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So im writing a 40k fanfic starring a minor xenos empire I created and I kinda wanna have them wipe out a space marine chapter to show how cool they can be but I dont want to piss off the entire fanbase. what would be a chapter that is well known enough that killing them off would mean something but obsure/disliked enough that killing them off wont have massive fan backlash.

Ultramarines

None of them.

Seriously, rule #1 of writing any decent fanfic is that you don't mess with established canon; 'minor xenos empire' + 'wiping out a space marine chapter' is already stretching believability to breaking point, even before adding 'well-known chapter'.

That sort of thing is best left up to BL and codex writers.

I'd suggest you either make your own up, or rather than wipe out a chapter, have the xeno make it untenable for the marines to continue campaigning, so they withdraw and leave the xenos to their devices.

Wiping out a chapter is pretty darn difficult

Maybe it would be better to have your xenos destroy an explorator fleet that came onto your empire's territory.
You could have, say, a company or so of SM tagging along, and maybe now the SM chapter has sworn vengeance for their lost brothers. Better to set up a mortal enemy than reel off a list of kills, I think.
My advice would be to make up your own SM chapter, rather than say your empire did major damage to one of the major chapters.

You could use a throw away deathwatch team that's expecting something else.

The thing with 40K fluff, is you can really go nuts with creating and destroying your own Space Marine chapters. While iGuy91 is correct that wiping out a chapter is pretty darn difficult, its not *that* difficult. Chapters get wiped out all the time in official GW fluff. Orks do it, Crons do it, Chaos has corrupted multiple chapter at once.

Here is the thing, a Chapter of Space Marines were created so that if any individual chapter went to chaos, it would not be as devastating as an entire legion- so they are relatively small by comparison. So there are tons and tons of individual Chapters, and you can make them up and do whatever you want. You can further *link* that home brewed chapter to a larger legion, via successor Chapter. This gives the chapter a "hook" into the fluff that people can immediately identify. For instance, creating a successor chapter of the Imperial Fists (lets say the Emperor's Knuckledusters) does several things. It lets you create and destroy the chapter in any matter you see fit. Nobody will bat an eye because its a minor chapter, but you still get a hook to a big legion and Rogal Dorn through the shared geneseed. Perhaps Chapter Master Ephraim picked a fight he couldn't win. In any event, the destruction of a Chapter is a big accomplishment, so don't feel like you need to go all Mary Sue on a former Legion.

Finally, on a general fiction writing piece of advise. You always want to write about hardship. Nobody wants to hear about how your "minor xenos" empire defeated a Space Marine Chapter in open combat. Its far more intriguing to have them come into contact with the Imperium, fight a losing battle, and are saved from the brink of extinction by either a stroke of luck (deus ex machina Warp Storm, or the Imperial Forces are forced to withdraw to deal with an Ork or Chaos Incursion) or some other great sacrifice that buys them enough time to survive- (such as blowing up their homeworld to destroy the Imperial Forces in a trap). From there you can discuss how your empire handles it near defeat, and adjusts to survive in the 40K world- either by becoming a space faring fleet who lost its homeworld to the Imperium and other powers and survives as pirates in an armada city, etc.

Remember, the Imperium operates much like the Police do when tackling a difficult situation. If one officer isn't enough, they call in reinforcements. If one Chapter sends out a distress signal, then the Imperium will frequently send more Chapters / Imperial Guard / Titans, etc. Until the threat is completely annihilated. It is strongly implied that one of the only reasons the Tau were able to survive was because the Imperium could not afford to commit the necessary resources due to the 13th Black Crusade and Tyranid Hive Fleets invading. If you choose to have your xenos empire survive, its far more believable to have a plausible reason that the Imperium cannot commit the forces it requires to exterminate them.

alot of people seem confused as to how a minor xeno empire could wipe out a chapter so let me give some context.

so the thing that sprred me to write this fic was my anger at GW for basically ignoring Tau auxillarys. Sci Fi alien nations with multiple diffrent alien species has always been one of my favorite things. the covenant in halo are literally my favorite sci fi faction ever.

So my idea for a xenos empire is a confederation between six diffrent even smaller xenos empires.

technologically they are at best on par with the IoM and at worst a fair bit behind.

they do have one major advantage though. they have FTL drives that do not use the warp and are far far more precise than the warp drives and are capable of tactical jumps. but they are a fair bit slower than warp drives.


so after some minor skirmishes the imperium descends to send a small crusade to destroy the xenos before they become a threat. they breeze thier way through some colonys before they happen upon one of the 6 species homeworlds. at this point they are unaware of the xenos FTL drives and begin assualting the planet after wiping its small defense fleet. after a couple weeks of pitched battle the IoM fleet is completely blind sided when almost half of the xenos empires entire fleet tactical jumps in right behind the imperium fleet. caught by complete surprise and outnumberred to hell and back the imperium fleet quickly gets overwhelmed and almost wiped out the remnants forced to withdraw and abbondon the crusader forces still assualting the planet.
with orbital and shortly therafter air superiority the xenos are able wipe out the imperium ground forces to a man inluding an entire SM chapter.

unrealistic or no? it did take half the xenos navy and the imperium completely underestimating them to pull off the win and it took the devastation of one of thier homeworlds. is that too mary sueish?

 akaean wrote:
Finally, on a general fiction writing piece of advise. You always want to write about hardship. Nobody wants to hear about how your "minor xenos" empire defeated a Space Marine Chapter in open combat.

That's... not at all what I would advise. Hell, the bit about always writing about hardship is simply wrong. First and foremost, you write about what interests you, the writer. If nobody wants to read what you wrote, then that's their issue. You can focus on writing to an audience when you're doing it as a job, but until then, you find something you want to write about and you write about it. I said before not to mess with established canon, but at the end of the day, to hell with that if you want to do it anyway.

Second, a story that's pure hardship is just as one-dimensional as a story that's unapologetic "war, feth yeah!" bolter-porn. That's not to say that there should be no hardship, because without hardship to overcome the story goes nowhere; it stays at the one constant of "everything is fine, nothing to see here", but it should be natural hardship with natural flow. One disaster after another can shift from making you wonder "I wonder how they'll get through this" to "I wonder what BS they'll manage to get through next". There's also plenty of room for badassery that punctures the gloom, like a Dreadnought that had been ploughing through the lines being pulled to the ground after getting overconfident or cut off from supporting infantry. It might not be a critical occurrence, or it might be just a fleeting moment of glory, but damn it all it feels good. There's nothing at all wrong with writing something that isn't constant misery and woe, even in the otherwise grim darkness of the 41st millennium. It just has to make sense, and flow.

To use the evacuation example, the hardship is obviously they're being pushed to abandon their homeworld, or be killed trying. There's no need to make it harder than it has to be, there, and arguably something like that demands things to occasionally go right. Not all the civillians need to be massacred before they can reach safety, nor transports ships blown out of the sky as soon as they take off by relentless AA fire. What it could do with is how the people are coping. There will be naysayers who preach that they're doomed either way, but there'll be people who have accepted that what's happening is happening, and they need to do something. Rallying speeches in besieged city streets, heroic sacrifces by air forces that might simply be covering the successful escape of a group of transports, or hard-fought victories where the natives used their homeworld advantage to prove that the Imperium might have firepower, but also unfiltered arrogance. In a way, every victory the natives win, big or small, simply provides a hardship for the Imperium to overcome, and propels the story beyond "the space marines were winning until [insert deus ex machina here]".

Hardship has a definite place, but that place is not absolute, not always at the head of a story, and it's not always insurmountable.

alot of people seem confused as to how a minor xeno empire could wipe out a chapter so let me give some context.

so the thing that sprred me to write this fic was my anger at GW for basically ignoring Tau auxillarys. Sci Fi alien nations with multiple diffrent alien species has always been one of my favorite things. the covenant in halo are literally my favorite sci fi faction ever.

So my idea for a xenos empire is a confederation between six diffrent even smaller xenos empires.

technologically they are at best on par with the IoM and at worst a fair bit behind.

they do have one major advantage though. they have FTL drives that do not use the warp and are far far more precise than the warp drives and are capable of tactical jumps. but they are a fair bit slower than warp drives.


so after some minor skirmishes the imperium descends to send a small crusade to destroy the xenos before they become a threat. they breeze thier way through some colonys before they happen upon one of the 6 species homeworlds. at this point they are unaware of the xenos FTL drives and begin assualting the planet after wiping its small defense fleet. after a couple weeks of pitched battle the IoM fleet is completely blind sided when almost half of the xenos empires entire fleet tactical jumps in right behind the imperium fleet. caught by complete surprise and outnumberred to hell and back the imperium fleet quickly gets overwhelmed and almost wiped out the remnants forced to withdraw and abbondon the crusader forces still assualting the planet.
with orbital and shortly therafter air superiority the xenos are able wipe out the imperium ground forces to a man inluding an entire SM chapter.

unrealistic or no? it did take half the xenos navy and the imperium completely underestimating them to pull off the win and it took the devastation of one of thier homeworlds. is that too mary sueish?

A few of the major issues I personally have with this are:

An FTL drive that's slower than a Warp drive is still very slow. Warp drives can take weeks to cover distances even when the Warp is calm and relatively stable. A response fleet would first have to be alerted, then formed, converge on a singular staging point, and finally move off at the speed of its slowest vital vessel. All that takes time that your empire doesn't have.

Even if a response could be made, what's keeping the Crusade fleet--not something to be taken lightly--from A) sweeping the world aside, and B) retreating and ordering exterminatus? Even the Damocles Crusade suffered heavily both before and during their siege of a major T'au sept world, and was already underequipped. All that kept them from pulling back and nuking the place was the fact that the T'au had shown tenacity and honour enough to be afforded better deaths in the eyes of most of the Crusade. The Empire here has been completely and effortlessly wiped out in space, doesn't have any technological advantage that would help, and has given the Crusade no reason to not raze the world and move on.

A crusade fleet's scale--even a 'small one'--is vast, and to have an entire chapter of marines and all that entails--multiple Battle Barges, hosts of other advanced craft--joined by other elements of the Imperial Navy, Astra Militarum, and Titan Legions, no doubt also aided by companies from other SM chapters--especially chapters such as the Black Templars--be fought to a standstill over many weeks by an empire that's almost certainly outclassed in every way is, in my opinion, too unbelievable. I know I keep going back to the Damocles Crusade, but only because it's the most well-known instance of a less-major Xenos race having a homeworld--of sorts--invaded by a crusade fleet, and their order of battle is huge, but also noted as being under-strength for a crusade fleet, with regular calls for reinforcements given given. Despite that, the Imperial forces kept gaining ground, and pushing the T'au back over days at a time. A far lesser empire I cannot see lasting long enough to be rescued, not against a Crusade fleet even close to up-to-strength.

What I could see happening, however, is a counter-attack into Imperial territory, after the Imperials chase what's left of the Empire off their world and, in their hubris, have no reason to believe that wasn't simply the last of them. A sudden, unexpected assault against [insert random made up SM chapter here]'s nearby homeworld in response would mean that you encounter something you can more easily overcome, with their chapter now scattered between different systems and other missions. It might still be hard-going, but it's doable, with your Empire escaping as quickly as they arrived after putting the world to the torch. What that leads to is a game where the Imperium know more of you exist but they don't know where, and you can target systems and worlds to get retribution, but you have to be careful with it, as you cannot afford to be on the reciving end of another Imperial assault.

I dont want to write your story for you; it's your prerogative to complete dismiss all of this and do it anyway. That's half the beauty of writing. But it's something I might explore if I wanted to make things more believable in the setting.

You could invent a chapter that's on a penitent crusade. That way you can have the entire chapter mobilised and as depleted or battle-ready as you like, and it also means they probably don't have a lot of support (so you don't have to include a lot of imperial allies for the story to make sense).

Edit:
You could include a bit about the hardships and victories the chapter endured on their quest. Humanize them a bit, so that the outcome of the battle feels dramatic for both sides. This also gives you a hook for enmity with progenitor chapters and/or other allied forces. Just my 2cts, have fun writing!

Imperial Fists. They're stupid AF, as the Iron Warrios demonstrated, and have a masochistic death wish, so it's no big deal if they (almost) get killed off for plot points.

I never said they were weaker than the tau. overall they actual control more territory due to them being around far more and being made up of several already established empires that merged into a federation the tau control 20 major systems (or septs) the xenos federation controls about a 150. 20 for each of the 6 major species, a dozen or so that are controlled by the federation itself, and a handful of miscelanious planets that dont fit in any category. such as a couple frontier human words that joined them. they would fight just as hard as the tau would to protect one of their homeworlds and thus earn the respect of the crusaders just like the tau did. also while your right that traveling great distances can take weeks but as I just said they only have to traverse a distance of a hundred and half systems at the most. aslo remember that one advantage of pinpoint FTL is that you can actually pop out in syatem instead of having to pop out outside the syatme and speand a couple days traveling at sub light to actually get to the planet like the imperium does. so for short distances the xenos drives might actually be technically faster cause they can appear right next to the planet they want to go to. so I dont think that assembling thier fleet would be as diffucult as your making it out to be.

chimera0205 wrote:
I never said they were weaker than the tau. overall they actual control more territory due to them being around far more and being made up of several already established empires that merged into a federation the tau control 20 major systems (or septs) the xenos federation controls about a 150. 20 for each of the 6 major species, a dozen or so that are controlled by the federation itself, and a handful of miscelanious planets that dont fit in any category. such as a couple frontier human words that joined them. they would fight just as hard as the tau would to protect one of their homeworlds and thus earn the respect of the crusaders just like the tau did. also while your right that traveling great distances can take weeks but as I just said they only have to traverse a distance of a hundred and half systems at the most. aslo remember that one advantage of pinpoint FTL is that you can actually pop out in syatem instead of having to pop out outside the syatme and speand a couple days traveling at sub light to actually get to the planet like the imperium does. so for short distances the xenos drives might actually be technically faster cause they can appear right next to the planet they want to go to. so I dont think that assembling thier fleet would be as diffucult as your making it out to be.

So.... how come nobodies ever heard of them before?

chimera0205 wrote:
I never said they were weaker than the tau. overall they actual control more territory due to them being around far more and being made up of several already established empires that merged into a federation the tau control 20 major systems (or septs) the xenos federation controls about a 150. 20 for each of the 6 major species, a dozen or so that are controlled by the federation itself, and a handful of miscelanious planets that dont fit in any category. such as a couple frontier human words that joined them. they would fight just as hard as the tau would to protect one of their homeworlds and thus earn the respect of the crusaders just like the tau did. also while your right that traveling great distances can take weeks but as I just said they only have to traverse a distance of a hundred and half systems at the most. aslo remember that one advantage of pinpoint FTL is that you can actually pop out in syatem instead of having to pop out outside the syatme and speand a couple days traveling at sub light to actually get to the planet like the imperium does. so for short distances the xenos drives might actually be technically faster cause they can appear right next to the planet they want to go to. so I dont think that assembling thier fleet would be as diffucult as your making it out to be.

You said their technology was either on par with, or worse than the Imperium's. Given that a fortified T'au sept world wasn't able stop a badly damaged Imperial crusade gaining ground daily even with more and steady reinforcements and technology far more advanced, I feel it safe to assume that this empire would fare considerably worse.

Even with that aside, though, you're now saying your "minor Xenos empire" spans 150 systems, utterly dwarfing the T'au--a major Xenos empire--and even the Interex at their peak of 30 when they were discovered during the Great Crusade. That sounds pretty major to me, and is also where I start seeing their special FTL system as an issue. As a minor empire, I could forgive something like a hyper-accurate FTL drive, because you're still limited by numbers, resources, and potential enemies. When you're suddenly talking 150 systems, it becomes a little ridiculous. An empire of 150 systems with tech like that should already be a major galactic player, if only because they can appear outside anywhere, at any time, with 150 systems-worth of numbers, and fall back just as cleanly.

Every other spacefaring race in 40k has a limitation or issue with their long-distance space travel. T'au rely on marginally slower-than-light hops, the Imperium and Chaos rely on the Warp, the (D)Eldar rely on the aging and falling-apart Webway, Orks on their own gestalt orkiness, Tyranid Narvhals can't enter FTL while inside a system's gravitational field, and Necrons rely purely on sublight speeds outside Dolmen Gates. All of these are in some way suboptimal or otherwise carry risks, which means that no single race has a clear advantage over the other. A large--because there's no way 150 systems comes close to "minor"--empire which can simply FTL directly to an absolute point in space, do its business, and then go right home again has an incredible advantage over every race in the galaxy, especially if it's fast enough to even make up for another race's requirement on sublight to close distances.

Ignoring that, we also have the issue of: 'if they have 150 systems in their empire, how has nobody ever heard of them?' A smaller empire might have been masked by warp storms--though since they make no use of the warp, that wouldn't actually stop them doing anything--or occupy a region of space small enough/insignificant enough to pay little heed to, but 150 systems is far from nothing. There are Xeno races of far fewer worlds that are fairly common knowledge to the Imperium, and others that drew their ire for some reason or other and were brutally crushed. A large empire also provides the issue of interaction with other Xenos; the likelihood of being the target of Dark Eldar raids, or Ork incursions significantly increases, and Tyranids also become a problem, being drawn to such a large number of close, populated systems. Even the T'au and their paltry 20 systems have issues with Orks, and also find themselves in the path of a Hive Fleet.

150 worlds is not all that much when you consider that the IoM has over a million. and the reason no ones ever heard of them was because until recently they were not one decently sized empire but 6 smaller empires that only formed there confederation a couple hundred years before present time.
its also implied that the rakk gol probably have at least a hundred planets given the pretty large area they have been sighted in. and
tyranids are only a problem in the east and the federation has dealt with several ork and eldar raiding partys.

Indeed, at that size you are almost better off putting your Empire in a separate galaxy in the Milky Way's local group.
The truth is that we just don't know whats out there, whether there be Orks, Tyranids, other civilizations, other gods? We just don't know. Frankly, we don't even know which direction the Tyranids have come from! Its open for interpretation whether they come from Andromeda or Triangulum or have consumed all other galaxies in our local group. Since it hasn't been specified its safeish to claim a small dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky way as an origin point for your Xenos Empire.

From there, you have a good standpoint to interact with the Warhammer 40K universe. 1) you have the possibility to (very believably) have your entire xenos galactic empire engulfed in total war against a Tyranid fleet. 2) If their technology is sufficiently advanced you can establish a presence in the Milky Way by way of colonies along the fringes- possibly in an attempt to escape the Tyranids!.

Keep in mind this still allows you to be significantly smaller than the Imperium of Man. The Large Magellanic Cloud is 10% the Mass of the Milky Way, and its one of the larger sub galaxies. To give you a real idea of scale here. The Imperium has an empire spanning the Milky way which is easily over 100 billion stars. If you set your Xenos Empire up in the Fornax Dwarf galaxy (one of the minor galaxies in orbit of the Milky Way) they would have an empire spanning 60 thousand stars. Which puts you at a much smaller size than the Imperium, this lets you develop at a safe distance from them due to being outside of the Milky Way.

 akaean wrote:
Indeed, at that size you are almost better off putting your Empire in a separate galaxy in the Milky Way's local group.
The truth is that we just don't know whats out there, whether there be Orks, Tyranids, other civilizations, other gods? We just don't know. Frankly, we don't even know which direction the Tyranids have come from! Its open for interpretation whether they come from Andromeda or Triangulum or have consumed all other galaxies in our local group. Since it hasn't been specified its safeish to claim a small dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky way as an origin point for your Xenos Empire.

From there, you have a good standpoint to interact with the Warhammer 40K universe. 1) you have the possibility to (very believably) have your entire xenos galactic empire engulfed in total war against a Tyranid fleet. 2) If their technology is sufficiently advanced you can establish a presence in the Milky Way by way of colonies along the fringes- possibly in an attempt to escape the Tyranids!.

Keep in mind this still allows you to be significantly smaller than the Imperium of Man. The Large Magellanic Cloud is 10% the Mass of the Milky Way, and its one of the larger sub galaxies. To give you a real idea of scale here. The Imperium has an empire spanning the Milky way which is easily over 100 billion stars. If you set your Xenos Empire up in the Fornax Dwarf galaxy (one of the minor galaxies in orbit of the Milky Way) they would have an empire spanning 60 thousand stars. Which puts you at a much smaller size than the Imperium, this lets you develop at a safe distance from them due to being outside of the Milky Way.

thats actually a really great idea. I think ill go with that.

Or utilise the great plot hammer that is the great rift. A couple of hundred years on the far side of that with no imperial messing about a small empire could have formed and done ok.

I wouldn’t use a known chapter back on your OP. make one up and maybe don’t wipe them out but batter them so they are nearly useless. Gives you scope for an enemy as said before.

There's a common black library practice of mentioning a brand new chapter and then reffering to their total destruction.

Hell, call them 'Sacrificial Lambs' - sounds like the Sons of Dorn already.

 ChargerIIC wrote:
There's a common black library practice of mentioning a brand new chapter and then reffering to their total destruction.

Space Marine chapter in the refridgerator?

 ChargerIIC wrote:
There's a common black library practice of mentioning a brand new chapter and then reffering to their total destruction.

Hell, call them 'Sacrificial Lambs' - sounds like the Sons of Dorn already.

Heh I rather like that idea.

If you can't really do that, killing off a couple companies of Space Marines might suit your purposes fine enough. That's already a couple hundred so it still shows the stakes are high and all that junk.

Just make them Blood Ravens, finish off what Relic started when they released DoW 3

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Just make them Blood Ravens, finish off what Relic started when they released DoW 3

but if I killed of all the blood ravens who would steal all my xenos races stuff?

 EmpNortonII wrote:
Ultramarines

/thread

Nobody likes them. Kill them off and you'll be celebrated as a hero.

 Peregrine wrote:

 EmpNortonII wrote:
Ultramarines

/thread

Nobody likes them. Kill them off and you'll be celebrated as a hero.

Do you want Matt Ward to show up in your bed with a bloody spatula? This is how it happens.

chimera0205 wrote:
alot of people seem confused as to how a minor xeno empire could wipe out a chapter so let me give some context.

Here's a better explanation: a chapter is 1000 marines. 1000 marines is an absurdly tiny force on the scale of planetary conflicts, a single battle going wrong could easily wipe them out. Hell, if you want to be realistic a drop pod assault on a defended world would likely be a multi-chapter force with the majority of them (probably including multiple entire chapters) annihilated by AA defenses and a few pods getting through by sheer numbers. And god help the space marines if they have to fight a Vraks-style war of attrition, several chapters per day would be wiped out in the meat grinder.

(Yes, this contradicts GW's fluff, but GW's authors have no sense of scale. To make any sense out of space marines you need to increase all of their numbers by several orders of magnitude.)

 Peregrine wrote:

 EmpNortonII wrote:
Ultramarines

/thread

Nobody likes them. Kill them off and you'll be celebrated as a hero.

You might not like them but you aren';t everyone. the Ultramarine hating is old hat. it doesn't make you look "cool"

Eh, no. No minor alien empire can wipe out a chapter without getting 3 other chapters bashing their face in.

Have them wipe out some Orks or Tyranids if you want to show they are cool.

If anything, however, I would be fine if the Iron Hands, Flesh Tearer or the Malevolent Marines are wiped out. But I would still rather they either go out in a blaze of glory or are forced to pay for their crimes by other forces of the Imperium.

Possible contenders:

Iron Snakes

Novamarines

Crimson Fists

Lamenters

I thought wiping out entire chapters was a common way for authors to portray a group's badassery in the same way destroying an Avatar of Khaine is used to portray an individual's badassery. AKA; the Worf Effect