Marius Amalrich

Marius Amalrich was a Marshal of the Black Templars whose service spanned some of the most cataclysmic events of the age, from the death of Cadia to the return of a primarch. He led his crusade with the zeal and fury for which his Chapter is rightly famed, and his story bridges the darkest hour of the Thirteenth Black Crusade and the dawning hope that followed it.

When Abaddon the Despoiler flung his forces against Cadia in the final days of the Thirteenth Black Crusade, Amalrich brought his crusade to the doomed world's defence, hurling his warriors into the maelstrom as the fortress-planet burned. Though Cadia fell and the galaxy was split asunder by the birth of the Great Rift, the Black Templars under his command fought on with undimmed defiance, refusing to yield even as the old certainties of the Imperium crumbled around them.

In the desperate times that followed, Amalrich joined his strength to the Celestinian Crusade, the holy war that culminated in the resurrection of Roboute Guilliman upon the world of Macragge. When a fresh Black Templars crusade arrived to bolster the reborn primarch's cause, Amalrich's deeds were recognised by the Chaplains of his Chapter, and he was raised to the highest honour a Black Templar can know: he was named the Emperor's Champion, chosen vessel of the Master of Mankind's wrath.

So elevated, Amalrich took his place in the vanguard of the Terran Crusade, the perilous voyage by which Guilliman fought his way across a hostile galaxy to stand once more before the Golden Throne. In the end the Marshal gave his life so that the crusade might reach its goal and the primarch return to Holy Terra, his sacrifice a final act of devotion in a life defined by unbreakable faith. In the annals of the Black Templars he is remembered as a warrior who fell that hope might live.