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I recently stumbled upon this BA piece of art and was told they are the Soul Drinkers or something like that. I was desperately looking for fluff, but to no avail. The most I could scrounge up was that they're some sort of separatist SM chapter bent on reverting the Imperium back to the way it was supposed to be. I also landed myself an AoBR and have been juggling ideas of what to do with the spes mureens i got with it. So far it's between Dark Angels, Sallys, or these supposed Soul Drinkers. Anything that could possibly sway me in the SD direction would be greatly appreciated.

There's a novel (or perhaps a series) called Soul Drinker, explaining them. They're obsessed with this chapter relic called the soul spear (may or may not be daemonic) and they're rebellious scum after a falling out with imperials in an incident involving slaaneshi cultists working with dark eldar.

Check out the "Soul Drinkers Omnibus." Kind of cheesy as far as it goes, as Ben Counter tends to write his first drafts in crayons, but it was my first BL read so I did enjoy it. The fluff kind of goes something like:
1-chapter disobeys the inq.
2-chapter is tricked into following tzeetch.
3-chapter is declared renegade, and suffers mutations due to tzeentch's influence.
4-chapter frees itself from tzeentch.
5-chapter begins quest to free the imperium from the beurocratic government in place, and free people to realize their worth as humans.

There are some really cool opportunities for conversion, as alot of the main characters in the army have mutations.

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Soul_Drinkers

the soul spear was given to them by rogul dorn after the 2nd founding

Basically, the way I understand it, The Soul Drinkers are one of the few renegade Space Marine Chapters that don't follow Chaos.

Maybe this belongs in the fluff section?

The guys in that picture look like Emperor's Children (pre-heresy) to me...

Those are Soul Drinkers for sure.

First, because its the cover of one of their books. And second, because pre-heresy EC´s have golden shoulder trim afaik. No white/ bone colors.

Edit: Oh and of course EC´s dont have the Chalice symbol as well. Thats Soul Drinker insignia.
EDIT²: Book Cover can be found HERE

I really wanted to do a soul drinkers army after reading the books.
There a four of them. I recommend reading them and taking notes as you go.
The Chapter Master is a 7 legged librarian called Sarpedon. His eighth leg is bionic!!!
One of the other characters has turned to Khorne and has swords instead of hands.
Nuff said!!!!

Please keep us posted if you make these!!!!!

Alex Kolodotschko wrote:
One of the other characters has turned to Khorne and has swords instead of hands.

I think his skin is transparent as well.

Alex Kolodotschko wrote:
The Chapter Master is a 7 legged librarian called Sarpedon. His eighth leg is bionic!!!
One of the other characters has turned to Khorne and has swords instead of hands.

Flachzange wrote:I think his skin is transparent as well.

Whoa. I've had that book laying around with no inspiration to read it....but now....It's definitely next after Blood for the Blood God!

Thanks a ton for the insight guys. I had no idea they had books. I'll have to check those out. If I do end up trying out soul-drinkers what codex should I use? To me it sounds like they retain most of their imperial tech but still suffer from mutations.

LOL, how interesting...

Back in 2nd ed., Soul Drinkers a Blood Angel successor chapter that simply had a different color scheme and chapter regalia. I almost chose them for my marine army back in 96.

LOL

Cheers guys - yes, I guess the chalice does give it away!

All that purple and gold had me blinded to the imperial truth...

;-)

Gavin Thorne wrote:Back in 2nd ed., Soul Drinkers a Blood Angel successor chapter that simply had a different color scheme and chapter regalia. I almost chose them for my marine army back in 96.

You sure you're not thinking of the Blood Drinkers, Gavin? I don't have my Angels of Death Codex anymore, so I can't check to be sure.

Soul Drinkers are an Imperial Fist successor, hence Dorn's spear figuring into their lore so prominently. If I were doing a SD army I'd probably use the vanilla marine codex, you can use the spikey codex but if you're going for accuracy fluffwise then I think you should go the SM route. Like I said, awesome chance for some good conversions. They recieve their intel from a rouge psyker who is locked in a sarcophagus, in a dungeon on their ship or some such. I always wanted to model that guy freaking out inside the box.

Didn't the main protaganist, or a central figure in these books, get mutated like a spider? I've never read the books, though if it's the right series I know my cousin did. He had started modding a figure for that character which was quite impressive eventhough he was never satisfied with it. I've got it in my Chaos bin.

Ok, I think i'm the only person on the forums that has actually read the series so I might as well share my knowledge.
*Spoilers*

SOUL DRINKER
Soul Drinker begins with a Battle Company lead by Commander Caeon as they assault a mutant infested space station to recover their revered relic, the Soul Spear, which is a gene-encoded rod that emits two blades of pure immaterialism and is only able to be used by those with the blood of Dorn in them i.e the Soul Drinkers.
They own the mutants and manage to find the SS, but before they can retrieve it the AM teleports in and snatches it from them. Not long after Caeon is killed by a mutant. With Sarpedon as the last figure of authority in their ranks he issues a raid against the AM ship to retrieve the SS.
They win of course and trot happily back to their Battle Barge, where their Chapter Master is pissed off. He issues a duel to the death between Sarpedon as the only way to atone for his treachery. The Librarian is victor and becomes the new Chapter Master/ Head Librarian with a noticeable mutation of eight chitinous legs. Slowly the chapter's number begins to mutate and Tellos, whose arms had been chopped off by an Electro Priest, runs around the ship trying to figure out what's wrong with him.

They get brought to a Daemon infested world by a Preacher whom they rescue from the Space Station and cleanse the world of taint, killing the head Nurgle Daemon there and Sarpedon getting his leg ripped off by a big daemon of Nurgle. The Tzeentch Daemon that had been mutating them shows up and thanks them for removing his rival of Nurgle and asks him to join Chaos, Sarpedon flatly refuses and stabs it with the Soul Spear.
End of book one.

btw, Tellos goes pretty much insane from the loss of his arms because he wants to continue fighting for the Chapter, but proves his worth when he shoves fan blades into his hand sockets. They let him do it and jam Chainblades into his hands where he led the assault marines as a deadly beserker.

Also, Tellos dissapears in one of the books with his squad. I think it was during a planet raid where, yes, a necromancer made it RAIN ZOMBIES. He filled a cargo freighter with corpses, brought them to life and ejected the cargo hold. Can you say "OH SNAP"!

Book 2 - THE BLEEDING CHALICE
(Which gets it's name from the Chapter Emblem, a chalice)

The Inquisition is pretty pissed off at the Chapter for destroying an Adeptus Mechanicus Ship nd going renegade and send in Inquisitor Thaddeus whom has to hunt them down and kill their leader, Sarpedon.
The Soul Drinkers are now pretty screwed with their mutations as they cannot recruit new marines with their faulty Gene-seed and some are becoming too horrifically mutated (One even grew another head!)

Realizing this, they then have to break into various Imperial owned laboratories and such to fix the mutations. Eventually they come into the contact of another Daemon prince of Nurgle, in the form of a long dead wizened old man with high pschyic power that is slowly corrupting an Imperial system.
Thaddeus breaks all the rules trying to track down the SD by even raiding a AM world for information on their whereabouts, pretty much making him renegade too.

Eventually Thaddeus, Sarpedon and the Daemon Prince square off with Sarpedon killing the Daemons bodyguards and the Inquisitor killing the Daemon himself. The book ends on Thaddeus leaving Sarpedon alone and the Chapter once more able to 'reproduce'.
End of Book 2

Though they are unable to save Tellos and several Assault marines and leave him to his fate.

Book 3 - CRIMSON TEARS

With a whole bunch of new recruits on their side the SD once more happily trot along into another battle against the enemies of the Imperium, this time against Slaanesh and the Dark Eldar. They are not alone on this world as the Crimson Fists are brought forth to attack and 'cleanse' the SD from the world. Noticing the SD attacking the CF the Dark Eldar recruit the SD onto their side thinking that they are evil, which they aren't.

Sarpedon discovers that the DE leader, Karhedros, is actually using the entire planet as a massive offering to Slaanesh and hightailing it before anyone realizes, killing the SD, CF and human forces on the planet. Sarpedon manages to lure the CF into the DE lair and stop the rite from ending, saving the planet.
As the Soul Drinkers, Crimson Fists and Guardsmen leave the planet the world is issued an EXTERMINATUS by the Imperial navy to remove the system of 'taint'.
Oh, and they find Tellos and Sarpedon defeats him, but doesn't kill him...
End of book 3.

Whilst not entirely important in this book as the next, there are a squad of Scouts led by 'Brother Eumenes' that begin questioning the SD actions.

Book 4 - my favourite - CHAPTER WAR

Under the suggestion of their Chaplain, Iktinos, the SD go charging onto a world being invaded by Orks to save the population there. Things go great and they come quite close to killing the Ork Warboss and defeating the WAAAGH!, before the Howling Griffons also attend the Planet's distress call. Mistaking the SD for CSM they then begin to openly attack the SD and push them back toward their Battle Barge.
But newly deemed Space Marine Eumenes has other plans and begins a revolution amongst the SD, creating a CHAPTER WAR where the new recruits attack the older marines.
Being attacked from both sides Sarpedon resigns as Chapter Master and hands over authority to Eumenes in exchange for help against the Howling Griffons. Sarpedon manages to kill their Chapter Master and persuade the rest of their force that they have mistaken their chapter for a different one (who would have thought that there'd be a CSM Chapter with a Chalice as their emblem too, eh?)
Sarpedon then kills Eumenes and offers someone to take his place, no one does so he remains their Chapter Master and Ork Warboss is killed.
End of Book 4

There are loads more goodies and nuggets of useful information within the books but I think I've revealed enough.

You sure you're not thinking of the Blood Drinkers, Gavin? I don't have my Angels of Death Codex anymore, so I can't check to be sure.

You've got it right there, sorry for my ignorance... blood, soul... easy to confuse.

I liked the series. It's not great fiction, but I thought it was good 40k fiction. I even did 1000 pts of Soul Drinkers for Adepticon a few years ago. A few things to consider:

All the sergeants run around without a helmet. All of them. And they tend to die of massive head wounds. In one of the books, a squad gets swallowed by - basically The Blob. And the sergeant dies because the acid eats his skull, where the troopers survive with damage where the acid eat away at the joints.

They're a close-combat oriented chapter. Lots of assault marines.

Before they rebelled, they were generally called upon for drop-missions and boarding actions.

They get their name because the special SM gland (which name I forget) that allows them to eat brains and glean info - it works better for SD than other marines.

They have few or no vehicles in the books. I don't recall them even using a rhino, but I might be wrong. They may have some before they go renegade, but I don't recall them using any.

They end up floating around in a Space Hulk.

Some of them end up with mutations, but most either have no mutation or very minor ones.

A lot of the modeling opportunities depend on 'when' you play them. Before they go renegade (which actually is because an inquisitor declares them heretics), they're a Codex chapter. After they rebel, they continue to fight, but with battle losses totally change their organization.

Before they're declare heretics, it's mostly tac and assault squads. Some missile launcers are around, but not much mention of heavy weapons. I don't recall there being a dread in any of the books, but it could fit. In one of the books, terminators make an appearance, and they note that their stock of TDA is pretty limited (which is odd, since they specialized in boarding actions).

I think the color scheme and fluff is really cool, but I found that sticking to a 'fluff' list is pretty restrictive. For SM, I would think: Tac squads, assault squads (either with jump packs or a drop pod), scouts, vanguard vets, and maybe one terminator squad. For CSM, you're probably looking at CSM squads, raptors, and a terminator squad. CSM could probably go with the chaos undivided icon, but not one of the cult markings. I could see having Berzerkers as the 'super assault squad', but probably only one squad.

I've been tempted to expand my SD force, especially because I liked how they came out looking. But, I can't build a 'fluffy' list that I want to play. Tac marines and assault marines don't excite me as much as dreads and sternguard and tanks.

There are four books in the Black Library about them..all of which I've read. I didnt read all of the posts, but they are generally considered heretics. Could use them as a split army ...traitor when you need to play chaos..and Imperial when you wanna play the good guys. Use Sarpedon when leading chaos..and the Chaplain when playing Imperials. Great amount of fluff and alot you can do with conversions. They use a Red Templar symbol..and work well with bits of the black templar sprues.

Im building an army of them know..using every boxed kit for marines and chaos. Should be loads of fun. Ill load up pics later.

I hope you actually start this army, i want to see everyones take on the conversions, i have now been inspired to start my own SD army, can you say Sardepedon Conversion!!!!!!!

Hey "!?": I've read all the books but the fourth, next time you spoil a story, use the handy "Spoiler Tags" so you don't ruin for those that want to read it.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

lexicanum wrote:Inquisitor Thaddeus. Forges an alliance of convenience with Sarpedon in order to kill Teturact. Uses incredibly expensive executioner rounds in his auto pistol. One round has been known to cost the same as an Imperial Cruiser space ship.

I'm accustomed to how over the top 40k is, but... wtf? This quote, combined with 8 legged non chaos space marines and other such shenanigans makes me doubt the quality of this book.

Well, they were influenced and manipulated by tzeentch. hence the reason for a lot of their mutations. But they freed themselves from the chaos influence and are now protectors of all that is mankind, but not part of the empire. Its quite simple actually.

That makes sense enough i guess, but auto pistol shots that cost as much as a cruiser? Seriously?

Thanks for all the info guys! Even if it is kinda spoilerish. Now is Sarpedon a regular Librarian or a termie?

I was pondering using nid legs for his mutated form, so size does matter.