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1 / 4 · Click to enlargeLore & origins
Chaos Space Marines are Space Marines who have turned against the Imperium and serve the Ruinous Powers. Many come from the nine traitor Legions that followed Horus in his rebellion. After the Heresy failed, they retreated into the Eye of Terror, where ten thousand years of the Long War have passed for some of them in only a few centuries, thanks to the warped flow of time in the Warp.
Other Chaos Space Marines come from renegade Chapters or individual warriors who fell to Chaos long after the Heresy. Many fight for themselves, as pirates and raiders. Others join warbands under powerful Chaos Lords, and the greatest of them, such as Abaddon, can unite them for the Black Crusades that tear into Imperial space.
Chaos Space Marines share the gene-seed and transhuman physiology of loyalist Astartes, so they are every bit as strong and durable. Most belong to the nine Traitor Legions that sided with Horus, many of whom have lived through ten thousand years because time flows unevenly in the Eye of Terror. Others come from later Renegade Chapters that broke with the Imperium. After the Heresy only the Word Bearers kept anything like a unified Legion; the rest fractured into warbands that raid, fight each other and occasionally answer the call of a Black Crusade.
Their fall is a deliberate choice. A warrior raised to deny himself fear, pleasure and ambition throws that discipline away and chases everything he was forbidden: wealth, power, slaughter or forbidden knowledge. The Dark Gods reward success with gifts and mutations, which may just as easily be curses. The highest prize is apotheosis as a Daemon Prince. For every warrior who achieves it, many more are twisted into mindless Chaos Spawn. That is also why they fear death: a fallen servant's soul belongs to the gods.
Appearance & wargear
Chaos Space Marines wear power armour from many eras, often ancient Heresy-era marks covered in spikes, chains, trophies and daemonic features. They carry bolters, chainswords and the same weapons as loyalist Space Marines, along with daemon weapons and Warp-touched relics.
Many Chaos Space Marines still wear the armour marks they carried at the Heresy, such as Iron, Maximus, Mark IV and older patterns, warped with spikes, horns, trophies and armour plates that have fused with flesh. A squad carries bolters or bolt pistols with close combat weapons, plus a special or heavy weapon such as a flamer, meltagun, plasma gun, heavy bolter, autocannon or lascannon. An Aspiring Champion leads, and many squads carry an icon of their patron god.
Weapons & Vehicles
The signature .75-calibre rocket-propelled mass-reactive firearm of the Adeptus Astartes, firing self-propelled explosive bolts that de…
The brutal motorised tooth-bladed sword carried by Space Marines, Imperial Guard officers and Chaos renegades, chewing through armour a…
The screaming, blood-drenched motorised war-axe of the World Eaters and Khorne Berzerkers, trading all defensive finesse for bone-shatt…
A volatile directed-energy rifle that hurls bolts of miniature sun-hot plasma capable of vaporising Terminator plate and tank armour—at…
A short-ranged thermal sub-molecular agitation weapon that flash-melts battle tank armour, bunker doors and heavy walkers into bubbling…
A volatile liquid-promethium projector that floods bunkers, trenches and xenos swarms in clinging, self-oxidising gouts of cleansing ch…
A belt-fed 1.0-calibre automatic support cannon known to Imperial troops as the "Backbreaker," scything down massed infantry and light …
The Imperium's premier long-range anti-tank laser cannon, firing a blinding lance of coherent light that punches cleanly through battle…
An oversized servo-assisted armoured gauntlet sheathed in a matter-shredding energy field, capable of tearing open tank hulls and crush…
Chaos Space Marines infected by a daemonic technovirus that fuses flesh, armour and weapons into a single shapeshifting mass.
Chaos Dreadnoughts whose entombed pilots have been driven insane, combining tank-like firepower with psychopathic fury.
Explore all 48 entries in the Weapons & Vehicles armoury.
Battlefield role & tactics
Chaos Space Marines are a flexible core of veteran infantry, backed by cultists, daemons, daemon engines and the marks of the Chaos Gods.
In the field they are line troops, as flexible as loyalist Tactical squads. They hold objectives, ride Rhinos into contact and fight effectively at any range. Their technology is older than the Imperium's, since most later inventions only reach them as loot. They make up for that with daemonic allies, Daemon Engines and sorcery. Their weakness is cohesion. Warbands are bound by fear or ambition, and rival champions may abandon or betray each other mid-battle.
Munitorum & Ordo Xenos Technical Dossier
Classified under Ordo and Departmento Munitorum threat-index protocols as a primary Chaos Space Marines are a flexible core of veteran infantry, backed by cultists, daemons, daemon engines and the marks of the Chaos Gods. asset of Heretic Astartes (Chaos Space Marines), Chaos Space Marines relies on a tightly coupled symbiosis between operator conditioning and primary armament. Field maintenance and biological recovery logs indicate that extended deployment without liturgical recalibration or bio-stasis rest degrades targeting and metabolic stability by less than 4% per solar week—far outperforming standard sector baselines—while post-engagement recovery teams prioritize the immediate extraction of their core wargear, neural/gene-seed components, or machine-spirit memory cores before enemy scavengers can exploit them.
Notable battles & users
- The Horus Heresy: nine Legions turned traitor and laid siege to Terra.
- The Black Crusades: Abaddon led thirteen Black Crusades against the Imperium, the last of which broke Cadia.
- 13th Black Crusade (999.M41): Abaddon's largest invasion since the Heresy, which destroyed the Fortress World of Cadia.
- Battle of Thessala (131.M31): Fulgrim's strike against the Ultramarines, in which Roboute Guilliman was mortally wounded.
Related
Characters (3)
Abaddon the Despoiler · Warmaster of Chaos, Lord of the Black Legion
Huron Blackheart · Tyrant of Badab, Master of the Red Corsairs
Haarken Worldclaimer · Herald of the Apocalypse
Related units
PossessedObliteratorsHelbrutes
Chaos Cultists
Rhino
Noise Marines
Plague Marines
Rubric Marines
Khorne Berzerkers
Chaos Terminators
Raptors
Night Lords Nemesis Claw