Deathwing

The Deathwing is the Dark Angels' name for their First Company (also used by all Dark Angels successor chapters). Unlike the First Companies of Codex Astartes-compliant Chapters, the Deathwing exclusively fights in bone-white Terminator armor, and never forms power-armored Veteran Squads. They are part of the Dark Angels' Inner Circle, the secretive cabal that hunts the Fallen Angels, members of the Dark Angels Legion who (allegedly) fell to Chaos during the Horus Heresy -- in fact, the only way to join the Inner Circle (and thus become a Company Master, Librarian, or Chaplain) is to be inducted into the Deathwing.

Like the Ravenwing, the Deathwing have a different colour scheme from the rest of the Dark Angels, wearing bone white Terminator armour. Deathwing armour originally retained the black and white colour scheme of the Dark Angels Legion, but according to Chapter legend, a group of Terminators under Captain Ezekiel (birth name Cloud Runner, no relation to the Chief Librarian) returned to the Dark Angels ancient recruiting world of Plains World to find that the planet had been overrun by genestealers. Rather than subject the planet to Exterminatus, at the urging of Librarian Lucian (real name Two Heads Talking), the Terminators, all natives of Plains World, decided to fight off the genestealers and save the native humans. They proceeded to undergo Plains World's death ritual, where warriors would paint themselves in ashes, but since they didn't have that, they repainted their armour white. Succeeding at the cost of everybody but Captain Ezekiel, the Dark Angels later returned and reclaimed the Terminator, which would be kept white as a remembrance of the Terminators sacrifice. The story was written way back in 2nd edition, and doesn't really gel with current 40k canon. It's also speculated in story that the legend was just made up by the Inner Circle to as a means to prepare the Dark Angels for eventually learning about the Fallen (warriors long gone from their homeworld returning to find outside influences corrupting it bears more than a little similarity to Lion El'Jonson coming back from the Horus Heresy to find Luther had fallen to Chaos).

Deathwing Terminators are not very different from Terminators available to Codex Chapters, but they tend to operate as one army, as opposed to single squads distributed among deployed forces. This is represented in-game by allowing a Dark Angels army which includes Belial, the Master of the Deathwing, to take Deathwing squads as Troops as well as Elites (allowing up to one hundred and two Terminators to take the field). The "-wing" suffix has come to be used as shorthand to refer to other all-Terminator armies, like Draigowing, where Kaldor Draigo allows a Grey Knights army to take Paladin (super-Terminator) squads as Troops, or Loganwing, where Logan Grimnar (of the Space Wolves) causes Wolf Guard (which may be Terminator-armored) to count as Troops.

Update: As of the 6th Edition Codex by Jeremy Vetock (praise be his name) the Deathwing can now rape Chaos Marines. Nothing says repent like a T5 Terminator with a mace the size of a man. The regular Deathwing got some handy new rules, including a Plasma Cannon, which while not entirely useful, is awesome.Template:Marines-Codex