Moritat

The Moritat was an unofficial designation given to certain Astartes of the ancient Legiones Astartes, who displayed suicidal urges and a blatant disregard for overall combat doctrine. Operating independently on the battlefield, these individuals were often employed as efficient shock assault troops and assassins. From its earliest days, the Raven Guard Legion employed more Moritats than did many others. The individuals assigned to this duty were often those considered extreme in their methods even by the cold-blooded Xeric (original Terran members of the XIX Legion) and they were often used -- willingly -- to undertake missions from which they were not expected to return. This bygone rank no longer exist amongst the Adeptus Astartes of the modern 41st Millennium.

History
The ancient designation known as a Moritat, harkens back to the bygone era of the Great Crusade during the mid-30th Millennium. Amongst the Raven Guard and the XIX Legion that preceded them, there was a tendency amongst combat veterans placed in situations of extreme stress to forsake all pretence of self-preservation, fighting with a terrifying silent determination and the sole aim of causing as many casualties and as much destruction as possible before succumbing to their foe. This strange blood-soaked ennui that drove many amongst the Raven Guard to sacrifice themselves in battle was known among the Terran XIX Legion as becoming "Ash Blind", while the Raven Guard native to Deliverance knew it as the "Sable Brand", a condition heralded by the darkening of the entire eye to black. Those warriors who survived their suicidal furies sometimes recovered, their brethren never mentioning the incident in a typically Raven Guard display of reticence, but more often were evermore plagued in combat by the urge to slay until death took them, paying no heed to tactical plans. The XIX Legion, in the days before Primarch Corvus Corax's return, made little attempt to organise the Ash Blind on the battlefield, relying on the flexible nature of their tactical doctrines to make the maximum use of their suicidal urges when they took hold. The Raven Lord turned this aberrant effect of his gene-seed into a valuable weapon in his tactical arsenal, forming those afflicted by the Sable Brand into units of Shadow Killers and employing them as shock assault troops and assassins. It was the employment of such unconventional troop-types that allowed Corax to best his brother Roboute Guilliman in several of his brother-Primarch's notoriously testing strategio-simulacra, an unexpected tactic that the lord of the Ultramarines had never faced before but was quick to adopt into the Legiones Astartes order of battle, creating the "Moritat" as it was later known amongst the Legiones Astartes.