Darnath Lysander

Lysander, proving that "Vanilla" is not bad.

Darnath Lysander is the First Captain (later Third Captain) of the Imperial Fists Space Marine Chapter. He's a pretty cool dude. he wears yellow and doesn't afraid of anything. On the tabletop, he's feared as with 2+ and 3++ saves, Eternal Warrior and 4 wounds, this guy will not die. His Fist of Dorn will fuck up your armour. He can reroll bolters, despite not wielding one, and he lets his squad reroll them too. He is also a techmarine, and can fortify ruins. Don't fuck with him, or he will murder you to death.

Backstory

Lysander has what might be one of the manliest back-stories of all time. His backstory begins as a kid of only 13. After surviving a Waaagh! and a heresy, he was recruited on Holy Terra because a captain thought he was the second coming of Dorn. He murdered what we can only assume were scores of chaos. He also boarded and captured the Eldar vessel named the Blood of Khaine. It is generally accepted that the Blood of Khaine had the Avatar of Khaine onboard, so we can only assume that Lysander tore it apart with his bare hands. Unfortunately, other factions began powergaming, trying to stop Lysander and company from doing the incredibly cheesy tactic of Drop-pods and Teleport homers, so the cultists used Warp dickery to mishap a squad of Terminators into a mountainside. As his Captain lay dying, he saw it fit to bestow Lysander with the Fist of Dorn, the coolest looking Thunder Hammer that ever was. Lysander then killed all of the stupid chaos cultists, then got promoted to Captain.

For years, Lysander terrorized the galaxy with the Fist of Dorn, deep striking himself and other Terminators into other enemy squads, just like how you play him tabletop. He later happened upon an Alpha Legion base, and tore them to shreds. All of them. Years later, as he was chilling with some Terminators on their way to Deep Strike some poor xenos, he got stuck in a warp storm and was lost. During this time stuck in the Warp storm, he probably roamed the warp with Draigo, beating the everloving shit out of whatever poor demon they met. A thousand years of demon-killing later, he re-emerged back into regular space. Chaos-held space. Immediately captured by Iron Warriors under the command of Warsmith Shon'tu (the self-proclaimed reincarnation of an infamous warlord of the same name who ruled during the Dark Age of Technology), who blew up his ship, then captured him and some of the survivors. The mad Warsmith then tortured them for a few weeks on their fortress world of Malodrax in between bouts of ranting about "his" past exploits. Tired of the Iron Warrior's shit, Lysander broke his way out of Malodrax's capital with his bare hands, leaving a trail of death and destruction. He broke out of a fortress-world full of Chaos Space Marines specialized in fortified positions and close combat. Naked. After returning to Imperial space, he was screened for all types of daemonette STD's and for traces of heresy. Amazingly, he was clean. Being the oldest Space Marine alive, he was promoted back to captain of the first company. His first act was to go back to the Iron Warrior fortress world of Malodrax, and destroy all that remained. Due to his rampage earlier, he succeeded in destroying a few untoppled buildings and Chaos UNICEF, but Shon'tu had long since escaped.

Today, he walks around with his hammer and his hammer-wielding buddies whacking at the ankles of Traitor Titans.

A Bad Boss

Darnath Lysander is not the sort of person you'd want as your employer. Even amongst genetically enhanced religious fanatics indoctrinated from childhood to genocide all deviants to death, he has a reputation for being a bit of a cockhead. For example, once upon a time, the Imperial Fists 3rd Company was surrounded by Iron Warriors, their Captain was killed, and the company was almost annihilated. The few survivors of the ordeal would later learn that reinforcements from the Blood Angels and Ultramarines were in the system and available for rapid deployment at any time, but Lysander, the commander of the Imperial Fists on the planet, was too proud to accept their aid, instead preferring to allow his marines to die in great, heaping mounds. In fact, during the subsequent trial Lysander continued to deny that their assistance was ever needed and even suggested that if the Ultramarines hadn't intervened, he would have slain the Warsmith commanding their forces. (Incidentally, the Warsmith in question was none other than Shon'tu, which suggests that Lysander was motivated by revenge and not just stubbornness.) While Chapter Master Vladimir Pugh considered stripping him of his rank for allowing the unnecessary deaths of so many of his men, doing so ran the risk of causing a split in the Chapter, as many believed Lysander's actions to be heroic instead of the byproduct of a single-minded obsession with revenge against the Iron Warriors. As a compromise, he merely demoted Lysander to the rank of 3rd Company Captain (and promptly reassigned them to a crusade against the Orks, much to Lysander's disappointment).

This is not bullshit, this is actually canon.(Well he wasn't necessarily demoted. The first company of most chapters rarely fights en masse, so it is entirely reasonable that Lysander was simply attached to the third company at the time. In the book Architect of Fate, Lysander was attached to an Imperial Fist garrison on board a star fortress, so he clearly goes where he wants when he wants to.)

He probably has trouble remembering that not everyone has 2+ and 3++ saves, Eternal Warrior and 4 wounds like he does.