Preacher of the Emperor
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Ladies and gents,
I am currently refining the fluff for my DIY chapter, the Black Cross. Please take a few minutes to review the background below and give me comments. I'm looking to make it consistent throughout and am also interested in hearing about what you think should be included and what you think can come out. Thanks!
-Mike K
Origins
The Liber Reconvinco, which details the retaking of the galaxy following the Horus Heresy, is the first Imperial publication that mentions the Black Cross. The Liber Reconvinco states that when the White Scars Legion was split according to the Imperial Edict, Jaghatai Khan did so by selecting his most accomplished war leaders and gifting them with weapons, heraldry and warriors in the ancient manner in which Chogorian tribal warriors were elevated to chieftains. Out of this ritual were born the dynamic chapters known throughout the Imperium such as the Marauders, Rampagers, Destroyers and Storm Lords.
One of the war leaders chosen by Jaghatai Khan was a little known champion by the name of Brother-Captain Temion. During the heresy, Temion was assigned as the commander of the Seventh Brotherhood of the White Scars and given command of one of waystations used to replenish Imperial forces enroute to Terra and charged with protecting Imperial supply lines in the Reorx sub-sector. Unbeknownst to all, the planet the waystation was built upon, Jeren’s Hope, had been infiltrated by members of the Alpha Legion who had built an intensive network of saboteurs and cultists within Jerenian society. By the time Temion and his battle brother’s reached Jeren’s Hope, the waystation had fallen and the planet was in open rebellion against the Emperor.
Knowing that he had to quickly rectify the situation, Temion forced a landing on planet’s surface by drop podding his troops directly onto the space port. With this vital artery now open, the Marine Thunderhawks began shuttling bikes and vehicles down to the planet’s surface as the rebels mustered their forces around the space port in preparation for a counter attack. While the rebels were preparing, Temion and his Marines struck. Spearheaded by Attack Bikes and Predators, the Marines of the Seventh Brotherhood tore through the Jenerian’s nascent defensive lines and routed the rebels in short order.
As the Marine’s acolytes sorted through the carnage, they discovered a dead Space Marine emblazoned with the markings of the Alpha Legion and several dead Jenerian officers bearing hydra brands on their right arms. Once these findings were presented to Temion, the Brother-Captain took immediate and ruthless action. Temion ordered the bodies of the slain to be crucified and, harkening back to how the Terran hero Hercules defeated the hydra, ordered all their heads to be burned. Using the only trees available, a variant of the Terran African Blackwood whose wood was almost sheer black, the acolytes and servants went rapidly to work and soon the crosses containing the bodies of the Jenerian dead populated the landscape as far as the eye could see.
Unnerved by Temion’s ferocity and with no real counter to their superhuman foes (Imperial records show that no more than 20 Chaos marines took part in the fighting), the rebellion quickly folded and Jeren’s Hope was reconquered within a span of three days. The planet’s population was rounded up and interned in a series of camps and mobile patrols of Rhino mounted squads and Attack Bikes kept up the pressure on the more stubborn remnants that refused to surrender and attempted to wage a guerrilla war. In keeping with Temion’s original order, all additional rebels were also crucified with burned heads. By the time the Seventh Brotherhood was recalled to Chogoris for the splitting of the Legion following the heresy, Jeren’s Hope and every other world in the Reorx sub-sector had been cleansed of the Alpha Legion’s malevolent influences and was quick to heed Temion’s words rather than face his wrath.
At the ceremony, Jaghatai Khan presented Temion with a shield of pure silver, to represent the strength of his devotion to the Emperor, inlaid with a simple jet cross that symbolized his decisive actions during the Horus Hersey. In addition, Temion was gifted with one of the Primarch’s own swords, called Tiamet, and three Brotherhoods of Marines to call his own. Inspired by Jaghatai Khan’s gift, the Marines adopted their commander’s heraldry as their own and choose the name “Black Cross” for the new Chapter.
Homeworld
Varaha is a feudal world in the Segmentum Pacificus that is inhabited by a multitude of small nations and roving tribes. The people of Varaha are extremely war-like and while every now and then a great conqueror emerges who manages to briefly unite several of the nations under his reigns, most of those humans likely to ascend to true greatness on Varaha are recruited by the Black Cross before they can mature as planetary leaders. This has a very deliberate effect of keeping Varaha divided and fighting, which the Chapter’s leadership believes is important to keep the quality of the chapter’s new initiates high. The population is split almost evenly between primitive cities and nomadic tribes, with the city dwellers clustered in river valleys for agricultural purposes and the nomadic tribes dominating the more arid regions.
Varaha itself is a vibrant world, with high mountain ranges and sweeping expanses of fertile grasslands. While the horse has been domesticated, the large grasslands have led to the predominance of the chariot as the chosen method of warfare. It is not uncommon to see large armies of chariot mounted spearmen and archers on the march, supported by screens of light cavalry and dismounted missile troops. Heavy infantry is a relatively uncommon sight, being vulnerable to massed chariots, except for the northern highlands where the broken ground makes the use of chariots untenable. The Varahian penchant for chariots has carried over into the Black Cross, where the home world recruits have shown a natural flair for handling and fighting from attack bikes, leading to a much greater use of attack bikes than is the norm among other chapters.
The Black Cross itself maintains only a minimal presence on Varaha. Several small strongholds are scattered across the planet so that battles can be observed and recruits identified. Once a significant number of recruits have been gathered, they are shuttled up to the Chapter’s fortress-monastery that is maintained in the highest mountain range on Varaha. Here, they undergo their initial training and surgery before being sent back to the planet’s outer reaches to complete the final combat trials in variety of environments, including mountains, deserts and swamps.
Combat Doctrine
The preferred method of war has not changed significantly in the centuries since the White Scars were broken up. Heavily influenced by Jaghatai Khan’s teachings, the Black Cross still prefers a fluid, mechanized style of war that emphasis speed and firepower. Bike squadrons will probe enemy defenses to find weak points and, once identified, armored spearheads of Predators, Razorbacks, and Attack Bikes will fall upon the vulnerable points of the enemy lines and tear them asunder. Decisive engagements are avoided unless the terms of battle are extremely favorable to the Chapter’s Marines and the enemy is still reeling from the dizzying pace of maneuver war forced upon them.
While the chapter prefers to keep its opponents at arm’s length, hounding and harassing them with missile and lascannon fire to whittle down their numbers while the armored spearheads swirl around them, the Marines of the Black Cross are more than capable of engaging in close combat when the occasion arises. Elite veteran squads armed with close combat weapons and jump packs as well as sapper squads equipped with flamethrowers and demolition charges for close quarters fighting are a common sight in the Chapter’s formation and their expertise was put to good use in many cities and condensed spaces across the Imperium, clearing lanes and opening breaches for the Chapter’s heavier units to exploit.
Organization
The Black Cross is organized slightly different than a normal Codex Chapter. The First Company is reduced in size to only four veteran squads and serves as the Chapter Master’s personal body guard, able to intervene at the critical junctures of the battlefield in major campaigns but still able to fend for itself when the Chapter Master is moving by himself to visit the deployed Battle Companies.
The 2nd to 7th Companies are organized as Battle Companies. Each Battle Company is slightly larger than the normal Codex company, consisting of two veteran squads, six tactical squads, two devastator squads, two assault squads, and two bike squadrons. Each Battle Company also maintains its own vehicle armory, complete with Attack Bikes, Land Speeders, Predators, Vindicators and Thunderfire Cannons. The Chapter’s heavy reliance on vehicles makes Techmarines invaluable to the daily operations and each Battle Company is allocated a master Techmarine and two junior Techmarines to ensure that the Chapter is ready to continue fighting at all times. This organization is designed to allow each Battle Company to serve as an independent strike force, capable of undertaking a wide variety of missions throughout the Segmentum without having to wait for supporting elements from other parts of the Chapter to catch up although they will receive support in larger, set piece battles from the 8th and 9th Companies.
The 8th Company is designated as the “Castellan” Company and consists of six tactical squads and six devastator squads. The 8th Company is normally charged with the defense of the fortress monastery, but will be used in the field to garrison strong points and hold important fortifications against enemy counterattacks while the Battle Companies exploit a breakthrough. The 8th Company only rarely takes to the field, but when it does it is in its entirety in support of the decisive operations of the campaign.
The 9th Company is designated as the “Sapper” Company and fields six assault squads, supported heavily by Predators and Dreadnoughts, whose sole purpose is to create breaches in the enemy lines so that the battle companies can affect a mobile breakthrough. They are also used in siege situations to create and hold the breach, allowing the Battle Companies to storm enemy holdings. Elements of the 9th Company are sometimes sliced off to Battle Companies to complement them in particularly stalemated situations but the Chapter generally prefers to field its siege specialists en mass when the occasion demands it.
The 10th Company remains dedicated as a Scout Company, charged with the training and integration of new recruits to the Chapter.
Beliefs
Like their origin Chapter, the White Scars, the Marines of the Black Cross continue to hold true to Jaghatai Khan’s vision of a united Humanity and see the Emperor as their founding father and the ultimate way in which Humanity will be united, but do not worship him as a god. The Chapter’s Chaplains preach that it is every Marines duty to protect Humanity from both the enemies without and within and to maintain or expanded upon the number of worlds united under the Emperor’s beneficent rule until the day in which he steps down from the Golden Throne and leads the Second Great Crusade which will unite the remainder of the galaxy under his rule and see the last of the Xenos threats permanently expunged.
The induction of the primitive peoples of Varaha has, over time, strongly influenced the Chapter’s iconography and believes. The people of Varaha generally see the depths of night as forbidding and while the Marines themselves do not fear the literal darkness, they have begun associating Xenos and rebels as being creatures of the night and see their role as bringing the Emperor’s light to regions and thus removing the darkness. This has led to several incidents of excessive treatments of rebel human populations, including the infamous “Geneva VII Fire” in which over 700 captured rebels were burned at the stake to remove the darkness from their souls. Incidentally, the iconography depicting the Emperor has slowly been gravitating towards icons used to represent sun gods in various Varahian cultures, though in Marine murals the Emperor is depicted more along the lines of an avatar rather than a god. There has also been a rise of superstitious behavior in the Chapter, including the reading of natural occurrences as omens of the Emperor’s Will, but the Chapter’s fervent adherence to Imperial law and edicts has relegated this to an official curiosity rather than a matter of concern.
Gene-seed
The Black Cross’ gene seed is considered to be stable, showing no signs of mutation or deviation outside of the exceptional ferocity and aggression common to all White Scars successors.
Battlecry
“Pro Imperator, defaeco obscurum quod addo lux lucis!” (“For the Emperor, purge the Darkness and bring the Light!”)
Fluff Blurb #1
“Hugger’s Bane”
While the Black Cross is considered to be intolerant of Xenos even by Imperial standards, no single Xenos species is as universally despised throughout the Chapter as the Eldar are. The 3rd Company in particular has shown exceptional expertise in fighting against these mobile aliens. While deployed to the Manchessian subsector in response to Dark Eldar raids, the 3rd Company found itself caught in between two warring factions as the Dark Eldar raiders were being simultaneously hunted by an Eldar force led by the Farseer Mannahnin. Rather than remain idle behind fortifications, Brother-Captain Scipio charged the local PDF commander with the defense of the population centers and set out to engage the aliens on his own terms. The Marines deployed a thin screen of local scouts equipped with only radios and strict orders to observe Eldar movements but to avoid detection and report at all costs. Once the likely target of a Dark Eldar raid or Eldar task force was identified, the 3rd Company would launch an armored spearhead consisting of Razorbacks, Predators, Attack Bikes, and Landspeeders to intercept it with a centralized whirlwind battery providing support to the Marine’s mechanized forces.
The results were immediate. The Dark Eldar were clearly accustomed to finding easier prey and after only a month of fighting, the 3rd Company could lay claim to over 100 wrecked alien craft and over 1,000 corpses. With the Dark Eldar in search of easier battles, Imperial strategists expected the Eldar forces under Mannahnin to move to another system but it quickly became evident that the elusive Eldar were searching for something else as they continued to attack Imperial facilities seemingly at random. Redirecting the efforts of his local scouts, Brother-Captain Scipio finally managed to pin the Eldar down as they launched an attack against a research station deep in the woodlands of Wakaruss III. To this day, the Eldar objective remains unknown but the situation developed quickly into a pitched battle, with the aliens trapped in between the defenders of the research station and the Black Cross’ mobile forces. Forced to disengage, the aliens left a trail of wrecked grav-tanks and smoking corpses behind them in their haste to escape the range of the Marine’s weapons. The defenders reported that several of the labs had been breached by Eldar aspect warriors, but nothing of apparent significance had been taken or destroyed. Shortly after the battle on Wakaruss III, Imperial sensors detected a significant mass moving through space but it disappeared from the view screens before a conclusive analysis could be completed.
For the 3rd Company’s heroic actions in defeating the Eldar threat to the Manchessian subsector it was awarded the honorific of “Hugger’s Bane” and the Black Cross was given recruitment rights to the inhabited planets of Wakaruss III and Aegyptus VIII. The title was to prove a prescient one, as the 3rd Company continues to be a deadly foe for the Xenos Eldar and has established a long line of battle honors combating them since its actions in the Manchessian subsector.
Fluff Blurb #2
“Flickers of Hope”
Since the end of the Horus Heresy, the Black Cross has taken upon itself the task of preventing any additional worlds in its area of responsibility from slipping away from the Emperor’s Light and into the darkness of Chaos. While this self-imposed task sometimes leads to excesses, such as the now legendary Marburg Cleansing, it has also produced a virtual mini-empire centered on Varaha. Much like the Ultramarines, the Black Cross has taken a strong interest in the security of its home world and has taken great pains to ensure that it remains self-reliant and free from internal unrest and rebellion so that the Chapter can concentrate on the Emperor’s external enemies.
A total of four worlds owe fealty directly to the Chapter. In addition to their home world of Varaha, the agri-world of Damara IV, the civilized world of Apollon II and the forge world of Ogoun are all subject to the Black Cross. Surprisingly, there has been little resistance to this expansion of the Chapter’s power by either the Administratum or the Ecclesiarchy. Since the Marines are little interested in the day to day affairs of the four worlds, the Administratum has simply continued their usual functions and the planets’ bureaucracies continue to function as they would for any other Imperial governor. In fact, the bulk of the world’s populations live and die without ever seeing a Space Marine, so indirect is the Chapter’s wardship of the four worlds. But the constant protection provided the worlds by the Chapter’s presence and the relief of the normal Imperial burdens in tithes and regiments has led to high levels of stability and prosperity on all of the Chapter’s feudal worlds.
Even the Ecclesiarchy has chosen to see the positive in the Black Cross controlling multiple worlds, with the sector’s ecclesiarch head, Bishop Augustine, calling the lands controlled by the Chapter “little flickers of hope to ward off the depths of night.” Whether this is because the Bishop truly believes the Chapter is doing or is simply pragmatic enough to know off the immense dangers posed by encroaching Xenos threats that he is willing to accept the direct protection of a Chapter of Space Marines remains known only to him.
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