The Justiciars
| The Justicars | ||
|---|---|---|
| Battle Cry | "He wills it!" | |
| Number | XIII | |
| Founding | First Founding | |
| Successors of | N/A | |
| Primarch | Uriel Salazar | |
| Allegiance | Traitor. Tzeentch. | |
| Colours | White and Black | |
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The Justiciars were a Traitor Space Marine Legion. Once considered the most loyal and trusted of the great Legions, they were consumed by the powers of Chaos and sided with Hektor Cincinnatus in the Hektor Heresy. Among the ranks of the Traitors, they are unusually renowned for their selflessness and courage - the same qualities that had made the 13th beloved servants of the Emperor.
History
The most difficult task any living being confronts is understanding their place in the galaxy.
- Uriel Salazar, Confessions
The story of the Justiciars is both irony and tragedy. The Emperor crafted their gene-sire Uriel Salazar as a great weapon against the dark powers of Chaos, and Uriel's gene-sons were well-equipped to carry on that mission against the Witch Kings and Sorcerers who plagued humanity at the end of the Age of Strife. Yet as the mission of the Legion evolved into a fight against the corrupting touch of Chaos within the young Imperium, they were drawn into the web of Tzeentch and turned against mankind.
Early Campaigns
The first recruits for the nascent Thirteenth Legion came from the children of the Emperor's defeated enemies in the Unification Wars. From those few who survived the gene-seed, the ten best were selected to make up the Thirteenth Squad the Sacred Band and fight in the Pacification of the Merican Hives under the command of Hektor Cincinnatus. Led by Aldous Cadigan, the Thirteenth Squad undertook reconnaissance and kill-team missions. They were rightly commended for slaying the Psysavant Cabal of San Angelus before the battle for that hive commenced, but the six survivors of the Thirteenth Squad refused to accept decorations and asked that the honours only be awarded to the fallen. For this reason, the names of slain Lo-Zho Lou, Zlatko Tolyan Blazić, Kamaraj Kohli, and Temur Oghruk are known to us, but of the survivors only Aldous Cadigan is remembered.
Despite impressing with their combat effectiveness and humility, Cadigan and his men played a limited role in the Unification Wars. New recruits were inducted into their number, now styled the Thirteenth Legion, but they held up no great battle honours. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the warriors of the Thirteenth carried out small operations against high-value targets, particularly enemy psykers, ahead of the more glorious battles fought by other Legionnaires. Certainly someone was doing this dirty work, for the chronicles of the Unification Wars often make reference to sorcerers serving Techno-Barbarian Warlords such as Nathaniel Dume, but hardly ever speak of these powerful figures intervening against the Emperor's armies after the Pacification of the Merican Hives.
Had it not been for problems with many of the Legions activated prior to the Thirteenth, it is possible that the gene-sons of Uriel Salazar might have remained a specialist force dedicated purely to the slaying of witches. But with the exception of Hektor's glorious First Legion, few of the Thirteenth's elder brothers were truly ready to leap forward into the stars around Sol. In His wisdom, the Emperor commanded that additional genetic resources be devoted to expanding the Thirteenth Legion and making them ready for the Great Crusade shortly after the Battle of Mount Ararat and the end of the Unification Wars. To furnish recruits to the expanding Legion, the officers of the Thirteenth Legion sent their agents into the vast subterranean prisons beneath Terra's hives, searching for children who had been born to a ruthless struggle for survival. In explaining the new course, Aldous Cadigan wrote to the War Council that the work of his Legion, "can only be done by saints and monsters, and we already recruit every saint we find."
Those who expected the Thirteenth's new men to commit terrible atrocities were disappointed. In the first campaigns of the Eleventh Expedition Fleet Cadigan's "saints" kept a careful watch over their charges and the careful, disciplined compliance actions of the Legion soon won them the nickname, Iron Angels. Even in the desperate fight against the sorcerous cohorts of the "God-Emperor" Bassal-Narassur the Undying at Messonia in 813.M30, the Iron Angels went into battle and laid down their own lives, rather than employ orbital bombardment and inflict civilian casualties. Bassal-Narassur was slain and Messonia brought into Compliance with the Imperial Truth, but the Thirteenth were so battered that their Expedition Fleet withdrew to the Sol System to rebuild.
Uriel Salazar
It has been theorised that the sacrifice of the Thirteenth at Messonia was at the command of the Emperor, for just five years later the Legion would be meet with their Primarch and gain access to the vast manpower reserves of his home world Tiberia. Fresh genetic material from Uriel Salazar invigorated the Legion physically, but his moral presence was even more significant. Salazar's selfless dedication to the Imperium and its peoples, his great humility, and his tremendous self-discipline made him the embodiment of the Thirteenth's principles. More than just a leader or a father, he was his gene-sons' ideal. The Primarch's first command was to set aside the name "Iron Angels". Uriel explained to his men that such a moniker was boastful and unfitting for their mission. In place of that grand title, he styled the Thirteenth as "The humble fellow-soldiers of the Emperor and His justice", but they would be more commonly known as The Justiciars.
Uriel never officially rebased his Legion to Tiberia and always hailed Ancient Terra as the cradle of the Justiciars. However, in reality the Thirteenth moved much of their recruiting and training infrastructure to the Primarch's home world very early on. The Eleventh Expedition Fleet officially rejoined the Great Crusade in 820.M30 under Uriel's command, but it would not embark on major campaigns again until 824.M30, when the first classes of Tiberian recruits joined the Legion. Other Expedition Fleets, at first commanded by Cadigan's veterans, soon followed in the footsteps of the Eleventh and the Justiciars won many splendid victories for the Imperium under their own banner. Almost as important were the many independent Compliance Groups that went to the aid of other Imperial forces confronted by Sorcerers. The skills of the Unification Wars had not been forgotten by the Thirteenth Legion, and they hunted witches all across the Milky Way. Their talents were also used in the fight against psychically-potent Xenos, such as the Eldar.
As the Great Crusade began to reach the fringes of the Astronomican's light, the Justiciar's mission slowly changed. The Space Marines were too few to hold the vast frontiers of the young Imperium on their own, let alone expand it. Human warriors of the enormous Imperial Army were committed to the spearheads of the Crusade in ever-increasing numbers. In addition, many officially compliant worlds harboured treasonous intent. Uprisings flared up across the Imperium, often led by psykers. To combat the threats within the Imperium, Uriel began to break up his Expedition Fleets into more Compliance Groups spread thinly throughout the Galaxy. Although their lack of concentration robbed the Justiciars of the laurels won by other Legion at the end of the Great Crusade, they gladly gave up honour for duty. Their small bands were indispensable to the merely mortal soldiers of the Imperial Army confronted by the terrors of the Warp.
Yet for every witch-led rebellion that the Justiciars put down, two more sprang up elsewhere. Uriel Salazar became obsessed with understanding the pattern of these revolts, believing that if he could discover a logic to such events he could better deploy his far-flung forces. For all the nobility of his purpose, Uriel's great project led him into darkness. The logic that he worked to understand was the unfathomable intelligence of the Chaos God Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways. Every new insight twisted the Primarch's great mind towards the paths of Chaos. When Aubrey The Grey came to claim the Thirteenth for the Traitors, Uriel willingly knelt before the Arch-Traitor and solemnly pledged his men to Hektor's cause with the words he had once used to affirm his loyalty to the Emperor:
He wills it.