Blood Angels

The Blood Angels are a First Founding Space Marine Chapter descended from the IX Legion and Primarch Sanguinius. Loyal to the Imperium of Man, they are counted among the most disciplined and artistic of the Adeptus Astartes, the Emperor’s genetically engineered warrior brotherhoods, though their nobility is shadowed by an inherited affliction that darkens every battle-brother in later life.

The Chapter is based in the Baal system, centred on the rad-scarred world of Baal, with its fortress-monastery, the Arx Angelicum, supporting a Chapter that also operates extensively from its attendant battle fleet. Sanguinius himself was found as an infant on Baal Secundus, one of Baal’s moons, after being cast into the warp with his fellow primarchs; he rose to unite the moon’s surviving human tribes before the Emperor located him and gave him command of the IXth Legion, then known as the Revenant Legion.

Under Sanguinius the Legion was reshaped from a feared and isolated force into one of the Great Crusade’s most celebrated hosts, noted for shock assault, orbital drop operations and swift campaigns of ultimatum waged against non-compliant worlds, and it developed a lasting rivalry with the similarly assault-focused World Eaters Legion. When the Horus Heresy broke the Imperium apart, Sanguinius was slain by the Warmaster Horus at the climax of the Siege of Terra; the trauma of that death passed into the blood of every Blood Angel, giving rise to the Red Thirst, a craving for violence, and the Black Rage, a degenerative madness in which the sufferer relives the primarch’s final moments.

Following the Second Founding, the Legion was divided into the Blood Angels Chapter proper and a wide kinship of successor Chapters, collectively termed the Sanguinary Brotherhood, among them the Flesh Tearers and the Angels Encarmine, all of whom inherit some measure of Sanguinius’s gene-flaw.

In the present era the Chapter has suffered heavy losses, notably during the Devastation of Baal, and has drawn tithes of recruits from its successor Chapters alongside reinforcement from the Primaris Space Marines raised during the Indomitus Crusade to rebuild its ranks. It remains led by Chapter Master Commander Dante, one of the longest-serving Space Marines in the Imperium, supported by senior commanders such as the Chief Librarian Mephiston.