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Hi all, quick question. Would a legion like the Word Bearers have chaos marks in the fluff or would they remain undivided. Back ground wise could say a word bearers company look to knorne when attacking planet A and then change to Nurgle when attacking planet B, or once your red you will always be red. Also could my chaos lord in a word bearers army really have a mark.

The reason I'm asking is that I want to do a word bearers army and want to remain close to the fluff for them whilst also acknowledging that marks of chaos are too good to ignore.

Thanks

They are undivided. they give equal supplication to all 4.

So no marks on Word Bearer units as a general fluff rule.


That said, you could run models with marks and just say the Word Bearers have invoked the blessing of X god for this battle. and will revert back to their unmarked position after the battle.

Just make sure the marks are indicated somehow. Like a base that just follows the unit around that has the mark on it, just for you and your opponent's benifit. That way you can paint them up in Word Bearers colors, and still use marks. You don't ruin your painting aestitic for the sake of playability.

Actually new fluff indicates they follow all chaos gods as a pantheon, but revere one of them with manic fervour. So you could just say that each unit you give a mark just worships that god more than the others. pg13 of the codex

Indeed. To worshipers of chaos undivided, the individual gods are like saints in Catholicism, or Greek gods You might revere all of them, but some people prefer to focus on one or another, at least for the time being. The point is that their worship of that particular god does not trivialize their reverence of another god.

zechs_mequise wrote:
Actually new fluff indicates they follow all chaos gods as a pantheon, but revere one of them with manic fervour. So you could just say that each unit you give a mark just worships that god more than the others. pg13 of the codex

They have always said they worship the Gods as a pantheon, even in earlier editions. I used to play chaos space marines for years and i have to say: ''if it's undivided, it's undecided''. so just leave your colors as the warband and as Grey Templar said, do something like make bases. I remember i would just put a color coated die next to the squad. It still makes sense to have marks and people have changed their worship, but only if its undivided. being undivided is different than selling your soul to one single ruinous power.

Yeah i know they have worshiped them as a pantheon, like you said they always have. But now the fluff has the addition of some of them now favoring one god over the others, so for instance if you wanted to take a unit of say noise marines or give your lord a mark you would be fully justified in doing so without fluff bunnies pouncing on your decrepit soul

That's the thing about worshipping a pantheon, you still end up favoring one god over another for some things. The only thing I would say needs to be done to keep things fluffy is to have your Warlord be unmarked to represent the whole of the force.

Just finished the word bearers BL trilogy. They clearly have dedicated parts of their host. At least one of the closest lieutenant of the dark apostle is clearly dedicated to Khorne. I don't see why specific part of the bearers should not be dedicated to a specific god.

I do not see these guys changing marks though.

As far as I'm aware from all of the Word Bearers fluff I read, they do worship chaos as a pantheon, but there are some units/forces who are more dedicated to one god than another.

Having a squad with a mark in a word bearers army makes perfect sense to me.

Just because a legion/force is undivided it does not mean that it isn't possible for them to have a mark or favour a particular god. A prime example is in the Storm of Iron book, this centres around a Iron Warriors force invading an imperial world, they have units of bezerkers (I understand they are not undivided.) and also some of their higher up commanders and other groups clearly have marks of worship a particular god, one in fact is very much in the service of Khrone.

They worship mostly one god as most legions BUT the difference is that they do not defy the other three gods. Lets give an example: A World Eater will always hate a follower of Slaanesh and Tzeentch and vice cersa. The Word Bearers are different. They aknowledge the strenght of every single god and praise each of them. However they are always free to chose a path.

 The Observer wrote:
They worship mostly one god as most legions BUT the difference is that they do not defy the other three gods. Lets give an example: A World Eater will always hate a follower of Slaanesh and Tzeentch and vice cersa. The Word Bearers are different. They aknowledge the strenght of every single god and praise each of them. However they are always free to chose a path.

Basically this.

Well said The Observer

Thank you Rysaer. I do what I can do best, I observe and share the truth of chaos

Thanks for the feed back guys. I'm glad you are thinking what I'm thinking. I do love the Word Bearers but a few marks can never go a miss.

The fluff has been changed so that all Chaos forces pretty much operate identically. This is so they can all be represented by a single list. I'd say you can safely disregard the old fluff and just play them like you would any Black Legion army.