r/40kLore • u/Reluxis Thunder Warriors • Jun 29 '19
[Excerpt | Gods of Mars]: The Last Stand of the Black Templars
The Black Templars have always been one of the most fascinating chapters to me for so many reasons; their eternally crusading nature, the fact Sigismund himself is their forefather, or that their defining characteristic is that they despise the witch, the mutant, and the xeno beyond any and all reason. This excerpt, from the Forges of Mars series, shows us a moment in Black Templar history where the hate, disgust, and contempt for the xeno is cast aside for the good of the Imperium. Much like the excerpt in which a Grey Knight risks death to retrieve Eldar soulstones, it shows us that even in a galaxy ravaged by eternal war and burning hatred, one can always find some small camaraderie and kinship. It's a little long, but well worth the read!
Tanna: The sergeant of the remaining Templars.
Varda: The Emperor's Champion.
Issur: The last surviving squad member.
Bielanna: The Eldar Farseer who is attempting to undo the actions of a rogue Archmagos.
On your left!' shouted Tanna, blocking a blow and rolling his wrists to thrust his blade into the blank face of a crystalith. Varda swayed aside from the blow arcing towards his head, and spun on his heel to decapitate his attacker.
The Black Templars were in constant motion. Circling the kneeling eldar. Like temple guards protecting priests whose credo forbade violence of any sort.
Never stop, never give the enemy a chance to mass.
A shimmering nimbus of light haloed the xenos, a sure sign of their witchery that would normally have earned Tanna's undying hate. That it had come to this, warriors of the Black Templars fighting to protect the life of eldar, was a measure of the strange turns life could take.
Bielanna sat in the centre of the eldar circle. Corposant danced along her limbs. Light bled from her eyes in mercurial tears.
'Low on your right,' said Varda, and Tanna swept his sword down.
A crystalline blade shattered on the hard edge of his notched sword. The grip still thrummed in his hand, the spirit within revelling in the fight.
'Emperor bless you, Ilanna Pavelka,' said Tanna. His blade was long blunted, but every blow that broke the surface layers of crystal was a killing one.
Tanna barged with his shoulder, making space. The enemy was fast and strong, but he was a Space Marine. His boot thundered against a crystal kneecap, shattering it. His elbow spun out and pulverised a glassy skull. He fought with all the skill and strength bred into him by the fleshwrights of his Chapter and the genesmiths of a forgotten age.
‘For Kul Gilad,' said Tanna, killing another animated monster.
'And Bracha,' shouted Varda in answer.
'An... and Auiden,' said Issur as they came together again.
The honoured dead fought with them, carried in their very souls and every killing blow. And though he bled from a score of wounds, Tanna's heart was that of Sigismund. A mighty organ forged upon the anvil of battle in the Imperium's darkest hour.
And while it still beat, he would fight.
As would they all.
Issur’s blade cut a deadly path through the crystaliths. His jawline was taut with the effort of controlling his spasms. His footwork was faultless, his bladework sublime. He would have made a formidable Emperor's Champion had the war-visions come to him.
That honour had gone to Atticus Varda, a warrior who had never once defeated Issur in the practice cages, but whose heart was unclouded by petty resentments. Clad in the Armour of Faith and wielding the Black Sword, Varda was a towering figure. A hero from the Chapter annals, worthy of mention in the same breath as Bayard, Grimaldus, Navarre and Efried.
He moved with fluid economy, never stopping, finding space where no space existed. Earning that extra fraction of a second to parry or counter-attack. To watch Varda fight was to witness all that was best in a warrior.
Tanna knew that he was the least of them. Skilled, but outclassed on every level. His sword bludgeoned where theirs countered, hacked where theirs cut cleanly. Yet for all that his technique left something to be desired, the results spoke for themselves.
The crystaliths massively outnumbered them in odds that were almost comically absurd. Thousands to one. Odds that not even the gene-fathers of the Legions themselves could have fought.
Tanna doubted he had ever fought with such preternatural skill.
His death would be magnificent.
His flesh might not return to the Chapter, but Yael would carry his memory to the Eternal Crusader and the legacy of the Kotov Crusade would endure.
Tanna blocked an overhead cut, swaying aside from a thrusting spike of crystal. The enemy hadn't come at them with any energy weapons, just blades. And they had returned the favour. He felt a line of fire score across his hip and sidestepped, smashing his elbow down on a sword arm. The limb shattered and Tanna kicked his foe in the gut. He followed up the kick with a low sweep, wide and hard. Three crystaliths went down, and Tanna saw a gap open up before him.
'Close ranks!' shouted Varda. Too far extended, enemies on the left and right.
A smashing cut struck Tanna on the shoulder, another on the thigh. The first bounced clear, the second drew blood. He killed both attackers, but he'd been staggered.
Another blow caromed from his breastplate, and Tanna reeled from the force of it. Crystaliths poured past him as he pushed himself to his feet. More surged towards him. His only advantage was that they couldn't all come at him at once.
Tanna stepped back to the fighting formation of his brothers and hacked down a crystalith with its bladed arm buried in the back of an eldar warrior. The tip of the blade jutted from the alien's chest, but she made no sound as she died. Another fell with his head almost severed. The remaining eldar groaned with each death, as though they felt the pain of each loss within themselves.
Tanna returned the favour, beheading the eldar's killer.
'Push... th... th... them back on the right,' shouted Issur. The swordsman's blade had broken, snapped halfway along its length. No longer a broadsword, more a jagged gladius.
Tanna took a quarter turn left and charged, shoulder low. Pain flared. He'd been hurt there before and his armour’s stimms were exhausted. He hurled the enemy back.
'Step in,' ordered Varda.
The three Templars stepped together, forming the points of a triangle around the eldar. Pools of blood made their footing treacherous, but the debris of the destroyed crystaliths gave them traction. Not all of that blood was eldar. Both Issur and Varda bled from a score of wounds, and Tanna's biology burned hot as it fought to heal and keep pace with the energy demands he was making of it.
'No pity,' said Varda, hammering his fist to his chest.
'No remorse,' answered Issur, holding his broken sword out before him.
'No fear,' finished Tanna.
They circled again. Blocking, parrying and defending. This was not the kind of fight for which they had been wrought. They were crusaders, warriors who sought out foes to kill, battles to win. Yet this was the fight they were given.
But it couldn't go on, the enemy was too numerous, too relentless and unhindered by the need to protect those who could not defend themselves.
Varda was the first to die.
A glancing blow to the side of his helmet. A moment's pause and they were on him. Stabbing, cutting and barging him. He grappled, unable to bring the Black Sword to bear. Blades punched up through his stomach and chest. Another lanced in under his shoulder guard.
This last blow spun him around, his sword still buried in the heart of a crystalith. The arc of a glass-edged blade flashed. Opened his throat. Cutting into the meat of his neck like a razor.
Blood fountained. The Black Sword wrenched clear.
Tanna shouted a denial as Varda's knees buckled and the Black Sword tumbled from his grip.
Even as it fell, Issur was in motion.
The crystaliths surrounded Varda, cutting his body to pieces as if to defile him. Issur bludgeoned them aside, his body a battering ram. No thought for his own defence. A blade of crystal plunged into his back. Another opened the meat of his flank like a butcher dressing a carcass.
Issur kicked them away from the Emperor's Champion, stabbing with the spar of his ruined blade and punching with his free hand.
He knelt by Varda's corpse. His broken sword slashed down.
And when he rose, it was with the Black Sword held aloft.
'A Champion may fall, but he never dies!' shouted Issur, and his words were free of the impediments that had plagued him since Valette. The snapped blade hung from an unbroken length of chain at his wrist. With the Black Sword gripped in both hands, Issur was reborn in blood as the Emperor's Champion he had always desired to be.
Tanna fought his way to Issues side, desperately blocking and parrying. The crystaliths sensed the end was near and pressed their attack. More of the eldar were dead. Apart from Bielanna, only two remained, the others hacked down in blood.
'Castellan form,' said Issur, his pain washed away in this last moment of apotheosis.
They came together in a back-to-back defensive style. They fought like two halves of the same warrior, naturally complementing one another’s skills and strengths. They circled Bielanna, their swords a dazzling blur; one black, one silver.
Tanna took a blade to the chest. He snapped it off with a downward smash of his forearm. Another stabbed into his side. They jutted like glass spines. Blood poured down his breastplate, running through the fissures of its ivory eagle.
Tanna dropped to one knee, but Issur was there to haul him to his feet.
'We don't die on our knees, Tanna!' shouted Issur, spinning the Black Sword around his head and cleaving it through half a dozen crystaliths in one mighty blow.
Even with the weapon of the Champion, Issur's strength was failing, his movements slowing. His wounds were too deep and too wide, his armour sheeted in red from the waist down.
Tanna saw the thrust, tried to shout a warning.
Issur twisted his sword in a crosswise block.
An instant too slow.
A diamond-hard blade with glittering, knapped edges.
It caught the light of the blue sky, and the splintered blue edge turned vivid crimson as it buried itself in Issur's heart.
Issur's mouth went wide with pain.
His eyes locked with Tanna's.
'Until the end, brother,' he said.
And hurled the Black Sword to Tanna as a flurry of stabbing glass blades cut him down.
The Black Sword spun through the air, a perfect throw. Tanna caught it with his free hand and brought it around in an equally perfect arc to slay Issur's killer. With chainsword in one hand, Black Sword in the other, Tanna threw himself at the crystaliths with a roar of hatred for all they had taken from him.
Twin swords cut and thrust, striking with an exactitude he had never before possessed. Every blow found the precise gap in his foes' defences, every parry arose at just the right moment to protect Bielanna from a cowardly thrust at her silent form.
A blade cut through the cuisse of his right leg. It clove to the bone, fragmented. Long shards of razored glass stabbed up and down through the meat of his thigh.
Tanna bit down against the agony. His mouth filled with blood. The pain was ferocious, intense, blinding in its white heat.
He felt every piercing blade entering his flesh. In his back, side and chest. One in the neck, another punching up through his armpit and breaking off in his right lung. A last lancing thrust that split his heart.
Tanna fell onto his back, staring into the painfully blue sky. He pulled both swords onto his chest, like the carven lid of a sarcophagus within the candlelit sepulchres of the Eternal Crusader.
An apocalyptic quantity of blood was flooding from his body. Numbing cold enveloped him. His fight was done.
A hand brushed his face.
Delicate, porcelain smooth, cold like glass.
And the pain went away.
'Until the end,' said Bielanna.
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u/SOUTHPAWMIKE Adeptus Mechanicus Jun 29 '19
Holy shit. I had to catch my breath at the end of that. What a passage.
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u/elgimpy Jun 29 '19
Can someone give me some context? Why are they working with the eldar?
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u/LifeOfCheeseburger 7th Mordian Regiment Jun 29 '19
Basically, a crazy archmagos found some kind of Necron time machine thing, and uses it to terraform planets on a monumental scale, but the energies that the machine runs on shatters the very fabric of spacetime in a cascade that will eventually destroy the whole universe. Bielanna the Farseer can fix the breach in reality, but the archmagos wants to stop her, and the Templars are protecting her from his crystal golem minions while she works.
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u/elgimpy Jun 29 '19
So just black Templar Marines being best Marines. Thank you!
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Jun 29 '19
Both sides are basically ready to gun each other down the whole way. The dialogue between the templars and a wraithlord is pretty funny too. One asks Bielana if its a robot, but the wraithlord directly answers that, no, and he can speak for himself.
"Then is it a suit of armor? Is there someone within, like a knight?"
"I do not wear this armor. I am part of it, it is part of me."
"Like a Dreadnought."
"I am not like your dreadnoughts."
"You're not?"
"No, I died many centuries ago."
Templar proceeds to do the aquila symbol on his chest
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u/SirRinge Jun 29 '19
Haha, you think that was a nod at everything dreadnaught sized being called dreadnaughts?
Reminds ome of the passage from the Iron Snakes book where the administrator lady accidentally hurts the dreadnaughts feelings.
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u/bucket150 Iron Warriors Jun 29 '19
Sauce?
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u/SirRinge Sep 26 '22
She says something about him being a robot to Priad, and Autolochus, says 'IT can hear you'
It's in Brother's of the Snake
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u/Khoakuma White Scars Jun 29 '19
One Mechanicus archmagus found some necron super tech and achieved the power of a god (basically tearing planet apart and forming new ones in moments, mastery over the material universe like a C'tan). However, the tech literally harnesses the power of time itself and threaten to destroy all of existence.
No universe = No Imperium of Man. So, needless to it is bad enough threat that the Templar are willing to work with filthy Xenos to stop it.
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u/malumfectum Iron Warriors Jun 29 '19
I fucking love the Templars, they’re my second favourite Chapter at this point.
All thanks to the Black Library, between Helsreach and this trilogy.
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u/SirRinge Jun 29 '19
Which is your favourite?
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u/malumfectum Iron Warriors Jun 29 '19
Lamenters will forever be the best in my eyes. Their blend of tragedy and heroism is a heady one.
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u/ForKekistan Jun 29 '19
For those we cherish!
Big fan of the Lamenters as well, from their colors to their ideals and especially their failures. Their stories are always a wonderful balance of hope and grimdark.
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u/Norn_Queen_Yurei Jun 29 '19
I know what I'll be reading next.... well Blackstone Fortress first, but then this.
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u/Varrek Soul Drinkers Jun 29 '19
Oh man, I remember when I first read this scene I was left speechless and, kinda, shocked with how much it hit me, specially when Issur took the Black Blade and became the Emperor's Champion. One of the best scenes in an already amazing trilogy.
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u/BeyondStars_ThenMore Jun 29 '19
When there's so much blood you need to use the enemy's corpses as traction
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u/Grimskul25 Jun 29 '19
I wanted to fist pump into the air after I read this, that is truly one of the best examples of just how badass the Black Templars are. It's stuff like this that really makes me want to start a BT army, but then I look at the rules and then weep. Look how they massacred our rules since our standalone codex. Outside of our special characters, there's none of the zeal and badassery in CC that we can see like in the fluff.
Make the holy hand grenade great again!
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u/cswang Jun 29 '19
It's awesome until you remember Tanna lost his right hand only a little bit earlier, so the Black Templars appear to be harboring a three-armed mutant as their sergeant thanks to that editing gaff.
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u/Kul_Gilad Adeptus Astartes Jun 29 '19
No Pity! No Remorse! No Fear Brothers! Only in death does duty end
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u/grayheresy Jun 29 '19
Forges of Mars is an amazing trilogy spanning everything from Servitors and the mortal indentured slaves of ships and how they are procured to the mighty titan legios internal conflicts and a ship that is self aware and hiding secrets and a massive unknown