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I'm thinking of creating a group of 30k Blackshields, and the nice thing about those is that their fluff possibilities are endless...

What I'm thinking so far is to have a group of Outlanders, legionaries who have seen the depths of the human's capacity for war and decided to say "Frag it, I've seen enough, I'm going rogue..." and become pirates (in spaaaace!), more or less...

I have a few paths of ideas that are appealing to me right now with that basic idea:

1-To have the group in a japanese-asian style and have them become 'Ronins'... To me this means a lot of armor converting to have Pariah armor, helmets in samurai style, and cold-one cavalry counting as bikes. They are the "Lotus-eaters" (because they've seeeeen gak, man....)

2-The group have explored the depths of the deepest reaches of the galaxy, they have taken on exploring space hulks, and so have a large number of terminator plate, all patched up between different patterns, even with orky-style plates here and there. They are the "Halo Born", their sigil, a crudely painted circle.

3-The band has had contact with the harlequins, and have taken some of the style of the performing mercenaries. They wear a brighly colored motley, and make use of eldar weapons (so, many xeno deathloks...) Their emblem would be a Joker, a laughing icon, or one of the old trickster gods of Terran mythology.

4-Something else, just as awesome...

I'd really like to also use the models that I'm going to build into games of 40K as my own custom chapter, which will be an extension of the old blackshield band that got 'recognized' as a chapter in a later founding...

All thoughts and suggestions are appreciated, welcomed and encouraged...

 ChaosDad wrote:
1-To have the group in a japanese-asian style and have them become 'Ronins'... To me this means a lot of armor converting to have Pariah armor, helmets in samurai style, and cold-one cavalry counting as bikes. They are the "Lotus-eaters" (because they've seeeeen gak, man....)

Pass.

2-The group have explored the depths of the deepest reaches of the galaxy, they have taken on exploring space hulks, and so have a large number of terminator plate, all patched up between different patterns, even with orky-style plates here and there. They are the "Halo Born", their sigil, a crudely painted circle.

Has potential and is my favorite. If you haven't read it, I'd recommend reading Death of Integrity, which goes into immense detail about dealing with a space hulk, but in a much more technical way than most 40k. In particular, the heavy exposure to radiation, constantly dealing with anti-gravity, the unique and non-standard xenos and imperial ship knowledge needing to be dealt with and the emergency use of the Mucranoid organ.

In addition, I would go into detail of who the Halo Born were before they went rogue. Were they a Death Guard company that specialized in the heavy radiation of space hulks? Were they Terran White Scars with a sense of wanderlust? Were they Imperial Fists void-experts who were exposed to some terrible madness-inducing event deep in the heart of a space hulk? I'll say again, this is my favorite.

3-The band has had contact with the harlequins, and have taken some of the style of the performing mercenaries. They wear a brighly colored motley, and make use of eldar weapons (so, many xeno deathloks...) Their emblem would be a Joker, a laughing icon, or one of the old trickster gods of Terran mythology.

This one requires some tricky mental gymnastics to work properly but is certainly possible. It sounds like they would have to be literally inducted into a Harlequin Troupe in order to wear their colors. Perhaps the marines are actually being possessed by the Harlequins in some sort of cruel joke? It would explain the jump to piracy and basically allow them to act like Harlequins in the bodies of marines.

I quite like the terminator idea as well, although it kind of goes against the use of pariah armor that is no longer void-sealed (I had a good plan of using bits from the catachan command squad for a squad of pariah-armored marauders...).

For the terminator suits themselves I have the six termies of the Calth box (including the captain...) and twelve old-school metal chaos terminators. Since there are ten pairs of arms in the BaC box, i was planning on using the cataphactii lightning claws on some chaos bodies...

As for the possession, since I have a 40k alpha legion army, i quite like the idea of plans within plans within plans, and the idea of the marines being misled by some power to emulate the harlequins, without being actually part of their troupe, quite appealing... You know, Just as Planned...

although it kind of goes against the use of pariah armor that is no longer void-sealed

Pariah Armour replaces Power Armour. It's not necessarily not void sealed - for example, Blackshield Breachers can have both Pariah Armour and the Hardened Armour traits simultaneously as far as I know.

Result - your armour is clearly void-sealed, but provides less protection against actual heavy gunfire. So no 'cold void' rending hits from boltguns, and reroll saves against frag grenades, but bugger all protection from an autocannon round.

Which makes sense - if the force was based on a hulk, maintaining the environmental protection of their armour would take precedence over maintaining the combat protection - to the point that you might see some pieces of normal void suits replacing 'proper' armour, especially if they wore old stuff (like MkII).

Plus, breachers with Pariah bolters work well - swapping their bolters to an assault weapon pairs up well with a preference for close quarters.

Option 1. - Worn out trope is worn out.

Option 1. bonus

Option 2. - Pretty solid and unique idea, plenty of possibilities for conversion (an' sum lootin!)

Option 3. - Kinda unlikely as there's still a pretty kneejerk reaction to eldar when astartes are involved, renegade or not (see angel exterminatus).

If contact with aliens is your thing, necrons are known to have some presence during the heresy (although very limited, and they had little power). You could have them working for the necrons in return for equipment.

Trazyn was around during this time (confirmed in necron codex) and so they could even be mercs hunting for his museum treasures.

Of your original ideas though, harlequins sound top.

The Deep-space terminators idea seems to be the one that is taking more shape in my mind...

Jareddm mentioned the idea of a Death Guard force as originators, and I really like the idea. I would think that If there is a mission to a hazardous part of deep space, I'd send the Death Guard, personally...

They are far from the theater of war when the heresy breaks out, and they can't go along with it... They take back the colors of the dusk raiders, scraping the cream white from their plates to the bare ceramite, and paint their right arm red... The old halo and skull of the death guard and the dusk raiders goes to only the halo, their realm, the depths of the galaxy...

Breachers, i like... Marauders I'd like to still model some in bare-arms-bare head pariah plate, just for the kicks...

Now I need a name...

I don't want to use the Dusk Raiders, and I like the concept of deep diving, and of somehow getting the void or halo in there...

Halo divers?
Halo raiders?
Riders of the Deep? (with their very own theme song that popped in my head: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DED812HKWyM)

Suggestions? Thoughts?

The Sunless? Or the Gloom Hunters? Eclipse riders....I'm just chucking ideas here.

The Sunless... I like that... With pale white skin of always being in the void or in hulks...

The rumors of the new 30k plastic boxed game of a squad of tartaros terminators, a squad of breachers and a squad of assault marines sounds pretty good to me right now...