Crimson Fists

Crimson Fists
Battle Cry	"There is only the Emperor" "He is our shield and protector."
Founding	Second Founding
Successors of	Imperial Fists
Chapter Master	Pedro Kantor
Primarch	Rogal Dorn
Homeworld	Rynn's World
Strength	Less than 500
Specialty	Tactical flexibility and spanking orks
Allegiance	Imperium of Man
Colours	Blue and crimson red

The Crimsons Fists are a second founding chapter of the Imperial Fists, formed by the younger and more level-headed members. Noted for their crimson gauntlets, which inspired from a ritual with Rogal Dorn and a Imperial Fist successor Chapter Master having a manly handshake with Dorn with cut palms, signifying blood brotherhood between them. Though the name sounds more like a particularly painful sex act of slannesh that ends in internal bleeding, but whatever, they're still cool.

They got fucked over during an Ork invasion on Rynn's World, their home planet, when a stray missile fired from their orbital defense grid struck their own fortress. The damn thing somehow missed its original target, bypassed ALL of the fortress' void shields, and hit the armory directly. The chances of this happening are about as likely as rolling 100 d20s and only getting 1s on all of them. (If you're curious, the probability of that happening is one in 1267650600228229401496703205376*10¹⁰⁰. Seriously.)

Note: This was a standard missile fired from an orbiting defensive platform, it normally should have done NOTHING to such a mighty stronghold beyond a small crater. How did something this random happen? Well, the missile hit a piece of mountainside that was really super-duper weak (and somehow the Crimson Fists didn't know about it) and went deep down into the mountain. The missile detonated the Crimson Fist's weapon stockpile, causing their chapter a lot of hurt.

(The missile was actually fired from one of the fortress's anti-ship weapons bastions, and the void shields had to be dropped to fire them. It was also the type of anti ship missile that formed a melta field over the warhead to bore through ship armor before detonation, but still, terrible luck.) Which is why silos like that should be kept separate from the fortress, so you don't have to drop your shields to fire. While this would expose the silos, you can have one missile each and hide dozens of them far away from one another.

But its okay, because the Crimson Fists still managed to beat the Orks with only two-hundred and twenty-eight marines, 100 of which were killed the actual number of marines that survived their fortress monastery being destroyed isn't stated (Rynn's World mentions 16 including Pedro Kantor and Alessio Cortez). Kantor had sent a significant force to New Rynn City to defend it (because, you know, Crimson Fists aren't complete arseholes and will make time to defend the civilians). All that's known is that after the Imperial fleet came to Rynn's World to screw up the Orks there were only a couple of companies left. A Land Raider appropriately named Rynn's Might that somehow managed to skillfully pilot itself using only its machine spirit and take out a good chunk of the invading Ork horde, including a warboss, with hellish accurate weapon fire. It then tried to run over the Orks and when its treads were clogged with bodies and its doors smashed open, it was entered by Lootas seeking to take it after which it vented the reactor and killed them all with hot plasma.. The Crimson Fists were able to recover the machine spirit of "Rynn's Might", and are now trying to find a new vehicle to house the machine spirit. They probably need a titan chassis to contain that much awesome.

Let's also not forget that, there's a part from the Rynn's World novel where Captain Cortez saves a mother and her kids, one of which is only a baby, from being murdered by Orks. Kantor is quite displeased at this, knowing that there are very few Crimson Fists left and they could not afford to take refugees along for the ride. However, he mentions they can tag along if they can keep up with the Astartes. You know how that went. Eventually the mother fatigues and falters, falling to her knees. The column of marines halt as their Chapter Master moves to the back, where the reader is to believe that he is about to kill her given his wrist-mounted Storm Bolter is very, very close to her head. She pleads that her children were so heavy and she tried, and what does Kantor do? Let me stress that he did not want her in the first place. What does he do? He replies with, "You did well to bring them this far. It is time someone else carried you now." And then he picks her up in his arms, along with her kids, and rejoins his Battle-Brothers. Do you see the Ultrasmurfs doing such a doubly heartwarming and doubly awesome act of kindness? Of course not. Unless your name is Uriel Ventris or Titus.

The Crimson Fists 1st Company is known as the Crusade Company and consists of 128 marines after the Crimson Fists decided to get shit done during the Crusade of Righteous Retribution. During the crusade, the Fists were unable to procure new recruits, and slowly suffered attrition until they ended up with only 128 marines left. Sounds kind of pathetic until you realise that the crusade lasted for over 300 years meaning that the Fists lost less than 3 marines a year. It's now considered a bad omen if they don't have a full strength Crusade Company. Problem, Ultramarines?

It's also worth noticing that only 9 years after the Battle for Rynn's World, the Crimson Fists were already sending forces to fight in the Zeist Campaign. If it hadn't been for the Ultramarine leadership, shit might have gotten done. Crimson Fists obviously do not fuck around.

On /tg/

Also known as "Mexican Marines" because their chapter master (Pedro Kantor), and their crazypants 3E captain Cortez had Spanish first names. Because Mexico is obviously the only Spanish speaking country in the world. this nickname was likely devised by American neckbeards, who see more Mexicans than Spaniards during their lives. And for the fact that the REAL reason that said Land Raider fucked the Orks' shit up was because it was filled with the remaining 200 battle brothers Land Raiders can't hold two hundred Marines, and I refuse to get the joke. Besides, a loyal, massive war machine going on a killing rampage out of love of it's owners is so much more cute and adorable.

Also in the Honor the Chapter book of the Deathwatch RPG, there is a Crimson Fist Chaplain called Jorge Martinez, and there are suggested Spanish-sounding names like Alrovez and Sanchev. In other words, Crimson Fists are badass Spaniards, fuck you.