Dante - Notable Campaigns: Kallius Insurrection (Unknown Date.M40) - The Blood Angels, once again, tasted the risk of annihilation, losing nine out of every ten Space Marines, and almost the entire Chapter Council. Three full Companies -- including the young Brother-Captain Dante and his 8th Assault Company -- launched a devastating assault on Kallius' Landing and its dependency worlds, in support of their overwhelmed Successor brethren, the Angels Numinous (more commonly known, because of their symbol, as the "Blood Eagles"). World after world rose up in rebellion, insurrections spreading across the region and blanketing the sub-sector. Entire populations and ragtag fleets were led into battle by chanting Traitor Marines, clad in a panoply of colours, drawn from countless warbands. The Blood Angels found themselves tied up in protracted conflicts and trench wars, caught in a cobweb of a much wider heresy. As the solar weeks became months and the solar months became standard years, more and more of the Chapter arrived to punish, cleanse, and reclaim the rebellious worlds. The Rolls of Honour run black with the ink of millions of enemies slain, but the Blood Angels suffered casualties beyond their ability to sustain a fighting front. With dozens of Imperial Guard regiments arriving alongside several relief Chapters, the Blood Angels withdrew from the conflict with their heads held high. Yet the bitterest blow was yet to be struck: it came as the remnants of their fleet mustered above Kallius' Landing itself, when a Traitor armada broke from the Warp, hungry for the chance to wipe the Angels from the face of the Imperium. The battle that followed lasted for three solar days of void war and vicious boarding actions, during which Dante and his warriors were responsible for the taking and scuttling of seven capital-class vessels. When the Blood Angels at last stood victorious and took stock of their losses, fewer than two hundred Space Marines clad in red still drew breath. The last surviving Sanguinary Priests and Chaplains came together in communion, electing the last-living Captain as the next Chapter Master. Dante accepted the mantle of Lord of the Angelic Host, while still wearing his bloodstained, broken armour. It would be the last day he ever wore red, forever after to be clad in sacred gold. Not because he was the best or the brightest, but purely because he was the last man standing. Such an ascension should have heralded a grim rule, but fate would tell a different tale.Scouring of Ultramar (746.M41) - Recognising that the Tyranid invasion of Ultramar is but the first of many yet to occur, Lord Commander Dante sends three companies of Blood Angels to assist the Ultramarines in scouring the remaining beasts from the eastern sectors. Upon their return three standard years later, the three companies are much reduced in number, but wealthy in invaluable Tyranid-hunting doctrines that are swiftly passed on to the rest of the Chapter.The Assault on Baal (798.M41) - Three colossal space hulks drop out of Warp in the Baal system, signalling the arrival of WAAAGH! Big Skorcha. Dante orders the deployment of two companies to each of Baal's moons. The remaining companies are assigned to strike forces and ordered to board and destroy the Space Hulks. Two of the Space Hulks are destroyed with much of the WAAAGH! still on board. Before it too is destroyed, the final Space Hulk disgorges thousands of Orks, the Warlord Big Skorcha among them, onto the surface of Baal. Knowing the bulk of the Blood Angels forces to still be in orbit or on the two moons, Big Skorcha aims to breach and ransack the Chapter's fortress-monastery. However, the Blood Angels are not to be so easily outmanoeuvred, as the Chapter's Dreadnoughts led the defence of the fortress-monastery long enough for reinforcements to arrive from orbit.The Axonar Spirewar (830.M41) - Dante sends the 3rd and 4th Companies to quell rebellion on the Hive World of Axonar. Deeming the defences at the base of the hive cities to be too formidable for a direct assault, Captain Metraen orders a series of low-orbit Jump Pack insertions onto the upper spires of the hives. Trapped behind their own defences, the rebels are swiftly crushed.The Battle of Stonehaven (901.M41) - Lord Commander Dante leads the Stormraven drop assault that finally breaks WAAAGH! Bludcrumpa's solar decade-long siege on Forge World Ironhelm.Second War for Armageddon (941.M41) - WAAAGH! Ghazghkull descends upon the Hive World of Armageddon during the Second War for Armageddon. The Blood Angels are one of three Space Marine Chapters to respond. Such is Lord Commander Dante's reputation that Tu'Shan of the Salamanders and Marneus Calgar of the Ultramarines cede overall command to him. The tactical manoeuvrability of the Blood Angels proves to be crucial in the later stages of the campaign. The 3rd Company, under the command of the newly promoted Captain Erasmus Tycho, forms the heart of an armoured spearhead that cripples the chief Ork supply lines, leaving the WAAAGH!'s Mekboyz without the necessary gubbins and gears to keep the massive Skullhammas and Stompas fully operational. With its heavy guns thus neutralised, the WAAAGH! is finally broken before the towering walls of Tartarus Hive, where Dante and Tu'Shan famously fight side by side against Ghazghkull's bodyguard.Gehenna Campaign (955.M41) - Lord Commander Dante and the 3rd Company battle against the Necron Legions of the Silent King amidst the dusty wastes of Gehenna. For three solar weeks, neither side can seize the upper hand, with Dante's tactical brilliance stretched to its limits in countering the time-space manipulations of the Silent King. The stalemate is broken only when a Tyranid splinter fleet enters orbit, forcing the two armies to break off hostilities and fight the common foe. The impromptu alliance proves to be the Tyranids' undoing. Following the final battle at Devil's Crag, Dante and the Silent King go their separate ways, both forces now too battleworn to guarantee victory over the other, and, at least for the Blood Angels, the idea of turning on those they had so recently fought alongside, a rather distasteful one.The Blackfang Crusade (994.M41) - Judging that the Ork strongholds in the Blackfang System have defied the Imperium for too long, Dante mobilises the entire Chapter in a standard year-long campaign that not only drives the Orks from the twelve worlds of Blackfang, but also from two neighbouring star systems.Shield of Baal (998.M41) - News reaches Baal that the Cryptan Shield, intended to hold back the might of Hive Fleet Leviathan, has collapsed. Already Lord Commander Dante has put plans in motion to defend the Blood Angels' homeworld, strike forces fighting hit-and-run battles with Leviathan's smaller splinter-fleets throughout the Red Scar. Meanwhile, the defences of Baal and her moons have been bolstered like never before; indomitable fortresses rise above the sweltering sands, and the might of the Blood Angels' successor Chapters gathers from across the galaxy. Yet still it may not be enough, for the Tyranids are seemingly without number, and Hive Fleet Leviathan is learning the weaknesses of its prey at an exponential rate. Knowing that the consumption of the Cryptus System would open the floodgates for an unstoppable Tyranid invasion of Baal, Commander Dante takes action. At the head of a mighty strike force that comprises the 1st and 2nd Companies of the Blood Angels, Brother Corbulo, First Captain Arenos Karlaen, Chief Librarian Mephiston and the bulk of Gabriel Seth's Flesh Tearers, Dante strikes out for the Cryptus System. He will see the defences shored up if such a thing is still possible, and if not will do battle with the Cryptoid Tendril directly in a desperate bid for the salvation of Baal.Scions of Sanguinius Conclave (999.M41) - Teetering on the brink of oblivion following the events on the Shrine World of Sabien, the fate of the Blood Angels Chapter now required the magnanimity of their Successor Chapters. Lord Commander Dante summoned all of the Blood Angels' Successor Chapters for a conclave on Baal following the near-disastrous Chapter civil war that nearly tore the Blood Angels apart. Dante called for the support of the Blood Angels successors to help aid the Chapter in the protection of their common Primarch's homeworld and his remains from the attack of both the Tyranids and the Forces of Chaos. While Dante lead the discussion at the conclave, the Apothecaria was working on a radical new procedure to replenish the ranks of the Blood Angels in one swift stroke: the lost art of replicae. Caecus was the Chief Apothecary or Apothecae Majoris of the Blood Angels. Disturbed by the dwindling numbers of his Chapter, and dreading its extinction, he was involved in fruitless experiments, which Lord Commander Dante ordered stopped, to clone Space Marines, thus eliminating the need to go through the arduous process of the maturation and implantation of the gene-seed in an Aspirant. However, Caecus disobeyed the order and secretly continued the experiments, prodded by an agent of the vile Chaos Space Marine Apothecary Fabius Bile. He was tricked into bringing Bile, who was disguised as a well-known Adeptus Mechanicus Magos Biologis, to Baal, mistakenly thinking the false "Magos" would help in cloning Space Marines to increase the Blood Angels' numbers. Through Bile's manipulations, Caecus was duped, and only managed to create monstrous, mutant clone-Astartes known as "Bloodfiends" who were consumed by the Red Thirst. These creatures were a shattered mirror reformed in the image of a Blood Angel, but lacked any of the qualities that could be thought of as human. The mutations that cursed the gene-seed of the Blood Angels had been enhanced by the machinations and Chaotic tech-heresy of Fabius Bile, and with each drop of blood they consumed, the thirst that dominated the Bloodfiends grew stronger. The mutants broke free from the confines of Caecus' laboratorium and began to run rampant through the sacred halls of the fortress-monastery of the Blood Angels. During their rampage, Bile managed to steal a glass vial that Caeucus had carried back from the Chapel of the Red Grail -- a measure of the mingled blood of a hundred standard centuries of Sanguinary Priests and the Primarch himself, the raw vitae of the Chapter. During the Bloodfiends' rampage, a small group of the bloodthirsty mutants assaulted the sacred Chapel of the Chapter's fortress-monastery. Brother Corbulo raced to the Chapel to confront the vile creatures. He knew exactly what it was the beasts wanted, and he bellowed out a denial, charging in a headlong rush to meet such embodiments of corruption. The creatures swarmed Corbulo as the Sanguinary Priest carved into them with his chainsword Heaven's Teeth. But the largest of the Bloodfiends, a massive brute easily the size of an Astartes in Terminator Armour, threw itself towards its target -- the Red Grail and the precious blood of the Primarch it contained. The Bloodfiend seized the holy relic and then tipped the contents of the cup into its open mouth and drained it to the dregs. Now that the beasts had tasted the blood of the Primarch, they only craved more. In the aftermath of this desecration, Bile had achieved his goal and escaped from the Blood Angels' homeworld with a sample of the precious vitae of their Primarch. The Blood Angels and their successors successfully defended their most sacred of sites on Baal -- the Golden Sarcophagus of Sanguinius within the sacred sepulchre where the body of the Great Angel lay for all time, sleeping in light, forever preserved. The Sons of Sanguinius destroyed the horde of mutants and erased the stain of Chaos from their midst. They had paid for the continued sanctity of the Great Angel with their blood, and in the aftermath of this misery, Lord Commander Dante took responsibility for what had happened and he accepted it without complaint. Dante believed that it was his hubris that had brought the Chapter to this dark place. The Successor Chapters took this into consideration as well as Lord Commander Dante's original request for the successors to grant the Blood Angels a small tithe of their Chapter's Initiates in order to replenish the ranks of the Chapter. The Successor Chapters unanimously agreed to hand over to the Blood Angels some of their own neophytes to help their ancestral Chapter rebuild its strength in the wake of the Chaos assault -- and in preparation for the oncoming assault by the Tyranids of Hive Fleet Leviathan and the Forces of Chaos of the 13th Black Crusade.Devastation of Baal (ca.999.M41) - With the arrival of Roboute Guilliman's Indomitus Crusade in the midst of the massive temporal distortions caused by the birth of the Great Rift, the Blood Angels and their Successor Chapters are successful in fending off the great assault of Hive Fleet Leviathan upon their homeworld of Baal. The remainder of the Leviathan is largely consumed by a Warp storm and a great assault of Khornate Daemons led by the Blood Angels' most ancient foe, the Bloodthirster Ka'bandha.