Marius Amalrich - The 13th Black Crusade and the Fall of Cadia: Marshal Marius Amalrich was in command of the Cruxis Crusade when he diverted that force of the Adeptus Astartes to Cadia to aid in the defence of that crucial Fortress World in the final stage of Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade. Amalrich deployed his Crusade forces amongst the Imperial Guardsmen holding the Loyalist line to the south of Kasr Kraf, as he had little faith that the mortals would prove equal to the task.When the southernmost spur of Kasr Kraf's Martyr's Rampart collapsed, only Amalrich's Black Templars held the line as the Astra Militarum fell back before the Chaos onslaught. Marshal Amalrich's Black Templars had sworn to defend the Martyr's Rampart, and defend it they did, with every iota of the zeal and fury for which their Chapter was known.Though the walls were little more than rubble, they fought on -- an island of stalwart steel amidst the shifting tides of Chaos. Black Legion, Word Bearers and more sought to overwhelm Amalrich's outnumbered band with Chainsword and hellfire. Battle-Brothers perished in ones and twos, and their Crusade banner many times toppled from the crest. But the living found fresh strength in the sacrifice of the dead, and each time the banner fell it was raised higher than before.Yet, when the force of the Chaos assault shifted northwards to the fortress city's Kriegan Gates, the Marshal acknowledged what had been obvious to his peers from the first -- that the Black Templars' strength would have been better employed upon the walls of the fortress than at the Martyr's Rampart. Even generations after the fact, the stubbornness of Rogal Dorn still haunted his inheritors. Yet there remained time to make amends for the error.One of the Cruxis Crusade's Thunderhawks had been destroyed during the opening bombardment, but the other endured, untouched in a subterranean hangar. Swallowing the last of his pride, Amalrich gave the orders to abandon the Martyr's Rampart. Their Thunderhawk, hull smouldering and crippled engines belching smoke, ploughed into the muster field adjacent to Kasr Kraf's Kriegan Gates, disgorging the vengeful warriors of the Cruxis Crusade into the heart of the heretical foe.Each blow struck by a Son of Dorn that day was one of penance as much as fury, and was all the mightier for it. But during this fight, Amalrich and his Astartes would have been slain by the Traitor Baneblade Vicanthrus if the Necron Lord Trazyn the Infinite, covertly aiding the defenders of Cadia against their common foe, had not unleashed a stream of nano-machines that reprogrammed the massive super-heavy tank's Machine Spirit to target its own fellow servants of the Dark Gods.After Kasr Kraf ultimately held against the Chaos assault due to the arrival of the Living Saint Celestine and defeat of the Daemon Prince Urkanthos, Amalrich and his Black Templars were redeployed to the defence of the Cadian Pylons of the Elysion Fields. They defended the southern perimeter alongside Captain Tor Garadon of the Imperial Fists' 3rd Company against the Chosen of Abaddon and the Black Legion. Unfortunately, the Sons of Dorn proved too few despite their valour, and the Chaos Space Marines simply swept around them to assault the pylon fields.After the Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl successfully activated the Cadian Pylons with the aid of Trazyn and cut the local area of space-time off from the Warp, Abaddon, who had come to Cadia personally to see the world finally fall, was forced to retreat. As he and his forces left Cadia behind in their dropships to return to his flagship, the Vengeful Spirit, Amalrich and his Astartes slaughtered many of the Traitor Marines before they could flee off-planet.But the Loyalists' victory proved all-too-short-lived. The Despoiler would not be denied the prize he had sought for millennia so easily. Foreseeing the need for a fail-safe, Abaddon had the damaged bulk of the Blackstone Fortress Will of Eternity, its systems disabled by an assault from the Imperial Fists' star fort Phalanx, hurled from orbit as an artificial meteor into the surface of Cadia.The massive kinetic strike destroyed what remained of the world's defences, ensuring its envelopment by the now rapidly-expanding Eye of Terror. Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed, badly wounded at the hands of the Despoiler himself, ordered an evacuation of the dying world. As Cadia crumbled to pieces around them, the Battle-Sisters of the Order of Our Martyred Lady and Marshal Amalrich's Black Templars were the last to depart, their bloodied survivors crowding aboard transports sent from Archmagos Cawl's Ark Mechanicus Iron Revenant to reclaim the Imperial Knights of House Taranis.The Imperial survivors of Cadia -- led by Cawl, Saint Celestine, Inquisitor Katarinya Greyfax of the Ordo Hereticus and Amalrich -- now calling themselves the Celestinian Crusade -- used every voidship at their disposal, including the Iron Revenant, to ferry the three million survivors off Cadia. Unable to enter the Warp because of the roiling instability of the Immaterium near the Cadian Gate, the Imperial fleet was forced to flee through the Cadian System at sub-light speed, and the Chaos warfleets gave chase.The largest and most powerful remaining Imperial capital ship, Cawl's Iron Revenant, heroically sacrificed itself in battle against the Vengeful Spirit so that the Celestinian Crusade could escape to Klaisus, the nearby ice moon of the world of Kasr Holn. It was Celestine who explained that she had experienced a precognitive vision that their salvation -- and that of the Imperium itself -- lay on that barren, frigid planetoid.Celestine's vision proved prophetic, for the surviving Celestinians were rescued from Chaos attacks and the unforgiving arctic environment at the last by the arrival of the Eldar Ynnari through Klaisus' hidden Webway gate. Though his flagship was lost, Belisarius Cawl had rescued its most precious cargo -- the Armour of Fate, key to the resurrection of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman.