Lamenters

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Lamenters
 LamentersChapterIconV2.png
LamentersPrimaris.jpg LamentersMarineGW.jpg
Founding Chapter: Blood Angels[3]
Founding: M36 (Cursed) 21st Founding[5a]
Chapter Master: Malakim Phoros[19g]
Homeworld: Fleet-Based[5a]
Fortress-Monastery: Battle Barge Mater Lachrymarum (Former)[5a]
Colours: Yellow
with Black
and White
checks. Company affiliation shown by knee colour.[11][25]
Strength: Estimated 311 marines post Badab War.[5a] Recently bolstered by Primaris.[19c]
Battle Cry Unknown. Possibly “From Blood Born; to Blood Evermore Consigned.”[5a]

The Lamenters are a Space Marine Chapter of Blood Angels descent. Long dogged by misfortune, they sided with the rebel forces during the Badab War, but were granted the Emperor's forgiveness at the conclusion of that conflict subject to the undertaking of a penitent crusade. That crusade eventually brought the Lamenters directly into the path of Hive Fleet Kraken, bringing the chapter to the brink of extinction.[4]

History

The Lamenters are a Successor Chapter of the Blood Angels, yet they have avoided the fate of others implanted with the gene-seed of Sanguinius. While they managed to control the flaws of their gene-stock, they still succumb to it in extreme circumstances.[7] Even so, at the close of the Dark Millennium stories have begun to circulate that the Black Rage has returned tenfold after their flawed attempts to cleanse it from their gene-seed.[8]

For much of their history the Lamenters have a record of effective and well-intentioned service to the Imperium, yet they have been subject to extraordinary levels of misfortune. Their ill-luck has seen them fighting in more desperate defences and last stands than any other chapter of its age, and they accept it with symbols of grief and lamentation. The Emperor's Tarot predicts that their misfortune will only get worse.[7]

Founding

A product of the so-called 'Cursed Founding', the Lamenters were long considered a successful result of whatever mysterious methods were used in the creation process of this Founding that so damned a number of their brethren chapters. Despite showing no signs of mutation or incipient madness, the noble Lamenters still found themselves shunned by a great number of the existing Astartes Chapters due to their association with the Cursed Founding. By the early years of M37 the majority of the surviving Cursed Founding Chapters were embroiled in various disputes concerning their right to exist. As some of these became violent, the seemingly pure Lamenters decided to quietly relocate to the western fringes of the galaxy. A fleet-based chapter, they elected to go on crusade against the enemies of the Imperium, an endeavour that would take up much of the next millennium and a half.[5a]

Their self-imposed crusade was curtailed when the Chapter was once again relocated en masse, this time on the order of the High Lords of Terra. The Lamenters - along with a number of other fleet-based chapters - were tasked with repelling Chaos incursions from the Eye of Terror. During one such defence against the Black Crusades the Lamenters' status as a Cursed Founding Chapter worked against them once more, when the Mortifactors Chapter refused to associate with them and abandoned the Lamenters during the defence of Corillia from the Black Legion. The Lamenters elected to remain and defend the populated Imperial world despite this change in situation, and suffered heavy casualties as a result. By the time a relief force made up of elements from the Ultramarines and White Scars made it to the planet to rescue them, barely 200 battle-brothers of the Lamenters were left. In an early demonstration of the kind of serious misfortune that would come to plague the Lamenters, the survivors of this campaign were immediately caught in a warp-storm and vanished, with the entire Chapter swiftly being declared lost in the warp and presumed destroyed.[5a]

Recent Years

Having returned from the warp and built up their strength, the Lamenters returned to crusade duties, this time around the galactic core, before once again being reassigned by the High Lords in mid-M41. Along with the Astral Claws, Mantis Warriors, and Charnel Guard, the Lamenters were transferred to the Maelstrom Zone as the Maelstrom Warders, an Astartes brotherhood formed to defend local Imperial space against threats emanating from the Maelstrom. Close ties were formed between these Chapters (although the Charnel Guard was withdrawn from the sector shortly after), particularly between the Astral Claws under Lugft Huron and the Lamenters. It has been theorised that the demonstrations of friendship and bonds of brotherhood undertaken and shown by the Astral Claws to the Lamenters, things not familiar to the oft-spurned Cursed Founding chapter, may have had a significant impact on the Chapter's subsequent behaviour.[5a]

Early in the last century of M41, Lugft Huron - the Tyrant of Badab - instigated the Badab War, drawing the Lamenters and Mantis Warriors with him into armed conflict with the broader Imperium. Somewhat unwilling combatants - the Lamenters refused to compromise the honour-bonds forged with the Marines Errant during the Corinth Crusade by firing at them, instead using manoeuvres and numbers to drive them off - the Lamenters were eventually removed from the war by the actions of the loyalist Minotaurs Chapter, who managed to locate the Lamenters' fortress-monastery Mater Lachrymarum, baiting the entire Chapter to rush to its defence. In the brutal ambush and shipboard fighting that followed, the Lamenters were mauled, eventually being forced to surrender with only 300 battle-brothers remaining, most of whom were wounded.[5a]

It was found that the chapter's siding with the renegades was not from any notion of rebellion against the Imperium; rather they viewed the Imperial attack on the Astral Claws as a challenge to the sovereignty of the whole Adeptus Astartes. At the defeat of the rebellion, the Lamenters were granted the Emperor's forgiveness, subject to a hundred-year penitent crusade.[1]

Their crusade led them straight into the jaws of Hive Fleet Kraken. The Lamenters fought hopeless battles defending planets such as Malvolion and Devlan from the invading Tyranids, taking heavy losses in return. The last known census of the Chapter reported that only three companies of Lamenters remained.[4]

The Lamenters' believed success at avoidance of the Red Thirst and Black Rage recently prompted the Blood Angels to eagerly attempt to contact their brothers, to invite them to the conclave of Chapters descended from Sanguinius to discuss the fate of their ill-starred bloodline. Ships that ventured to find the Lamenters have returned empty-handed.[3]

Despite their brutal war against the Tyranids, the Lamenters have emerged victorious, and their Chapter Master claims that they have only grown stronger.[11]

K. X. I. Oforos is an Imperial Planetary Governor who ordered the imprisonment of his subjects that began behaving strangely in the wake of the Psychic Awakening. They were kept in the Gaol Station Desmotterius and, for reasons unknown, his guards could not bear to be around these prisoners, so they were only fed every three days. One day, however, Space Marines clad in yellow and bearing bleeding heart emblems arrived on Oforos' world. They then took possession of the strange prisoners, as well as anyone else imprisoned in Desmotterius, and the Governor gave no argument against the Space Marines for their release.[14]

During the Devastation of Baal, the Lamenters were called into the defence of the planet; however, the chapter declined the call as they were not of a mind or size to help, this being only a few years after their devastating losses at the hands of Hive Kraken and still within the 100-year of the start of their Penance Crusade.[13]

Some time in M42, the Lamenters deployed to the world of Raphaela alongside the White Panthers and Blood Angels to battle a Tyranid invasion.[19b] By this point, their penitent crusade had concluded and they had begun slowly rebuilding their numbers. Unlike their fellow Maelstrom Warders chapter, the Mantis Warriors – who had been denied Greyshield reinforcements when the Torchbearer Fleets arrived[20b] – the Lamenters’ numbers had been bolstered by an influx of Primaris.[19c] Unfortunately, these Primaris appear to carry the same ill-fortune as the rest of the chapter.[19] Although Lamenters recon elements were able to slay the Tyranid Prime [19d] guiding the swarm in the city of Pallas on Raphaela’s southern continent,[19a] it was only after the Chapter suffered significant casualties.

Timeline

Gene-Seed

The Lamenters are Blood Angels successors,[22a] but like all the chapters created during the 21st Founding it is believed that the Magos Biologis charged with overseeing the Founding manipulated their gene-seed.[21] It has been speculated that the inception of the Lamenters was an attempt to breed out the deficiencies known to mar the otherwise superior DNA of Sanguinius's strain of gene-seed. If this was the plan, then the experiment's primary objectives seem to have been achieved, in that the Lamenters did not suffer from the Black Rage[22a] (although some battle-brothers have been known to still succumb to it in extreme circumstances).[7] However, the Lamenters appear to have suffered from the most appalling twists of ill-fortune and tragedy, and are undoubtedly stricken with a morose curse; the aura of tragedy surrounding the Lamenters has been described as a palpable thing, projected in waves before them and forcing their enemies back.[22a]

The Lamenters gene-seed is not stable,[20a] leading to some of their numbers, known as Cursed Knights, to seemingly have escaped their chapter's curse and lack the mutations of their brethren - but this veneer of perfection often hides more extreme mutations. Other brothers, suffering the worst extremes of the chapter's curse, are known as Abominations.[22c] Those troops are not used by the Chapter when fighting alongside imperial allies.[22b]

At the end of M41, stories have begun to circulate that the Black Rage has returned tenfold, after the flawed attempts to cleanse it from their gene-seed.[8]

Organisation

The Lamenters were one of the Chapters created in the Twenty First Founding, afterwards becoming known as the Cursed Founding. Created from altered Blood Angel stock, some in the Imperium believe that the Lamenters' inception was an attempt to breed out the deficiencies known to mar that otherwise superior DNA. If true, the experiment seemed to have been successful in its objectives for some time, as the Lamenters were long thought not to suffer from the Black Rage associated with the Blood Angels-descendant Chapters. Of course, the Lamenters are thought cursed in another way, suffering the most appalling twists of ill-fortune and tragedy.[5a]

The lack of typical Blood Angels deficiencies in their gene-seed meant that the Lamenters were considered as a Codex Astartes-adherent Chapter for much of their history, although the nature of a fleet-based Chapter does require some flexibility in this regard, with isolated fleet elements being forced to adapt their tactics to the resources available to them. Additionally, the Lamenters fought without direct Imperial support for most of their history due to their reputation, instilling in them a sense of self-reliance uncommon in many Codex-style Chapters who are more comfortably meshed in the greater Imperial war machine. The regular outbreaks of misfortune that happened to the Chapter also resulted in a great deal of flexibility and pragmatism developing in the Lamenters' philosophy, as well as in their recruitment procedures.[5a]

In combat the Lamenters favour shock assault and close air-support tactics, and are used to performing drop-assaults and boarding actions. Lack of contact, both practical and philosophical with the other sons of Sanguinius resulted in only a small number of Blood Angel-style arms and equipment existing in the chapter and beyond this the Lamenters also own only a small number of Tactical Dreadnought suits. The Apothecary department does operate like that of the Blood Angels, with a type of Sanguinary Priest referred to as a Calix existing as a senior officer. This Calix Priesthood has become more integral to the Chapter in recent times as the curse of Sanguinius has manifested in the Chapter, which in turn has resulted in the creation of a Death Company.[5a]

Before the Badab War the Lamenters were known to possess an especially powerful fleet. This consisted of the Barque Mater Lachrymarum, which acted as the Chapters mobile command base and repair dock. In addition, they possessed two forge ships, two unusually powerful Battle Barges, six Strike Cruisers, three Vanguard Light Cruisers, and twenty-two escorts of various types. However, much of this fleet was lost or captured over the course of the war and struggles against Hive Fleet Kraken.[5a]

After the conclusion of their penitent crusade, the Lamenters were reinforced by an influx of Primaris from the Torchbearer Fleets. These elements – along with the organisational changes they brought with them, such as the addition of the roles of Intercessor and Eliminator – appear to have been integrated alongside their Firstborn brothers.[19c] However, elements of old organisational doctrine persist, such as jump troops being referred to as Assault Squads[19e] and the Calix retaining their place of prominence.[19f]

Chapter Elements

Notable Artefacts

  • The Banner of Tears — After the Lamenters' part in the Badab War, their chapter banner was a tattered remnant. When they were granted the Emperor's forgiveness, the banner was given to the Orders Pronatus of the Adepta Sororitas to be repaired and purified. Their handiwork was said to be inspired by the Emperor, and that they wept as they wove, contemplating the Emperor's great sacrifice for humanity. The banner became known as the Banner of Tears and was taken with the Lamenters on their penitent crusade.[2]
  • Catechist — A powerful Inferno Pistol wielded by the Chapter Master.[5b]
  • Glaive Encarmine — A two-handed, master crafted power weapon wielded by the Chapter Master.[5b]

Fleet

Aircraft

Chalice of Wrath — Thunderhawk[17]

Notable Lamenters

  • Malakim Phoros — Master of the Lamenters, Lord of Ruin, Watcher of the Deeps. His fate was uncertain after the conclusion of the Badab War,[5b] until early M42, when he was confirmed to still be alive and leading the Chapter.[19g]
  • Chyron — Interred in a Dreadnought, Chyron avoided the ultimate fate of the Lamenters due to being on assignment to the Deathwatch. Believes himself to be the last surviving member of the Chapter.[6]
  • Yanor — Sergeant[16]
  • Ramethos – An Eliminator who took part in the defense of Raphaela against the Tyranids. Despite continual misfortune slowly stripping him of resources, he was able to assassinate the Tyranid Prime guiding the swarm in the city of Pallas with his final Executioner round. Fate unknown.[19]
  • Dagan – An Intercessor who took part in the defense of Raphaela against the Tyranids. After being mortally wounded, he sacrificed himself creating a distraction so the Tyranid Prime guiding the swarm in the city of Pallas could be slain.[19]

Images

Miniatures

Trivia

TriviaScrollTrans.png

The following information is not to be regarded as officially sanctioned and/ or is not written from an in-universe point of view. A detailed explanation of the term "Trivia" as used in the Lexicanum can be found here.

  • One source gives the Chapter's name as Lamentors. This is presumably a spelling error.[15]
  • There has been a long standing misconception about the Chapter's battle cry being "For Those We Cherish, We Die In Glory!" however this appears to be fan made and has never been mentioned in any official sources. The closest to a battle cry in an official source is “From Blood Born; to Blood Evermore Consigned.” but this is unconfirmed to be their battle cry or simply a quote.[5a]
Original depiction of the Lamenters

See also

Sources

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