Beliefs

The Smoke Jaguars take great pride in both their accomplishments and the number of foes they have brought down but despite all that they do not really see themselves as soldiers, not for them holding a line on a map or advancing territorial borders. The Initiates view themselves as hunters first and foremost, seeing their purpose as being nothing less than to track down and eliminate the worst heretics, traitors and Xenos in the galaxy.

Yet at heart the Smoke Jaguars are highly spiritual Chapter, much given over to ritual and mystical philosophies including a belief in prophecy and astrology. The Chapter's librarians spend much time charting the movements of the stars and mediating upon their findings to divine their Chapter's future. This symbolism extends to the Emperor himself who they view as the life-giving light of the galaxy. While they do not deify him as an all-powerful god, they do hold that his self-sacrifice against Horus allowed the Sun-Emperor's mind to fly free and become a mighty power in the Warp.

They hold that upon death the spirit is freed to travel to its true home. For mortals this is either to join with the Sun-Emperor or to be consumed by Chaos but as for their own brothers they believe that their souls return to the Fortress-Monastery to stand guard over the Chapter in the spirit world. For this reason the Smoke Jaguars attach intense importance to their dead, going to great lengths to recover their bodies and return them home to be ritually mummified and stored with due reverence within the crypts under their home. Given their covert nature this is not always possible, so the initiates also strive to ensure their names endure, carving their names and deeds in glyph form upon the walls of their Fortress-Monastery or erecting proud steles on its grounds.

The Smoke Jaguars hold that one is not truly dead until they are forgotten, so they memorise as many name-glyphs as they can, thus lost souls will find their way home to continue their battles in the afterlife. The ultimate embodiments of this are the Chapter's Dreadnoughts, who are held in reverence as the Living-Dead, still fighting on beyond death to protect the living.

Yet what the Chapter seeks to hide with these superstitions and dogmas is that the Smoke Jaguars harbour a terrible sense of disconnection with the wider galaxy, the long isolation severing them from their legacy and inheritance. For this reason, the brothers are driven by a compulsion to prove their worth to the galaxy, seeking to demonstrate their right to stand among humanity's defenders by merit of their deeds.

This urge becomes an outright obsession when dealing with matters regarding their Primarch. Having spent six millennia expecting to be reunited with their gene-sire the revelation of his unexplained disappearance was a shocking blow to their psyche. Since then the Smoke Jaguars have spent many centuries seeking any hint of Corax's presence or the smallest clue as to his fate but there has been nothing and every search has ended in bitter failure.

Despite this the Chapter holds Corvus Corax will return someday and until then they cling fiercely to any touchstones of his they can find.