The Sword Brethren are the greatest champions of a Black Templars fighting company, warriors whose skill and accumulated honour have carried them to the very summit of their brotherhood. In a Chapter that spurns the strictures of the Codex Astartes, they serve in the place a First Company of veterans would hold in a conventional Chapter, and they are gathered into the Household of the Marshal who commands the crusade. To stand among them is to have proven oneself across countless battlefields beneath countless alien suns.
Most Sword Brethren are veterans of long and bloody service, though the Chapter's traditions leave room for an Initiate who performs some deed of such surpassing valour that he is raised early to their ranks. However they come to the honour, once elevated they are set upon one of two paths. Some fight together in dedicated squads, a spearhead of master-crafted blades and heavy weapons hurled at the enemy's strongest point. Others take command of Crusader Squads, leading Initiates and Neophytes as a knight leads his retinue.
Armed with power weapons, master-crafted bolt weapons and combi-weapons, the Sword Brethren embody the crusading spirit of the Black Templars at its most lethal. They are the tip of the spear when a fortress must be stormed or an enemy champion cut down, and the sight of their number closing for the kill is, for many foes of the Imperium, the last thing they ever behold.
Order of battle
