CAPTAINS & COMMANDERS
An officer with the rank of Captain commands every Space Marine Company. The Captain will be a stalwart veteran of thousands of battles. Over the decades and in some case centuries of war the Captain will have accrued a vast store of knowledge and experience of fighting, tactics and leadership. Space Marine Captains are first and foremost warriors expected to lead from the front and they are powerful enough for their personal combat prowess to be able to affect the outcome of a battle involving thousands of combatants. They lead by example and command their troops with absolute authority. Space Marine troops venerate their leaders and consider promotion to Captain as the pinnacle of achievement and service. Captains are proud and terrible warriors but eventually their combat skills fade, either through age or injury. These Captains continue to serve the Chapter as members of the Headquarters officer cadre. Here they use their incredible experience and knowledge to manage recruitment, training and administration. They also serve as Chiefs of Staff to the Chapter Master offering insight on matters of strategy, tactics and the general business of war. The Chapter Master himself will have once been a Company Captain and in theory he still holds the rank. There are many other titular ranks within the Chapter. These include Commander of the Watch, Commander of the Arsenal, the Master's Secretarius, Lord of the Household, Commander of the Fleet, Chief of Ordinance and Commander of the Watch. A Captain may be honoured with such a title in addition to his commissioned rank. Many of these honorific titles carry with them important duties and responsibilities. Captains wear power armour or Terminator armour decorated in the Chapter livery. Their badge of rank is the Company heraldry. In its most basic form this is simply the Company colour displayed on their right shoulder pad. This pattern also forms the basis of the Captain's banner and may even appear on the hull of any personal vehicles. Captains wear the Chapter icon on their left shoulder pad. Space Marines are proud of their achievements and Captains no less so. Over the many years of battle the Captain will have won innumerable honours and distinctions. Furthermore their wargear will have damaged and repaired or replaced a hundred times or more. Each honour adds a new element to the Captain's livery. Each repair provides the Chapter's Artificers with an opportunity to embellish his armour or weapons with decoration and devotions. In this way the basic rank markings are superceeded by a mass of details and decoration. Space Marine Captains therefore have a unique heraldry and very individual appearance.
These shoulder pads show the basic Company heraldries. These had their origin in the days when Space Marines were organised into Legions, formations many times larger than the current Chapter. It may have been that these patterns were originally used to differentiate between the sub-units of those vast regiments. These heraldries now form the basic liveries for the Company Captains and are displayed on the Captain's right shoulder pad and back banner. Veteran Captains are unlikely to display such markings as their personal honours and merit awards will supplant the basic design. 
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