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Understanding that most of you do not have the time to read a wall of text, I will try to summarize my chapter's background quickly.

During the seige of artulia, the 4th company of the Dark hunters chapter of space marines were tasked with defending the hive of artulia from black legion warband. The 4th company was slowly pushed back to the inner levels of the hive, and prepared for a near suicidal counter attack. Black legion vindicators and hellbrutes battered the loyalist defenses night and day seeking a breaching point, finally, they found one. As the final shell crashed into the wall, a murderous roar accompanied the sound of falling debris, and out charged the remaining fourth company.

At first they managed to drive the enemy back a level, however the traitors quickly regrouped and counter attacked, crushing the opposition. As the survivors fell back, they heard an unearthly noise, as if a ghost was grieving the losses of the loyalists. A sword appeared in the hand of the captain, seemingly shimmering in and out of existence and moaning dreadfully, seemingly moving and cleaving without the captain being able to control his arm, not a bullet touched him as he clove through the traitor legion, the blade shrieking with every drop of heretic blood spilled on its blade, phasing out of existance before it hit, but phasing into existence inside of the enemy. finally, as the enemy retreated out of the hive, into the awaiting arms of the rest of the dark hunters chapter, purging the heretics in bolter fire.

As the last heretic died the blade faded away into nothing and left the planet, the chapter master, after he heard the tale, was convicted to ask the high lords of terra to make a new chapter in honor of the event. Many other appearances of this blade have been recorded, and has even been studied by the inquisition, the sword's design and detail matching the emperor's sword. Although some believe it to be a daemonic weapon, other chapters have witnessed it aain and again, adding their demand for a new chapter in honor of this anomaly. Incidentally, a chapter was needed to defend the eastern fringe, the high lords decided that the request would be filled. Thus was created the spectral blades.

The Spectral swords is an unusual chapter in its formation, while it has an extremely small amount of assault marines and vanguard veterans, it has up to 3 sternguard squads per company (The only exceptions to this is the 10th company which have none, and the 1st company which have 4) Most companies have 2 squads of devastators, and there are enough bikes to mount the full chapter. The chapter master (through extensive training of his psychic powers,) can send the sword to those in need or summon it to himself. The chapter has only one chaplain, they do have the separate rank of lieutenant, the commander of two to four squads.

Recently however, because they do not worship the emperor as a god and because of numerous accounts of them being abandoned by other imperial forces, 6 companies have seceded to the tau, destroying one company, the remaining 3 companies have lost their sector to their brothers and the tau. A crusade into this sector has been launched however noone has made landfall onto enemy planets yet.



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