"..as a slave to Chaos? Nothing you say can tempt me from the path of honour -- or prevent me from avenging my battle-brothers."
- —Captain Titus rejects Nemeroth's offer to join the forces of Chaos during the Liberation of Graia
Captain Demetrian Titus of the Ultramarines 2nd Company as a Firstborn Space Marine.
Demetrian Titus is a former Firstborn captain and commander of the Ultramarines 2nd Company and later a Primaris Marine lieutenant of the same company who has fought for the Imperium of Man for more than 200 Terran years. His exploits earned him a reputation as one of the greatest heroes of the Ultramarines. Despite his relative youth by the standards of the Adeptus Astartes, he was already a decorated Veteran of several major campaigns waged across the galaxy by his Chapter.
Lieutenant Demetrian Titus of the Ultramarines 2nd Company after crossing the Rubicon Primaris to become a Primaris Space Marine and being reduced in rank due to his long absence from the Ultramarines.
One of Titus' last known campaigns before his disappearance occurred upon the Forge World of Graia where he helped launch a successful defence from an assault by an Ork WAAAGH! led by the Warboss Grimskull and then a subsequent Chaos invasion led by the Chaos Sorcerer Nemeroth and his Chosen of Nemeroth warband of Heretic Astartes.
Showing an unnatural affinity to shrug off attacks made using the powers of the Warp by the forces of Chaos during the defence of Graia, Titus was taken into custody on suspicion of heresy by the Inquisition after the end of that campaign. Subsequently, he vanished from all official Imperial records for almost a standard century.
By the Emperor's will, the wayward Titus was miraculously returned to the Ultramarines in the Era Indomitus and cleared of all charges. He proceeded to cross the Rubicon Primaris and was transformed into a Primaris Space Marine. Reassigned to the 2nd Company, he was unfortunately reduced to the rank of lieutenant so as not to bring discord to the Ultramarines' existing hierarchy. Titus cared not for the reduction in status, he was grateful just to be deemed worthy to serve the Chapter once more.
Demetrian Titus is the primary protagonist of the Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II third-person action video games.
History
Origins
The saga of Demetrian Titus begins when he was born approximately 175 standard years before the end of the 41st Millennium according to the old Imperial Calendar in the Realm of Ultramar, home of the Ultramarines Chapter who are hailed by the wider Imperium as one of the greatest Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes and the staunchest defenders of the Imperium.
Titus was recruited in his youth and excelled as a recruit, although, at times, he had trouble reining in his temper. Regardless, he overcame many opponents and suffered many wounds, both physical and psychological, and rose through the ranks of the Ultramarines while serving in the 2nd Company. While he followed the rules and guidance of the Codex Astartes, the Ultramarines' most sacred tome of strategy, organisation, and moral behaviour penned by his Chapter's primarch Roboute Guilliman, Titus believed that the most important part of the Codex was its spirit, not its letter, and how one chose to uphold its values.
Captain Titus of the Ultramarines Chapter while still a Firstborn Space Marine.
Early in his career, Titus befriended fellow Ultramarine and Veteran Sergeant Sidonus. At some point in Titus' service, he was part of an Ultramarines squad who engaged a Chaos Sorcerer, a corrupted psyker corrupted by the Ruinous Powers. Titus' whole squad was killed by the sorcerer's Warp-infused attacks, but Titus somehow survived direct blasts of Warp energy, despite suffering grievous wounds during the course of the battle, and single-handedly killed the sorcerer.
Much to the surprise of the Chapter's Apothecaries, Titus survived his injuries and made a full recovery. Many within the Chapter questioned how he survived, intimating that he may have been touched by the corruption of Chaos. Titus himself had no explanation for his seeming invincibility to the direct touch of the Warp.
Beta-Arcturus
Sometime later, the Ultramarines' 2nd Company deployed to the world of Beta-Arcturus to defend the planet against an invading force of Craftworld Aeldari Aspect Warriors from Biel-Tan, where the company's captain, Trajan, slew the Aeldari's Autarch. Titus led Trajan's Command Squad against the elite Aspect Warrior bodyguard of the xenos general, and accounted for the deaths of three of the lethal sword-fighters, brutally carving through their wraithbone armour with his chainsword. The aliens were defeated, but in their spite they captured one of Titus' battle-brothers as they withdrew, a young warrior named Leandros.
This prompted Trajan to lead a combat squad to recover Leandros, ordering Titus to secure the battlefield and await his return. The deceptive Aeldari, however, had lured Trajan into an ambush. Revealing hidden forces not yet committed to the battle, the vengeful Biel-Tan surrounded Trajan and cruelly cut him down. Titus led the counterattack that recovered Trajan's body and assumed command of the strike force that went on to drive the alien aggressors from Beta-Arcturus for good.
Titus' brevet captaincy over the 2nd Company was a state of affairs that Chapter Master Marneus Calgar was to make permanent, granting Titus command of the company after they bore Trajan's body back to Macragge to be interred within a grand sepulchre within the Fortress of Hera. Titus went on to lead the 2nd Company to victory after victory against the mutant, the alien, and the Heretic. Many senior Ultramarines, such as First Captain Severus Agemman and the Chapter Master himself, regarded Titus as a model of the humility expected of their Chapter, while also being an exemplary warrior and strategist.
However, despite his meteoric rise and accolades from his Chapter's high command, doubts still lingered within Titus as he still felt the weight of taking over the mantle of command from his fallen mentor. By late in the 41st Milllennium, Titus had served for over 150 standard years, with Leandros and Sidonus at his side in every battle, leading the Ultramarines 2nd Company to victory after victory against all manners of horrific threats.
Liberation of Graia
Captain Titus slays a Greenskin with his chainsword.
Ten standard years after taking command of the 2nd Company, Captain Titus led an Ultramarines strike force to relieve the Forge World of Graia, which had been invaded by the 1 million-strong force of Orks of WAAAGH! Grimskull. Warboss Grimskull was intent on stealing advanced Imperial weapons, including a Warlord-class Battle Titan.
Captain Titus faces the Ork invasion of the Forge World of Graia.
The assault was part of an intricate plan unleashed by the Chaos Sorcerer Nemeroth, the Chaos Lord of a warband of Chaos Space Marines known as the Chosen of Nemeroth, to get his hands on an experimental power source on the world that would allow him to ascend to become a Daemon Prince. Accompanied by 2 members of his Command Squad, Sergeant Sidonus and Battle-Brother Leandros, Titus joined with the Astra Militarum's 203rd Cadian Shock Troops Regiment and its only surviving officer, Second Lieutenant Mira, to eventually kill Grimskull and halt the WAAAGH!.
Unfortunately, the Ordo Xenos Inquisitor Drogan, whom Titus and his Astartes relied upon for assistance in retaking the world, was actually an undead pawn of Nemeroth who used a specially-designed weapon powered by the experimental power source Nemeroth wanted to open a portal into the Warp. This allowed the Chaos Sorcerer, a horde of Chaos Daemons and his Chaos Space Marines to come to Graia.
Curiously, however, Titus once more displayed an unknown immunity to the sorcerer's psychic powers which immediately raised the suspicions of the highly orthodox and Puritan Leandros to his commander's possible corruption.
Following the death of his old friend Sidonus at Nemeroth's hand, Titus hunted down the foul Chaos Sorcerer and slew him just as he was in the throes of the ascent to Daemonhood, banishing his dark soul back to the Warp for punishment by his Dark Gods.
Titus' Captivity
Despite his valiant efforts to liberate Graia, Captain Titus was sequestered by Inquisitor Thrax and his retinue of Black Templars Space Marines on suspicion of heresy, after Leandros reported his captain's display of uncommon resistance to corruptive Warp power unleashed by the Chaos Sorcerer Nemeroth, as well as Titus' multiple deviations from the Codex Astartes, held sacrosanct by all Ultramarines.
Captain Titus was taken away for interrogation by Inquisitor Thrax, whereupon he disappeared from the Chapter annals for a time. Cato Sicarius, who had felt that he had been overlooked for command following the First Tyrannic War, replaced Titus as captain of the 2nd Company.
Titus uses a Plasma Gun against an Ork during the Liberation of Graia.
As it turns out, Inquisitor Thrax held an extreme grudge against Astartes, seeing them as a liability to the Imperium and never quite trusting them, especially after the events of the Badab War, an uprising instigated by the Renegade Astral Claws Chapter early in the 10th century of the 41st Millennium. Titus was imprisoned by the Inquisition for over a standard century, continuously tortured and psychically interrogated by Thrax in an attempt to find the truth of Titus' supernatural resilience to Warp energies, keeping Titus in stasis between interrogations. The Space Marine captain was psychically scourged and subjected to brutal mind-trawls, and even though no sign of Chaos corruption was ever discerned, the Inquisitor refused to relinquish his captive.
During this time, Ultramarines Chapter Master Marneus Calgar made numerous petitions to representatives of the Holy Ordos of the Emperor's Inquisition, demanding that his captain be returned to the brotherhood of the Ultramarines. Whether these requests fell on deaf ears or were lost in the labyrinthine levels of secrecy and self-proclaimed hierarchy that exists within the Inquisition, Calgar never learned. No word reached him of either Inquisitor Thrax or his captive, Demetrian Titus, for many Terran years.
Deathwatch Service
Captain Titus stands triumphant with chainsword and Bolt Pistol.
After a standard century of captivity by the Inquisition, Inquisitor Thrax led an operation against the traitorous Grey Slayers Chapter, who had become corrupted by the insidious machinations of the Dark Gods. Leading a large retinue of Grey Knights upon the corrupted Chapter's homeworld, they began to purge the Heretic Astartes in earnest.
Captain Titus makes effective use of his bolter during the Liberation of Graia.
However, during the conflict, Thrax was possessed by a Daemon, and in turn, was killed by his retinue of Grey Knights. In the wake of Thrax's death, forces drawn from the Red Hunters Chapter were dispatched to investigate and secure the Inquisitor's holdings. In a remote Inquisitorial watch station far to the galactic south, a Red Hunters kill-team discovered almost a score of Space Marine interrogation subjects locked in stasis cells, preserved from the passage of time. Titus' story could have come to an end there, had the Inquisitor responsible for overseeing the seizure of Thrax's materials felt inclined to conceal the shame of her fellow Inquisitor. Instead, Titus, and several other warriors of various Chapters who had attracted Thrax's attention, were conveyed to the Deathwatch watch fortress of Watcher Keep to be evaluated.
Captain Titus confers with Sergeant Sidonus of his command squad and Second Lieutenant Mira of the Astra Militarum during the Liberation of Graia.
After being found free of Chaos taint or disloyalty, Titus would eventually enter the service of Watcher Keep as a Deathwatch Black Shield, his former identity unknown to those he fought alongside. Having received no word from his brethren since his incarceration, he came to believe he had somehow brought shame upon his name and that of his beloved Ultramarines and determined that he was not worthy to bear the Chapter's name. Overcome with shock and grief at his discommendation, Titus had all of his former Chapter's heraldry purged from his battle-plate and assumed a self-imposed exile as an outcast Black Shield.
If he could serve the Imperium and his Emperor as an alien-hunting battle-brother of the Deathwatch until death claimed him, he would do so gladly, having no more desire for personal glory than he did at the start of his life as a Space Marine. Assuming the name "Nullus," Titus honourably served alongside his fellow battle-brothers in the Deathwatch for many standard years. During this point in time, unbeknownst to Titus, the Ultramarines' primarch Roboute Guilliman had been resurrected on Macragge during the Ultramar Campaign of the 13th Black Crusade, and now once again served as lord commander of the Imperium and Imperial Regent.
Guilliman led his newly declared Indomitus Crusade against the various enemies of Humanity, as the galaxy had literally been split in two by the opening of the Great Rift at the start of the Era Indomitus, a galaxy-spanning Warp rift formed in the wake of the destruction of the Fortress World of Cadia at the hands of the Warmaster of Chaos, Abaddon the Despoiler. However, this crusade left many worlds weakened after committing large numbers of troops to the war effort, leaving them more vulnerable to invasion.
During this time, the Fourth Tyrannic War began in the Segmentum Pacificus, as swarms of Tyranids, ravenous extragalactic aliens that threatened to consume all life in the Milky Way, invaded the already-beleaguered strongholds of Humanity in the galactic west.
Return to the Ultramarines
Lieutenant Demetrian Titus after his transformation into a Primaris Marine by crossing the Rubicon Primaris.
Titus, as "Nullus," deployed as part of the Deathwatch's Kill-team Kasaeran, deploying to the Recidious System via Corvus Blackstar. During their mission to the Recidious System, Nullus and his squad were tasked with reinforcing the Astra Militarum forces based there on the world of Kadaku, who were already weakened by the toll taken by the Indomitus Crusade muster across the Imperium Sanctus.
The kill-team's gunship was brought down by swarming flocks of winged Tyranid bioforms, forcing the warriors to engage with the insectoid aliens on the planet's surface. Here, Titus was gravely wounded by a monstrous Tyranid Carnifex. As life bled from his torn body, his Deathwatch battle-brothers lying slain around him, he prepared to commend his soul to the Emperor. It was then that Titus was reunited with the warriors of Ultramar, as an Ultramarines strike force arrived to relieve the Deathwatch at Kadaku.
Varro Tigurius, Chief Librarian of the Ultramarines, detected the soul-sign of the warrior once known as Demetrian Titus in the local Immaterium as their strike craft traversed the Warp. Even as the Tyranids' Shadow in the Warp began to cloud Tigurious' witch-sight like cataracts, the Chief Librarian recognised he who had once been the captain of the Ultramarines 2nd Company.
As fate would have it, Tigurius travelled aboard the Righteous Fury, the same vessel that had borne Titus and Trajan before him to battle many times, and it was this mighty voidcraft of the Chapter that broke from the Warp at the edge of the Recidious System. There, the strike cruiser prepared its Thunderhawk gunships to deploy to the planet where the broken form of the Black Shield known to his comrades as Nullus lay dying.
Lieutenant Titus and his fellow Primaris battle-brothers of the Ultramarines stand ready to bring their wrath down upon the enemies of Humanity in the Era Indomitus.
The Ultramarines 1st Company arrived on the planet to reinforce the Deathwatch forces, bringing none other than First Captain Severus Agemman and Chief Librarian Tigurius. The Ultramarines fought valiantly, their weapon blasts wreaking devastation upon the Tyranid bioforms with the carefully born discipline of experienced Tyranid hunters, holding back the tide. They arrived too late to save Kadaku from falling to the Great Devourer but the Deathwatch warriors of Watcher Keep were able to recover their dead and wounded and fall back into the Ultramarines' gunships. All except the ravaged Black Shield Nullus, who Tigurius ordered returned to the Apothecarion bays aboard the Righteous Fury.
Titus' wounds were grave, and it was decreed that he would undergo the "Calgarian Rites," the Ultramarines' name for the Rubicon Primaris, in order to have even a chance of surviving. Titus withstood the procedures necessary to become a Primaris Space Marine as stoically as he had endured any of Inquisitor Thrax's interrogations and was remade stronger than he had ever been. When he awoke, he was surprised to find himself honoured with the rank of lieutenant under the command of Captain Sevastus Acheran of the 2nd Company -- a warrior who had only recently left the Scout Marine reserve when Titus was taken from the Ultramarines alm,ost a standard century before. Once more Titus resolved to do as was bid of him by his Chapter, and serve under a warrior who held the titles he had once held.
There were those amongst the Ultramarines who were apprehensive about Titus' return to the Chapter. Chief Librarian Tigurius, however, had performed his own examination of the former captain and found him to harbour no taint, before psychically communing with Chapter Master Marneus Calgar who authorised Titus' immediate reinstatement. Their word was as adamantine, and Titus was officially welcomed back into the warrior brotherhood of his gene-sire. Lieutenant Demetrian Titus, once and once more of the Ultramarines 2nd Company, would bring the wrath of his Chapter to the foes of the Imperium anew.
Personality
Titus prepares to go into battle.
Demetrian Titus was an unusual Ultramarine who believed that the Codex Astartes offered an excellent series of guidelines for what it meant to be an Astartes, but that it was not sacred writ to be followed soulessly and automatically.
He believed that the spirit of the Codex was more important than its letter and that how one chose to live out the directives contained within it truly determined if one was an Astartes or not.
Psychic Resistance
Captain Titus stands unbowed.
Titus has displayed a potent resistance to the psychic powers unleashed by the servants of Chaos on multiple occasions, the origin of which is unknown but which has laid suspicion upon him of somehow having been corrupted by the Ruinous Powers.
There is no sign of such a Chaos taint, nor has Titus been deemed to be a psyker, so the nature and scope of this resistance remains unknown at the present time, though this ability led to Titus' arrest after the campaign on Graia by the Inquisition.
Wargear
At one point or another, Captain Titus wielded almost every piece of wargear in the Space Marine arsenal, including the standard Bolt Pistol and chainsword favoured by many Astartes officers.
Perhaps Titus' most distinctive wargear when he was still a Firstborn Astartes was a weapon that fired explosive mines that generated a gravitic field and would stick to foes before exploding, which was called the "Vengeance Launcher."
As a Primaris Marine lieutenant, Titus wielded the new, upgraded wargear made available to the Adeptus Astartes during the Era Indomitus by the technological genius of Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl.
The wargear listed below represents only a starting, standard configuration, which can change at any time based on circumstance and the availability of other weapons and equipment.
Standard Firstborn Captain Wargear
- Jump Pack (Optional)
The Master-crafted Boltgun can be replaced with:
- Any Pistol
- Another Astartes melee weapon
A chainsword can be replaced with one of the following:
- Another Astartes melee weapon
Standard Primaris Lieutenant Wargear
- Power Sword (Optional replacement for Master-Crafted Auto Bolt Rifle or Chainsword)
- Master-crafted Stalker Bolt Rifle (Optional replacement for Master-Crafted Auto Bolt Rifle or Chainsword)
- Power Fist (Optional replacement for Master-Crafted Auto Bolt Rifle)
Canon Conflict
At the time of its release, the developer of the Space Marine video game claimed on its forums that it took place in a parallel Warhammer 40,000 universe where the Ultramarines 2nd Company is commanded by Demetrian Titus rather than Cato Sicarius.
To deal with this problem to Warhammer 40,000 continuity, in Space Marine II Titus was not only transformed into a Primaris Marine but was also reduced in rank from captain to lieutenant so that he no longer was equal in rank or authority to the current commander of the Ultramarines 2nd Company, Captain Sevastus Acheran. White Dwarf 498 established that the events of the Liberation of Graia in the first game happened before Cato Sicarius took command of the 2nd Company.
See Also
Sources
- Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness (1st Edition), pg. 5
- White Dwarf 498, "Lieutenant Titus of the Ultramarines", pp. 54-61
- Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine (Video Game)
- Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Forums (Defunct Link)
- Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II (Video Game)
- Warhammer 40,000: SPACE MARINE 2 – World Premiere Reveal - The Game Awards 2021