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The battlebarge Lux Fidelis bears her host through the void, carrying out their holy crusade from one end of the galaxy to the other. Her hull bristles with the firepower to level cities and set skies ablaze, her sensors look unfeelingly into the endless voids, her massive cogiator banks think the strange slow thoughts of the machine-spirits. Her holds bear holy relics from across the galaxy, and mementos of a long and bloodied history, spoils of countless wars against every foe mankind can name. She has darkened thousands of skies, from the Eastern Fringe to the Eye of Terror, leaving smoldering ruin in her wake. Her guns rain down destruction on the worlds beneath as the wrath of an angry god, and the Black Templars who make her their home descend as angels of death upon fiery wings.
Wheresoever they go, these knights bring the Emperor's light. Their crusades take them to war on uncharted worlds beyond the frontiers of Imperial space, scouring the xeno in their lairs and bringing the Creed to apostate worlds that have never known the Emperor's service. Their arrival has been the salvation of entire worlds beset by foes, the doom of civilizations that had thought to stand against the master of mankind. They have made war alone and they have fought beside the great heroes and commanders of the Imperium. Such victories they have had in their time, and such defeats.
Lux Fidelis and her sister-ships have traveled the stars for thousands of years, bringing blood and fire and steel wherever they go. They have known loss but not fear, they have known defeat but never shame. Without hesitation, they throw themselves unceasingly against the worst horrors the galaxy has to offer, without surcease or repose. Until the Imperium of Man knows peace, neither shall they.
Against the great darkness of the universe, they are a small light. But see them, and see that they shine.

I offer you this, and this only: a life of unending toil and hardship, with neither safety nor peace. I offer life and death at my command, and a place for your children's children as serfs of the crusade.
I offer this to any with love for the Emperor, with strength of heart and strength of arms. I offer this because I have a need. Soldiers I have, workers I lack, for men must bear the light of faith to the deepest of darkness, that it may be burned to lamentations and dust.
--Marshall Utarion, preparing his departure from Holy Terra

The origin of Lux Fidelis and the line of her commanders trace themselves back to the Reign of Blood and the second siege of the Imperial Palace. While Asartes fought the armies of Vandire throughout Terra's hallowed cities, the skies above were torn with the clash of the space-fleets. Among the litany of ships lost was one of the Templars' battlebarges, reduced to a burned-out hulk in Terra's orbit by the massed firepower of Terra's defenses. Her compliment of warriors, however, had been deployed to the planet's surface before her destruction, and the loss of their vessel only spurred them on to further acts of valor and brutality. Under the command of Castellan Utarion they waged war through the confines of the hive cities, holding out for three days until they could be relieved by a regiment of Skitarii tech-guard. Even so, the Templars took no more time than was needed to rearm and resupply before joining the front lines of the Confederation of Lights, standing beside Sebastian Thor himself as the cradle of mankind tore itself apart, through months of brutal combat and desperate engagements. When the outer walls of the Emperor's Palace fell, Utarion was among the first to lead the besieging forces into the thickest of the fighting. In the hallowed halls of the Imperial Palace itself, Utarion finally fell to a squadron of the Emperor's Brides, flamer and melta cooking his armor into a white-hot shell around his body. Only hours later the fighting ended, the Reign of Blood closed by a true vision and a wrathful hand, and High Lord Goge Vandire was given the Emperor's judgment by Alicia Dominica.

When the peace became known, both sides were once again leal subjects of the Imperium, and both sides worked together to tend the dead and wounded. Thus it was the Sisters of Battle who tended to the ruined form of the fallen Castellan, surrounded by the corpses of their sisters. It was to their great surprise to find signs of life, and he was taken to be tended by the trained medicae of the Imperial Palace, under the supervision of Templar apothecaries. He faded in and out of consciousness, muttering of a woman, bearing the Chapter's colors, bathed in light. All agreed that it was miraculous that he had lived so long, and fight as he may, he was not expected to live another night.

It was as he lay dying that Alicia Dominica, the leader of the Brides of the Emperor, came to visit a man who had hours ago been among her most implacable of foes. She came to give her regrets, and her apologies, for her part in bringing him to such a state. She had been Vandire's personal bodyguard, and commander of his defenses, until the mysterious Adeptus Custodes had brought her before the undying Emperor himself to see the truth of the High Lord's bloody rule. Her intent had been to ask the dying man's absolution, and to present him a gift, a power sword given to her order from the foundries of Mars. Instead, the Templar hero gained strength and vigor from her visit that could only be called miraculous. Though he would need extensive augmetic and reparative surgeries, he would go on to fight again.

While the Lord Castellan made his recovery, so too did the ship that had born him. In gratitude for the Asartes' assistance, the masters of the Adeptus Mechanus had captured the hulk of the Templar ship, and went to work rebuilding the battlebarge from the remains of her ruined frame in the vast shipyards of Mars. When High Marshal Sigenandus left to carry on the Wars of Apostasy, Utarion was left with a small contingent to supervise the battlebarge's construction and the construction of a chapter keep on Terra's sacred soil. So it was that he saw the rise of Sebastian Thor to Ecclisiarch, and the returned Brides of the Emperor take their place as the Ministorium's fighting force. So it was that he was able to renew his vows to the Emperor and to Mankind at the foot of the very Golden Throne. And so it was that the newly constructed battlebarge was christened Lux Fidelis, and Utarion raised to Marshall and set at her helm. He staffed her with men and woman of Terra, native and pilgrim alike, and set out on crusade to meet the enemies of mankind wherever they should dare to show their faces. He fought alongside Dominica and her Order of the Ebon Chalice many times and more, reforging the broken Imperium through fire and blood. He and those sworn into his Sword Brethren were known as the Chalice Brotherhood, in honor of the blessed saint, and the terrible knowledge imparted by the Master of Mankind.

All this has passed through history into legend, but the Chalice Brotherhood fights on through the darkening days of the 41st Millennium, their legacies seared into the histories of thousands of disparate worlds in short, brutal courses of war and flame. So does their dear ship carry them to the twilight of the millennium, to seek glory or ruin against the full might of Abbadon's Black Crusade.

Work in progress as I go about this. Still to come--more recent history and personages.

-Arturius
At the Time of Ending, Lux Fidelis is lead by Marshll Arturius, as she has been for centuries. He has traveled the breadth and width of the galaxy, and his scarred and ancient form is composed nearly as much of augmetic replacement as he is of flesh and blood. Seven Imperial worlds revere him as a saint, his age-old heroics having long since passed into legend. He is a man of few words and little mirth, showing little of his passions in his outward expressions. He could command his followers into the jaws of death with a word, and none would so much as hesitate or doubt.
No one can say for how long Arturius has commanded the Lux Fidelis; with a life spent plying the void and the imaeterium, his engagements are scattered across time and space by the mercurial nature of the Warp travel. At least once, Arturius and his vessel seem to have disappeared from Imperial records for nearly a century before appearing in support of Imperial forces over Nicieza IX in 719M41. A few years later, Lux Fidelis is reported in action in both the Tempestus and Obscuras segmentia over the same time frame. All that can be certain is that, wherever his crusades lead him, he will show his foes the fury of the Emperor.
However long it has been, Arturius is clearly ancient. The flesh that is left has aged like old wood, but he retains the strength and vigor of a man in his prime. His one remaining eye is still clear and piercing, and shows the full force of his quiet intensity that belies the quiet dignity he generally puts forward. When the crusade goes to war, however, the full forces of his rages are let loose on the battlefield, and whenever possible, he leads from the front, in the thickest of the fighting, bringing death to his enemies by his own hand.

-Castellan Lunzel d'Ore: The Golden Child, first sword of the Chalice Brotherhood
Lunzel was born on the shrine world of Eglise, raised in the Scholia Progenium as the son of unknown officials, raised by ecclesiastical tutors and Sororitas overseers. At the age of six, he saw Storm Trooper graduates visiting their old programs, and then and there determined to join the Storm Troopers. He spent every waking moment studying military history, running through exercise, and drilling his classmates in small unit tactics. This lasted until the first visit from an alumnus in the Commissariat, at the age of ten, wherein his passion was dedicated to becoming an Imperial Commissar. He dedicated himself then to the litanies of the Emperor, the tactica Munitorium, and mock-executing the younger children for heresy and cowardice. Then at thirteen, Asartes of the Black Templars came to visit the shrine world, and the boy was awestruck. He determined there and then he would become a Space Marine. That very day, he walked through the black gate and away from everything he had known.
Less than two full centuries later, Lunzel d'Ore has become the most respected and successful members of Arturius' sword brethren. He has shown himself to be a natural leader, and is often given the responsibility of leading fighting companies under Arturius' authority. Depending on the circumstances, this may give him the duty of leading a strike force in another battlefront, command over the fleet while Arturius is on-world, or leading a detachment of the Templar ships on missions ranging across the galaxy.
Where Arturius is old and weathered, Lunzel is young and beautiful, with golden hair and gilted armor. He smiles easily and often, even in the middle of a raging combat, and has a gift for winning friends and loyalty. If Arturius could lead his men into the jaws of death with a word, Lunzel could take his brothers into the Eye of Terror with a smile.

-Canonness Angelique d'Bucher of the Ebon Chalice, the Firemaid

-Dominus, Master of Sanctity

-Reclusiarch Kreutzer

Some notable engagements of the Lux Fidelis:
744M41: In the Damocles Gulf Crusade, Lux Fidelis was largely engaged in fleet support, finding little opposition in the Tau forces unless outnumbered. The Tau colony world Qa'vor, a major industrial base and Air Caste population center. The Templar fleet struck unexpectedly, and the battle barge destroyed three orbital cities before beginning her bombardment of the planet's surface. The embittered survivors referred to Arturius and his vessel as 'destroyer of cities' during and after his ground campaign, a name he wears proudly.
874M41: During the Crusade of Wrath, Lux Fidelis fights its way through the Maelstrom, joining forces with Lugft Huron and his Astral Claws over a world dubbed “Libri Nequam,” from where Dark Apostle Bligx of the Word Bearers had sent out raids and preached the words of his dark gods. The combined loyalist forces laid siege to his librarium-fortress, clearing the way with orbital bombardment and dropping into the center of the keep. Lught Huron and Arturius stood together to confront the traitor marine, and deliver the Emperor's long-deferred justice in person. The fortress was taken, and the marines were able to secure the fortress to ensure none of the heretical texts would escape their purge.

More work on characters and events to come. I've been busy, but I try to get some of this done on the side.

Comments, criticisms, suggestions, all welcome.

Someone say something. The suspense is driving me nuts.

It's good.
I presume they're an IF successor...
The ship sound like a barrel of laughs as well.