so far my players have defeated some pretty epic bad guys, as well as come out of some pretty hardcore situations relatively unscathed due in some part to luck, but mainly to strong tactics and pure bloody minded stuborness.

What do you reckon the requirements of being awarded the Crux Terminatas are?

They need to be inducted into the Veteran Company of their Chapter normally. If you feel that they have earned the honor, you can have them be recognized by a superior officer (Captain, Veteran Sergeant, etc.) and put up for commendation. Perhaps even work it into roleplaying and have them go through additional trials or testing to qualify.

Hrm.

If you're running through the modules, I'd say completing Oblivion's Edge or The Emperor Protects successfully would be a good opportunity to grant it, as long as the characters are like Rank 4+. But seriously, winning those are sort of epic-beyond-epic IMO, as reflected by the fact that those modules give Fate Points as mission rewards (presumably because your players have had to burn Fate during the module at least once ).

My players (sans the characters that joined up later, who were all Deathwatch veterans and already had theirs) earned their Crux Terminatus… Terminatuses… Terminati? Would it be Cruxes Terminatus? Anyway, earned them for completing The Emperor Protects, after having gone through Extraction, Final Sanction, Oblivion's Edge, and a few original adventures.

Gaire, that's my plan as well.

Well, you save a Magos, a planet, and the entire Reach, I think they earned it.

So far my players have

completed final sanction and obvlions edge

assualted and destroyed a chaos held frigate

performed a xenocide on a alien planet

destroyed a hidden tau staging post

assualted and crippled a tau cruiser

rescued vermillion level personages from an ork held world

slain an ork warboss and his retinue

They are now rank 4, and distinguished renown.

maybe they are getting close.

Next they are going after the chaos version of the deathwatch.

I'm debating this issue myself. My group has saved a world from outright harvesting by Slaugth and their human allies, cleansed a watch station of Hrud and are currently stealthing their way around the rainy streets of Sinophia Magna. If their current mission is a success, they will definitely earn the Calixian Chalice (a custom honour for Astartes who do great deeds to preserve the sanctity of the sector). The Raven Guard tac marine is well on his way to earn a marksman's honour. I could see one or two of the others earning the Iron Skull and Iron Halo but those will be a few missions down the line.

As for the Crux Terminatus, I have the issue that the first mission was hugely long and I perhaps gave a bit too much xp per session. So the group is approaching rank four but are not in respected yet. This does provide rp possibilities, as their superiors are divided as to how much honour and rank should be bestowed upon these obviously gifted marines (they are working scarily well together). Some think they should be promoted, others think they should spend years in the field before earning any significant rank in the Watch. The Xerxes watch fortress in Calixis has its internal politics.

In mechanic terms, I go by the book, Rank 4+ and Renown 60+

In game/RP terms it depends on what is happening in the games. I like to include tertiary objectives that are really hard but offer good experience/renown bonuses. If I have a player in my party looking at an advance specialty that requires Crux Terminatus, I'm willing to write into the adventures opportunities to earn it. It should be some major actions against Xenos, Chaos, etc. that turns the tide: helping to save a planet or system (or even the entire Reach)

As others have pointed out, if you use the official campaign materials, there are lots of opportunities in there to award the Terminatus. If you're homebrewing all your missions, once they get to rank 4 or 5 start looking at them having bigger and bigger missions: fighting the Tyranids on Castobel, dealing with Chaos, helping to stop the Tau advance (this is assuming you're using Jericho Reach…if you've built your own sector you'll probably have some ideas on what the major threats there are)

I didn't award any in the game I ran. The group itself was too busy arguing amongst themselves, and such Astartes are not worthy of being inducted into their First Company.

That said, my Iron Hand I'm playing in a recent game has been awarded the Crux Terminatus for the successful completion of a mission where we ended up destroying six Ork Gargants, with the recovery of every single gene-seed that was recoverable, and the sheer dogged determination of an Iron Hand in the face of what other chapters call a week in the Apothecarium, that I called "A mere setback, you're only slowing me down" (Losing the right arm, half my chest, both my legs).

Then the second mission confirmed it… punching out an Ork Warboss and choking him on a krak grenade, and then taking down a Killa Kan in two rounds…

That's the only Crux Terminatus I've seen in Deathwatch awarded.

@ Darmort
Tis but a scratch

I think it should take more than just completing The Emperor Protects.
There are 2 players from my group I am going to give Crux Terminatus to when the group finishes The Emperor Protects because they killed a daemon prince and 6 of his veteran body guards without losing a fate point, and I tried to kill them without cheating.

- Erik