Void Stalkers

[valanus]

Hello all, have taken a break from making my Imperial Fists force and decided to do something with all the CSM i seem to gathered and that are just lying around. Having really enjoyed reading Lord of Night and Soul Hunter recently I am thinking of creating a Night Lords splinter group or faction that have split from the main Night Lords force and renamed themselves the Void Stalkers. Fluff-wise they became disgusted with the way their legion was heading and decided to go it on their own.

I want them to be loyal to the original Night Lords methods of fear and terror tactics and operate with more hit and run, lightning strike style attacks.

I don't want to use demons etc in the force, as i simply don't like them and i really don't want to use the horrible bat wing helmet look because i just don't like it at all.

If anyone has an tips or words of advice or just any thoughts on the matter i would appreciate any input as i'm really not sure whether to use the CSM codex or use something more like the BA codex as it would let me use lots of jump pack and this seems more in keeping with their style of combat.

help please.

Valanus

[Hobo Willie]

There's several ways to go about this.

 

1) Codex: Blood Angels - I disagree with this choice because you are basically doing this so that you can take Assault Marines as troops. However, as the Night Lords don't have Baal Predators or Death Company (no matter how you try to fluff it up, the rules really don't fit) or the various dreadnoughts and other loyalist goodies, you have to skip out on a lot of the fun and unique units in that Codex to try and keep the army in line with the Night Lord's fluff. I honestly doubt it'll be as fun as you'd think.

 

2) Codex: Space Marines - I also disagree with this for much of the same reasons as above. You have to skip out on all but the basic stuff, which will make for a bland list. Droppods are excellent fits fluffwise and Sternguard fit well enough. But as an Imperial Fist player, you've probably had your fill of that.

 

3a) Codex: Chaos Space Marines - If you strictly adhere to the idea that the Night Lords shun worship (and those that worship), the Codex is fairly bland as well. However, all of the basic Chaos Space Marines come with a close combat weapon, a bolt pistol, and a bolter, making them more versatile than a Tactical Squad. In addition, Chosen with their Infiltrate/Outflank fit the stealthy nature of the Night Lords and nothing is more frightening than five meltaguns appearing on your flank and slagging your most expensive tank. Raptors are an obvious choice, fluffwise, though they are rather lackluster on the table. Though a decent shock unit when teamed with an HQ.

 

3b) Codex: Chaos Space Marines - If you want to go the route that they tolerate the occasional cult unit, it opens up a lot of options. Or that the Night Lords you paint up could just be fielded as a warband allied to a cult army (and used as Chosen to represent that they are also highly specialized). That might be the better way to go competitively.

 

Honestly, by going as an Undivided Legion (that isn't Black Legion) with the current codices available usually means you're going to be ignoring at least some portions of the Codex and somewhat hindering your own ability to build interesting lists with the current Chaos Codex. I'd really just make your own Renegade Chapter that has cult units or do a cult army or a Black Legion army if you want to keep it fluffy and interesting.

[valanus]

To be honest i can make the fluff fit the army, that's why i love fluff. As long as i can field a decent force i can work any kind of unit choice into the fluffyness. I think you may be right about the CSM option. Thanks for the reply.

[Dammish]

I have been lurking the forums here for a bit trying to find more posts on this topic, and if you will all forgive me for being a rather new player I would like to throw my two cents in:

 

Blood Angels codex option: This is what I have been thinking about doing with my own night-lord-themed codex company, and I still think of it as an enjoyable and fluffy-option. The chaos codex and the GW site both attest to the ubiquity of the raptor amongst NL forces and their favor for it during raids is now legendary. Seeing as it occupies such a unique space within their chapter tactics as well as their fluff I can see many good reasons to include assault troops (the codex equivalent to raptors) as a troops choice and call it even. Also, have you ever seen pictures of pre-heresy raptors with NL colors? The color scheme and iconography is all there but no pointy claw-feet and no obvious mutation. It is much easier to get the look right with normal assault marines and a scary paint job in my opinion.

 

My only beef with fielding a NL army with CSM models is that the normal chosen and trooper units are CLEARLY chaos tainted and there is no way to get around it without massive work on the modeler's part. If you want to field a NL army with a nice fluffy background where they are still resisting the effects of mutation and chaos, these models just will not serve you purposes as well as standard SM will.

 

As far as the limitations of actually fielding units go, I personally see a lot more restraints being put on me trying to field them as chaos. A CSM division that is trying to resist the forces of chaos will have no chaos banners, no daemons, no possessed, no berserkers, no obliterators, (probably) no defilers and certainly won't be fielding any of the named personalities as their HQ choice except maybe Bile. That leaves a paltry number of units to the player which have much to be desired in the way of tactical flexibility and chaos specialization (good luck finding a CSM player who wouldn't want either an obliterator or a defiler in their setup).

 

Now in terms of codex units, couldn't you largely make the argument that because NL rely on raid tactics and have been plaguing the Imperium for many millennium that MAYBE they made off with a land speeder or two? Most of the basic technology that codex chapters use was in use during the Heresy, right? I know that chaos use a slightly different pattern for their dreadnoughts but that the special rules for those units are largely based on the demonic characteristic of the driver, not the machine itself. Again, an untainted NL army would not use tainted units such as you find in a chaos Dread, but they MIGHT still have some venerable dreadnoughts constructed either pre-heresy or in the dark days afterward by techmarines within the chapter. So what units, specifically, would an untainted NL army be unable to take??

[Rain]

Raptors aren't really common among Night Lords, they are just less rare than they are among other legions. Jump packs in general were very rare pre-heresy and so the units equipped with them were small and elite. Fielding a chaos legion list with jump packers as troops really doesn't make much sense unless it's actually a raptor cult banded together from several legions.

 

Oh and as for your army OP, just use Codex:Chaos especially as you already have a vanilla marine army. Just as an aside, keep in mind that what you think was the "true" calling of the Night Lords may or may not be as true as you think. Remember that Sahaal is very self-important and possibly deluded and Acerbus outright mocks his beliefs stating that Curze thought of him as a useful idiot, which might not be far from the truth.

[Dammish]

Oh I see. I did not know that about the raptors, though I knew that the "true" purpose of the 40K Night Lords remains a point of contention. I just see a lot more to like about a "semi-loyalist" interpretation of the NL, since other interpretations seem to commonly fall short at something like "desperate and cunning traitor legion." I mean, if you are going to fall from grace you may as well do it while sticking to your principles. Having them worship chaos just feels like a massive cop-out, as if they couldn't make it on their own without Curze. Maybe that's true, but they lose so much of their appeal compared to traitor legions that rebelled on principle like the World Bearers or Sons of Horus.

 

Back to the topic of how to field a "loyalist" band of NL, though, do you have any recommendations for fielding them as chaos? From what I read here, there aren't many incentives to field, as you say, "vanilla" CSM except as Chaos Chosen who get a much more interesting weapon load-out. I STILL see some problems justifying their stats, though, since most of the differences between normal SM and their Chaos counterparts are justified in the fluff through chaos mutation. I do not yet know the CSM codex in and out so I do not know off-hand which models have different stats from their SM counterparts, though a quick look at it shows that many of the troops are actually CHEAPER than their codex versions which surprises me.

 

Maybe I will give chaos another shot and see what the forums here have to say about running plain-yogurt flavored chaos. Thank you for your help, and I hope that this thread will prove useful to others with the same question.

[Brother Kirus]

You might want to look in to Space Wolf codex. With some obvious restrictions (scouts, thunder wolf cavalry est.) this codex might represent NL very well. Night vision, elite warriors, drop pods, more controllable dreadnoughts…

[Hellios]

Raptors aren't really common among Night Lords, they are just less rare than they are among other legions. Jump packs in general were very rare pre-heresy and so the units equipped with them were small and elite. Fielding a chaos legion list with jump packers as troops really doesn't make much sense unless it's actually a raptor cult banded together from several legions.

 

I disagree with this... not that they are rare but that the only option that makes sense is a raptor cult from various legions... I think if your warbands leader was a captain of an assault company of the night lords may well be able to have a large number of assault marines.... especially if you go with the 100,000 strong legion rather than 10,000 even if the night lords only had 1,000 jump packs... is it that hard to believe that somewhere some war band leader has 40 or so?

[Rain]

@Hellios

Yeah it kind of is. I mean the (assuming 100k) legions also probably had several thousand tanks, but does 40 tanks in one "skirmish" army make sense? Also remember that even now, but especially pre-heresy, not all members of an assault company had jump packs. Khârn led an assault company, and he didn't have a JP did he? That said, if legions were 100k strong, 1000 jump packers is quite a reasonable number, but these would be spread out over the legion and after losses, etc. there probably just aren't very many left, and those that are, are probably the elite units in armies consisting of the much more numerous foot infantry. Is it possible? Well sure, but it's really bending things, I mean it's "possible" to have a Chaos army using Black Templar rules and "stolen" Land Raider Crusaders, it just seems farfetched so it's not done.

 

@Dammish

Well yes, cult units would be restricted, however that's the price you pay for fluff, if you want to follow Night Lord fluff, especially "puritan" NL fluff, no matter what list you use, many powerful options will be restricted. The main issue though in my mind is not so much no cults as no Daemon Prince. DP's are just such an amazing HQ that is better than lords and sorcs in pretty much every conceivable way. Also, standard CSM are best with Icon of Chaos Glory, which would also not make much sense with "puritan" Night Lords. Honestly I think trying to play this kind of army just hamstrings you too much because "not Chaos Chaos" lists don't exist. That said, a fluffy and effective NL army can be made with a DPs, CSM's with 2x assault weapon, fist champ and IoCG in rhinos, outflanking chosen with 4x assault weapons in a rhino, raptors with meltaguns, etc.

[Dammish]

Many thanks to Rain for your constructive input, and also to Kirus for an idea that had never even occured to me. I will give the Space Wolves a closer look tonight and see whether or not this might work better with the fluff. Really, just so long as I do not have to use any home-brew rules to field my units then I and my fellow players will be quite happy. ^_^

 

Now, on to a more specific question that I had, I am trying to re-balance my army list along the very reasonable lines offered up by Helios (using CSM codex) but I am having one very serious problem. When I originally bought my models I had planned to field them as either space marines or Blood Angels and so I invested in some really nice metal Vanguard models that I painted and have been fielding as Honor Guard for my jump-captain. These four guys are by FAR my favorite models in terms of painting quality and I desperately want to field them as something, but they all have plasma pistols or power swords and I just can't bring myself to throw them in with the other raptors. I would love to field them as Chaos Chosen with outflank and place my captain (now my chaos lord) in with them but I see no option for giving chosen jetpacks. Does anyone have any ideas?

 

EDIT: I have now read several entries talking about "renegade" marine chapters and I was hoping someone here might be willing to explain them to me. Do they have a different codex or use any special rules? Fluff-wise, are they just normal space marines that have broken from Terra and are now pursuing their own agenda, like the Black Templars? Seems like THIS might be the way to go for my Night Lords.

[Rain]

No, chosen cannot take jump packs, raptors would really be your only option. Also, stick to meltagun/plasmagun/flamer for your special weapons, plasma pistols are currently overpriced for what they do. Honestly if I were you I would keep them as part of a separate Blood Angel army and just start from scratch if you want to play Night Lords because red Night Lords with blood drops on them would be a bit iffy.

 

Renegade Chapters are not at all like Black Templars, essentially they are chapters that for whatever reason have been declared Excommunicate Traitoris by the Imperium. The reasons for this vary from actual Chaos worship, to not tithing geneseed, to chapter rituals being construed as Chaos worship by the Inquisition when they really aren't and a bunch of other reasons. Renegade Chapters do however tend to sooner or later side with Chaos merely because they are hunted by the Imperium as traitors and can only find safe harbor in warp anomalies which are in turn ruled by Chaos so when in Rome...

 

Renegade Chapters can be played using either the Space Marine codex for recent renegades or renegades that consider themselves loyal (Relictors) or the Chaos codex for longer term renegades or outright Chaos worshippers (Red Corsairs). Night Lords are not a Renegade Chapter however, they are a Traitor Legion, and would use the Chaos codex because of the various restrictions which come from being that old.

[Dammish]

Aww, man this is such terrible news! These vanguard are like my favorite part of playing with this army and I was so pleased with the paint job. I should have specified earlier though, Rain, that they are sporting NL colors and have had their imperial aquilas cut down into bat-wings (which I did for basically all of my marines). As a side note, why are there no honor guard or command squads in the Chaos codex? Surely the idea of giving captains a retinue was not a resent development (though after what happened the last time Sanguinous was left on his own, I could see why they might implement such a policy). I have a hard time imagining any self-respecting heretic lord marching into battle without at least a few dead-eyed worshipers in tow.

 

I think that it would really help me if I knew exactly how long it has been since the Night Lords started retreating into the Eye of Terror en mass, since I know that they gave puritanical rebellion a solid shot immediately following the Horus Heresy. Good, clean living beating and pillaging the imperial tithe-state and all that jazz. I understand that the chaos gods will impart their favor unto what they see as worthy evildoers whether or not said chosen actually WANT to be blessed, so naturally the kind of lifestyle the NL live will eventually result in at least minor mutation. However, from what I hear there are a few companies still resisting the call to regroup at the EoT and as a result are mitigating the worst effects of chaos taint. I had planned to build and paint a kind of NL "chaos anonymous" from whatever forces within the surviving chapter were still staunchly resisting the pull of the chaos gods. An "anti-chaos cult", as it were. To what extent can we say that such companies are "resisting" the effects of chaos and what level of mutation is just a natural by-product of living the fast and sinful life?

 

EDIT: I am now seriously considering wiping off all the chapter markings on these guys and repainting them as another obscure codex chapter instead. Or possibly crimson fists. Anyone have a recommendation?

[Dammish]

Maybe I should just post what I had planned to use as their fluff story here and leave it open for your criticism, since I seem to be among restrained and generally patient peers. If just looking at this makes you want to shout TLTR then feel free to stop paying attention at this point. :tu:

 

"After struggling to preserve the lives and principles of his chapter for many centuries, the Night Lord's seventh company captain (whose name, once infamous, is now lost) at last met his apparent end at the hands of an Imperial Fist counter offensive. Clinging to life despite grievous injury, the unknown captain escaped his executioners as the lone survivor of his entire company. Desperate and lost, regrouping at the eye of terror seemed the only viable option if he was to keep personal survival a prerogative. But out of pride he chose a different path. Posing as a common pirate he allowed himself to be captured by an Imperial Guard border patrol and taken into custody on a prison station lost in deep space, known as the Chateau D'If. Within a year he had assembled a small following and during the chaos of a prison riot he took control of the station under great secrecy, cutting it off from the Imperium and claiming its homicidal occupants for himself. He immediately took the name 'Armand Dorleac' and forsook 'Captain' for the title of 'Warden,' becoming the new and terrible voice of law upon the lonely prison station. He then turned the Chateau D'If into a violent training ground, pitting the worst of the Imperium's murderers, rapists and fear-mongers against each other in an endless battle royal wherein only the worst could hope to survive and thrive off the remains of their victims. He took the worst that the Imperium could offer and using the alchemical secrets of the Astartes and his own gene-seed turned them into super-powered monsters with which to terrorize the galaxy anew. After three centuries of careful natural selection and bloody training he had reconstituted his chapter from nothing, renaming them 'the Children of Chateau D'If' and using what remained of the less ambitious prisoners as slave labor to convert the entire Chateau into a mobile space platform and symbol of his company's undying commitment to all acts of atrocity."

 

Now the two big problems that I see are that a captain may or may not (again, please pardon me for not knowing the SM codex fluff) be able to "make" normal people into space marines on his own, though most articles I have read make the process of geneseed augmentation seem more like a misunderstood ritual than a complex surgery. The other issue is that this still does not explain where he got the bolters and power armor to equip them. Personally, I am willing to believe that he was able to regroup with the rest of his chapter at some point and be resupplied through them (with a little extra skimmed off from successful raids) but I understand that a suit of power armor is an extremely rare and valuable artifact within the imperium that must be either passed down from one battle-brother to another or else be built anew by the Adeptus Mechanicus. If anyone knows of a fluffy fix for these problems (or sees problems which I have missed) then please feel free to chime in, and thank you in advance for your constructive criticism. :blush:

[Rain]

The NL fled into the Eye soon after Kurze was killed which was during the scouring, so right after the siege of Terra which was 10,000 years ago. That said, the NL are said to be the least mutated of all Chaos Legions and so having a company with no tentacles would be perfectly fluffy. Also, no Night Lords overtly worship Chaos, it's just that some are seduced by it without really knowing it, and it owns them while they think they own it.

 

As for your fluff, it wouldn't work because A.) Even if he took off all of his armor, guardsmen would know that an 8 foot tall guy with arms wider than their waists is not a common criminal and B.) As you mentioned he would be unable to make more marines, especially that many. Each individual marine carries the geneseed for 2 more marines, the amount for the first is harvested when he is alive, and the second when he dies. Also the process is difficult and requires a lot of arcane technology or demonic power which is why most legions go to Fabius Bile to do it for them, so if entire legions can't do it properly, a single captain on a prison world certainly wouldn't. That said, you could have a NL (who is part of an existing company) infiltrate an Imperial prison, kill all of the guards and take over, having the inmates fight each other as you said and then taking the survivors back to the Night Lords ship to be taken to Fabius for "marinification".

[Dammish]

That is good to know about the timeline, I was working under the apparently faulty assumption that there was a large chunk of time between the Heresy and the NL retreat into the Eye. As you say, this would make the Chaos codex an obvious choice for any Night Lord army, since there has now been a long history of concentrated exposure to the forces of chaos. Does make me wonder why exactly the Night Lords are getting off with so little mutation, though. They are certainly no LESS heretical than the Iron Warriors or the Alpha Legion, though maybe the forces of chaos simply don't see any reason to modify them when they already do their job so well and so willingly.

 

I was also bothered by the idea that no one would pick up on the fact that this hulking brute was a former marine, and included the bit about him being taken prisoner mostly because I wanted the premise to seem more feasible. I know that these are veteran marines, but taking over an entire prison planet with advanced security sounds more like the work of a primarch than a captain. Though the Night Lords specialty IS infiltration...

 

Now, I am just a little bit foggy on the issue of geneseed augmentation. I did a bit of research and, while I still cannot find the chapter codex entry, more than one article has told me that the progenoid gland has two components that mature independent of each other, one coming to maturity after ten years and one at five. Each progenoid contains the genetic material needed to culture one of the nineteen organs necessary for space marine augmentation. So, if you harvest each organ as soon as it becomes mature then you will have the necessary genetic material to make yourself one space marine after sixty-three years plus change. This would give Warden Dorleac enough time to consolidate his control over the Chateau as well as waiting for a second generation of prisoners to be born which he could start augmenting, since you usually do this with very young and very psychotic men. The speed of the process would then be exponential, but this story does keep them removed from the 40k timeline for a nice long stretch. I have read that a normal (codex) space marine will only have their progenoid taken out once when they first mature and once again when they die, but I cannot tell whether this is because of some physical limitation or because codex rules demand that there be no more than 1000 (10K?) marines in a single chapter at any time. But clearly the progenoid DOES grow back after it is removed, because apothecaries remove it from a dead marine to give to his replacement.

 

I have absolutely NO problem with the idea of Bile getting involved in this. He is one of my all-time favorite chaos personalities (gonna make an entire list with him and his gene-altered super-marines one day when I have money) and the idea of having an entire prison planet to experiment with would certainly be incentive enough to bring him on board the project. I have read that in times of dire need even codex chapters will use condemned prisoners as "incubators" for the progenoid gland and mass-produce space marines from as few as a dozen. As far as psychological conditioning goes, I imagine that this can be left to the captain since he embodies the principles of his chapter in many ways and I really don't think he's going to care whether or not his angry little pets are the pinnacle of mental health so long as they follow his orders unquestioningly and get the job done right. Besides, the Night Lords were using condemned prisoners as candidates since before the Horus Heresy from what I gather.

 

Now as far as justification goes, does this qualify my guys for use as a codex chapter you think? The necessity of regrouping and the long gestation period would require them to spend a large portion of their chapter history outside of the eye of terror and in that time they weren't doing anything worthy of the chaos god's attention since their only goal was survival. This would dramatically reduce the likelihood of mutation and corruption, despite the questionable stock they were chosen from. Also, since this chapter built itself up from basically nothing and used the relatively healthy gene seed of a single renegade captain it would not be as predisposed to the chaos powers as an older traitor legion that has been doing the work of the chaos gods for centuries. Using this backstory I keep them out of the 40K canon for a substantial period to preserve the legitimacy of their line from chaos and I only have to justify having ONE Night Lord traitor with healthy gene seed sometime during the thirtieth-millennium rather than an entire company.