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Obsidian Glaives

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Obsidian Glaives
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Founding Chapter: Ultramarines[3]
Founding: Second Founding[3]
Chapter Master: Midnias[3]
Homeworld: Obstiria[3]
Fortress-Monastery: Penumbral Spike[3]
Colours: Black and bone[3]
Strength: Destroyed
Battle Cry We Shall Endure[3][4]

The Obsidian Glaives were a Space Marine Chapter[2] of Ultramarines descent.[3]

Overview

The Obsidian Glaives Homeworld of Obstiria is an irradiated world. The Obsidian Glaives are the world's sole inhabitants, as all attempts to settle the planet have failed. As such, the Chapter Master's title as Planetary Governor, which is symbolized by the Crown of Obstiria, worn under the Chapter Master's helmet, is hollow.[4]

The Fortress Monastery of the Obsidian Glaives, the Penumbral Spike, is surrounded by mountain ridges. The surest pass towards it is the Black Gulch, which formed a test for Aspirants. The Chapter recruits its Aspirants from criminal youths who have been sentenced to death. A Chaplain would visit the boy at his cell and test his commitment to his sin and the looming punishment. A penitent boy would be offered with a chance to extend his punishment by serving as one of the Emperor's Space Marines. One of the trials, held after the first steps of augmentation, was a journey to the Penumbral Spike, leading through the Black Gulch. An aspiring Obsidian Glaive had to reach the Fortress Monastery alive, braving the deadly radiation of the sun.[4]

While a strictly Codex-adherent Chapter, the Obsidian Glaives based their culture around punishment. Where other Chapters consider their service to the Emperor their duty, the Glaives see it as a form of punishment for their crimes and failures. They will take blame, often self-appointed, for perceived failures, and seek to offer penance for their shortcomings. Cases of self-flagellation have been recorded.[4]

The initiates of the Obsidian Glaives as a part of becoming the Space Marine goes through the so-called sleep-doctrination which tended to force out previous memories to be replaced with battle-lore and tracts of the Codex Astartes. It is ironic that even though everyone of the Obsidian Glaives didn't remember who he was before the re-building, everybody still believe that they were guilty without any doubt.[4]

To became the full Space Marine brothers the new-converted Scouts firstly thrown onto the radiation saturated surface of the Obstiria where they must survive by any means, even if it would lead to the death of their fellow pretender.[4]

The Obsidian Glaives' Fortress Monastery was home to a rich collection of relics and historic documentation. The Chapter is known to have gathered wargear of defeated enemies and stored it in the vaults below the Penumbral Spike. Among their greatest treasures, however, were the remains of their first Chapter Master, Fulminos, who survived entombed in a Dreadnought sarcophagus.[3]

Obstiria's radiation degrades the connections between the sarcophagus of a Dreadnought and its pilot. These connections cannot be replicated by the Chapter and the degradation slowly poisons the Dreadnought's mind, causing them to constantly flashback to when they were still able bodied Space Marines, and eventually kills them. Because of this each of the Obsidian Glaives' Dreadnoughts are equipped with life readings, that display the amount of time each interned Space Marine has before death claims them. In order to expand that time for as long as possible, the Chapter keeps most of the Dreadnoughts asleep in a shielded vault, that protects them from the radiation, deep beneath the Penumbral Spike. Due to their adherence to the Codex Astartes, the Obsidian Glaives leave one Dreadnought active for a short time to serve as an honour guard for the Fortress Monastery, before they are rotated with another Dreadnought within the vault.[3]

History

In 548.M41 the Chapter participated in the Helrak Incursion when piratical Eldar raiders used the Space Hulk Mote of Darkness to bring war into Imperium. Thanks to Captain Dynares of the First Company and the Land Raider Valour Maximal all of the xenos on board the space hulk were destroyed.[1]

In 987.M41 the Chapter's 7th Company was trapped in a chrono-loop by the Necron Cryptek Orikan the Diviner. the Cryptek sends warriors against them and observes the results with curiosity. For the Space Marines, it is a battle that rages on in a day that neither begins nor ends.[5]

The Chapter is said to have been destroyed in the Red Waaagh! by the Ork Warboss Grukk.[2]

See also

Sources