Editing Deathwing (section)

==Origin==
[[File:SHDeathwing.jpg|left|thumbnail|The Deathwing, back when they had that whole Native American schtick going on.]]

The Deathwing were originally the linebreaker troops and veterans, capable of shattering enemy formations and creating openings for other units to exploit. They were required to go toe to toe with the enemy and were most often elite units called upon to act as bodyguards for senior officers. As the [[Horus Heresy]] progressed, the Wing gained prominence as the officers the bodyguards were protecting died off, leaving the Deathwing veterans to get thrust into command roles.

The Deathwing were said to excel in special operations alongside other legion units, especially working in support of the larger Stormwing; getting right up close to the foe and disrupting the enemies plans and formations. They excelled at heavy assault and teleportation strikes, as they liked to get right into the face of the enemy and pummel them into the ground.

Like the Ravenwing, the Deathwing have a different colour scheme from the rest of the Dark Angels, wearing bone white [[Terminator Armour]]. Originally, members of the Deathwing could only bear white armour if they had taken a blow intended for another and survived the encounter. The new colour scheme recognising their selfless devotion. Otherwise they retained the black and white colour scheme of the Dark Angels Legion. But after the break up of the legion into Chapters, all members of the Deathwing wear white, the idea possibly being that they take the 'blow' of knowing the forbidden history for the rest of the chapter.

According to apocryphal chapter legend, a group of Terminators under Captain Ezekiel (birth name Cloud Runner, no relation to the [[Ezekiel|Chief Librarian]]) returned to the Dark Angels ancient recruiting world of Plains World to find that the planet had been infiltrated by [[genestealer]]s. Rather than subject the planet to [[Exterminatus]], at the urging of Librarian Lucian (real name Two Heads Talking), the Terminators, all natives of Plains World, decided to fight off the genestealers and save the still uncorrupted native humans. They proceeded to undergo Plains World's death ritual, where warriors would paint themselves in ashes, but since they didn't have that, they repainted their armour white. The warriors succeeded in eradicating the genestealer's cult at the cost of everybody but Captain Ezekiel and when the Dark Angels later returned to reclaimed the suits of armor if not their bearers, they henceforth kept the suits of the First Company painted white in memory of their battle-brothers glorious final battle.
 
This story was written way back in early 2nd edition, and doesn't really gel with current 40k canon [[DERP|(especially the parts where 300-year-old veterans are worried about dying of old age or the concept of retirement)]]. The story is kept in the Dark Angels lore out of tradition, but modern writers ''heavily'' imply that it's a metaphorical tall-tale made up by the Inner Circle. Partly as an easy justification for outsiders and neophytes, but also as a mean to prepare the Dark Angels for eventually learning about the Fallen (warriors long gone from their homeworld returning to find outside influences corrupting it bears more than a little similarity to [[Lion El'Jonson]] coming back from the [[Horus Heresy]] to find [[Luther]] had fallen to [[Chaos]]). Lore written in 2020 confirms the story is just a folktale, and Deathwing have been bone-white since the Great Crusade.