Another revision. Now we're a splinter Crusade, not a seperate Chapter... except its still mostly a seperate Chapter
Also I looked it up in the
SM codex and MOST of the 1st Co was lost w/Lysander, not all. So here's Vengeance CRUSADE history, take 3:
From their massive star fort, the Iron Moon, Vengeance Crusaders strike against the foes of the Imperium. Born from the gene-seed of the Imperial Fists chapter, they claim the
living legend Darnath Lysander as spiritual patriarch. The famous Captain's own gene seed was used to culture the Vengeance Crusade's gene stock shortly after he and many of his
company were lost in his famous millennium-long warp mishap. The tragic event actually sparked the decision to found the new Crusade, if indirectly. Grief stricken and enraged, a
faction among the Imperial Fists, largely the remaining members of Lysander's First Company, wished to take ship and seek their lost First Captain, but the risk involved in the possible
loss of more of the Chapter's resources made others argue fiercely against the idea. In the end the two faction's champions took the argument to the dueling blocks, and the
Seeker's champion bested the Stoic's and earned his faction's wish: a new Crusade was declared in the name of vengeance for the lost. Vengeance Crusaders would wear Imperial Fist
colors and iconography, and hold true to their vows to Dorn and Emperor, but were for all intents and purposes a new and autonomous Chapter. Taking minimal ships and supplies so
as not to overburden their greatly depopulated brethren, Vengeance Crusade prepared to enter the Warp. Perhaps predictably, they were lost to the same storm which claimed
Captain Lysander's ship. The incident was quietly covered over in the Chapter's history as an embarrassing minor schism which ended itself at the cost of hundreds of Astartes and a
wealth of ships and resources.
A millennium later the Imperial Fists were still fighting, their noble First Captain remembered but replaced more than once since. Then Lysander returned. His ancient ship
regurgitated from the Warp near an Iron Warriors stronghold and immediately crippled. The mighty Captain himself captured and imprisoned. Tortured and mocked for months,
brought back from a hell of madness to a hell of shame and pain. Then the escape. Broken manacles and hungry fists served him well enough at the time, though now he wields a
hammer entrusted to the Chapter by Dorn himself. Guards slain, orbital defences sabotaged, he stole a ship and crewed it with fellow freed prisoners of the traitor Chaos Marines. He
quickly established contact with Imperial forces and was returned to the Fists with great honor and celebration under Imperial Guard escort in a matter of weeks. Though he was
extensively tested both physically and psychically for many months, he was still given the respect due a man with his impeccable record, and returned to his rank afterward.
This story is widely known. What is not known even to many Imperial Fists is that Vengeance also returned. The Crusade also was spewed from the Warp a thousand years
from when it entered. They too found themselves before the guns of an enemy world, auspex still Warp-blind and sensors unable to cope with the number of enemy guns already
firing on them. But the sensors did show one thing very clearly: the runic icon for Darnath Lysander's ship. That which they sought was near, and every Astartes on board felt his
hearts leap at the thought. Having sustained incredibly light losses to the Warp storm, the Crusade fleet still represented a significant naval presence, and every station was crewed by
a Space Marine fighting to save the living symbol of his Chapter's honour. The battle of Malodrax was short lived, and many Vengeance ships were utterly destroyed with all hands lost,
but there was a good reason. Every shot fired from every Crusade gun targeted an implacement or orbital platform which was firing on Lysander's ship. Their bold sacrifice prevented
the total obliteration of the Captain's vessel, at a terrible cost in Crusader lives. They were the only assistance Lysander had in his fabled capture, and probably the reason his ship was
not simply destroyed altogether, yet none outside the Vengeance Crusade celebrate their actions.
Several Vengeance ships had their guns silenced by precision fire after the Iron Warriors realized that they were not firing to protect themselves. The Crusaders had witnessed
Lysander's capture, and saw a dark and shaming chance. They fought the traitors when they boarded the crippled Imperial vessels. But they fought to lose, and they lost to be
captured. After the Warp storm, the naval engagement, and the repelling action there were few enough Crusaders alive, but each knew if even one of them could reach the Captain
it would be worth it. Seeing their lost commander's face would accomplish their mission and turn the past hell into a glory road. So they took the shame of defeat and capture as
merely a path to victory. Like smearing kohl over a decoration for a stealth mission, it did not lessen the honor represented.
It was Vengeance Crusaders who caused a splinter of adamantine to find it's way to the Captain's water ration. After he picked his locks and slew his guards, it was Vengeance
who had a map of nearby anti-air emplacements and other priority targets for an escape. Many died on suicide runs at batteries and bunkers over a kilometers-wide area to provide a
gap for a single stolen ship to make it out. Five Crusaders were on that ship with the Captain. All had been his sergeants, a thousand years prior. All had fought and bled for him a
thousand times before he was lost, and had endured the same humiliation and agony as he since his return. They said nothing of the Chapter Master's decision.
After Lysander was exonerated from all suspicion by near a year of testing, he led the First Company of the Fists once more and wiped the Iron Warrior presence from Malodrax
completely. When the smoke cleared, he found his Company had gained in number, and many of them were unarmored. A few dozen Vengeance Crusaders had hung on in captivity
after the escape before. They were miserable shadows of what a proud Astartes should look like, but they held their looted boltguns in steady hands. They were given medical
attention immediately, then sequestered with the sergeants from the escape, who had been released from testing with the Captain, but kept confined to quarters.
All were given back their basic armaments and assembled at a disembarkation dock. A voice came over the vox hail, a voice every living Fist would know and obey without
conscious thought; every one but the Vengeance Crusaders, who had never met the Chapter Master, Vladimir Pugh.
'Vengeance Crusade, your objective is complete...' There was a pause with the weight of the ages in it. '...the Imperial Fists have no further tasks for you. You have served
you Chapter well for a thousand years, though it may have seemed longer in the warp, or on Malodrax. Your torments have changed you too much to return to your brothers,
however. The torture engines of the Iron Warriors have dampened your response to our psycho-conditioning hypnomats. We have also noted your relative apathy to the pain glove,
and the changes you have made to your armor. If you do not think like us or feel like us or look like us, you must stand apart from us. We bear you no malice and mean you no harm,
but your place is elsewhere. Fists of Vengeance, I salute you."
Then they were ushered aboard a transport and taken to a spaceport. The crusade ships moved on and left less than fifty Space Marines with the gear they stood in and
nothing else. Those were the surviving members of Vengeance Crusade. As the last lights of engines winked out in the distance, each Marine swore an oath of vengeance. Not
against the Fists, for they understood why they had been cast out. The oath they swore came from the torture and mockery they suffered on Malodrax, and was unyielding and
brutal in its wording and intent. They swore to thwart Chaos in any form, using whatever means necessary. If a man stood between them and their foe, they would trample that
man. If Chaos hid beneath a rock, they would destroy that rock. If the rock was the foundation of a city, what matter? Hardened in the crucible of ancient wars and recent
tortures, the newest Crusade of the Imperial Fists was founded by its oldest and perhaps toughest First Company veterans, and the unflappable troopers who had survived torments
unimaginable alongside them.
They were committed to the cause but wondered how they might replace their losses without a Chapter planet or even a favored recruiting world. Crusading Chapters such as
the Imperial Fists are known to simply harvest worlds at need, weeding out the weak and unworthy as their training process goes on, but many Chapters have a dedicated planet or
system from which they regularly conduct drafts. The advantage to an Astartes-held world being security (obviously) and also the ability to tailor a culture to create citizens prepared
for the recruitment process. Teaching tribals which end of a bolter makes noise is tedious. The veteran sergeants were unable to find a satisfactory solution, and the Crusade waned
near obscurity for long years, with only a trickle of Marines joining, and those often the last remnants of broken Chapters. The loss of Commander Ryllos during the Macharian Heresy
was not the killing blow to the Crusade that many thought, however. Inexplicably, the next two Commanders selected had been White Scars prior to joining the cause of vengeance,
and they kept the Crusade from extinction, barely, by using guerilla tactics and by avoiding major engagements. When the mighty Jangath Commander-Khan finally succumbed to his
many wounds fighting Eldar pirates, the last of his honor guard, Crusade Champion Ilden Arctos, took up his fallen Commander's sword and led the barest remnants of the Vengeance
Crusade to victory. Tales of his exemplary display of the Crusade's ethos traveled, and eventually losses were replaced enough to field a single company again. Newly appointed
Crusade Master Arctos chose his next campaign with great care. He committed the entire company to a beleaguered industrial world, already nearly a lost cause.
Following a brilliant and brutal blitzkrieg campaign which shattered Waaagh! Bloodgob, the civilian population of Rigel IV was left decimated. Crusade Master Ilden Arctos held
council with the few surviving members of the local government, and came to a weighty decision. All the boys orphaned by the war, every prepubescent male child without a
guardian across the face of the world, were to be gathered as fresh recruits. Rigel IV lost thirteen percent of its original population after the war was already over, to their saviours.
Master Arctos, seeing the dedication in the eyes of boys who had no one left to follow but him, made the practice official Crusade custom, naming them Vengeful Children, or Children
of Vengeance. So it is that these new Vengeance Marines know the pain of loss, and have a personal stake in the Crusade's work. Planetary governors and Defense Captains have
learned to look at the numbers before calling on the Fists of Vengeance, as they will take every last orphaned boy on the planet. Those who fail to meet Space Marine standards are
sent to Imperial Guard regiments across the Segmentum, and are still highly valued for their unwavering resolve and sharp discipline in battle.
In tribute to their spiritual patriarch, Captain Lysander, Vengeance Marines are dedicated to cleansing the stain of Chaos from the galaxy. While the Crusade will answer any
request for aid that they may, Vengeance Marines are in active pursuit of Chaos in all its forms. Chaos marines are their primary target, but their efforts cleaning up renegade Imperial
worlds and the warp have brought them against Eldar and their dark counterparts, Tyranid by the hulk-load, and the occasional lost and confused Waaagh!. Taking after their Imperial
Fist ancestry, Vengeance marines tend to prefer a stand-up fight to the lightning hit and run strategies of the White Scars, or the unpredictable behaviour of the Space Wolves. This
preference is not universal, and Vengeance marines consider quick thinking and individual action to be a part of adherence to the Codex.
So that's it. Please comment, I like revising and trying to keep the background 'correct' and fitting to existing Imperial Fist fluff.
2,801p
'ardboy Nob and his 'ardboyz
2-3 
" -KingCracker