Chapter Organisation
The Celestial Lions count Rogal Dorn as their Primarch and proudly call themselves Sons of Dorn. Like other chapters founded on the Imperial Fist gene seed, they closely follow the Codex Astartes as outlined by Roboute Guilliman. Like several other chapters, the Celestial Lions use slightly different terminology when referring to elements of the chapter’s forces. For example, each squad is referred to as a Pride. The Companies are usually named after the company commander, for example their 5th company (before the events leading up to their near complete destruction during the 3rd war for Armageddon) was internally referred to as Hektor’s Company.
Scouts are commonly referred to as Cubs to represent their “juvenile” nature within the chapter. But this is limited to use within the chapter as a nickname rather than an official designation.
One notable difference between a Celestial Lion and most other marines is their armour. The differences are solely superficial and do not affect the performance of the marines. The marines of the Celestial Lions have slightly modified armour. Their backpacks have baroque lion heads on them instead of the standard vents on the sides. Terminators have a lion’s head on the opposite shoulder pad (as a stylised sculpture of the chapter symbol) to their Crux Terminatus.
So just like other Codex following chapters, the Celestial Lions consists of the following:
Each company consists of one hundred fighting marines, a command staff and support vehicles.
The Veteran 1st Company (made up of terminator and veteran squads)
The 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th companies are battle companies consisting of six tactical squads, two assault squads and two devastator squads
The 6th and 7th companies are the Tactical reserve companies, made up solely of tactical squads. The 6th is also trained in the use of bikes, while the 7th is trained in the use of land speeders.
The 8th company is a reserve company made up entirely of assault squads. The assault squads are often called upon to pilot the chapter’s land speeder and bike squadrons.
The 9th company is made up entirely of devastator squads.
Finally, the 10th company is the scout company.
Each marine within the chapter has a strong martial pride in their own abilities and works closely with their fellow marines. Marines will often be swapped out between squads to further the comradeship and strengthen the bonds between the squads to a point where each marine can essentially predict how the other members in his squad, and on a grander scheme, their company will react to any given situation.
The Lions will often share tales around a fire, like the tribes of their chapter planet, keeping that tradition in the Chapter long after they have transcended from being the humans they once were. This also helps further reinforce the bond and brothership between the warriors of the Chapter. They are renown for be compassionate, especially with regards to those with whom they’ve been charged with protecting. Unlike most chapters, the Lions value the lives of the humans of the Imperium. One might wonder if their gene-sire hadn’t been Vulkan in this behaviour which closely matches that of the Salamanders.
This is reinforced by near constant drilling and combat training. The chapter often sends it’s companies on training raids to small, remote pockets of xenos habitats, more often than not, some small ork settlement. This helps to keep the xenos populations low and provides the marines with live fire combat training.
Before the chapter’s devastation during the third war for Armageddon, the chapter master was Abongameli. Known for his fair and equal dealings with others within the Imperium and implicitly trusted by those that have worked with him in the past, Abongameli had a considerable amount of friends within the Imperium. He would often work closely with the Segmentum commanders to ensure the safety of the Imperium’s assets in the area near Armageddon. Unfortunately, Abongameli was killed early on in the fighting during the third war for Armageddon. His body was never found and rumours still persist that he was “disappeared” by the Inquisition due to his popularity in order to suppress any sympathetic assistance to the Celestial Lions during the ensuing debacle that saw over nine tenths of their chapter strength destroyed.