The following is a Work in Progress.

 

INDEX ASTARTES - SIN EATERS

Battle Brothers of the 3rd Company

 

ID & HIGH GOTHIC: 0293 - COMEDENTIS PECCATI, "SIN EATERS"

 

GENELINE: IX LEGION - GENE-DRIFT MINORIS

 

FOUNDING: 2nd (CLAIMED), 3rd (SUSPECTED)

 

DESIGNATION: PARTIAL CODEX COMPLIANT

 

HERALDRY: SLATE & CRIMSON, GOUTE De SANG ON SILVER PALE

 

CHAPTER FIEF: DUMAH, UPON THE STAR-FORT VINDICE STELLA

 

MOTTO: AD VITAM AETERNAM, "TO ETERNAL LIFE"

 

INTRODUCTION & PRE-HISTORY

No man, bar the Emperor Himself, is beloved by all, not even a Primarch. All of the Astartes Legions, at least all for whom records remain contained those who chaffed at the changes made when they were reunited with their gene-fathers. Terran born, or traditionalist warriors who found the learned practices of their Primarch's adopted homes and cultures. Sub-legions and recon elements who missed the initial, ecstatic reunion, and never saw these larger-than-life figures in the flesh. Holdouts from an older, fouler war than the Crusade itself. 

 

The IX Legion were known, for a time, as The Revenant Legion. Eaters of the dead. Beautiful killers. Inheritors of names. These men who would in time become the Blood Angels left much behind when they were transformed by the Angel Sanguinius, when their hungers were tempered by a godling's grace. It was, for most, a revelation. Redemption. A chance to cast of a monstrous identity for something more noble. 

 

Or, to others, a false mask to hide their shame. A casting-aside of effective, sound battlefield practice that had marked them out amongst their cousins in the other Legions. A denial of their Emperor-given, transhuman edge. In other Legions such warriors often found themselves among the Traitors - or dead amongst the ashes of Isstvan III - or fighting all comers as Blackshields, but those of the IX who would eventually form the core of the Sin Eaters were loyal, to the Imperium if not their Primarch. Forced to deny their hunger, and a growing sense that they had been denied something more, they nevertheless fought throughout the Heresy, to the very walls of the Imperial Palace on Terra, and beyond. Only with the butchering of the Angel were they freed, and in the fires of the Scouring did they reformed themselves, reclaiming practices long-since forbidden. Like many quasi-independent Legion elements they were chosen to form new Chapters during the Second - Some records suggest Third, though the Chapter itself claims Second - Founding, Revenants beneath a new flag, Eaters of the Dead once more. 

 

Eaters of Sin.

 

Brother Sergeant of the 3rd Company, a Lesser Immortal

 

CHAPTER HOMEWORLD & FORTRESS MONASTERY

Dumah is a cool, and shadowed world, thickly forested and mountainous, where it is not swallowed by vast and crushing glaciers. The human population, techno-feudal throwbacks abandoned in the distant past live in stone keeps that rise above the forested valleys and frosted peaks, kept warm by ancient generators deep within their bowels, sacred and ill-understood. War, of a sort, is constant. Warbands and raiders hunt each other between the trees, or engage in ritual battles in the few open clearings, killing each other of generational grudges, and stores to survive the long, harsh winter years. 

 

It is from this hardy stock that the Sin Eaters draw the largest single source of their recruits. Their Monastery, The Vindice Stella, sits in low orbit, a red star that passes above the peaks of Dumah, and has done for some 9,000 years. The ancient Star-Fort, left adrift in depths of space was captured by the Chapter in their earliest days, and placed above their chosen fief. Some 30% of their aspirants are drawn from Dumah, the rest from suitable human stock encountered on campaign. The Induction Sarcophagi utilized by most of the Blood Angels gene-line are capable of turning the twisted mutants of Baal into beautiful, strong astartes, and such technologies are put to good use by the Sin Eaters to allow for rapid recruitment while on the move, the various Company Fleets and Strikeforces more-or-less self sufficient, returning to Dumah to take part in Chapter-wide rituals and the sharing of heroic remains. 

 

Reclusiarch Hanuman, Chaplain of the Immortals

 

CHAPTER ORGANISATION & CODEX COMPLIANCE

Like many of their fellow Blood Angel successors, the Sin Eaters act largely within the tenants of the Codex Astartes, at least as it applies to battlefield strategies. Squad-level organisation and equipment, accepted skirmish-to-campaign strategic practices, all to be found somewhere within The Avenging Son's updated Codex, at least for the most part. Outside of the battlefield, however, divergence is found. 

 

The Sin Eaters do not keep a 10th Company. Instead, each battle-line Company is expected to raise and maintain their own initiates, and field scouts as required. This means that each Company often exceeds the usual size as dictated by the Codex, and the Chapter as a whole often doing the same. This is not without precedent amongst more mobile chapters, the needs of a specific long-term campaign leading Companies to swell their numbers when support from elsewhere is unavailable. If the Chapter, during a rare meeting of the Companies finds that it has grown too far beyond the 1,000 Marines stipulated in the Codex Astartes, a period of lessened recruitment is begun, and attrition allowed to return them to something closer to the limits placed on an Astartes Chapter. 

 

It has been some time since the last such meeting of the Companies. Ordo Astartes estimates place the Sector-wide count of Sin Eaters marines between 1,200 and 1,400 warriors, though their involvement in the ongoing 4th Tyranic war is expected to reduce those numbers dramatically. 

 

Leadership of the Chapter falls to the Immortals of the First Company, those Marines who have moved beyond death, becoming repeating patterns within the genetic memory of the Chapter, reborn in new flesh after the eating of the old. The Immortals, the True Immortals, form the First Company, and from there are assigned leadership and guidance of the Battle Line Companies, alongside fellow elites to act as bodyguards or force multipliers, forming a core of Crusade Fleets and Strikeforces. 'Lesser' Immortals, those not elevated to the First Company due to having not proven their stability to the Chapter Reclusium often lead squads within the Battle Line Companies, marked out by golden helms and personal heraldry not worn by those on their first, and likely only, lives. 

 

Immortals of the Blade

 

IMMORTALITY & THE LAST REVENANTS

The Omophagea - an organ common to all Astartes - is hyper-active among the sons of Sanguinius. The extent of this mutation has varied, over the millennia, though all from that line feel it to some extent. The urge for flesh. For blood. To the Blood Angels themselves this is a mark of shame, and curse to be warded against, but to their earliest ancestors among the IX Legion it was a gift embraced. To be able to gain intel from defeated foes through the eating of their flesh is an ill-understood practice to most Marine Chapters, one made use of sparingly. Not so the Revenants, who ate freely from the bodies of the fallen on both sides through the conquest of Terra. To them, it became a way of maintaining skills and memories of the Legion, dead warriors shared amongst their fellows, their memories imbibed. In some cases this allowed younger marines to quickly advance in rank, taking on the names and practices of those they had eaten. 

 

Ghastly, bad for the morale of allied human forces, but undoubtedly effective. 

 

The Sin Eaters have maintained this practice for 10,000 years, and in that time have learned how to coax those devoured memories to life. Their Omophagea has mutated further through repeated use, and the careful selection of desired traits by the Apothecarion. To be eaten by a Sin Eater is to be Known. Understood. Human foes are open to them completely, once their bodies are retrieved, and their own dead reclaimed for the genetic memory of the Chapter. All Initiates finish their elevation to full Astartes with a meal of the fallen, a final induction and training all in one. 

 

Stranger still are the Immortals. The genetic memory of the Chapter is strong, and certain individual consciousnesses, constructed from the devoured minds of dozens of fallen warriors stringer than most. These are the Immortals, those who have been reborn in fresh bodies when eaten, able to entirely replace the freshly hypno-indoctrinated minds of recruits, and return to the First Company clad in new flesh. These beings - or agreed upon delusions, as some within the Ordo Astartes claim - are by some measure the oldest 'living' Space Marines, with memory fragments dating back into the distant past, some for thousands of years. The re-embodiment of one of these Immortals is a grave and delicate task, overseen by both the Apothecaries and Chaplains of the Chapter. The body is retrieved, preserved in stasis, and made ready for devouring in total by a recruit selected for the task, one who has yet to taste their final meal, but is nevertheless complete and proven. They are watched and cared for during the potentially lengthy period of conversions, presented with items of their many lives, weapons and equipment, and finally allowed to return to service amongst their brothers, old eyes in a new face. 

 

The truth of the matter is difficult to discern, and harder still to ever truly confirm. Are they, as the Chapter claims, truly immortal beings within the genetic memory of the Chapter, born into new bodies through ritual and science? Or is this simply a more elaborate, and effective form of the 'spiritual' rebirth of officers in the days of the Revenant Legion, with fresh Astartes simply bolstered and aided by memories left for them by the lost? Who can say.