Black Templars

The Black Templars are a Second Founding Space Marine Chapter descended from the Imperial Fists, without a fixed homeworld. Raised from the gene-seed of the primarch Rogal Dorn in the wake of the Horus Heresy, they are recorded as among the largest of the Adeptus Astartes and do not observe the strictures of the Codex Astartes, instead organising themselves around an unending Imperial Crusade waged in the Emperor’s name. Their first High Marshal, Sigismund, had served as Rogal Dorn’s First Captain and as the Emperor’s Champion during the defence of Terra; he led the Chapter’s founding contingent away from Holy Terra and swore that the Black Templars would never rest until every enemy of the Emperor was destroyed.

The Chapter keeps no permanent homeworld, its companies serving instead aboard dispersed Crusade fleets commanded from the Gloriana-class battleship Eternal Crusader. Rather than a single fortress-monastery, the Black Templars raise a Chapter Keep upon each world their crusades conquer or liberate, using these strongholds to watch for heresy, muster fresh recruits, and stage further campaigns. Each Crusade fleet is led by an officer styled Marshal, answerable only to the High Marshal, and is subdivided into fighting companies under Castellans. The Chapter is further marked by its veneration of the Emperor as a divine being, a practice unusual among the Space Marines, and by its black cross device, said to descend from a marking once worn by veterans of the Imperial Fists Legion.

The Chapter’s founding followed a dispute between Rogal Dorn and Roboute Guilliman over the Second Founding’s division of the Legions; Dorn resisted the breaking of the Imperial Fists until the threat of being branded heretical forced his agreement, and the Black Templars emerged, alongside the Crimson Fists, among the first Successor Chapters raised from his Legion. In 781.M31, Sigismund’s fleet met the returning Abaddon at the Cadian Gate during the First Black Crusade; Sigismund fell in single combat against the Despoiler, and every High Marshal since has renewed his oath of perpetual war. Ten thousand years of crusading followed, including the Third War for Armageddon in 998.M41, where High Marshal Helbrecht commanded the allied Space Marine fleet and Reclusiarch Grimaldus led the defence of Hive Helsreach, emerging its sole surviving Black Templar.

When the Great Rift opened, Black Templars crusades were scattered across and beyond the Imperium Sanctus, and the Chapter answered the disorder with renewed purges rather than withdrawal. Roboute Guilliman’s Torchbearer Fleets subsequently brought Primaris Space Marines to the Chapter, meeting High Marshal Helbrecht aboard the Eternal Crusader while he pursued the Ork warlord Ghazghkull Thraka; despite the Chapter’s zealotry, Helbrecht accepted the newcomers into Black Templars ranks, though their integration is recorded as troubled in crusades such as the Angevin. Relations with other Imperial forces have not always been smooth: in 998.M41 the Chapter came to blows with the Dark Angels over a prisoner suspected to be Cypher, drawing the attention of the Inquisition. In the current era the Black Templars remain engaged across the fractured Imperium, their fleets recorded in conflicts from the Pariah Nexus to the Nachmund Rift, still without a world to call their own.