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Just started repainting my old chaos force from the golden nineties. And first of all I bought a new dreadnought and painted ( codex sm venerable dread), and wanted to do something fun with the paintscheme/army.

So I came up with the idea to make everything very rusty and worn, and that evolved into making the force more undead than "normal" making everything looking as its been buried for a long time.

And that evolved to a backstory about a space marine chapter that was caught during fight in a strange warp flux (well, don't they all at some time ?!) that basicially turned them all into semi-mindless flesheating ... zombies. So they basically just roams the stars looking for fresh meat to tear from the bones of the fallen.

I've come to the conclusion that blood angels will work best for this army, with the deathcompany being the more mindless , meatcrazed ones. The way they attack with deepstriking and fast attack fits the theme well, as they want to kill and drag as many to their battlebarge as fast and effecient as possible, caring little for tactical positions and stuff like that,

so what do I need?

first of all a chapter of origin and second some general input. They are probably best off as an blood angel successor chapter being lost

MORE ELABORATE BACKGROUND IN MY NEXT POST A FEW DOWN

The Warp thing makes them sound like Fire Hawks that went sour...
If you didn't mind re-writing the fluff to much i have an idea that might work...
At any rate a solid legion of origin is Ultramarines since they are the founders of 60%(?) of the current chapters.
BA would work as well thouh their gene-seed would play havoc with whatever warp curse they have.

Please don't call them zombies (zombies are completely mindless, so wouldn't be able to use weapons, and they don't run).

As purplefood has already said, the idea isn't impossible seeing as it happened to the Fire hawks/legion of the damned.

Wrote this background story just now (I haven't read it back and fourth yet). This might explain it some more:


“ The watch, waiting. Watching for enemy movement, protecting my battle-brothers.
Alone, the cold air is scented with millions of smells, and I read it like a map.

The enemy might be near, and the … blood… is warm.
The air shudders, and the blood of the last battle lingers on my tongue, the taste sweet.
Must remain discipline, my holy bolter watching the skyline.

Sudden movement in my peripheral vision. Smell of an non-animal.
My reflexes tells me to duck, but instead I spin around, running straight toward the smell.

I see a humanoid, and she sees me. My power armour squeaks as I run.
I’ve neglected the holy maintenance of my armour. I fly through the air and strike the humanoid like a ton of bricks.
It’s a girl, a human girl. Her legs broken by impact.
She screams, she screams until I close my teeth around her neck and tears her soft skin.
Her warm blood fills my gullet and I shudder of shame and enjoyment.
I realise I’ve just broken the codex, that all fresh blood is to be brought alive to the battle barge.
I realise I do not longer know who I am.
I trained and fought side by side with my battle-brothers for centuries, defending humankind from it’s enemies,
and now a human child is slowly dying, as her life bloods fills my mouth.

Knowing also that the scent of blood will bring my fellow marines and I will not escape.
They will bring me in front of Captain Valingas and he will judge me.
Strip me of my honours and place in me in the squad of those already dead, the ones who have fallen into the abyss.
The blood crazed.

Both my hearts worked overtime as the girl’s stopped beating.
I sat down and stroked her bloodstained hair. Her eyes looks at me.

I remember the day of the battle, we fought side by side, me and my brothers.
Chainswords slammed into the armour of the traitor guard.
My powersword accompanied my litany of the emperor, as I fought back to back with Brother-captain Valingas.
We were on a mission to destroy the fabled Stone of Death, an ancient chaos artefact.
It was heavenly guarded by both the Nightlords and at the core, surrounding the Stone, the Thzeentchian Thousands sons.

Their Sorcerers had formed a ring around the artefact, chanting in an obscene and foreign tongue.
Our brothers fell, but with every dead of my brothers, three Traitors were slain.

We were mere seconds away from slaying the closest of the sorcerers as a sound as the heaven split open was heard.
The earth opened and a huge wave of blood rose towards the sky.
Everything went greenish black, and I remember slamming hard into different object, breaking bones.
The movement seemed to be as I was sucked into a maelstrom and all I could hope for was the saving grace of the Emperor.

After a while the visions came, visions of death and flesh. It lasted for years and then suddenly stopped. I woke up.
I clawed myself up miles of bloodied mud, like crawling up from my own grave.
Well on the surface I saw the remnants of my battle brothers and our enemies.
Most of them were dead, distorted and to my disgust I saw many of my brothers feasting on the corpses.
Many of them were changed, looking pale and pallid.

Suddenly I heard a roar of a storm bolter. Captain Valingas tactical dreadnought armour was … merged with living corpses.
His storm bolter fired straight at the brothers who had lost their senses, and was eating the flesh of our enemies.
He roared the litany of discipline. Our forces gathered around our commander, as he laid down the new commandments.

From that day we did not hunt the enemies in the name of the Emperor, we hunted to feed.
Many brothers lost their minds during the travels, and first they were killed and sacrificed, but after a while we all realised every one of the battle-brothers risked blood-insanity,
when all that remained was the lust to feed.
So they were organised into assault squads, leading the charge, as they were already dead.

Captain Valingas held disciple high, an advocate of the swift assault, but when our drop pods shook the ground it spelled doom for all as we spared no one.
Our resources were renewed by scavenging and our curse seemed to spread to those brought to our battle barge.
The core of the ship was sealed off, guarded by Captain Valingas honour guard at all times,
but the rumours was that the ship now was powered by the Stone of Death, firmy locked up inside the reactor.

I lay the girl down quietly on the ground and closed her eyes.
I could hear the silent humming sound of my brothers power-armour as they closed in.
I grinned the words of activation trough bloody teeth and my power fist started to power up.
Dropped my holy bolter on the ground and grabbed my chainsword.
With I roar I rose up and charged the first of my brothers,
hoping for a quick death at the hand of a friend, instead of eternity as a ever-hungry monster.”

Now that story makes sense for a fallen BA chapter/company... but the zombie thing is still a bad idea IMO...

mmh ... any other idea, maybe a little more " fresh" ?

This idea is based around the converting I plan to do/started , with all rusty marines, looking as they've been buried for years, and with zombie heads etc ?

I'd really appreciate some way of making a more interesting story but with the same theme .

Okay...
How about this:
The entire chapter is in a massive hive defending it from a chaos invasion. Eventually the chaotic taint spreads to the populace and the hive turns into a slaughterhouse with the marines forced to kill everything and everybody. The don't exact exterminatus because they wish to use the hive as an example and to prove themselves. Eventually the fighting gets to much and the hive begins to collapse. Everyone is buried alive and most die.

After a few months/years the surviving marines dig themselves out and regroup (digging out any other survivors) they number only 1/2 companies and have lost most of their officers. Only a chaplain, a librarian and his apprentice and a techmarine survive from the chapters support.

The remaining marines decide the Emperor abandonded them in the hive and stike out alone.

They meet a daemon prince(Nurgle or Tzeentch) later on who promises them power if they swear themselves to chaos. They do, the price for this power is that they must consume the flesh of another human every month or they will be driven insane with the lust for power. They attack random worlds abducting and consuming the population, those that do not get flesh are driven insane but their lust and are unable to control themselves.

However, the power they gain is great and they are able to perform feats that is far beyond the abilities of normal marines.

I have an Undead Chaos Marine army and I use the rules for Astaroth and the Death Company. If you need some ideas feel free to check out my P&M blog by following the link in my sig.