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Hi everyone! It's time for DakkaDakka to get on its knees and grovel before the might of Marneus Calgar, Master of Ultramar and leader of the Barmy Army!

You thought Marneus Calgar was a boring old fart, a stern and stoic leader of men who commands the utmost respect. You were wrong. Everything you have been told is a lie. Read the REAL story of Marneus Calgar. Brace yourself, for a legend is reborn.

Please note: due to continual rewriting and a new Christmas Special coming every year, this thread is permanently Under Construction.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Click to read a lovely bit of over-sharing from yours truly - including the true story of what happened to Imperial-Literature.net. (Remember that?)



MARNEUS CALGAR'S BARMY ARMY DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Click to see who's who in the Barmy Army universe!



MARNEUS CALGAR'S BARMY ARMY THEME TUNE

Yes, we have a theme tune! It wasn't written specifically for me unfortunately, since only about two people worldwide remember the Barmy Army (and only one of them actually likes it - I love you Mum!) It's a remix of One Man and his Droid by Dummeh, who back in 2012 gave me kind permission to use the track for Barmy Army purposes. Dummeh has hit the big time since then - well done to him!

MARNEUS CALGAR'S BARMY ARMY CHRISTMAS STORIES

For some reason in 2008, I started to associate MCBA with Christmas. Every year when the weather turns cold, the nights get darker and the glow of a Coca-Cola armada approaches, my thoughts turn back to the Barmy Army. These stories were really popular back in the day, but alas, the world has changed since those heady times; the MCBA's relevance has disappeared as a result of vast 40K fluff changes, not to mention the departure from the 40K community of every single person who supported me when I first started writing. There is also the question of age. I am a 40 year old man writing outdated stories about a plastic wargaming model who poos his pants. Something had to change. So as of 2019, the MCBA will focus on silly, magical Christmas fiction, with fewer paragraphs consisting entirely of poo jokes.

Here are the Christmas Specials in order. Please note that all of the stories undergo periodic edits:

=|[U]|=

2008 MCBA Christmas Special: The Night Before Christmas
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the base
Not a xenos was stirring, nor warships in space...

The original which will always have a special place in my heart! This got ripped off and edited on other websites. Takes me back to the good old days

=|[U]|=

2009 MCBA Christmas Special
"That's a point," Calgar said. "I can't wait to see your faces when you see what I've got you."
"Presumably, sir, they won't be the same faces we made last year, when you didn't get us anything at all."
"I did! I bought you a chocolate orange. It's not my fault that it smashed into a million pieces when I tried playing cricket with it."
"Well what did you do it for, sir?"
"Some theories must be tested, Number Two. Some theories must be tested."
Milo and Bannerman exchanged glances.

Until 2019, this was the "first and only" Barmy Army Christmas Special which is not an insulting parody of someone else's work. Maybe I was less lazy in 2009. MCBA was still flying fairly high at this point, but the demise of Imperial Literature, the fiction website which I posted on in those days, would soon put an end to that. This story was rewritten fairly extensively in November 2017.

=|[U]|=

2010 MCBA Christmas Special: The Lion, the Witch and the Tanith Feth-Wit
"Don't be insane, you wazzock!" Calgar said. "We can't all climb in there at the same time! What will the Warrior Lodge say?"
"Sir, we aren't supposed to be running warrior lodges."
"Er... of course, Dick. I was speaking in metaphor."
"Ah. A metaphor for what, sir?"
"Just get in the fething wardrobe."

I had immense fun writing this and still think of it as one of my most atmospheric pieces. It's far from my best quality but still raises a chuckle. Somewhere floating out there on the internet is an edited version of it (unauthorised) which someone drew a cover picture to. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is something I've associated with Christmas ever since I saw it at school on the day we broke up for Christmas thirty years ago. While that specific cartoon film is dreadful and annoying by today's standards, these are exactly the qualities people should look for in a proper Marneus Calgar yarn. It took 2-3 days to write this story in a few epic sessions and it was extensively rewritten in November 2017.

2010 unfortunately marked the point where I stopped writing regular Christmas Specials, although I still thought about my old chums from the Barmy Army each winter.

=|[U]|=

2012 MCBA Christmas Special: A Christmas Calgar
"They are not innocents cast aside by an uncaring Imperium. Well, some of them probably are, but someone nicked my 207 GTi last week! Your political correctness edicts state that we must call these people travellers. The bastards are travelling all right - in my fething Peugeot!"

There was a time when I thought this was the best story I'd ever written. It's also notable as the only Marneus Calgar's Barmy Army story where Saint Sabbat makes an appearance. The ghost, Finnigan, was named for my closest friend from Imperial Literature's glory days, who I remain friends with to this day; he suggested I ruin A Christmas Carol for that year's Christmas Special. Well, I'm about to re-read it and maybe bring it up to modern standards, so if you hear an apocalyptic cry of NOOOOO, you'll know that this story didn't live up to the memories.

This was my first ever crossover between Warhammer 40,000 and my prequel series, 20K. The crossover element is the scene aboard the XMS Ontario, which was a nod to my story Ghostwalkers (the Dakka rewrite which I linked to is incomplete and I think the original ending may have been lost, making this yet another NoPoet story which needs serious work).

There's not much else to say about this one except that as its author, I feel it is greatly under-appreciated!

=|[U]|=

2017 MCBA Christmas Special: Masters of the Wardiverse
“I smell Tyranid,” he said.
“It's probably just Dick's aftershave,” Calgar said, beginning to climb down. The cliff face was treacherous, ready to collapse at any minute.
“I'm not joking, fool,” Mender growled with customary lack of respect. “The Tyranids are highly adaptive. There's no telling how they've evolved to survive on a Space Marine homeworld.”
“Well unless they've evolved an immunity to bullets, I think we're all right,” said Calgar. The ground collapsed beneath his feet. In an instant, the Lord of the Ultramarines was riding a stone avalanche on his arse, straight into the Bug-Monster's lagoon.

Author's comments:

I really struggled with this one. It began in March 2014, watching the He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special while writing and making notes - imagine how weird it was to watch a Christmas Special when Easter was around the corner. The He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special is really excellent for an 80s cartoon film, far superior to the unwatchable Thundercats Ho! The Movie for example, and in my opinion is just behind Home Alone 1 and 2 as the most Christmassy film of all time. So I wanted to do it justice while making it distinctly my own, and distinctly 40K.

I hoped to have the story done and dusted before Yule, as I am always "snowed under" with things to do at that time of year. However, with typical NoPoet panache, the story languished on my hard drive until it was completed at the last minute in 2017. This made it the first Christmas special I'd completed in five years. The story probably wouldn't have been finished at all it not for Nanowrimo, "National Novel Writing Month", during which I wrote 35,000 words worth of 20K, 40K and HH stories (this doesn't even include the vast amount of editing), but I didn't write a single word of my own novel.

In the end I believe the effort (and the constant re-writes which even involved printing and editing with red pen) resulted in the biggest and most dramatic Barmy Army story yet written. In fact, it's the longest piece of completed fiction that I've ever posted online. It's also one of the least appreciated!

=|[U]|=

2018 MCBA Christmas Special: A Winter's Fail
“Any news about my dating profile?”
Dick and the Commanders exchanged glances.
“Select index tertius on your slate,” Dick said.
Calgar did so. His mouth moved as he read. Then he jolted fully upright.
“Someone wants to meet me! Told you I was a fething stud.”
The Chapter elite shuffled uncomfortably.
“Hold on,” said Calgar. “Why is is she using a picture of Jimmy Saville?”
“That's not Jimmy Saville, sir. It's her.”
Calgar looked at him with an expression of confused horror.
“She seems very keen, sir,” Dick said. “I would even say insistent. You've already received five large teddy bears and some Christmas tree baubles in the shape of a heart with her face in the middle. We've also had to double the guard throughout Ultramarines HQ, and even install an anti-climb net on the outside of the building, but she keeps cutting through it. Those eviscerators go through everything.”
Calgar deleted index tertius.

Sigh. Where do I start with this one? I got hit hard by the clocks going back, the weather taking a dark turn and some really tough things going on in my life, so I was in a dark place upon starting the story. I wanted it to be grittier than is typical for MCBA and to have the characters all strung out, spent and exhausted, exactly how I felt at that time. Not a good basis for an Xmas special, right? I was also writing an Angry Marines novella at the same time. (It's on 1D4Chan's Angry Marine page if you want to read it, but beware, it's not for easily offended Millennials.

At some point I got my head back in the game and spent two weeks hammering my writing. My girlfriend warned me that the poo jokes were way too prevalent and I was too old to be writing stuff like that, but I ignored her, as I was too intent on getting the bloody thing finished. However the story got stretched out by way too many characters and events to the point where I simply didn't have time to finish it before Christmas. I am always deflated once Christmas is actually over and it didn't feel right to finish the story for the New Year, so it was simply shelved until the end of October 2019. Looking back in October 2019, I can see that my girlfriend was correct, so this story received heavy revision, and would eventually be finished before Xmas 2019.

This makes Xmas 2019 the first year that there would be two MCBA Christmas Specials posted on Dakkadakka.

=|[U]|=

2019 MCBA Christmas Special: Fool Runnings

If you're reading this prior to December 2019, you've found an Easter egg! When I'm finished with the 2018 Xmas special, I will be hammering away at this year's entry. As a result of various things I've learned since 2018, I am going to make future installments much shorter, much brighter, and for the first time since 2010 I am going to return a magical feeling of Christmas to the Barmy Army universe.

After all, no-one has told me to stop writing them altogether!

MARNEUS CALGAR'S BARMY ARMY: TAU VERSUS ULTRAMARINES

Part One

= Ultramarine Chapter History =

The Astonishing War Record of the Ultramarines

30th Millennium - The Ultramarines number at least 500,000 men. God, 500,000 of the sods. Thank the Lord for Horus.

31st Millennium - Horus leads the largest warhost of Chaos ever known in the invasion of Earth. Roboute Gulliman and his entire Legion of Ultramarines are at the other side of the galaxy. Gulliman will later write the book on tactical thinking.

31st Millennium - After the Heresy army is destroyed, Gulliman writes a book of military tactics. There is a huge rush of demand for this book. Many copies were returned when it was discovered Gulliman omitted the "How to avoid pitched battles by travelling to the other end of the Milky Way on a goose chase and staying there til the war is over" chapter. It is considered a wacky coincidence that the Imperium which relies on Gulliman's book also worships a corpse.

31st Millennium - The Ultramarines are split into numerous Chapters. Try as we might, it's hard to find something funny to say about this. Roboute Gulliman pegs it in combat. The Ultramarines preserve his body in a sus-an field. Everyone thinks this is a bit weird, as it is like taking a deceased grandparent to the taxidermist.

32nd Millennium - By now the Ultras are charging admission to see their Primarch. Gulliman's position within the field is altered so that he appears to be rearing up like a ferocious bear. This is very popular with children and less so with purists.

41st Millennium - Marneus Calgar is born.

*=|[U]|=*

The Astonishing War Record of Marneus Calgar

940.M41 - Entire Ultramarines 1st company wiped out by Tyranid invasion of Macragge. Marneus Calgar survives due to being locked in a bunker typing someone's lottery numbers into a cogitator over and over to "prevent the sky from going purple." Calgar somehow escapes to lead his fleet into battle against the last wounded 'Nid ships in orbit around Macragge. Calgar subsequently lauded as a hero for repulsing the weakened Tyranid fleet.

996.M41 - Marneus Calgar partakes in the decisive Battle of Ichar IV. He spends the entire battle standing behind a Razorback with a medic next to him. Hive Tyrant Andy Chambers drops a spore mine on Calgar's head inflicting 3 wounds. "Fortunately", Calgar has 4 wounds on his profile.

*=|[U]|=*

An Astonishing New Look for the Ultramarines

"Right that's it, I've had enough of looking like the Tau. Paint everything purple!"

"Which shade of purple, sir?"

"The same shade as I paint my fingernails!"

The Ultramarines Chapter disappears from active service leaving the Hellhawks, Sons of Light and some other Chapters nobody's heard of swamped with Orks. A year later they return with repainted and very mediaeval looking armour. Everyone comments how nice they look. Nobody mentions that the amount of paper sticking to their power suits makes it look like they just came through an explosion in a print shop.

*=|[U]|=*

= Part One: Marneus Calgar's Barmy Army =

In which the Ultramarines are revealed to be cowards and the Tau are shown to be uber-shooty with the ability to crush anything that enters weapon range.

[Originally posted on www.imperial-literature.net December 2001]

Marneus Calgar and his men were hiding in a cold network of caves, the only place on the planet safe from Tau firepower.

"Curse those blue ponces," Calgar yelled. "And I'm talking about the Tau, not my men!"

"Shhh, sir!" his banner bearer hissed. "You'll have more of those bloody invincible Battlesuits in here after us."

The situation was simple: Calgar wasn't ordering anyone to go outside because the Tau would shoot them, and the Tau weren't coming in here because the Marines would kick them all around the cave system.

"Sir," the only surviving tech marine reported, "all our tanks were trashed within sixteen seconds of the first Tau ambush. It was like a White Dwarf battle report where someone manages to roll three sixes in a row every turn. Our remaining guns cannot penetrate the Tau armour. We must stay in this underground khazi until our relief ship arrives to nuke the Tau from orbit."

"Yes yes yes," Calgar said impatiently. "And how long will that be?"

The tech marine and standard bearer exchanged unhappy glances. "Er...thirty-seven years, sir."

"Thirty-seven YEARS?!" roared Calgar. "I've got an important dinner next month! Are those wallies in the Navy delayed by "the wrong type of leaves" on the runway again? I sent a communique advising them to equip their starships with anti-leaf lasers. Do they listen? Do they heck! I get a snotty reply from some minion respectfully telling me to jump on a bike with no seat."

"Sir, I -"

Calgar was on one of his rants and talked over the standard bearer. "We ought to report those fat idiots to the Inquisition. Yeah, I know, let's anonymously report the Imperial Navy and say they all worship daemons."

"But sir, we're not supposed to know anything about daemons," the standard-bearer said. "With our unwilling adherence to Murphy's Law we'll probably be executed just for talking about them."

"Shut up you tart," Calgar boomed. "Gaunt's Ghosts talk about them all the time. They don't get executed! Well, except for the "stubborn stereotypical Yorkshireman" who ended up on a Black Ship. Besides, the nearest Inquisitor is over 5,000 light years away, and the Inquisiton is run by a bunch of wallies!"

"That's where you're wrong actually," said a sergeant from the second company, pulling his latex face mask off and revealing the gorgeous features of a female inquisitor.

"Jesus Christ! That's not a man, it's a woman, baby!" Calgar cried. "Quickly men! Hide the weed!"

"You're too late, Space Marine," the Inquisitor said. "I know all about your dirty little habits. Let's review the evidence. Drinking illegal booze? Smoking those stinking "herbal cigs" while you're on duty? Looking at Japanese hentai on your portable computer? Talking about daemons? Calling the Inquisition a bunch of wallies? Deviating from Codex by equipping your personal Rhino with a highly illegal assault-cannon-and-targeter combo? And worst of all, you demonstrate a truly astounding level of cowardice by cringing in a cave from blue ponces - and I'm talking about the Tau, not your men! I am going to torture you when this is over. Then after thirty-seven years when the relief ship arrives, do you know what I'm going to do to you? I'm going to make you my bitch."

"What does she mean?" Calgar muttered to his standard bearer, speaking from the corner of his mouth.

"It means you'll be sucking her toes 'til the Rhana Dandra, sir."

"Don't look at your banner-bearer, look at me!" snapped the Inquisitor.

"But I trust him and rely on his counsel," Calgar replied. "I value him so much I give him a ten-foot totem pole to carry into battle, making him the most visible man in the field."

"It's true," said the banner-bearer. "I think..."

"Better let me do the talking, Dick," Calgar whispered too loudly.

"Dick?" the Inquisitor smirked.

"We just call him that to embarrass him. His real name is P*nis."

Ignoring the muffled sniggers of his comrades, the standard-bearer adjusted the weight of his standard and reached out with a free hand. "Dick Bannerman at your service, my lady."

"Dick Bannerman?"

"Yes, Dick Bannerman. Is something wrong?"

"You're telling me your name is Bannerman and you're the banner man; you're called Dick and you carry a large wooden pole."

"I am immune to your mockery, Inquisitor," said Dick. "I learned to cope with it after fifteen years of bloody hell at standard bearer school."

"He went to the Marneus Calgar Is Awesome Academy," Calgar said with a smug grin.

"Enough of this nonsense. You've got no chance, Calgar," the inquisitor snapped, striking a mighty pose. "Do you surrender to my authori-tay?"

Calgar straightened to his full weetabix-boosted height of eight foot one inch. "Do I hell!" he spat right into the woman's face, stinking her out with his breath as he hadn't had a chance to clean his teeth all week. As if anyone would spend points buying toothbrushes instead of tanks. Yeah right! They aren't even in the Codex - not that Calgar cares, but that's another story. "As if I'm going to give in to you! I'm a Space Marine special character and I can do whatever I want (with my opponent's consent)."

With that he punched her so hard she exploded against the wall. It reminded him of smacking an Imp while berserk in a game of Doom.

"Heh heh, no-one expects the Inquisition...to explode. These power fists are definitely worth fifty points." Calgar flexed his augmented musculature. Then he remembered he'd just killed the first woman he had seen since 934989/M41. "Damn, I forgot to get a shag, and I think she fancied me!"

Suddenly things got worse: the thin, reedy sound of musical pipes began to creep along the comm-link.

"Tell that feth-wit Milo I'll shove those pipes up his arse in a minute!" roared Calgar. "I'm not putting up with THAT for thirty-seven years."

= End of Part One =

Coming up in part 2: What is that feth-wit Milo doing with the Ultramarines? Is he an annoying Wesley Crusher character who only made it into the story because the writer is a monkey bashing a typewriter? Or will he serve a greater function than playing the bagpipes? Don't ask me, I'm making this up as I go along!

UPCOMING AND UNFINISHED MARNEUS CALGAR STORIES

I will work on the following stories depending on the time/motivation available, and whether or not anyone still cares about this series!

Marneus Calgar in Tau Vs Ultramarines - Part 2
This is already floating around somewhere on the internet. It will need a severe rewrite before posting here.

Marneus Calgar in Tau Vs Ultramarines - Part 3
"All right then, what about the White Fiddlers? Surely there can't be a Chapter called the White Fiddlers."
A white-armoured Space Marine at the back of the crowd slowly raised his hand.
"Feth off!" Calgar said in disbelief.
The Marine showed Calgar the Chapter marking on his left shoulder pauldron. It was a tattered-looking picture of Gary Glitter playing a violin.
"All right then, the V for Vendettas."
"Yep," a voice came from the centre of the crowd.
"The Rampant Brigade?"
"Here, my Lord, for the honour of the Emperor!"
"All right, calm down mate, we're not making a computer game. What about the Tax Men?"
"ATTACK FOR TAX!"
"Oh, for feth's sake! Who calls their Chapter the Tax Men? What do you do, persecute heretics who haven't paid their VAT? All right, what about the Sons of Bitches? Even if they are here, who's gonna admit they're a Son of a Bitch?"
The crowd was silent.
"Right, that's better. It's all the fault of the Sons of Bitches. Now for some physical humour! Who wants to see Kojak crawling through a Jeffries Tube?"
The Lord Calgar began to tug his trousers down.
"Not now, sir," Dick said, yanking Calgar's kit back up.

This story was started a decade ago but never completed and may well be lost, but maybe one day I'll finish it and post it here! It features the first and so far only canonical appearance of Geri Halliwell, who seems to have vanished from the later stories.

Calgar's Kidney Stone
Calgar's heroic companions must get their leader from the Ultramarine HQ to a distant Apothecarion to have his kindey stones removed. Unfortunately, Macragge is under attack from the forces of Nurgle, including a Nurgle Warlord Titan; have the Ultramarines cashed in their chips? And if not, they probably should, because they're about to get flattened.

This exists as a few disconnected paragraphs but it wasn't very funny, focused way too much on poo jokes (again) and the story was looking to become too epic in scale. I may return to this one if I ever learn how to write effective SHORT stories, without them bogging down into sprawling epics.

Marneus Pan - Prat in Tights
"Ho there, Peter, I mean, Marnie Pan. Are we calling him Peter or Marnie?"
"I think he prefers Marneus."
"Feth's sake, I bet even his parents were embarrassed to call him that. Ho! Ho there, sir! Ho!"
Calgar's voice came distantly from the cliff edge.
"Are you calling me, Number Two, or summoning a prostitute?"

Join the Ultramarines and their Tanith mascot as they venture to the dream-world of Neverland, to free it from the threat of a terrible plague. Can our heroes navigate the Minecraft-corrupted landscape while coping with pirates, an alpha-plus psyker called Tinkerbell and a crocodile that bites Calgar's nads off, and defeat the Gutfather – an Exalted Greater Daemon of Nurgle? And if they can overcome all these odds, will Calgar's increasingly strange behaviour lead him to abandon the Ultramarines Chapter and take up his rightful place as Marneus Pan, Prat in Tights?

This story exists only as a beginning, which was not considered to be funny at all when I posted it on the long-defunct Imp Lit, and the best battle scene I've ever written - a battle between a Great Unclean One and a Keeper of Secrets, something I've definitely never seen anywhere else. Getting the characters into the Minecraft universe proved a huge challenge which I couldn't overcome, and I have long since moved on from playing Minecraft, but this story is worth finishing simply due to the battle.

Greetings all. I've extensively rewritten the above two posts, and am hard at work on no less than two Barmy Army Christmas Specials: the final installment of last year's epic, which was unfinished due to time and other factors, and a brand new, more Christmas-centric tale for this year.

There are a few other Barmy Army stories which remain unfinished, and I wonder if anyone thinks it's worth continuing the saga of Lord Calgar and his long-suffering minions? Do you find it funny despite its childishness? Or have the Barmy Army passed their retirement date, and it's time for them to drive into the sunset at the end of the 2019 Xmas Special?

Please note: I am currently revising the 2018 Xmas special to reduce the quantity of poo jokes, as I get that they went too far. There will be a note at the beginning of the story once I've finished the edits.

Any and all comments would be massively appreciated.