Variant Deathwatch Chapter badge worn in the Era Indomitus.
The Ultimaris Decree was a proclamation made by Primarch Roboute Guilliman after his resurrection in the Era Indomitus that provided Primaris Space Marine reinforcements for the struggling Deathwatch Chapter.
History[]
Resurrected and returned to the Imperium in its hour of greatest need during the Ultramar Campaign of the 13th Black Crusade, Primarch Roboute Guilliman strove to reunite his father's shattered realm after the start of the Era Indomitus. As the lord commander of the Imperium and Imperial Regent, he presided over the Ultima Founding of the Adeptus Astartes, wherein the long-slumbering Primaris Space Marines were awoken by the primarch's ally and their creator Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl and sent to join the war against Chaos.
As part of this grand mobilisation, Guilliman seconded entire Chapters' worth of Primaris battle-brothers and deployed them -- along with all their supporting materiel -- to reinforce the hard-pressed Deathwatch as so-called "Fortis Kill-teams" and pull them back from the brink of annihilation. Other types of Primaris kill-teams were soon established as the watch masters of the Deathwatch began to find new ways to use their improved transhuman warriors.
When Guilliman first learned of the existence of the Deathwatch after his awakening, he realised two things: the necessity for the Chapter's existence and the wisdom of its creation in the 32nd Millennium, and how thinly stretched its resources were. In some places, the Great Rift had cut watch fortresses off from any support. In others, furious Warp storms drove desperate xenos migrations before them, leaving the Deathwatch embattled against waves of displaced enemies that had nothing left to lose. Foreseeing that Humanity's shield against the alien would soon be sundered without aid, he issued the Ultimaris Decree, so that every newly-founded Primaris Marine-only Space Marine Chapter created during the Ultima Founding would be bound to provide Primaris Marines for the Deathwatch in perpetuity.
The Ultimaris Decree also directly reinforced many watch fortresses across the Imperium with Primaris Marines. In total, thousands of the new generation of Space Marines were distributed to the Chapter's watch masters, nearly all of whom accepted the new Space Marines without question, so dire were their circumstances in the Era Indomitus. Soon enough the Primaris Marines' might was proven to their Firstborn brethren, and put to good use.
There had long been no single name for the agreement by which Space Marine Chapters pledged their warriors to the Deathwatch, and few possessed identical terms. To the Ultramarines, it is the "Accord Eternus," while the White Scars fulfill what they call the "Kardunn Pact" -- named for the site where the bargain was struck in blood. The Knights of Abhorrence maintain their secret "57th Protocol," while most Ultima Founding Primaris Chapters had their Deathwatch tithe established through the holocryptic sections of the Ultrimaris Decree.
However, some Primaris Chapters have since annulled those sections of the decree from applying to them and enacted their own individual alliances with the Deathwatch like many of the Firstborn Chapters.
Sources[]
- Codex Adeptus Astartes - Deathwatch (8th Edition), pp. 6, 26
- Codex Supplement: Deathwatch (9th Edition), pg. 10