Lord Commander

Icon of the Astra Militarum

Lord commander is a general officer rank of the Astra Militarum.

The five lord commanders are each responsible for directing the operations of all of the Imperial Guard forces within an entire segmentum of the Imperium.

It is common to refer to each of the lord commanders by the name of the segmentum which they lead, i.e. lord commander solar, lord commander tempestus, lord commander obscurus, etc. The rank also has variant titles which have been used by some of its holders, such as "lord high general."

Notable Lord Commanders

• Arcadian Leontus - Leontus is the current lord commander solar of the Astra Militarum in the Era Indomitus, the supreme commander of all Astra Militarum forces in the Segmentum Solar, the very heart of the Imperium. Though his remit is technically confined to the defence of the Segmentum Solar, Leontus has led campaigns far beyond its boundaries. How else, he argues, can he protect Holy Terra from distant foes?

• Bock - Bock was the lord commander who had Colonel Vladimir Nikita Kurov, only a lieutenant at the start of the Second War for Armageddon, appointed to his staff during the Bakkus Crusade. Kurov would later become one of the most able and reliable Astra Militarum commanders of recent times. Once promoted to general, Kurov was placed in direct command of all Astra Militarum forces on Armageddon.

• Eugenian - Eugenian was a lord commander solar, possibly during the Third War for Armageddon.

• Macharius - Macharius was the lord commander solar, the supreme military commander of the Imperium's Segmentum Solar and one of the High Lords of Terra, who is also perhaps the most famous commander of the Astra Militarum. Granted the rank of warmaster by the Senatorum Imperialis, he undertook the Macharian Conquests, also called the Macharian Crusade, of 392-399.M41, which in only seven standard years added nearly 1,000 new worlds to the Imperium at the very edge of the Milky Way Galaxy in the Segmentum Pacificus. He was also later canonised as a saint of the Imperial Cult by the Ecclesiarchy.

• Phillips - Phillips was the lord commander solar during the early years of the 41st Millennium. He was captured during the Roxane Rebellion by rebel forces, only to be rescued by the Donian General Macharius. After the battle and Macharius' victory over the rebels, Phillips made Macharius his successor as the lord commander solar. Phillips was later killed in action during the Lemort Landings.

• Lucellin Tyberius - Lucellin Tyberius was a renowned and highly skilled lord commander of the Astra Militarum. At his death, his knowledge of military tactics and strategy, as well as his haughty and dominating personality, were cybernetically persevered in his gold-plated skull as a form of limited artificial intelligence for use by future generations of Imperial military commanders. The machine was named the Tactical Auto-Reliquary of Tyberius.

• Morcar - A famed lord commander of the Astra Militarum remembered for his battles with the Asuryani. He is most famous among Imperial military strategists for this quotation, "I had heard many rumours of the horrors of the mysterious Eldar. Of fire-clad Daemons no weapons could harm. Of power-wreathed psykers who can tell your future and forecast your doom. Of winged warriors falling from the sky like rain and tall guardian warriors powered by the spirits of the dead. None concerned me. None held any terror for a faithful servant of the Emperor with the might of the Imperial Guard at his command. None save their aircraft. When fighting the Eldar, watch the skies..."

• Otto Ivan Gustavus - Otto Ivan Gustavus was a lord commander of the Astra Militarum once described as a walrus of a man from Valhalla. In his youth Gustavus first served as a Lieutenant commanding an armoured fist platoon, and eventually rose to command his regiment of Valhallan Ice Warriors before ultimately earning promotion into the ranks of the Imperial High Command's General Staff. He was known to be loud, bellicose, and generally unpleasant but possessed of a keen political sense. Gustavus took overall command of the Imperial forces during the Taros Campaign, though he was relieved of his command and arrested by Commissar-General Mordred Van Horcic after the failure of Operation Comet during that brutal campaign.

• Sebiascor Ebongrave - Sebiascor Ebongrave is a lord commander of the Astra Militarum and the overall commander of the Imperial forces in the Achilus Crusade's Canis Salient in the Jericho Reach. His paranoia and fanatically-driven search for traitors in his own ranks are legendary. Ebongrave views the T'au as a subtle and insidious enemy, their ideology of the Greater Good standing in stark contrast to the certainty of the Imperial Creed. He believes the Greater Good only appeals to those who lack true conviction in the righteousness of the divinely-ordained Human destiny to dominate the galaxy. He believes those Humans who join with the T'au Empire are traitors to their own species, and further the infection of xenos ideology. As a result, Ebongrave holds that T'au sympathisers are widespread throughout the Imperium and has ordered brutal purges against suspected pro-T'au elements within the Achilus Crusade. However, Ebongrave's detractors within the Canis Salient claim that his hostility towards his own people only drives them to embrace the ways of the T'au and that his paranoia has transformed into a delusion. Ebongrave is currently based in a secure bunker on the Fortress World of Spite, where he oversees his purges against suspected xenos sympathisers and Imperial traitors. Fearing for his life from the threat within his own ranks, Ebongrave rarely leaves his bunker and instead relies on his trusted subordinate Lord General Reila Vann to carry out most of the daily necessities of command.

• Xa'chan - Xa'chan was a lord high general, a variant title for lord commander, of the Astra Militarum.

• Zuhlke - Zuehlke was a lord commander of the Astra Militarum and the original tactical commander of the Imperial forces engaged in the Siege of Vraks. Slow and cautious, the siege proceeded at a snail's pace and resulted in high casualties under his command. However, when the arrival of Chaos Space Marine warbands on Vraks routed the forces under his command, Zuehlke was replaced as overall commander of the siege by Marshal Amim Kargori of the Astra Militarum.
  

Sources

• Codex: Armageddon (3rd Edition), pp. 1, 30
• Codex: Astra Militarum (6th Edition) (Digital Edition), "Heirlooms of Conquest"
• Codex: Imperial Guard (2nd Edition), pp. 31-32
• Codex: Imperial Guard (5th Edition), pg. 13
• Deathwatch: Rising Tempest, pp. 10. 117
• Imperial Armour Update, pg. 36
• Imperial Armour Volume Three, pg. 40
• Imperial Armour Volume Six - The Siege of Vraks - Part Two, pp. 40-71
• White Dwarf 240 (UK), pp. 32-33
• Warhammer Community - Lead the Astra Militarum From the Front With the Legendary Lord Solar Leontus.