Captain Titus

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Making the Ultramarines awesome again.

"The Codex Astartes is a set of rules. They guide us, shape us as Ultramarines, teach us to place duty and honour above all. But how we live with those rules is the true test of a Space Marine. And you, have failed."

– Captain Titus to Leandros, showing Ward and his failures just how wrong they are

Captain Lieutenant Titus (demoted as of Space Marine II), first name generally assumed to be "Motherfucking", is the disgraced former Captain of the Ultramarines Second Company and the protagonist of the vidya Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. He is voiced by MARK MOTHERFUCKING STRONG!!!! in the first game and Clive Standen, aka Rollo of Normandy, in the sequel.

While his immediate fate after the first game is unknown, the trailer for Space Marine 2 confirms he's alive, has crossed the Rubicon Primaris, and is kicking ass again. He appears to have spent a formative amount of time with the Black Templars, seeing how he has his chainsword chained to his wrist and is ripping the heads off of tyranid warriors.

Space Marine I

When Forgeworld Graia was invaded by Warboss Grimskull and his Ork WAAAAGHH!!!, the Imperium, rather annoyed by this, in particular because of fear of losing some Warlord-class Titans, responded by sending the Ultramarines Second Company, led by Captain Titus. Titus, along with fellow Ultramarines Brother Leandros and Veteran Sergeant Sidonus, proceeded to aid the remaining Imperial Guardsmen, led by Second Lieutenant Miranda 'Mira' Nero.

After destroying a captured planetary defence cannon that was shooting down Imperial reinforcements ("Clever of the damned Orks", as Sidonus put it), and furthering the guardsmen's advance, Titus and his companions made their way to Manufactorum Ajakis, where they found an inquisitorial servo skull, which carried a holographic video recording. The recording shows Inquisitor Drogan asking for aid, along with safeguarding an experimental device if he were to die. The Ultramarines then made their way inside the Titan works where they found the Titan Invictus, intact but abandoned, and Drogan. Drogan explained that he needed to retrieve the power source of the experimental device from its chamber deep beneath the Manufactorum. They then assist Drogan in doing this, whilst also killing invading Orks and evading Grimskull himself.

As Titus obtained the power source, its instability made the entire room collapse. Titus, however, somehow survived and placed the power source into its canister. After escaping the sewers and reuniting with his comrades, they rendezvoused with Drogan in a ruined plaza. Drogan expressed surprise that Titus survived, since the power source was composed of Warp energy. Drogan then explains that during his time on Graia, he created a weapon known as the 'Psychic Scourge' in hopes of helping the Imperium's war against xenos, whilst also experimenting on Warp energy. The weapon's effect are described in audio logs as blowing up heads of selected Xenos (confirmed by testing on Orks, Eldar, Tyranids and even Tau).

Titus and friends fought their way to the Inquisitor's lab (both on foot and in Valkyries), then through it, to the Psychic Scourge's firing station (blowing up all the Inquisition servoturrets in the process), where they jammed the Power Source in and activated the device. Unfortunately, the Psychic Scourge opened a bunch of Chaos portals instead of killing the Orks like advertised. Well, the Warboss got jumped by Bloodletters, but still... Sorcerer Lord Nemeroth showed up and blasted the Ultramarines with psyker power, all while declaring Drogan a long-dead puppet possessed by a handy daemon. Titus resisted like a boss long enough for Grimskull to reappear and pull Nemeroth with him into the bowels of the facility. Titus then fought his way past Bloodletters, Chaos Havoc Marines, and even more Orks to meet up with Mira's guardsmen.

After duelling with Warboss Grimskull (yes, he survived free-fall wrestling a Sorcerer in Terminator Armour, because he was not finished with the Space Marine) and blowing up the big Ork's head with a plasma pistol (because the Space Marine was finished with him), Titus returned to the manufactorum to power up the Titan. After he put the Power Source inside the giant death machine, the Titan's cannon blew the fuck out of the Orbital Spire with the big Chaos portal on top, before Nemeroth could bring in his ships. Titus gave the Power Source to Sidonus, but then Nemeroth teleport-snuck up behind them and rapes Sidonus with lightning claws. This makes Titus rage harder than fa/tg/uys in a Matt Ward thread, but Nemeroth just grabs the Power Source and teleports away like the Chaos pussy he is.

Still brimming with rage, Titus jumped off the manufactorum, met up with some Blud Rehvens who were practising their Steel Rehn, and blasted his way across a bridge with a ton of Chaos Marines on it. Then he grabbed the same Thunderhawk he had jumped off and chased Nemeroth to the Orbital Spire (which was now floating somehow because Warp). Nemeroth tried to use the Power Source to turn into a daemon prince, but Titus just bum-rushed the Chaos pansy, tackled him off the Orbital Spire and beat him to death in free-fall. Using the manly power of his hands, Titus crushed both the Sorcerer Lord's face and the Power Source, which exploded, and then he landed inside a flying Thunderhawk.

The next morning Titus is getting some much needed shut-eye as the Ultramarines, Blood Ravens, and Mira's guardsmen clean up the last tiny remnants of Nemeroth's invaders. Unfortunately, Titus wakes up to find Leandros has called the Inquisition on Titus. Wait... didn't Leandros quote the Codex as Chaos allegiance causing Warp resistance, not the other way around? Logical fallacy aside, the Inquisitor clearly doesn't believe Leandros, but has to arrest Titus anyway, so Titus tells Leandros that Guilliman's Codex is just guidelines and tactics, and that Leandros fails as a Space Marine because he's a blind spiritual-liege-worshipping bitch who can't think for himself. Then Titus climbs aboard the Inquisition ship and flies off to get painfully investigated for Heresy save another day for the Emprah.

Ironically, in one of the Horus Heresy novels, Roboute Guilliman admits that while the Codex is an excellent work of strategic and tactical brilliance, it does not qualify as a replacement for the soldier's ability to independently act in the field (read: brains). So Titus was, in fact, holding to the Codex as Guilliman intended and is far more true to it than Leandros, making Leandros a freakin' heretic. In other words, it's a scathing condemnation of He who must never be named as a whole.

Double irony, the Codex states that if a Marine suspects that one of his brothers has fallen to Chaos, he should go to the Company's Chaplain and Librarian, whose duty it is to monitor for, and punish, these things within the Chapter. In other words, Leandros violated the Codex and circumvented the chain of command while claiming he's following it. In real life, soldiers are demoted or outright court martialed and dishonourably discharged from the armed forces for doing that! Titus' punishment was demotion to Lieutenant for breaking protocol, so we can assume Leandros has been knocked down to the reserves or sentenced to undertake a one-man Penitent Crusade by Space Marine 2. Maybe even exiled from the Ultramarines and forced to become a Black Shield.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II

Titus, now a Primaris Lieutenant, wait where’s his backpack?

It took us over a decade, but he finally has a bespoke mini.

Come December 2021, and a sequel under Focus Home Interactive and Saber Interactive has been announced. Trailer shows Captain Titus returning but as a Primaris Lieutenant and saving a bunch of guardsmen from a horde of Tyranids. We can safely assume that whatever plans Lierop had for him have been scrapped. Judging by Titus' services studs, he is now 400 years old or so. Eagle eyed viewers can also see that he has a small inquisitorial medallion (not a rosette, obvs) on his armour, suggesting that he did them some kind of service after his arrest on Graia as a deal, or more likely the Inquisitor had no intention of keeping an obviously pure Marine and just went through the motions. He has a remake of his Sternguard Veteran renditionn official model now, though this is technically also yet another Primaris Lieutenant model release. This is a clear indication that Geedubs' crippling addiction to Primaris Lieutenant model releases has gotten to the point that they will have a video game sequel made and a board game based on that just for an excuse to continue feeding it.

Relationships with characters

"Hey there, Captain"

• Sidonus - Titus regarded Sidonus as his 'most trusted battle-brother' and closest friend. Sidonus in return shared this friendship with him. Unlike Leandros, who was quickly suspecting Titus of Chaos corruption, Sidonus never suspected or even accused Titus of taint. When Sidonus got impaled with extreme prejudice by Nemeroth, Titus actually did a Big No (which is parodied here), and swore vengeance. Titus finally got revenge when he killed Nemeroth.
• Leandros - Titus is disappointed by Leandros' strict adherence to the Codex Astartes, but nonetheless tolerates his behavior, viewing it as immaturity. Leandros originally saw Titus as an inspiration, but his perceived violations of the Codex Astartes, and his supposed Chaos taint, caused Leandros to suspect his Captain. When Leandros rats Titus out to the Inquisition, Titus tells him that his devotion to the Codex means he has failed to truly become a Space Marine because he cannot see past the Codex's text to the battlefield it is meant to be applied to. We last see Leandros unable to look Titus in the eye like the pussy Codex-worshiper he is, as the latter leaves with the Inquisitor.
• Second Lieutenant Miranda Nero - While there isn't any real action between her and Captain Titus and they spend the game focusing on their duties, there are very small hints that they do have some feelings for each other. Titus affectionately calls her Mira, instead of her formal name - that said, she always, always goes by Mira in the game. However, Mira urged Titus to try and resist the authority of the Inquisition when they accused him of Chaos taint, but Titus decided to surrender himself to them so that they wouldn't hurt Mira and his battle-brothers. Of course these hints are all vague and shouldn't be taken seriously (advice that obviously went ignored by Rule 34 fanboys). It's much more likely that it's mutual respect due to the fact that Titus is a Space Marine and Mira earned his respect by taking charge and holding out against the Orks for so long. Besides, Space Marines in general have never been confirmed to have a sex drive (although obviously some exceptions to the rule do exist).
• Inquisitor Drogan - Titus is the only Marine in the game who trusts Drogan, and actually shows concern about the Inquisitor's near-fatal wounds, thinking it would be a shame to lose such a powerful ally. Of course, Drogan is a corpse being puppeted by a daemon.
• Warboss Grimskull - Contrary to most Marines, Titus sees the Warboss as an enemy that must be put down, but not to the extent that he's all zealous about it. In fact, he never underestimates the danger that the rather cunning Warboss presents, but also doesn't put the Warboss down before much, much later, because the Ork isn't a top priority. Sure, he messes up the Captain's plans from time to time, but then again, the Marines' only job is to help liberate the planet (with a side quest for a certain Inquisitor coming popping up later), but going after the Warboss would consume so many resources that it wouldn't be worth it. Orks have a nasty habit of just defaulting to following the second biggest greenskin around. After the Chaos invasion was started, Grimskull takes a backseat while trying to hold together his WAAAGH! This fails, and he instead goes after Titus one last time, trying to take him down to get revenge... unfortunately, he had run out of patience for the Warboss. The results are obvious.
• Nemeroth - A fucking huge Chaos Sorcerer Lord of Chaos Undivided. Through a bit of Just as Planned and similar douchbaggery, he arrives on Graia to use an artifact on the planet to simultaneously get his army into Realspace and to become even more fuckhueg. While Titus regards Nemeroth with the same kind of professionalism as he did with Grimskull, Nemeroth has much more interest in the him, bordering some sort of obsession. He frequently addresses Titus as "brother", which can mean one of many things (Brother, as in "fellow Marine", or making the point that the Captain might be susceptible to the forces of Chaos. He could even have been an Ultramarine once, who knows). Nemeroth also takes note of Titus' ability to "resist his touch", claiming that the Captain is something special, as he is almost immune to Chaos in general. Even after Titus tells him to fuck off back to the Warp and stop his "brother"-bullshit, Nemeroth still addresses him as brother, and seems to know something about the Captain, which will bite him in the ass later... just according to keikaku. He also seems to have more Bloodletters at his disposal than Chaos Marines, despite being a Sorcerer.

Reasons why Titus is such a Badass

Leandros was wrong

• He's a fucking Space Marine. What did you expect?
  • He's a fucking Space Marine Captain. Of the greatest cha*BLAM*... of arguably one of the most esteemed Chapters.
• He hails from Terra, a well-policed area known as Miami.
• Women want him and men want to be him. Yeah baby!
• He was one of the VERY few Ultramarines characters prior to the 8th Edition rework that was multidimensional, not an arrogant ass, and a generally cool guy who cared about protecting others.
• He is one of very few, repeat, VERY few Ultramarines that actually offs gives the Codex Astartes proportionate importance. He states that the Codex is just a set of rules and guidelines a useful source of tactical and moral guidance, but should not be followed blindly, and how they choose to live by it is what makes them Space Marines Ultramarines.
  • The irony is that Roboute Guilliman would love Titus and be pissed with the rest of the Chapter. Now that Robby's back, he'd probably want to talk to Titus, Grandpa Smurf being the kind of guy who reads debriefings to form his own opinion. Guilliman also would be able to see Titus is lacking in the areas of teamwork, leadership and tactics can be too reckless, so as a compromise with the Inquisition, he might reassign Titus to redeem himself in service to the Deathwatch. He may even be demoted to serve as leader of a Kill Team.
  • His interpretation of the Codex Astartes falls closer to that of the Raptors (Chapter), although the way that it is implemented relies on his own badassery.
• Unlike the majority of his Chapter, Titus actually improvises when dealing with the enemy, be it Ork or Chaos, and is willing to employ somewhat unorthodox tactics to get the job done.
  • Examples: His solution to his Thunderhawk being unable to land safely due to ork gun batteries is to simply use jump packs and descend down to the Ork Kill Krooza (armed with nothing but his combat knife, his bolt pistol and his GIANT CERAMITE BALLS no less), and then blowing said krooza's bridge with its own dorsal gun battery (this tactic is similar to that favoured by the Angry Marines,but with less collateral damage.); When the Orks were trying to use a Titan-sized laser weapon hanging from a crane to get into a Forge, Titus' way to deal with this was, of course, to drop the thing on the Orks; When an Imperial Warlord Titan gets ready to go shoot the Chaos-controlled orbital spire, two Blight Drones and Chaos psyker try to shut it down before it's ready. Titus' solution is to surf the fucking Titan and kill them, without cover no less.
    • In short, Titus gets shit done.
  • Unlike Uriel Ventris, Titus does this only when it is necessary. As opposed to trying to make some sort of point about the Codex Astartes.
• As said above, he killed thousands of enemies by himself and also with only Sidonus and Leandros to aid him. And a regiment of guardsmen. And a Titan. And later Imperial reinforcements from off-world.
• His reaction to a one-on-one challenge by a Daemon Prince? Body-tackle it off the edge of a kilometres-tall orbital spire and fight it while in free-fall, proceed to single-handedly beat the snot out of the partially daemonized Nemeroth.. and finally killing it by crushing the Daemon Prince's head with his bare hands while still in free-fall (unlike some cock-sure moron who got his body possessed by another Daemon Prince whose name is Severus. No, not that one.)
• He's voiced by MARK FUCKMOTHERING STRONG!!!!.
  • At least in the first game; time will tell if Rollo can do him justice.
• He's nice to the Imperial Guard he meets, even the lowest ranking Guardsmen, which can't be said about most high-ranking Imperials. He is, in fact, nicer to Guardsmen than some of their own commanders.
• He is surprisingly humble, attributing his successes to the Emperor's will, seeing himself as simply being an instrument of that will. This is a refreshing contrast to the stereotype of Ultramarines taking their label as the "Imperium's favoured sons" for granted.
• He had the balls to stand up to the goddamn Inquisition, backed by four Black Templars, and even willingly gives himself up to them in order to save his friends and his Chapter. This is in stark contrast to Leandros, who betrayed his brother through his ignorant (and selective) adherence to the Codex.
• He kinda looks like your dad.
• He gives few to zero fucks about standard protocol when there is a job to be done.
• Show me anything that solos groups of 10+ plus Bloodletters.
  • Eliphas the Inheritor.
  • Kaldor Draigo.
• His entire speech at the end of the game to Leandros is basically telling Matt Ward that he has failed as a writer.
  • Several fans consider Titus to be the best balance between Matt Ward's Lawful Stupid Spiritual Liege fan-wankery over the Codex Astartes and Graham McNeill's "the Codex Astartes is useless and cool Space Marines don't follow it" Chaotic Stupid Mary Sue special snowflake Uriel Ventris.
• As of 7E, he has his own miniature model head alongside Sidonus (via Sternguard squad).
  • 10E would release an actual Titus mini as part of a Space Marine board game.

The minis in question. Our heroes are on the far right

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• The future games starring him would originally have had him escape, become a renegade Astartes, go on a Jack Bauer killing spree across the galaxy in the name of the Emprah, and finally returning to head his own chapter, presumably to beat some sense into Leandros and shame the Inquisition. Awesome.
  • If he does become a Chapter Master, he will probably smack sense back into the rest of the Adeptus Astartes and, from there, the rest of the Imperium. Then mankind will steamroll the rest of the galaxy.
• Because the developers knew their audience, he's not a meaty slab of walking tank able to take any assault and come out unscathed, and on any difficulty above normal the game is genuinely challenging and requires more strategy than simply wading in and killing everything. This is awesome for two reasons. The first is that it does the enemies of the Imperium full justice instead of just making them easily destroyable blood-juice-boxes, e.g. a large enough group of Bloodletters is easily capable of overpowering you if you don't fight them in the right way. The second is that enemies that require you to think to take down are about ten times more satisfying to fight. Not to mention you're reminded that these enemies you have to actually work to defeat are fought by the Imperial Guard, too. Balls of adamantium the size of universes.

ANGRY MARINE?

Damn straight. Titus thinks the Codex is for pussies, uses authentic Angry Marine tactics such as fucking orks to death with his chainsword, and even gets an Angry Purity Seal which gives him an Angryness Meter. The latter is canon. He is also fueled by violence and thus regenerates health by murdering Orks to death in particularly messy ways. His basic equivalent of a medkit? Punching gretchin into bloody mist. His way of finishing off a Nob? Either jamming a chainsword through his mouth, or pinning its foot with an axe and tearing said mouth open with his bare hands. Not to mention he also has the lesser known Angry marine trait, namely a resistance to the warp.

Obviously at some point, maybe during a rare joint operation, some geneseed got mixed up and the Ultramarines got some Angry Marine geneseed, and the Angry marines got some Ultramarine. Equally obvious, when the angry geneseed was used by the Ultramarines most of there recruits blew up unable to contain THE SHEER FURY that is the angry marines, and when the angry marines used the Ultramarine geneseed they were like "WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THIS WEAK ASS SHIT?" and their recruits equally failed as marines, but may have become serfs or something. Titus just lucked out in being able to take the angry geneseed, though you have to wonder what the Angry Marine version of Titus, an Angry Marine with Ultra traits, would be like.

I guess we know where the Inquisition is sending him.

SERVANT OF KHORNE?!

Actually he's probably just being corrupted by Khorne and doesn't know it. His resistance to the warp is similar to the psychic immunity Khorne gives to his followers (see Kharn, who really is a swell chap) and he rejuvenates himself by killing things in RIP AND TEAR fashion and by bathing himself in blood (although all this is also a hallmark of the most pure and incorruptible of the Imperiums defenders). Also, he runs on anger, like all Khornate Chaos Marines. And can tap into it to go into what is pretty much a Berserker's rage. Oh yeah, and he's fighting a douchebag Sorcerer of Tzeentch's. Nemeroth isn't Tzeentch, he's one of those wishy-washy "unaligned" pussies. Most Undivided Chaos sorcerers have heavy leanings towards Tzeentch anyway. Or, he was just a hollow-guy.

Probably more relevant is one of the quotes he gives you on death: "Success is measured in blood: yours or your enemy's." Which, while the Imperium is certainly not opposed so some good old fashioned bloodshed, that sounds pretty Khornate.

But if he's corrupted this way, then what does that make the Black Templars?

On the other-hand, due to Khorne also being the god of Martial Honor and survival, it could be that he does indeed have Khorne’s favor simply by being an honorable, humble, visceral warrior. It’s not like the Chaos Gods truly have a “side” no matter what their worshippers think. Same could be said for the Black Templars and any other Chapter specializing in close combat (which Titus also seems to do a huge amount of).

Counter Arguments

"A true man may flinch away its embrace, if he is stalwart, and he girds his soul with the armour of contempt."

– Gideon Ravenor

There's some that get immunity to the effects of the warp. Grey Knights are an example. He might just be a Blank who managed to avoid getting skullfucked by the Black Ships. You never see any Librarians willingly hanging around the guy, after all. Then again serving long enough to become a captain means he would have been around psykers long enough for them to have notice he was a blank. So we could just kept it to sheer willpower combine the fact he's emotionally stable means warp stuff wouldn't harm him as much. He couldn’t be a blank anyway as the power of Space Marines is obviously the result of Warp fuckery as even the most conservative examples of them are dramatically beyond human capability, no matter how dense or big a man’s muscles are.

It's possible he's a pariah, instead of a blank, since he's shown to be partially affected by the powers of the warp (like when the power source literally backfired in his face and just knocked him out cold when it should very easily have atomised him). Of course, it is important to remember that the Warp is entirely a matter of willpower. The device itself (especially its backlash) had no will. Compare that to the willpower of a Space Marine captain's determination to win. Yeah. So, in that way, he saved himself through sheer badassery. Literally. Which if you think about it fits the game (and canon in general) pretty well.

Titus: The Living Saint!

Titus was undergoing apotheosis and becoming a Living Saint! Think about it. He suddenly is surrounded by a golden glow (like Living Saints), he gets a full heal (like Living Saints' ability to resurrect), his attacks become more powerful (Empowered by the Emprah!), and he has an ever growing resistance to the Warp. Nemroth even points out that he has been "touched by the Warp", yet its Titus. He doesn't have even an iota of Chaos corruption. He killed a Chaos Champion, WITH HIS BARE EMPEROR BLESSED HANDS!. His fury was not the unrestrained rage of Khorne (he would have glowed red), he was channeling THE EMPEROR'S HOLY WRATH!! He wasn't a full Living Saint yet, but he was well on his way to becoming another Greater Daemon of the Emperor!

What would have happened in (the original) Space Marine 2 & 3

“I had some big plans for Titus,” van Lierop said. “The second part of his story was to focus on a ‘Titus Unleashed’ plot—basically there were forces arrayed against him that would see his loyalty to the Adeptus Astartes pushed to its limit, and his reaction would be to kind of ‘go rogue,’ and we'd see a different Titus, not quite as in control as we saw him in Space Marine. He would be kicked out as a consequence—exiled, which would basically be a death sentence for him.” (or a ticket to the Deathwatch as a Blackshield.)

The first game showed us what it looked like when a Space Marine was fighting in a disciplined manner, and the second game would have opened the door for a slightly wilder version of the character. That’s not the end, though.

“He would survive, and come back even stronger in the third game, where other Space Marines still loyal to him would rally around him and he'd return to ‘clean house,’ but as the head of a brand new Chapter that we would build around him,” van Lierop continued.

So what kept this from happening?

“Sadly, THQ was already starting to fall apart by then and it became clear that Space Marine 2 wasn't going to happen. I was pretty heartbroken about that,” he said. “But that's the way the business works. In the end I'm glad things turned out the way they did, because I think if the end hadn't been so hard, I might not have sought out a better way. And Hinterland might not have ever happened.”

Subject of Canon

Captain Titus is considered canon by Black Library writer Nick Kyme. In the audiobook Veil of Darkness Cato Sicarius is walking in the Macragge Hall of Heroes, and one of the memorial statues is labelled "Captain Titus". Conveniently the video game itself doesn't timestamp itself at any point, only taking place sometime after "the Aurelian Crusade". Since there were actually three Aurelian Crusades, one for each Dawn of War II game, we could theorise that Captain Titus fights on Graia sometime between DoW II and Chaos Rising. Only we really can't because the Blood Raven said "None shall find us wanting, Ultramarine", which is their battle cry post-Retribution.

As per the release of the trailer for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, Titus is now officially canon. GW has also put this debate to rest permanently with the release of his miniature (as a Primaris Lieutenant) in a Space Marine tabletop survival game revealed in May 2023.

The best way to interpret this is that the statue belongs to some other Captain Titus from earlier in the Chapter's history. A chance to finagle this is that Titus was Acting Captain at Graia while Sicarius was overseeing Uriel Ventris's trial for codex breach and he was serving with the Black Templars during the events that took place between the Daemonculaba incident and before Chapter Master Marneus Calgar became Primaris. With a final adjustment of Sevastus Acheran, Cato's successor to Second Company Captain as the latter was missing in the warp before the Plague Wars, being a senior sergeant to Titus but being wounded while Graia was being invaded and thus being the proper successor to the Second Company as Titus becomes a lieutenant after returning with Sicarius out of the way and promoted to the Victrix Guard.

Videos Starring Captain Titus

• This Is Officially Canon.
• just...no.