Sergeant Telion

Sergeant Torias Telion is the Ultramarines Scout Sergeant of the 10th Company, trainer of the Chapter’s scout recruits and one of its finest marksmen. Unlike Astartes who advance into the battle companies, Telion has remained with the 10th for the whole of a long service, judging the scout role better suited to his gifts than command of a line squad. He prepares Macragge’s aspirant scouts for the field and leads them there himself, a standing that sets him apart from most sergeants of his rank.

Telion’s method is unusual within the Chapter: he takes as many as sixty scouts into a single campaign, using infiltration, marksmanship and small-unit skirmishing to achieve objectives that an Ultramarines captain would otherwise have to win with a conventional line battle. Several other Chapters have studied and adopted elements of his training doctrine, though none has reproduced his personal skill with a sniper’s rifle, which is reckoned among the finest in the Chapter.

During the Black Reach campaign, fought against the Ork WAAAGH! mustered under Ghazghkull Thraka, Telion led a company of scouts through the tunnel systems beneath the surface, hunting the greenskins in the dark alongside a picked group of warriors serving under Captain Sicarius. The two officers’ paths crossed again during the Invasion of Ultramar, when Captain Galenus called on the 5th Company to hold its line as one formation. Telion refused the summons, judging his scouts better used against Tark’s Dark Mechanicus forges, which he and his men destroyed while the captains fought the remainder of the war without him.

Chaplain Cassius has, on more than one occasion, had to explain Telion’s conduct to officers who read the Codex Astartes as a fixed rulebook rather than a body of principle open to interpretation. Telion’s record — a scout company operating apart from the main battle line, answering to its own reading of the objective — has become an illustration within the Chapter of how far personal standing and proven judgement can earn licence to depart from doctrine. He remains active on Macragge, still training the recruits who will carry his methods, if not his marksmanship, into the Chapter’s future companies.