IA:War Dogs

[Doghouse]

I'm wacking together a quick marine army and after some suggestions for fleshing out the background material.

 

What I'm thinking off the top of my head is a chapter that s heavily infantry based. I don't really know what founding the Invaders were but I'd like the War Dogs to be either a successor of the chapter or of the same founding sharing the same geneseed.

 

The really rough outline I have so far in my head is that these guys only use Devastator and Tactical squads. Devastator squads fill the same role as other chapters allowing initiates to cut their teeth in battle but beyond that the role of tactical marine is seen as a true all rounder. Sternguard veteran squads represent senior more experianced tactical squads and the Bolt Gun being revered above all other weapons in their arsenal.

 

The philosophy of the chapter is the old cliched "glorious death in battle" theme. The only honour greater than this is to be placed in a dreadnought so that they can die in battle all over again fighting bigger foes.

 

Now the bit I'm pondering which might be stretching it a little is to have the first company consist soley of between eighteen to twenty odd dreadnoughts. Now in my mind it's pushing it a bit to have a chapter with so many but what I was thinking was that these guys have unwittedly become a specialised tool for Marneus Calgar to use to supress renegade chapters or intervene in disputes between loyalist factions that are beyond the reach of the Ultramarines.

They acknowledge other chapters as their brothers, aiding them when required and should they be ordered to bring a wayward chapter back into the fold then they do so without remorse or regret.

 

So the idea is that these guys are walking a very fine line. In their mind their only true equals would be other Astartes so the only way that they could truely get their glorious death is to fight fellow Astartes.

I was thinking that for each chapter that is made to repent a penance is paid, whether it is a penitent crusade or forfeiting their homeworld in more extreme cases. So it might not be too far a stretch for them to have to hand over several of their Dreadnought suits that were slain in the conflict to the War Dogs as part of this punishment.

 

Basically Calgar sees them as an extremely loyal slightly divergent codex chapter but the truth is these guys go looking for trouble fighting the hardest opponents they can find.

[Codex Grey]

I like the idea of an entire Company of Dreadnoughts slowly marching towards the enemy. It is the Veteran Company afterall, and dreads are the most veteran of the veterans :D But as you said it may be streching it. The Ultramarines have acording to the new codex 26 dreads spread throughout the Chapter. Thing is, they are a first founding Chapter with ten millenia worth of service and probably have acess to more dread suits. The other thing is that the number of dreads they have is something that has been built up over time. So for a new Chapter to dedicate a whole Company to dreads seems strange since they don't have any in the begining. Maybe it happened after a catastrophical event or somesuch. I don't know how to justify it, but I hope you find a solution.

 

The part about being Marneus tools... I don't know, it just doesn't sit right with me.

[Brother Kaven]

Hey Doghouse, I'm with Grey on the idea of an entire company of Dreads slogging their way toward you but alas would you really want to throw all of your experience into battle and just by some freak chance lose a vast majority of them? But damn, if it was simple to make dread armor i'd do it in a second.

 

Now on being Calgar's "hammer of justice", I wasn't aware that you could bring a "wayward" chapter back into the fold. I thought one they where considered wayward the big I would call Excommunicate and call for the order of apprehending them or killing them.

[Grey Hunter Ydalir]

Now on being Calgar's "hammer of justice", I wasn't aware that you could bring a "wayward" chapter back into the fold. I thought one they where considered wayward the big I would call Excommunicate and call for the order of apprehending them or killing them.

 

That depends on the wrong committed, and whether the Chapter that committed the crime is willing to submit themselves to the Emperors judgemend and, potentially, be found guilty and put to death. If however they are found to be sincere, the Imperium can ill afford to kill off some of its most powerful warriors and has in the past accepted chapters back into the fold after various transgressions. The Badab War serves as more than enough evidence of this.

 

However on the other side of it, I doubt it would be a terribly common ocurrance and not something to just go about doing, as marine chapters rarely cede from the Imperium anyway.