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Yeah yeah... I gave in and got some dudes in power armor. I was getting tired of not having the backing of the rules, and a Deathwatch book was on sale at the time, so I decided to give them a go.

However, most of my knowledge of specific Space Marine chapter organization and history is fuzzy at best, and I wanted some help nailing down the specifics and figuring out what can and cannot be in a homebrew SM chapter, as well as relevant information I may be missing. So I'll try to give some broad strokes here for what I want.

But first, some history! All of this is relatively open to suggestion, correction, and changes. I'm gonna trust at least one of you is a huge story buff that will be able to point out any glaring flaws.



And then some pics to give you the idea of the color scheme. I primarily want to go with a sort of WWII armor look, with army/forest green, accented with azure. Since this is a chapter that hasn't had contact with the Imperium at large in thousands of years, they still use Heresy-era pattern equipment.





Do let me know if any of you know a better match for the particular flavors/backstory I'm aiming for here, whether it be in choice of Primarch/parent legion, at what point in time they got separated from the Imperium or what event might have surrounded that, or any other detail.

Paint job looks good

But m issues.. Why would a legion army rename themselves?

How developed is the world they were based on.. Do these guys follow the Old or New Imperial Creed?

How do they maintain their numbers, as well as equipment.. (considering the failure rate of Spacemarines and population required)

Once they were rediscovered, why haven't they been supplied by the Imperium, with the fleet and Auxiliary support, and still have to rely on the RT

Drop the induction of Hereteks. The only good traitors are the dead ones.

If they predate the Iron Cage, they probably wouldn't rename themselves, but would probably have Mechanicum support which can fill in the gap you need to replace the Hereteks.

Their Chapter name could be what the natives call them. The camo paint scheme could have come before the name change since Pre-Codex Astartes Marines were tactical and did things like camouflage themselves.

The name change makes perfect sense if they were forced to execute their lorekeepers (the Librarians) early on.

To sustain their numbers it's makes sense for there to be an indigenous human population not directly affiliated with the Hereteks. Or, perhaps, the Chapter absolutely WRECKED the Hereteks so hard that only scattered bands of their descendants were left, all technology and heretical gains lost. Since Space Marines don't actually die of old age, dying in battle well before it's ever become an apparent problem, if they won they may not have necessarily needed to recruit that much.

The pragmatic reliance on the Rogue Trader seems pretty cool, I like it. Also makes a valid justification for any alliance you run.

So, if I'm reading this right...

Are you implying that your Chapter forces people to be breeding stock? Um...do I need to go into details as to why this is a bad idea?

Ok, getting some good feedback here.

@GodDamUser: I get the issue with the splinter group renaming themselves. However, Humble Guardsman brings up the good point of that kind of info being more mutable, what with the librarians dead, and thousands of years having passed. Also, they would likely follow the Old Imperial Creed

On the issue of maintaining numbers and tech, I already dipped into the idea of them exploiting and reforming hereteks for those resources. That could possibly lead into them attaching themselves to the Rogue Trader fleet instead of pursuing proper Imperial rearming - They know full well the stuff they've done and are currently using would never be approved, so they would rather not draw attention and simply continue using they're heretical perfectly normal kit.

@Humble Guardsman: We got the issue of a population to maintain numbers again. I do kind of like the idea of the hereteks being so thoroughly routed that none of their original cohesion or social structure exists anymore, instead becoming reliant on the Lead Foxes to build any semblance of society. In any case, their chapter size would be very small - low enough to easily fit most of their fighting force aboard the aforementioned rogue trader fleet.

On the issue of marines not aging - it seems plausible, but leads to one of two problems. Either the environment is hostile enough to keep them fighting on a semi-regular basis, which after 10,000 years would grind them down to nothing on sheer probability alone, or they never had to fight after their initial landing, which would allow them to maintain their numbers without a ready populace to draw from, but would also leave them so out of practice that they may be useless in battle.

@curran12: It's possible. I guess it depends on how readily we would need this chapter to start replenishing its ranks. If they needed new recruits right away, brainwashing some breeding stock may be necessary to explain them maintaining a fighting force. However, if we could say the Lead Foxes managed to delay a dire lack of troops for, say, a century or two, it's possible that the shattered descendants of the hereteks might be reorganized by the marines into a new civilization to draw from.


So we've got issues with recruiting from the hereteks or their direct descendants, but possibly not with the descendants of their descendants if we assume things were smashed back to the bronze age. Name and color scheme could be the result of millennia-long shifts and loss of lore, as well as pre-Iron Cage tactics. And hitching a ride with a rogue trader - I kind of like the idea of that being an arrangement for the Lead Foxes to continue to fight for the Imperium alongside someone willing to keep hush-hush about the drifts in their organization that would brand them heretics. At the very least, they would be extremely non-compliant with the Codex Astartes, or even the division of power the Imperium enforces - they would actually rule of their planet, including what government the remaining humans have, as well as direct control of any auxilia that gets organizes. Man... this is making me wish Tyrant's Legion was effective or even up to date, cause it sounds like a perfect fit theme-wise.

I agree with what Tactical-Spam said - The only good heretics are dead ones. Unless they're re-purposed as something like Servitors, heretics are always killed.

As for drawing tech from the planet's inhabitants, there's one key problem in my mind: The 'creation' of new Marines. Any race or group that is technologically advanced enough to have the tech these Marines need to 'create' more Marines would likely not only have an interstellar empire (or at least space-faring capabilities), but also either kill the Marines or help them get back to the Imperium in a time farm a lot shorter than the several millennia you speak of.

Then there's the issue of survivors. With the fact that it is highly unlikely they'd have any access to any tech that would help them replenish their numbers, there's also the fact that in an incident such as you've described, it is unlikely that there was an overwhelming amount of marines that survived (an estimate of 100 - 200 seems like a reasonable maximum to me). With that in mind, I find it unlikely that the Marines would last several millennia on their own. They're good, but I doubt they're that good.

Now let's assume that the idea of happening across a planet with the tech required to 'create' new Marines is viable: Every human population in the galaxy has a percentage who are psykers. Would the Marines not be able to turn one of these psykers into one of their own, thus having a 'Librarian' who can send Astropathic messages to come get them?

Then there's the idea of the Rogue Trader. Not that I'm against this idea, but if a Rogue Trader comes by and discovers them, why hasn't a Rogue Trader passed by sooner? Seems mighty odd that a Rogue Trader would pass by a planet that no other Rogue Trader or Imperial Vessel has passed in the past few millennia. It might be another emergency drop out of the Warp much like the Astartes had to do millennia before, but even that seems too coincidental and conveniently times for your lore.

Also, unless there was a relatively significant civilian portion of the survivors, how would the Space Marines colonise? If it's simply the clearing of a relatively local area of population in order to construct a relatively rudimentary fortress, colonisation is probably not the right way to describe it. If you there is indeed a decent civilian contingent and they were settling land, then they would be doing to colonisation, not the Space Marines.

Also, the Imperium wouldn't let these Astartes just say "Oh hey, we're back. Now we're running off to serve the Imperium with these Rogue Traders." There'd be a lot more of a process involved with their return into the fold, not to mention they would be given their own fleet as opposed to having to rely on Rogue Traders for Transport. Then there's the idea that Rogue Traders and Space Marine Chapters have vastly different needs and objectives, making the Chapter's reliance on them unfeasible at best.


I personally think you're trying to rely too much on the isolation these Astartes experienced as well as a relatively unrealistic reliance on Rogue Traders in order to define your Chapter. In my experience both as someone who has tried to do similar things as well as someone who's read people's fan-fiction in which they've tried to do the same, it often doesn't work well. Try to take the elements you have an convert them into something more realistic. For example:

-- Millennia of isolation is never a good idea, especially if you're tying to add character to your Chapter. Try instead to develop your Chapter based on two things:
(a) The virtues and beliefs the recruits bring to the Chapter during their service.
(b) The deeds they do in the service of the Imperium.

Remember that defeating a Chaos incursion or fighting Orks is nothing unique, but it hasn't been done before by your Chapter as written by you. also remember that being part of the Imperium and serving it will do a lot more for your Chapter and its character than a long period of isolation ever will.

-- The planet they landed on could be both rich in resources as you've said and also be named as the Chapter's homeworld. Then the Chapter could source their equipment from a Forge World that uses their world's resource to craft their beloved Frag Cannons and Specialist Ammunition.

-- Reliance on Rogue Traders is bad in my opinion, but operating with the a lot (especially if the Chapter operates on or beyond the fringes of the Imperium) sounds decent.

-- Adopting the new Chapter name from the local population would still take time, but let it be something that isn't officially changed until much later.


As one final point, I do very much like the colour scheme.

Hi Mate,

Really enjoyed the army backstory and your painting is really good!

I don't see any major lore problems with your backstory, the Carcharadon's Astra (and all the Chaos warbands!) manage to recruit members and maintain equipment just fine without any of the Imperial infrastructure so I shouldn't think it was a big issue.
Some other things I'd like to know;
Does your chapter still maintain sub warp space travel capability? Do they have a main fortress or space station or are they mobile? What is their planet like? Does it have hive cities or is it a feral world or what?

Only thing is that by being isolated from the Imperium you miss out on all the cool internal politics and rivalry that makes the setting so interesting for me personally.

Cheers
Kroem

@IllumiNini: Ok! Lots of good questions. That why I came here. Due to my staunch refusal to play space marines of any variety before, I only know so much about how a chapter actually works. So go through this point by point and see what can be explained and what needs changed.

I agree with what Tactical-Spam said - The only good heretics are dead ones. Unless they're re-purposed as something like Servitors, heretics are always killed.

As much as I like the idea of the chapter having a ‘dark secret’ of inducting the descendents of hereteks, I guess it would stand to reason that a contingent of Rogal’s crusade would simply wipe out such opposition to the man, rather than keep enough around to rebuild civilization. I may need to reconsider the use of the Imperial Fists as their parent legion. The tactics and combat doctrine fit the bill, but the history requires some bending to work a group of them into their own new chapter. More on that later.

As for drawing tech from the planet's inhabitants, there's one key problem in my mind: The 'creation' of new Marines. Any race or group that is technologically advanced enough to have the tech these Marines need to 'create' more Marines would likely not only have an interstellar empire (or at least space-faring capabilities), but also either kill the Marines or help them get back to the Imperium in a time farm a lot shorter than the several millennia you speak of.

This is where I need to ask what kind of facilities are necessary to create new marines. I kind of assumed a battle barge full of them would have the means to produce more of them, even if not at the capacity a full-fledge citadel would. I don’t need this faction to have a large number of them: since I run them as Deathwatch on the table, they do come across as quite elite. I hope I didn’t come across as suggesting the hereteks had the means of geneseed implantation - their inclusion to the story was for providing unorthodox means of producing and maintaining gear, particularly the brand of frag cannons the chapter uses.

Then there's the issue of survivors. With the fact that it is highly unlikely they'd have any access to any tech that would help them replenish their numbers, there's also the fact that in an incident such as you've described, it is unlikely that there was an overwhelming amount of marines that survived (an estimate of 100 - 200 seems like a reasonable maximum to me). With that in mind, I find it unlikely that the Marines would last several millennia on their own. They're good, but I doubt they're that good.

This is also true. Even under the best of circumstances, I’ve rarely heard of marines that lived for more than a few centuries. Living for ten thousand years would put them up there with the primarchs. This is where I dip back into the idea of changing the parent legion from Imperial Fists. The reason for the absurdly long isolation was primarily for the fact that I wanted this faction to use pre-heresy era armor and weapons, and this was compounded by making them a long-lost splinter of Rogal’s crusade. I needed them to get lost for long enough that they would consider saying ‘sod it’ to the crusade, since they would be so far from contact to participate in it any longer, and instead carve out a place of their own on this new planet. That’s to say nothing of making enough time pass without outside influence to no longer identify as Imperial Fists. All that said, I might be better served finding a parent legion that better matches the tactics and color scheme, and either just have them bopping around this entire time as a task force small enough to not make it into a lot of records, or further stretch the warp shenannigans to instead pull a pre-heresy faction straight into the 41st millenium. Maybe someone with better knowledge of all the existing legions might be able to point me in the right direction?

Now let's assume that the idea of happening across a planet with the tech required to 'create' new Marines is viable: Every human population in the galaxy has a percentage who are psykers. Would the Marines not be able to turn one of these psykers into one of their own, thus having a 'Librarian' who can send Astropathic messages to come get them?

On the point of a planet having the tech to create marines - I think I may have been unclear as mentioned earlier; the marines would have brought the tech necessary to make more of them, assuming that would be possible. As for the pyskers, I was thinking repeated lesser daemonic incursion, plus the soul rot that killed off their pyskers on arrival, would make the Lead Foxes leary of any that popped up, probably putting them to the blade rather than give the daemon a potential in. Once again, this might be a mutable idea, depending on how their history may be revised

Then there's the idea of the Rogue Trader. Not that I'm against this idea, but if a Rogue Trader comes by and discovers them, why hasn't a Rogue Trader passed by sooner? Seems mighty odd that a Rogue Trader would pass by a planet that no other Rogue Trader or Imperial Vessel has passed in the past few millennia. It might be another emergency drop out of the Warp much like the Astartes had to do millennia before, but even that seems too coincidental and conveniently times for your lore.

I was thinking it would simply be an uncharted world somewhere on the fringes of the galaxy. That would make it a perfect hideout for the aforementioned hereteks, and the rogue trader who happened by would have thought they discovered a new world right up until they find marines and humans running around.

Also, unless there was a relatively significant civilian portion of the survivors, how would the Space Marines colonise? If it's simply the clearing of a relatively local area of population in order to construct a relatively rudimentary fortress, colonisation is probably not the right way to describe it. If you there is indeed a decent civilian contingent and they were settling land, then they would be doing to colonisation, not the Space Marines.

I guess ‘colonize’ is the wrong word in this case. More taming the land like you just described.

Also, the Imperium wouldn't let these Astartes just say "Oh hey, we're back. Now we're running off to serve the Imperium with these Rogue Traders." There'd be a lot more of a process involved with their return into the fold, not to mention they would be given their own fleet as opposed to having to rely on Rogue Traders for Transport. Then there's the idea that Rogue Traders and Space Marine Chapters have vastly different needs and objectives, making the Chapter's reliance on them unfeasible at best.

This brings us back to the idea of the chapter’s dark secret of maintaining its numbers and equipment. They -could- go back to the Imperium at large, but doing so would involve divulging their drifts and misdeeds, and likely lead to them being wiped out as heretics. Once again, this is subject to change depending on how their heritage is reworked.

And the rest is stuff that will likely be ironed out with the previous issues. But to expand/reiterate, there are the broad strokes I’m looking for:

- Emphasis on ground assault tactics, especially short range shooting with solid projectile weapons. Support comes in the form of sniper squads and bikers with power weapons.
- Based on planet with hyper-dense metals used for ammunition. Environment is primarily marshland and temperate hills.
- Allied with well-armed human mercenaries (typically run as Inquisitorial Acolytes with power armor and storm bolters).
- Army green with Azure accents for color (obviously)
EDIT: Also forgot lack of psykers. That too.

I wanted to put something down for general temperament, but I realize at this point that I had never nailed it down. I originally built these models to be Knights Inductor (Reasonable Marines), but later noticed their play style was far more aggressive than Reasonable Marines would allow. Once again, I’m hoping this is something that can be hammered out with some background reassignment. Their history is pretty much up in the air at this point, so the battles and achievements that would shape them are largely unknown.

I like it! However, how would they maintain numbers of Space Marines and power armour? It ain't easy to make either, especially without a Forge World or the like present.

 Humble Guardsman wrote:
The name change makes perfect sense if they were forced to execute their lorekeepers (the Librarians) early on.

To sustain their numbers it's makes sense for there to be an indigenous human population not directly affiliated with the Hereteks. Or, perhaps, the Chapter absolutely WRECKED the Hereteks so hard that only scattered bands of their descendants were left, all technology and heretical gains lost. Since Space Marines don't actually die of old age, dying in battle well before it's ever become an apparent problem, if they won they may not have necessarily needed to recruit that much.

The pragmatic reliance on the Rogue Trader seems pretty cool, I like it. Also makes a valid justification for any alliance you run.

I don't think even the Imperial Fists would forget their own name.

You have what, several hundred nigh-unkillable Gods of War to try and scour the whole planet?

Let's assume they really do intend to kill every single one of them, down to the last workcrew and factory slave. That's a massive ask for that number of Marines, even with auspex assistance and a means of rooting out the most remote or hidden enclaves. Far more likely that the Space Marines toppled the ruling power (The Hereteks and their armies) and then ran rampant for a while tearing down anything that looked even remotely heretical. It would take long for successive generations of the lower classes (whatever was left of them) to revere the SM instead of their old masters. In the Gaunts Ghost book the IG don't go massacring every single individuals to live on a world that has been occupied by a Chaos authority for some time.

It may have been hundreds of years after initial planetfall that the first indigenous recruit was accepted due to the SM being starved for numbers. They were probably treated with suspicious by quite a lot of veteran Brothers, and it was probably a big deal for the Chapter as a whole. Heck, you could have an ornery Dreadnought that still doesn't entirely trust the 'new kids' that make up the mainstay of the Chapter these days.

 ChazSexington wrote:

I don't think even the Imperial Fists would forget their own name.

Over several millenia? Certainly it could be muddled. It's not like they need to form a convention as to establishing a name change. All it would require is for the integration of the locals name to remain somewhat the unofficial term or title among the new initiates. They know on paper they are the Imperial Fists, but their father always called them 'The Foxes of the Southern Sun' and his grandfather called them that and even your fellow recruits refer to them by that name. It's possible for the name Imperial Fist to first fall into memory rather than active use, and then eventually be forgotten. Of course, the name doesn't have to be forgotten for them to no longer refer to themselves by that title.

Axle_Gear wrote:

I agree with what Tactical-Spam said - The only good heretics are dead ones. Unless they're re-purposed as something like Servitors, heretics are always killed.

As much as I like the idea of the chapter having a ‘dark secret’ of inducting the descendents of hereteks, I guess it would stand to reason that a contingent of Rogal’s crusade would simply wipe out such opposition to the man, rather than keep enough around to rebuild civilization. I may need to reconsider the use of the Imperial Fists as their parent legion. The tactics and combat doctrine fit the bill, but the history requires some bending to work a group of them into their own new chapter. More on that later.

Populations of heretics and heresy within a population are two different things, the later being easier to deal with because heresy within a population can be expunged while simultaneously leaving the loyal population. With that in mind, you could work that into the Chapter's deep dark secret (maybe something to do with Chaos Taint appearing in a certain percentage of initiates recruited from this world).

Axle_Gear wrote:

As for drawing tech from the planet's inhabitants, there's one key problem in my mind: The 'creation' of new Marines. Any race or group that is technologically advanced enough to have the tech these Marines need to 'create' more Marines would likely not only have an interstellar empire (or at least space-faring capabilities), but also either kill the Marines or help them get back to the Imperium in a time farm a lot shorter than the several millennia you speak of.

This is where I need to ask what kind of facilities are necessary to create new marines. I kind of assumed a battle barge full of them would have the means to produce more of them, even if not at the capacity a full-fledge citadel would. I don’t need this faction to have a large number of them: since I run them as Deathwatch on the table, they do come across as quite elite. I hope I didn’t come across as suggesting the hereteks had the means of geneseed implantation - their inclusion to the story was for providing unorthodox means of producing and maintaining gear, particularly the brand of frag cannons the chapter uses.

Check This Page out. It explains how the process of creating a new Space Marine goes, then you have to consider the fact that the implants have to be grown. I'm not particulalrly familiar with the specifics of it myself, but the two biggest problems your Marines would have are growing the implants as well as inserting them into potential Marines. I'm not sure where these facilities would be on a Fleet-Based Chapter, but for a Homeworld-Based Chapter, the facilities required to produce the implants and 'create' a Space Marine would almost surely be on the planet (likely in their Fortress Monastery). For a Fleet-Based Chapter, I have no idea. It could be on a vessel specifically designed for it, it could be on their flagship, it could be on one or more of the worlds they recruit from - I don't know. In any case, it sounds a bit snow-flakey that they would conveniently get into such a situation with the ability to replanish their numbers.

Axle_Gear wrote:

Then there's the issue of survivors. With the fact that it is highly unlikely they'd have any access to any tech that would help them replenish their numbers, there's also the fact that in an incident such as you've described, it is unlikely that there was an overwhelming amount of marines that survived (an estimate of 100 - 200 seems like a reasonable maximum to me). With that in mind, I find it unlikely that the Marines would last several millennia on their own. They're good, but I doubt they're that good.

This is also true. Even under the best of circumstances, I’ve rarely heard of marines that lived for more than a few centuries. Living for ten thousand years would put them up there with the primarchs. This is where I dip back into the idea of changing the parent legion from Imperial Fists. The reason for the absurdly long isolation was primarily for the fact that I wanted this faction to use pre-heresy era armor and weapons, and this was compounded by making them a long-lost splinter of Rogal’s crusade. I needed them to get lost for long enough that they would consider saying ‘sod it’ to the crusade, since they would be so far from contact to participate in it any longer, and instead carve out a place of their own on this new planet. That’s to say nothing of making enough time pass without outside influence to no longer identify as Imperial Fists. All that said, I might be better served finding a parent legion that better matches the tactics and color scheme, and either just have them bopping around this entire time as a task force small enough to not make it into a lot of records, or further stretch the warp shenannigans to instead pull a pre-heresy faction straight into the 41st millenium. Maybe someone with better knowledge of all the existing legions might be able to point me in the right direction?

Pre-Heresy Armour and weapons are supposed to be one of two things:

-- Rare;
-- No longer in use;

This is because the ability to create these sorts of things has been lost or because something better has come along. Take MkIII Power Armour (dating back before the Heresy): It is very rare in M41 and I get the impression it is only produced in very small amounts for a very select few Chapters (if it as still produced at all). Then there's things like tanks, weapons, etc etc etc. Take another example - The Typhon Siege Tank: You're only likely to possess one in M41 if your Chapter was from an early Founding (2nd or maybe 3rd) and even then only if you're descended from the Imperial Fists (or have heretical origins in the Iron Warriors) since they were the two Legions that used them the most during the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy.

Also, if you want your Chapter to still use Pre-Heresy gear, that might be a problem due to the aforementioned rarity and production issues. Assuming a full-strength Chapter, one - maybe two - full-strength Companies (100 - 200 Marines) within the Chapter may be kitted out with gear from around that time, but that would be getting up there in terms of the limit. Your Marines are more likely to use a lot of gear developed after the HH rather than before, especially if they were Founded as part of an official Founding.

Axle_Gear wrote:

Now let's assume that the idea of happening across a planet with the tech required to 'create' new Marines is viable: Every human population in the galaxy has a percentage who are psykers. Would the Marines not be able to turn one of these psykers into one of their own, thus having a 'Librarian' who can send Astropathic messages to come get them?

On the point of a planet having the tech to create marines - I think I may have been unclear as mentioned earlier; the marines would have brought the tech necessary to make more of them, assuming that would be possible. As for the pyskers, I was thinking repeated lesser daemonic incursion, plus the soul rot that killed off their pyskers on arrival, would make the Lead Foxes leary of any that popped up, probably putting them to the blade rather than give the daemon a potential in. Once again, this might be a mutable idea, depending on how their history may be revised

I'm still not a fan of the idea since I don't think that the Marines would be quite so suspicious for such a long period of time. The incident on the ship prior to their arrival is unlikely to be enough to make them this distrusting of psykers - The incident would need to be repeated quite a few times as well as have noticeably negative effects on the Chapter in order to make the Marines this suspicious. If you can get this sort of idea to work by fleshing it out and writing it right, power to you, but I don't see this idea working particularly well myself.

The only way I see this idea being a decent idea is if the "Soul Rot" becomes a genetic mutation of their gene-seed rather than simply a phenomenon seen only on the ship they arrived in (thus making the induction of psykers into the Chapter impossible). But then that also leaves the idea of "Why can't the psykers just stay human and send Astropathic messages?"

Axle_Gear wrote:

Then there's the idea of the Rogue Trader. Not that I'm against this idea, but if a Rogue Trader comes by and discovers them, why hasn't a Rogue Trader passed by sooner? Seems mighty odd that a Rogue Trader would pass by a planet that no other Rogue Trader or Imperial Vessel has passed in the past few millennia. It might be another emergency drop out of the Warp much like the Astartes had to do millennia before, but even that seems too coincidental and conveniently times for your lore.

I was thinking it would simply be an uncharted world somewhere on the fringes of the galaxy. That would make it a perfect hideout for the aforementioned hereteks, and the rogue trader who happened by would have thought they discovered a new world right up until they find marines and humans running around.

Not entirely impossible, but a little bit snow-flakey.

Axle_Gear wrote:

Also, the Imperium wouldn't let these Astartes just say "Oh hey, we're back. Now we're running off to serve the Imperium with these Rogue Traders." There'd be a lot more of a process involved with their return into the fold, not to mention they would be given their own fleet as opposed to having to rely on Rogue Traders for Transport. Then there's the idea that Rogue Traders and Space Marine Chapters have vastly different needs and objectives, making the Chapter's reliance on them unfeasible at best.

This brings us back to the idea of the chapter’s dark secret of maintaining its numbers and equipment. They -could- go back to the Imperium at large, but doing so would involve divulging their drifts and misdeeds, and likely lead to them being wiped out as heretics. Once again, this is subject to change depending on how their heritage is reworked.

Yeah, going down this particular road gets very complex and a bit snow-flakey, so it might be worth rethinking it a bit. Don't necessarily scrap the ideas, but maybe see if you can reconcile them into ideas that work.

Axle_Gear wrote:
And the rest is stuff that will likely be ironed out with the previous issues. But to expand/reiterate, there are the broad strokes I’m looking for:

- Emphasis on ground assault tactics, especially short range shooting with solid projectile weapons. Support comes in the form of sniper squads and bikers with power weapons.
- Based on planet with hyper-dense metals used for ammunition. Environment is primarily marshland and temperate hills.
- Allied with well-armed human mercenaries (typically run as Inquisitorial Acolytes with power armor and storm bolters).
- Army green with Azure accents for color (obviously)
EDIT: Also forgot lack of psykers. That too.

I wanted to put something down for general temperament, but I realize at this point that I had never nailed it down. I originally built these models to be Knights Inductor (Reasonable Marines), but later noticed their play style was far more aggressive than Reasonable Marines would allow. Once again, I’m hoping this is something that can be hammered out with some background reassignment. Their history is pretty much up in the air at this point, so the battles and achievements that would shape them are largely unknown.

I'll get to these points when I have more time. In the mean time, I also suggest you start off by looking at two topics:

-- The Space Marine Legions as well as some of the Loyalist Legions' 2nd Founding Chapters.

This will hopefully give you enough information about the Legions and their Successors to know who this Chapter's Parent Legion/Chapter should be. I'd avoid being secret successors of Traitor Legions for now because that gets very complicated very quickly.

-- Take a look at Foundings. Every Chapter (with the exception of a very select few like the Grey Knights) are created as part of a Founding.

Given what you're going for, I'd suggest the 3rd Founding. I'd suggest 3rd Founding because doing them as part of the 2nd Founding can be tricky. For example, it is known that the Salamanders Legion had no Successor Chapters created during the 2nd Founding since they were made exempt from the split (as a result of various events during the HH). So the 3rd Founding is your safest bet in terms of the earliest Founding you can use.

I'd also avoid scenarios whereby your Chapter was not formed as part of a Founding because that can get tricky. Either pick a Founding or state that the specific Founding during which they were created is unknown (while still explicitly stating they were created during a Founding).

Ok, let's dig in...

Populations of heretics and heresy within a population are two different things, the later being easier to deal with because heresy within a population can be expunged while simultaneously leaving the loyal population. With that in mind, you could work that into the Chapter's deep dark secret (maybe something to do with Chaos Taint appearing in a certain percentage of initiates recruited from this world).

I think there might be some confusing the terms 'heretic,' as in the religious offender, and 'hereTEK,' as in experimenters whose methods and creations fly in the face of the Omnissiah. I can't imagine the Imperium would care to differentiate them much, but I feel it's important to note. That said, it's possible that the world originally operated under the auspices of the hereteks, even Logician cultists and traitor ringleaders need a working population and cronies to get things done. Maybe the planet was originally under the rule of treacherous technocrats, using slave labor to mine hyper-dense minerals, and the arrival of the Lead Foxes led to their being overthrown. From there, we could have hereteks still lurking within the population of liberated civilians, and we've got ourselves an Imperial world with a checkered history.

Check This Page out. It explains how the process of creating a new Space Marine goes, then you have to consider the fact that the implants have to be grown. I'm not particulalrly familiar with the specifics of it myself, but the two biggest problems your Marines would have are growing the implants as well as inserting them into potential Marines. I'm not sure where these facilities would be on a Fleet-Based Chapter, but for a Homeworld-Based Chapter, the facilities required to produce the implants and 'create' a Space Marine would almost surely be on the planet (likely in their Fortress Monastery). For a Fleet-Based Chapter, I have no idea. It could be on a vessel specifically designed for it, it could be on their flagship, it could be on one or more of the worlds they recruit from - I don't know. In any case, it sounds a bit snow-flakey that they would conveniently get into such a situation with the ability to replanish their numbers.

I took a quick look through their, and while the facilities for doing all the surgery would take some stretching, or simply having an established location, creating geneseed looks like it should happen with any marine. Progenoids produce geneseeds within marines throughout their life, so unless something is wrong with that, the essential basis is there. The extensive list of other organs presents an issue, though. We could say they were originally fleet-based, and the ship they crash landed in had the facilities necessary for the whole process.

At this rate, I am willing to reconsider the whole ship-wrecked and stranded thing, though I would like an explanation for the chapter having the relatively low numbers reflected in 'elite-ness' of the Deathwatch list.

Pre-Heresy Armour and weapons are supposed to be one of two things:

-- Rare;
-- No longer in use;

/snip

That's... going to be an issue. The entire army, aside from some of the character models, is done up in pre-heresy/heresy-era armor. I would need some way for them to either be able to at least manufacture the patterns of armor they use, or some reason for them to produce remarkably similar armor in lieu of the standard Mk IV that most marines have. This is kind of a must, unless I intend to throw out ALL my models for the sake of being completely in line with typical Space Marine history.

I'm still not a fan of the idea since I don't think that the Marines would be quite so suspicious for such a long period of time. The incident on the ship prior to their arrival is unlikely to be enough to make them this distrusting of psykers - The incident would need to be repeated quite a few times as well as have noticeably negative effects on the Chapter in order to make the Marines this suspicious. If you can get this sort of idea to work by fleshing it out and writing it right, power to you, but I don't see this idea working particularly well myself.

The only way I see this idea being a decent idea is if the "Soul Rot" becomes a genetic mutation of their gene-seed rather than simply a phenomenon seen only on the ship they arrived in (thus making the induction of psykers into the Chapter impossible). But then that also leaves the idea of "Why can't the psykers just stay human and send Astropathic messages?"

I kind of like the idea of the Soul Rot becoming a defect in their geneseed, but the question you pose does still remain. I'm thinking one of a handful of explanations:
- The planet's population is small enough that each generation is liable to not have any psyker powerful enough for astropathic communcation.
- The Soul Rot has infected the warp space around the planet, afflicting any psyker who comes within that space (though this renders travel out of the system nearly impossible, as simply arriving would kill your navigator)
- A strange property of the planet itself prevents or suppresses the use of psychic powers. I'm thinking this unnaturally dense metal that the Lead Foxes keep using for their ammo might act as a psychic Faraday cage. Maybe it being so dense without being radioactive is a result of it simultaneously existing in reality and warpspace at the same time? I personally like this idea, but it would mean that many people (and marines) planetside could be psykers and wouldn't realize it until they left, which can cause all kinds of problems. Alternatively, it could be causing a 'something in the water' effect that stunts or eliminates the birth rate of pyskers.

Alternatively alternatively, I could scrap the chapter being separated from the Imperium altogether, but that leaves me with a blank slate and an entire history to get done by Friday night. I'm trying to write this up for an Inner Circle event this weekend, so you might see why I'm concerned with getting the specifics down -just- right. I'm not entirely certain how much they are expecting, but I'd like to at least get these general ideas down so I have a solid foundation to work from.

I took a look over the loyalist chapters, and the Emperor's Warbringers seemed to fit a lot of the motifs I was going for, though the name is incredibly uninspired.

I'm beginning to feel like I might be better off with my Imperialis Militia army for the Inner Circle if I can't get this fluff to pan out, though getting them display ready would be a mad scramble at this point.

Axle_Gear wrote:

Check This Page out. It explains how the process of creating a new Space Marine goes, then you have to consider the fact that the implants have to be grown. I'm not particulalrly familiar with the specifics of it myself, but the two biggest problems your Marines would have are growing the implants as well as inserting them into potential Marines. I'm not sure where these facilities would be on a Fleet-Based Chapter, but for a Homeworld-Based Chapter, the facilities required to produce the implants and 'create' a Space Marine would almost surely be on the planet (likely in their Fortress Monastery). For a Fleet-Based Chapter, I have no idea. It could be on a vessel specifically designed for it, it could be on their flagship, it could be on one or more of the worlds they recruit from - I don't know. In any case, it sounds a bit snow-flakey that they would conveniently get into such a situation with the ability to replanish their numbers.

I took a quick look through their, and while the facilities for doing all the surgery would take some stretching, or simply having an established location, creating geneseed looks like it should happen with any marine. Progenoids produce geneseeds within marines throughout their life, so unless something is wrong with that, the essential basis is there. The extensive list of other organs presents an issue, though. We could say they were originally fleet-based, and the ship they crash landed in had the facilities necessary for the whole process.

At this rate, I am willing to reconsider the whole ship-wrecked and stranded thing, though I would like an explanation for the chapter having the relatively low numbers reflected in 'elite-ness' of the Deathwatch list.

Yeah, trying to explain the Chapter's ability to replenish their numbers in this sort of situation is very difficult to make viable.

I can't remember where I read it, but I'm pretty sure it's not unheard of for Chapters to operate at numbers less than a thousand, though this doesn't necessarily have to be the case. Why exactly does your Chapter need to have low numbers?

Axle_Gear wrote:

Pre-Heresy Armour and weapons are supposed to be one of two things:

-- Rare;
-- No longer in use;

/snip

That's... going to be an issue. The entire army, aside from some of the character models, is done up in pre-heresy/heresy-era armor. I would need some way for them to either be able to at least manufacture the patterns of armor they use, or some reason for them to produce remarkably similar armor in lieu of the standard Mk IV that most marines have. This is kind of a must, unless I intend to throw out ALL my models for the sake of being completely in line with typical Space Marine history.

From the pictures, it looks like the earliest pattern of Power Armour used in the models you have is Mk III. It's not unheard of for Chapters to have a number of these suits available, thus giving you a relatively unique opportunity to fold into your lore reasons as to why you Chapter might have an abnormally large number of suits still in good condition and active use. I would also fit in with your idea for a close combat / close quarters theme. It's not likely that these suits of armour are easily replaceable (if at all), but it's not impossible to maintain that many suits for so long - it just depends on how sparingly they're used.

As for Pre-Heresy Weaponry - I'm not seeing anything from your pictures that stands out as going against the currently produced weapons withing the 41st Millennium, so that should be fine.

Axle_Gear wrote:

I'm still not a fan of the idea since I don't think that the Marines would be quite so suspicious for such a long period of time. The incident on the ship prior to their arrival is unlikely to be enough to make them this distrusting of psykers - The incident would need to be repeated quite a few times as well as have noticeably negative effects on the Chapter in order to make the Marines this suspicious. If you can get this sort of idea to work by fleshing it out and writing it right, power to you, but I don't see this idea working particularly well myself.

The only way I see this idea being a decent idea is if the "Soul Rot" becomes a genetic mutation of their gene-seed rather than simply a phenomenon seen only on the ship they arrived in (thus making the induction of psykers into the Chapter impossible). But then that also leaves the idea of "Why can't the psykers just stay human and send Astropathic messages?"

I kind of like the idea of the Soul Rot becoming a defect in their geneseed, but the question you pose does still remain. I'm thinking one of a handful of explanations:
- The planet's population is small enough that each generation is liable to not have any psyker powerful enough for astropathic communcation.
- The Soul Rot has infected the warp space around the planet, afflicting any psyker who comes within that space (though this renders travel out of the system nearly impossible, as simply arriving would kill your navigator)
- A strange property of the planet itself prevents or suppresses the use of psychic powers. I'm thinking this unnaturally dense metal that the Lead Foxes keep using for their ammo might act as a psychic Faraday cage. Maybe it being so dense without being radioactive is a result of it simultaneously existing in reality and warpspace at the same time? I personally like this idea, but it would mean that many people (and marines) planetside could be psykers and wouldn't realize it until they left, which can cause all kinds of problems. Alternatively, it could be causing a 'something in the water' effect that stunts or eliminates the birth rate of pyskers.

The easiest way might be to simply say that tumultuous Warp Storms or other Warp phenomenon at the very least interrupt the ability of psykers to send Astropathic communications let alone coherent Astropathic communications.

I'd also say to leave the 'Soul Rot' to the particular initial incident in Warp and have it only affect the Astartes and other psykers that were on the Chapter's vessel during said incident.

Axle_Gear wrote:
Alternatively alternatively, I could scrap the chapter being separated from the Imperium altogether, but that leaves me with a blank slate and an entire history to get done by Friday night. I'm trying to write this up for an Inner Circle event this weekend, so you might see why I'm concerned with getting the specifics down -just- right. I'm not entirely certain how much they are expecting, but I'd like to at least get these general ideas down so I have a solid foundation to work from.

I took a look over the loyalist chapters, and the Emperor's Warbringers seemed to fit a lot of the motifs I was going for, though the name is incredibly uninspired.

From what I've read on both the Warhammer 40K Wikia and Lexicanum, the Emperor's Warbringers sound - in part like the sort of thing you're going for for sure.

If you're not sure about your own idea, then might I be so bold as to propose the following?

When it comes to explaUninvolved why they are the way they are, I have a couple of things to add.

GW published something that is as close to the codex astartes as they get have, it's called Insignium Astartes. It says a couple of things that help.

- most of the chapters of in the Imperium are not truly codex chapters.
- Codex means chapters that are divided into "companies of battle and companies of reserve" but it isn't detailed that this means the Ultramarines/DA/BA breakdown, and battle companies have some number of tactical, etc squads but the ratio is not fixed.

So with the loose definition of codex organization and a good source saying most chapters don't even meet those loose standards, you don't have to do anything weird to explain it.

The example is Iron Snakes. In-universe they appear no more controversial than Ultramarines, and yet they have no companies, all squads have their own apothecary and standard bearer, and it's common for entire basic squads to be armed with combat shields and (power) spears.

As far as everyone being elite, I think you don't need an explanation really. Where do normal veterans come from? The veteran company. Sure they are the best marines in the chapter, but they are also put into a separate group for some reason. The chapters think they have a need for company-sized basic formations with battle companies, and then a separate group of elite units for special missions. Just say they never do company- sized ops and only ever train marines to be "veterans," I.e. special kill teams.

So who uses kill teams? That's right, the deathwatch and inquisition, who do things like insert on a world being eaten by Tyranids to extract a relic, but don't do larger battles. Well there you are.

This is important because it seems like the background so far is something other than fun. You don't need them to be sort of contrived so that you can play deathwatch rules. I think your plan for locally produced super dense metals is good.

If you have a bunch of non-psychic marines and they recruit someone who has powers, they don't suddenly have a librarian who can astrally communicate, they have a dangerous untrained psyker who has no useful abilities and probably should be killed.