturally living longer on average than the Marines of any other chapter. Older fluff used to give them all pale skin, red eyes, and black hair, but nowadays they better resemble their fair-haired, angelic founder. Their successor chapters, especially the Blood Drinkers, take up the slack.
• Pirate Ninja Zombie Robot: The Blood Angels combine elements of angels and vampires.
• The Pollyanna: A all-male example on a factional level; despite the darkness of the Black Rage and Red Thirst that perpetually hangs over them, they are also one of the most optimistic chapters. The Blood Angels have inherited Sanguinius's idealism, and the belief that no matter how bad things are, they can always get better. The knowledge of their own flawed nature allows them to regard themselves with a certain humbleness unusual in Astartes, allowing this belief to flourish despite the kind of universe they inhabit.
• Pretty Boy: Sanguinius, who was known as the Angel in life, was the most physically beautiful of the Primarchs and the Blood Angels have inherited his good looks.
• Ray Gun: The Blood Angels have access to inferno pistols, a pistol version of the meltagun.
• Red Is Heroic: By the standards of the setting, the red armoured Blood Angels are known to be one of the noblest Astartes Chapters in existence, willing to go to great lengths to protect the Imperium.
• Red Is Violent: Despite their otherwise noble nature, the influence of the Flaw has led to the Chapter becoming renowned for their ultra-violent assaults.
• Red Ones Go Faster: The Blood Angels' focus on getting to the enemy as quickly as possible has led them to develop the overcharged Lucifer-pattern engine resulting in their armoured vehicles being significantly faster than those used by other Chapters.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The rank of Lieutenant^note added to the Codex Astartes after the resurrection of Roboute Guilliman has been incorporated into the Blood Angels' order of battle in a unique way, with each of a Company's two Lieutenants taking on a different role; one highly aggressive, the other more strategic and cool-headed. One Lieutenant, known as the Sword of Sanguinius, is charged with leading the most dangerous assaults and vital missions, lending his strength to that of his battle-brothers and normally being one of the first of the Company's warriors into battle. The second Lieutenant is known as the Warden of the Blood and it is his role to take command of the Company should the Captain be lost to the Chapter's Flaw. The position of Warden of the Blood requires great strategic abilities and a calm mind.
• Religious Vampire: Having a defect like the Red Thirst doesn't prevent them from being one of the Imperium's paragons and its in fact their faith that keeps them in check. In addition, their Primarch whom they deeply honor also has some Jesus-like traits himself.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Every Blood Angel, to some degree, even the less experienced ones. This is due to bearing the Genetic Memory of their Primarch's death, and battle can trigger involuntary flashbacks to it. The ones who succumb to "the Black Rage" are those whose symptoms have overcome them so thoroughly that they can no longer distinguish between Sanguinius' memories and the reality around them.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: It is said that the crozius arcanum known as Figure of Death has become infused by the fearful aura of its first wielder, and that it passes on this fear to those it strikes. The late 8th Edition rules for the Figure of Death force any unit struck to take a negative modifier to their Leadership characteristic.
• Super-Reflexes: Some Blood Angels have inherited a small measure of their Primarch's combat abilities, exhibiting speed and reflexes faster than even the enhanced abilities of their fellow Astartes. The 8th Edition rules represent this with the 'Speed of the Primarch' Blood Angels Warlord Trait that allows the Warlord to always strike first in close combat.
• Super-Speed: The Sanguinary Discipline Psychic Power, 'Quickening', sees a Blood Angels Librarian enhance their speed, or that of an ally, with the in-game effect^note in all editions of increasing the model's Movement and combat speed considerably.
• Tragic Hero: As the above quote describes, the Blood Angels are a pack of bloodthirsty (literally) berserkers who slaughter everything around them...or rather, they would be, were it not for their steadfast refusal to give in to their dark compulsions and insistence on remaining masters of themselves, even as the inevitable twin curses of the Red Thirst and Black Rage weigh on them.
• Trick Bullet: Quake bolts are rare bolt rounds utilised by the Blood Angels and their successors that create a pulse shock wave when they hit, knocking their target to the ground, and making their vulnerable to a follow up assault. Rather than damage a target, the 8th Edition rules makes units hit by quake bolts easier to hit in close combat.
• Unstoppable Rage: Two different levels of this affect the Blood Angels and their successors:
  • The Black Rage, a curse that can transform them into frothing berserkers. Even after ten thousand years, the Blood Angels have no idea what triggers it.
  • The Red Thirst, while much less severe than the Black Rage, is bad enough that it still forces anyone affected by it, even those not suited to close combat, to charge into the fray and rend the enemy to pieces.
• What the Hell, Hero?: In Devastation of Baal, Guilliman harshly criticizes their decision to keep Baal's moons as irradiated wastelands in order to obtain stronger recruits, stating that forcing its people to live in hellish conditions alienates them from their leaders and is precisely what sends them into the arms of Chaos.
  It has long been in your capability to transform these worlds. Baal Primus is dead, but you need not let your remaining people suffer unnecessarily. Will they fight any better for dwelling on a world that kills them? By sacrificing their children to the Emperor's service, they have earned a better life. Once you have torn that blasphemy down, raise up the population of Baal Secundus. Teach them what we are fighting for. A line must be drawn between what is good and what is evil, for if the Great Enemy comes with offers of power to a wretch, what reason does he have to refuse hell if he dwells in it already?

The Sanguinary Guard

Originally founded as the personal bodyguard of the Primarch Sanguinius, the Sanguinary Guard are a corps of highly elite veterans fielded by the Blood Angels and their successors. Each guardian wears beautifully crafted armour dating from the times of the Great Crusade and carries a mighty blade that crackles with crimson lightning. Equipped with winged jump packs and wearing sculpted death masks, the Sanguinary Guard embody the spirit of their lost Primarch, inspiring their battle-brothers and striking fear into the enemies of the Imperium.

---

• Abnormal Ammo: The Angelus-pattern bolters used by the Sanguinary Guard are loaded with bloodshard shells, specially designed bolt shells that contain razor-filament capable of cutting through all but the strongest armour with ease.
• Arm Cannon: The Angelus-pattern boltgun is a wrist-mounted bolter issued to the Sanguinary Guard that allows them to wield their glaives encarmine with both hands.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: During the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy, the Sanguinary Guard acted as the personal guard of the Primarch Sanguinius, a mighty warrior himself who could face countless foes alone and break the back of a Greater Daemon of Khorne with his bare hands.
• Mask of Power: The Death Masks worn by the Sanguinary Guard serve to both honor their fallen brothers and strike terror in their foes. In-game, Death Masks cause a -1 penalty to the morale of nearby enemy units.
• Sword and Gun: The typical weapons loadout for the Sanguinary Guard is the Angelus-pattern bolter and the Glaive Encarmine, an exceptionally well-crafted two-handed power weapon which can either be a sword or an axe.
• Symbolic Wings: The jump packs worn by the Sanguinary Guard are decorated with large angelic wings in imitation of the mighty pinions of their Primarch, the Great Angel Sanguinius. The angelic image that these wings give the Sanguinary Guard greatly boosts the moral of their allies and strikes fear in the heart of their enemies.

The Death Company

Some say that the Blood Angels are tainted: that they harbour a dark secret. I know this to be true. I have seen the infamous Death Company: wild-eyed and foam-mouthed berserkers who tear their enemies limb from limb, crush skulls with a single blow, snap spines and rip out inner organs. [...]

— Inquisitor N'Syun

On the eve of battle, those of Sanguinius' lineage who fall to their gene-curse and are overcome by the Black Rage are taken by the Chapter’s Chaplains and segregated from their brethren. As they can never be released from their curse, their armour is repainted in black and red, and they are gathered together into a fighting force called the Death Company. These berserk shock troops are sent into the teeth of the heat of battle to win final glory and honour by bringing horrifyingly brutal death to the enemies of the Imperium. Should a Death Company brother survive their final battle, they are typically granted the Emperor's Peace as death is the only release from their curse.

---

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Guardian's Blade is a powerful glaive encarmine that became a relic of the Death Company after its wielder fell to the Black Rage. The Blade is famed throughout the Chapter for having a blade so sharp that no armour in the galaxy can protect from its razor-sharp edge. In the 7th Edition rules, the exceptional blade's sharpness was represented by it having the high Armour Penetration characteristic and the Armourbane special rule, allowing it to cleave through both personal and vehicle armour.
• The Berserker: The Black Rage causes Blood Angels to degenerate into blood-crazed lunatics who are overcome by the Genetic Memory of Sanguinius' death, and grouping them into the Death Company allows their squads to vent their fury on the Emperor's enemies rather than their comrades. When unleashed, the Death Company brutally tear their opponents apart in close combat, ignoring wounds that would incapacitate other Astartes. In some editions, the Red Thirst^note a yearning blood-hunger that afflicts all Blood Angels would temporarily turn a Blood Angel into a berserker, forcing even their support units to engage the enemy in brutal close combat.
• Death Seeker: Only one Blood Angel has ever recovered from the Black Rage and to leave them in that state is considered a fate worse than death. As such these Death Company brothers are sent into the worst fighting in search of a merciful end in combat, with any who survive given the Emperor's Peace after the battle.
• Evil Me Scares Me: The Blood Angels won't hesitate to charge Tyranids or even Daemons in close combat, and indeed relish the opportunity. What truly gives them pause is the prospect of falling to the Black Rage and joining the Death Company.
• Mini-Mecha: The mortally wounded Blood Angels who pilot the Chapter's Dreadnoughts are just as susceptible to falling to the Black Rage as their living brothers, and such tragic individuals are also initiated into the Death Company. They are installed into Furioso Dreadnoughts ornamented with the Company's macabre imagery, and unleashed as living battering rams against the foe. Unlike their flesh and blood brothers, Death Company Dreadnoughts often survive their battles and the sheer power and effectiveness of these weapons is such that, rather than being granted the the Emperor's Peace, they are restrained and kept in stasis for deployment in future battle.
• Onrushing Army: While a typical Blood Angel deployment moves forward swiftly and aggressively, it is done with the tight discipline expected of Astartes (even if that discipline can sometimes become strained). However, when the Death Company advances, no such discipline is possible; the Marines in it are Death Seekers to a man and only interested in a Self-Destructive Charge, and are too far consumed by the Black Rage to even contemplate any other approach.
• Power Born of Madness: Those gripped by the Black Rage become superhumanly brutal in combat and feel no pain, so that nothing short of death will stop them.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: The Reliquary Armour, a relic of the Death Company from 7th Edition, is an ornate suit of artificer armour decorated with the bones of more than thirty Blood Angels heroes who fell to the Black Rage before their death. The armour is a grim reminder that even the greatest of the Chapter can become lost to the Flaw, stoking an extreme desire for vengeance within the heart of the wearer. In the rules this determination was represented by the wearer gaining special rules that allow them a better chance of resisting enemy psychic powers and the ability to get into close combat quicker.
• Suicide Mission: The Death Company is often deployed on suicide missions where they can die a glorious and honorable death against impossible odds, rather than live in perpetual madness. It is a good way for the chapter to honorably dispose of Blood Angels lost to the Black Rage and, sometimes, the Death Company might even prevail and deal a truly hard blow to the enemy.

Iron Hands

++THE FLESH IS WEAK++

The weak must be expunged in order for Humanity to survive. Only the strong can be trusted, my sons. Our will must be as steel, our resolve as adamantium; it cannot yield even for a moment. We few have been entrusted with a sacred duty to ensure the Emperor's reign is eternal. So shall it be, whatever the cost.

— Ferrus Manus, addressing the Iron Hands at the Gorgonos Conclave

Formerly the Tenth Legion of Astartes, the Iron Hands were once known as the Stormwalkers and their Primarch is Ferrus Manus. The Chapter is ruled by the Iron Council, with the temporary elected position of Voice of the Council acting as the de facto Chapter Master. The Voice of the Council at the beginning of the Era Indomitus is Kardan Stronos. The Chapter doesn't maintain a single fortress monastery upon their home world of Medusa. Instead, each individual Clan Company has its own mobile Hall of Conquest, with the only permanent structures on the planet being the Eye of Medusa, where the Iron Council meets, and the Gorgon’s Forge, where the Chapter’s greatest relics are kept.

The Iron Hands believe that the death of their Primarch during the Horus Heresy was caused by giving in to emotion, and have since become obsessed with cold logic and the purity of the machine. Technologically adept beyond the knowledge of most other Chapters, the Iron Hands ritualistically replace their organic components with cybernetics, and have forged close ties with the Tech-Priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Despite their tireless defence of the Imperium, the Iron Hands' hatred of weakness and lack of mercy have led to friction with other Imperial forces. Since the opening of the Great Rift and the dawning of the Era Indomitus, the Iron Hands have striven to find a greater balance between emotion and logic, and have launched the Iron Crusade to free the Stygius Sector from the grip of Chaos, despite the official Imperial retreat from the War Zone.

While the Chapter has been part of the Warhammer 40,000 game since its 1st Edition, the Iron Hands are generally treated as a stubborn, mechanically focused Codex compliant Chapter. The Iron Hands first received Chapter specific supplemental rules during 3rd Edition in their Index Astartes article published in White Dwarf and later republished in the Index Astartes III background book. During 6th Edition, Codex Supplement: Clan Raukaan introduced some new background information and rules for the Chapter that were later updated and reprinted in 7th Edition's Codex Supplement: Angels of Death. In 8th Edition, the Chapter used the basic Astartes rules from the August 2019 release of Codex: Space Marines with additional Chapter specific rules^note including rules for their first named character released in September 2019's Codex Supplement: Iron Hands.For 9th Edition, the Chapter uses a combination of the rules published in October 2020's Codex: Space Marines along with the previous edition's Codex Supplement^note with free downloadable errata.

---

• 24-Hour Armor: Sources indicate that the hatred some Iron Hands hold for their weak flesh has led to them becoming permanently bound within their armour.
• Abnormal Ammo: The Iron Hands and their Successor Chapter make use of haywire bolts, rare bolt shells crafted from sagatellum ore minded on Medusa itself. An item of Special-Issue Wargear, introduced during 8th Edition, these sophisticated bolt rounds unleash a crackling burst of electricity that burns out the circuitry of enemy vehicles and banishes their machine spirit. In-game this is represented by haywire shells having the chance to cause mortal wounds against any Vehicle units they hit.
• Amplifier Artifact: The Mindforge is a web of psycho-active circuitry that improves the connection between a Librarian and his weapon. Assisted by the Mindforge's machine-spirit, the Librarian is able to enhance and optimise the psychic energy that they channel into their weapon. The 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Iron Hands rules represent this by giving the force weapon wielded by the Librarian a superior stat line compared to its regular version.
• Arch-Enemy: The Iron Hands have a particular hatred for the Traitor Legions that betrayed their Primarch during the Drop Site Massacre on Isstvan V and will fight all the harder against those they see as responsible for their gene-father's death. The 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Iron Hands rules represent this with the Vengeance for Isstvan V Iron Hands Stratagem (granting them a re-roll against World Bearers, Iron Warriors, Night Lords and Alpha Legion units they are fighting in melee) and The Gorgon's Rage Iron Hands Stratagem (granting them bonuses when fighting Emperor's Children in melee, along with other benefits).
• Artificial Limbs: Their obsession with the superiority of the machine over flesh often leads to Iron Hands acquiring more bionics whenever they get the opportunity, often going so far as replacing perfectly healthy limbs with mechanical replacements should the opportunity arise. This obsession with augmetics has even been adopted into the rituals of the Chapter with all Iron Hands undergoing the Rite of Severance when they complete their training. The Rite involves the new battle-brother having their left hand removed and replaced with a bionic version in imitation of their Primarch's own metallic fists. Should a battle-brother advance to Veteran status, they will often replace their right hand with a second augmetic fist.
• Base on Wheels: Due to the unstable geography of Medusa making such a thing impractical, the Iron Hands do not maintain a single stationary fortress monastery. Instead, each of the Iron Hands' Clan Companies operates its own mobile factory-barracks known as a Hall of Conquest that roves the surface of their home world in a manner similar to that of the planet's nomadic tribes. These fully automated marvels of technology are maintained by armies of servitors and were created for the Iron Hands in the distant past by the Adeptus Mechanicus to seal the alliance between the two organisations.
• Brain/Computer Interface:
  • Some background material mentions that the crew of the Iron Hands' many war machines often use their bionic implants to bond directly with their vehicles, essentially becoming one with its machine spirit.
  • The Fortis-pattern data spike is a piece of Special-Issue Wargear available to Iron Hands Techmarines in the 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Iron Hands sourcebook. The data spike allows a Techmarine to instantly commune with the machine-spirit of any Iron Hands vehicle, allowing them to diagnose the cause and location of any damage the vehicle may have suffered with great ease. In-game, this is represented by a Techmarine with a Fortis-pattern data spike having a greater chance of restoring multiple wounds to the damaged vehicle.
• Brain Uploading: When the Clan Company Kaargul Iron Father Paullian Blantar fell in battle his brain, all that was left of his biological body, was installed into a Dreadnought body so that he could continue to serve. Some amongst the Clan Company, however, believe that the great Iron Father actually had his soul uploaded into his new body, transcending flesh entirely and becoming a great inspiration to the Kaargul.
• Cavalry Refusal: Even after their re-evaluation of their reliance on logic, the Iron Hands belief in "only the strong are worthy of surviving" often results in them refusing to come to the aid of besieged planets if they calculate that doing so will incur a high cost to the Chapter. This belief has also led them to abandon their allies when they needed help the most, such as during the Battle for Columnus, where their refusal to alter their battle plans and assist their allies led to the loss of two Titans and the complete destruction of an entire Raven Guard strike force.
• Chainsaw Good: The Teeth of Mars are a set of blessed chainswords with cog-toothed blades that are gifted by the Adeptus Mechanicus to those of Ferrus Manus' lineage who show exceptional affinity with machines. Said to be blessed by the Machine God, the Teeth are particularly effective against the machines of heretics and xenos. The 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Iron Hands rules represent this by giving the Teeth of Mars increased Armour Penetration and Damage characteristics compared to a regular chainsword, as well as an ability that boots their Strength characteristic when used against vehicles.
• Continuity Drift: When first introduced, in the 3rd Edition Index Astartes article focusing on the Iron Hands, Iron Fathers were a unique unit that combined the roles of Techmarine and Chaplain. Over the years a number of characters that didn't fulfil this role were given the title of Iron Father until, in the 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Iron Hands, it was officially stated the title is an honorary one that can be granted to any Iron Hand from the lowest battle-brother to the oldest of Dreadnoughts.
• Cool Helmet: The Tempered Helm^note  introduced by the 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Iron Hands is a relic helmet that contains unsurpassed information processors that efficiently filter strategic information so that the wearer has the best possible strategic overview of the battle, allowing the player to regain a Command Point they have spent.
• Cyborg: The Iron Hands' belief in the strength of machines over the weakness of flesh has led to many of the Chapter's battle-brothers replacing their biological limbs and organs with bionic replacements, even when they are undamaged, and therefore have a higher proportion of cybernetically enhanced warriors than Chapters not of Ferrus Manus' lineage. It is even rumoured that some of the oldest members of the Chapter have little organic matter left except for their brain and the progenoid glands required to create the next generation of Astartes. In most editions of the game, this heavy degree of mechanisation leads to the Iron Hands being very durable on the battlefield as their bionic parts are far more durable than those of flesh.
• Death World: The Iron Hands' home world of Medusa is plagued by extreme tectonic activity that almost constantly throws volcanic ash into the air, and where Hostile Weather fronts that can strip flesh from bone roll across the surface. The population of the planet live in nomadic clans that traverse the planet's broken plains in large caravans of tracked vehicles. The realities of their lifestyle mean that weakness in the population cannot be afforded, with those too wounded or sick to continue are expected to leave their fellows so as not to strain the already thin resources their kin need. The Iron Hands recruit from these clans and share many of their values.
• Deflector Shields:
  • The Gorgon's Chain is a symbiotic relic of the Iron Hands Chapter that can be fitted to a warrior's armour. Drawing power from the battle-brother's heart, the Gorgon's Chain is able to produce a powerful defence shield that reduces the energy of enemy attacks. The 8th Edition rules represent this by giving the bearer of the Gorgon's Chain an invulnerable save and reduces the chance that enemy ranged attacks will wound.
  • In the 3rd Edition Index Astartes: Hand of Justice Iron Hands rules, Iron Fathers (then a Chaplain-Techmarine combined character) wear a Mechanicus Protectiva in place of the rosarius worn by the Chaplains of other Chapters. These arcane devices fit onto the power armour of the Iron Father, generating a small force field that was just as effective at stopping attacks as a rosarius^note a 50% chance of stopping a wound with no modifiers
• Demonic Possession: During the Gaudinian Heresy, the Iron Hands' obsession with the perfection and purity of the machine led them to fall for a trap set by the Sapphire King, a powerful daemonic entity dedicated to Slaanesh that is obsessed with corrupting the Iron Hands. The incident resulted in a number of battle-brothers, including a full third of the Iron Council itself, becoming possessed by the Sapphire King's daemonic minions until Kardan Stronos realised that unleashing the repressed emotions of his warriors was the key to resisting the corruption. It was this incident that led to the Iron Hands re-evaluating their beliefs on the weakness of emotions.
• Devil's Advocate: When the Iron Hands integrated aspects of Roboute Guilliman's new Codex Astartes into their order-of-battle, they gave Lieutenants the role of Naysmith. In this role, it is the duty of a Lieutenant to criticise and question the plans of their Iron Captain until only a perfect, logical plan remains.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: The Iron Hands believe that the living metal hands of their Primarch were a physical embodiment of his doctrines of efficiency and strength above all things, something that has led to the Chapter's Rite of Severance where a newly initiated battle-brother has their left hand replaced with a mechanical one. Ferrus himself, however, never saw his hands as a sign of strength, for all the great works he accomplished with them he was painfully aware they weren't his real hands and it amazed him that no one else saw it that way too. He saw the hands as a sign of his weakness, a crutch he relied on instead of being strong in his own right.
• Epiphany Therapy: In the aftermath of the Gaudinian Heresy, where the Chapter’s preference following cold logic and emotional repression led to rampant daemonic possession, the Iron Hands were forced to re-evaluate their some of their core philosophies. While a the majority of the Chapter still hold to their belief that logic is superior to emotion, an increasing number, particularly amongst the battle-brothers of Clan Company Raukaan, are coming to the realisation that emotions tempered and controlled by logic can forge a strength greater than either in isolation.
• Healing Factor: The highly sophisticated Auto-Medicae Bionics, Special-Issue Wargear introduced during 8th Edition, incorporate automatic systems that can heal the biological components of those they are fitted to. In-game, these rare bionics heal the model they are attached to every turn.
• Jerkass: Due to their hatred of weakness and their reliance on cold logic when forming their battle plans, the Iron Hands have gained a reputation for ruthlessness, with some outsiders believing that they do not fight to protect the Imperium, simply to destroy the Imperium's foes. At best, this attitude can lead to Iron Hands being disdainful and dismissive of allied forces and refusing calls for aid if they do not believe they are worth their time. At worst, this hatred of weakness can lead to events such as the Purging of Contqual, where Clan Company Raukaan executed one in every three Imperial citizens within the Sub-Sector as they claimed that they could find very little evidence of innocence within the population.
• Knight Templar: The Iron Hands have absolutely no tolerance of weakness, both within themselves and in normal human populations they are meant to protect. The Chapter's high standards and ruthlessly applied logic often leads them to callously leave allies to die if it is tactically advantageous to do so and, during the Purging of Contqual, they executed two-thirds of the sub-sector's population as they believed that letting the Slaaneshi corruption take root on their worlds was a sign of guilt and weakness.
• Machine Empathy: Due to their close affinity with machines, and additional training from the Adeptus Mechanicus, Iron Hands Techmarines are some of the most talented engineers of any Space Marine Chapter, appearing to be able to instinctively diagnose what is troubling any machine-spirit. In-game this some editions of the rules make Iron Hands' vehicles tougher and easier to repair than those of other Chapters. The 8th Edition rules meanwhile represents this with the Machine Empathy Iron Hands Stratagem that allows Techmarines to repair vehicles twice in one turn.
• Machine Worship: The Iron Hands' reverence for the mechanical has led many amongst the Chapter to share some of the beliefs and practices of the Cult Mechanicus. Whether this idealisation borders on full veneration of the Omnissiah alongside the Emperor and their Primarch tends to very with edition and source material with the 3rd Edition rules making Iron Fathers combined Techmarine-Chaplains while other background indicates a looser relationship with the religious practices of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
• Man in the Machine: The Iron Hands consider being placed into the sarcophagus of a Dreadnought to be one of the greatest honours that the Chapter can bestow and there are even rumours that some battle-brothers undergo the procedure voluntarily, without being mortally wounded. Iron Fathers in particular are often granted the honour of transcending their weak flesh and becoming a Dreadnought, something that the 8th Edition rules represent with the March of the Ancients Iron Hands Stratagem that allows a Dreadnought to be upgraded to a Character with a superior stat line.
• Mirroring Factions: They will never admit it, but their complete disregard for the lives and efforts of the ordinary people they are sworn to protect, who they usually consider inferior beings barely worthy of living, is nearly identical to the attitude of many Chaos followers that consider the strongest must rule over the weak. And their obsession to overcome the Weakness of the Flesh by getting more and more mechanical enhancements from the Machine God is also very similar to the wish of Chaos cultists of trascending mortality by getting blessings and mutations from the Chaos Gods.
• Mobile Factory: The volatile geology of Medusa makes it impractical for the Iron Hands to maintain a single permanent fortress monastery in the manner of other Astartes Chapters. Instead, each of the Chapter's Clan Companies maintains a Hall of Conquest, a massive mobile armoury and barracks that produce the majority of the ammunition and equipment used by a Clan Company as they traverse the Medusan plains in imitation of the planet's native clans.
• My Greatest Failure: The battle-brothers of Clan Company Avernii, the Iron Hands' 1st Company, still blame themselves for allowing Ferrus Manus to die during the Drop Site Massacre at the outbreak of the Horus Heresy. This failure has driven the warriors of the Clan Company to take even more drastic measures to purge themselves of emotion through the near constant use of simulus chambers until it is said that the Avernii feel nothing except the guilt of their predecessor's failure, driving them to fight all the harder against the Imperium's foes.
• Named Weapon: The unique combi-melta Betrayer's Bane is a sophisticated weapon with an enhanced rate of fire for its meltagun half^note In the 8th Edition rules, it has double the amount of shots as a regular meltagun. The weapon is used to destroy the warriors of the Emperor's Children and has been engraved with the name of every battle where it has slain one of that most hated of Legions.
• Neural Implanting: The Iron Hands make extensive use of simulus chambers, controversial neural interfaces that allow a battle-brother to inload or exload a vast amount of data directly into their brain. The Iron Hands use these devices to instantly analyse data, conduct combat simulations and insert subconscious strategic protocols that prepare the recipient of any conservable battlefield scenario. The 8th Edition rules represent the pre-programmed firing solutions inserted into a battle-brother’s brain with the Methodical Firepower Iron Hands Stratagem that improves their ranged attacks.
• Not So Stoic: Despite their hatred of emotions and their desire for nothing except pure logic, when hard pressed the Iron Hands have been noted to lose control of their rage and hatred, unleashing their repressed emotions in fury. The 8th Edition rules represent this with the Gorgon's Rage Iron Hands Stratagem that gives them a bonus when in melee combat, particularly when fighting against the Emperor's Children.
• Rage Against the Mentor: One of the root causes of the Iron Hands' mistrust of emotion is their belief that their Primarch let himself be blinded by his rage at Isstvan V, leading to his irrational charge and ultimate death. In the aftermath of the Drop Site Massacre, the survivors embraced cold logic to the point of obsession, utterly rejecting their gene-father's more human qualities for the next ten thousand years.
• Rite of Passage: When an Iron Hands recruit is promoted to the rank of full battle-brother they undergo the Rite of Severance to mark the moment they become a true son of Ferrus Manus. The rite involves the removal of the initiate's right hand by the Chapter's most senior Iron Father, and its replacement with a bionic fist in honour of their gene-father's famous, living metal hands.
• Self-Harm: Some older background material mentions that the Iron Hands' hatred for their weak flesh often drives them to scourge their organic parts, so that the pain will remind them of how weak that flesh is and that, as a result, the remaining flesh of older Iron Hand is usually Covered in Scars. The 8th Edition background material meanwhile focuses on the ritual replacement of organic body-parts with Artificial Limbs.
• Thanatos Gambit: In the aftermath of the Horus Heresy, during the council known as the Tempering that was convened to discuss the future of the Iron Hands, Iron Father Arnok Kraan of Clan Company Garrsak was brutally assassinated by a mysterious assailant despite the extreme defensive measures in place. In the wake of his death, the council made the decision to stick to the dispassionate logic that Kraan had espoused, rather than fall to emotion as their gene-father did. A number of scholars have theorised that this outcome was exactly what Kraan had wished for, and he arranged his own death to make it a reality.
• Shock and Awe: One of the powers of the Iron Hands' 8th Edition Technomancy Psychic Discipline is Fury of Medusa, a psychic ability that allows a Librarian to unleash an electrical spirit against the enemy that can do multiple mortal wounds against multiple enemy units.
• The Stoic: The Iron Hands' are famous for their machine-like stoicism, rarely showing emotion and relying on cold logic to persecute their missions. This stoicism comes from the Chapter's hatred of all emotions and they continually strive to repress their passions so that they do not give in to the weaknesses of the flesh. The battle-brothers of the Chapter even look down on the pride and courage displayed by other Chapters.
• Super-Toughness: The high proportion of bionics used by the Iron Hands makes them even more durable than the average Astartes, able to advance through all but the heaviest enemy fire by trusting in their mechanical blessings. How this is represented in game depends on the edition and can range from simple additional saves to more involved special rules such as Feel No Pain^note a rule that let a model ignore a wound under certain conditions. The 8th Edition rules represent the durability of the Iron Hands with a number of Chapter specific abilities, Stratagems and Warlord Traits that give them chances to simply ignore wounds they take.
• Taking the Bullet: If their calculations conclude that the life of their commander is worth more to the Chapter than their own, Iron Hands battle-brothers are more than willing to intercept attacks intended for their superiors. The 8th Edition rules represent this with the Cogitated Martyrdom Iron Hands Stratagem that allows nearby units to the chance take a mortal wound in place of an attack that would have otherwise damaged an Iron Hands Character.
• Target Spotter: Some high-ranking Iron Hands include sophisticated targeting and data dissemination augmetics amongst their suit of bionic enhancements so that they can direct the fire of their battle-brothers with a high degree of accuracy. The 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Iron Hands rules represent this with the Target Protocols Iron Hands Warlord Trait that allows a nearby Iron Hands unit re-rolls for their ranged attacks.
• Technopath: The Librarian of the Iron Hands are able to use their psychic abilities to attune themselves to machines on a spiritual level. The Chapter's Librarians use these abilities to commune directly with machine spirits, encouraging damaged vehicles to repair themselves, cause enemy equipment to malfunction and reinforce the armour of their allies with psychic steel, represented in-game by the powers of the Technomancy Psychic Discipline^note available to any Astartes Librarian in some editions but unique to the Iron Hands in 8th Edition.
• Took a Level in Kindness: The combination of the events of the Gaudinian Heresy where the Chapter's obsession with the machine almost led them to fall to Chaos, the opening of the Great Rift that split the Imperium in half, and renewed hope of the dawning of the Era Indomitus led the Iron Council to conclude that the Chapter had lost its focus and are now determined to act in the Imperium's defence. While they still calculate the worth of any campaign they undertake, the Iron Hands are now somewhat more willing to take heavy losses in an attempt to save others instead of simply abandoning them to their fate and, such as during the Stygian Reforging, they have been willing to refuse orders to give up territory to the enemies of the Imperium if their own calculations lead them to believe that continuing the campaign themselves will lead to success.
• Trial by Friendly Fire: Due to the cold hard logic they use when devising their battleplans, the Iron Hands are more than willing to fire on their allies if they have calculated that this is the most efficient way of defeating the enemy. This isn't represented on the tabletop, however, as the Chapter still has to follow the normal targeting restrictions.

Ultramarines

"Courage and honour!"

Wisdom, brothers; the greatest gift of all. The gift that marks us out from the savage and the barbarian, that allows us to walk as giants in a world of men. Wisdom tells us when to use the sword and when to use the bolter, when to conquer and when to inspire. It has saved lives, saved worlds, and may yet save the galaxy. Use it well.

— Roboute Guilliman, The Iaxan Symposium

Originally known as the War Born, the Ultramarines were originally the Thirteenth Legion and their Primarch is Roboute Guilliman. Marneus Calgar was Chapter Master at the time of Guilliman's Resurrection and he has continued with that role as the reborn Primarch has taken up the duties of Lord Commander of the Imperium. The Chapter is based in Ultramar, a minor stellar empire within the Eastern Fringe with their fortress monastery, the Fortress of Hera, situated on the world of Macragge.

As it was their Primarch that wrote the Codex Astartes, the organisational and tactical treatise that all Astartes Chapters are supposed to follow, the Ultramarines view themselves as the embodiment of what it means to be a Space Marine, and pride themselves on having a practical and theoretical strategy for any battlefield scenario. Due to the stability of their gene-seed and the sheer number of Ultramarines at the end of the Horus Heresy, nearly two-thirds of all modern Space Marine chapters are of Ultramarines stock. Since the resurrection of Roboute Guilliman, the launching of Abaddon's 13th Black Crusade and the opening of the Great Rift the Ultramarines have been at the forefront of the Imperium's defence by leading the Indomitus Crusade, fighting in warzone across the galaxy, defending their realm from repeated attacks by the forces of Nurgle, and attempting to reclaim the five hundred worlds that used to be part of Ultramar at its height.

The Ultramarines have been a part of the Warhammer 40,000 game since its 1st Edition but didn't truly become the archetypical Space Marine Chapter until 2nd Edition when the codex sourcebook for generic Space Marines was named Codex: Ultramarines. The Chapter were the Imperial forces included in the starter sets for 4th and 5th Editions of the game^note known as Warhammer 40,000: Battle for Macragge and Warhammer 40,000: Assault on Black Reach respectively, and have appeared on the cover of every Codex: Space Marines book in every edition except 3rd. For 8th Edition, the Ultramarines provide the Imperial forces in the Dark Imperium starter set with their rules being a combination of the basic Astartes rules from Codex Space Marines with their Chapter specific rules detailed in Codex Supplement: Ultramarines released at the same time. 9th Edition saw the Ultramarines included in the game's starter sets, including the limited edition Indomitus set, with rules provided in October 2020's Codex: Space Marines and the previous edition's Codex Supplement.

For more about these paragons of Space Marine valour, see the Ultramarines novels.

---

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Soldier's Blade is a simple sword so masterfully-crafted that its monomolecular edge has never needed sharpening since the founding of the Ultramarines. Despite lacking the advanced disruption field technologies of power weapons, the Soldier's Blade is still capable of slicing through armour that their more advanced counterparts would struggle to penetrate. In those editions where the relic is included, the rules for the Soldier's Blade represent this with a superior Armour Penetration value.
• Acid Attack: The ancient storm bolter known as Vengeance of Ultramar is equipped with a micro-forge that coats the weapon's bolts with a bio-reactive acid that burns through living material in an instant. This is represented in the 8th Edition rules by the weapon having a re-roll when attempting to wound a non-vehicle target.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • The Ultramarines have never forgiven the Word Bearers for their surprise attack on at Calth at the outbreak of the Horus Heresy, and the subsequent ravaging of Ultramar. The 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Ultramarines represents this with the Vengeance for Calth Ultramarines Stratagem, which grants re-rolls when fighting Word Bearers in melee.
  • The Ultramarines hold a great hated towards the Tyranids and have been heavily involved in the defence of the Imperium from this extra-galactic xenos. This is hatred dates back to the very first Hive Fleet to assault the galaxy, Hive Fleet Behemoth, nearly destroying Macragge and wiping out their entire First Company. This hatred has even led to a rare departure from the Codex Astartes^note until Guilliman officially sanctioned their existence after his resurrection with the formation of special Tyrannic War Veteran Squads, specifically trained and equipped to destroy the Tyranid menace. When included as a specific unit^note rather than having regular Sternguard Veterans "count-as" Tyrannic War Veterans, Tyrannic War Veterans have special in-game rules that enhance their abilities while fighting Tyranids, such as the 8th edition Bane of Tyranids rule that grants them re-rolls when fighting against the xenos.
• Badass Cape: The Tarentian Cloak is a relic of the Ultramarines thought to date from the Dark Age of Technology. The Cloak is a marvel of technology, weaved with advanced bio-support systems and energy distributors that protect the wearer from harm and heal his wounds. The 8th Edition rules for the Cloak allow the wearer to heal their wounds each turn and gives them an unmodifiable save against enemy attacks.
• Boring, but Practical: While, in the lore, the Ultramarines do not specialise in any single battlefield tactic, their specialities being logistics, organisation and strategic planning, their overall body of skills gives them a strong foundation and that allows them to adapt to almost any battlefield situation, making them one of the most successful and well respected Chapters.
• Combat Clairvoyance: The Precognition power from the Indomitus Psychic Discipline^note introduced by the 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Ultramarines allows the psyker to perceive and avoid any attacks before they happen, granting him an unmodifiable invulnerable save, and giving a penalty on hit rolls against him.
• Cool Helmet: The ancient helmet known as the Helm of Censure holds Sergeant Thiel's controversial thesis on the best ways to slay any foe, including fellow Astartes. Written before the Horus Heresy, the information contained within the Helm is still considered one of the best works on the subject ever written. In the 8th Edition rules, the Helm of Censure grants the wearer re-rolls in combat, along with bonuses to rolls made against Astartes opponents.
• Depending on the Writer: Due to their lack of overt specialisation, many background writers and novel authors have taken various aspects of the Chapter in different directions. Common topics of divergence include exactly how strictly the Codex is followed (some sources say "To the letter", even if that veers right into Lawful Stupid territory, while others dial this back and say that minor variances are accepted, so long as they can be justified later), how well liked the Ultramarines are in universe (some material has noted the Chapter being prideful, with no small number of rivals and foes, while others painted them as one of the most beloved Chapters in the Imperium) and whether the Ultramarines are Masters of None or Masters of All.
• Good Luck Charm: Some background material mentions that the Ultramarines consider the battle barge Emperor Incarnatus to be unusually holy and see it as a herald of good fortune.
• Jack of All Stats: Due to their discipline, training and strategic planning, the Ultramarines are one of the most tactically flexible and well-rounded of all the major Chapters, able to fight on every front and undertake any style of mission with equal chance of success. The 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Ultramarines rules represent this with a number of different rules and Stratagems that allow them to adapt to various battlefield situations at a moment's notice.
• Lawful Stupid: In some early versions of their background, the Ultramarines were infamous for their near-religious adherence to the Codex Astartes, with reports of their members being punished or deemed heretics for acting in ways not in accordance with it in battle, even when such actions led to victory against the odds. This tendency has become less prevalent over the years, with such attitudes being confined to individual Marines who suffer from an obsession with following the Codex to the letter, and the resurrected author of the Codex being somewhat tolerant of deviation as long as it gets results.
• Loophole Abuse: While a Space Marine chapter is only supposed to have a single planet as its fief, they are allowed to draw recruits from multiple planets if necessary. In the case of the Ultramarines, these recruitment worlds just so happen to be in close proximity and share close cultural, trading and military ties. While each of these worlds are at least partially self-sufficient, with their own governments, fleets and military, all the worlds are fiercely loyal to the Ultramarines and together form the sub-sector wide stellar empire known as Ultramar with the Ultramarine's home world of Macragge at its heart.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Due to their gene-father being the author of the Codex Astartes the Ultramarines had been strict adherents to its tenets for ten millenia. However, the invasion of Macragge during the First Tyrannic War was so traumatic that they willingly diverged from the rules their founder prescribed by creating the Tyrannic War Veterans, a special unit dedicated to destroying the Tyranid threat.
• Plasma Cannon: The Sunwrath Pistols, gifted to Roboute Guilliman at the outset of the Indomitus Crusade by Archmagos Cawl, are some of the most advanced plasma weapons of their size created by the Imperium. Fitted superior cooling systems, the Sunwrath Pistols are able to fire at full power repeatedly without overheating. The 8th Edition rules represent this by giving the Sunwrath Pistols the stat line of a supercharged plasma pistol but with more shots and no chance of killing its owner.
• Powered Armor: The unique suit of Terminator armour known as the Armour of Konor is an honoured relic of the Ultramarines that offers far superior protection to even a regular Terminator suit. Constructed from thousands of layers of rare and durable alloys, the Armour can defend against even the most devastation of attacks. The 8th Edition rules for the Armour of Konor give the wearer a superior invulnerable save to that of a regular suit of Terminator armour, and also reduces the amount of Damage taken from each attack.
• Rules Lawyer: As the Chapter with the closest ties to its author, the Ultramarines are typically described as strict adherents to the tenets laid out in the Codex Astartes. At one time, exactly how strictly the Codex was stuck to tended to vary from depiction to depiction but the lore eventually settled on the Ultramarines' views differing from individual Marine to individual Marine: some regard the book as an almost religious text, others see it as an evolving set of tenets that are constantly upgraded as new foes and tactics reveal themselves. With the return of Roboute Guilliman, however, the Ultramarines have returned to being exemplary followers of the Codex Astartes as the author himself is now able to update its wisdom as needed.
• Series Mascot: Since at least the 2nd Edition of the game, the Ultramarines have been the default Space Marine Chapter, appearing on the packaging for default Space Marine products, and the effective mascot for the game itself. Since that time, the Ultramarines have also been a mascot for Games Workshop in general, a role they now share with the Stormcast Eternals from Warhammer: Age of Sigmar.
• Space Romans: The Ultramarines have a strong Greco-Roman theme with the traditional designs of their weapons and equipment design features with those of the Classical world (such as gladius-style combat blades and helmets with Roman Legion like helmet plumes), and Latin-like naming conventions. Their superior logistical and strategic abilities to their contemporaries are also based on the Roman Legions. In addition to this, the Chapter's home world of Macragge is depicted like a sci-fi version of Rome with marble architecture and toga wearing locals, while their stella empire of Ultramar from which the draw their recruits is analogous of the Roman Republic and Empire's large swaths of territory.
• The Strategist: Planning and strategy are noted specialities of the Ultramarines, their commanders able to plan wide ranging campaigns and read the flow of battle so that their well-trained warriors can switch between various pre-planned battlefield strategies at a moment’s notice. The 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Ultramarines rules represent this with a number of different abilities, Stratagems and Warlord Traits that effect Tactical Objectives, Command Points and the army-wide Combat Doctrine special rule.

Salamanders

"Into the fires of battle! Unto the anvil of war!"

The warrior sons of Nocturne appear as fearsome devils to most. Yet their valour, their strength, and their skill at arms speak louder than any disparaging voice. They craft war like no others, forging victory with burning conviction tempered by honour and patience. They are righteous fire made flesh, and their flames will never die.

— Vulkan, The Nature of War

Once known as the Dragon Warriors, the Salamanders were the Eighteenth Legion and were created from the gene-seed of the Primarch Vulkan, sharing their gene-father's obsidian skin and smouldering red eyes. The Chapter draws their recruits from the volcanic world of Nocturne, while their fortress monastery is built upon and within the moon Prometheus. The role of Chapter Master of the Salamanders, known as the regent of Prometheus, is traditionally taken on by the Captain of the Chapter's 1st Company. At the dawning of the Era Indomitus, this position is held by Tu'Shan, who sits at the head of the Chapter's ruling Pantheon Council.

The violent conditions of Nocturne breed a hardy people who provide fine recruits for the Salamanders, and unlike the Astartes of many chapters, Salamander battle-brothers often live amongst the human communities of their world, providing guidance for the population and mentoring prospective novices. Over the course of their training, all Salamanders are indoctrinated into the Promethean Cult, a creed that teaches self-reliance, patience, compassion and loyalty. Each battle-brother is also taught metalworking and blacksmithing, learning to maintain their own equipment, allowing the Chapter's Techmarines to focus on creating master-crafted wargear.

The Salamanders have been a part of the Warhammer 40,000 games since 1st Edition but it wasn't until the Third War for Armageddon Worldwide Campaign tie-in sourcebook Codex: Armageddon for 3rd Edition that they first gained supplemental rules to represent their own style of warfare. Subsequent editions generally treat the Salamanders as a generally Codex compliant Chapter with a focus on stubbornness and flamer weapons. During 5th Edition, the Chapter was featured in Forge World's Badab War sourcebooks where they received additional characters and background material about their involvement with the campaign. During 7th Edition the Salamanders received some rules in the Codex Supplement: Angels of Death sourcebook, alongside the other Codex compliant First Founding Chapters. In 8th Edition, the Chapter used the basic Astartes rules from the August 2019 release of Codex: Space Marines with additional Chapter specific rules released in October 2019's Codex Supplement: Salamanders. The rules for the Chapter's Badab War characters can be found in Forge World's Imperial Armour — Index: Forces of the Adeptus Astartes. For 9th Edition, the Chapter uses a combination of the rules published in October 2020's Codex: Space Marines along with the previous edition's Codex Supplement^note with free downloadable errata.

For more about the warriors of Nocturne, see the Salamanders novels.

---

• Amplifier Artifact: The Tome of Vel'cona, a relic of the Chapter's Librarius that was written by the Salamanders' Chief Librarian, contains his teachings on the nature of psychic abilities and how best to harness the fire that lies within the psyche of the Chapter's battle-psykers. Any Librarian who reads the book before a battle is able use this knowledge to enhance their own abilities that are represented by extra powers and bonuses to their casting ability in all editions of the tabletop game.
• Arch-Enemy: As with the other loyalist Legions present at the Drop Site Massacre that marked the start of the Horus Heresy, the Salamanders hold a particular loathing for the Traitor Legions that betrayed them during the disastrous battle and have access to the Vengeance for Isstvan V Stratagem^note from the 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Salamanders sourcebook, giving them a bonus when in melee combat with warriors from Word Bearers, Iron Warriors, Night Lords and Alpha Legion armies.
  • The Salamanders also have a seething hatred for the Dark Eldar that goes back to Vulkan's childhood, when Nocturne suffered regular raids from the "Dusk Wraiths", as the people of Nocturne called them. The antipathy only worsened when Vulkan personally slew one hundred Dark Eldar warriors in battle, and it remains to this day. Not surprising, since the Salamanders are quite possibly the most compassionate and openly humane warriors in the entire setting of 40k while the Dark Eldar are probably the most irredeemably evil and sadistic (and that's really saying something.)
• A Hero to His Hometown: Unlike most Astartes, when not at war the Salamanders return home and live quiet lives with their birth families. To the surprise of absolutely no one, being the home of an Astartes Warrior is a cause for immense pride among many settlements, and they often elect these favored sons to the position of tribal leader.
• Being Good Sucks: The Salamanders have suffered severe losses for their compassion and loyalty. Even back in the Great Crusade, they were one of the smallest of the Legions thanks to their near-suicidal dedication to protecting civilians. By the time the Heresy ended, they were the only Legion exempt from being broken into chapters because there simply weren't enough of them left to make multiple chapters out of.
• The Blacksmith: Vulkan was raised as a blacksmith, and the Salamanders have kept this tradition alive in the millennia since. Reverence for the fire and the forge are a fundamental part of the Chapter's creed, known as the Promethean Cult. Battle-brothers of the Chapter commonly build and maintain their own wargear, and have a distinct preference for weapons associated with metalworks, such as Thunder Hammers, and others that reflect the fires of the forge, such as flamers and meltas.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: Since the Salamanders make their own boltguns instead of relying on mass-produced versions like most Chapters, they typically lavish as much attention on decorating them as they do on maintaining them. A number of Space Marine sourcebooks include background material and Flavor Text dedicated to this concept, including one example where a Techmarine spent a year building a boltgun and then another fifty to refine and embellish it to his satisfaction.
• Bling of War: As with most of their weapons and equipment, many Salamanders will spend their time ornamenting their power armour with scales, flame patterns, draconic motifs and other symbols of the Promethean Cult.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: In addition to their roles as subsidiary commanders, Lieutenants in the Salamanders Chapter are assigned to fight as bodyguards alongside their more experienced Captain.
• Child Soldiers: Their recruitment process downplays this compared to most other Space Marine chapters - rather than selecting from preadolescent boys who were likely experienced fighters before ever reaching the Astartes and putting them through additional lethal tests, the Salamanders instead recruit their initiates from even younger (around the ages of six and seven) and have them apprentice in blacksmithing with a Salamander until they are of age for organ implantation. Of course, Salamanders aspirants will still end up having to succeed in lethally-dangerous tests and be trained as Super Soldiers before reaching maturity, just not as immediately.
• Close-Range Combatant: Their love of flamers and thunder hammers makes them best suited for close range combat.
• Dark Is Not Evil: With their glowing red eyes and onyx skin, many ordinary citizens of the Imperium see the Salamanders as almost daemonic, with some going so far as to demand they be purged for mutation. Despite this, the Salamanders are actually one of the most humane and humble breeds of Astartes who will go to great lengths to protect as many innocents as possible.
• Death World: The Salamanders' home world of Nocturne is a rugged place of volcanoes, ash deserts and earthquakes, populated by the fire-breathing reptiles that the Salamanders take their name from. Every fifteen years the Time of Trials begins as Nocturne's oversized moon Prometheus draws close. During this period, the planet's already high level of seismic activity increases exponentially, threatening every settlement save for the seven Sanctuary Cities that are built on geological safe areas and protected by powerful defences. Once the volcanic activity subsides, the planet is gripped by a long and bitter winter that covers the world in a frozen tundra. Such an extreme cycle is incredibly hostile to human life, with the only solace being the fresh veins of mineral wealth exposed by the regular cataclysmic upheaval.
• Elemental Barrier: Salamander Librarians are able to surround themselves and their battle-brothers with a wall of flame that protects them from incoming fire. Known as the Fire Shield, this Promethean psychic power^note from the 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Salamanders makes it harder for enemies to shoot at and charge the protected units for a turn.
• Fiery Salamander: The Salamanders are named after the fire-breathing, dragon-like creatures native to their home world and they make heavy use of both fire and lizard motifs in their design aesthetic. The Promethean Discipline ^note introduced by the 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Salamanders continues the theme with the psychic powers Drakeskin and Draconic Aspect that allow a Salamander Librarian to cover his allies with psychic salamander scales and take on the appearance of one of the great drakes respectively.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The fiery tenets of the Promethean Cult lead the Salamanders to use flamer and melta weaponry more frequently than many other chapters. In those editions that include Chapter specific rules, the Salamanders often get various benefits while using flamers and melta weapons, such as the 4th Edition rule that allowed Salamander Tactical squads to replace their heavy weapon with flamers or meltas, and the 8th Edition Stratagem "The Fires of Battle" that gives these weapons a chance of causing mortal wounds.
• Gentle Giant: The Salamanders lack the arrogance that affects some of their brother Chapters and respect human life above their own, making them some of the most humane and humble Astartes in the setting despite their daemonic appearance.
• Heavy Worlder: Some background material states that Nocturne has slightly higher gravity than Terran standard, resulting in a strong and sturdy population that were slightly slower than normal. In some editions this was represented on the tabletop by rules that reduced the Salamanders' Initiative^note making them slower in the assault phase in-game and restricting their access to anti-gravity vehicles and other Fast Attack choices.
• Hot Blade: While they don't glow with heat, the Drakeblades^note introduced by the 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Salamanders emit a fiery heat that allows them to melt through armour, giving them a high Armour Penetration characteristic, and can cause additional mortal wounds as they set the foe on fire.
• Magma Man: The Fury of Nocturne psychic power^note from the 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Salamanders allows a Librarian to split the earth and call forth boiling lava from beneath the planet's crust, causing mortal wounds against enemy units.
• Mighty Glacier: The Promethean Cult's warnings against haste and impatience have resulted in a preference for slow and steady advances and patient defensive actions. Additionally, while they are still capable of performing the rapid strikes favoured by many Chapters, the Salamanders field fewer fast attack elements than many other Chapters^note represented in some editions by an additional limit on the number of such units that a player could take. Some background material also mentions that the Salamanders have slower reaction times than other Astartes, although they are still far faster than an unaugmented human.
• Mythical Motifs: Dragons, representing their volcanic homeworld, the ferocious reptilian predators found there, and the chapter's broader association with fire and fire-throwing weaponry.
• Mobile Factory: The Artefact of Vulkan known as the Chalice of Fire is an ancient forge ship capable of manufacturing enough weapons and wargear to outfight an entire Legion of Astartes. Since its rediscovery by Forgefather Dir'san, however, the Chalice of Fire has been permanently moored at the Salamanders' orbital dockyards above Prometheus so that it can produce high quality war material for the Chapter.
• Named Weapon:
  • Drake-Smiter is a supremely powerful thunder hammer that was forged to destroy the void-dragons of the Moons of Orth. In the years since its forging, the mighty weapon has been found to be just as capable of shattering battle tanks and Titans as it is the diamond hard skulls of the beasts it was originally created to slay.
  • The relic flamer Nocturne's Fury was created in imitation of the fire-breathing dragons of ancient Terran myth. After its destruction during the Indomitus Crusade, the remains of Nocturne's Fury were incorporated into the combi-weapon Nocturne's Vengeance so that its mighty machine spirit could continue to serve the Chapter.
  • Wrath of Prometheus has served the chapter faithfully for centuries, slaying countless numbers of the Emperor's foes the length and breadth of the galaxy. Such is the power of this expertly crafted bolter that, in-game, its profile is closer to that of a heavy bolter than a regular boltgun.
• Nemean Skinning: Before they can become one of the Firedrakes of the 1st Company, a Salamander battle-brother must hunt down, slay and skin one of the great reptiles the company takes its name from, and it is not uncommon for Salamander officers and heroes to wear these dragon hides into battle. While these cloaks are often simply aesthetic, some editions make them a wargear option that grants the wearer additional protection.
• Playing with Fire: The importance that fire has to the Promethean Cult leads to many of the Salamanders' Librarians manifesting fiery psychic powers. How this is represented in the game varies by edition, with some simply encouraging players to choose their powers from the generic Pyromancy psychic discipline, while the 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Salamanders includes a Chapter-specific Promethean discipline that allows Librarians to cast fireballs, create walls of flame to protect their allies, or strike their foes with flaming fists.
• The Power of Family: Unlike the vast majority of Astartes chapters, when not at war the Salamanders prefer to return home to Nocturne and Prometheus to live with their home tribes and birth-families. Because of this, the bonds between the Salamanders and their homelands are often incredibly strong. Vulkan actively encouraged this among his sons, believing that they would fight all the harder and more valiantly if they remembered who they were fighting for.
• Pragmatic Hero: While still far less callous than many Astartes, the warriors of the Pyroclasts, the Salamander's 3rd Company, are far more willing to slay the innocent alongside the xenos and the traitor in order to prevent their taint from further infecting the Imperium. Those that serve in the 3rd Company believe that by doing this, they can embody the pragmatism of their Primarch, but they still carry the weight of the innocent lives they have taken.
• Pro-Human Transhuman: While they will willingly cause civilian casualties when there is no other alternative, the Salamanders are known to be one of the most compassionate of all the Chapters of Astartes, going to great length to protect the human population of the Imperium. The Salamanders will stand against anyone who targets civilians unnecessarily, and Chapter Master Tu'Shan even went so far as to beat the First Captain of the Marines Malevolent to a bloody pulp for their excessive bombing of a refugee camp during the Third Armageddon War.
• Punctuation Shaker: For the people of Nocturne, the typical naming convention is two 1- or 2-syllable components separated by an apostrophe. Prominent examples in the Salamanders include Chapter Master Tu'Shan, Chief Librarian Vel'cona, and Da'kir in the Salamanders series of novels. There are exceptions to the rule, however, with names such as Adrax Agatone and Vulkan himself, who was named by his Nocturnean foster father after the first king of salamanders from the planet's mythology.
• Returning War Vet: Salamanders are unique among Astartes in that many of them, when on leave, return to their home planets, tribes, towns, and sometimes even birth-families rather than maintaining a monastic lifestyle at the Fortress-Monasteries. Unsurprisingly, their communities of origin frequently appoint returning Salamander leaders to the position of tribal authority.
• Samaritan Syndrome: In their early days, the then-Dragon Warriors Legion was known for taking their drive to protect civilians to irrational, seemingly-suicidal extremes. They nearly got themselves wiped out completely before Vulkan was found and able to teach his sons to temper their compassion with pragmatism.
• Scary Black Man: Vulkan's gene-seed has a flaw in the Melanochromic Organ^note which rapidly adjusts the melanin in a Space Marine's skin to account for ambient radiation which causes it to essentially be stuck in max output mode. This, combined with Nocturne's naturally high ambient radiation, causes the Salamanders to become onyx-skined giants with glowing red eyes that make them look like daemons to many ignorant Imperial citizens. The Salamanders are well aware of the effect their appearance can have and often use it to their advantage, quashing potential rebellions with their very presence. Despite this look, the Salamanders are still one of the most humane and humble of Space Marine Chapters.
• Self-Harm: The Salamanders have numerous scarification rituals where a battle-brother will get one of the Chapter's specialised brander-priests to burn oaths, honour marks, rank insignia and symbols of the Promethean Cult onto their bodies. Facial brands are also a mark of Veteran status amongst the Chapter’s warriors.
• Stone Wall: Due to their Heavy Worlder status, their preference for heavy, customized armour, and their dedication to the Promethean Cult that teaches patience and stoicism, Salamander Strike Forces are often less mobile than those of other Astartes but are much harder to displace when they are committed, with many editions giving them special rules and abilities perfect for defensive actions. On the other hand, the Salamanders' plethora of powerful, short-ranged weapons such as flamers and meltas, coupled with their skill at defences, mean that they also excel at certain long-game tactics, particularly when assaulting through close terrain.
• Super-Senses: One of the unique features of the Salamanders' gene-seed is that their eyes are more sensitive to infrared light than those of other Astartes. To take advantage of this fire-sight, the Salamanders have developed a special material that can be worked into their equipment to generate infrared emissions that produce signals and designs that only other Salamanders can perceive.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: While staunchly loyal to the Imperium, the Salamanders tend to chafe working with some of the more ruthless and brutal in its forces. They have special enmity with the Marines Malevolent for their callous disregard of civilian life. If the two chapters are anywhere near each other, it's likely going to end in a fight.
• That Thing Is Not My Child!: Due to the Black Dragons' murky origins and their extreme mutations, the Salamanders have never accepted that they share Vulcan's gene-seed with them despite persistent rumours and circumstantial evidence.
• Token Minority: There are a number of pieces of artwork showing the Salamanders with traditional African features. Coupled with their onyx skin this makes the Chapter one of the few official black factions in the game, and the only black First Founding Legion.
• Tomes of Prophecy and Fate: When he disappeared, Vulkan left behind an entire archive of books, sheet metal scrolls, crystal dataslates, curios and mysterious items that are collectively known as the Tome of Fire. The Salamanders believe that these items contain messages left by their Primarch that contain, among other things, clues to the locations of the lost Artefacts of Vulkan, but it's up to the Forgefather to interpret them.
• Wave-Motion Gun: One of the nine Artefacts of Vulkan, the Eye of Vulkan is a massively powerful laser weapon capable of destroying ships and asteroids with a single blast. The weapon was originally mounted on the ancient forge ship Chalice of Fire but has since been incorporated into the orbital defences that protect the Salamander's fortress monastery on Prometheus.
• Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Unlike many Chapters, the Salamanders follow the example of their gene-father and take great pains to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties. Their value for human life causes them to view any mission that involves being forced to kill Imperial citizens or failing to save civilians a failure. One of the quickest ways to anger them is for an allied force to show casual disregard for human life.

Raven Guard

"Victorus aut Mortis!"

A battle can be won with brute force, or random luck. But a war? A war is won with cunning, and waged without mercy. For the noblest of goals one must sometimes commit ignoble acts. So ask me not to justify the Raven Guard's ways. The carrion worlds in our wake should make a statement eloquent enough.

— Corvus Corax, at the Eurydicus Hearing

The Raven Guard were originally the Nineteenth Legion. Their Primarch is Corvus Corax and their home world is Deliverance, the moon of the industrial world Kiavahr. Prior to the Prefectia Campaign, their Chapter Master was Corvin Severax. After Severax's death Kayvaan Shrike was promoted to Chapter Master.

The subtle and shadowy Raven Guard are masters of stealth and covert operations. Disdaining the shock assaults of the Blood Angels or Space Wolves, the Raven Guard prefer crippling surprise attacks where the enemy is most vulnerable, frequently utilizing Scout squads or airborne infantry. Fiercely independent, Raven Guard companies function under a great deal of autonomy, but are quick to respond to calls for assistance from Imperial commanders.

As with the other First Founding Chapters, the Raven Guard have been part of the game since its 1st Edition but have rarely had much focus. The Chapter received detailed background information and their first supplemental rules in their 3rd Edition Index Astartes, article published in White Dwarf, but when the article was republished in the Index Astartes IV collection the rules section was removed due to the introduction of the Chapter Traits system in the 4th Edition Codex: Space Marines. During 7th Edition the Raven Guard features in the War Zone Damocles campaign books with the rules from these publications being reprinted in a digital codex supplement focusing solely on the Chapter, and later in Codex Supplement: Angels of Death. In 8th Edition, the Chapter used the basic Astartes rules from the August 2019 release of Codex: Space Marines with additional Chapter specific rules released in September 2019's Codex Supplement: Raven Guard.For 9th Edition, the Chapter uses a combination of the rules published in October 2020's Codex: Space Marines along with the previous edition's Codex Supplement^note with free downloadable errata.

---

• Abandoned Hospital: The Forbidden Apothecarion is the abandoned medical beneath the Ravenspire where the Corax attempted to replicate the Emperor's genetic engineering to quickly rebuild his Legion. After purging the Apothecarion of the foul results of these experiments, the Primarch ordered the Apothecarion sealed, but once a year its doors have to be guarded by the Veterans of the 1st Company as bestial cries echo through its dark corridors.
• Animal Motifs: Ravens and other corvid birds. Many of their successor chapters continue this trend and sometimes expand it to other birds, such as the Iron Ravens, the Knights of the Raven, the Necropolis Hawks, and the Raptors.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Due to enormous materiel losses on Isstvan V, most Raven Guard power armour is from older marks with the Mark VI "Corvus" pattern power armour being particularly prominent.
• Canis Latinicus: The Chapter's High Gothic Battle Cry, "Victorus aut Mortis!", would be "Victoria aut Mors" in proper Latin.
• Casting a Shadow: The Librarius of the Raven Guard practice Umbramancy, a psychic discipline centered around manipulating shadows and which especially suits the Raven Guard's tactics. Raven Guard Librarians who use this discipline are able to cast a veil of darkness around them to hide them from the enemy, travel within shadows to reach any place on the battlefield or even turn an enemy's own shadow against them, creating ravens made of darkness that disorientate the foe.
• Combat Pragmatist: The Raven Guard care little for honour and are happy to use any tactics as long as it gets results. They are particularly adept in the use of assassination, ambush, sabotage and other forms of asymmetric warfare, and are even willing to repaint their armour as part of a disguise, a tactic most other Chapters would consider an insult to the armour's machine-spirit.
• Creepy Crows: The Raven Guard are a black-ops-esque unit — as much as giants in a power armor can be. In one of their short stories, Shadow Captain Shrike manages to scare an Ork Kommando. Their home world, Kiavahr, even houses a species of giant, carnivorous, man-eating ravens.
• Due to the Dead: The burial customs of the Raven Guard consist only of stripping the fallen of his equipment, gene-seed, and bird skull totems^note for burial back on the Raven Guard's home world before leaving the corpse for the local carrion birds.
• Dynamic Entry: A common strategy by the Raven Guard who use their Stealth Expertise to set up ambushes, sprung with the speed and violence expected of Astartes. The Chapter make great use of assault squads as a key part of their battlefield tactics, dropping right onto the enemy without warning while using their surprise and momentum to increase the damage of their assault.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: The Raven Guard have a defect in their Melanochromic organ that turns their skin pure white while their hair and eyes turn jet black. This physical appearance. coupled with the Chapter's predisposition for shadows and stealth, lends the Raven Guard as a whole a ghostly look.
• Entertainingly Wrong: It is common knowledge that Astartes function as terrifyingly lethal shock troops who show up in Highly Conspicuous Armor and smash their way quickly through the enemy, carried forward by their enhancements, equipment, training, coordination, and unbreakable wills. The Raven Guard consider this reputation to their advantage, because the last thing most foes would expect is Astartes who will blend into the background and spring careful ambushes.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Depending on the Writer, the Raven Guard were originally Celtic Irish, with simplified celtic knot patterns around the full version of their chapter badge, the dark green tint of their earlier armor, and the prominence of ravens in Irish folklore. Later writers would bring in Pacific Northwest Native American elements due to a similar love of raven iconography present in that culture as well.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: The Raven Guard were some of the first victims of the Drop Site Massacre during the Horus Heresy, and as a result of the shock and surprise of the incident they suffered some of the worst casualties. In order to bring their numbers back from the brink of extinction, Corax tapped into some sealed knowledge that was forbidden to the eyes of all but the Emperor himself and his Primarchs, and used this to tinker with their gene-seed to accelerate the process of making new Marines. It worked, but many of those suffered warping of the flesh, gigantism, and horrible mental trauma, becoming twisted abominations. Corax gave them the Emperor's Peace, and said of his actions, "Nevermore". The Raven Guard's induction rate remains low to this day because of it.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: The Raven Guard specializes in fast, stealthy, surgical attacks, rather than the brute-force onslaught preferred by many other chapters.
• Homing Projectile: The Korvidari Bolts, used by the Raven Guard and their Successors, contain an advanced targeting and flight correction system that allows them to hit even the most evasive of targets. Introduce by the 8th Edition Codex Supplement: Raven Guard, these special-issue bolts can be fired at enemy units outside of the firing model's line of site.
• Invisibility Cloak: During the Great Crusade, Raven Guard warships used a void shield variant called Reflex Shields which essentially rendered them invisible through redirection of their physical and energetic emissions.
• Mirroring Factions: To the Night Lords. They are both armies of stealth and surgical strike masters, with the Raven Guard prior to Corax being found being extremely brutal and callous just like the Night Lords. Corax is taken aback when he realizes just how similar the two groups really are.
• Named Weapon:
  • Ex Tenebris is a relic boltgun of the Raven Guard rumoured to have been created by the Primarch himself as a gift for his brother Konrad Curze. A highly accurate and silenced weapon, the Ex Tenebris is now borne into battle by the greatest heroes of the Chapter.
  • The masterfully crafted Sniper Rifle Nihilus is traditionally carried by the greatest marksman of the Raven Guard's 10th Company. The weapon fires inky-black shots that implode with such force that they can split the power armoured opponent in half and will even penetrate armoured vehicles if it hits in the right spot.
  • Swiftstrike and Murder are a pair of perfectly balanced lightning claws that allow their wielder to rip through all but the most heavily armoured foes at incredible speed.
• The Quiet One: Raven Guard Marines spend a lot of time listening and very little time talking, to the point of barely engaging other Astartes in conversation. This can sometimes irritate members of the more boisterous chapters such as the White Scars or Space Wolves.
• Stealth Expert: The Raven Guard are the greatest practitioners of stealth and subtlety amongst the Adeptus Astartes. The Chapter is known to practice a specialist stealth discipline they call "Wraith-Slipping" that allows them to slip effortlessly from shadow to shadow, and are also known to develop secret rites of silence, personal techniques that allow them to baffle the sounds of their armour and equipment so that they can move far quieter than many enemies expect. In-game, their 8th Edition Chapter Tactics give enemy units a -1 penalty to their Ballistic Skill for shooting attacks against Raven Guard units that are more than 12" away.
• Terror Hero: The Raven Guard are stealth and infiltration specialists able to sneak up on enemies despite being power-armored giants. A successful campaign by the Chapter leaves their enemies huddled around light sources, mortally afraid of the dark. In-game, one of the Raven Guard's unique Tactical Objectives awards them points for any enemy unit that is forced to fail a Leadership test.
• Wolverine Claws: Lightning claws are the signature weapon of the Raven Guard and their successor Chapters with many of their Veteran Squads being entirely outfitted with them. The Chapter have even developed their own pattern of lightning claw, the Hawks Talon, which has hooked blades in imitation of the claws of a bird of prey.

---