Fresh-Faced New User
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I have reworked my initial idea into a full-fledged background for this warband, and as such have deleted the text of the original post and will put the details, now on the 40k homebrew fandom, here as a superior replacement to the information presented before.
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The Apparitions Unleashed are a chaos Warband of ghostlike traitor marines who haunt the worlds they assault with the seemingly random appearances of a particular Warp Storm which travels across the galaxy. They were created by a group of Warp Ghosts who were gifted the power to reanimate dead marines into a state that vaguely resembles that of the substance of Daemons, likely for their role in enabling the first Black Crusade fleets to break through the eye and into Imperial realspace.
Warband History
At the height of Abaddon's 8th Black Crusade, a mysterious rift appeared above a ruined battlefield of the planet Yog III. With its sudden arrival came the dropship which disembarked several dozen warriors of the Warp Ghost's chaos warband, and one by one they awakened each fallen astartes with strange chants before a wave of the hand brought the corpse to reanimation. In total 300 astartes were risen in a confused state, continuing actions that echoed their final moments before death. Strangely, injuries such as exploded heads, missing limbs and gaping holes in torsos simply vanished as if death was mere dream, and the Warp Ghosts were met with resistance from both fallen loyalists and traitors before they realized that whatever power had brought them back into being made it so that their projectiles and weapons couldn't collide with the bodies of their foes, simply passing through and vanishing into the sinister mist that drifted over the wasteland like a deathly blanket trying to pacify its children. The Warp Ghosts, soon collectively referred to as "The Undertakers" by their confused "recruits" harried the confused spirit-marines into ethereal thunderhawks piloted by silent spirits and taken into the corridors of the fleet ships that hung below the maw of the warp storm which became known simply as the Trapezoidal Door, or the Door.
Notable Campaigns
Warband Headquarters
Their fleet travels with the whims of a warp storm called "The Trapezoidal Door". This "Door" acts quintessentially as a traveling port for the warbands of Chaos, frequently making detours back to the Eye of Terror to assist the forces of Chaos. Their haunted vessels are arife with spirits from across the ages, crew and personnel who tend to the inner workings of the ship by habit moreso than need. Rarely do the Apparitions Unleashed wage full campaigns in the wake of their raids due to the storm's mercurial nature. As fighting onworld begins to reach a crescendo of plundering and looting the storm begins to dissipate: a process which may take three days of which within that time members of the warband must make it back to the fleet before it leaves them behind. This would provide an ample opportunity for freedom from the constant command & demand of the Undertakers, if it weren't for the fact that their very undeath is weaved into the power of the storm itself, for those left behind fall as lifeless suits of armor bubbling with a strange ectoplasmic substance that simply vanishes without a trace. Still, some members (especially those who died as staunch loyalist with traces of fealty to the emperor left in the residual spark one might call a soul) choose this as a viable option for release, essentially committing suicide with the departure of their traveling maelstrom.
Warband Organisation
A contingent of quiet leaders and splinter faction of the Warp Ghosts themselves rules the roost primarily from the fleet, organizing deployments and occasionally making immense human sacrifices to the storm in order to orientate its trajectory to where they want it to go. Sometimes however, the roaring gateway simply showers the entire fleet in an absurd nightmare hail of disappointment: in the form of screeching gargoyles and daemons of unaffiliated warp domains, and decides to take them completely off the course they ask.
Officer Ranks
Those who are given orders directly from the Undertakers themselves are called Charonites, often resentful in their station because they are never given any meaningful insider explanation as to the Warp Ghosts nature and origins.
Specialist Ranks
Line Ranks
Specialist Units & Formations
Order of Battle
Companies
Combat Doctrine
Its often theorized that the Apparitions Unleashed are the ground-based "Dogs of War" subfaction of the Warp-Ghosts, an arm of the original faction established to break through their traditionally fleet-based Ferrymen's way of contributing to the Long War. Their raids and operations have included, but are not limited to:
-Boarding operations, knowledge of which is passed down from the Undertakers to the Charonites to the rest of the force.
-Ground assaults, sieges, and unexpected small outpost raids to catch easy prey and make recruiting easier with overwhelming and hopeless odds against their enemies.
-Summoning daemons, though this is more often to bind them into contracts to assist in roles centrifugal to the force such as recruitment.
Warband Culture & Beliefs
In the early days of its inception the warband was a confused rabble, with some newly added troops causing detriment to line and formation as they broke down into suicidal charges and attempted to wreak havoc on the Undertakers plans by straying from dictated orders and just plain offing themselves in the enemies line of fire (since they were unable to turn their bolters on themselves). Their personalities retained unwarped glimpses of who they once were as loyalists, sometimes causing them to "wake up" from the affects of the torture which converted them from the start. These have been mostly weeded out, at the fault of their own nature and sometimes thrown out of airlocks during warp transit to meet unknown and terrifying fates. Now with its ranks bloated by dead members of various warbands and legions they organize themselves into squads accordingly, the occasional Black Legionaire relocating to a squad to fill a position of a fallen member of that group. Beliefs and cultures vary wildly, each member allowed to practice and worship the pantheon as he sees fit in his own quarters with the Undertakers planting a firm boot down on any who descend into rivalries over such matters.
Because of their hollowed out state, the Apparitions Unleashed can only feel to the extent that memory and nerves buried within the meat of their statically undecaying bodies allow. Similar to the simulated sensations allowed for in certain advanced dreadnaught constructions, what they experience feels like a distant shell of life, like a flavorless meal devoid of mirth. To compensate for this the Apparitions Unleashed often engage in going the extra mile in their chaos worship, hoping their god permits them to feel the thrills and experiences they hold dear. This can be seen exponentially in the possessed, whose daemonic consciousness are a transcendent reward once again allowing them to feel the warmth of their enemies blood or the smell of their fear. Second in popularity to this method of experiencing life once more, strong followings of Slaanesh and Nurgle exist within their ranks, giving them the chance at the thrills of excess or the semblance of life borrowed from the pestilence which riddles their minds and bodies. Even the agony of despair brought by a blight enflames them with the experience of being, filling the hollow void that separates their residual souls from finding true meaning in their existence.
This seems to reinforce a pecking order between the Undertakers and the Apparitions. Those who are newly drawn into the ranks will suffer displaced feelings of separation from their own experience of life, and so they will strike a fanatical pact with chaos as worshippers to relieve themselves of such damnation. More intimate with Chaos than mere plunderer and pirate warbands, they will go to greater lengths of sacrifice and toil to further their favor with their god, gain in power and therefore liberate themselves from the misery of feeling void. Such a preoccupation keeps them from falling out of line. No Apparition warrior has ever left the ranks to join another warband, for separation from the storm is separation from life, Though a few have seemingly ascended to daemonhood through the ages and joined the cohorts of the warp itself. This is something the Undertakers feel is an earned rite of passage onto the next life. Despite this, said daemonkin have returned through the gateway to fight alongside their astartes brethren in the name of humanities ultimate ascension to Chaos.
Warband Recruitment
Unable to perform proper gene-seed implementation, the Apparitions Unleashed bolster their ranks through the mysterious necromantic art of the Undertakers, something that has a 1:3 success ratio. Indeed bartering for bodies with other groups in the Eye of Terror is commonplace, as was in their successor the Warp Ghosts. Never at a point of despair after receiving some losses, and never wavering their silence in light of questions, the Undertakers don't allow able-bodied fighting numbers to exceed 1200, a statute suspiciously in line with the Codex Astartes.
After an individual is taken into the depths of their flagship, the Lyre of Calixis they are subjected to forms of mind-altering warp-torture. Gargoyles taunt these new inceptions, howling dirges of despair that reflect their innermost thoughts and challenge and crush faith. Psychic torment is unleashed by daemons bound to the will of the Undertakers, and the asylum-like screams and supplications shift into broken cries of acceptance. Chaos Marines felled at the hands of the Apparitions Unleashed are easier to compel, often falling in-line quite easily to their second lease on life.
Daemons by name
Humans, psuedo-spirits and Cult Following
Those who died in the battlefields of the galaxy often appear mid-warp transit as confused spirits who somehow found their way into psuedo-materialization. A notable number of these are spirits of guardsmen, ship crew, rogue traders and others who died hating their service to the Emperor in their final moments, likely due to being placed in suicidal charges by their commanders or perhaps sent on doomed journeys by their captains. These resentful lesser ghosts soon go back to their day-to-day routines with true awareness drifting in and out of dreamlike states of being, never truly alive or dead and given the state of the galaxy: a blissful fate compared to many others. These are the very recently deceased; perceptions of time being fickle across the galaxy, though the appearance of people the Apparitions have killed in their most recent onslaughts have confirmed that the transfer from the warp is nigh-instantaneous- for any amount of time spent in the warp for a soul is likely doomed to become a morsel for the ravenous things that hunt the scraps of lives that once were.
There is also a living cult following of humans on board the vessels, and renegades and pirates who found no other "port in the storm" but the fleet of the Apparitions Unleashed. These often make their way to other fleets in the eye or try to stay on the worlds they raid in an attempt to disengage themselves from the strange haunts of the Apparition ships.
The Company of Spectral Sisters are another group within the fleet who are believed to be the spirits of Sororitas battle-sisters that died without the glory of martyrdom in their hearts, but harboring regret at their death in the name of the Emperor. These Sororitas are spared the sentient misery embraced by their counterparts by being trapped in an eternal dream of believing they're fighting the enemies of the Imperium. They're full-blown ghosts in the fact that other than being perceivable, they cannot perceive or have a physical affect on the inhabitants of the vessel. Their gunfights and disembodied screaming are thought of as anything from annoying distractions from routine to endearing, humorous and amusing to those who get to witness the passing display of phantasmagorical fanaticism as it roams their flagship, the Lyre of Calixis.
Notable Members
Master of Arms Jrill Devant, a fallen warrior of the 94th grand battalion Iron Shrikes acts as the medium of negotiations between the 94th Grand Battalion of the Iron Warriors and the Undertakers who keep close ties with the 94th. Indeed Medrengard is a frequent point of interest to the Undertakers, the toiling world a source of equipment and traitors to spread across the galaxy.
Warband Fleet
The fleet, while not massive is always large enough to transport sector-destroying numbers of Chaos marines and renegades. Unnumbered smaller transport craft and fighters garnish hanger bays seeping with glowing spectral light and those Imperial voidsmen who have encountered the vessels report hearing songs and wails with their presence. The ships themselves remain hovering in the maw of the Trapezoidal Gate, keeping them insubstantiated so that they're nigh-impossible to fire upon without coming dangerously close to the storm which for all intents is an unfriendly devouring kraken to any enemy ship. Even than daemon-ships once thought destroyed successfully have occasionally re-emerged from the bowls of the warp, a sacrifice being made by the Undertakers to appease their rebirth and refilled with crewmembers from the Eye of Terror and beyond.
Notable ships:
Lyre of Calixis - Considered their flagship, it is a stolen blackship believed to have been lost by the combined efforts of unsanctioned psykers and chaos marauders overtaking the ship. Its believed that the psychic imprints of its prisoners drawn into its chassis over the millenia played a pivotal role in the creation of the Apparitions Unleashed, though as quiet as the Warp Ghosts are we will never know. True to its namesake the vessel was first created and began making its runs through the Calixis Sector, before being lost in transit and re-emerging as the abomination it is now.
Warband Relics
A supply of coins is passed around the ship, given to departing passengers as a "good luck" token so they can make it back to the eye of terror without the assistance of the Apparitions Unleashed.
Warband Appearance
The Astartes of this haunted legion appear in the manner similar to the Warp Ghosts, with unearthly dirges emanating from the ground out of nowhere and strange lights cascading in the sky. Day turns to night unnaturally and roaming bands of human ghosts playing daemoniac instruments are a common precursor to the full-on assaults that emerge from drifting veils of fog. Their armor a bleached bone white gives off an eerie glow of greens and blues as ichor weeps from cracks in their armor. Khornite warriors, as raging in unlife as in living, seethe with hot red and orange hues and hateful fiery eyes. Not true ghosts in the form of non-material beings, they are referred to as spirits only for lacking of a better word, and are certainly not 'zombies' in the usual sense. Gene-seed implementation is a no go for recruiting, though it has been tried before with utterly horrifying consequences. Their bodies, dead but static with no natural process of decay: something their Warp Ghost lords seem proud of.
Warband Badge
The Warband has adopted the symbol of the trapezoid representing the Trapezoidal Door. Its variations range from the simple geometric shape lined with sigils to the artistically rendered organic maw-with-angles more directly resembling the force which binds them all. Alongside this, the traditional Warp Ghosts iconography and a totem pole of heads facing opposite directions in the fashion of the ancient Terran myth of Janus, who was said to be the master of doorways and locks.
Relations
Allies
Its worth noting that those who fight alongside the Apparitions Unleashed may be forced to fight as if they aren't receiving support from the warband. At any moment the Trapezoidal Door may begin dissolving back into the Immaterium, a matter of absolute urgency to the Apparitions fighters who will immediately stop what they're doing, no matter how important to simply pack up and return back to the fleet. Those who take such a gamble lightly and rely too much on the warband for help will be doomed to fight their own battle against potentially hazardous odds.
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