Black Templars

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. They are also deeply unusual amongst the forces of the Adeptus Astartes for venerating the Master of Mankind as a literal god, just like the mortal adherents of the Imperial Cult. 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.