Emperor’s Champion

The Emperor’s Champion is the Black Templars’ foremost duellist, a Space Marine sworn to meet the galaxy’s most dangerous foes in single combat. Whoever holds the title wears the relic Armour of Faith and carries the Black Sword, advancing into battle bare-headed as a declaration that his faith needs no visor to prove it. The Champion exists to answer challenges no company of the line is suited to: named enemy commanders, daemonic champions, and monstrous foes whose defeat by single combat carries weight beyond the immediate battlefield.

Chapter tradition traces the office to Sigismund, first High Marshal of the Black Templars, who as First Captain of the Imperial Fists carried the title of Emperor’s Champion at the Siege of Terra and there killed Khârn the Betrayer of the World Eaters in single combat. Later Champions are drawn from among the Chapter’s Sword Brethren for their skill at arms and depth of oath, then consecrated by the Reclusiam before taking up the Black Sword and Armour of Faith, relics kept aboard the battle-barge Eternal Crusader between campaigns. In battle the Champion advances ahead of his brothers to issue formal challenge to the enemy’s greatest warrior or darkest daemon, a duel fought in full view of the Chapter so that victory or death alike serves as testimony to the crusade.

The office carries no guarantee of survival, and a Champion who falls in his duel is mourned and replaced rather than avenged by substitution, for the challenge itself is held sacred. Under High Marshal Helbrecht, who leads the Black Templars’ perpetual crusade in the era of the Great Rift, the Emperor’s Champion continues to be fielded wherever the Chapter’s fleet makes war, from the defence of Armageddon against Ork invasion to the innumerable smaller reclamations of the Reformation Crusade. Sigismund remains the office’s measure rather than merely its founder: every Champion since is judged, implicitly, against a duel fought at the walls of the Imperial Palace during the Horus Heresy.