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not to highjack your thread, but im doing some thing similar. perhaps you can get some inspiration?
--++//BEGIN TRANSMISSION//++---

Name: hounds of loken.
Founding: Founding: after the istvaan III massacre, only a few Luna wolves remained alive, scattered throughout the planet's surface, and even then many of them were wounded, hence their not being discovered.
This band of survivors numbered 2 dozen or so astartes, and they made flight for terra in a world eaters ship abandoned by it's past-owners.
it was not for several centuries that the flaw showed itself, on the battle field of derviss VIII
Gene-seed: Horus. -note: see "flaw" below.
Homeworld: Archerin betaris.
Homeworld details: archerin betaris' surface is a barren wasteland, a mysterious virus having killed all things living well before the imperium arrived. But, many species of fauna and flora have developed in the cavernous tunnels below the surface, and this is where the Luna wolves make their home.
Organization: unlike most chapters, the chaplains of the hounds of loken disperse among the chapter, acting as sergeants, comand squad veterans and even (in the case of the high-chaplain) a captain. An unusual number of terminator armour are found within the armouries of thehounds of loken. By the same leaf, very few bikes are there, leading to the belief of a trade between the hounds of loken and the White scars. Besides this, they primarily stick to the codex astartes (even though I will be using the chaos codex )
Combat doctrine: the hounds of loken display a unique love of close combat, but at the same time, will hold a gun line as rigourously as they will charge the enemy.
Often times, the hounds of loken will utilise the flawed in a mannor similar to death company, for some of the more Sane among the flawed feel endless pain,
And are given an honourable death.
Beliefs: the hounds of loken believe that the only way to honour the original luna wolves, those purged in the istvaan III incident, is to completely eliminate all remnants of the arch-traitors puppets. They primarily attack those who served in the suns of Horus as traitors, willing to invade a whole world to kill a single sons of Horus chaos space marine. They also venerate garvial loken as the epitome of the astartes image.
Colours and heraldry: white with silver or black lining. Black wolf head, often against a crescent moon.
Battlecry: for them! For the emperor!

"From the arch-traitor, from Horace, we were created, and from Horus, the arch-traitor, come our foes. We are the avengers of our fore-fathers, the honourable dead that would not bow to Horace, to them, we owe our lives, for them, we will crush the arch-traitor's pawn, for them, for the emperor!" chapter master solace.

Recruitment: The hounds of loken recruit from the hardened tribes of their world, whom construct huge underground cities of marble, and have three unusual trials.

Notable members of the hounds of loken:
Chapter Master: Solace.
Chief Librarian: +++error+++
Captain of the 1st company: torgaddon. Named for the ancient hero.
Notable engagements:
:current:
The battle of mortalis:
Hive fleet kraken threatens the forsaken knights chapter planet, and thehounds of loken first, second and third companies rush to their aid, lead by solace himself.
Relationship with the forsaken knights:
The forsaken knights share a deep found bond with the hounds of loken, even lending forces on long term scales to each other, the chapter masters of the luna wolves and forsaken knights, solace and the shrouded lord respectively, are close friends.

The mournival: solace keeps a council of: the high chaplain, chief librarian, first captain, and second captain, known as the mournival. They offer battle field and other advice.


The flaw:
The hounds of loken gene seed is flawed.
Some space marines of the chapter slowly devolve into rambling monsters, mutant things of horrendous appearance. Their like ness to chaos spawn could spell the doom of the chapter, and any brother afflicted is immediately placed in stasis, the current total being 142 afflicted, they are hidden at the core of the hounds of loken fortress, and are a closely guarded secret, solace has voweled to save his chapter from this affliction, but unlike the thousand sons, who were afflicted similarly, solace has set a line in the sand between what he will, and won't, do.
The dark on the horizon:
Known only to solace and his mournival, solace bears the first signs of the flaw. It seems he has hence forth held it back by pure force of will, but even that is failing. Unless a cure can be found soon, he will almost certainly fall...
+++ END TRANSMISSION+++

 Psienesis wrote:
Well...

For starters, a Chimeric Chapter (that is, a Chapter that splices the geneseed of 2 or more other Chapters together) almost never ends well.

Two... being part of a Traitor Legion would mean (assuming they weren't all exterminated) that their rebuilding process would be *very* closely monitored. It would probably not be feasible to use recovered Word Bearer geneseed in creating the new Marines.

Three.... the Word Bearers' geneseed is probably corrupt, and was corrupt before even Calth. So gathering their geneseed from that battle, and using it create new Space Marines, is probably going to lead to lots of problems, of the Chaotic variety.

Agree with points one and tow, but point three is wrong.

I think it is in "Aurellian" that Ingethel the ascended tells Lorgar that the Word Bearer's were the Chaos Pantheon's first choice as the Legion to spread the faith, specifically because they were one of the most genetically pure of the Legions. This allowed them a much more stable recruitment rate that helped them boost their numbers throughout the final decades of the great crusade to become the second largest Legion. Notice that all of the small Legions were the most genetically unstable; The Thousand Sons, The Emperor's Children and The Space Wolves were all showing signs of mutation in the Geneseed long before the Heresy. In some cases it probably just slowed recruitment like with the Wolves but in the case of the other two it was almost catastrophic.

Anyway, pedantic moment over. But yes you are right the geneseed is now probably quite corrupt with all the chaos worship and what not.

As regards the whole "Lorgar would have purged them" argument - Not necessarily. For instance, what if this chapter was lost in the warp, prior to Monarchia, when the WB were still very pro-imperial, and emerged later.

Assuming whoever found them didn't shoot on sight, they might be tested, found to be emperor worshippers, and permitted to continue, under close observation.

It's certainly not the wildest chapter genesis theory I've ever heard.

... the Imperium's policy is generally to shoot first, shoot now, shoot later, and never, ever question the purity of your purpose.

True, and I know that should an imperial ship try and scan a ship, and comes up with "Word Bearers", they'd be firing everything as fast as possible.

But I'm sure there is SOME kind of reason that would stop them doing so - maybe the WB ship's record was lost, so the Imperial systems won't recognise it.

Plus, If it's Pre-Heresy, It'll be in the old colours, which the first responders might not recognise, and without all the demonic gargoyles and so a "modern" WB ship would have.
And I think they'd have the old Word Bearers Legion symbol, plus a unique chapter symbol.

Combine that with a slightly less zealous (read: less trigger-happy) first response, and the WB making it clear they weren't a threat, maybe someone might have heard them out.
Not saying it's likely, but it's plausible.

Hilariously enough, a lot of the nay-saying about why this chapter couldn't exist regarding its original concept looks like it might end up being jossed if the Iron Warriors loyalist faction that's friends to the Ultramarines ends up becoming a loyalist chapter (Silver Skulls being the current suspected results). Of course, that story's still on-going so we can't say for sure how it'll end.

 welshhoppo wrote:
Agreed, the general consensus is that Traitor Legions turned good does not happen.

There likely are loyalist Iron Warriors (Silver Skulls), general loyalists of the traitor legions (Grey Knights), possible (unlikely) loyalist Night Lords (Space Sharks exhibit a lot of similar traits and doctrine), etc. Just that they weren't formed from traitors turned loyalist, but loyalists who fled the traitor legions and were rolled into existing Legions (Ultramarines sucked up a lot of those guys). But to my knowledge, there are NO Loyalist Word Bearers, as their own planet's worship was Chaos. And once you go Chaos, you don't come back.

 Wyzilla wrote:
And once you go Chaos, you don't come back.

False; Prosperine obsession with psionics and knowledge could be considered Tzeentchian influence, and yet at least one Thousand Son (Revuel Arvida) remained loyal, and possibly the same goes for the rest of the Fourth Fellowship.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
Agreed, the general consensus is that Traitor Legions turned good does not happen.

There likely are loyalist Iron Warriors (Silver Skulls), general loyalists of the traitor legions (Grey Knights), possible (unlikely) loyalist Night Lords (Space Sharks exhibit a lot of similar traits and doctrine), etc. Just that they weren't formed from traitors turned loyalist, but loyalists who fled the traitor legions and were rolled into existing Legions (Ultramarines sucked up a lot of those guys). But to my knowledge, there are NO Loyalist Word Bearers, as their own planet's worship was Chaos. And once you go Chaos, you don't come back.

There were Terran Born Word Bearers that had to be purged by the traitors. I dunno if there were any Colchis ones, though. It should be noted though that for a hundred years, Colchis worshiped the Emperor, not Chaos.

TiamatRoar wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
Agreed, the general consensus is that Traitor Legions turned good does not happen.

There likely are loyalist Iron Warriors (Silver Skulls), general loyalists of the traitor legions (Grey Knights), possible (unlikely) loyalist Night Lords (Space Sharks exhibit a lot of similar traits and doctrine), etc. Just that they weren't formed from traitors turned loyalist, but loyalists who fled the traitor legions and were rolled into existing Legions (Ultramarines sucked up a lot of those guys). But to my knowledge, there are NO Loyalist Word Bearers, as their own planet's worship was Chaos. And once you go Chaos, you don't come back.

There were Terran Born Word Bearers that had to be purged by the traitors. I dunno if there were any Colchis ones, though. It should be noted though that for a hundred years, Colchis worshiped the Emperor, not Chaos.

The Word Bearers purged all that wouldn't do as the Primarch/Kor Phaeron/Erebus commanded, before the HH.

 thetallestgiraffe wrote:
I think that people are putting too much emphasis on the gene-seed side of things. There was a lot more to the traitor legions than just being genetically susceptible to corruption, but it was also about the people and how they were by themselves. Like I don't think that the word bearers were so zealous before the heresy because of their gene-seed, I think it was more Lorgar's personal Influence on them. It's why they still had to purge their ranks of all the older terrans and whatnot; although they had the same gene-seed they had different influences.

This. Predestined to Fall might be cool in a Greek Tragedy way but their native upbringing clearly effected the Primarchs deeply. Do you think Jaghatai Khan would have been a Mongolian warlord if he'd grown up on Terra?

On the idea, a founding right after the Heresy seems simply impossible. Two ideas I can think of:

1) They broke away having been some place else when Istvaan happened (cut off by a warp storm?) and are pulling an Alpha Legion or rather Soul Drinkers I guess. Its clearly stated elements of the Traitor Legions were untouched by Chaos and had to be purged. Make them overwhelmingly Terran and having to do a mini purge of their own of Lorgar loyalists when they hear about the betrayal.

2) Isn't it amplied that during one of the 'dodgy' Foundings the gene-seed of Traitor Legions were used? However that does miss the point of your fluff I guess as I doubt they'd be told they are of Word Bearer stock.

This comes up a lot with home-brewed loyalist traitor chapters. The two solutions are, and have always been: "Twenty-first Founding" and "Stayed loyal during the Heresy and now we are the Inquisition's b*tch".

The 21st Founding is easy: the Adeptus Terra diddled with geneseed, including some traitor geneseed, to see if they could "improve" or "fix" said geneseed. As a result, some chapters got made with traitor geneseed. These chapters most likely have no fething idea who they are really descended from. The 21st Founding exists in the fluff for this very reason.

The other option is harder to work with, since you need to come up with a good reason your chapter stayed loyal during the Heresy (and why they weren't slaughtered outright by the proper loyalists) but, whatever the excuse, your chapter *must* be under strict Inquisitorial watch. There is no, I mean no, I emphatically repeat NO way that loyalist traitors would be permitted to exist without someone in authority knowing their origins and watching them very, very closely for any signs of traitorism. And since the Inquisition is the group that handles that sort of thing, we all know who would be living on your chapter's couch and eating out of their refrigerator. Whatever excuse you use to get your loyalists to survive the Heresy is fine, as long as the end result is that the Inquisition is forever monitoring them closely (and no, your chapter isn't cleverly putting one over on them, either... the Inquisition expects treason, so if it exists, they will find it. Heck, they'll find it even if it *doesn't* exist).

The last option, the one that a lot of people want to use (and never should, as it is the least plausible out of a series of implausible choices), is "we stayed loyal during the Heresy when everyone else turned traitor and now we are loyal and NO ONE KNOWS OUR SECRET"... and really, if you want that back story so bad, just play Dark Angels.


And I say all this as a guy who has a loyalist traitor Marine army, so I know whereof I speak.

 thenoobbomb wrote:

TiamatRoar wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
Agreed, the general consensus is that Traitor Legions turned good does not happen.

There likely are loyalist Iron Warriors (Silver Skulls), general loyalists of the traitor legions (Grey Knights), possible (unlikely) loyalist Night Lords (Space Sharks exhibit a lot of similar traits and doctrine), etc. Just that they weren't formed from traitors turned loyalist, but loyalists who fled the traitor legions and were rolled into existing Legions (Ultramarines sucked up a lot of those guys). But to my knowledge, there are NO Loyalist Word Bearers, as their own planet's worship was Chaos. And once you go Chaos, you don't come back.

There were Terran Born Word Bearers that had to be purged by the traitors. I dunno if there were any Colchis ones, though. It should be noted though that for a hundred years, Colchis worshiped the Emperor, not Chaos.

The Word Bearers purged all that wouldn't do as the Primarch/Kor Phaeron/Erebus commanded, before the HH.

No, that was a different bunch of guys that were killed. And that wasn't a purge so much as an all out civil war that happened before the Word Bearers name even existed.

TiamatRoar wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
Agreed, the general consensus is that Traitor Legions turned good does not happen.

There likely are loyalist Iron Warriors (Silver Skulls), general loyalists of the traitor legions (Grey Knights), possible (unlikely) loyalist Night Lords (Space Sharks exhibit a lot of similar traits and doctrine), etc. Just that they weren't formed from traitors turned loyalist, but loyalists who fled the traitor legions and were rolled into existing Legions (Ultramarines sucked up a lot of those guys). But to my knowledge, there are NO Loyalist Word Bearers, as their own planet's worship was Chaos. And once you go Chaos, you don't come back.

There were Terran Born Word Bearers that had to be purged by the traitors. I dunno if there were any Colchis ones, though. It should be noted though that for a hundred years, Colchis worshiped the Emperor, not Chaos.

Those weren't really Word Bearers, like all of the other Terran born Astartes from the launch of the Great Crusade. I don't think it's even possible for any actual Word Bearer to turn loyalist, given that the religion on their planet was Chaos.