Excoriators

Excoriators
Founding	Second Founding
Successors of	Imperial Fists
Successor Chapters	None
Chapter Master	Zachariah Kersh
Primarch	Rogal Dorn
Homeworld	Eschara
Strength	~900
Specialty	Defense and attrition fighting, BDSM
Allegiance	Imperium
Colours	White and Silver

The Excoriators are a chapter of Space Marines descended from the Imperial Fists. They are the subject of Rob Sanders' Legion of the Damned novel, more so than the Legion themselves. They're basically a chapter full of grumbling whiny killjoys with a pain fetish. They spend the first half of the novel whining about how badly the Alpha Legion raped their First Company, stole their Chapter Standard, and poisoned their old Chapter Master ("Oh go cry us a river you pussies" ~Lamenters). They spend the second half of the book fighting a blood crusade. They also spend the entire book ordering their chapter serfs to whip them harder, dammit!

They're one of the very few Imperial subfactions with the balls to point out the Emperor never wanted to be worshiped as a god, that he's nothing more than the greatest human psyker. They actually get into an argument with the Ecclesiarchy about this at one point; the argument ended with some Excoriator Scouts sniping the braindead priests.

They have this gene seed defect called "the Darkness". All it does is make them fall into a coma at random, much like how aneurisms kill normal humans. They actually figured out a cure for this coma though, but after they successfully test it out on their Chapter Champion they spend a hundred more pages complaining about how he's still "cursed" and how he's a "coward" for not chasing the Alpha Legion (even though the Chapter Champion points out several times that the planet the Alpha Legion are supposedly on is an obvious trap, just like last time) instead of rejoicing that their best swordsman is alive and just beat the motherfucking Black Templars in the Feast of Blades (a swordsman tournament of Imperial Fists successors). Seriously, they waste so much time whining and bitching and indulging in their stupid whipping fetish. This is probably why the Legion of the Damned wait until all of the whining little bitches are dead before actually showing up in their own book.

---

Another interpretation

First and foremost let me say this, when Space Marines are the primary characters in the piece it is not a good idea to write them as the utterly stoic fearless killing machines that the rest of galaxy sees them as. Why? Because internal conflict is one of the greatest hallmarks of fiction; without internal conflict the characters are two dimensional cardboard cut-outs meandering about the setting. The Excoriators carefully skirt this line; they have internal conflict to spare, and none of it is arbitrary or stilted. Their real problem is they risk coming across as two-dimensional cut-outs anyway because 90% of them can't move past "grouchy" and "cynical" for their character traits, and because they insist on chasing their stolen Chapter Standard to a planet they already know it isn't on.

Now let's move on to what makes the Excoriators awesome:

They, like most Chapters descended from Rogal Dorn, put an enormous amount of emphasis on endurance, perhaps even more so than that of other Imperial Fist descendants. For example, when their power armor is damaged they will only repair it to the point of restoring functionality. Superficial things like scrapes, pitting, dents, and etc. are ignored. So while other marines (Pretty Marines) will spend hours making sure their armor looks just perfect, Excoriators show up looking like the maw of the warp just spat them out. You want to scare your enemy? Show them that you've already weathered everything they could potentially throw at you. How their champion won the Feast of Blades was not, by his own admission, simply because he was a superior swordsman or duelist but also because the Black Templar and Imperial Fist champions with whom he was dueling with simultaneously underestimated the sheer amount of damage the Excoriator's champion could soak up and still fight like a son of Dorn.

Also while the Excoriator's are unusual in their denial of the Emperor as a god, the Legion of the Damned heavily suggests that the Excoriators may have come around to the divinity of the Emperor since it was plea for the assistance that was sent directly to the Imperial Palace on Terra that seemed to preempt the arrival of their ghostly saviors.