Dante

Dante is the Chapter Master of the Blood Angels, an Adeptus Astartes commander who has led the Chapter from Baal for more than a thousand years. He is among the oldest Space Marines still in Imperial service, and accounts of his precise age differ. His authority rests on long tenure and on his role as custodian of the Chapter’s inheritance from the primarch Sanguinius, whose legacy the Blood Angels carry together with the flaws of the Red Thirst and the Black Rage.

Dante commands from the fortress-monastery of Baal, the Chapter’s home world, and is recorded as taking to the field in person, wearing the Death Mask of Sanguinius and carrying the Axe Mortis and the plasma pistol Perdition. His long rule has been spent containing the Chapter’s genetic curse, which he manages through the institutions beneath him: the Death Company, marshalled by Chaplain Lemartes; Astorath the Grim, who grants the Emperor’s Peace to those beyond recovery; and Mephiston, Chief Librarian, whom Dante keeps close as counsellor and fighter. The Blood Angels’ successor Chapters, among them the Flesh Tearers, share the same inheritance, and Dante’s stewardship extends in principle to the wider Sanguinius line.

His standing in the present era is tied to the Devastation of Baal, when a splinter of Hive Fleet Leviathan closed on the Baal system and Dante led the defence of the home world and its moons alongside Mephiston and the Chapter’s companies. Baal thus serves as the fixed point of his story on the map. In the period of the Indomitus Crusade, which followed the return of Roboute Guilliman, Dante is recorded as one of the senior Imperial commanders whose forces and counsel the Primarch could draw upon, with the Blood Angels contributing to the wider reconquest. He remains active as Chapter Master.