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Ok, here goes, this is the background behind my custom Adeptus Astartes Chapter. I will probably end up posting pictures of my models on another section of the forum.

Shortly after the Horus Heresy, several high ranking Astartes military officials, including what few Primarchs were still alive and other various Chapter Masters, banded together to form a secret chapter comprised of marines from all current chapters. The main idea was to prevent a single flaw from being shared among the entire fighting force. In the case of other chapters, this could be quite a burden on the battlefield (like the mindless rage of the Blood Angles). If all strengths and weaknesses from the various chapters were combined together, perhaps a strong, unified force could be created.
This idea was brought before the Inquisition, Imperial Guard, and Adeptus Mechanicus, each of whom rejected the entire idea. Their response was likely extra cautious due to the extreme turmoil recently caused by the Heresy. The Primarchs and Chapter Masters continued with their plan in smaller scale and in secret despite the original refusal, figuring that if the chapter was active, perhaps they could one day prove themselves worthy to the rest of the Imperium.
Each of the member chapters donated a bit of gear or personal whenever a chance came. Each and every bit of ‘missing’ equipment had to be carefully smuggled and hidden away with its trail masked or destroyed. After hundreds of years of squirreling away supplies, a battle barge previously used by one of the renegade chapters suddenly went missing from a massive space junkyard near Mars. The council of leaders finally had a way to both transport their gear and hide their marines for the fledgling project.
As soon as the ship was repaired and refurbished, it was packed to the gills (or whatever a starship has instead of gills) with all of the previously ‘lost’ gear, new initiates, and older veterans who volunteered to lead the newly formed chapter.
This chapter became known as ‘The Martyrs’ as homage to all those who lost their lives defending the empire.
The plan for the battle barge to drift in-between star systems until called upon by the empire. All the while they would be training and honing their skills, ready to return and save those who had attempted to prevent their creation.
As with all good stories, disaster struck the ship on its maiden voyage. As soon as the barge started its engines, a fueling ship got caught in the blowback and detonated, catapulting the barge into a partially formed warp portal. Without any helm control, the ship was thrown back and forth by the unpredictable currents until it was forced back into the material realm.
The systems on the ship had been badly damaged by the warp, and the ship was falling strait down the gravity well of an uncharted planet. With little control, the best the pilots were able to do was drop the ship in the softest looking area around. They missed. The Planet had an incredibly small gravitational pull for its size, and without instrument help, the pilots hit a mountain full on.
Once the dust cleared, it became obvious that the ship was never going to fly again and The Martyrs were stranded. Furthermore, most of the chapter’s initiates, all of the pilots, most of the phsykers, and a large amount of the smaller space worthy crafts (thunderhawks and drop pods) were irreparably damaged or killed.
The planet became known as Cavyrn (pronounced KAV-URN) due to its mostly hollow interior and honeycombed structure. This is also part of the reason why the gravity is so low. The surface has an area roughly half again as big as earth, but the caves below the surface have never been fully explored.
The natives all hail from similar phenomena as the marines, though most happened almost a quarter million years ago. All types of being walk the surface or crawl in the dark below. Humans are the most widely spread species but some tau, elder, ork, and other, unidentifiable species are also present. Small tribes of nomads travel from town to town in a very middle-eastern esque environment. There are rumors that monsters lurk in the untraveled caves, and whether these are daemons, tyranids, chaos admech, or something more sinister remains to be seen.
The geography of the surface is relatively uniform, mostly desserts with a few tall mountain ranges like the one the Martyrs ran into. Almost all of the water is underground in hidden seas, but where it does become exposed is where the towns tend to collect.
Seeing this, the marines left alive gave up hope and renamed themselves the Grave Diggers, the chapter damned from conception and doomed from the start. At least they could make a life for themselves here, on this ball of dust. They stripped off their gaudy colors (still TBD) and instead clothed themselves in camouflage and desert survival gear, damn the codex they stated. Here there is no empire and none of the old rules apply.

Feedback welcome

I'm gonna be honest with you. I had to stop reading to roll my eyes with the first paragraph. and as I managed to continue... it didn't get any better. seems a little too special snowflake if you ask me. especially as there would be no NEED to be secretive about some sort of "Grand experiment" and it just seemed a bit.. eh.. the black rage wasn;'t exactly common knowledge. (I doubt even the primarchs know of it) and of the primarchs out there, I think most would take offense to the idea that their sons are somehow "cripplingly flaws"

and then you ended it with "away with no limits and no rules" sounds like an attempt to just further their special snowflake status by basicly removing ANY setting limits on em (which to be blunt is what makes someone or something intreasting. the flaws and imposed limits)


I know it seems kinda harsh but you DID ask for feedback. my suggestion go through and ask yourself "do I really need this?"

another thing to consider, if the world is so low gravity that'll actually have an impact on them (in fact one would think that would render the local population a less ideal group to recruit from.()

I like your general concept, though I think you also need baggage for your chapter.
Some points I would consider changing:
- High Lords of Terra propose chapter for second founding for reasons like you stated ala no one weakness, lots of geneseed used etc. though Primarchs reject the idea. Goes ahead anyway in secret. Takes away the whole "ALL THE PRIMARCHS LOVE US". This also gets rid of the gaping hole left of the impossibity of a chapter existing purely off minor donations. The logistics of running an army/chapter is massive. Also gets rid of the fact that marines wouldnt just up and leave their current chapter for the sake of an unsanctioned founding, if marines were created from the start without prior knowledge of their background.
- How does your chapter get new geneseed? Do they just sneak a handfull of geneseed from everyone and remove the labels? You would need to explain this.
- On the last point I made, it sounds like your guys aren't currently getting new geneseed. So do they do nothing or are they about to die out very shortly.

The more I think about it, the more I realize how unfleshed out this idea is. Maybe back to ths drawing board a bit.

I would recommend reading: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/132379-guide-to-diying/#entry1520507

My observations:

Admitting your Geneseed was flawed was not something the Primarchs would do. Outside of the Blood Angels chapter, only Horus knew about the Red Thirst and the Black Rage was poorly understood for quite some time.

After the Heresy; Vulkan, Russ, & Dorn were against the splitting up of their legions into chapters. So having them conspire to create a new chapter would be unlikely.

Space Marines are the elite of the elite, so having an extra level of elite in there is kind of pointless. And breaks the suspension of disbelief. Grey Knights are stretching as is. And an organization made up of various chapters already exists; The Death Watch. They were created by the one organization that could do this; The Inquisition.

Marines don't need survival gear, but Camo is always good. The Raptors adopted camo green after being stranded on a jungle planet.

Where is the rest of the fleet? A Battle Barge is tough enough to crash land and still one day fly again. The Blood Angels' Red Tear did so.

The Marines would not give up hope, they would exterminate the xenos and bring the world into compliance with the Imperial rule. Stranded or not.

And finally: "Here there is no empire and none of the old rules apply." is so 1990s.

Hope that helps.

PS I like the name.

Generally, I like the idea of the planet itself. I can't imagine a space marine chapter giving up their armor and such though. If you have access to advanced armor and weaponry, especially on a dangerous uncharted planet filled with a good variety of other races, whether you were cut off from the Imperium or not, I can't imagine giving up your battle gear.

I think the setting could be fun for Skirmishing or Role Playing though. Like I said, I generally like the planet.

Ok, responses are about what I expected.

A couple points I was trying to get across, but my story weaving skills aren't as great as I think they are
1. A new environment with the ability to factor in the other player in group I play with.
2. This chapter is supposed to be slightly more realistic in my eyes, with well worn gear and more individual characters, to be created later.
3. This chapter is going to be hated by the Inquisition and imperial guard.
4. there isn't much hope of going back to the rest of the galaxy.
- I might switch up the broken battle barge for some sort of warp - sinkhole type phenomenon and include some local space hulks, that way I can still use story accurate drop pods

With the multiple chapters present, I can use the space marines I have already have painted in a whole bunch of random chapter colors, and don't want to redo those paint jobs, as they actually look pretty cool. I'm thinking that the new space marines learn of their heritage somehow and wish to become more like their ancestors by wearing their colors. I've already painted/bought some Blood Angels/Death Company, Ultra Marines, Raven Guard, Doom Legion,Space Wolves, the Professor and Mary Ann, wait sorry, wrong list
Many others are currently packed away under textbooks and such, cant remember what they are

As for replacements, local humans are available for recruits, but gene seed is limited, so the chapter can never hope to exceed a set number, I'm thinking 150 at any given time. (I don't plan on buying massive amounts of marines and in typical games less than 100 marines can be deployed)

The battle barge, if I'm remembering correctly, has an integrated manufactorum. That, combined with the rich mineral deposits I was going to mention in the next section of background can provide for a bit of replacement gear.

Any ideas of how to redo the story are still welcome, just please don't smash a new gamer (just got back into it after a few years off).

Okay, as a professional author myself, and as a veteran of many many writing groups I have to say this:

STOP BEING NEGATIVE NELLYS!

I mean, jeeze, it's not the perfect fluff or anything, but really? Let's try to be as constructive as we can. I like that nobody outright insulted the ideas here, but let's try to help instead of just saying "try again!"

Okay, so some thoughts:

The idea is actually pretty cool to me. It kinda reads like gorka-morka space marines (crashlanded ship, inhospitable planet, forced to adapt ect)

The idea of mixing a bunch of space marine chapters together also appeals to me as, aside from the geneseed thing, and obviously the whole "WE IS THE BEST!" aspect of all space marine chapters: I have never seen a really valid reason why this didn't happen more. So if we go from the idea that this chapter did form, why exactly did it happen?

If it were me I would actually try for simplicity in the background. How about the following:

-Groups of veterans from mostly destroyed chapters, companies ect, secretly gather together to propose this multi-chapter idea to the high-lords of terra.

-Someone like Horus, Abbaddon, Alpha Legion, I don't know ANYONE really didn't like the sound of a way for space marines to confer together into an uber chapter.

-These vets are intercepted mid-transit and their various ships engage in a mid warp battle with whoever this is that doesn't like them.

-This battle forces them into a warp storm, their ships smash together and combine into a space-hulk, and eventually are spit back out of the warp to crashland into planet Inhospitable. Strangely: this isn't the only time this has happened as the planet already has other life forms on it, and possibly even other space marines (why not?)

-The survivors try to work together and survive, at first fighting the inhabitants, but then either eliminating, enslaving, or working together with them.

-They either cobble together geneseed approximations with xenos tech (or whatever you want really, Aztek magic? Why not?) or they can be sometimes joined by others in dying ships/escape pods/ect who occasionally drop in from the warp. This allows them to eventually function as something like a normal chapter, albeit one without imperial sanction, and use whatever strange cobbled together ships they can put together to carry out the imperial mission around the galaxy without sanction, and without restriction. In this way you get something akin to the Legion of the Damned but, you know, different.



Now obviously I'm not suggesting you take this exact story outline here, as it's pretty rough, but I think you could use the general theme (reduction is your friend,) to help your fluff really shine. Your ideas are pretty strong and even quite cool...they just need a few nudges in the basics to make the whole fluff workable within the rest of the universe. Believe me: I've seen waaaaaaaay worse things than what you have written get published.

Also: unlike that DIY guide that was linked I personally have no problem with people declaring their chapters cool/unique/different as I think part of the charm of making your own chapter IS to make them different! (If I wanted to play "Ultramarines chapter ninety six" I would just play Ultramarines! ("But sir: our uniforms have a different shade of BLUE! We are totally different!")

Sorry for the rant, and I don't mean to insult or offend anyone else here, I just have something of a pet-peeve when it comes to non-constructive feedback any more :-)

And of course: may the Emperor bless your dice!

Okay, as a professional author myself, and as a veteran of many many writing groups I have to say this:

STOP BEING NEGATIVE NELLYS!

I mean, jeeze, it's not the perfect fluff or anything, but really? Let's try to be as constructive as we can. I like that nobody outright insulted the ideas here, but let's try to help instead of just saying "try again!"

Vod, thank you! (ego levels have returned to normal) (Vod is Mandalorian for friend, brother, sister, battle brother, etc)

Hmmmm, maybe the inquisition catches up to the marines (PS, I really like the idea of the inquisition disproving of space marines then trying to kill them)

Because of their secrecy and isolation, this chapter could work with canon fluff because they will likely never reappear in the galaxy as a whole.

To meet your criteria how about this: The world of Cavyrn is an Imperial Shrine world of such significance that several Chapters have contributed to the world's defense with an Honor Guard. Depending on the chapter, this assignment is either an honor or penance for misbehavior. For instant Sven of the Space Wolves was sent there for pissing in the corner of the Great Hall. The Battle Barge in orbit is from an almost extinct chapter. Their few remaining marines are the command and support elements of the honor guard. Recently their has been an increase in xeno incursions on the world for as yet undetermined reasons. More worryingly Warp Storms have now cut off all hope of resupply or reinforcement.

I could totally see the inquisition doing just that...perhaps the Representative of the Inquisition (one of the high lords) who got wind of the idea, and was worried that the overarching structure would interfere with the Inquisition's nearly unlimited power, and possibly even lead to something akin to the age of Apostasy (though probably mostly the power thing.)

You could even swing the "loyalist" aspect by claiming that it was the Emperor himself who steered their broken hulk through the warp and ensured they survived to make it to the planet.

Again: just spitballing here!

leerm02 wrote:


Sorry for the rant, and I don't mean to insult or offend anyone else here, I just have something of a pet-peeve when it comes to non-constructive feedback any more :-)

I actually think some of the comments above will help solidify a better narrative, not necessarily a bad thing, but no worries.

I keep thinking about what the OP said about them donning survival gear. Could you have an overabundance of Scouts in this army? If they are recruiting from the locals, or even just the remnants of the chapters that made up the overall force, I think it would make a neat story and the survival gear would make most sense, if there are alot of scout units. Not only that, but with lots of scouts, they'd have plenty of reliance on stealth and infiltration since they're not really going to have absolute tons of the more advanced armor or tanks and vehicles.

Also, are you planning on giving them any particular special rules or having a dominant enemy type on the planet? I was thinking they could easily be in a position to turn their big crashed ship into a personal tech fortress monastery from which they make sallies to tame the wilds and the various other groups of baddies/tribes/monsters/evil. They could be very dependent on the local civilizations for food, so simply slaughtering/subjugating them might not be an option given how thin they'd have to spread around to do it.

Maybe they could also occasionally find relics or archeotech hidden deep in world. Ancient and forgotten Mechanicum depots could be found, some with working automated defenses, some infiltrated by baddies, some housing long forgotten secrets. Local psykers could still be extrememely dangerous for them also, if their own Librarians were mostly killed.

All just ideas. I think the world could be a lot of fun as a setting.

I second the scout idea, assuming the OP likes scouts :-)

Sorry, miss-communication, when I mentioned donning survival gear, I was thinking extra knives, bayonets, pouches, heat reflective paint, etc. I still have the power armored units as 99% of my forces.

Yeah, I personally just never liked the look of scouts myself. I mean I totally *get* them but the look just isn't cool IMO.

Reference picture time!!!

In order,
Surface of Cavyrn
Crashed Battle Barge/Space Marine Fortress
Possible Creature of the deep
Cavyrn from space

leerm02 wrote:

Okay, as a professional author myself, and as a veteran of many many writing groups I have to say this:

STOP BEING NEGATIVE NELLYS!

I mean, jeeze, it's not the perfect fluff or anything, but really? Let's try to be as constructive as we can. I like that nobody outright insulted the ideas here, but let's try to help instead of just saying "try again!"

This made me laugh out loud. As a "professional writer", would you not want some constructive criticism on the topic you clearly are not very conversant in, and having the suggestion of giving it another shot with some pointers, than having something that doesn't make sense, and isn't appealing to other people? I thought as a professional writer, you of all people would respect constructive criticism. No one before your post just said "you are badz", everyone stated what would work better and what they didn't like and why. Just as you did after telling everyone that they are negative nellies for doing the same thing.

Sounds a bit reasonable marine-ish, but even more special snowflake. Take out the stuff involving their creation and I think the story would make more sense. Also, are they renegades due to what they say about there being no empire there?

As has been stated, having an amalgamated gene-seed Chapter wouldn't happen, but you could have them as
- a 21st Founding Chapter and they have chimeric gene-seed.
- Unknown Founding

 Bluefalcon23 wrote:
.
As with all good stories, disaster struck the ship on its maiden voyage. As soon as the barge started its engines, a fueling ship got caught in the blowback and detonated, catapulting the barge into a partially formed warp portal.

Hahahahhahaha, what? This explanation is REALLY corny.

 Bluefalcon23 wrote:
.
Here there is no empire and none of the old rules apply.

Real bad. First of all, it's the Imperium (Not empire), and secondly, that is totally bizarre and completely and utterly out of character for Space Marines. Changing their colours is no problem, but going Renegade just because they're isolated?

I think the Chapter idea is good, it just needs some changes to make it more in-universe.

leerm02 wrote:

(If I wanted to play "Ultramarines chapter ninety six" I would just play Ultramarines! ("But sir: our uniforms have a different shade of BLUE! We are totally different!")

Donut: My armor isn't pink, it's lightish red.
GriffL: Yeha, they have a color for that. It's called PINK!


Sorry, couldn't resist.

To reiterate, this already exists in 40k.

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

Unlike other Space Marines, the Deathwatch are not truly a separate Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes; rather, they are a collection of Veteran Space Marines drawn from all of the different extant Chapters who serve together in the Inquisition's service for a discrete period of time. To be chosen by one's Chapter to serve in the Deathwatch is a great honour for any Space Marine, as only the most elite and experienced members of a Chapter are ever chosen for this extremely hazardous tour of duty, the specifics of which must be kept secret by Inquisitorial order and sacred oath even from a Deathwatch Astartes' home Chapter.

So, taking deathwatch into account: what if this chapter was the "original" idea behind deathwatch, but was taken out through a political power grab ect, and later the deathwatch organisation became a thing?

That way it fits with the deathwatch lore, but also keeps the whole "lost chapter" thing as well :-)

...or alternatively: you could even just use the whole deathwatch history (which I will admit I didn't actually read up on until you linked it, so thanks for that!) as a spring-board: the new chapter could actually be a particularly large contingent of deathwatch that wasn't a chapter at all until after it crashlanded and they were forced to work together to survive and deal with the xenos.

Which actually sounds like a pretty cool setting for a story actually!

What are your thoughts OP?

leerm02 wrote:

So, taking deathwatch into account: what if this chapter was the "original" idea behind deathwatch, but was taken out through a political power grab ect, and later the deathwatch organisation became a thing?

That way it fits with the deathwatch lore, but also keeps the whole "lost chapter" thing as well :-)

...or alternatively: you could even just use the whole deathwatch history (which I will admit I didn't actually read up on until you linked it, so thanks for that!) as a spring-board: the new chapter could actually be a particularly large contingent of deathwatch that wasn't a chapter at all until after it crashlanded and they were forced to work together to survive and deal with the xenos.

Which actually sounds like a pretty cool setting for a story actually!

What are your thoughts OP?

I think if the OP read a few books about the Death Watch, he might decide to toss his idea and just be Death Watch. As Space Marines go, they *are* pretty cool.

 Lord Blackscale wrote:


Donut: My armor isn't pink, it's lightish red.
GriffL: Yeha, they have a color for that. It's called PINK!

Aaaaaaaaand Exalted.

leerm02 wrote:

So, taking deathwatch into account: what if this chapter was the "original" idea behind deathwatch, but was taken out through a political power grab ect, and later the deathwatch organisation became a thing?

That way it fits with the deathwatch lore, but also keeps the whole "lost chapter" thing as well :-)

...or alternatively: you could even just use the whole deathwatch history (which I will admit I didn't actually read up on until you linked it, so thanks for that!) as a spring-board: the new chapter could actually be a particularly large contingent of deathwatch that wasn't a chapter at all until after it crashlanded and they were forced to work together to survive and deal with the xenos.

Which actually sounds like a pretty cool setting for a story actually!

What are your thoughts OP?

I think if the OP read a few books about the Death Watch, he might decide to toss his idea and just be Death Watch. As Space Marines go, they *are* pretty cool.

I actually like the first idea by leerm02, perhaps the group that initially created the chapter then suggested the deathwatch idea as a followup after the chapter was lost to the depths of space.

I'll try to come up with a revised background story soon.

The problem with the concept of not letting a single flaw being present is that you're creating a chapter with multiple flaws that could appear randomly at any time. The advantage with only the Blood Angels having the red thirst/black rage is that they have mechanisms to cope with it. They don't also have to cope with other flaws from other primarch lines.
I also don't think any of the flaws are widespread enough to be of particular problem, the notable chapters that have the flaws have managed to survive 10,000 years so far and still be feared chapters.

I like the idea of a combined chapter though, sort of like the death watch in make-up but created to foster better relations between the different primarch lines.
Perhaps it was an early attempt to avoid marines turning on each other but the project was deemed too difficult to sustain and dropped by the High Lords of Terra.

Mistrusful of the lords, who seemed to be going against what the Emperor stood for, the surviving Primarchs created a secret Marine Council which would act as a rallying point for the various chapters should the lords ever prove treasonous.

This council maintains a chapter drawn from all nine of the original loyalist legions.

 Bluefalcon23 wrote:
As for replacements, local humans are available for recruits, but gene seed is limited, so the chapter can never hope to exceed a set number, I'm thinking 150 at any given time. (I don't plan on buying massive amounts of marines and in typical games less than 100 marines can be deployed

How can 150 marines maintain gene-seed from all loyalist First Founding chapters? Are they organized by gene-seed? Does the apothecary check what Primarch the gene-seed is from each time a marine dies? How do you ensure gene-seed from a certain Primarch doesn't die out?

With 150 marines, there are only 16.67 marines with gene-seed from a certain Primarch (9 loyalist Primarchs). It'd be way too easy to lose all access to a certain type of gene-seed ("Chapter Master, Squad XX has been wiped out! We lost nearly a third of Vulcan's gene-seed!", "Chapter Master, Thunderhawk XX! went down with all of Dorn's gene-seed!" etc).

Just saying...

 EngulfedObject wrote:
"Chapter Master, Thunderhawk XX! went down with all of Dorn's gene-seed!" etc).

"No worries commander, it's just Dorn's geneseed we lost, it's not like we lost all of our Death Company.... Oh wait."

It works better if the force you own is just apart of your army instead of the whole army. Otherwise when you have a battle, if all your dudes die, it is hard to justify still having an army (if you like to RP your battles like me). Commanders and chapter masters "getting wounded" and "retiring" from battle is justifible, but a whole army just getting wounded is not.

I only have a few dozen marines, and don't plan on fielding many more than that per battle.

As for loosing all of a specific Primarch's gene-seed, specific squads wouldn't be 100% from the same Primarch, if Thunderhawk XX (If only I had one ) went down, then less than 10% from each primarch would be lost.

How about every space marine is equipped with the gear necessary to recover gene-seed? That way lots more could be recovered.

I could also follow TV show logic and not care about the results of yesterday's battle when fighting today's.


Note: I'm going to be out of touch for a few days, warp storms / spring break vacations are forecasted by the local elders.