Would this take on the Grey Knights be accepted?

[Master Fluff]

Okay, so I love the look of the Grey Knights, but I also really love adding a little personal touch to my models, so I was wondering if you think the Grey Knights chapter would mind, really, if a few knights, maybe a few squads, a dreadknight, a few termies and a leader, went off on their own hunts and had a few different traditions, such as painting war paint (not like the orks, mind) on their armour?

 

I know the knights are real strict, so they probably wouldn't let a half company go off walk about, but do you think there is any possibility of getting this background to stick?

 

I already have the loose ends of a story, where a Grey Knight band are lost in the Warp for, say, 66 years, and when they emerge they are untainted, exactly the same only now they go on personal vandettas and hunts rather than coordinated missions.

 

Just a thought, so thanks for any input.

 

MF

 

NOTE

Please don't say "it's your army, you can do what you want" because what I want my army to do is be plausible. Cheers

[Reclusiarch Darius]

NO WAI

 

Just jokes lol. Sure you can do that. It's perfectly plausible that a couple of Grey Knights could get stranded/teleported wrong and have to fight their way back to Titan. Keep in mind though, if they're lost out in the universe, they'd make it a priority to return to their Chapter. It would take them a while (long enough to make some story out of it), but unless they die they'd make it.

 

With regards to painting their armour, aside from the Chapter colours, Grey Knights get a lot of personal freedom. They each have their own personal heraldry, celebrating famous battles they were in or personal accomplishments worthy of Chapter honours.

 

As a starting point to your idea, maybe you could go with the story of a small force dispatched to recover a Paladin aspirant who has been waylaid on his journey back from his quest (or perhaps he has run into abnormal amounts of trouble in attempting it's completion, and requires extraction/assistance).

[ChaosPhoenix]

Maybe they were stranded on a planet for some years and painted their armor to honor a cause (like the Deathwing). I think thats ok. Maybe they'll have to clean their armor once they're back at Titan, but for the moment, it would be ok.

[Chairman_woo]

You are right insofar as Grey knights have a little less flexibility for ideas like this than most armies, however what you are suggesting makes plenty of sense to me. The new GK fluff very much paints them as being about "Pragmatism before Tradition" and gives me the impression that the GK consider themselves so inccoruptible that personal indulgences where new ideas or pursuing goals is concerned are often not just allowed but sometimes even encouraged.

 

If your enclave of warp wandering guy's have been chasing a particular deamonic/heretical kabbal or plot it makes perfect sense that their Grandmaster might well give them his blessing to go off on a "deamonquest" of some description to straighten things out. A simple vendetta might not be enough by itself but if there is a suitably terrible threat to mankind associated with it then who better to send than the guys who have already steeled their hearts with contempt?

Warpaint/ceremonial markings seems pretty fair enough provided it looks neat (Like you already said the orky style is probbably not very appropreate :D )

 

 

If your worried about pushing it fluff wize I'm seriously thinking of basing my GK's around an "Illuminated" enclave which I fear is a much bigger stretch of the imagination! Seems to me if ever there was a group of people capable of surviving full blown illumination its the Grey knights i.e. being possesed by a greater deamon (or something suitably simmilar and warp related) and then banishing said deamon leaving the individual with an understanding of the warp and material universe shaired only by Gods, Greater Deamons and the fellow Illuminated.

Its a bit easier to make that idea fly than my fleeting description suggests (sounds very very heretical the way I just worded it I do realise), but in my head atleast Justicar Thawn is clearly a Sensi and I like to think that to a GK Illumination would feel like shairing a perspective on the universe with their Emperor (who due to his very nature understood and percieved the warp & its creatures in ways we could only dream of).

 

 

So yes in conclusion go for it! If you think things through enough you should be able to come up with good reasons for everything you have suggested ;)

[AlexHolker]

I do not feel this is plausible. One of the major reasons why the Grey Knights are so incorruptible is because of the human traits that have been deliberately excised from their minds through hypno-surgery, mind wipes and indoctrination. They are weapons, not people - the question you should ask is not whether the other Grey Knights would accept their actions, but why your Grey Knights would do it in the first place.

[Chairman_woo]

I do not feel this is plausible. One of the major reasons why the Grey Knights are so incorruptible is because of the human traits that have been deliberately excised from their minds through hypno-surgery, mind wipes and indoctrination. They are weapons, not people - the question you should ask is not whether the other Grey Knights would accept their actions, but why your Grey Knights would do it in the first place.

 

All I can say to that is its a very specific interpretation of the fluff where these things are concerned, and the fluff Ive been reading dosent suggest that they are unthinking unfeeling robots like that. They still hold deamons & heretics in utter contempt even if they do so in a rather pragmatic self controlled way, their characters still have actual charachter (Mordrak is/was a somewhat troubled man, Stern dabbles in somewhat questionable things). Under the old (and very basic by comparrison to the new) fluff Gk were almost charachterless "weapons" but they are now being portrayed as actually caring and thinking about what they do.

 

Just because one has complete controll over oneself does not mean one does not have thaughts and feelings and even beliefs. A GK would never act on a vendetta just because he had developed one, but it does not mean he might not take a special interest where this is practical. If youve been chasing a particular deamon for centuries then inevitabley it becomes a little personal if only because of the intimate understanding and relationship one forms with such a close enemy, and concequently making one the ideal choice to go after said Deamon.

 

If you dont like that idea thats fine, if you dont like the new fluff and want to keep thinking of them in 3rd ed terms that is also fine, but fluff is far too open ended and personal of a thing to dictate terms unless something is specificaly contradicted in the (constantly changing and often self contradictory anyway) source fluff IMHO. It seems very easy to explain why a GK group would be off on extended campaign/quest and its not a big stretch of the imagination for such a group to develop its own little quirks especialy given the GK now basicaly have a mandate for pragmatism over tradition.

[Grimtooth]

I think the flexibility that the OP might need to complete his fluff is the very steadfast determination that the GK pursue their designated enemy, the demonic. I get the impression that if it meant death to the very last GK showing back up on Titan with the name of a particularly difficult demon that has been banished, how that demon got banished would become lore within the chapter.

[Master Fluff]

Thanks for all the replies, guys, they've Illuminated a lot of possibilities. I like the idea of perhaps the Deathwing thing, where a small group perhaps fought their way through a horde of blue-blooded daemons and now the warband paint similiar blue tattos over their armour in recognition. Yeah, thanks again everyone! Maybe in a few weeks I'll have some pictures to show you to go with this.

 

Cheers,

 

MF