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Okay, this Chapter just got itself a bit of a face-lift. I was pretty satisfied with it, but I always kind of felt it was never complete. Original first post, including the previous article, are contained as a spoiler at the bottom of this post. As always, C&C is requested. They shall be pure of heart and strong of body, untainted by doubt and unsullied by self-aggrandizement. They will be bright stars on the firmament of battle, Angels of Death whose shining wings bring swift annihilation to the enemies of Man. So it shall be for a thousand times for a thousand years, unto the very end of eternity and the extinction of mortal flesh. -- Codex Astartes Origins “The grey army is at our gates, to drag us down into the dust where they crawl. Their poison seeps through. But we stand and we cry, we are with God! And with God, we will die!” – The Savior King speaks, 999.M41 Captain Galgalliel of the Archangels, the First Company of the Blood Angels Chapter, had a long, illustrious career, including nearly four centuries as Captain of the Chapter’s most elite forces, before given one of the greatest honors known to the Astartes. In the 35th millennium, the 11th Founding was declared, and the Archangel Galgalliel selected to command a newborn Chapter formed from the blood of Sanguinius. In honor of the revered dead, the Chapter was given the name the Angels Penumbral, marking them the first of that name for nearly two millennia. The Archangel quickly forged the Chapter into the very personification of wrath, striking down the heresies of the weak and the impurities of the alien. To them went the consecrated world of Aggelos, deep within the Principalities, an isolated collection of nearly two hundred systems. The Principalities were under near total domination by Ecclesiarchal authorities. However, in spite of the often poor relations between the Adeptus Astartes and the Ecclesiarchy, the Angels Penumbral readily adapted and conformed, in no small part due to the stubborn faiths of their granted home world. Their relationship grew, so that the two would often work in concert and to each other’s benefit. The ministry would send word to the Angels of heretics to be eradicated and cults to be exterminated. The most significant example was the Purging of the Conclave in M39. Local Inquisitors had acquired evidence that a Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes, the Conclave, had become thoroughly corrupted by the influences of Chaos. With the secretive Dark Angels spearheading the assault, the Religio Dominus, the hereditary ruler and spiritual leader of the Principalities, asked of the more forthcoming Angels Penumbral to participate in the hunt. The taskforce struggled for three years against the Conclave, until finally the corrupted Chapter was shattered, with few of the treacherous renegades escaping. Word had it that the renegades split into small, fractured Conclaves that scattered to the winds, but it was decreed that the threat to the Imperium no longer required the Angels’ presence. Since then, the Angels Penumbral have harbored a distrust of their cousins, those sons of the Lion. Recently, with the Tyranids invading the Imperium en masse, the Principalities have become under assault by a splinterfleet, officially labeled the Gorinech Tendril. The Angels Penumbral, to their great shame, took the threat too lightly at first. Dozens of the Principalities’ worlds along the trailing edge fell almost overnight. The Angels Penumbral have since declared all-out war and the entire Chapter has mobilized in attempts to stem the all-devouring tide. The Angels, in coordination with the coalition of local military, are holding out for an organized Crusade to push the xenos out of the Sector. However, these efforts have been hampered by subterfuge from unknown quarters, and the alien hordes have managed to continue slowly their inexorable push forward to the Imperial core, against all resistance and the fury of angels. Home World “When the brown rock turn black at the sight of blood, and the fallen sun hovers overhead, do not sheathe your blade or cease in the bloodletting. Nothing angers an angel more than passivity.” – Proverb by the Holy Scrivener Seshayyim Aggelos is a large rocky world deep within the Principalities. Classified as a delta-class Death World, Aggelos suffers from unstable tectonic activity, making earthquakes and volcanic eruptions commonplace. It has a verdant belt of vegetation that girdles the planet, but largely Aggelos is a dry world of hot sands and rocky formations. The Angels Penumbral have, in surveying their world, located multiple points of relative stability across the planet. Here, they have planted immense, circular towers, filled to bursting with technologies that allow them to observe and record the Aggelians. The Aggelians themselves are a fractured, feudal people, often at war with themselves over meager resources in the never-ending struggle for survival. As all of the mortal populations within the Principalities are, the Aggelians are zealous followers of the Imperial Creed. War has become indelibly inscribed in their religious faiths. They believe that all conflict is to the betterment of the human species. Each variation of faith on Aggelos, and there are many, believe fully and truly that only they are in the right, and must wage war against all those in the wrong, by extension everyone else. It is done in the name of the God-Emperor, and anything less would be an affront to His Divinity. To the people of Aggelos, the Angelspires, as they know them, are revered places of worship. The world’s greatest city-states have formed at their base, upon the skeletal remains of other great civilizations, which had eventually lost the fight for a space next to divinity. Such cities are sprawling masses of low buildings, for it is sacrilege to create anything of unnecessary height, for to do so is to defy the works of the angels. In the shifting oceans of sand, the nomadic tribes thrive, who survive by trading between cities or raiding them, and who covet and fight to the death over every found oasis. Though there exists on Aggelos a temperate zone, teeming with plant and wild life, no Aggelian would dare risk venture within its shadowed depths. The angels have decreed the gardens of Aggelos off-limits to mortal kind, and to defy them is to welcome certain death. The Angels keep close watch over Aggelos, especially during times of great conflict. Many battles have been ended abruptly as the Angels fall from their fortress-monastery on pillars of flame, smiting the unworthy as they extricate those promising few. The fortress-monastery, styled Sol Invictus, is a large orbital plate, not unlike those see on Terra. The plate hovers over Aggelos, high among the clouds. It is a marvel of design and architecture, its outer faces composed of shifting white marble and reflective glass. Even in the darkness of Aggelos’ moonless night, the home of angels shines with blinding light. As much as the Angels have become incorporated into the belief systems of the Aggelians, so have the Aggelian faiths been incorporated into the Chapter Cult. The Aggelian mortals see the Angels much as the Angels see themselves, as the vengeance and wrath of the Divine Emperor made of His Own Flesh descended upon the galaxy. However, there are those that see them as dark figures, terrible demons that fall upon their most promising young warriors as a means to cull them and keep them weak. It is no secret within the Chapter what is done with such mortal cults. Though many fear that some long forgotten incident of their own flaws is what instigated such beliefs. No recruits are taken from such faiths, and whispers on desert wind will rouse the faith’s rivals against them. Only one apocryphal faith has resisted the usual attempts at extermination, led by a messianic figure known simply as the savior king. Founded 973.M41, the savior king refuses to acknowledge the divine heritage of the angels, and sees their father and his brothers as hyper-inflated stories of mortal men. The God-Emperor is a spiritual entity, the truest essence of Godhood, not a physical Man who was God. Worship of those who claimed to be His sons is tantamount to idolatry and deemed heretical. Many among the Angels Penumbral have decried the cult; that they must take an active hand in eradicating it, which has grown in strength of late. Many within the Chapter fear that to allow this cult to live comes with the risk of letting in one indoctrinated to its twisted faith. By the end of the 41st millennium, the Chapter Master has finally given in to the demands of the concerned. It may be too late. Combat Doctrine “And war came to the heaven, as the angels fought the dragon, and the dragon feasted upon the angels.” -- Retribution 21:7; apocryphal The Angels Penumbral are a wave of fury, preferring to meet enemies head-on where they can make their physical strengths count the most. With the high preference for jump packs and aerial assaults typical of the sons of Sanguinius, the Angels plummet from the heavens, slamming into and crushing their foes from above. Battle-brothers of the Adeptus Astartes are the avenging Angels of Death and the Angels Penumbral lay claim to that title like no other. They roar into battle with the screaming of jetfire accentuating the fervently yelling Marines as the Chaplains lead them through the catechisms. The blasphemy of the daemon, impurity of the xenos and heresy of the traitor are zealously intoned as the Angels cut them down with sword and roaring bolter. The Angels Penumbral fear the day their curse becomes commonly known, for with such a realization they may be deemed irretrievably damned. As such, the Angels Penumbral are infamous for being the lone survivors in many a conflict, where only the Angels are aware of the truth of the battle. Organisation “And the Son of Man came into His glory, and with Him upon His last days were His Angels, then did He sit upon the Throne of His glory.” – attrib. Adina, the First Apostle The Chapter adheres closely to the Codex Astartes in organization, more so than other sacred sons of the Angel Sanguinius do. Even the Blood Angels, the foremost inheritors of Sanguinius, deviate in order to compensate for the shared curse of the Sanguinian bloodline. The Angels Penumbral do not share in this deviation, though adherence to the Codex is not the reason underlying this fact. The Angels Penumbral do not field a Death Company. Those who suffer from the curse, on or off the battlefield, are restrained and imprisoned within the Sarcophagaem. This dark and brooding ship ferries the damned to their place of execution. So on guard are they that there have been times the ship has been entered only to find sane Marines who have overcome momentary lapses of judgment and merely lost control over their anger, however this is never enough to stay the execution. Though those who suffer the Black Rage are treated with attempts at dignity and mercy, for their anger is honest if not righteous, those who suffer the Red Thirst are not treated with such. Not unlike the Commissars of the mortal Imperial Guard, the Angels will kill their brother, immediately and without hesitation. The Chapter reveres their first Archangel and his primary advisor, Reclusiarch Zephirem, and the Chapter has retained this pairing as a traditional element of their command structure. Though Zephirem was part of the Chapter’s Reclusiam, these advisors can and do come from any of the auxiliary organizations, though dominantly from the Reclusiam. Beliefs “For we wrestle not against the flesh and blood of the Principalities, nor against its powers, but against the hidden rulers of the darkness within this world, against the spiritual wickedness in low places.” – Archangel Yehosho’a of the Corporeals, 991.M41 The Angels Penumbral believe in a truth that few other Chapters have the courage to accept. They believe fully in the divinity of the God-Emperor. Due to their own genetic links to the God-Emperor, this religious belief extends to themselves. The Emperor is God, His sons are born of His Flesh and His Soul, and the Astartes are His Angels. Within Sol Invictus, the pious Marines show reverence to their dead within their extensive crypts, the Sheofon. The Sheofon consist of rows upon rows of interred remains, majestic statues depicting the fallen in their primacy overlooking those who pay sacred homage. Nearly all of the Angels who have fallen over the millennia have their remains within Sheofon. Even those with no remains to be found, or who have been executed in the throes of Black Rage, still have a place. Only to those who succumb to the Red Thirst are denied place. Though all know the overwhelming temptation to give into their curse, those who do have forsaken the brilliant divinity within and damn themselves. Their mortal body remains blasphemously alive, but the true Angel died as he succumbed. Those who have given in to the Black Rage are remembered for who they once were. Those who indulge in the infernal hunger of the Red Thirst are stricken from all records, regardless of whatever prestige they had in life. Gene-Seed “These words spake Sanguinius, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thy Throne.” – Ged’on Eli of Khasawet The Angels Penumbral are made in the God-Emperor's image, granted a fraction of His Divinity with which they may be the instruments of His Wrath. The blood of the Angel, holiest of the Nine Divines and from which the Chapter is named, flows through their veins, granting them his strength and nobility, but also his flaws. Though closest in perfection than any other of that esteemed pantheon and fashioned most in the God-Emperor's own image, Sanguinius suffered most of all the myriad flaws of man, from which he had been forged. The terrible thirst and anger that haunted this distant and holy son of the God-Emperor haunts still his children, and few more so than the Angels Penumbral. None within the Chapter knows why, though they have sought and craved to Him on Earth for a release from its constant presence for ages to no avail. The best that they can do is to excise those who exhibit the curses as quickly as possible, lest its corruptive nature spread further. Battle Cry "Unto the Godless, death!” Here are a couple new images. I'm rather fond of the bronzed helm to go along with the pauldrons, but I included one without so I can get some input. http://i.imgur.com/VmOQnLz.jpg http://i.imgur.com/h0SIufa.jpg