Origins

After the resurrection of Roboute Guilliman, the release of the Primaris Project, and the Indomitus Crusade, many chapters were created, including some from previously unused gene-lines like the Space Wolves and Salamanders. The Crusaders of the Crucible are one such. Founded near Corinthe, they were intended to protect its sector from Tyranids, Chaos erupting from the Maledictum, and the hostile segments of the Eldar, particularly Craftworld Alaitoc.

Most of those men who became the Crusaders of the Crucible were from early in the Imperium, not long after the Great Crusade, when the Imperial Truth still held much sway, and their progenitors, the Salamanders, have a strong atheic spiritual tradition, the Promethean Cult, which was knowledge passed to them in their time among the Unnumbered Sons. Despite this, the chapter are fervent adherents of the Imperial Cult. Saint Celestine, the greatest of Living Saints, saved the lives of several veterans, future officers of the Crusaders, and each saw a personal vision from the Emperor the next time they rested. When, some months later, they were assembled into the initial command staff of the new chapter, they recognized in each other that spark of faith and divine inspiration, and despite Lord Commander Guilliman's known wishes inculcated in their men and their hypno-indoctrination process faith in the God-Emperor.

Homeworld

The Crusaders have been a fleet-based chapter since their formation, constantly on crusade and moving from place to place, fighting foul xenos and other enemies of the Emperor. They range less widely than their honored cousins of the Black Templars, though, and cover only a dozen sectors, returning to most worlds within them roughly once per decade. Accordingly, they have a number of fortified recruiting outposts with a permanent serf staff, forges and chapels, and the capacity to store geneseed and house potential recruits. There are four Hive Worlds in their patrol radius, six Feral Worlds (two of them Death Worlds), and two Medieval Worlds; each contributes significant recruits, as do a Mining World and a Knight World. Each of these fourteen corresponds to one of their seven companies, and each company manages its recruiting pipeline separately. Notable heroes from their homeworlds are taught to the recruits, and several are considered auspicious origins for particular specialties, e.g. the Knight World, Ratcheth Beta, is considered an ideal place to find future Techmarines, and Sykitat, one of the Feral Worlds, is considered to produce excellent Scouts and Scout Sergeants.

Combat Doctrine

The forge culture of the chapter is much like their progenitors, and so they make heavy use of thunder hammers, flamers, and less commonly melta and grav-guns. Their zeal for the fight also makes them frequently charge into close quarters, laying about with their hammers. These produce a strong overall tendency to close-range fighting, whether short-range bombardment with flamers, grav, and melta, or direct melee with hammer and mace.

Strategically, their preferred tactic, where viable, is "hammer and anvil"; either surprise attack, or harry the enemy with scouts and artillery, to put them into a position where they cannot retreat or evade effectively, then hit with massive force. They are perfectly comfortable attacking an enemy's strong points with this maneuver, and have had significant success with doing so, though using it against fortifications has rarely been successful and so is largely avoided. Against fortifications, drop pod bombardment inside the fortified line, primarily Deathstorm servitor-gun pods and Lucius dreadnought pods, is used to force the enemy to engage on unprepared ground, followed by an assault on the fortifications, which will still be a hammer and anvil attack if practical but is most often a more conventional assault.

Organization

The Crusaders have seven companies, which are all significantly over-strength, with most having between 150 and 200 brothers including scouts who have started implantation. Each company has at least one battle barge and a handful strike cruisers, but they range widely; Fourth Company ("Skyburners"), has four barges but only four cruisers, while Seventh Company (the "Emperor's Gaze") has only one barge, but over fifty cruisers. The rest are in between, most with either two barges or one large one, and around a dozen cruisers. The Chapter Master's flagship, the Burning Light, is the First Company's primary battle-barge. Each company usually deploys independently of the others, and is self-sufficient, with veterans, scouts, vanguard, and specialists of each type.

The mix of specialists, though, varies between companies and across time, and particularly so for chaplains and librarians. By convention, the Chief Librarian is a member of the Second Company, the Master of Sanctity in the Fifth, the Chief Apothecary in the Seventh, and the Master of the Forge part of the First. Because of the importance of craftsmanship and forge-craft, every company has a high-ranking Techmarine second only to the company's captain in authority, known as a Forgewright, who presides over the company motor pool and other armaments, as well as judging masterworks for potential Craftmarshals. In a nod to the battle/reserve company divisions prescribed by the Codex, Third Company (the "Purifying Flames") has a higher concentration of Devastator squads, Second Company (the "Emperor's Anvil") has more Assault squads, and Seventh has more Vanguards. Fourth and Sixth ("Wildfire") Companies have a higher concentration of Tactical squads, with higher numbers of aircraft and land speeders and tanks and bikes, respectively. First ("Fire-Chosen") and Fifth ("Eradicators") have no organizational preference, though the First is most prestigious and so has more Craftsmarshals than other companies. About half of captains have spent a decade in the First at some point before receiving the promotion.

Within the companies, squads are split among Tactical, Assault, Devastator, and Vanguard, as usual for a Primaris chapter. However, Devastator squads are mixed with Scouts, who learn some of the ways of long-range combat while they are not equipped to engage in close quarters as their training and instincts push them to do. When the black carapace has taken root properly, they transfer to Vanguard operations for a brief time, and when they are satisfied they have learned it well enough and their Forgewright is satisfied they have demonstrated their skill at the forge by creating a weapon - usually a thunder hammer - and claiming a life with it, they are promoted to Brother-Smith and transferred to a Tactical squad. They then cycle through Assault, vehicles training, and back to Devastator squads, before being considered a fully-trained Knight-Maker. Veterans are called Craftmarshals, and being recognized for the title requires the creation of a masterfully-worked weapon or armor. Most marines stay in one company for their lifetime, but Knight-Makers and Craftmarshals can be transferred as needed, when the companies meet.

Beliefs

The Crusaders leadership have followed the Imperial Faith since the chapter's inception, and most of the battle-brothers followed them in fairly short order. It has served them well in their clashes with xenos and Chaos, shielding them from psychic interference and sorcerous taint. They believe the Emperor also guides their hands while they work in their forges, and they may be right; masterworks from the chapter's hands show a markedly elevated rate of crafts possessing anomalously high effectiveness in ways that cannot be adequately explained by their material composition or construction.

The personal visions of the chapter's founders have led them to also promote the belief that they are the chosen of the Emperor, meant for greatness and instruments of His will above and beyond His other Angels of Death. They therefore are a very proud group, disdaining stealth and bombardment in favor of frontal assaults which demonstrate that fated doom has come for the foe, and often refusing to retreat even if defeat appears certain. This is particularly true when fighting xenos, Eldar most of all; their war with Craftworld Alaitoc has had hot and cold periods in the century since their founding, but the largest gap between battles has been 3.2 standard years.

They retain the Promethean Cult's emphasis on patience, determination, and self-reliance, and the reverence for the forge, hammer, and flame. But they lack the emphasis on self-sacrifice, and the humility, of their parent chapter, and do not think much of the common mass of humanity. Accordingly, the Salamanders do not give them significant respect or aid, and they are rumored to be considering "disowning" the Crusaders as not true sons of Vulkan. For their part, the Crusaders respect their elders of the Salamanders, but believe that their humility and kindness makes them inferior instruments of the Emperor's will, and that their perception of Vulkan's will, being contrary to the Emperor's, must therefore be faulty.

In the fourfold tenet of hatred, "Purge the heretic. Beware the psyker. Excise the mutant. Abhor the alien.", the last is emphasized. Opinions vary on the importance of the other three, but given their large deviation from the human (and even astartes) norm, tolerance for mutants is given much more readily than is the habit of the common folk of the Imperium. The most contentious is the opinion of psykers; the chapter Librarius is small despite its size, and some companies, particularly the Fifth (sometimes called the Chaplain's Fifth, for its traditional inclusion of the Master of Sanctity and a high concentration of the chaplaincy), resist including any librarians in their number at all.

Geneseed

Without Nocturne's radiation, the Crusaders of the Crucible do not share the distinctive gray-black skin of the Salamanders, though they share the mutation which gives rise to it. Instead, their skin is mottled and patchy, similar to vitiligo, but with the soft pink and chocolate brown mixed with gray, off-white, and bluish-black. They retain an unusually high resistance to radiation, and the bright red eyes which seem to glow with internal light. No novel mutation has been noted.

Battlecry

"The Emperor's Forge! Refine the worthy! Cremate the rest!"

Crunch

Use the rules for a Salamanders successor chapter as described in the Salamanders Detachment Rules, including the Promethean Cult rule, but choose Warlord Traits from the BLACK TEMPLARS list and Chaplain Litanies from the Litanies of the Devout. CRUSADERS OF THE CRUCIBLE cannot use the Born Protectors, Despite the Odds, Exemplar of the Promethean Creed, Trust of Prometheus, or Vengeance for Isstvan V Stratagems, but can use the Devout Push and The Emperor's Will Stratagems, replacing the BLACK TEMPLARS keyword with CRUSADERS OF THE CRUCIBLE. They also gain this Stratagem (a nerfed version of Abhor the Witch):

[1CP/2CP] Hammer of Witches

Crusaders of the Crucible Stratagem

The chaplains of the Crusaders focus their brother's holy hatred into a bulwark against psychic assaults.

Use this Stratagem in your opponent’s Psychic phase, when an enemy PSYKER model manifests a psychic power within 24" of any CRUSADERS OF THE CRUCIBLE CHAPLAIN units from your army, if you have not made a Deny the Witch attempt against that power. Roll one D6; on a 4 that psychic power is resisted. For 2CP, if your army contains no PSYKER units, you may use this with any CRUSADERS OF THE CRUCIBLE unit, not just CHAPLAINs.