[Divinity Original Sin 2 Update V3 0 226 993-CODEX Patch
Betty Neyhart
Black TemplarsWarcry"No Pity! No Remorse! No Fear!"FoundingSecond Founding (31st Millennium)Successors ofImperial FistsSuccessor ChaptersUnknownNumberUnknown (5,000-6,000 suspected)PrimarchRogal DornChapter MasterHigh Marshal HelbrechtHomeworldFleet-Based Chapter -- all Astartes serve aboard one of many Black Templar Crusade FleetsFortress-MonasteryGloriana-class Battleship Eternal CrusaderAllegianceImperium of ManColoursBlack, white and red
The Black Templars are a Loyalist Second Founding Space Marine Chapter derived from the Imperial Fists' gene-seed and their primarch, Rogal Dorn. Their origin can be traced back to the Imperial Fists' defence of Terra during the Horus Heresy.
Since that time, the Black Templars have been on the longest Imperial Crusade the Imperium of Man has ever known to prove their loyalty to the Emperor of Mankind. They are not a Codex Astartes-compliant Chapter and maintain a very different Chapter structure and culture than is the norm amongst most of the Adeptus Astartes.
After the Horus Heresy, Rogal Dorn, primarch of the Imperial Fists, resisted the break-up of the Space Marine Legions into smaller Chapters. It was only when the Imperial Fists were almost branded Heretics that Dorn relented, allowing his beloved Legion to be subdivided into Chapters. One of the new Chapters born of this time was the Black Templars.
To prove his loyalty to the Emperor in the wake of the Imperial Fists' opposition to the Second Founding, the first Chapter Master of the Black Templars -- the High Marshal Sigismund -- assembled a massive war fleet and began the greatest Space Marine Crusade in the history of the Imperium. It has lasted for 10,000 standard years.
Eschewing the establishment of a Chapter homeworld, the Black Templars took to the stars in a mighty war fleet. Rather than constructing a single Chapter fortress-monastery as most Space Marine Chapters do, the Black Templars determined to establish a Chapter keep upon each world they conquered, to keep watch for treachery, to stage future crusades, and to recruit new battle-brothers. The ten-millennia-long Imperial Crusade of the Black Templars has seen its warriors embroiled in some of the most momentous conflicts ever to engulf the Imperium.
The subsequent High Marshals of the Chapter have followed the example of their founder and taken the fight to the realms of the alien, the Heretic, and the witch. The Black Templars are crusaders, holy warriors battling to bring the truth and light of the Emperor to the unconquered worlds of the galaxy.
With bolt shell and chainsword, the Black Templars convert the benighted to the light of the Master of Mankind and destroy those who refuse to welcome His truth. Each crusade is directed by the will of the Marshal in command, and each is despatched by the decree of the High Marshal of the Black Templars to fulfill their prime mission to cleanse the stars.
The Black Templars are the best-known example of a Crusading Chapter in the whole Imperium; their doctrines, traditions, and organisation reflect their particular approach to prosecuting the Imperium's wars. The Chapter is divided into a variable number of self-contained and highly mobile forces known as "crusades," each commanded by an officer known as a "Marshal," who is equivalent to a captain in a Codex Astartes-compliant Chapter and whose only superior is the High Marshal of the Chapter himself.
Under most circumstances, the Chapter is divided into no more than three separate crusade forces, though during especially calamitous times the number has risen to several times more. Crusade forces are such large and powerful bodies that they are usually sub-divided into tactical bodies known as "fighting companies," analogous to a standard Codex Astartes company, and each of these is led by an officer with the title of "Castellan", equivalent to a lieutenant in Codex-compliant Chapters. With the successful conclusion of a war for which a crusade force has been raised, the various fighting companies within it are likely to be assigned a new mission, redeployed piecemeal to bolster other crusades already in the field, or sometimes amalgamated into the High Marshal's household until such time as a new crusade force is mustered.
Each crusade force is raised from available fighting companies in order to prosecute a particular foe, purge a specific region of space or attain a definite goal. Many of these wars are planned and undertaken by the Chapter itself, according to the wisdom of its current High Marshal and other highly ranked Chapter officers, but others are undertaken as a result of petitions from other institutions within the Imperium.
In the main, the High Marshal of the Black Templars is likely to receive only the highest-ranked petitioners, generally those with a warrant from the Senatorum Imperialis and therefore speaking with the direct authority of the High Lords of Terra and the Emperor Himself.
On occasion, however, the High Marshal might agree to hear the petitions of especially highly placed Inquisitors or even well-regarded Rogue Traders, though he is under no legal obligation to offer such individuals any aid. Many times in its glorious history, the Chapter has gone to war alongside other august Imperial bodies, and a complex web of mutual obligation and honour has evolved.
The Chapter's propensity for launching such crusades is not merely a point of history or tradition, but something deeply rooted in its psyche. The Chapter was formed during the Second Founding from those battle-brothers of the Imperial Fists Legion most disposed towards aggressive and bold styles of warfare and, furthermore, in whom the events of the Horus Heresy had imprinted an unstoppable drive to continue the Great Crusade and avenge the treacheries committed by the Traitor Legions.
Perhaps these battle-brothers were the most recently recruited of the old Legion, their raw zeal yet to be tempered by the experience born of duty for which the Imperial Fists were so honoured. Regardless, the drive of those original Black Templars became instilled in the new Chapter from the beginning. The processes by which its gene-stock was cultivated imbued it in future generations on a genetic level.
By a combination of raw zeal, genetic enhancement, relentless psycho-conditioning and the continuous reinforcement of the Chapter's histories and battle honours, each battle-brother is an exemplar of the crusading warrior-knight, fired with righteous anger and driven to avenge every wrong ever done to the Imperium of Man by every Traitor, fiend, and alien ever to have existed.
At the Siege of Terra during the Horus Heresy, many Champions of Chaos arose from the Traitor Marines' ranks. During this time, the Primarch of the Imperial Fists, Rogal Dorn, chose the Imperial Fists' First Captain Sigismund to fulfill the role of the Emperor's Champion.
First Captain Sigismund was given the best armour and weapons the Legion possessed, and he swore a holy duty to seek out and destroy the foul Champions of Chaos. He did so by challenging over two dozen of the enemy leaders to single combat and slaying them or banishing them back into the Immaterium.
At the end of the Horus Heresy, each of the Space Marine Legions was broken down into smaller organisations known as Chapters, each composed of one thousand Astartes, as part of a plan to spread the power of the Imperial armed forces so that no one man could bring to bear the influence that the Warmaster Horus had over the Space Marines.
Rogal Dorn, as Primarch of the Legion responsible for the defence of the Emperor's homeworld, Terra, initially refused to have his Legion broken down. Dorn fought with his fellow Primarch Roboute Guilliman over the issue, calling the Ultramarines' Primarch a coward, and Guilliman in turn accused Dorn of heresy and disloyalty to the Emperor.
The Primarchs Leman Russ of the Space Wolves and Vulkan of the Salamanders favoured Dorn's stance while Jaghatai Khan of the White Scars and Corax of the Raven Guard supported Guilliman's position on the issue.
It was only after an attack on the Imperial Fists' Strike Cruiser Terrible Angel by the Imperial Navy and the threat of a renewed civil war between Dorn's Legion and the newly-formed Successor Chapters of the other First Founding Legions that he decided to relent and allow the Imperial Fists to be divided.
One of the Imperial Fists' first Successor Chapters, the Black Templars have since become one of the largest and most feared Space Marine Chapters. The surviving Imperial Fists were split into four Chapters during the Second Founding. The younger warriors became the Crimson Fists, while Dorn's chosen warriors remained the Imperial Fists, and the orbital assault specialists were long believed, erroneously, to have formed the ranks of the infamous Soul Drinkers Chapter.
The fourth Imperial Fists Second Founding Successor Chapter were the Black Templars. Sigismund, named the Black Templars' first Chapter Master, took with him the most zealous of the Imperial Fists brethren and those that shared his fervour took on the black and white panoply of Sigismund's armour, and then they embarked on an Imperial Crusade to prove their loyalty to the Emperor.
Sigismund refused to adhere to the Codex Astartes, seeing the foundational treatise written by Roboute Guilliman as an insult to the teachings of his own Primarch, Rogal Dorn. Instead, he led his warriors into the depths of space, taking the war directly to the enemies of the Imperium.
In the centuries since, the Chapter has diverted even further from the standard tenets of the Adeptus Astartes. Embracing their faith and acknowledging the God-Emperor's divinity, the Black Templars have developed a fanatical zealotry and aggressiveness. This deviation from orthodoxy disturbs many of their fellow Space Marine Chapters, though the Black Templars' dedication to eradicating the enemies of Humanity cannot be questioned.
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