Daggers History

The Blue Daggers: A Loyalist Space Marine Chapter, founded in an unnamed Founding, M41.525 from Novamarine mixed stock.  Largely Codex-compliant in general modus operandi and formation, save for their anomalous 9th and 10th companies.  The Chapter owns 63 Terminator suits, divided between Apothecaries, Chaplains, First Company Veterans, Techmarines, and Librarians.  30 Techmarines, 14 Apothecaries, 11 Librarians, 13 Chaplains, 18-man Council of Masters, 19 Dreadnoughts.  Honor Guards are of average size and gear, though they have no psykers nor Terminators.

Company Captains never have an Honor Guard, and instead integrate their command teams directly into their Squads.  For the 2nd through 8th companies, this consists of the Company Captain, the Honored Brother-Lieutenant who seconds him, the Venerated Senior Sergeant who seconds him in turn and distributes orders to each Sergeant, the Company Champion, the Company Standard Bearer, and five troops equipped with whatever combination of combi-weapons and blades they desire. Each of these could easily have been a Sergeant in their own right in another squad.  No Master’s Honor Guard, however, is larger than six Brothers plus the man they protect, to ensure that the Chapter is not too large to maintain Codex compliance.  In practice, this is meaningless, since the Chapter is already far larger than the Codex dictates.

Among the Daggers, there are protocols that are universal, and some which are constrained to the practice of a single Company or even Squad.  The Daggers may not, for instance, collect trophy weapons from fallen foes for their use.  The Blue Daggers practice a strict and unyielding habit of never collecting trophies in battle, under any circumstances.  Partially installed to prevent competitions between brothers, this also cuts down on the risk of a brother being tainted by Chaos.  This is also for the mollification of the Mechanicum, without whom the Daggers would be all but helpless after a costly battle.

The Daggers lack several of the traditional Master roles of the more Codex-dependent Chapters, such as a Master of Signal, Lord Victualer, and Master of the Watch.  Their tasks are delegated instead to Company Captains or to their unique Master titles.

Historically, the Blue Daggers are the byproduct of a unique Founding circumstance, one over which they had precious little control.  In M41.400, the Cloudburst Sector was abruptly attacked by a force of technologically powerful, extragalactic aliens, known only by the common phrase found in their cogitators: Glasians.  The aliens savaged three systems in the sector without mercy, hesitation, or clear objectives.  Although a combined force of Novamarines, Black Templars, Deathwatch, and Imperial Navy forces successfully drove off the monsters and blew up their massive flagship, Cloudburst was left reeling.  The presence of this race of dangerous aliens had no precedent, and worse yet, the aliens were obviously tainted by Chaos somehow, without exception.
An emergency conclave of the Ordos Malleus and Xenos on the mighty Watch Fortress Pykman was held, while Watch Fortress Dascomb recovered from the damage done to it by the Glasians.  After much deliberation, multiple consultations of the Tarot, and extensive testimony from the Adeptus Mechanicus, an agreement coalesced.  A force of one hundred twenty Novamarines and Angels of Fury from nearby sectors would remain in the Cloudburst Sector to defend it from further incursion.  Led by brilliant tactician Brother-Lieutenant Augustus Alderoster, this force of Primogenoitors would be withdrawn in one hundred years if no sign of more Glasians emerged.  The detachment was officially dubbed Exigent Task Unit Cloudburst, and settled into the Septiim system under strict Inquisitorial observation.  The Task Unit formally began their mission in M41.425.
The force of Novamarines worked tirelessly to fortify a base on an abandoned Mechanicus asteroid mine, and dug in.  Periodically, members of the detachment joined the Deathwatch to hone their skills, and the Brothers harvested their own geneseed as all Marines do.
After seventy five years of total inaction by either the Glasians or their dark patron in the sector, the Inquisition was growing impatient.  Though the Task Unit had stayed flawlessly loyal and vigilant, and had collected their own geneseeds with commendable punctuality (actually sending some back to Honorium when the Chapter needed it to replace the missing company), the Task Unit had effectively nothing to do.
The Inquisition’s Ordo Xenos was debating with the Ordo Malleus in the Conclave Cloudburst about shortening their mission when the panicked Astropathic signals arrived.  Four systems were under siege this time, by more Glasians than before.  The Inquisition scrambled its assets, aided by the Basilikon Astra and Navy.  This time, to their horror, they faced three huge colony ships, and one even larger one that seemed to command the others.  The Daggers’ asteroid base was destroyed along with ten Marines when the larger colony ship attacked them directly.  The Septiim system was besieged for almost a year, while the agri-world of Chlorit was destroyed by the activation of a Glasian FTL drive.
When the aliens were finally beaten at a staggering cost to the sector, the stark truth came clear: the invasion had occurred precisely one hundred years after the first, and had been ten percent larger than the previous.  Their forces had been more widely spread, but the sequential increase was impossible to miss.  Consultations of the Tarot and careful psy-autopsies of Glasian leaders pointed to the same result: the sector was being used as a test bed by the wicked Tzeentch.
The Ordo Malleus and Ordo Xenos debated for years.  Barely-civil arguments over jurisdiction, policy, and Imperial survival raged for months at a time in the subterranean audience halls of the Cloudburst Palace.  Finally, in M41.429, a decision was tentatively reached.  The Lord Inquisitor Cloudburst at the time, a nearly five hundred year old psychic of the Ordo Hereticus, signed and manhandled the other Ordos into signing a binding Conclave Assent to treat the alien incursions as the jurisdiction of the Ordo Xenos.  He added a caveat that jurisdiction over repelling the beasts would default to the Ordo Malleus if anything changed in the circumstances of the invasions, formally titled the Glasian Migrations.
Meanwhile, the Novamarines were confronted with a new problem.  While a great, bloody victory over millions of evil aliens was, obviously, a triumph for the ancient Chapter, they could hardly be expected to hold an indefinite depletion of one tenth of their ranks.  Furthermore, Cloudburst was not secure by any means, they pointed out to their Inquisitorial allies.  Honorium was not in Cloudburst; the Chapter had no formal ties there.  Moreover, Rogue Traders and Explorators were constantly finding new threats, treasures, and colony opportunities in the Cloudburst Circuit – who was to say that only the Glasians and Free Corsair Collective would threaten Cloudburst in the future?
When the Lord Inquisitor Cloudburst heard these arguments, inspiration struck.  After some more consultation with the Novamarines, he declared that the detachment of Successors in Cloudburst would be established as the core of a completely new Chapter.  This Special Exceptions Founding, one with no number, would formally establish the Exigent Task Unit Cloudburst as a true, equal Chapter of Space Marines, and would be headquartered in the only system the Glasians had hit twice: Septiim.
Surprised by the generosity and prestige of this pronouncement, but delighted at the chance, the Novamarines and Angels of Fury accepted at once, and began the logistical processes of giving a tenth of their fleet and equipment to their kin.  The newly-minted Blue Daggers put down roots in another, far larger asteroid base, one with room for thousands of Marines and thousands more support personnel and serfs.  Declaring the pre-Apostasy Battle Barge Sharp Edge their new command ship, and formally elevating Alderoster to Chapter Master, the Blue Daggers took back the hundreds of geneseeds they had sent the Novamarines and began rapidly expanding their ranks.
Since then, there have been new invasions of Glasians in M41.600, 700, 800, and 900.  Each is a cumulative 10% larger than the previous, and each time, the Daggers have smote them into the ground, alongside their allies in other branches of the Imperium.  Had things continued to improve for the rest of the galaxy, the Daggers may well have outlasted the Glasians.
Things have not improved for the rest of the galaxy.
Between the arrival of the Tyranids, the Necron Reawakening, the start of hundreds of catastrophic Waaaghs, heresies and rebellions unnumbered, Hrud migrations, and the explosive expansion of the Dark Eldar, the Imperium is now so strained that barely any help can be spared for Cloudburst.  Thousands of other Crusades and Wars of Faith or Reclamation drain the Imperium’s coffers and garrisons.  The stirrings of Abbadon the Despoiler in the depths of the Eye are not helping, nor is the shrinking area of the Astronomican.
The Daggers do not yet stand alone, but that may change.  The Age of Ending is upon mankind.