Deathwing

If Stubbornness had a physical form, then it would've looked like the Deathwings.

The Deathwing is the Dark Angels' name for their First Company; currently led by Belial. 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.

The fact that the latest 6e Dark Angels codex is sketchy about how many members make up the Deathwing (though heavily implied that it's more than just a "mere" 100) and with the fact that each of the Unforgiven chapters also appears to include a similar formation (though under different names) implies that the Dark Angels Legion had a metric butt-ton of terminator armour lying around that no-one else knew about.

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 traditional way to join the Inner Circle (and thus earn promotion to a Company Master, Librarian, or Interrogator-Chaplain) is to be inducted into the chapter's secrets during their time in the Deathwing.

• However, there are exceptions: Sammael was "unofficially" inducted to the Inner Circle during his time in the Ravenwing and was promoted to Master of the 2nd without having passed through the Deathwing at all, whilst Azrael was inducted directly into the Deathwing Knights without passing through the Ravenwing or the "lower" ranks of Deathwing.

History

The Deathwing, back when they had that whole Native American schtick going on.

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 (especially the parts where 300-year-old veterans are worried about dying of old age). 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).

Tabletop

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). Furthermore, individual Deathwing terminators can choose their weapon selection, rather than having it relatively fixed as in other chapters.

• 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.

As of the 6th Edition Codex by Jeremy Vetock (praise be his name) the Deathwing now rape Chaos Space Marines, which makes perfect sense considering it is their primary duty to take down the Fallen. HERETICS. The regular Deathwing got some handy new rules such as the ability to split-fire, and are more accurate on the turn they arrive, and now get access to Plasma Cannon, which while not entirely useful, on a terminator is awesome.

They also got new units; such as the Deathwing Knights who are the the Elite-within-the-Elite; each armed with a traitor-bane power mace (AP3 vs Heretics) and storm shield. Nothing says repent like a WS5/T5 Terminator with a mace the size of a man charging at you with the hammer of wrath!

As before; Dreadnoughts can also be members of the Deathwing gaining the same bonuses against the Fallen, as their terminator armoured brothers, but ALSO Land Raiders can be assigned to the First Company too, making them Awesome.

Gallery

<gallery> File:1st Company.jpg|Follow me you assholes! 'n pray to the Emprah We don't run in to any fucki'n genestealers!