Editing Black Templars (section)

==On Psykers==
{{topquote|WHAT HAVE THE PSYKERS EVER DONE FOR US?!"<br>"Navigation."<br>"What?"<br>"...The navigators are psykers."<br>"Oh, yeah, that's true."<br>"And the astropaths."<br>"Yes, them as well. Warp travel and communications, I'll grant the psykers are pretty good at that."<br>"And the Grey Knights."<br>"WELL OF COURSE the Grey Knights. We'd be in a right mess without them now wouldn't we. But apart from the navigators, astropaths, and grey knights, WHAT HAVE THE PSYKERS EVER DONE FOR US?!|Brother Regulus addressing his squad}}

For most of their history the Black Templars didn't have any Librarians. This was generally thought as a pretty simple fact, they hate all forms of witches. They even have a special rule call "Abhor the Witch". That was until 6th edition when it was more explicitly stated that they had no real compunction against other librarians from other chapters, Astropaths and Navigators, since they were the only people who knew how to drive the massive Crusading fleets (pure unadulterated HOLY RAGE!! can't steer a ship through the Warp after all). Of course, this was always true since the BT always accepted those psykers that the Emperor himself had sanctioned (although they watched them closely), which includes Astropaths, Navigators and (surprise, surprise) the Grey Knights. Which invalidates the logic of the following paragraph.

According to the GW apologists, the major difference between their codex and 6E is their opinion on other psykers: In previous works, it was made pretty clear that they wouldn't suffer the witch no matter who they were (except for the aforementioned groups the Emperor sanctioned personally), and as such literally couldn't ally with any other psyker-using force except for the Grey Knights (and even then, it was AoC (Note: "AoC" is a 6th Ed construct)). Come the 6E Codex however, suddenly all their hatred for every psyker was scaled back to merely just being a hatred to all enemy psykers. Some may call this fluff-rape and all that in their neckbearded [[RAGE]], but others realize that setting up tons of restrictions would ultimately serve to cripple the Templars and ultimately just kept things easier by just generalizing it, to say nothing of the fact that the Emperor himself was a psyker. Not to mention the whole organization of sanctioned psykers used by the Imperium. Those guys were permitted to operate by...uh...someone, right? If it was the Imperial Senate, then only the Captain-General of the Custodes speaks with the Emperor's voice. If it was literally anyone else with that kind of authority then it would be someone even closer to the Emperor in authority than merely his voice. So, the general hatred of psykers just isn't feasible anyway.

So it was changed. The Black Templars hatred is only towards alien and rogue psykers and that they have great respect for the ones in the fleet (and don't go bugfuck nuts, which is no mean feat for a mortal psyker). So why no Librarians? There are three <s>theories</s> hypothesis in the codex:

*They still enforce the Edict of Nikaea. Considered most likely, given their [[Crunch|special rule]] "Abhor the Witch!"
*A gene-seed defect.
*They lost them during The Howling.

A small part of it likely has to do with their recruiting process. Since they recruit from the worlds they Crusade on, and they spend a decent amount of time purging renegade psykers, there probably aren't any psykers left for them to recruit and they're not likely to recruit Psykers found by somebody else. It still doesn't explain why they've never had a recorded incident of latent Psykers awakening once they've been recruited. <strike>They kill any newly awakened Psyker, then pretend he never existed until everyone forgets him.</strike>

Rather hilariously, the Black Templars are not even certain why they don't have Librarians; because the Librarius usually maintains the records of the chapter, the Templars have allowed their understanding of history to fall into decay. For the time being, they have come to the conclusion that the loss of the Librarius is simply part of the Emperor's grand design, and should he see fit to bless them with Librarians again they would gladly use them.

Given how the Warp (and 40K in general) works as a genuine Clap Your Hands If You Believe setting, it could be that the Black Templar's own hatred of psykers causes any psykers or latent psykers they didn't realize were such to either become non-psykers or simply inactive/latent and remain that way. Rogal Dorn rejected Chaos so strongly that basic daemons were incapable of existing in his presence. So, it wouldn't be surprising if the Templar's hatred does prevent psychic manifestation.

To add to all the confusion above, the newest Codex says that the Black Templars flat out hate all psykers, and treat their navigators and Astropaths as little more than dignified slaves, throwing another wrench into the whole fucking situation. Especially since the Navigator Houses wouldn't tolerate that and astropaths contain a piece of the Emperor's own will/soul and are sanctioned by him personally. It's probably Games Workshop messing around purely for shits and giggles.