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Are the Librarians designated to a company and also members of the librarium?
Or ar they members of the Librarium exclusively and loaned out to companies on deployment?
If so where do they sit in the company chain of command?

The head librarian holds a rank within the company that is up there just below the Captain I believe. He is a CO and in the event of the Captain not being there will take overall command.

Individual Librarians or Codicers are attached to companies and are a permanent part of them, but get obviously some separate training to hone their psychic abilities.

That doesnt hold true for all Chapters though, for example the Silver Skulls chapter has a codicer in every squad, who uses the Emperors Tarot to advise the sarjeant(sic) and battle brothers. Its all about how much focus the individual chapter puts on psychic uses and powers.

I do not believe the Librarians are permanantly attached, nor are Chaplains IIRC, as a general rule.

They may be attached and simply be assigned to a particular companyn repeatedly simply by virtue of familiarity.

And as everything it may vary from chapter to chapter.

I would assume by the layout of the chapter organization charts in the codices that Librarians, Chaplains, etc are not attached to individual companies in most cases and are actually on loan as you put it.

As for where they fall in the chain of command that probably varies a lot depending on the chapter and the individuals involved. If a captain goes down or is unreachable a sergeant might take command over a codicier, but in another case someone like Tigurius or Mephiston might even have operational command over a captain.

Judging by C:SM, Librarians are part of the Librarius Department, and are not permanently attached to a company. A Chief Librarian holds a position as an honoured advisor in the Chapter, on par or slightly above the Captains.
On a side note, some Chaplains are permanently attached to the companies, some to the Reclusiam.

 Eetion wrote:
Are the Librarians designated to a company and also members of the librarium?
Or ar they members of the Librarium exclusively and loaned out to companies on deployment?

Generally the latter. They're not permanent part of companies like Chaplains and Apotecharies (in a Codex Chapter each company has its own Chaplain and Apotechary, but not its own Librarian.)

If so where do they sit in the company chain of command?

They probably don't, they're not line officers. They act as advisors, not as operational commanders.

Ok. That's what I suspected.

Although their place in the command chain does seem to be quite variable source to source.

When the chain of command gets fuzzy with Space Marines, they usually defer to whomever is the most respected. That is why the 1st company captain is considered to have command over any other company captains who might be present. That's probably the reasoning behind characters like Mephiston being depicted as having command over large Blood Angel forces in multiple sources.

EDIT: Wow, posts at the same time down to the second.

Just from observation it appears they are slightly below captains in the chain of command.

So in absence of a Captain a Librarian would take command.

I would also postulate that Chaplains also outrank Librarians of equal status. So a Chaplain would be above a Codicier but not an Epistolary.


So the order of importance would be Captain>Chaplain>Librarian. All assuming basic rank. The Master of Sanctity or Chief Librarian would rank above a Captain.

But the rank isn't necessarily mean they would take command. A Captain would probably still be in charge of the mission even if the Chief Librarian was tagging along.

The actual importance seems to be heavily dependent on the marine in question's personal charisma and reputation, Chapters seem to have their own politics going on, largely based on age and experience.

Orblivion wrote:
When the chain of command gets fuzzy with Space Marines, they usually defer to whomever is the most respected. That is why the 1st company captain is considered to have command over any other company captains who might be present. That's probably the reasoning behind characters like Mephiston being depicted as having command over large Blood Angel forces in multiple sources.

This is *basically* the gist of it, command structure wise. The Codexes state that should a Captain become a casualty in battle, command immediately passes to the highest-ranking Sergeant on the battlefield, which will usually be a Tactical Sergeant. However, there are some cases where Librarians, Chaplains and in some rarer cases Apothecaries and Techmarines have command of a force. This would usually be set up before battle and only in VERY rare circumstances would command pass to one of the side-organisations mid-battle. Mephiston's a good example already given, Tigurius, Njal and Ezekiel would be others too as they're all deeply respected in their respective Chapters.