Torchbearers - Operations: Torchbearer fleets could spend solar months or standard years seeking the Space Marine Chapter whose future they are entrusted with. The tormented state of the Warp in the Era Indomitus makes any interstellar travel a deadly proposition, even within the Imperium Sanctus.The successful conclusion to a Torchbearer fleet's mission comprises the identification and location of the Chapter, the safe arrival of the precious cargo at their homeworld and the peaceful handover of the Primarch's Gift before returning via the same dangerous tides and undertaking a new mission.Yet so much hangs in the balance, and catastrophic failures blight many Chapters' legacies.With the desperation, greed and warmongering furore that permeates the galaxy, especially beyond the Great Rift in the Imperium Nihilus where the light of the Astronomican is still only a memory, even the superlative warriors of the Space Marines face frequent annihilation. A Torchbearer fleet that has the good fortune to find the Chapter they have searched for may have come upon them in what might be those Space Marines' last gasp.The targeted Adeptus Astartes might be deployed in Chapter strength to one particular war zone where their foes have swelled in numbers and threaten the Space Marines with extinction, or their homeworld itself may be under invasion.In such circumstances, the Torchbearers' own forces do not hesitate to commit to the fray, allying their full resources to the defence of the Chapter. Should the Space Marines fall in battle, or if the Torchbearers arrive to find evidence that the Chapter was in fact long since destroyed, the fleet's specialists would endeavour to re-found the brotherhood using only Primaris Marines. The Primaris Space Marines of the Ultima Founding intendedto reinforce their new Chapter would establish themselves on the fallen Chapter world if safe, or they would select a new one.The Torchbearer ships would often serve as the reformed Chapter's initial fleet, enabling them to undertake early missions while helping to set up communications with nearby Forge Worlds that would continue to supply the nascent Chapter.The successful reinforcement or re-founding of Space Marine Chapters is not always the outcome for the Torchbearer fleets. The task forces find some Chapters, embattled but surviving, and yet who dare to query or even refuse the offered technology. Some may fear a loss of independence, even the erosion of their identity. Many Chapters are deeply suspicious when confronted by unknown warriors claiming to share their genetic lineage, a Gift seemingly offered by a primarch -- a figure of legend -- whose influence and power reflects unknown intentions.Their duty as defenders of Mankind, and the technology's status as being ultimately from the hand of the Emperor, is impressed upon such wayward Chapters. The Torchbearers may brand those who steadfastly maintain their refusal as Heretics and then take on the mantle of the Chapter's executioners.Other Chapters may already be so far down the dark path of heresy that the fleet does not enter into any dialogue with them. Accompanying forces ofGrey Knights or Sisters of Silence may deploy in strength to exterminate such stains upon the Imperium's roll of honour.In either case, the pristine Primaris genetic material held in suspension may be deemed to be tainted somehow and may never be used to found a Chapter.Most disheartening of all outcomes for a Torchbearer fleet is being unable to find the targeted Chapter at all. The galaxy is unthinkably immense, and it is almost impossible to find worlds or fleets unless one knows already where to locate them. Finding such information, thanks to the Imperium'sbyzantine bureaucracy, is already difficult, though Roboute Guilliman ensured that his Torchbearer fleets have the most trustworthy reports available and are barred from few datasources.Some Chapters are known only by a name and the region of Imperial space they guard. Some might have become little more than legend, their deeds known onlyby an account of a single battle -- perhaps standard centuries or millennia ago -- whose location is uncertain. Some may have relocated to a different homeworld, the notification either never having been made or else buried in a sealed office, slowly fossilising beneath the weight of countless centuries of paperwork.There have also been Torchbearer missions where the outcome itself was not certain. The Gladius Ad Umbra Fleet could not locate the Lions Azure in the Afqal Sub-sector, but they did unexpectedly contact the Wardens of the Philae. The Wardens' history over the last three standard millennia so closely matched the fleet's records of the Lions Azure that the commander could not be certain if they were one and the same or not.Conversely, there have been narrowly avoided catastrophes involving the genetic material for one Chapter nearly being handed over to another founded under the same name and near identical-heraldry. Such errors could have long-lasting and horrific consequences for a Chapter if it mixed its own carefullymaintained genetic material with that of another Chapter from a different lineage.The resulting Chapter might never be stable, risking insanity, psychosis and mutation, its warriors' forms as roiling as the Warp rift that now splits the galaxy.