Fists Exemplar

The Fists Exemplar were a Space Marine Chapter of Imperial Fists descent, raised in the Second Founding and later erased from Imperial record. A loyalist force of the Imperium of Man, the Chapter was formed from those Imperial Fists who accepted Roboute Guilliman’s proposal that the Legions be divided into smaller Chapters after the Horus Heresy. Its first Chapter Master, Oriax Dantalion, is recorded as having urged that reform on Rogal Dorn, who named the new Chapter for its members as exemplars of the new order. The Chapter is recorded as revering Guilliman almost as much as Dorn. The date of its founding is not firmly established.

The Chapter was fleet-based and was charged with watching the Rubicante Flux, a sporadic Warp storm afflicting the Abra Sector on the edge of the Segmentum Solar, close to Terra. For this duty it was given the star fort Alcazar Astra, which had served the Imperial Fists in the Horus Heresy. During a patrol, an eruption of the Flux swept the fort towards a nearby star. Dantalion and his captains guided it down to the world of Eidolica, where it was grounded permanently and Dantalion was killed. Eidolica became the Chapter’s home world and the fort its fortress-monastery, and Alameda succeeded as Chapter Master. By tradition the Chapter’s armour was left unpainted, in bare grey ceramite. No fixed map position for Eidolica is established here.

The Chapter served for some millennia until the War of the Beast, recorded as falling in the mid-32nd Millennium. The Ork warlord known as the Beast sent an Attack Moon (a vast Ork assault platform) into orbit above Eidolica. Alameda and First Captain Garthas were killed in the opening fighting, and Second Captain Maximus Thane took command. Marshal Bohemond of the Black Templars arrived with a fleet and persuaded Thane that the world was lost, and the survivors were evacuated. They later attended a meeting of Imperial Fists successor Chapters in the Phall System, joined the assault on the Ork Attack Moon over Terra, and served among the Last Wall forces under Koorland. Thane was sent to find the Soul Drinkers, while a force under First Captain Zerberyn allied with Iron Warriors under Warsmith Kalkator against a large Ork fleet. Other tasks included taking the Tech-Priest Eldon Urquidex into custody on Mars, the hunt for Vulkan on Caldera, and the first invasion of Ullanor.

By the second invasion of Ullanor, made to kill the Beast, the Chapter had been reduced from three companies to fewer than 73 Battle-Brothers. After the war and the treachery of Zerberyn, Thane, as acting Lord Commander of the Imperium, ordered the Fists Exemplar erased from history. Its survivors were distributed among the Adeptus Astartes, some to found new Chapters, and their existence was kept secret. A new Chapter inherited Eidolica and the battle barge Alcazar Remembered. The Fists Exemplar are therefore extinct as a distinct Chapter.