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Would it be lore heresy to paint my Noise Marines in the colours of my Word Bearers army, as if they were actually a part of the legion instead of just a random band of Empy's Children mercenaries?

Same goes for Khorne Berserkers and Plague Marines.

From a fluff standpoint, the Word Bearers do not worship just one Chaos God (all of them), but I could imagine that because they accept all Gods, they would allow Noise Marines within their ranks.

You could lore them up as Word Bearers using sonic weapons to spread the word. In combat they use it to scream their litanies into the bones of their enemies.

Outside of combat they tone it down so entire cities can hear them scream their blasphemy.

Just say that its a slaneesh cult within the word bearers ranks

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
scream their blasphemy.

I think you're confusing my Word Bearers for those naive, pre-heresy Emprah worshipers.

You see, these are post-heresy Word Bearers, they only scream the truth.

Would this be Double-heresy I see blooming?

I play Word Bearers, and I also run all the cult troops except Thousand Sons.

My Word Bearers work very closely with a contingent of the Dark Mechanicus, and so my "noise marines" are justified fluff wise as using archeo-tech weapons, and not as devotees of Slaanesh (I also used Forge World Volkite weapons to represent the sonic weapons).

Likewise, my 'counts as' Plague Marines are modeled as being heavily augmented with cybernetics.

My Berserker unit is justified fluff-wise as being fanatic devotees of The Word (well, far more fanatical then your run-of-the-mill Word Bearer anyways). Extremist zealots in an army of extremist zealots. Tabletop-wise, they are modeled with far more parchments, candles, flames, and scripture written on their Armour.


If you do use this kind of setup to explain why there are cult forces in your Word Bearers, make sure you model them such that you can clearly tell the units apart from each other, and from your vanilla CSM troops.

The Word Bearers worship Chaos as a pantheon, with all gods being equally important. Someone who favors one single god is frowned upon. And cult troopers are unheard of in the fluff as far as I know. The Word Bearers trilogy, the HH books and Daemon World do not include a single one-god-only Word Bearer.

But it is easy to go with what greg0985 said. Model them up and if they look cool enough, everyone should be fine.

Going full heretic, however, I will also accept cult troops. Why not? A single squad may start worshipping Khorne and not care about what the rest of the Host says. They will never achieve nothing, they will be looked down. They are no longer following the Word of Lorgar. They are no longer part of the Host. They are failures, pariahs, good-for-nothing souls. But they could exist. An army could be composed of a low-level Disciple leading into battle the spiritual dregs of the Host, those who have been trapped in the allure of a single god. Heretics from the Word Bearers point of view. A Repentia-like army, with no possible redemption for them, bound to fight in the most brutal missions until all of them die.

I like it. And I think anyone fluff-centered enough to care about WB using cult troops will appreciate this fluff too.

i remember a BL book (one of the Marduk ones) where he became possessed by a Slaanesh Daemon, so I would assume they can and do make temporary pacts with whatever God hears their whims.

There are plenty of ways to justify using cult troops. Maybe this particular warband has individual cults to focus on each God aspect to better understand and utilize the True Pantheon.

I initially made this thread to find out if I could include the actual cult troops within my WB army, but like some of you have suggested, I've come up with my own fluff to explain their presence (which was much more fun)

How does this sound?

Berserkers = Light Bringers: initially, they were simply marines who painted their armour with murals depicting the glory of the pantheon. They began to drift towards favouring melee combat so that their victims could better appreciate their art as they died. While unintended, being in the thick of the carnage of battle caused them to gain Khorne's favour,

Noise Marines = Truth Screamers: as someone else suggested, basically marines that preach the word really, really loudly. The excessiveness of their preaching drew the attention of Slaanesh.

Plague Marines = Doubt Flayers: eccentrics who would adorn themselves in the flesh (sound familiar?) of those fools who were too blind to accept the good news. The flesh would inevitably grow rotten and please Nurgle. I know this kind of sounds a bit Slaaneshy too, but seeing as Slaanesh and Nurgle tend to both enhance the defensive capability of their champions, I don't think it's that big of a problem.

Because I'm not particularly skilled at converting models yet, I'll probably just use the actual, unmodified cult models. Although, for the Plague Marines, I may just use the vanilla CSM models and drape them in green stuff.