Commander Dante

Commander Dante is Chapter Master of the Blood Angels. He was born Luis Dante in 447.M40 in the salt deserts of Baal Secundus, and became a captain in 753.M40. He fought as a captain in the Kallius Insurrection of the late 40th millennium; one account placed him with the 5th Company and the account of the insurrection itself placed him with the 8th Company, and the two accounts do not agree. By the insurrection’s end he was the only captain of the Chapter still alive, and the surviving Sanguinary Priests and Chaplains elected him Chapter Master.

Dante has led the Blood Angels for more than a thousand years and is recorded as the longest-serving loyalist Chapter Master still active. He wears the Death Mask of Sanguinius, said to be cast from the primarch’s own features, and the office of Chapter Master is described as weighing on him more heavily than any weapon. In the Second War for Armageddon, following the planetfall of 941.M41, Tu’Shan and Marneus Calgar ceded him command of the Space Marine strike force on the planet; the war’s narrative also records him taking command of all Imperial forces there, ordering Herman von Strab held for trial, relieving Hive Acheron, and leading the drop-pod assault on Hive Tartarus. Both formulations of his command on Armageddon are recorded.

In 994.M41 he led the Blackfang Crusade, and in 998.M41 he led the Imperial counter-attack during the Cryptus Campaign. At the Devastation of Baal he commanded the defence of his homeworld, slew the Swarmlord on Baal Secundus, and was badly wounded; accounts within the Chapter hold that Sanguinius himself bade him live. The siege was broken when Roboute Guilliman’s Indomitus Crusade fleet arrived; the battle is dated both to about 999.M41 and to the early 42nd millennium. Guilliman subsequently named Dante Lord Regent of the Imperium Nihilus.

Dante ordered the reconquest known as the Angel’s Halo and fought at Kheru during it. He underwent the Rubicon Primaris, and during the Arks of Omen he led the boarding of the Ark Night Terror in the Saganas Belt. At the Battle of Idolatros he brought a Blood Angels fleet to Wyrmwood, was struck down by Angron, and, after Lion El’Jonson intervened, helped coordinate the evacuation that followed. He did not take the field in person in the Third War for Armageddon, sending Captain Erasmus Tycho’s 3rd Company in his stead.