Tyrannic War Veteran

"The blasphemy of the Tyranids is such that only one solution is acceptable. Extermination. There can only be two sides in a fight - choose carefully, lest you and I find ourselves on different sides."

- Chaplain Ortan Cassius, Master of Sanctity of the Ultramarines Chapter

A Tyrannic War Veteran is a veteran Space Marine of the Ultramarines Chapter that survived the first horrific incursion of the Tyranids during the First Tyrannic War. The invasion of Hive Fleet Behemoth was only halted at Macragge, in a series of battles known as the Battle of Macragge, where a good portion of the Chapter was heroically sacrificed to stop this xenos menace. These veteran Tyranid fighters were formed into a cadre of elite Tyranid Hunters which are specially trained to effectively combat the Tyranid threat.

History
The Battle of Macragge was the greatest test ever faced by the Ultramarines Chapter when they confronted the first invasion of the Milky Way Galaxy by the Tyranids of Hive Fleet Behemoth in 745.M41. Coming from the Eastern Fringes of the galaxy, Hive Fleet Behemoth invaded the Imperium of Man's Ultima Segmentum. It is likely that the Tyranid Hive Mind was drawn to the Milky Way Galaxy by either the beacon of the Astronomican in the Warp or the potent psychic presence of the Emperor himself. Thankfully, the Ultramarines stood in its way. The Ultramarines were quick to react, and the newly appointed Grand Master of the Chapter, Marneus Calgar, deployed the Ultramarine fleet to stop the Tyranid Hive Fleet at the garden world of Prandium - the jewel of Ultramar, with gardens and forests of such amazing beauty and genetic craftsmanship that it was considered one of the Wonders of the Imperium - a world that the Ultramarines were duty-bound to protect.

It was a slaughter. The tactics and strategies decreed by the Codex Astartes, a tome of knowledge created by the Ultramarine Primarch Roboute Guilliman to govern all aspects of Imperial warfare, did not succeed against the Tyranids. The harrying strategies of the Ultramarines could not inflict enough damage against the Tyranids - and the close-range passes of Thunderhawks and other Imperial aircraft and vehicles for optimal firepower favored the Tyranids' mode of attack even more, since their spore cysts and clawed tentacles would burst or tear open many of the ships that went in on the attack. The Ultramarine fleet had to sacrifice Prandium to consumption by the Hive Fleet. They would have to adapt and develop new strategies and tactics, even weapons, if they were to be successful against the Tyranid menace. Hit-and-run raids were abandoned in place of concentrated defenses and static firepower. This meant that the Ultramarines had to choose a place to defend, and they chose their homeworld of Macragge, the very heart of Ultramar.

Scant weeks later, the outrider vessels of the Tyranid fleet attacked Macragge. The alien bio-vessels swept aside attacks by Ultramarines Strike Cruisers and swarmed over the planet below. Soon many thousands of Mycetic Spore-birthed beasts scurried and rampaged across Macragge. Deeming that the Tyranid threat was too massive to be opposed piecemeal, Calgar combined his ground forces into three mighty armies. The primary and secondary taskforces, composed largely of 1st Company Veterans and the regiments of the Ultramaran Planetary Defence Forces, bolstered Macragge's polar fortresses against the Tyranid onslaught. Meanwhile, Calgar's taskforce, the largest of the three, performed a series of rearguard actions, attempting to slow the Tyranid advance and eliminate Hive Mind synapse-control organisms. Calgar achieved great success in the early days of the campaign, buying time with blood for his Battle-Brothers to the north and south. However, the Tyranids kept coming. In a final climactic battle on Cold Steel Ridge, the Ultramarines rearguard was brutalised by the Tyranid horde and Calgar himself was gravely wounded. Knowing that to remain planetside was to doom his followers to wasteful death, Calgar withdrew to the orbiting Battle Barge Octavius. Refusing all but the most vital medical attention, the Master of Macragge took command of the fleet, and sought a way to save his world from certain destruction. Hours later, the main Tyranid fleet arrived at Macragge. With no sign of reinforcements, Calgar led his fleet in a series of daring attacks, striking at isolated vessels as they spread out to invade Macragge in force. Caught between the blistering firepower of Macragge's polar fortresses and the vengeful hammer blows of Calgar's fleet, Tyranid vessels were destroyed by the score, but many more yet remained.

As battle raged, the Tyranids unleashed thousands of Mycetic Spores above the vital polar fortresses -- and if the fortresses were taken, Macragge's guns would be silenced, and the world left defenceless. So it was that the Tyranids landed in even greater numbers than before, and the fortresses soon found themselves sorely beset. Their gruesome cargo delivered, the battered Hive Ships retreated from orbit. Trusting to his Ultramarines to keep the fortresses secure, Calgar relentlessly pursued the Tyranid fleet, determined that it would not bring ruin to other worlds. Never before or since has the valour of the Ultramarines been tested as it was in the defence of the polar fortresses. The Veteran Space Marines of the 1st Company led the lightly-armed Auxilia in a tenacious defence of the fortresses, holding every wall and trench until the last possible moment before it was overrun by the Tyranid swarm. Slowly the troops withdrew ever deeper into the fortress, while making the Tyranids pay for every single yard of ground they advanced.

Valiantly defending the northern polar fortress, the Ultramarines' 1st Company had been wiped out to the last man. The Battle of Macragge remains a great source of both sorrow and pride for the Ultramarines. The names of its fallen are commemorated each year at the Feast of Days, their sacrifice remembered throughout Ultramar with honour and gratitude, but the cost had been great. The Ultramarines 1st Company was gone and the 3rd and 7th sorely diminished. It would be many long years before the Chapter could properly replace its losses, but replace them it would, but the Ultramarines would endure.

Formation of the Tyrannic War Veterans
In the aftermath of the Battle of Macragge, the Ultramarines were faced with the Herculean task of rebuilding their most experienced body of Veteran warriors -- the 1st Company. Responsibility for this undertaking fell to Chaplain Ortan Cassius, whose hatred for the Tyranids and all they had done to the worlds of Mankind knew no bounds. Cassius petitioned Marneus Calgar for the authorisation to raise a new body of Ultramarines drawn from the ranks of those Astartes who had survived the First Tyrannic War. Only those Space Marines who had been tested like he had could truly understand the threat posed by the Tyranids. Marneus Calgar eventually acceded to the Chaplain's request. With the Chapter Master's sanction given, for the first time in the Chapter's history, the dictates of the Codex Astartes were re-written. The Chaplain gathered his corps of Tyrannic War Veterans. Under Cassius’ leadership, those Battle-Brothers who had fought the hardest against the Tyranid swarms that had assaulted Macragge were elevated and afforded additional duties, until each was eventually judged worthy of joining the ranks of the slowly reconstituted 1st Company. These so-called "Tyrannic War Veterans" make up the first and most powerful of the Chapter's reformed 1st Company, and are second to no other warriors of the Imperium because of their experience, training and upgraded Power Armour. Though a minor deviation from the Codex Astartes, Marneus Calgar tolerates his mentor's divergence from its sacred tenets, sensing that someday there shall be another reckoning between the Ultramarines and the Tyranids, and that Cassius' Tyrannic War Veterans may be the key to final victory.

Role
These so-called “Tyrannic War Veterans” serve in every part of the Chapter, often as squad leaders where they can pass on their knowledge to their Battle-Brothers. Under their command, the expertise they gained at such cost during the Battle for Macragge has been passed on and disseminated throughout the ranks. Devastator Marines are taught where to aim their weapons to bring down the mighty warrior beasts of the Tyranids, or how best to use rapid firing heavy weaponry to hold a seemingly endless swarm at bay. Tactical Marines are taught the optimum combination of firepower and manoeuvrability, and which creatures to attack to the disrupt the whole. Assault Marines are taught how to engage this most fearsome of close quarters enemies in the deadly storm of close combat, countering every attack the enemy tries to make and in turn dealing it the killing blow. While the Tyrannic War Veterans tutor others in their knowledge, they seek also to learn more of the Tyranids. It was the Codex Astartes that provided the inspiration, for had not Roboute Guiliman committed his own wisdom and experience to its pages so that others might learn from his example? Had not he brought to bear the fearsome weight of his intellect to master a thousand and more styles of warfare?

Deathwatch Service
In the decades since the First Tyrannic War, those who survived have passed on the grim lessons they have learnt to those who have not faced the Great Devourer. It has, since the earliest days of their impromptu brotherhood, been a tradition of the Tyrannic War Veterans to teach as much as to fight, spreading hard-won insight amongst Astartes of every Chapter, and to swear the Apocryphon Oath is one more route for this knowledge to be passed on. Thus it was that the first of the Tyrannic War Veterans presented himself at Watch Fortress Erioch and partook of the Apocryphon Oath. His duty is to disseminate what he knows of the Tyranids and their methods, tutoring others, even the elite of the Deathwatch, in how best to counter the hive fleets’ advance. By joining the Deathwatch, the Tyrannic War Veterans increase their chances of encountering the Tyranids on the field of battle, and in so doing learn more of their enemy’s ways. Finally, what he learns of the Tyranids whilst undertaking his Vigil, a Tyrannic War Veteran can take back with him to his Chapter, and disseminate his hard won knowledge still further. And then, his mission complete, he may take up his place in the 1st Company, and fight alongside his brothers.

Several Tyrannic War Veterans are currently serving the Long Watch in the ranks of the Deathwatch of the Jericho Reach. One, Brother Scelus, is considered likely to be granted the rank of Watch Captain, though whether or not he will accept this honour given his need to return to his Chapter and pass on his knowledge remains to be seen. It was Brother Scelus who mastered the technique of using a cluster of sync-fused krak grenades to slay the very largest of Tyranid monstrosities, and he has passed this unique tactic on to several Battle-Brothers he has served alongside. Other Tyrannic War Veterans have mastered the use of various xenos-keyed poisons, coating their combat blades with deadly venom or delivering them by way of special ammunition. All of the Tyrannic War Veterans are masters of fighting the Tyranids, and to serve in the same Kill-team as such a warrior is to fight alongside both a trusted Battle-Brother and a masterful tutor.