Lemartes

Lemartes bears one of the loneliest duties in the Blood Angels, for he is the Chaplain set over the Death Company, the warden and shepherd of those brothers whom the Black Rage has claimed. To lead the lost he must walk among them as one of their own, and indeed the curse burns within Lemartes himself, for he too has fallen to the Flaw. What sets him apart is that his will proved stronger than the madness.

Where the Black Rage strips other warriors of all reason, Lemartes has wrestled it into a kind of leash, remaining lucid enough to command even as the fury rages behind his eyes. He is counted among the mere handful of Blood Angels ever to contain the curse rather than be consumed by it, a distinction he shares with the Lord of Death himself. This terrible balance makes him the perfect guardian for the doomed, close enough to their affliction to lead them, master enough of it to keep his purpose.

In battle Lemartes and his charges are a sight to freeze the blood, a knot of black-armoured berserkers driven to feats of slaughter that outshine the deeds of legend, their Chaplain's crozius rising and falling at their head. He channels their agony into a single devastating charge, giving shape and direction to a fury that would otherwise spend itself uselessly, so that the lost might die achieving something worthy of remembrance.

When the fighting ends, Lemartes is returned to a stasis-sleep, laid to rest until the Chapter has need of him once more. There he slumbers through the long weeks and months, his rage suspended, until the horns of war call again and he is woken to gather a new Death Company and lead them, as he always must, toward their glorious and final end. In this cycle of waking and slumber he has outlasted countless companies of the doomed, a grim and enduring constant of the Chapter's most sorrowful duty.