Torchbearers

"This is a gift from the Emperor to His chosen instruments of death. Pray be mindful, Chapter Master, of your honour-bound duty before you repeat your refusal."

—Shield-Captain Graentis, Shield Host of the Emissaries Imperatus, Commander of the Torchbearer Task Force Aggarmenus

The Imperial Aquila

Torchbearers were the specialised task forces of the Indomitus Crusade whose mission was to give the genetic engineering technology and Adeptus Mechanicus Tech-priests required to create Primaris Space Marines -- known as the "Primarch's Gift" -- to the already extant Firstborn Space Marine Chapters.

Early during the muster of the Indomitus Crusade fleets, specialised task forces were assembled and sent racing out into the galaxy. Known as "Torchbearers," they were tasked to make contact with specific Firstborn Space Marine Chapters and to furnish them with the "Primarch's Gift" -- the name given to the genetic technologies and Magi Biologis required for those Chapters to create their own Primaris Marine battle-brothers from new recruits.

Torchbearer task forces typically comprised small, fast, heavily armed voidcraft and were garrisoned with a mixture of Sisters of Silence, Adeptus Custodes of the Emissaries Imperatus, and Greyshield Primaris battle-brothers of the same genetic line as the chosen Chapter to be reinforced. These escorts ensured that their precious cargo reached its destination regardless of threats and impediments and was put swiftly to use by its recipients.

Some Chapters were assigned Torchbearers because they were known to be nearing -- if not already past the brink of -- extinction. Task forces despatched to these so-called "waning" Chapters had first to locate them and determine if they still fought on in the Emperor's name, then begin the replenishment of their strength if they did.

If tragedy had already overtaken the waning Chapter then a new Chapter Master was selected from amongst the Greyshields and the Chapter was reestablished with only Primaris Marines, their first duty often to exact vengeance upon whatever foe had laid their forebears low.

Many Torchbearer task forces were assigned to those Chapters simply too far distant, or else too mobile in nature, for the main thrust of the Indomitus Crusade fleets to reach. Many such Chapters had homeworlds that lay beyond the roiling mass of the Great Rift in the Imperium Nihilus.

Others, including such illustrious names as the Ultramarines, the Black Templars, and the Raven Guard, inhabited regions far from Terra or were scattered across the void aboard crusading fleets.

Torchbearers assigned to these Chapters employed every asset that might lend them speed and efficacy. Most boasted multiple cadres of Silent Sisters, their presence intended to quell the most ferocious of Warp Storms and aid their comrades in weathering an often-desperate passage through the madness of the Cicatrix Maledictum.

Some further augmented their ranks with Rogue Traders whose voidcraft and knowledge of hidden routes was invaluable, especially potent astropaths to aid in making contact with their quarry, and brotherhoods of Grey Knights to stave off the perils of daemonic interference with the Torchbearers' vital mission.

History

"Lieutenant, inform the captains of the Cardinal Taris XI and the Bullshock they will turn about and hold off those Aeldari phantom-ships. Remind them only the cargo in our hold matters. Then thank them and block their transmission."

—Admiral Shand, Battlefleet Solar, Commander of the Torchbearer Fleet Imperator Judicium

Formation

The creation of the first Primaris Space Marines by Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl was nothing short of a miracle in the eyes of many among Terra's halls of power. In an age when Mankind stood closer to the precipice of extinction than perhaps at any other time in ten thousand standard years, Cawl's technological genius provided an opportunity for the Imperium not only to survive but also to strike back against the numberless legions of Heretics and xenos that assailed the Emperor's realm.

The archmagos' design and manufacture of the advanced weapons, armour and war engines with which the Adeptus Astartes would wage war in this dark epoch were visionary. Yet such strength meant nothing if those in most need of it were beyond reach. What use is a newly crafted blade hung above a smith's forge when the questing knight fights empty handed?

The task of deploying tens of thousands of Primaris Space Marines, fully matured with all of Cawl's genetic bio-science, fell for the most part to many of the initial task forces and battle groups of the Indomitus Crusade. But such a burden was never their primary objective. Where the fleets' scheduled mission to throw back the onslaught of invaders and usurpers took them into contact with established Chapters, their armadas would deliver intakes of Primaris Space Marines, already blooded on the dangerous journey.

Thus did Roboute Guilliman's own vast forces from Fleet Primus supply what became known as the "Primarch's Gift" to the Space Wolves and the Blood Angels, amongst many notable others. So too did elements of Fleet Tertius reinforce the Verydian Hawks and the Hammers of Dhrex, while Fleet Secundus delivered to the Selenarchs the strength with which to retake the Garredes Cluster.

From the very inception of the Indomitus Crusade, Guilliman understood that many successors to his and his primarch brothers' genetic legacy would never be reached with such coincidental logistics. So the primarch formed specialised fleets that would seek out those Chapters that might not be contacted by the Indomitus Crusade for many standard years, if at all.

These smaller naval formations were initially identified only through ciphers and cryptological ident runes. In time, these and their successors who followed their lead became known -- at least among those few aware of their presence -- as the "Torchbearers."

The Torchbearer fleets are tasked with searching the war and Warp-ravaged Imperium for specific brotherhoods of the Adeptus Astartes. It was intended that each Torchbearer fleet would be assigned a single, definitive target, though there are authorised exceptions and mission improvisations that cause some to contact more than one in a single expedition.

Torchbearer fleets are designed to seek out many of those Chapters whose home world lies beyond the Cicatrix Maledictum, those who are known to be stretched most thinly and in danger of being ground into extinction, those whose home world no recent record can even locate and those whose crusading, isolationist or nomadic modus operandi mean their current location is uncertain.

A Torchbearer fleet would take on its infinitely precious cargo at one of a number of shadowy operations hubs in the Sol System or in certain neighbouring sub-sectors. The majority of these fleets embark strike forces of fully matured Primaris Space Marines bearing the specialist organs and genetic markers devised by Cawl, alongside armoured containers of weaponry and carefully laden squadrons of battle tanks.

Differing fleets carry varying amounts of these physical specimens and materiel, but all Torchbearer fleets carry sealed canisters shrouded in wards and wreathed in anti-empyric stasis loops. Inside are cryogenically preserved genetic material and tissue samples, along with thrice-blessed crystalline wafers.

These encrypted data wafers store the arcane methods by which to use these biological specimens. This is the most precious knowledge, the means by which the target Chapter would create Primaris Space Marines for themselves.

Depending on where a particular Torchbearer fleet is laden and which specific Chapter it has been assigned to locate, the nature and complexity of the technological and arcane wards around these canisters could vary widely. Embedded also in a shrine-tended cogitator core, utterly divorced from any ship systems, are the encrypted engrams that would enable the Chapter's Techmarines, vehicle crew and battle-brothers to maintain and operate additional marks and patterns of new wargear and armoured vehicles.

A senior Apothecary from the recipient Chapter would often co-monitor the transfer of this data closely, as it would form a key component of future hypnoindoctrination procedures.

The safe delivery of this genetic and technological knowledge is the primary overriding imperative for the Torchbearer fleets, and the majority of their duties are inextricably linked to this goal. As a secondary imperative, many are also tasked with gaining an understanding of what lies beyond the Great Rift (if anything) and with finding a way through.

The smaller size of Torchbearer fleets enables them to more easily gather intelligence without drawing attention either from local authorities or roving fleets of enemies. The stability of Warp channels, the integrity of a system and its society, the presence (or lack) of enemy and allied assets, the alteration of established stellar phenomena -- all of these and more fill the databanks of the Torchbearer ships.

When it comes time to call an end to their mission, whether successful or not, the fleet's commander would return to a designated star system. There, in addition to a rigorous debriefing and a thorough purification of the ships and crews in body and spirit, any intelligence gathered is passed through a series of psycho-osmotic screenings before being passed on to Guilliman's logistical priesthood known as the Officio Logisticarum.

Saving the Angels Revenant

For the Torchbearers task force sent to locate the Angels Revenant it appeared at first as though the Chapter was extinct and their duty was to reestablish it in whole. The Chapter's homeworld of Libethra had been cracked open by the Necrons of the Maynarkh Dynasty in order to engulf the original Angels Revenant in lava.

No trace could be found of those scattered Battle-Brothers who had avoided the tragedy. Yet even as Torchbearer forces set down upon the riven, airless carcass of Libethra and prepared to declare the waning Chapter extinct, their auspex and vox networks picked up faint signs of ferocious battle taking place deep beneath the planet's surface.

Tales are told elsewhere of the subsequent battle for dead Libethra against the Necron menace, of the alliance between the Torchbearers and the last vengeful remnants of the Angels Revenant, and of that Chapter's rebirth amidst the furnace of war -- suffice to say that the Primarch's Gift ushered in a new era for the Angels of Libethra.

Sons of Medusa

Some Torchbearer task forces were assigned to Chapters who, for reasons of doctrine, genetic heritage, or historical circumstance, were expected to resist the bequest of the Primarch's Gift. It was unacceptable, but not unbelievable to Roboute Guilliman and his advisors, that the most traditionalist or headstrong Firstborn Chapters might wholly reject the Primaris Marine gene-tech or the intrusive presence of the Adeptus Mechanicus magi who accompanied it.

In such cases the task force's complement of Adeptus Custodes was typically larger than average. Their presence left no doubt that this boon came by the grace of the Emperor Himself and that to resist its implementation was to deny the will of the Master of Mankind. Just such Torchbearer forces were dispatched to locate the tripartite fleet elements of the Sons of Medusa.

Resistance was predicted from their three War Clans: Lachesis, Mageara, and Atropos. The gene-seed used to fashion their Primaris Marine reinforcements came from that of their parent Chapter, the Iron Hands, and the internecine savagery of the Moirae Schism had left no love lost between them and the Sons of Medusa.

In the event, the task force sent to locate the Lachesis War Clan had the easiest duty; by the time they had rushed to aid the Sons of Medusa in their battle against the Orks of the Dravus Cluster and fought alongside them for a full Terran year the martial bonds they forged superseded all other barriers.

Those Torchbearers assigned to the Mageara and Atropos fleets, however, faced much greater challenges that went far beyond resistance from the Sons of Medusa themselves.

Organisation

"We cannot help the Bedenite Fusiliers, Captain. If the Emperor decrees that they fall resisting the Tyranids, then that is their duty. I have another. Now, seal off that damned Astropath from broadcasting to the bridge; I will not have that Bedenite colonel’s weeping distracting my flag officers."

—Count-Commander Torustan Hin-Brahey, Commander of the Illuminated Right Task Force

The task forces and battle groups of the Indomitus Crusade bear to war immense and often extremely varied armies capable of subduing entire star systems and even sub-sectors. By contrast, the armed forces of Torchbearer fleets are commonly more compact, elite and focused.

The Emperor's bodyguards of the Adeptus Custodes are found amongst the majority of them. Of all the Custodians' Shield Hosts, the Emissaries Imperatus are the most commonly represented, although Custodians belonging to other shield hosts are not unknown. The presence of the Adeptus Custodes serves to enforce the receipt of the Primarch's Gift and is seen by some Chapters as a guarantee of its bonafide or even divine nature.

The Adeptus Mechanicus maintains a widespread tech-priest presence aboard Torchbearer ships, though there are relatively few martial or zealous followers compared to the retinues of Tech-Priests Dominus who accompany crusade fleets. The expertise of numerous creeds of tech-priests is essential to the safety of the Primarch's Gift throughout transit and the successful transfer of their priceless cargo should the mission be successful.

Many Torchbearer task forces are joined by an Inquisitor and their retinue of Acolytes. Some of these investigators oversee security and sequestration protocols of the sensitive technology. Others provide local knowledge of the star systems the fleets travel through, their reputation and clearances helping to secure passage through suspicious planetary governments.

Astra Militarum forces do not often see service with the Torchbearers. Those that do are typically elite special forces such as Tempestus Scions. Otherwise, they are hardy veterans skilled in defending against boarding actions, the requisitioned retinue of some senior officer, or perhaps a regiment whose past dealing with the target Chapter might engender some goodwill towards the unusual Primarch's Gift.

Other forces known -- at least to the Officio Logisticarum and certain Inquisitors -- to travel within or alongside a Torchbearer fleet are cadres of Sisters of Silence, demi-brotherhoods of Grey Knights, Adepta Sororitas missions as well as Rogue Traders and their diverse, colourful retinues. Sleek warships, redirected from their usual commissions to serve Torchbearer fleets, often carry small armies of experienced Navis Imperialis boarding parties, many of whose members are brutal, Voidborn veterans.

The Torchbearer fleets comprise small numbers of fast, powerful and resilient warships. They typically boast more than enough firepower to dissuade piratical raiders from attacking. They require the belligerent muscle to break out of enemy encirclements and the speed to outpace more dangerous fleets. The Office of the Paternoval Envoy selects expert and adaptable Navigators under a discreet accord Roboute Guilliman brokered with the Paternova himself.

Specialist local knowledge of the Warp in those regions the fleet passes through is no longer the boon it once was -- having become more unpredictable -- and only those Navigators able to guide voidships through the most hazardous Warp Storms and rift quakes are sequestered for Torchbearer service.

Command of a Torchbearer fleet is commonly vested in the highest ranking officer aboard. Usually, this would be the senior Custodian, though some fleets are commanded by a sinister Sister of Silence, the lordly Noble of a Knight household or the ranking Navis Imperialis officer. Among the Adeptus Astartes being transported by the fleet to their intended Chapter, their senior officers offer advice and tactical expertise, usually only taking up a commanding position during rare battles the fleet becomes embroiled in.

On occasion, some fleets are accompanied by small contingents of Space Marines hailing from Chapters other than that sought out. These are often representatives from brotherhoods known to have established ties with their target, and they act as another way of reassuring their allies once found.

Operations

Torchbearer fleets could spend solar months or standard years seeking the Space Marine Chapter whose future they are entrusted with. The tormented state of the Warp in the Era Indomitus makes any interstellar travel a deadly proposition, even within the Imperium Sanctus.

The successful conclusion to a Torchbearer fleet's mission comprises the identification and location of the Chapter, the safe arrival of the precious cargo at their homeworld and the peaceful handover of the Primarch's Gift before returning via the same dangerous tides and undertaking a new mission.

Yet so much hangs in the balance, and catastrophic failures blight many Chapters' legacies.

With the desperation, greed and warmongering furore that permeates the galaxy, especially beyond the Great Rift in the Imperium Nihilus where the light of the Astronomican is still only a memory, even the superlative warriors of the Space Marines face frequent annihilation. A Torchbearer fleet that has the good fortune to find the Chapter they have searched for may have come upon them in what might be those Space Marines' last gasp.

The targeted Adeptus Astartes might be deployed in Chapter strength to one particular war zone where their foes have swelled in numbers and threaten the Space Marines with extinction, or their homeworld itself may be under invasion.

In such circumstances, the Torchbearers' own forces do not hesitate to commit to the fray, allying their full resources to the defence of the Chapter. Should the Space Marines fall in battle, or if the Torchbearers arrive to find evidence that the Chapter was in fact long since destroyed, the fleet's specialists would endeavour to re-found the brotherhood using only Primaris Marines. The Primaris Space Marines of the Ultima Founding intended to reinforce their new Chapter would establish themselves on the fallen Chapter world if safe, or they would select a new one.

The Torchbearer ships would often serve as the reformed Chapter's initial fleet, enabling them to undertake early missions while helping to set up communications with nearby Forge Worlds that would continue to supply the nascent Chapter.

The successful reinforcement or re-founding of Space Marine Chapters is not always the outcome for the Torchbearer fleets. The task forces find some Chapters, embattled but surviving, and yet who dare to query or even refuse the offered technology. Some may fear a loss of independence, even the erosion of their identity. Many Chapters are deeply suspicious when confronted by unknown warriors claiming to share their genetic lineage, a Gift seemingly offered by a primarch -- a figure of legend -- whose influence and power reflects unknown intentions.

Their duty as defenders of Mankind, and the technology's status as being ultimately from the hand of the Emperor, is impressed upon such wayward Chapters. The Torchbearers may brand those who steadfastly maintain their refusal as Heretics and then take on the mantle of the Chapter's executioners.

Other Chapters may already be so far down the dark path of heresy that the fleet does not enter into any dialogue with them. Accompanying forces of Grey Knights or Sisters of Silence may deploy in strength to exterminate such stains upon the Imperium's roll of honour.

In either case, the pristine Primaris genetic material held in suspension may be deemed to be tainted somehow and may never be used to found a Chapter.

Most disheartening of all outcomes for a Torchbearer fleet is being unable to find the targeted Chapter at all. The galaxy is unthinkably immense, and it is almost impossible to find worlds or fleets unless one knows already where to locate them. Finding such information, thanks to the Imperium's byzantine bureaucracy, is already difficult, though Roboute Guilliman ensured that his Torchbearer fleets have the most trustworthy reports available and are barred from few datasources.

Some Chapters are known only by a name and the region of Imperial space they guard. Some might have become little more than legend, their deeds known only by an account of a single battle -- perhaps standard centuries or millennia ago -- whose location is uncertain. Some may have relocated to a different homeworld, the notification either never having been made or else buried in a sealed office, slowly fossilising beneath the weight of countless centuries of paperwork.

There have also been Torchbearer missions where the outcome itself was not certain. The Gladius Ad Umbra Fleet could not locate the Lions Azure in the Afqal Sub-sector, but they did unexpectedly contact the Wardens of the Philae. The Wardens' history over the last three standard millennia so closely matched the fleet's records of the Lions Azure that the commander could not be certain if they were one and the same or not.

Conversely, there have been narrowly avoided catastrophes involving the genetic material for one Chapter nearly being handed over to another founded under the same name and near identical-heraldry. Such errors could have long-lasting and horrific consequences for a Chapter if it mixed its own carefully maintained genetic material with that of another Chapter from a different lineage.

The resulting Chapter might never be stable, risking insanity, psychosis and mutation, its warriors' forms as roiling as the Warp rift that now splits the galaxy.

Naming Conventions

Roboute Guilliman was conscious of the dangers of prescribing a standardised naming convention for the Torchbearer fleets. Many unorthodox fleets dispatched on sealed orders with the highest clearance risk drawing unwelcome attention if they also bear unusual patterns in their fleet identity signals. He thus left each fleet commander to determine his or her own signifier.

Many of these shadowy flotillas acquire names born of the commander's inspirational faith in their endeavour, such as Task Force Hopelight and the Beacon Angelis Task Force. Some bear the name or title of their commander. The Mahj of Cironis' Fleet was led by the ruling Noble of House Th'arkone, a Knight house hailing from the rad-blasted world of Cironis.

Task Force Aggarmenus, meanwhile, was formed from the twenty-third name inscribed inside the golden armour of its commanding Custodian, Shield-Captain Graentis.

Others brazenly identify their target Chapter. Torchbearer Task Force White Sentinels did not know when they launched whether the eponymous Chapter survived due to their affinity for dangerous close assaults. The task force became unavoidably engaged in a number of fierce void battles against Aeldari Corsairs, Heretic Astartes raiders and bands of greenskin privateers. Their commander, Admiral al Pre'golsa, inflicted such stinging defeats upon all he came across that the fleet's name came to be feared by pirates across the Karenna Sub-sector. When he finally encountered the doggedly surviving White Sentinels, al Pre'golsa had inadvertently secured a deadly new reputation for his fleet as expert naval tacticians to be avoided in void combat at all costs.

Torchbearer fleets built around a core of Adeptus Mechanicus vessels typically include alpha-numeric sigils alongside more prosaic elements, while those captained by especially zealous commanders may be named for specific miracles, saintly heroes or holy worlds.

Torchbearer Relics

• Stalker Helm - Elements of this artificer-wrought sensor-net are thought to date back to the Dark Age of Technology. Data stacks deep below Mars' surface record that it has been fitted into the helmets or wired into the face masks of the greatest hunters of every age. Within its node-lattice, sigil-etched lens arrays and auto-blessed ocular scanners allow the wearer to analyse their prey's every movement, detect their frailties and predict the fatal misstep that seals their doom with more accurate fire from the wielder's ranged weapon.
• Blade of Bonding - Fashioned by a dozen master artisans in reverent similitude of the legendary blade of the Emperor now wielded by Roboute Guilliman, this finely balanced power sword was designed to be taken by a Torchbearer fleet into the darkness. At the mission's end, should the fleet find the Space Marine Chapter they sought, this sword is to be gifted to their commander. It symbolises the Chapter's reforging, alloying advanced power field technology and nano-razor regeneration alongside traditional artifice that recalls the heroes of legend.
• Helix Pattern Narthecium - This surgical multi-tool is an enhanced version of the Narthecium commonly used by the Apothecaries of the Adeptus Astartes. Fitted with multi-spectral analysers, cocktails of bio-engineered nerve-stimms and flesh catalysts, as well as cortical augurs and fulcrite-toothed nanosaws to shear through the toughest armour, the bearer is able to drag even mortally wounded battle-brothers back from the brink of death.
• Orb of Cleansing - First gifted to the commander of the Torchbearers task force assigned to locate the Silver Phoenixes Chapter, this arcane sphere of unknown origin is able to push back malignant psychic energies. In the darkest regions of the Imperium Nihilus beyond the Cicatrix Maledictum, its pulsating waves of purity have been seen to cloud psykers' control of their powers and even burn away the minds of witch-spawn.

Sources

• White Dwarf (November 2019), "Dawn of the Era Indomitus," pp. 46-51
• White Dwarf 466 (July 2021), ""A Light in the Darkness," and "Torchbearers Crusade Force," pp. 52-55, 65