Scythes of the Emperor

The Scythes of the Emperor are a Codex Astartes Chapter of Space Marines, a Third Founding successor of the Ultramarines within the Imperium of Man. Raised in the early decades of the thirty-second millennium, the Chapter is counted among the Shield Chapters of Ultramar, the loyalist Chapters that assist the Ultramarines in the defence and expansion of Roboute Guilliman’s realm. The Chapter’s numbers were gravely reduced for generations following the near-destruction of its home world by a Tyranid hive fleet, and have since been restored during the Ultima Founding of the Indomitus Crusade era.

The Chapter’s home world was Sotha, an agricultural world bearing a fortress-monastery known as the Aegida, sited close to the mountain called Mount Pharos. The mountain concealed the Pharos, a pre-Imperial device of xenos origin that channelled psychic energy to guide Warp travel across a limited range, a relic Guilliman once used to draw scattered loyalist forces to Macragge. Sotha was effectively destroyed during the Second Tyrannic War, and no firmly established permanent successor home world is recorded for the Chapter. The Scythes of the Emperor wear black power armour with a yellow torso and backpack, marked with the crossed scythes that give the Chapter its name.

The Chapter’s origin lies in the Ultramarines Legion’s 199th Company, styled the Aegida, which Guilliman assigned to guard Sotha and the Pharos during the Horus Heresy. The company distinguished itself at the Battle of Sotha against a Night Lords splinter fleet under Krukesh the Pale, in which the loyalist Iron Warriors Warsmith Barabas Dantioch sacrificed himself overloading the Pharos to disable the raiders. After the Second Founding, the Aegida Company was kept in being as a concealed eleventh company under Captain Oberdeii, in contravention of the newly promulgated Codex Astartes. When the Third Founding was called nearly a millennium later, Oberdeii, its last survivor, was permitted to raise the company into its own Chapter; he named it the Scythes of the Emperor and became its first Chapter Master, with Chaplain Segas, Brother Wenlocke and veterans of the Orlan Conquest among its founding strength.

In the forty-first millennium the Chapter fought in the Corinth Crusade of 698–705.M41, joining Ultramarines, Angels of Absolution, Lamenters, Silver Skulls and Marines Errant forces under Marneus Calgar against the Ork Waaagh! Skargor in the Charadon region. During the Damocles Gulf Crusade of 745.M41 the Scythes of the Emperor led the initial landing on the Tau-held world of Sy’l’kell and later fought alongside the Ultramarines and Iron Hands during the assault on Dal’yth Prime, before the crusade withdrew as Hive Fleet Behemoth approached the Eastern Fringe. The Chapter also took part in the Verdeworlds Campaign of 865.M41.

The advance of Hive Fleet Kraken during the Second Tyrannic War of 992.M41 fell upon Sotha itself. A Genestealer Cult that had infiltrated the Chapter’s ranks sabotaged the world’s void shields and automated defences as the hive fleet arrived, and despite a defence mounted by six companies, Sotha was declared lost. Barely two hundred and thirty-nine battle-brothers and twenty-five vessels escaped with the Chapter’s fleet toward the Miral system, later joined by Techmarines under Master of the Forge Sebastion and by the First Company under Chapter Master Mansirius Thorcyra, who had been absent from Sotha at the time of its fall. This near-annihilation left the Scythes of the Emperor a diminished force for generations, until the Ultima Founding and the Primaris reinforcements distributed by Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl restored its ranks in the era of the Indomitus Crusade.