Dark Angels

"Never Forget, Never Forgive! The Fallen Must Repent!" - Deathwing Catechism

The Dark Angels are considered among the most powerful and secretive of the Loyalist Space Marine Chapters and were the first of the original 20 Space Marine Legions to be created during the First Founding. Though they claim complete allegiance and service to the Emperor of Mankind, their actions and secret goals at times seem at odds with that professed loyalty, as the Dark Angels strive ever to atone for an ancient crime committed long ago against the trust of the Emperor in the time of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy.

Lion El'Jonson
The gestation pod containing the infant Primarch Lion El'Jonson, mysteriously teleported through the Warp from Terra by the Ruinous Powers, landed on the feudal death world of Caliban, a planet of immense forests inhabited by terrible, monstrous beasts mutated by the touch of Chaos due to the planet's proximity to the nearby Eye of Terror. He managed to survive in the forests alone, living as a wild man far from civilization.

Caliban was home to many knightly orders created to defend its people and the massive fortress-monasteries they lived within from the great beasts. One such organization was known simply as "the Order", made up of commoners and nobles alike (whereas the other knightly orders were assembled purely from the nobility). A group from the Order found the feral Primarch in the forests. While the knights seemed inclined to kill him, one man, a knight named Luther, stayed their hands and decided to take the Primarch in. He named him Lion El'Jonson, which means "the Lion, Son of the Forest" in the Calibanite dialect.

Jonson was taken to the Order's fortress-monastery and taught human ways, learning to speak incredibly quickly and becoming a fierce warrior in the Order's ranks - though of his time living alone in Caliban's forests, he said nothing. With Luther at his side, Jonson called for a campaign to exterminate the great beasts of Caliban, a time-consuming process that took nearly a decade. The word of their successes brought an influx of new recruits into the Order as the campaign progressed. Any knightly order that did not follow Jonson's lead was destroyed down to the last man. After the last of the great beasts fell, Jonson was named Supreme Grand Master of the Order and ruler of all Caliban, and the world entered a golden age of peace and prosperity.

Shortly after the success of the campaign, the Emperor of Mankind and his Astartes scouts arrived on Caliban after they detected the psychic emanations of one of the Primarchs. Jonson automatically saw the connection between him and the Master of Mankind, and swore his fealty. The Emperor granted Jonson command of the I Space Marine Legion, known as the Dark Angels, and Luther was one of the first members of the Order to undergo the process to become a Space Marine.

The Great Crusade
Twenty Legions of Space Marines were created by the Emperor during the Great Crusade to join and lead the Emperor's quest to unite all of humanity under the aegis of the Imperium of Man. The Dark Angels Legion was the very first of those original "First Founding" Legions to be created at the beginning of the Great Crusade, and so were originally under the command of the Emperor himself.

Once the Emperor discovered Lion El'Jonson on Caliban, however, the Primarch took command of the Dark Angels Legion that had been created from his genetic stock, and he was granted command of the 4th Expeditionary Fleet of the Great Crusade in orbit of the planet Sarosh, which had formerly been commanded by an officer of the White Scars Legion. The Saroshi - ruled by a bureaucracy - had recently expressed their interest in becoming part of the Imperium, and the Imperials were eager to allow them in, believing that these people seemed to have the same secular beliefs as they did. But the Saroshi (without mentioning it to the Imperial expedition) secretly worshipped Chaotic entities in the Warp they called the Melachim, and saw the anti-religious stance of the Pre-Heresy Imperium as unsuppressed evil. The Lord High Exacter, the leader of the Saroshi bureaucracy, denounced Jonson and the Emperor to his face aboard the Dark Angels' flagship, and Jonson responded by ramming his sword through him. The Saroshi had also brought a nuclear device aboard their shuttle, intending to assassinate the fleet's entire command structure, including Jonson; however, Luther and a junior Librarian named Zahariel managed to eject the shuttle into space, causing only minor damage to the flagship. After this incident, Luther, Zahariel and two hundred others were sent back to Caliban in disgrace to oversee the recruitment of new Space Marines into the Legion from the Calibanite population.

Another incident occurred during the pacification of the world of Dulan that began the millennia-long rivalry between the Dark Angels and the Space Wolves. The planetary governor, Durath, had denounced Space Wolf Primarch Leman Russ as "the Emperor's lap-dog" and swore to feed his heart to his pet Grox. Russ, enraged, swore to kill Durath himself and demanded the satisfaction of leading the assault. Jonson, however, had meticulously planned the attack and was not about to let his brother's hot-headedness foil his plans. Jonson led the assault, leaving Russ to watch helplessly as the Lion killed Durath. After the battle, Russ stormed into the fortress and struck Jonson across the room. A brawl ensued that lasted a full day and night, the two combatants being said to be equally matched: while Russ was slightly stronger, the Lion was slightly quicker. Russ eventually ceased and started laughing, realizing how foolish their fight was. Jonson, however, still angry at what he considered the treachery of Russ' first punch, knocked the laughing Space Wolf out cold with one final blow. By the time Russ regained consciousness, the Dark Angels had departed for new fields of battle in the Great Crusade. It has since been customary for selected champions from both Chapters to engage in a non-lethal duel whenever they meet so that honour may be satisfied.

The Great Betrayal
The Dark Angels had been posted to the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy when word reached them of Horus' treachery. It is known that Horus ordered the Night Lords Legion to intercept the Dark Angels, but without success. As the Dark Angels were in transit to Terra alongside the Space Wolves Legion, so too was the Ultramarines Legion, who had also thwarted Horus' efforts to keep them from Terra. They arrived too late; Horus had been defeated and the Emperor grievously wounded, his shattered body placed within the Golden Throne. Grief-stricken, Jonson returned to Caliban. Upon the Dark Angels' arrival in orbit, they were fired upon from the surface. Pulling back the fleet, El'Jonson tried to find out what had happened, and discovered that Luther - who had become embittered by what he perceived as El'Jonson taking all the glory - had poisoned the minds of the Space Marine garrison and the new recruits against their Primarch. Correctly believing Luther and the planetside Dark Angels to have been tainted by Chaos, an infuriated Jonson ordered that Caliban be bombarded from orbit, destroying the planet's defenses.

El'Jonson led his forces to the surface and assaulted the Order's fortress-monastery, where he confronted Luther in single combat. Luther, transformed into a Chaos Champion by the power of the Chaos Gods, was now evenly matched with the enraged Primarch. The battle between the two leveled the monastery as the planet was coming apart around them, the bombardment taking a heavy toll on the surface. El'Jonson managed to wound Luther, but could not bring himself to kill the man who had been his brother and mentor. Luther lashed out with a powerful psychic attack that mortally wounded the Primarch. As he saw what he had done, Luther felt a veil lift from his eyes, and the Chaos Gods - seeing that once again their chosen Champion had failed - lashed out with the powers of the Warp. The Fallen Angels were scattered throughout space and time, and Caliban tore itself apart under the strain of the Ruinous Powers' assault. The only portion of the planet remaining intact was the rock on which stood the monastery in which Luther and the Lion had dueled. The Dark Angels entered the shattered monastery and captured the broken Luther; of El'Jonson himself, however, there was no sign. It was believed that Jonson was thrown into space and time along with the Fallen, but there is not enough evidence to back this up.

A Fallen Angel named Astelan told a different version of these events. According to Astelan, Lion El'Jonson was late in arriving to the defense of Terra not due to being too far away, but because he was waiting to see whether Horus or the Emperor won. Astelan, believing that those who were with Jonson would not forgive them for turning on their brothers, ordered the defensive batteries of Caliban to fire upon the returning Dark Angels fleet. This is perhaps foreshadowed at the end of the novel Descent of Angels, from the Horus Heresy series. The difference between the Dark Angels' view of the fall of Caliban and that of the Fallen Angel Astelan is considered to be due to Astelan's warped, literally, perception of the events, but the novel suggests that some aspects might be true after all, and Lion el'Jonson had betrayed the Emperor when he was most needed.

After the Horus Heresy
With their Primarch missing and their Battle-Brothers on Caliban having betrayed them to Chaos, the Dark Angels swore to redeem themselves in the eyes of the Emperor and force the Fallen Angels to repent. To this day, the Dark Angels and their Successor Chapters call themselves the Unforgiven, and wage a war of repentance to wipe this secret stain from the honour of the Chapter. They can never truly rest until every one of the Fallen has been eliminated.

Chapter Organisation


The organisation of the Dark Angels Chapter differs from the standards of the Codex Astartes in the shape of its higher ranks, along with the order of battle of its 1st and 2nd Companies.

The Dark Angels' Chapter Master is known instead as the Supreme Grand Master and its company captains are called Masters, with other senior officers holding the title of Grand Master. The Chapter Council, composed of all the Chapter's company Masters and other senior officers like the Grand Master of Librarians (Chief Librarian), the Grand Master of Apothecaries (Chief Apothecary), Grand Master of the Forge, and the Grand Master of Chaplains (High Chaplain) and chaired by the Supreme Grand Master, is called the Inner Circle.

The Dark Angels' 1st Company is referred to within the Chapter as the Deathwing, The Deathwing is comprised solely of Dark Angels Veterans who only take to the field of battle in bone-white Terminator Armour. This armour was originally coloured black, but was repainted white to honour the valour of a group of 30 Terminators who single-handedly halted a Genestealer invasion of Plain's World, one of the Dark Angels' main recruiting worlds after the Horus Heresy. The Deathwing is unique in that it has enough of the rare and precious Tactical Dreadnought Armour suits to equip the entire company, in excess of 100 complete sets of Terminator Armour.

The Dark Angels' 2nd Company is called the Ravenwing. The members of the Ravenwing are chosen not only for their skill at fast assaults using bikes and Land Speeders but also for their resilience to the heretical rantings of members of the Fallen Angels. The Ravenwing wear jet-black armour in the style of the Dark Angels during the Horus Heresy and specialise in lightning-fast assaults. All but the highest members of the Chapter's Inner Circle are oblivious to the true purpose of the Ravenwing, which is to hunt down and capture every last member of the Fallen. Only with the blood or full repentence of the Fallen do the Dark Angels believe that their sins against the Emperor during the Heresy may finally be washed away.

The Dark Angels maintain a very special cadre of Chaplains known as Interrogator-Chaplains who are tasked with getting any member of the Fallen Angels who are captured by the Dark Angels to admit their sins and repent of their betrayal of the Emperor. Interrogator-Chaplains are as skilled in the arts of interrogation, torture and psychological manipulation as the most experienced members of the Inquisition.

Chapter Headquarters
The ruins of Caliban are located in the Cadian Sector, to the galactic north of the Eye of Terror. Prior to the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy, the Death World of Caliban was covered with lush forests, inhabited by monstrous creatures warped by the proximity of Chaos. The humans of the planet were a proud, martial people, forced to live in great stone monasteries. The Dark Angels rebuilt their fortress-monastery on the asteroid that had borne the original fortress of the Order, drilling deep into the bedrock and rebuilding the ruins. The new fortress is known officially as the Tower of Angels, but is more commonly referred to as "The Rock." The Rock has been equipped with massive Warp-Engines, enabling faster-than-light transit through the Immaterium. The warrens beneath The Rock are where the Dark Angels bring their Fallen brethren to be redeemed by their Interrogator-Chaplains. It is believed by the Inquisition to hold many other secrets. Only when a Dark Angel reaches the rank of Company Master does he truly learn all the secrets of the Dark Angels, but one secret is known only to the Supreme Grand Master, the Master of the Chapter: the Fallen Angels' leader, the Chaos Champion Luther, is not only still alive, but imprisoned within the deepest, most secure cavern of The Rock. He is incurably insane, and has thwarted the attempts of every Supreme Grand Master to make him repent to date. Luther simply rants and raves that he has no need of confession or repentance, for one day Lion El'Jonson will return and forgive him for his sins against the Emperor.

Chapter Recruitment
As the Dark Angels have no homeworld to speak of (since the destruction of Caliban), they draw their recruits from a variety of planets, mainly those feudal worlds with a pre-industrial level of technology. Representatives of the Dark Angels visit each recruiting world once within a normal human's lifetime, and take the strongest juveniles from the population. Each recruit is thoroughly screened, and from the moment he is accepted into the Chapter as a Space Marine, his past becomes irrelevant. Once the recruit is accepted he will undergo the normal rites to become a Space Marine. However, should he fail, his mind will be wiped clean and his body converted into that of a Servitor, the mindless cybernetic automatons that carry out the labourous tasks of the Chapter.

After the Heresy, the Dark Angels recruited from a single planet known as Plain's World. Sometime before the 41st Millennium, a group of returning Deathwing found that their planet had been overrun fifty years earlier by Genestealers, with only a few un-tainted humans remaining. The Terminators, whose duty and honour required the extermination of the Genestealers, prepared themselves for battle. The odds of their success was nearly non-existent. And so, the Terminators engaged in their native death ritual. Instead of anointing their skin with white ash, they anointed their armour changing its colour ro bone white. The Terminators cleansed the world and rescued the enslaved populace, and in honour of those few Terminators, the armour of all Dark Angels Terminators was ever after painted white. The Dark Angels' leadership, the Inner Circle, recognised the folly of relying upon one planet for manpower and so diversified their recruiting grounds to include other worlds.

Chapter Combat Doctrine
The Dark Angels follow the standard combat doctrine of the Codex Astartes, but their dogged resistance against overwhelming odds is legendary. The Dark Angels will stubbornly stand their ground in combat, refusing to give ground to the enemy, even if it is tactically beneficial to do so.

The primary driving force of the Chapter is the hunt and capture of the remaining Fallen Angels. Only by forcing every single one to repent do the Dark Angels believe they can restore their honour. If a member of the Fallen or someone who may know of the location of one, is present on the battlefield, the Dark Angels will ignore their objective and do all in their power to capture this individual. Everything else is second to the capture of a Fallen Angel, including any other human life. It is not unknown for Dark Angels to fire upon friendly targets in order to prevent them from discovering the secret of the Fallen. Those friendly units that survive are often taken to The Rock to be turned into Servitors, to silence them forever.

The Dark Angels are also notoriously intolerant of non-humans and mutants, even those like Ogryns or Ratlings who are considered benevolent by the Imperium of Man. They are also highly mistrustful of the Imperial Inquisition, and will refuse to fight alongside any force that incorporates members of the Inquisition, or non-human soldiers, except in the most dire of circumstances. This is due to the fact that they do not want the Inquisition investigating the Chapter or discovering its dark secrets.

Chapter Colours
Prior to the Horus Heresy, during the Great Crusade, the Power Armour of the Dark Angels Legion was jet-black. Not long after the Legion's Primarch was reunited with the warriors of the 1st Legion, the wedge began to be driven between the Calibanite Dark Angels and their Terran-brethren. On the right shoulder pads of the Calibanite Dark Angels, where normally a Space Marine’s organisational and rank markings would be painted, they were authorized to wear the personal heraldry of their respective Knightly Orders. On their left shoulder pads, El’Jonson had decreed that Calibanite warriors were to wear the dark green of their home world’s forests as an act of remembrance of the battles fought to tame their homeworld under the leadership of the Lion.

After the Heresy, the bulk of the Chapter began to appear in dark green armour, while the 1st and 2nd Companies' panoply remained jet-black in honour of the original Legion. The Deathwing Company later re-coloured their armour to bone-white in honour of a battle fought long ago. Chapter legend states that a band of Deathwing brethren returned to the world of their birth, only to find their people enslaved to a large Genestealers cult. Abiding by the traditions of their people, the brethren repainted their armour white, symbolising that they were dead men walking - ghosts - setting out on their death-quest to rid their world of the Genestealers taint. Since that day, the Deathwing have continued to wear their Terminator armour in bone-white colours, in solemn remembrance of the sacrifice of their predecessors.

Veteran Dark Angels are commonly found wearing hooded cloaks; this symbolises their shame over what the Fallen Angels had done near the end of the Great Crusade. Cloaks are worn by the Veteran Dark Angels and the Chapter's inner circle because they know enough about the Dark Angels' history, and thus their shame, prior to obtaining their rank within the Chapter.

Apothecaries of the Dark Angels keep their entire armour painted black except for the backpack, groin and torso armour, which are all white. They have a red vertical stripe painted down the centre of the helmet.

Chapter Badge
The badge of the Chapter is a winged sword on a green roundel. Variants of this symbol exist for the Deathwing and Ravenwing Companies, the former depicting the winged sword as broken, the latter a sword held by a single wing and raven's claw. The 10th Company, the Chapter's Scout Marines, uses the Dark Angel Sword but without the wing device, to symbolise the fact that the Scout Company comprises Chapter Neophytes, who have yet to "earn their wings" as full Dark Angels.

Notable Dark Angels

 * Azrael - The current Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels Chapter and the unofficial commander of all the Dark Angels' Successor Unforgiven Chapters during the 41st Millennium.
 * Cypher - The most feared member of the Fallen Angels whose true name is unknown. Wherever this phantasm of a man goes, other Fallen are not far behind. This name comes from ancient Caliban, where it was commonly a title, Lord Cypher, rather than a name, given to the man who would renounce his own true name and become the keeper of the Order's traditions, rituals, lore and ceremonies.
 * Master Belial - Master of the Deathwing Company
 * Master Sammael - Master of the Ravenwing Company, rides a rare anti-gravity Jetbike left from the time of the Horus Heresy.
 * Master Gideon - Ex-Master of the Ravenwing, crushed to death by a Titan.
 * Master Ezekiel - Grand Master of Librarians - Keeper of the Book of Salvation. This ancient tome contains the names of everyone of the Fallen Angels that the Dark Angels have captured.
 * Master Sapphon - Present Grand Master of Chaplains. He received the post neither due to age nor ability as an interrogator (Asmodai is his superior in both these things), but for his vast leadership skills.
 * Interrogator-Chaplain Asmodai - Oldest and most successful living Interrogator-Chaplain within the Chapter today. Bearer of the fabled Blades of Reason.
 * Interrogator-Chaplain Molochia - Greatest of the Dark Angels' Interrogator-Chaplains. Molochia died after over 300 years' service to the Chapter, with 12 Black Pearls on his Rosarius. To this day, no other Interrogator-Chaplain has emulated this achievement.
 * Brother Bethor - Bearer of the Sacred Standard. (The Dark Angels have three Sacred Standards, namely the Standards of Fortitude, Retribution and Devastation.)
 * Scout Sergeant Namaan - Legendary Sergeant who died halting the Ork advance during the Piscina IV Campaign.
 * Anaziel - Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels in the 37th Millennium. Requested the creation of the Disciples of Caliban Chapter of Unforgiven Space Marines.
 * Chaplain Boreas - Chaplain of the 3rd Company during the Battle of Piscina IV.
 * Master Ezekiel - leader of the Deathwing recruiting party which discovered the Genestealer infection of their homeworld. Realizing that they faced a potential suicide mission, the Marines reverted to their tribal names, and painted their armour death-white. Ezekiel became the warrior Cloudrunner once again, and fought along side Weasel-Fierce, Bloody Moon, and the Librarian Lucius, known as Two Heads Talking.
 * Master Gabriel - Ex-Master of the Deathwing. Was sent to find Captain Ezekiel and his men as they did not return from Totem. On finding Ezekiel the lone survivor, Gabriel discovered the fate of his Brothers. Gabriel returned to his Chapter and started the new Deathwing using his own badge, a broken sword mixed with the wings of the Chapter badge, and kept the white in respect of his Brothers. He was killed on the Space Hulk Charnel Shrine.
 * Chapter Commander Merir Astelan - Ordered planetary defenses on Caliban to fire on Lion El'Jonson's fleet after it returned to the Chapter homeworld from the Horus Heresy.

Notable Friendships
The Lion and Leman Russ went on to become very close brothers. No other Legion could compare to these two combined Legions. It is suggested that Ragnar Blackmane (Wolf Lord) of the Space Wolves Chapter knows about the Dark Angels' secret in the novel Sons of Fenris.

Successor Chapters
After the Horus Heresy, the Dark Angels founded at least three Successor Chapters to track the Fallen, the known ones being the Angels of Absolution, the Angels of Redemption and the Angels of Vengeance. These Successor Chapters share in the secret of the Fallen, and collectively the Dark Angels and their successors refer to themselves as "The Unforgiven".

In addition several other Chapters have since been created using the Dark Angels' gene-seed. These Successor Chapters were introduced in the 4th Edition Codex: Dark Angels released in 2007. The new Chapters introduced were the Guardians of the Covenant, the Consecrators and the Disciples of Caliban. The Disciples of Caliban are unusual in that Dark Angels' Chapter Master Anaziel specifically requested their creation, the only known instance of a Chapter Master making such a request, much less having it granted. The Consecrators are notorious for using lovingly-preserved technology from the time of Lion el'Jonson himself, and as such they bear a striking resemblance to the Dark Angels of pre-Heresy days.

Curiously, although Dark Angel gene-seed is every bit as pure and fully functional as that of the Ultramarines Chapter, the seed of the Lion has rarely been used to create new Space Marine Chapters since the Horus Heresy.

Chapter Notes
Prior to the Codex: Angels of Death, the background of the Dark Angels, both in Games Workshop material and within the fictional Warhammer 40,000 universe, was shrouded in mystery. Aspects of the Chapter's fall to Chaos bear similarities to the legends of King Arthur, in particular Arthur's/El'Jonson's eventual defeat, and Gawain's/Luther's fall from grace. Also, the name of their Primarch, Lion El'Jonson, is inspired by the English poet Lionel Johnson, the author of "The Dark Angel". Originally the name was spelt Lyyn Elgonsen (Rogue Trader, p.138); presumably to obscure the reference. The dark secret revealed in the original poem was its author's homosexuality. The home of the Dark Angels prior to the Second Edition revision of the Chapter was the planet Delahon.

Conspiracy Theories
Games Workshop has in recent years restricted the information about the Dark Angels to emphasize the mystery surrounding the Chapter. The fate of Lion el'Jonson had been purposefully left out of all texts since the 2nd Edition Codex: Angels of Death (a Dark Angels/Blood Angels "combo" codex; the first dedicated codex for either Chapter) from the mid-1990's, and only re-emerged in the 2001 "Index Astartes" article published in White Dwarf magazine. While the Inner Circle of the Chapter know of the existence of Luther's stasis cell beneath The Rock, there is another chamber at the very heart of the Rock that is unknown to all but the Watchers in the Dark and the Emperor himself. This secret chamber contains the still-sleeping form of Lion el'Jonson. Similarly, information regarding the Chaos Space Marines character Cypher, rumoured to be foremost of the Fallen, is kept vague to further fuel players' imaginations.

The novel Angels of Darkness (Thorpe, 2003), written by Games Workshop staff member and codex writer Gav Thorpe, provides an alternative account of the events that split the Chapter, and the Primarchs' influence over their Space Marines. Despite the layers of learning and civilisation el'Jonson acquired in later life, the time he spent in the forests of Caliban marked him permanently, and he remained a brooding, paranoid, and secretive man. Jonson's experience taught him that exposure invited predators, that darkness was as welcoming as it was dangerous. Intrigue, half-truths, and suspicion became second nature to each new Dark Angel. Jonson mistrusted the Terran-born Dark Angels above all others. While these men formed a minority within the Legion, Jonson spent by far more time leading them than the Caliban-born Dark Angels. el'Jonson also systematically removed control from each company commander and held his Legion's reigns tightly. Each company posted to a warzone was shadowed by a younger company in secret to report on its men's loyalties to the Primarch.

As the Heresy erupted, the Dark Angels were operating on the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy. In the interim, Warp storms cut Caliban off from reliable astrotelepathy, so that only garbled accounts of current events reached the planet. Some were true, some were half-true, some were outright fabrications. In their desperation, the elder Dark Angels tried to leave Caliban and confront Horus. They were prevented by their younger brethren in a battle that grounded the Marines' vessels and despoiled Caliban. When the Lion returned, his fleet was fired on for fear that he had sided with Horus, and that the victors' version of the uprising had already damned them in Jonson's eyes. Jonson immediately ordered a full-scale bombardment, and the destruction of Caliban soon followed.

The canonicity of the novel is hotly debated. Although the Fallen character (Astelan) is a first-hand witness to events, it is unclear which of his claims are true, which are deliberate misinformation, and which are bias. The author, Gav Thorpe, has stated in an interview on Dysartes that the book is not an objective look at the events on Caliban, but a character study of one of the Fallen Angels.

Known Chapter Theatres

 * The Egammonon Revolt - Fourth Quadrant Rebellion
 * Straton - Third Tyrannic War
 * Hyades - While hunting for one of the Fallen Angels, the Dark Angels first engaged a force of the Space Wolves after some bad blood rose between them and then the two Chapters put aside their feud to defend the world from an attack by the Forces of Chaos.