IA: Pale Messengers

[Rain]

I was bored so I decided to write up some army fluff in a quasi-IA format for my new Death Guard army. It's not really a DIY chapter as such as it's a cohort of the Death Guard legion, but it's an individual Chaos warband with its own history, leader, and motives so I thought this would be the proper place to post it.

 

Origins

 

The warband that would one day come to be known as the Pale Messengers was born in the storied days of the Great Crusade as a cohort of the mighty Death Guard legion of the Adeptus Astartes. When the Emperor first walked upon the blighted moors of Barbarus and met with the primarch Mortarion, the primarch was incensed at the newcomer’s presumptuousness and condescension, and though most of the elders were jubilant that a god among men had arrived as their salvation, there were those among Mortarion’s gaunt bodyguard that shared their primarch’s suspicions. One such man was Tanath Von Junzt, the son of what passed for a minor noble that left his family to follow Mortarion on his campaigns against the hated creatures that lived upon the planet’s venomous spires. Although he was a proud crusader for humanity and a staunch follower of Mortarion, Von Junzt was considered eccentric among his peers for also taking deep interest in the ways and sorceries of the planet’s overlords, an interest that he swore was merely an academic one, and one that engendered knowledge necessary for successful battle. When Mortarion was granted command of a Space Marine Legion, he ordered his chosen cohorts to be reborn as Adeptus Astartes and so Tanath Von Junzt and those close to him were forged into a cohort of the 4th Great Company of the newly renamed unbroken blades: the Death Guard.

 

Upon their foundation as a force of Space Marines, Von Junzt and his men were fairly quickly gifted the vessel Messenger of Fate as a boon for their service by Mortarion and sent on missions into unexplored space to reclaim a series of human occupied systems that had regressed into feudal states and yet categorically refused Imperial rule and clung to ancient and deviant philosophies despite the forces arrayed against them.

 

Von Junzt was a quiet and studious man, and killing his fellow humans saddened him, yet the opportunity to delve into the ancient libraries and crypts of his conquered foes was seized with relish. Such fascination was obviously against the accepted Imperial truth and so he would often seclude himself in his study to scour any grimoires and manuscripts that he might have rescued from a ruined reliquary or overthrown fortress. It was during, and perhaps because of, such studies that he began hearing subtle voices at the very edge of perception, and found that if he focused upon them enough that he could cause objects to move or shatter untouched. This nascent gift both intrigued and frightened him, and he swore to himself to never reveal it, though he could not resist further exercising his psychic abilities, and even attempt replications of various minor rituals that he discovered in his studies.

 

The Messenger of Fate

An ancient vessel of unknown construction and design, the Messenger of Fate is a short, ugly ship with a rough blocky superstructure, enormous engines and an unusually heavy armament for which it sacrifices crew capacity, comfort, and maneuverability. Attached to the Dusk Raiders at the beginning of the Great Crusade, the Messenger was rumored to have been a peace offering from the techno magi of Mars to the Emperor following the machine cult’s absorption into the Imperium, though this is of course impossible to verify and may be but legend. Long though destroyed in the Battle of Terra when it was heavily damaged and was reported to have smashed into the remains of an orbital station, the hated vessel was reportedly sighted as early as M.33 and confirmed engagements with a corroded and scarred ship that can only be the Messenger throughout the Age of Apostasy and during several Black Crusades bear bloody witness to the resilience of its ancient design.

 

The Betrayal

 

When Mortarion turned against his father and spit upon his oaths at Istvaan, he recalled all of his wayward sons to his side to bear witness to the new order. Von Junzt was overjoyed at the opportunity to finally denounce the Imperial Truth that had forced his studies and abilities into darkness and secrecy and the Messenger of Fate joined the Death Guard fleet as preparations were made to assault Terra.

 

The entirety of what happened aboard the Messenger on that fateful jump only its damned crew shall ever know, but the voices that had once been but whispers in the Astartes commander’s head grew to a buzzing, gurgling crescendo, and bloated flies and shapeless things that cannot be and yet are cavorted through the vessel’s narrow halls and exalted Von Junzt as their father and benefactor. It was in those days that might have been centuries for time has no meaning in the warp, that Von Junzt was finally driven mad with what he saw as a fate that he had brought upon himself, and one that robbed him of the humanity that he so valued. Seeing no other option, he finally called back to the voices, and Grandfather Nurgle accepted him as one of his champions.

 

Beliefs

 

The Pale Messengers see themselves as the bringers of inevitability and servants of entropy. Their long mad lord, the Daemon Prince Von Junzt, has completely disassociated himself from his will and actions and sees the butchery of his warband as the random events of a cruel universe and not strictly within his power. This causes his raids to be notoriously difficult to predict as unlike most Chaos warlords he seeks neither territory nor plunder, but simply to inflict random death. Even more puzzling is his tendency to leave certain worlds completely untouched, while utterly devastating their neighbors for no reason that can be fathomed by Imperial analysts.

 

Also of note is the warband’s long standing hatred of the rebel Typhus, who the last remaining human vestige of Von Junzt sees as a traitor to his beloved Primarch. Visions of the heretical prophet Her’mekh the Blind describe an attack upon the Terminus Est carried out by the Messenger of Fate in which the Messenger was damaged and nearly destroyed by the larger vessel before the stirring tides of the warp spirited the listing Messenger away as Father Nurgle chuckled at the clamoring of his beloved children.

[Ferrata]

I think you have the corner stones to make an interesting character for your warband. However, I would suggest moving the timeline slightly later, just after the Heresy. Let him join up with Mort. and go through those steps as meddling with the HH is generally a bad idea and leads to a weakened chapter.

[Rain]

Thanks for the response. Well, I definitely want my warband to be members of the pre-heresy legion, so obviously they were involved in the heresy. That said, it's not like I wrote them in as bringing down the wall of the Imperial palace or anything, they showed up, got their ship nearly destroyed, possibly fought a bit on the surface, and retreated back to the Eye.

 

Also Von Junzt only thought that it was him that brought the plague on, it was obviously really Typhus, which might be another reason that he hates Typhus as much as he does. So I really tried to follow canon there as well as I could using artistic license only for my invented characters' reaction to canon events. Also I specifically made them 4th Company because as far as I know that puts them farthest away from clashing with any canon regarding Garro, Grulgor, or Typhus.