Ultramarines army rules, detachment abilities, stratagems and lore for Warhammer 40k, with links to the full unit datasheet table.
The Ultramarines are considered one of the strongest and most honoured of all the Space Marine Chapters in the Imperium of Man, and were responsible for almost single-handedly holding the Imperium together after the Horus Heresy.
Highly-disciplined and courageous warriors, the Ultramarines have remained true to the teachings of Primarch Roboute Guilliman for 10,000 standard years. The Ultramarines were originally the XIII Space Marine Legion before the reforms that initiated the Second Founding and reshaped the Imperium after the Heresy in the Time of Rebirth on the orders of Guilliman himself as the Lord Commander of the Imperium and Imperial Regent.
The name "Ultramarines" is a nod to the Chapter's galactic region of origin, its standing amongst the other Space Marine Chapters and their role as the source for the gene-seed of more Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes than any of the other former First Founding Legions combined.
The culture of the Ultramarines is loosely themed upon the culture of Old Earth's ancient Roman Empire, as exemplified in their Astartes' High Gothic names and their strict adherence to the Codex Astartes, as well as the society of their homeworld of Macragge and the Chapter's method of recruitment.
The Ultramarines directly rule the sub-sector of space in the Segmentum Ultima of the galactic east known as Ultramar as a fief of the Imperium and their Chapter Master is also considered the Lord of Macragge and the Master of Ultramar.
Of all the thousand and more Space Marine Chapters in the Imperium, it is the blue-clad Ultramarines that, in the mind of the countless billions of the Emperor's subjects, personify everything that the Adeptus Astartes stands for. The Ultramarines and their many Successor Chapters have stood at the very forefront of the war against the Traitor, the alien, and the Daemon since the very foundation of the Imperium. Across the domains of the Emperor, the Ultramarines are celebrated as heroic, virtuous, and noble defenders of Humanity, their deeds recorded in devotional works the length and breadth of the galaxy.
Even amongst the Space Marine Chapters themselves, the Ultramarines occupy a position of special honour. The gene-seed from which the original Ultramarines Legion was founded is considered the purest that remains, and it is estimated that some two-thirds of Chapters across the galaxy share their inheritance, being either direct successors or created from tithed Ultramarines genetic material. This shared inheritance often ensures that when the Ultramarines go to war, they are supported by many other Chapters, and that when Space Marine commanders gather to consider common strategy, the counsel of the Ultramarines is greatly valued.
Often, the presence of even a small number of Ultramarines units in a larger military undertaking will ensure the participation of many more Chapters, so highly are the sons of Roboute Guilliman held in their brothers' esteem.
When Hive Fleet Behemoth struck the Eastern Fringe, it was the Ultramarines Chapter that turned the tide, even at the cost of the Chapter's entire Veteran 1 Company. At the Chapter homeworld of Macragge, one of the largest battles seen in centuries was fought, with the Ultramarines, led by their master Marneus Calgar, at the very forefront. In addition to the great honour won by the Chapter in that titanic struggle, the Ultramarines gained invaluable experience in fighting these vile xenos, which they have passed on, often via service in the Deathwatch, to many other Chapters.
When the Horus Heresy erupted, the Ultramarines were long prevented from defending the Throneworld by the great Ruinstorm conjured by the Word Bearers during the Battle of Calth that cut the galaxy in half for long years. By the time the Ruinstorm dissipated and the Ultramarines could move to reinforce Terra, the Warmaster Horus' Siege of Terra was already underway.
At the outset of the cataclysmic civil war created by the treachery of Horus and the machinations of the dark powers of the Warp, the XIII Legion, the Ultramarines, stood as one of the single, most powerful military forces in the Imperium.
With an active fighting strength somewhere in the region of a quarter of a million Legiones Astartes, a sector-spanning domain under their overlordship and an arguably unparalleled structure for the supply and training of initiates -- allowing it to withstand losses that would potentially cripple other Legions -- it was this very strength that would make it a prime target for the Traitors' conspiracy.
It would be at Calth that this blow would fall. But while the legend of the lapis-blue hosts of Ultramar and the strategic genius of its Primarch Roboute Guilliman were already widely promulgated by the Iterators and Remembrancers of the Great Crusade, the path by which it arrived at this apotheosis of power was not so well known and in some cases, the facts actively kept secret.
The complexities of the XIII Legion's past and the sometimes divisive and even antagonistic relationship the Ultramarines had with several of their fellow Legions was also concealed. It would be this hidden history that was to bear bitter fruit at the Battle of Calth and cast its shadow on all the wars that were to follow.
The XIII Legion's origin lay, as with their fellows, on Terra and the closing years of the Unification Wars. Extant records from this time show the XIII Legion's "Alpha" intake -- the test bed raising of several thousand warriors by which its gene-seed's stability and adaptability was judged -- was passed firmly within acceptable parameters and with no singular or notable physical mutation beyond the expected pattern, with full functionality of implanted organs to projected specifications.
Psycho-organically, initiates were noted to display increased aggression, as was expected, but also a marked tendency towards cohesion and the adoption of hierarchy, alongside an almost pathological dedication to the achievement of an assigned goal, particularly when compared against the psychological profiles of certain other alpha samples such as those of the XII and V Legions (later known as the World Eaters and White Scars, respectively), who demonstrated more markedly heightened individualistic and fractious tendencies post-implantation.
Although much of what would then transpire for the XIII Legion's very early expansion past its test stage has been occluded by layers of the unbreachable secrecy inherent in much of the Emperor's ancient gene-work, and records lost in the destruction caused on Terra by the great siege of the Imperial Palace during the Siege of Terra, certain facts can still be pieced together and a hypothesis formed.
In terms of recruitment, evidence is apparent for a net being cast across Terra for initiates for the XIII, with intake from areas as diverse as the sub-equatorial maglev clans of Panpocro, the war families of the Saragon Enclave, the proud Midafrik Hive Oligarchy and, most latterly, the anthropophagic tribes of the Caucasus Wastes.
As varied in culture and origin as these groups were, they all had one factor in common: their violent and often bitter resistance to the later stages of Unification, a resistance broken ultimately in each case not by negotiated surrender but near-annihilation, with, in some situations, little remaining save interned refugees and orphaned populations left by the savage conflicts which had brought these peoples to heel.
From its earliest incarnations, the XIII Legion had remained true to the strictures of the Principia Bellicosa, as laid down by the Emperor and His advisors at the beginning of the Great Crusade. The warriors of the Legion were organised into standardised companies of approximately a thousand warriors, then into chapters, each of ten companies.
Unlike many of their brother Space Marine Legions, they made little attempt to re-codify the structure or vary the size of individual units. Instead, the War-born enshrined the basic strictures of this system as an honoured tradition of the Legion, one that was to see little modification even in its later years after the rediscovery of Roboute Guilliman, who expanded and elaborated on this structure, seeing in it great virtue, rather than replacing it.
Roboute Guilliman also expanded on the XIII Legion's practice of observing how others fared in battle and adopting modified versions of their comrade Legions' tactics where efficacious. This spoke to Guilliman's own predilection for analysis and observation, and in this case what the primarch saw, he studied with a relentless precision, always seeking to distil and improve upon success and exceed the originator's accomplishments by the application of his intelligence and the diligence of his Legion. Such improvement was something he always believed a possibility, an attitude which at times brought the ire of some of Guilliman's peers.
The operational doctrines of the XIII Legion favoured tactical diversity and the application of overwhelming force. As a reflection of this, the Legion maintained relatively few tactically specialised companies, instead choosing to spread those units which maintained large stocks of non-standard equipment and munitions evenly throughout the various companies of the Legion.
It was intended that every Ultramarines company would be individually capable of meeting the enemies of Mankind on any terrain and in any theatre of war with equal ability and emerge victorious, magnifying this power in combination with the Legion's other chapters almost geometrically. To this end, each chapter featured a proportionate mix of tactical and assault units, armour and artillery as well as gunships and transports.
With the sub-division of the massed ranks of the XIII Legion that occurred in the later years of the Great Crusade, reforming it into more individual crusade expeditionary fleets than any other single Legion, the value of the doctrine was quickly re-established and built upon. The Legion attempted to standardise much of its equipment base and supplement it where needed with local patterns, which if not the most potent or advanced of their type required lesser resources to mass-produce, in order to optimally meet the ever-expanding needs of its warriors. This factor itself would have great impact on the latter day development of Space Marine forces beyond the wars of the Horus Heresy.
While this doctrine of structured adaptability was to become deeply ingrained within many of the Legion's chapters, there were some notable deviations from this pattern. Some few individual chapters, through long-held preferences or some quirk of supply, maintained notable strengths of non-standard equipment or personnel.
The Ultramarines 4th and 22nd Chapters are the most noteworthy example of this, with the 4th, known within the Legion as the "Aurorans", operating roughly five times as many armoured vehicles as a standard chapter, while the 22nd, the so-called "Nemesis" chapter -- long a hold-out of the XIII Legion's Terran-born contingents -- maintained large numbers of Space Marines equipped as Destroyer units, and was one of the few Ultramarines formations to routinely be deployed especially to Exterminatus operations by the Legion.
After the Horus Heresy, the Space Marine Legions were broken up into small fighting forces called "Chapters." Roboute Guilliman laid down the organisational dictates that would become a part of every Space Marine Chapter of the reformed Adeptus Astartes from then on. Though some Chapters would later stray from the precise structure laid out in Guilliman's Codex Astartes, most Astartes Chapters remain faithful to its teachings.
The Ultramarines Chapter of the 41st Millennium follows the teachings of their primarch and the Codex with a religious dedication. They follow the organisational format laid out during the Second Founding with strict devotion, only deviating from their primarch's teachings when the situation leaves them no other choice (such as with the creation of the Tyrannic War Veterans).
During the incursion of Hive Fleet Behemoth, the Ultramarines elite 1st Company of Veterans was utterly wiped out in a heroic last stand beneath the northern polar fortress of Macragge. The 1st Company contained the Chapter's finest warriors who were equipped with Terminator Armour, a precious and ever-dwindling resource.
Such losses of warriors and materiel are not easily replaced. As the Ultramarines were located in the galactic east, which saw successive assaults from Tyranid hive fleets, the experiences that made Veterans of their warriors inevitably came from fighting those foul xenos.
Under the personal direction of Chaplain Ortan Cassius, a new elite, the Tyrannic War Veterans, emerged. These new elite squads were a departure for the Ultramarines, a Chapter for whom such specialisation was almost unheard of. But two factors led to their formation: first, the necessity of having a full-strength Veteran company available and second, the Chapter's rabid hatred for the Tyranids.
Were the graven statues in the Hall of Heroes on Terra to come to life and step from their gilded podia, they would scarcely represent a greater or more noble gathering of exemplars than that which leads the Ultramarines. Even setting aside the fact that the Chapter for a time in the Era Indomitus boasted the Imperium's only known living primarch, who also bears the rank of Lord Commander of the Imperium and Imperial Regent, the calibre of the individuals who make up the Ultramarines Chapter Command is breathtaking.
Chapter Master and Lord Macragge Marneus Calgar had ruled for more than two Terran centuries even before Roboute Guilliman's return, and with his gene-sire's blessing he continues to do so with ever greater wisdom and martial magnificence.
Below Guilliman and Calgar stand a magnificent gathering of Imperial heroes; the honour guard of the Ultramarines. Handpicked from amongst the most veteran and deadly warriors of the Chapter, each warrior has a personal roll of honour stretching back over dozens of magnificent and blood-drenched conflicts. The axe-wielding warrior champions of the honour guard and the shield-bearing defenders of the Victrix Honour Guard stand ready to enforce their lord's every command, and to carry the vengeance of Ultramar out into the hostile stars.
Around these storied heroes orbits a veritable constellation of other august bodies and dedicated support personnel. The Armoury, the Apothecarion, the Librarius and the Reclusiam all branch off from the Chapter Command and aid in the overall rule of the Chapter's affairs.
Legions of Chapter serfs, acolytes, astropaths, lexographers, carto-divinators, historitors, logisticators and countless other ranks of mortal Human aides see to the day-to-day administration and coordination of the Chapter's affairs. Amongst the people of Macragge and across wider Ultramar, even the meanest of these individuals is greatly revered, and the Ultramarines themselves acknowledge their mortal servants' labours with gratitude and honour.
The Ultramarines recruit new Astartes from amongst the populations of all the worlds which comprise the Realm of Ultramar in the galaxy's Eastern Fringe. As the Ultramarines have long been the rulers of Ultramar, its local nobility considers having a son chosen to join the Chapter to be an honour without parallel.
Adolescent aspirants who wish to join the Ultramarines are generally expected to overcome one of two different types of Trials if they hope to be chosen to become neophytes.
First, the Ultramarines may expect their aspirants to pass what is known as an Exposure Trial within one of the more difficult environments to be found within the boundaries of Ultramar. Few worlds of the Imperium of Man are entirely free from adversity and these rare exceptions are either the holdings of wealthy mercantile combines or pleasure retreats for retired, high-level Imperial servants or the local sector nobility, entirely inaccessible to the vast bulk of Mankind.
Lore excerpt from Warhammer 40k Wiki on Fandom, available under CC BY-SA 3.0.