Category:Lamenters

Category:Lamenters
Allegiance:	Secessionist
Founding Chapter	Blood Angels
Founding:	M36 (Cursed) 21st Founding
Chapter Master:	Malakim Phoros (possibly deceased)
Home World:	None
Fortress-Monastery:	The Mater Lachrymarum
Colours:	Yellow with black and white checks
Specialty:	Unknown
Strength:	Lost; est. 300 marines at time of last contact

The Lamenters are a Space Marine Chapter of Blood Angels descent. They sided with the rebel forces during the Badab War, but were granted the Emperor's forgiveness at the conclusion of that conflict.

Armies

Imperial Search....No Result

History

The Lamenters are a Successor Chapter of the Blood Angels and they have avoided the fate of those implanted with the gene-seed of Sanguinius. While they managed to maintain the flaw of the gene-stock under control, they succumb to it in extreme circumstances. Though 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.

For while they have a long history of effective and well-intentioned service to the Imperium, the Lamenters are quite simply burdened with what appears to be a galactic level of misfortune. Their misfortune has sent them on more desperate defences and last stands than any other chapter of it's age, and they accept it with symbols of grief and lamentation. The Emperor's Tarot points that its only going to get worse for them.

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.

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 have anything to do with them and abandoned them 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.

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 Lufgt 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 great impact on the chapter's subsequent behaviour.

For in the last century of M41 Lufgt Huron - the Tyrant of Badab - instigated the Badab War, drawing the Lamenters and Mantis Warriors with him into armed conflict with the wider 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, baiting the entire chapter to rush to its defence. In the brutal ambush and boarding fighting that followed, the Lamenters came off the worst, eventually being forced to surrender with only 300 battle brothers remaining, most of whom were wounded.

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.

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 3 companies of Lamenters remained.

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 and the current status of the Lamenters is unknown.