A Deathwatch Apothecary performs a duty both sacred and delicate, for the warriors he tends are not his own Chapter's sons but battle-brothers loaned from across the Adeptus Astartes. When one of these knights falls in the war against the xenos, it is the Apothecary who kneels amid the carnage to reclaim the progenoid glands, harvesting the gene-seed that must one day be returned to the fallen warrior's parent Chapter so that his sacrifice might live on in a new generation. To lose such a legacy to alien claws or the corrosive spite of a xenos weapon would be a wound felt for centuries, and so the Apothecary guards it with grim and tireless vigilance. Yet his narthecium is not only for the dead. Amid the fighting he mends grievous wounds, drags the dying from harm's reach, and floods failing bodies with combat stimulants so that his brothers might strike one final blow. Trained in the varied biologies of a dozen Chapters and the myriad ways the alien kills, the Deathwatch Apothecary is the thin line between a battle-brother's death and his enduring honour.
Order of battle
