Absolvers - Origins: The Absolvers have protected the Gilead System since their first Chapter Master, Tygranas Dalir, swore a solemn vow to defend its people in perpetuity. His Astartes carry this mantle still, tightly bound as they are to every vow they make. They are a Chapter that bears a litany of glories, earned both in defence of the Gilead System and in war zones scattered far and wide across the galaxy.However, honoured as they are, the Absolvers harbour an ancient and shameful secret. Far from the blood-soaked battlefields of the 41st Millennium, in the heart of the Gilead System, failed aspirants and broken brethren speak raw damnation, recounting incoherent prophecies to their watchful guardians.The history of the Absolvers is both a chronicle of solemn oaths sworn to safeguard enigmatic secrets, and a burden of unrelenting shame, for when their will falters, the resulting actions can violate the very essence of what it is to be a Space Marine. To ascend to the ranks of the Absolvers is to inherit a heinous flaw, but also the vows to temper it, a history of hubris and the iron will to seek redemption.The history of the Absolvers is inextricably bound to that of the Gilead System. Here, the Chapter earned its well-deserved reputation for ruthlessly enforcing the Emperor's will, and here too did they forge an altogether less honourable legacy.The Gilead System is rich in resources and host to numerous Human-habitable worlds. Nestled on the border of the Segmentum Obscurus, it has always been a tempting target for conquest. By the 34th Millennium it lay in the grip of the forces of Chaos, its many worlds cut off from the Emperor's light by darkness and damnation. The system stood as a gateway into the depths of Segmentum Obscurus, presenting an ideal early conquest in a campaign to emancipate these beleaguered worlds and press further into the unknown.An Imperial Crusade to do just that was raised in the 34th Millennium, and at its head was Saint Julyanna Gilead, though she had yet to earn that lofty title. To a mighty fleet of Navis Imperialis voidships, she gathered a host of towering Imperial Knights, innumerable regiments of Astra Militarum soldiers, and the backing of a Tech-priest Dominus and her Battle Congregation. Despite the might of the host Julyanna Gilead assembled, one thing was conspicuously and inauspiciously absent -- the wrath of the Emperor Himself in the form of a contingent of Adeptus Astartes.Many stories are told of the Gilead Crusade, the high hopes and boundless ambition that launched it, and the glory and horror it would find amidst the far-flung stars to which that duty would carry it. One of the most revered tales is that, on the very eve of the fleet's departure beyond the Segmentum Solar, Tygranas Dalir, a storied Astartes warrior, came to Julyanna Gilead unheralded and pledged himself to her cause. With him, he brought a newly-founded Chapter of Space Marines. Tygranas hoped the nascent Chapter would earn the first of many honours acting as the Emperor's own armoured fist amidst the crusade's already formidable arsenal. To the leadership of the crusade, it seemed that the Emperor Himself had blessed their efforts, and all were overjoyed.As commonly told, the tale ends there, though certain records held by the Absolvers carry it further. Tygranas was so certain of the glory and honour to come that, by his decree, the Chapter he led bore no name, such that their presence was recorded under ambiguous and reverential appellations like "Dalir's Astartes" and the generic "Angels of Death." He hoped that by mighty deed and hard-earned victory, the newly founded Chapter would find on the battlefield a name worthy of its primarch, the mighty Sanguinius, noblest of all the Emperor's gene-sons.The tale of how Tygranas Dalir arrived with his nameless Chapter of Space Marines just in time to lend their aid to the Gilead Crusade is recorded in numerous Adeptus Ministorum tracts, but the truth of the matter seems clouded at best. Some scholars have suggested that the Chapter was established in an earlier Founding and its former name and history buried for reasons unknown.For a time, it seemed certain that this would be the case. Many hard-fought victories were won, and in the wake of some notable battle, the Chapter command would gather to consider if their victory was noteworthy enough to have earned them a name. The Liberation of Anacarsus, the Desolation of Minas, the Battle of the Nameless Gates -- none were judged sufficiently great, but as each conclave debated the matter, the Apothecarion recruited new aspirants from among the newly liberated populace. It seems this gave rise to the Chapter's tradition of recruiting from many diverse worlds and cultures, but in truth, even the Absolvers' own records of this time are deeply redacted.If any harboured doubts that the Emperor was truly with the crusade during those early, glorious days, then the actions of His Astartes in capturing and bringing the Gilead System to Compliance was a balm to such fears. They were ferocious in their persecution of the enemy, often pushing to engage the Chaos-worshippers that infested the system in brutal hand-to-hand combat.They were stalwart defenders of worlds brought back into the glorious fold of the Imperium, rooting out corruption wherever it was found and pushing back raids of foul xenos and desperate Heretics with the same unbridled ferocity with which they liberated the system. Would that the history of the Chapter ended here, or continued across the Terran millennia echoing these early, glorious victories. But even in these earliest days of the Chapter's history, signs of a devastating flaw were beginning to emerge, for the Absolvers were members of the Sanguinary Brotherhood, the genetic lineage of Sanguinius, and they suffered from the terrible curses of his bloodline -- the Red Thirst and the Black Rage.