Home-brewed Renegade Chapter

[Starleaf]

Hey, guys... I wrote a renegade Chapter yesterday. I have no clue whether it's an OK one, but I thought I could post it here, see what you think. I'm thankful for any advice as how to field it on the tabletop, too.

 

"BRETHREN OF TRUTH

------------------

The Brethern of Truth are a Chapter living on the very fringes of the Imperium, their fate

unsure if Imperial authorities ever would get a hold on them. Not only do they not follow

the Codex Astartes, even though they are an Ultramarines successor Chapter, but neither do

they acknowledge the dangers of tampering with their gene-seed. Their Chapter was founded

in the early days of the new Imperium, right after the writing of the Codex Astartes and

the re-organisation of the Imperium. For a thousand years and more, they followed the path

that the Codex had set for them. But in 576.M37, after the old Chapter Master was killed in

a raid by Tzeentchian traitors and the new Chapter Master, Castor Arthan, ascended to lead

the Chapter, their fate took a turn to the side. Castor had many, many ideas. Far too many,

the old guard of the Chapter said. But he was wise in strategy and the ways of war and in

the ways of inspiring the battle-brothers as well. Castor went about his work slowly, subtly.

 

No-one complained when he put the Techmarines to work on making their battle-gear more

functional. No-one that complained about him replacing the importance of the Emperor and

the Great Guilliman with the importance of Truth and Temperance, lived for long, with them

being placed in situations far beyond their capability. His lectures on the nature of the

Warp and how to best contain one's emotions by balancing them were well-recieved.

Little by little, the Chapter changed. The Apothecaries became the Witnesses of Peace,

devoted to maintaining both their brothers' composure outside of battle and their rage in

it and to make sure that the gene-seed wasn't so much pure as it was effective and potent.

The Chapter made sure to heavily indoctrinate those which they sent to Mars, ensuring their

loyalty to the Chapter first and foremost. At first, this proved difficult, and many were the

sacrifices made by Chapter Master Castor before all the Techmarines were ensured loyal.

Informally, they became known as the High Engineers.

 

Each and every battle-brother became accustomed to mantaining their own gear, as well as

tinkering with it to ensure top performance. The ways of old, of machine-spirits were long

gone. The way of the Imperium had been replaced with a devotion to ensuring that Chaos must

be contained and a devotion to bringing peace where peace was due. Truth, rather than Faith,

was extolled as the main virtue of a Brother. Reliance upon outside assistance, or

hard-to-replicate equipment was made sure to be minimised. Step by step, the Brethren became

rulers of their system, and then the three nearby, being extolled as exemplars of Justice,

Truth and Temperance. Faith in the Emperor dwindled. In 345.M38, Castor Arthan died in

another Tzeentchian raid. His successor, Alfred Descartes, continued his predecessors work,

but not without adding his own touch to the Chapter. Alfred laid the foundations of the

Brethren's intelligence organisation, the Seekers. In the years since Alfred's hand-picked

agents infiltrated the Administratum and ensured that their systems were classed as "Lost

to the Warp", the Chapter has seen three more Chapter Masters, all of them killed in action

against the dogged raiders of Tzeentch that constantly plague their little corner of Space.

 

The current Chapter Master is Millen van Der Vaal, also known informally as the "Philosopher".

His expertise lies not in the ways of war, nor in his immediate predecessors' technology. No,

van Der Vaal is another breed of man entirely. His entire capacity is focussed on the nature

of Truth and the perception of it. His first work, "On Truth and Imperial History", ensured

his place in the Chapter, but not until he published his latest "Treaties on Death and Continuity",

did the Great Council (those that make up both the body that chooses a new Chapter Master, and

adivse him) appoint him the new Chapter Master. Of course, being a Space Marine Captain, van

Der Vaal still has a form of tactical brilliance and skill with arms, but really he has become

a thinker foremost and a warrior second. His guidance and skillful theorems have more than

once have saved entire companies from ambushes by the Brethren's ancient enemies, the devotees

of Tzeentch. His treatment of the "Four Cardinal Emotions", Hope and Despair, Love and Hate

have drastically reduced the all-too present cults and Chaos worshippers in the Court (the

informal name of the Brethren's domains) as well as the shameful Truth of Brethren defecting

to Chaos - under the two hundred years that Millen van Der Vaal has ruled over the Court,

not a single Brother has defected. Some, of course, accuse van Der Vaal of himself being

in league with the Runious Powers. However, van Der Vaal's exceptional debating skills have

prevented anyone from acutally succeeding in proving this. van Der Vaal himself takes such

insubordination lightly: "The concerns of both Brethren and Citizens must be heard, and taken

seriously. As to these accusations, I can merely defend myself against them. I have not, and

will not, betrayed the Three Pillars: Truth, Justice and Temperance." a direct quote from

van Der Vaal to a Erodian journalist.

 

The Court itself is made up of three systems: Sarymis, the host of the Brethren's fortress-

monastery called the University, Erodis, the Thrice-Forged System, hosting three heavily

industrialised worlds, all headed by a different section of the High Engineers (Aerospace,

Warfare and the Generalists) and lastly the Tekmides system, housing no less than four

extremely fertile worlds that supply the three Hive Worlds (if one could call them that;

the Tri-Planets, as they're often called, only house thirteen to fifteen billion people each)

of that system with food, as well as exporting luxury goods to the rest of the Court. All

planets are heavily forested and have expansive ecosystems to better ensure their long-time

survival rates. The Citizens of the Court live comfortable lives. Due to the focus on Truth

and Justice, crime and poverty are both fought with equal fevour. When not on a raid or in

a debate, one can find the Brethren of Truth patrolling their Court, ensuring that all are

treated as justly as possible. However, due to the Third Pillar of Temperance, nothing must

become the focus to the exclusion of something else. As such, some measure of outlet for the

two negative Cardinal Emotions, Hate and Despair, must have an outlet somewhere. Most often,

regulated battle-games provide for Hate (as well as training the people of the Court for the

raids that are conducted with the Brethren) and staged tragedies and psychically-enhanced

operas and plays supply the population's need for Despair.

 

In battle, the Brethren focus on a balanced approach - not neglecting any aspect of a scenario

is their main tactic - quite possibly their only intact legacy from the Ultramarines. A

strike force of Brethren are always prepared for the worst possible outcome and are all

capable of quick withdrawals if need be. While the Imperium might be granted the virtues

of the Tech-Priests of Mars' new inventions and their discoveries of archaeo-tech, the Court

instead benefits from the High Engineers' willingness to try new things. Much of the military

technology of both the Brethren's and the Guardians of Truth's (the Court's equivalent to

both the Imperial Guard and the Imperial Navy) equipment is based on STC-derived technology,

and therefore far beyond what even the High Engineers are able to develop, the Engineers

still have managed to improve the quality of life for the Citizens of the Court significantly,

as well as making far more efficient harvesting and manufacturing machinery than existed in

these systems before - then they were backwaters, but now they're all that the neo-empire

of the Brethren have got. Still, some few improvements the High Engineers have managed to

make to their military gear - at least enough for the Court's technology to equal the Imperium's

military technology in efficiency, and exceed it in civilian technology and quality of life.

 

A very dire development has been made recently by the High Engineers as well - the re-discovery

of a Warp-Navigation Computer. Thanks to this, the Chapter's Librarians and specialised

Psykers known as "Bleeders" due to their tendency to haemophilia can manage to navigate

ships short distances through the Warp, without relying on the brilliance of the Astronomican

and the nearly-unavailable Navigators. It's short jumps - no more than 50 or 100 light-years

to be sure that time doesn't twist too much, or that the ship's Gellar Fields falter under

the pressure of the hungry Daemons that wish to eat the brilliant psychic beacon that guides

the ship. To travel farther distances, the Court's ships must stop and de-activate their

warp-cores for a few days - as such, the ships often devote large areas of themselves to

hydroponics, air-scrubbers and general life-support systems, leaving less room than in the

gargantuan relic-ships of the Imperium.

 

The Brethren know that if the Imperium discovers them again, it is but a matter of time before

the are subjected to at the very least a crusade, and quite possibly Exterminatus against

each and every planet in the system. As such, they keep their armed forces, raiders and

envoys bedecked in the symbols of the Imperium - the Aquila, the skull and the rest. At home,

however, no such symbols are to be seen. The Court is a simple place, with focus on practicality

and ease of repairs rather than any aesthetic or religious value. The Brethren themselves

prefer earlier designs of power armour, ranging from the Crovus Mk. VI all the way back to

the Mk. II Crusade designs, for their more practical nature, as well as their association

with the earlier values of the Emperor - unity, peace and refuge from the warp. How this realm

will survive, or indeed even if it will, only time will tell. What can be said is that the

Brethren believes in their cause - Truth, Justice and Temperance must become the core values

of the Galaxy, lest all will be consumed - if not by Chaos, then by the Tyranids or the

monstrous Greenskins.

 

"NO MORE TYRANTS! FOR TRUTH AND JUSTICE!" - battlecry of the Brethren of Truth and the Guardians

of Truth."

 

There you go. How does it look? I'm pretty much a complete noob at Space Marines, but I've been into 40K fluff and lore for quite some time. I've also recently learned the rules but only patchwise.

 

Regards,

Starleaf.

[Grimdarkness]

Whoa that's a lot to take in.

 

Interesting idea a chapter that has moved past the stagnation that has griped the whole of the imperium. I would change the founding to a later one.

 

I'll sit on this a while and come back.

[SaltyOps]

Interesting idea. I like it.

[voi shet magir]

Spell "ruinous" and "corvus," not "runious" and "crovus." Find-and-replace.

 

 

 

Why do you even like this setting? Do you find it flattering that you are smarter than fictional priesthoods that are intentionally described as superstitious?

 

Iconclasm is a good story when you know the person who's doing it and what drove him to it. You haven't shown that though, you give no sense of anyone's character or drama. Maybe you suggest that the "tzeentchian raiders" (treacher legionnaires? chaos renegades?) have subverted the chapter, but the suggestion is underdeveloped. If that is not your intent (and the tzeenchian should be dropped from renegades in that case as an abject detail), maybe some Xanthite view of natural chaos restrained by reason and temperence is you theme. You can do that successfuly and compellingly, but on

ly with a greatly increased moral ambiguity, of which you have included none.

 

This game is set at a scale where the heroic pose of personal combat is visible, but the marines who make up a chapter and individuals of any other faction are anonymous. We substitute the color scheme of a craftworld or regiment for pathos. It's a repulsive. You have evaded any dramatic or emotive entanglements just by your choice of setting.

 

Much of the military of the Bretheren's and the Guardians of Truth's (The Court's equivalent to bothe the Imperial Guard and the Imperial Navy) equippment is based on STC-derived technology, and therefore far beyond what even the High Engineers are able to develop,

Revise ridiculous run-ons.

[soddinnutter]

Warp-navigating cogitator engines do exist in the Imperium at the moment in mass usage. Usually by the crews of ships too poor to afford a Navigator. It allows ships to travel at about the same speed as Tau ships who use a similar device.

 

And machine spirits often do exist. Primitive precursors to or intentionally stunted AI. The rites, chanting and button mashing that the tech-adepts perform may look stupid but the chemical composition of the smoke from that incense may just be a form of access code, that chanting is in fact the username and the sacred oil is a cleaning fluid to get the cheeto dust from under the keys on the keyboard.

 

And the older patterns of armour were phased out for good reasons MkIII and previous Mks all had inefficient cooling systems for the reactor and the helmets didn't turn that well. Also the cabling to the electro-muscles was too easily damaged. Mk IV pattern took care of the cooling problem but the cables were still an issue. Mk V took care of that problem. MkVI (beakie helmets) were mostly just stop gap measure. It's big plus was that you could cannibalize almost any bits from any other suit to patch it up and the helmet had better atmospheric, auto-sense and communications devices built in. MkVII was just being introduced at the start of the Horus Heresy and was designed to be faster, stronger, more resilient and more efficient than the old models. And it was.

 

Only reason to run around in the old suits is either because the Mechanicus took your toys away or your chapter is on a massive and dangerous nostalgia trip. Also all the other chapters will laugh at you. Even the Marines Malevolent who are the knuckle dragging, club wielders of the Astartes commonality.

 

Also hoarding STC technology and not sharing is an arse move of all arse moves. Billions of lives could be improved with the recovery of even the most tiny of remnants of those old archives. Keeping it to your self is the sort of arse move that only a 1st founding Legion could get away with.

[Starleaf]

Spell "ruinous" and "corvus," not "runious" and "crovus." Find-and-replace.

 

 

 

Why do you even like this setting? Do you find it flattering that you are smarter than fictional priesthoods that are intentionally described as superstitious?

 

I like it because it's the largest wargame there is, and because it can contain basically anything, or so I was told. No, I don't take any stock in being smarter than the Tech-Priests. I mean, a monkey is more intelligent since they can innovate. What I wanted was an organisation that isn't as utterly stagnated as the Imperium. And no, not the Tau. Don't like aliens, also they get nothing that I like, gamewise. Crap Troops, indeed.

 

Iconclasm is a good story when you know the person who's doing it and what drove him to it. You haven't shown that though, you give no sense of anyone's character or drama. Maybe you suggest that the "tzeentchian raiders" (treacher legionnaires? chaos renegades?) have subverted the chapter, but the suggestion is underdeveloped. If that is not your intent (and the tzeenchian should be dropped from renegades in that case as an abject detail), maybe some Xanthite view of natural chaos restrained by reason and temperence is you theme. You can do that successfuly and compellingly, but on

ly with a greatly increased moral ambiguity, of which you have included none.

 

My intention was to make a "good" Chapter. I know that there are the Salamanders and the Space Wolves, and I wanted to make something on those lines, but one that had gone renegade. I knew that the idea of good Space Marines wouldn't be recieved well, so I tried to put in the possibility that everything just was a Tzeentchian plot (also, yes, the raiders were traitor Brethren, my bad), as to ensure that some grimdark could remain. Evidently I failed in this endeavour. I wanted good guys. Is that so bad? They'll still get shafted over. Everyone gets shafted over in 40K. Oh, and I just like heroes in the grimdark. I wanted a ray of hope that wasn't as crap as the Tau. And Tzeentch is the God of Hope and Change, is he not?

 

This game is set at a scale where the heroic pose of personal combat is visible, but the marines who make up a chapter and individuals of any other faction are anonymous. We substitute the color scheme of a craftworld or regiment for pathos. It's a repulsive. You have evaded any dramatic or emotive entanglements just by your choice of setting.

 

...Sorry, must be the fact that I don't have English as a native language, but I really don't get this. Like, at all.

 

Much of the military of the Bretheren's and the Guardians of Truth's (The Court's equivalent to bothe the Imperial Guard and the Imperial Navy) equippment is based on STC-derived technology, and therefore far beyond what even the High Engineers are able to develop,

Revise ridiculous run-ons.

 

And this neither. But I can tell you that I just meant they use the same STC-derived tech as do the Imperium, and since that is since the Dark Age of Technology, they can't really improve on it especially much - certainly not more than the Adeptus Mechanicus, the support of which they certainly don't have.

[Starleaf]

Warp-navigating cogitator engines do exist in the Imperium at the moment in mass usage. Usually by the crews of ships too poor to afford a Navigator. It allows ships to travel at about the same speed as Tau ships who use a similar device.

 

I had no clue about that. Thought that Chartist ships navigated using old maps and hope. So, it's not a re-discovery then? I thought it was like in Dune, that the machines were banned or something.

 

And machine spirits often do exist. Primitive precursors to or intentionally stunted AI. The rites, chanting and button mashing that the tech-adepts perform may look stupid but the chemical composition of the smoke from that incense may just be a form of access code, that chanting is in fact the username and the sacred oil is a cleaning fluid to get the cheeto dust from under the keys on the keyboard.

 

Yeah, I just said that these guys don't have 'em. Just as much as they don't have Terminator Armour, or Dreadnoughts or Land Raiders. And their High Engineers are more like a combo of historians and researchers, trying to understand and reverse-engineer the old systems instead of just venerating them and going through the practiced rites like the AdMech. The High Engineers on the other hand also have a much shorter life expectancy than the avarage AdMech priest.

 

And the older patterns of armour were phased out for good reasons MkIII and previous Mks all had inefficient cooling systems for the reactor and the helmets didn't turn that well. Also the cabling to the electro-muscles was too easily damaged. Mk IV pattern took care of the cooling problem but the cables were still an issue. Mk V took care of that problem. MkVI (beakie helmets) were mostly just stop gap measure. It's big plus was that you could cannibalize almost any bits from any other suit to patch it up and the helmet had better atmospheric, auto-sense and communications devices built in. MkVII was just being introduced at the start of the Horus Heresy and was designed to be faster, stronger, more resilient and more efficient than the old models. And it was.

 

Had no clue about that either. Thought that the "old=better" paradigm in the 40K universe applied to SM armour as well as everything else. I can just erase that, then. Thanks a lot!

 

Only reason to run around in the old suits is either because the Mechanicus took your toys away or your chapter is on a massive and dangerous nostalgia trip. Also all the other chapters will laugh at you. Even the Marines Malevolent who are the knuckle dragging, club wielders of the Astartes commonality.

 

As to this... These guys are renegades, they wouldn't care either way. They certainly aren't on a nostalgia trip, either. But they don't have "relics", per se, either. No Terminators, no Land Raiders, no Dreadnoughts and no such shiny stuff.

 

Also hoarding STC technology and not sharing is an arse move of all arse moves. Billions of lives could be improved with the recovery of even the most tiny of remnants of those old archives. Keeping it to your self is the sort of arse move that only a 1st founding Legion could get away with.

 

They have no more STC-derived tech than do the Imperium. Actually, a bit less. They have exactly what the Imperium had when they broke with it, and they can't really improve on it. And they've only made their own systems better since they were/are so far out, and were backwaters without significance.

[PorridgeMeister]

The current Chapter Master is Millen van Der Vaal, also known informally as the "Philosopher".

His expertise lies not in the ways of war, nor in his immediate predecessors' technology. No,

van Der Vaal is another breed of man entirely.

 

Does he have very big forces? :)

 

(Chemistry joke)

[Starleaf]

The current Chapter Master is Millen van Der Vaal, also known informally as the "Philosopher".

His expertise lies not in the ways of war, nor in his immediate predecessors' technology. No,

van Der Vaal is another breed of man entirely.

 

Does he have very big forces? :lol:

 

(Chemistry joke)

 

Not really. And yeah, I was kinda stumped for names there. But the Chapter, since they went renegade, have grown: they're something like 1,500 men strong now. Anything else to add? Or you just dropped by to say "Hey, van Der Vaal!" :teehee: ?

[Starleaf]

The current Chapter Master is Millen van Der Vaal, also known informally as the "Philosopher".

His expertise lies not in the ways of war, nor in his immediate predecessors' technology. No,

van Der Vaal is another breed of man entirely.

 

Does he have very big forces? :lol:

 

(Chemistry joke)

 

Not really. And yeah, I was kinda stumped for names there. But the Chapter, since they went renegade, have grown: they're something like 1,500 men strong now. Anything else to add? Or you just dropped by to say "Hey, van Der Vaal!" :teehee: ?

[Starleaf]

The current Chapter Master is Millen van Der Vaal, also known informally as the "Philosopher".

His expertise lies not in the ways of war, nor in his immediate predecessors' technology. No,

van Der Vaal is another breed of man entirely.

 

Does he have very big forces? :lol:

 

(Chemistry joke)

 

Not really. And yeah, I was kinda stumped for names there. But the Chapter, since they went renegade, have grown: they're something like 1,500 men strong now. Anything else to add? Or you just dropped by to say "Hey, van Der Vaal!" :teehee: ?