The Alternate Heresy - IA: Ultramarines

[Aurelius Rex]

The above posts have been very good, and got me thinking about aspects that I had not deeply considered before. I will get to Moonsword and SgtNacho in turn, but first, Mordray's comment.

 

I agree giving them free reign to advance their tech could be bad... but that's an author choice... In alter-'verse just what is it that is holding them back?

 

You don't have to add it to the IA but I just can't gather what is stopping them from rediscovering the lost arts of science and kicking it into high gear again.

A very good point. I think that other than occasional one-offs of isolated human civilisations found during the Great Crusade there is no place even in this Alt-'verse for humanity to have sparkling high technology that puts them on a par with the gods. 'Grimdark' and all... and it would unbalance gameplay and believability as to why they haven't already overrun the galaxy.

 

Anyway, the envisioned level of tech for the Ultramar Segmentum is generally better than the Imperium, but missing some high end things that the Mechanicus took / destroyed to allow to be captured when hostilities broke out. We know that the Mechanicus and the Imperium in general is slipping into superstition, and the Ultramarines pity them for it, but what is their excuse for not continuing scientific research. They have after all had ten thousand years, so why are they still using bolters?

 

My current thoughts on this were that Ultramar's greatest strength, its rigid organisation, is in this case a great hinderance to true progress. Guilliman's Codex Ultramar is so ingrained and works so well in most cases that there has grown up a culture that 'if it's not broke, don't fix it'. There would be continual small improvements on a system, refining and honing, but a huge inertia to throwing out the whole system and redesigning it from scratch. Evolution, not revolution.

 

So you have bolters and power armour that have been honed for ten thousand years - and as a consequence are incredibly good compared to the ones used by the Imperium, but they would never think to give the marines Super Space Death Rays because bolters were good enough for the Primarch. If Guilliman ever gets revived he would doubtless be absolutely disgusted at the lack of true progress by his realm - his masterwork has become a crutch - but then he wasn't there to have stopped it. :P

 

When they come across the Tau who have grown from cavemen to greater technological advancement than them while they were busy watching out for the Imperium, this is a serious shock to the system. They eventually fall out with the Tau, but this is enough to give them a serious kick in their superiority complex, and they start adapting things like railguns to their ships... and perhaps add it to a tank to give them something similar to the Imperium's Vindicator and even counter the Imperium's really heavy stuff like titans, which would probably always have been a thorn in their side.

 

How best to represent this in the IA? It is slightly skewed from the perspective of the Ultramarines, and they probably don't think they have done anything wrong, but a colourpiece could work. For example a speech from someone important such as Marneus Calgar, saying that they have been complacent, and must learn to incorporate things like Tau tech and research their own advances to be able to stop the Tyranids and break the grip of the Imperium once and for all.

 

Calgar would be in a perfect position to see that their systems have stagnated and were barely enough to deal with the Hive Mind. Would even he be able to overcome the institutional inertia to get things moving again? It leaves things open and full of potential for the future.

 

How does that sound? :tu:

 

Aurelius.

[Guest Mordray]

Bloody brilliant... lol.

 

That is a damn good thought line for the lack of tech advancement. It fits with the general superstition placed around the Codex and the Tau are perfect for a good swift kick as those nutters are advancing like mad.

 

Well that assesses my immediate concerns.

 

 

Keep up the good work, Aurelius.

[Moonsword]

I doubt they'd ever throw out bolters, but something similar to incorporating the advances in bolter rounds from canon to general production, making each and every bolter that much nastier, and improving their range and rate of fire by adjusting the weapon itself. Even purely "evolutionary" advances in a system, applied together, can be a revolutionary change.

 

Besides, they're quite powerful, reliable, and adaptable as a basic weapons system and leave you with a lot of potential. Something like an infrared seeker tip and a small steering array incorporated into individual bolt rounds by using improved microelectronics and explosives to do it without sacrificing range or firepower would make bolters into battlefield terrors. The change might have been resisted for a while - after all, standard, unguided rounds were good enough for the Primarch, weren't they? - but when the Tyranids come knocking, being able to hand trained Marines a weapon that lets them fire-and-forget and put much more accurate bursts downrange with less aiming will help offset their huge numbers. Other options would be heavier explosives in the missile launchers compared to Imperial versions, more reliable plasma guns that incorporate Tau advances in controlling their thermal spikes but without sacrificing the raw punch of human models, and a production model of power weapons that's cheaper and easier to field, letting them distribute the weapons more generally. I'd expect that Ultramar may be sitting on top of a lot of research that can be weaponized fairly easily once someone (Calgar, for instance) starts making the point loudly enough to get people off their butts and to realize that Guilleman's word was all about adapting to changing situations, including adapting your tools.

[Aurelius Rex]

Why must the Blood angels be bad? Especially Sangunius? He has always been the pure one, the angel, the BEST! Why would he suddenly succumb to pestilence and disease? Maybe I just hate that my boys get the Chaos card, I don't like that you just decided to switch the forces around, making evil=good and good=evil- Ultramarines.

 

I at first thought you were going to have the two forces split having World Eaters and Raven Guard fight Night lords anf Space Wolves, or whatever. You ( i know it wasn't just you) just mirrored the conflict to represent the other side.

Sanguinius's fall will not come out of the blue by any means. His origin and upbringing will be different and this will play its part. I don't want to say too much but bear in mind that Baal is a corrupted radioactive cesspit and its gene-pool is not universally spotless.

 

On the good to evil switch, from a dramatic and narrative perspective there has to be a difference between the way the legions come out, but it is not as black and white as you paint it. For instance, these Alt-Ultramarines could well be said to be more 'humanitarian' than the Imperium - the big change is not that they are evil, but that they were betrayed / made very bad choices and are now seen as pariahs by every other legion.

 

The project doesn't set out to simply mirror the fates from one to the other. I have tried extremely hard to make sure the alternate fate is believable within the context that it occurs. I got the impression that in your second paragraph you thought I was swapping the Night Lords with the Raven Guard and Space Wolves with the World Eaters. Forgive me if I have misunderstood your intention, but I have tried very hard to make sure that they are far more than cut and paste reversals. The Alt-Raven Guard are not the Norm-Night Lords, and similarly take a very different slant on being the Tzeentch cult legion than the Thousand Sons did. Similarly the Space Wolves are not just wolfy World Eater berserkers. Their motivations are very different - they are their own men. I am finishing the SW IA now so they are in my head at the moment. :lol: Other aspects of this history are also completely different to the Norm-'verse - there is nothing like the fates of the Iron Hands and the Salamanders in the HH history. :)

 

Anyway back to Sanguinius. What in his character points to him getting the Nurgle card? So he is a little perfect, but wouldn't that at least sound more Slannesh?

 

I like an idea i had, which was have the Blood angels turn on their primarch who stays loyal, so the Blood angels become evil (if they had too) But Sanguinius gets to still get himself torn up by Dorn.

 

Oh well, I do like this IA and the "DH-verse" Which we should call it from now on forever and always. I don't like the complete opposite forces.

The legion turning on their primarch who stays loyal has already been covered with Corax's fate. ;)

 

About Sanguinius being perfect, a fall to either Slaanesh or Khorne was a possible, but the mental image of him vampirically draining the blood of helpless victims in a desperate attempt to replace his own Nurgle-corrupted, blood struck me as far less obvious and a lot more compelling. :devil: Thanks also to Moonsword for his take on Evil Sanguinius too. :tu: It almost makes me want to skip ahead in the plan and do Alt-IA:Blood Angels next! :lol:

 

Besides, you have seen how good Sanguinius was as a good guy. Just wait to see how good (bad?) he can be as a bad guy! :)

 

Edit:

@Moonsword - those kinds of bolter evolutions all sound feasable. I can quite imagine Calgar finding lots of proposals like that through Ultramar Segmentum history that were all shelved by previous chapter masters. I will try to include this in the colourpiece when I write it up. More on the ships ideas later.

[Moonsword]

To be honest, I stole the infrared seeker straight from the gyrojet rockets GURPS Ultra-Tech and their "Viper" variant, which has carried that particular nasty idea for at least the last two editions of the book. Those things have always appealed to me as infantry weapons, especially when you pair them with explosive tips in rocket with a 25% greater diameter, which is about the same as the smart grenades the US Army was working with in the OICW project. Some microelectronics and steering fins aren't that big a stretch beyond what we can build today.

[sgtNACHO]

I know you didn't exactly mirror them and such, but I thought that Some of the Chaos guy and some of the Imperium guys would be the imperium team, and some chaos guys and some Imperium guys would be the Chaos team. I thought that would be a little more appealing to our curiosity. I used those chapters as they are similar although I didn't doubt you'd put them on totally different paths then their "Norm"-verse selves <_<

 

But your -verse has been created and their is no point in arguing what has already happened, so instead of changing the past lets improve the future right?

 

If I had to trust the future of the Blood Angels and their ability to kick some ass, it would be you my friend! This IA was very well written and your fluff is by far more interesting than I imagined when I opened this thread. I just hope for a story that is just as believable and well created as this one for my Pappa Angel!

 

Yes! You should start on IA: Blood angels right away! I don't want to wait much longer :D

 

The legion turning on their primarch who stays loyal has already been covered with Corax's fate.

 

Well then you stole my idea! :P ;)

 

Good work keep it up!

[Aurelius Rex]

@ Moonsword - With regard to the fleet, I was thinking that in general the Astartes would be able to use the Ultramar Segmentum navy as transports rather than being constantly having to waste their limited numbers crewing a ship. I think you are correct there. Because of the integrated nature of the Ultramarines / Navy / Segmentum guard that things like cruisers and grand cruisers, especially the carrier types, would have enough capacity to transport whole regiments, especially if their refinements extends to a degree of automation to reduce the vast numbers of slave ratings that are required for the Imperial ships. (I am just re-reading 'Execution Hour' at the moment which has a good representation of that aspect. ;) ) With more space freed up the cruiser could easily have room for a battle company if it needed a lift. As you said the ranking Ultramarine would be able to tell the captain what he wanted to do, such as past the orbital defences so they can assault a planet, but the 'how' part would be best dealt with by the navy officer commanding the ship. In such a case the marines would be able to get onto the planet quickly, backed up by the regiments on the ship which would come down later.

 

There would also be plenty of scope for the different chapters in the Ultramarines legion, and even more for their sucessors, to specialise in boarding actions, just as there is in the norm-'verse, with Daeothar's Fiery Lions.

 

A lot of these things would necessarily be outside the scope of what I can squeeze into the IA, but I do want to link it into there. The plan is to have Calgar watching the first example of his drive to revolutionise the Ultramarines - the (very heavy) railgun armed Grand Cruiser, parallel to the lance based monstrous battle barge that the norm-UM have after fighting the Tyranids, the 'something Opprimere'... Check the spelling tonight! :)

 

Edit: Got it!

"Seditio Opprimere was reduced to a near hulk at the Battle of Prandium. It was rebuilt as a gunship with powerful long-range plasma lances to give the Ultramarines stand-off fire support when fighting Tyranids using the new fleet tactics. This severely compromised the ability of the barge to deploy troops."

In the spirit of having events echo in both universes, but with very different context, this sounds like the perfect event to build the colourpiece around. :) The plan is to get the new piece done before I disappear on holiday in a week or so - watch this space. :)

[Moonsword]

One of the fun things with Ultramar (and, for that matter, the Imperium, since Abaddon apparently didn't parallel the canon Guilleman's separation of powers edict) is the tight integration of Guard and Astartes formations. While they won't have the raw power of Titans, Ultramar's forces probably have at least some access to the super-heavy tanks, and Shadowswords can reportedly make Titans very nervous.

[Ace Debonair]

By gods, these stories are good. I personally am hopping from foot to foot waiting for the Night Lords story. Not the most obvious one, perhaps, but I've always been a big fan of the bat-hats. :lol:

 

Also the chapters you've already covered have been almost unfairly detailed, believable and awesome. I'm also more than a touch curious about the fates of the Imperial Fists themselves, as well as Horus's chapter, whatever name they adopt come the finish in this tale.

 

Once I figure out how to post things properly instead of just responses I'll be quite tempted to write DH versions of my chapters, such as they are. ;)

 

White Scars next, you say? I'll be looking forward to that one, too. Keep up the good work! :D

[Moonsword]

The Fists appear, from the primary summary of the Dornian Heresy, to have become the Black Legion, commanded by Sigismund, where Abaddon organized and lead the Black Templars. I'm curious as to the combat organization of the Templars here, as Abaddon would have left a very different imprint on the Templars than Sigismund would have, and Sigismund's Black Legion is going to be something interesting indeed, less of a generalist force than a combine of fury and rage, spit on by the greater powers but driven by spite and shame at their Primarch's failure.

[Ace Debonair]

Oh yeah, I actually recall reading that bit now - sounds pretty neat. Thanks for reminding me! ;)

 

Still looking forward to Loyalist Night Lords. They always struck me as my kind of legion - striking when the sun goes down and using fear as a weapon and all that. Not sure if they'd get away with keeping the hats in this version of the story, though. :D

 

Re-reading some of this excellent story, though, I've got myself wondering... how (theoretically) could more loyalist chapters be brought in for this storyline? Would they be more legions instead, or would another method of dividing up the existing forces occur?

 

Or am I just thinking way too deeply now? :lol:

[Guest Mordray]

In the World Eater's IA it talks about them founding new Grand Companies (I think that was the term used), I beleive it also mentioned them not having the same colors but I could be wrong.

 

So that's one idea.

[Moonsword]

Neither do companies within the same Chapter sometimes (the Ultramarines canonically have a set of colors that's used somewhere on the pauldrons with the color designating which company you belong to), and more free-wheeling Chapters might not enforce things even that stringently. (The Wolves, for example, vary their heraldry by company.)

 

Given that the Emperor's Children are the arch-conservatives of the Dornian Heresy, I doubt they're doing anything more than varying the company designator color in the same fashion that probably existed before the Horus/Dornian Heresy.

 

@Ace:

They do, but the pre-Mortarion Death Guard were, canonically, the Dusk Raiders. They were infamous for hitting with the coming of twilight to the point it became a psychological terror tactic. The US Army pulls night ops on people for similar reasons of psychological and tactical advantage in combat.

[Ace Debonair]

Thanks for taking the time to reply to the ramblings of a humble, inexperienced newcomer, it's much appreciated.

 

I have to confess an almost total lack of knowledge regarding some of the chapters, such as the Death Guard/Dusk Raiders. I'm sure I read somewhere (no idea where) that the night attack was what gave the Night Lords their name, but perhaps I've mixed up the chapters and am waiting for the wrong story!

 

Still, all this means is I'm now eagerly waiting for more of the story! :P Can't wait to see how some of the other chapters turn out, too - the Dark Angels in particular - does this mean, for instance, that Cypher will be a good guy running from his chaotically aligned bretheren? :)

 

Either way, I can't wait to find out more. :)

[Aurelius Rex]

I haven't forgotten the thread, just dazedly trying to get back into the swing of things after my week's holiday down in the Lake District. I intend to add the colourpiece on Ultramarine technological development, or the lack of it, in the next few days. :)

 

Oh, and glad you are enjoying the Dornian Heresy, Ace.

[Moonsword]

*points at join date* You've been here longer than I have, Ace. I just read a lot. ;)

 

My main point on the night attack is that while it may be a Night Lords specialty, they're not the only ones that do it.

[Ace Debonair]

I may have been here longer, my friend, but I have a decidedly shakier understanding of much of the 40k universe.

 

I'm learning, though. :D

 

And I'm glad to see I wasn't barking up the wrong tree, if I understood you correctly - the Night Lords are still going to be stealth/night attack experts, but good guys. I can't wait. My imagination is already filled to the brim with potential split-off companies. :P

 

Also, Aurelius, it just dawned on me you found room for your DIY chapter in the story. That was woven in so well I took it on trust that it was an official chapter until about ten minutes ago. :ermm: Fantastic stuff.

[Tutteman]

Nice, I think I stick by my comment on an earlier one that I prefer this version to GWs

[Moonsword]

Something occurred to me earlier. Where did the Grey Knights come from here, if they exist at all? Given the way the Word Bearers and Thousand Sons seem to be the go-to guys for whomping on Chaos in the Imperium and the difference in the way the Heresy itself played out, I doubt they're Imperial, which leaves Ultramar.

 

Why, then, would the Grey Knights exist? Zealous and puritanical, dedicated to the Emperor above all, the Imperium's greatest champions in the fight against the Ruinous Powers, the elite among the elite in many respects canonically. Their faith makes them pariahs, and their tendency to care little whether they fight for the Imperium or Ultramar means they stand between the darkness of ignorance and superstition and the light of arrogance and hypocrisy, but as ever, they endure, militantly zealous, bringing their psychic power and puritanical faith wherever their endless crusade against the Ruinous powers leads them. Their ships are often ramshackle affairs, and their supplies run low, often supplemented by whatever they can beg, borrow, or steal, but still, come the morn, the Grey Knights will stand on the ramparts.

[Guest Mordray]

That was pretty damn good, Moonsword! That's also one hell of a lot more interesting then the 'we are the best of the best of the best! We have the best of the best of the best!' attatude and gear... bloody A's have the best terminator armour around and yet some how no one fully understands how to make it... what a load... stupid GW... they managed to make something with so much potential and loads of awesome, but they also keep screwing it up...

 

Oh well I could go on like that for just about forever...

[Ace Debonair]

Something occurred to me earlier. Where did the Grey Knights come from here, if they exist at all? Given the way the Word Bearers and Thousand Sons seem to be the go-to guys for whomping on Chaos in the Imperium and the difference in the way the Heresy itself played out, I doubt they're Imperial, which leaves Ultramar.

 

If the grey knights are psychically inclined, another possibilty is they could be a Grand Company that splits from the Thousand Sons. If the Imperium as a whole views the whole Ultramar bunch as traitors, and maybe even tainted by chaos, I'm not sure I could see the Grey Knights helping them.

 

Which doesn't stop everything you just said sounding cool. :eek

[Moonsword]

Their faith and views are not pro-Ultramar, they're pro-humanity, with a side order of Emperor worship as an ancestral cult. The way they act tends to confuse some of the Legions as to what they're looking at, and Grey Knights confronted by hostile loyalists tend to run. If captured, they began to pray to the Emperor and starve themselves to death. Their numbers are low, but they always seem to get enough to get by, if not enough to prosper.

 

I'm not that attached to the idea, but it seems like an interesting juxtaposition of their faith, their canonical status, and the way they'd exist in the DH.

[Aurelius Rex]

The Grey Knights have not been mentioned up to now - and neither has the Inquisition - but cross-pollinating the discussions here with the current Alt-IA article has produced an idea that has really excited me. I will tease it out some more and contact you about it by PM, Moonsword! :wacko:

[Potan]

Oh, good reading.

Really good job.

Keep, working.

Your alternate heresy is very interesting.

[Ubermensch Commander]

WOW! This is amazing! One of the best IA you have written so far.

I like how you kept up the IA style that GW kept: Skewing each IA to be favorable to the Legion/Chapter that it focuses on.

This and the Raven Guard ones are my favorites. Interesting and fresh takes on both of them, rather than taking the easy "flip them to their chaos counterparts" approach some others take.

Oh, and THANK YOU for not making Ultramarines a bunch of Chaos worshiping loonies. I like the idea of Guilliman's own pride making him do what he did rather than the cop out of "Chaos did it." A very nice "Third Faction" focusing on the traits that make the Ultramarines what they are: Superb discipline, organizational skills, and a supreme self conifdence that spills over to the populaces under their "noblesse oblige".

Their way is the BEST way; PERIOD!

 

Or so they tell us.