Burning Ashes

[Grand Master Laertes]

That's the story i devised on my DIY Chapter, the Burning Ashes. I hope you will enjoy it and tha someone will share its thoughts, comments and critics on it, so that I could try to emprove it.

 

 

The Imperium of Man stretches on a surface so vast that not even the bureaucrats of the Adeptus Terra can claim to know everything that happens within its boundaries. Countless questions still lie unanswered after tens of centuries, while new ones rise everyday. Who knows how many of these mysteries are one and the same, different faces of just one event. Like the story that binds the fate of the lost Chapter of the Blood Drakes to that of the Buring Ashes, appeared seemingly from nowhere.

 

 

Origins

If a researcher will be ever willing to try to reconstruct the history of the Imperium from the Horus’ Heresy to the beginning of the XXXIV millennium, in the endless archives of the Adeptus Terra it will discover an enormous amount of entries regarding the Blood Drakes Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. Of all those writings, more than half are copies of documents compiled by members of the Adeptus Mechanicus. It seems that a large group of researchers and servitors coming from Mars was entrusted to follow the Chapter in every moment of its life, even fielding at its side on the battlefields, reporting to Mars almost daily, documenting even the less interesting details. However, it is impossible to discover why the Techpriest were so interested in the Chapter. It is told that, when Anuriel, first Chapter Master of the Blood Drakes, was asked how ho could tolerate this kind of interferences to his independence, was used to answer: «It is a small price to pay: in fifty years we will have plenty of trustworthy witnesses ready to swear that the Blood Drakes are second to no one in the Astartes!» He was regarded mainly as a braggart too full of himself, but very few ever dared to deny his valour and his skills in strategy.

 

In the chronicles of the first victories of the Chapter, one is specially deemed of mention. It is the part that the Blood Drakes played in the campaign to free the Beltsabel system from the claws of Chaos. Anuriel himself was in charge of the Blood Drake expedition force: about three hundred brothers and two battleships. They could be found wherever the fighting was fiercer and more bloodied, crushing the enemies of the Imperium. Whenever an objective was deemed almost impossible to conquer, they were the first to assault and try to create a breach. In just a few months they became the most feared unit of the imperial army.

 

But one day, after a violent argument with the Chapter Master of the White Consuls, commander in chief of the expedition, Anuriel decided to retreat with all his men. Noticing the empty space where the most feared of the enemies were deployed just the day before, the heretics did not lose any time. Immediately their battleships attacked the defenceless positions and began to collect victory after victory, driving the imperial army further and further from Beltsabel. It was then that Anuriel come back. He just pretended to abandon the fight, in reality trying to outflank the enemy and attack its back when it was more vulnerable. The fact that he had with him, not just the two hundreds of battle brothers that had left days before, but the entire might of the Blood Drake Chapter, was a proof that his false retreat was just a part of a plan conceived time before. Trapped between the anvil and the hammer, the heretics could do nothing else than succumb.

 

Some hold that Anuriel devised that strategy all by himself, without consulting the other imperial commanders, when he discovered that their plan included a frontal assault to Beltsabel’s orbital defences and an heavy bombardment on the planet’s surface. The report of the White Consuls’ Chapter Master denies this eventuality and asserts that Anuriel’s moves were the outcome of a joined planning of the two of them. However, it must be noted that, from that day, Blood Drakes and White Consuls were never seen again on the same battlefield.

 

Anyway, for the acts of incomparable valour and the determinant role played in bringing back again the Light of the Imperium in that system, the High Lords of Terra granted the Blood Drakes the planet Beltsabel Tertius as a homeworld.

 

 

Homeworld

Beltsabel Tertius was a primeval world, covered almost entirely in dense jungles, populated by reptiles of every shape and dimension. If a city was ever built on its surface, at that time it should have been nothing more than a pile of debris hidden in the tangle of vegetation or drowned in one of the numerous swamps. The indigenous humans lived in villages made of wood. For a so long time they did remain Divided from the Imperium of Man, that they had forgotten even the arts of agriculture and metalworking. Their most refined weapons were spears made of wood and bone. Peoples hardened by centuries of harsh life, they were ideal candidates to become Space Marines.

 

Anyway, Chapter Master Anuriel did not want the Monastery-Fortress to be built on Beltsabel Tertius’ surface. Instead, he asked the Techmarines and the Techpriests that followed the Chapter, to turn in a fortress Aggeo, the smallest of the planet’s moons. Towering spires were built and kilometres of subterranean corridors and rooms were dug. Countless defensive weapons were installed on the structures or hidden in the craters. The titanic effort demanded decades to be completed.

 

Always in first line to eradicate till the last pocket of rebellion and heresy from the nearby worlds, the Blood Drakes reputation grew to the point that no other Chapter’s name was more well-known, in the galactic north-east, to the Emperor’s servants and His enemies alike. Paradoxically, this was the reason of the greatest disgrace in their history as well: overwhelmed by the fear of a so powerful enemy, Chaos worshippers of different systems formed a single coalition to oppose them, calling the support of daemons and traitor Space Marines.

 

At the beginnings of the XXXIV millennium, a huge fleet composed of ork and human ships invaded the system, finally managing to reach Beltsabel Tertius and landing thousands of troops. To defend the planet and its inhabitants, the Blood Drakes engaged battle on the ground and, counting on the superior knowledge of the territory, dispersed in small groups to attack simultaneously in every crucial point. It was then that a fleet of the Alpha Legion emerged from the warp and started to mercilessly bomb the planet, focusing the attacks where the loyal Space Marines were fighting, killing allies and enemies alike.

 

Scattered in positions too far one from another, most of the Blood Drakes squads that survived the first wave of bombs found themselves unable to regroup, making the withdrawal operations extremely slow and difficult. A great number of Space Marines undertook suicide actions to draw attention on themselves, hoping that their sacrifice could mean the life of at least other two battle-brothers. The situations was growing more and more dramatic at any instant. The Chapter Master Lervan himself and the captains of all the ten companies had lost their lives, so Morded, the most senior Chaplain of the Reclusium, was entrusted with the command. Certain that all hope was lost, he was on the verge of arranging an en masse assault with all the remaining forces at his disposition, trying to draw to hell with the Chapter the greatest number of enemies possible. Then hope and salvation came from the most unexpected place. The chief of the Techpriests

stationed on Aggeo come in Mordred’s presence and, asking him to not attack, he unveiled Anuriel’s secrets.

 

Mordred must admit that the Techpriest had not spoken in vain. If he had ordered the assault, the whole Chapter would have benne annihilated. Fleeing was not an honourless choice. If they could manage to survive, they could recover from their wounds and return stronger than before, ready to crush once again the enemies of the Imperium and exact their deserved revenge. He ordered the Techpriest to proceed. The weapon systems of the Monastery-Fortress suddenly stayed quiet, while all energy was diverted to centuries old engines to shorten the time needed to jump into the warp. Unknown to everyone except the Techpriests, Anuriel wanted Aggeo to become an enormous starship, on of the biggest ever seen in the whole galaxy.

 

While all that remained of the once mighty Blood Drakes was going towards safety, Beltsabel Tertius was shattered by the weight of the bombings. Looking at their beloved planet, the planet where they were born, raised, where they had received their first training, where their ancestors had lived, a great number of Space Marines was overwhelmed by a rage like nothing they ever experienced in their lives. They threw themselves against the crystal domes and the plaststeel gates of the fortress, trying to go outside, craving for battle and to spill the blood of the enemies, longing to die with their former home. The structures withstand the blows, but the same could not be said about their minds. Just an handful of them ever managed to get back a bit of sanity.

 

In the meantime, Aggeo was jumping into the warp for the first time.

 

After two millennia or just a little more from their birth, the Blood Drakes, even if officially created during the Third Founding from the Ultramarine’s geneseed, had experienced something very similar to what the Blood Angels call the Flaw. But this news never reached anyone’s ear in the Imperium. The psionics of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica in charge of the communications were among the missing ones of the conflict, and the Chapter did not want words about its survival to be spread, in order to prevent its enemies to locate it and attack when it was still weak. The Chapter was to remain hidden from the eyes of friends and foes alike, and that it should act , yes, in the name of the Emperor, but independently from every other force in the galaxy. Some years later the Blood Drakes Chapter was declared destroyed and the Bell of Lost Souls on Earth tolled a thousand times.

 

 

Organisation

After the fall of Beltsabel Tertius, the Blood Drakes were standing on the edge of extinction. Trying to find a way to keep the Chapter alive, an assembly of all the surviving senior officers was called. After months of debating, the Chapter emerged radically changed. To this day, that historical moment is still known as the Refounding.

 

Not even their name survived to that wave of transformation. To deeply sanction their break from the past, the Blood Drakes changed it into that of Burning Ashes, in eternal remembrance of the moment when their homeworld crumbled to dust, and in honour of the ancient tradition of the Beltsabelite to strew their heads with ashes in mourning times. The Chapter’s colours, the heraldry, the path that a battle-brother has to go through from the tenth to the first company, the combat doctrines: everything undergo a complete reformation. But the true heritage of the Refounding is the Cumclave Magistrorum. Maintaining that to entrust all the powers to a single individual cannot guarantee against bad decisions, no matter how skilled he is, it was decided that the Chapter should be guided by an assembly of its five highest charges: the Grandmaster, the Keeper of the Orthodoxy, the Custodian of the Blood, the Technocrat and the Magister Librarium.

 

The internal structure of the Burning Ashes remembers the one described into the Codex Astartes, but the differences are manifest. The second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth are all operative companies of 100 men each, organized according to the classical precepts. All the other companies, instead, do not have any limit to the maximum number of their effectives. Nor the tenth, the one that includes all the neophytes (the Cubs), nor the seventh, eight and ninth (respectively the tactical, assault and devastator supporting companies), and not even the first, made up entirely of veterans (the Sons of the Crocodile). Because the Chapter does not have a stable world to draw recruits from, it is a common practice to collect babies and young children from each and every planet they happen to visit for any reason. As a consequence, its staff is almost constantly over the 1000 units.

 

Because they are subjected to something similar to the Flaw, sometimes the Burning Ashes field units similar to the dreaded Death Company of the Blood Angels and its successors. Those who succumb to it are called the Avengers, because it is believed that they are the psychic inheritors of the rage that struck almost all the Chapter on the day that Beltsabel Tertius was destroyed. However, they seem able to manage it, and very few are doomed to remain forever struck into that state. Most of the Avengers return sane when the battle is over, not remembering what they have done.

 

 

Combat doctrines

After the Refounding, the Burning Ashes ceased to follow the warfare indications contained in the Codex Astartes. Totally obsessed with the need to conceal their presence and their true origin, they prefer to appear apparently from nowhere, coming on the battlefield from the sky or secretly landing far from it, planning a surprise assault. They are most expert in the hit-and-run tactics, patiently waiting for a moment in which the enemy is more vulnerable, even to the price of thousands of civilian lives, striking with peerless violence before disappearing in the fastest way possible.

 

Even if after discovering the Flaw in their blood they think that the Blood Angels could be their true primogenitors, they do not hold in esteem hand-to-hand over all the other forms of combat. Swiftness and adaptability are the keys of their strategies, and they are inclined to the deployment of very flexible battle formations.

 

 

Beliefs

The most ancient psalms and litanies are still kept into the archives of the Chapter’s Reclusium on Aggeo, but no Chaplain ever dared to recite not even one single passage of them, after the destruction of Beltsabel. The truth is that they honour the figure of Roboute Gulliman with a fervour comparable to that of the Ultramarines themselves. But when the Flaw became manifest, keep on calling him Father would mean to tell a deliberate lie. Lost every certainty about their origins, they abandoned altogether the cult of the Primarchs, maintaining just a cult of the Emperor revered as the distant and impassive demiurge that started their creation.

 

The void created by this loss of faith was spontaneously filled, little by little, by what the Marines remembered of the beliefs and the rituals of their fathers, revering the sacred crocodiles saved from the destruction of Beltsabel. The ceremonies of the Burning Ashes are far from the disciplined Masses served by the Chaplains of other Chapters, including a great amount of ritual dances, songs, duels and scars.

 

 

Geneseed

It is not clearly known what kind of geneseed was used in the founding of the Blood Drakes. The official documents report that all the nineteen zygotes came from the Ultramarines gene-pool. But that just seems to be a lie. It is widely known that no Chapter ever created from the geneseed of Roboute Guilliman ever felt into a homicidal rage similar to the Red Thirst of the Blood Angels in a lot of respects. Maybe the scribe that compiled the documents made a mistake? Or maybe someone deliberately forged the documents? And, if the geneseed really used was that of Sanguinius, why th Flaw took two whole millennia to manifest?

 

Someone notes that the Lamenters, even if officially created from the Blood Angels gene-pool, never suffered the Red Thirst. Maybe the thread of a hidden plot bounds those two Chapters, whose foundations are millennia far away one from the other?

 

 

Chapter’s mottos

“Wait in the shadows the moment to strike. Leave just ashes behind you when you’ll go away”.

 

“We are the ashes of a dead drake, still burning for the heat of its own breath”.

 

 

Battlecry

“Remember Beltsabel!”

 

 

From the left: Blood Drakes Assault Marine and Terminator

http://digilander.libero.it/fdta/dragonisanguinari.jpghttp://digilander.libero.it/fdta/dragonterminator.jpg

 

From the left: Burning Ashes Tectical Marine, Veteran and Veteran Sergeant assigned to a tactical squad

http://digilander.libero.it/fdta/tacticalmarine.jpghttp://digilander.libero.it/fdta/veteranmarine.jpghttp://digilander.libero.it/fdta/tacticalsergent.jpg

 

From the left: Burning Ashes Avenger and Terminator

http://digilander.libero.it/fdta/deathcompany.jpghttp://digilander.libero.it/fdta/veteranterminator.jpg

[Wolfy1322]

Not too bad in my view. Though it felt more like a story from begining to end for me, rather than seperate sections. I like to be able to read each section on it's own. But that's just me and I'm sure someone else will like it the way it is. I do have a question though, why did they all go mad when leaving the planet, instead of on the planet while they were being attacked?

[Grand Master Laertes]

I do have a question though, why did they all go mad when leaving the planet, instead of on the planet while they were being attacked?

 

In first place, it is for narrative reasons. I think that evacuating that kind of berserker madmen from the planet before its distruction would have been an impossible task, and so the entire Chapter would have been annihilated, instead of managing to escape the tragical end.

 

Secondly, they are Space Marine, the Emperor's finest, enginereed to fight fearlessly even in the most desperate conditions. "And they shall know no fear", it was said. A simple orbital assault do not seem a motivation strong enough to inescate a gene that remained latent for two millennia. But the destruction of their homeworld, the place where they were born, where they had trained from the beginning of thei "career", a place that they learned to love more than anyother in the whole galaxy and where their biggst failure was staged... well, this is a kind of shock that I think would be enough for it

[Odin Ravenwing]

Skimmed through it and I like the overall story but your chapters color scheme looks a little much for me. It may just be the shades of the colors or my preference towards contrasting light and dark typically with my color schemes I'm not sure, but I would personally think about fixing the colors a little bit.

[Grand Master Laertes]

Skimmed through it and I like the overall story but your chapters color scheme looks a little much for me. It may just be the shades of the colors or my preference towards contrasting light and dark typically with my color schemes I'm not sure, but I would personally think about fixing the colors a little bit.

 

to which colour schemes are you referring to? To the Blood Drakes' ones or to the Burning Ashes' ones? Or the both of them?