Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

literally worse than matt ward.

At least they're not cross bred with mlp....

A few years ago I toyed with an idea similar to what your trying.

What I did was my chapter was a loyal chapter until a crisis of faith in the Imperium, but not humanity, happened to them. After searching for a new purpose in how to defend humanity they answered a call to fight Tyranids on a Human world that had a Tau foothold on it as well, much like that one Ciaphas Cain novel, at the end they chose to join the greater good to protect humanity first.

This is literally the best thread I've ever read.

And as a Salamanders player I am offended that you would fabricate a request for aid from them, to your.....well....no way to put it lightly...abortion of everything grim dark and holy.


This fluff needs to be cast away into the tides of the warp, where it will then be given form into a flesh and blood body, then promptly given a rectal exorcism by the entirety of the Grey Knights chapter.

Heresy in the extreme!

So slight change in fluff;
The inquisition used the Tau geneseed (along With other Genes from different "harmless" xenos) to create serums that would give the one injected the memories and adaptations of the Xeno.
The Raven Guard agreed to pledge 100 astarters to this cause, promising that they would be reunited once again.
After the testing, all the Subjects, except the ones that were injected with the TauSerum, died.
The ones that survived suffered from Muttiple Personality Disorder, and left for T'au, finally coming to Tigris, which they renamed T'gris,and settled there.

I hope my Chapter seems less Heretical now.

Ember

So the Raven guard were like, "Oh Hai inquisitor, we heard you may be injecting people with random xeno syrup. Yup. Here's 100 marines to diddle with! Byeeeee! "

What if you framed it in an unintentional vector? What if a chapter of marines were deployed on a world with a Tau presence? And what if this chapter was infected by an engineered virus, the origins of which are up to you, but that virus had taken elements of tau DNA from the local tau and implanted it in a limited fashion into the genetic structure of the SM. The changes could be largely aesthetic, but also makes them blanks (the original purpose of the virus) because tau have no presence in the warp. The chapter, wanting to be loyal to the Imperium, try to hide this secret shame by quarantining themselves on this world and or system, defending humanity in the area from threats, but in the process of executing these missions, they develop a positive relationship with the local Tau, so they adopt the altruism of the greater good philosophy, and apply it to their situation. The genetic blending is there and the ideological bleed over is there, and in a far less ridiculous way. ( I’m sorry man, I’m trying to help you here, because I like the idea of out of the box fluff, but you do have to stay within the bounds of certain norms, and willful cross breeding of human and xenos species would never ever be permitted by any official Imperium group or organization.)

 GKTiberius wrote:
What if you framed it in an unintentional vector? What if a chapter of marines were deployed on a world with a Tau presence? And what if this chapter was infected by an engineered virus, the origins of which are up to you, but that virus had taken elements of tau DNA from the local tau and implanted it in a limited fashion into the genetic structure of the SM. The changes could be largely aesthetic, but also makes them blanks (the original purpose of the virus) because tau have no presence in the warp. The chapter, wanting to be loyal to the Imperium, try to hide this secret shame by quarantining themselves on this world and or system, defending humanity in the area from threats, but in the process of executing these missions, they develop a positive relationship with the local Tau, so they adopt the altruism of the greater good philosophy, and apply it to their situation. The genetic blending is there and the ideological bleed over is there, and in a far less ridiculous way. ( I’m sorry man, I’m trying to help you here, because I like the idea of out of the box fluff, but you do have to stay within the bounds of certain norms, and willful cross breeding of human and xenos species would never ever be permitted by any official Imperium group or organization.)

That's...
actually plausible. And sorta awesome too.

That's...
actually plausible. And sorta awesome too.

That's... exactly what I thought. I didn't expected such outcome when I started to read the thred....

THANK YOU THAT'S A GREAT IDEA!!!!!!
Now everything fits, so THANK YOU!!!!
Now, We have nothing to fear!!!!!!
LOOK OUT, THE SHADOW HUNTERS COME!!!!!
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

if anyone else wants to add there ideas, fell free to create Characters, legends and other stuff

ember

Or even more simply, marines that were falsely deemed heretics and aid the tau in exchange for protection but still come to the imperiums aid when able to.

Yeahhhhhhhhhh- I already painted a few with blue-ish skin and they have some tau bits, but still, great idea!!!

Ember

To the OP, just admit that you thought painting the faces of your space marines blue looked good and now you need a back-story to explain them.

 mondo80 wrote:
To the OP, just admit that you thought painting the faces of your space marines blue looked good and now you need a back-story to explain them.

Lol. This^

There are medical conditions that make your skin blue, but only the one caused from silver contamination would be mostly harmless. There's also a haemoglobin disorder that causes it which will make your oxygen distribution much worse than in a normal person and as such you'd probably fail to become a marine in the first place.

Maybe your marines like working silver jewelry and accents into their armor so much that they inadvertently contaminate themself with copious amounts of silver?

Maybe they secretly became the blue man group of 40k. ...


On a scale from 1 to 10 how well can your Marines play the drum?

-34. They where thrown Out of "Drumming for the Musicaly Inhibited".

Eldar shenanigans?

There could be substantial use for Adeptus Astartes that belong to the Incorruptible Swarm.

So, when the IoM prepared the 13th Founding, and decided to try to include some lesser Xenos material in one group (and utterly failed at it. Silly humans), a group of Eldar altered their work to make certain traits later added to the Tau (such as blindly following Ethereals) "somehow" manifested in the new Geneseed.

Naturally, when dealing with Tau, their innate "devotion" to the "Greater Good" manifested.

Eldar are one of the few groups that could make it happen, and would probably want to make it happen.

(Eldar are actually quite similar to Humans, compared to other races. It is strongly hinted either the Eldar or the Old Ones manipulated Human development...)

The upthread suggestion may be better, but it is an option.

(Although either way, prepare for constant conflicts with their parent chapter!)

I actually like that more, I originally wanted to start 40k with Eldar back in 5th. Got 14 Guardians, a Jetbike squad, some Fire Dragons, then gave up.


Thanks

Ember

Not only the parent Chapter, but every other Imperial faction in existence.

There's a lot that the more-liberally-minded Chapters will forgive or, at least, overlook... but corruption of the human genome with Xenos traits is not one of them.

I figure every other Imperial faction that is aware will hunt them.

However, I imagine the parent chapter would do everything it could to keep other factions from finding out...

Well, "Parent" Chapters don't really have much of a say when it comes to Foundings. They're tasked to donate some gear and some veterans to train the new Chapter (sometimes), but otherwise have no control over how or when their geneseed gets used to create new Space Marines.

In fact, the parent Chapter may find itself greatly offended that their geneseed has been corrupted in this manner, and launch a punitive crusade against the Tau, and their pseudo-Marine lapdogs, to cleanse themselves of this dishonor.

The Eldar could have created the virus as a means to provide a large number of blanks to battle a psychoactive warp entity in the area. but as far as the other thing hating it, that is a given. But if it is set in a remot region with little to no oversight, it could go decades or centuries before the news got out. Especially if the chapter has a special position that is either less blue or that has been surgically altered to look like a normal marine again to be the liaison to outside parties. but at the same time, bringing in geldar, tau ad space marines in the same force may be a little much. At least in my opinion. you are going to find a lot of hate for bringing tau-dar plus SM to a game, and don't expect the list to fly in competitive play.

It has some good, built-in story for intra-Imperial battles, though. In fact, you could get mileage out of the Parent Chapter vs Eldar/AdMech/Inq story, depending on how the origin-story was spun.

I wouldn't envision the Eldar fighting directly beside these Marines. Or at least less frequently than they do with Tau and SM. After all, they were designed and put into place with a purpose. They shouldn't need to interfere directly.

A low-points game or campaign of Eldar vs AdMech/IG for the back story could be awesome, though.

If you wanna do a Greater Good Space Marines thing, just have your marines ally with the Farsight Enclaves or something. I do that from time to time on the tabletop. The core idea of this chapter has some merit, but the genetic engineering angle is just plain silly. You can't mix and match DNA like that, it's highly likely that Tau don't even use the same polynucleotides as humans. Even if we just took it for granted that it was possible, the second one of your marines took off their helmet in front of an Inquisitor, they'd be targeted for extermination as mutants, heretics, and daemons all at once. That's how the setting works.

Also, 0/10. Sad that so many fell for this bait.

 GKTiberius wrote:
What if you framed it in an unintentional vector? What if a chapter of marines were deployed on a world with a Tau presence? And what if this chapter was infected by an engineered virus, the origins of which are up to you, but that virus had taken elements of tau DNA from the local tau and implanted it in a limited fashion into the genetic structure of the SM. The changes could be largely aesthetic, but also makes them blanks (the original purpose of the virus) because tau have no presence in the warp. The chapter, wanting to be loyal to the Imperium, try to hide this secret shame by quarantining themselves on this world and or system, defending humanity in the area from threats, but in the process of executing these missions, they develop a positive relationship with the local Tau, so they adopt the altruism of the greater good philosophy, and apply it to their situation. The genetic blending is there and the ideological bleed over is there, and in a far less ridiculous way. ( I’m sorry man, I’m trying to help you here, because I like the idea of out of the box fluff, but you do have to stay within the bounds of certain norms, and willful cross breeding of human and xenos species would never ever be permitted by any official Imperium group or organization.)

This is pretty good though.

EmberlordofFire8, you could say that the marines were somehow associated with Gue'vesa in some way (some previously Tau controlled world or something) and that they really dig the Greater Good and also agree that the Big E is the best thing since sliced bread.

They just cover their faces with woad (for that blue faced look) and call it good.

The DNA angle and the galactic distances are a bit much to stay in setting...

Or just do it and play with whoever wants to play against you.

-Sts

 Wyzilla wrote:

 EmberlordofFire8 wrote:
No a deer could not breed with a Octopus. BUUUUUUUT there genes could be conbined <---- straight face

YES THE TAU HAVE A NATURAL BLUE SKIN COLOR!!!!!

No. You can't just mix and match genes without potentially killing that which you're toying with. Genetics does not work like lego blocks.

Just as a tip, when making a DIY Chapter, don't think outside the box. The box exists for a good reason. But just to see if you're actually serious, why not post this on the Bolter and Chainsword? They after all do have the Liber Astartes section.

Worst advice ever. Basically telling the guy not to be creative with his backstory. Yeah I don't like this and mostly because Raven Guard wouldn't accept the Tau no matter how loyal they thought they were. They're filthy fething xenos.

I seen something about splicing spider genes into goats so they would produce large quantities of silk in their milk.
If you want blue faced marines go for it - I was going to add "who cares" but after reading this thread the answer seems to be quite a few folk.