The Black Sword

Sigismund's Inheritance

The Black Sword was Sigismund's weapon before it was the High Marshal's symbol. Sigismund — first Captain of the Imperial Fists, champion of Rogal Dorn, the first man in Imperial history to take the title of Emperor's Champion — carried it through the Heresy and the Scouring. His engagements with it killed enough named traitor Astartes that the chapter's record-keepers eventually stopped listing the names individually and shifted to legion-totals: thirty-one Word Bearers captains; nineteen Sons of Horus captains; an unknown number of Black Legion ceremonial commanders in the post-Heresy purges.

When Sigismund led the schism that split the Black Templars from the Imperial Fists rather than accept the Codex Astartes' Chapter divisions, the sword went with him. Dorn did not forgive Sigismund for the schism. He also did not ask for the sword back. The implication was that the sword had already chosen.

The High Marshal's Sword

The Black Sword is carried only by sitting High Marshals of the Black Templars. It is, by Chapter tradition descended from Sigismund's own arrangements, the formal symbol of the office: the High Marshal who is not carrying it is, by ceremony, not the High Marshal. Elevation to the office requires the previous High Marshal's death or formal retirement; in the Templars' history, retirement has occurred only twice, both for grievous injuries that rendered Crusading impossible, and both retirees lived less than a Terran year afterwards.

The blade is, by Mechanicus opinion, master-crafted to Astartes terminator-grade standards and balanced for the heavy frame of a Templar who has spent his entire active service Crusading. The Chapter has not permitted full Mechanicus assay since Sigismund's death, citing schismatic-era arrangements about the sword's custody. The Mechanicus, by quiet agreement, does not press the matter.

The Eternal Crusade does not end. We do not end.

— Helbrecht, attributed Helsreach

The Inheritance Line

Twenty-three High Marshals have carried the Black Sword between Sigismund and Helbrecht. Each elevation has been recorded in the Chapter's Reclusiam-vaulted line of succession. Most High Marshals die in engagement; the sword is recovered from the battlefield by a Sword Brethren detachment and held in the Chapter's reliquary until the next Marshal is named. The reliquary chamber, by the Chapter's reading of Sigismund's own arrangements, is the sword's home only between Marshals. It does not stay there long.

Four High Marshals in the line have, by the Reclusiam's careful records, been replaced within the same Terran year as their elevation. The pace of attrition for the office is, in the Chapter's own observation, the highest of any Astartes leadership position in the Imperium. Templars who take the sword do not, as a rule, retire to administer a Chapter-house. They Crusade until they fall.

Helsreach

Helbrecht carried the Black Sword through the orbital command of the Third War for Armageddon. He used it in personal boarding actions against ork hulks during the void engagement above Armageddon Secundus, in the surface command engagements at Hive Acheron, and in the brief but decisive ground action that broke Ghazghkull's flagship landing party at the war's apex. By Chapter count it added thirty-two confirmed warboss kills and an indeterminate number of nob and oddboy kills to its lifetime record during that campaign alone.

The Chapter's Sword Brethren maintain a kill-tally on the sword's archived service. The tally is, by their own admission, incomplete — it does not include kills during boarding actions where survivors were not available to verify counts, nor kills during the post-engagement clean-up sweeps where Templars do not record individual targets. The full lifetime count is held to be conservatively in the low six figures. Helbrecht's contribution alone exceeds the entire combat lifetime tally of most named Imperial weapons.

The Eternal Crusade

By Black Templars custom the Black Sword is drawn at the start of every formal Crusade and not sheathed until the Crusade ends. Since the Black Templars' Crusades typically last decades — the standing record is the Crusade Eternal launched by High Marshal Berossus in M37, which is still technically active under Helbrecht's continuation declaration — the sword spends most of its lifetime drawn rather than sheathed. The Sword Brethren maintain the blade nightly; the chain-fed power source has been replaced eleven times in the post-Helbrecht era and the engagement edge is honed before each watch-change.

Helbrecht is currently mid-Crusade. The sword is at his side, drawn. The Sword Brethren detachment that follows him from engagement to engagement maintains a standing rotation of three Brothers whose sole duty is the sword's between-engagement custody. The duty is not considered ceremonial. The Brothers in question are, by Chapter selection, the most accomplished swordsmen of the current cycle. The selection criterion, never written but uniformly applied, is that they could wield it if the High Marshal fell.

The Cadian Years

Helbrecht commanded a Templars detachment at the late stages of the Thirteenth Black Crusade. The detachment fought alongside the Cadian regiments through the planet's final ground engagements. The Black Sword's kill-tally for those engagements is recorded but not published — the Chapter, in a rare acknowledgement of Imperial post-engagement protocol, declined to release the figure on the grounds that the Cadian engagements had been Cadian victories rather than Templars victories and the kill-counts of supporting Astartes should not be foregrounded.

What is published is the sword's strike on Abaddon at the engagement where Cadia broke. Helbrecht and Abaddon were within strike distance for, by Imperial post-action reconstruction, approximately seven seconds. Helbrecht struck. Abaddon parried with the Talon. The Black Sword's edge marked the Talon — the only blade in Imperial history confirmed to have done so. Both warriors disengaged. The pylons fell within the following minute. Whether the strike-mark is on the Talon still, the Imperium has no way to verify.

I marked his armour. The Emperor will mark his soul.

— Helbrecht, attributed post-Cadia

The Standing Question

Whether the Black Sword retains, in any meaningful sense, an imprint of Sigismund — whether the office's first holder still influences the sword's behaviour through ten thousand years of continuous custody — is a question the Black Templars have never asked aloud and have never answered. The Sword Brethren note, in their private maintenance logs, that the sword's balance is not the balance the Mechanicus' analysis says it should have. The discrepancy is small. The discrepancy has not changed across the recorded Marshals.

The Reclusiam's Chaplains observe that the High Marshal's voice, in formal engagement-prayer, occasionally settles into a cadence the Templar pronunciation guides associate with archaic Imperial Gothic — specifically, the Gothic of late M31. The Chaplains do not connect this observation to the sword in any formal record. They do not, in private, deny the connection either. The sword has been in continuous service since 022.M31. It has been wielded by twenty-four men. The Chapter's working assumption is that it is wielded by one continuing tradition, and that the tradition is older than any current Brother's memory.