IA: Grey Spectres

[danking86]

Hi guys, I've been playing about with some ideas for a homebrew chapter, and was curious what you guys would make of what I've got so far. Feedback is most appreciated, and please do point out the (inevitably legion) places I've conflicted with Canon, been unoriginal, what you think of the colourscheme, or anything else you feel like saying!

 

 

http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/2891/spacemarinez.jpg

F

ormerly known as the Grey Dragons, the chapter now known as the Grey Spectres was once renowned throughout the Imperium as the saviours of innumerable Imperial worlds. But that was in another time. Now, the Grey Spectres are a dying chapter. Numbering less than five hundred battle-brothers, their days of glorious service to the Imperium are growing ever shorter.

 

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T

he Grey Spectres can trace their lineage back to the 10th Founding of Space Marines, the oldest of their records dating back to the 35th Millennium. These documents, which some even within the chapter now hold to be the half-remembered legends of another age, claim that the chapter was founded in response to dark predictions from the Emperor's Tarot. It is claimed that readings of the Tarot warned of a turbulent time of chaos to come. It is therefore significant that the gene-seed of the Salamanders, a chapter known for its ruggedness and famed for its endurance and stoicism, was selected to form for the basis for the new chapter.

 

If the chapter was indeed created to aid the Imperium in weathering the storms the Tarot forecast, then those predictions coudl not have been more timely.

 

 

 

<div style="background-color:#990000]The Howling

Founding Father Gunnar Kai

In a chapter known to particularly revere its ancestors only Vulkan and the Emperor himself are held in higher regard than the Grey Spectres' first Chapter Master. Young and fiery, Gunnar Kai was a great warrior, orator and strategist. It was Gunnar Kai who led the chapter through the worst fighting of the Howling. It was he who personally led the daring planetfall which broke the siege of the Iron Fortress on Haraam, landing accompanied a hundred of the chapter's finest warriors within the citadel of the Fortress itself and driving the defending forces before him into the waiting guns of the Salamanders and 112th Cadian Imperial Guard. His death at the close of the Howling Wars at the hands of a Dark Apostle of the Word Bearers Legion resulted in a Blood-Feud the chapter maintains to this day.

 

I

n 403.M34, just as the newly-formed Dragons were approaching full-strength, a psychic event on a scale never seen before or since theatened to rend the Imperium apart. Records from the time are fragmentary at best, but what scattered reports remain speak of the sudden death of millions, if not billions of Astropaths and Navigators. The full saga of this turbulent time would consume many weighty volumes, and is one best left for another time. Suffice it to say that the mass deaths of the Astropaths weakened the light of the Astronomicon, making interstellar travel and communication across the vastness of the Imperium all-but impossible. Entire fleets of ships were suddenly blinded and lost forever among the stars and thousands of worlds erupted in open rebellion, siding with planetary governors, rogue traders or even the ruinous powers as the far-flung systems of the Imperium threatened to fracture apart.

 

This was to be the fledgling Grey Dragons' finest hour. Fighting alongside dozens of chapters of their brother marines, the young chapter threw itself into the fires of the internecine wars plaguing the Imperium. The chapter's rolls of honour from this time read as a gallery of their greatest heroes. In warzone after warzone the chapter proved itself time and time again to be a worthy ally in the struggle to hold the Imperium together. The Grey Dragons became especially known for their incredible endurance and willingness to absorb the worst punishment the enemies of the Imperium could throw at them, accepting losses which even other Astartes would baulk at as they strove to live up to their motto of Duty unto Death. They Grey Dragons became especially sought after during siege and trench warfare, where their effectiveness in brutal close-quarter firefights seemed to invoke the very finest qualities of their Salamander ancestors. Furthermore, the Grey Dragons' willingness to absorb losses combined with a simply uncanny hardiness made the chapter Forlorn Hope and breaching troops without peer.

 

Beliefs

Chapter Master Sigismund Finnegan

A gaunt and pale-skinned man, Sigismund Finnegan is the latest Grey Spectre to hold the title of Chapter Master. As befits his position, Sigismund Finnegan goes into battle wielding the sacred thunder hammer Urtiel, which, along with the other ensign of his office, the great Escutcheon of Drakes, was given to the legion as a founding gift from the Salamanders' finest smiths. Confronted by the slow destruction of his chapter, Master Finnegan has devoted every waking minute to maximising the effectiveness of those battle-brothers left to him. It was Finnegan who renamed the chapter and ordered its warriors to abandon their homeworld to search for a cure to their affliction. Finnegan is a melancholy man, but a mighty warrior and one determined to either find a cure to his chapter's ills or drive it to do as much damage to the Emperor's enemies as possible before its glorious legacy is lost forever.

 

T

he Grey Spectres are now a grim and fatalistic chapter, a far cry from their days as the ebullient defenders of the Imperium who fought in the Howling. The beliefs of the Grey Spectres centre around worship of the Emperor and a deep respect for their ancestors, especially those heroes who served with distinction in the days of the Howling. Increasingly, however, the Grey Spectres have formed an almost cult-like fascination with death. This has been especially true since the election of Sigismund Finnegan as Chapter Master, whose first act as Master was to order the chapter to change its name to the Grey Spectres, reflecting their status as a dying chapter.

 

If the chaos of the Howling made the Grey Spectres, it was the Millennia following that cataclysmic event which slowly broke them. As the Ecclesiarchy slowly healed the wounds of the Howling, and the rule of Imperium was restored to the stars the Grey Dragons had fought so hard to hold together, the full extent of the legacy left to the Dragons from their forebears slowly became clear.

 

The Grey Dragons had always recruited slowly, taking to heart the advice of the Codex Astartes regarding the careful training and indoctrination of new recruits. It was in replenishing the heavy losses of the Howling that the chapter's curse became evident. As the chapter's Apothecaries worked to implant the gene-seed into new recruits, the survival rate among those selected began to fall. The stock from which the chapter drew its recruits had always been of the highest quality, drawn from the harsh jungles of the deathworld of Selva, where savage humans eke out a desperate existence battling the primordial inhabitants of the deep forests. The hardiness of these recruits, combined with the skill and care of the chapter's Apothecaries had meant that the survival rates of the chapter's neophytes had generally been high, with as many as one in five of those selected surviving to full battle-brother status. Slowly, however, as the Millennia passed, this success rate slowly fell away, until today as a few as one in a thousand recruits survive the process of becoming a Grey Spectre. Combined with the attrition of an existence of continuous combat, the falling success rate of new recruits damns the Grey Spectres to extinction within its current chapter master's lifespan.

 

Combat Doctrine

The Battle of Panazee IV

The battle to wrest the Panazee system from the clutches of the Word Bearers Legion was once of the first warzones the newly fleet-based Grey Spectres encountered during their wanderings. Panazee IV, the largets planet in the system, featured many heavily fortified hive-cities and promised many months of costly fighting. It was here that Chapter Master Finnegan demonstrated his new doctrine. Where the Grey Dragons would have fought a conventional siege on the planet's surface, Sigismund Finnegan ordered the chapter's battle barges to bombard the heavily populated hives. Bombardment cannons rained down death upon the hives, killing civilian and traitor alike. Abruptly, the attack halted and into the devastated hives drove Land Raiders, which disgorged thunderhammer-wielding Terminators, which swept the hives clean. Within days it was done. Panazee IV was devastated but returned to Imperial rule.

 

A

s their number have dwindled, the Grey Spectres have been forced to change their combat doctrines, seeking to make the most of every marine. The chapter still accept losses, sometimes on a truly alarming scale, only now they do so with the same stone-faced resignation with which they are now famous for enduring all hardships of climate and terrain. The chapter also hunt ceaselessly for a cure for their mysterious malady, their Apothecaries combing the planets the chapter encounters in its journey through the stars, relentlessly hunting for a way to save their chapter

 

In contrast to their previous practice of seeking glory and victory by breaking the enemy where he is strongest, however, the Grey Spectres prefer the tactics of shock. The Spectres now presage their attacks with extensive bombardment, utilising the guns of the Chapter's own fleet, those of their powerful force of Thunderhawks and even those of the Imperial Guard regiments stationed in those battlezones to which the Spectres are assigned. In these cases the Spectres will either countermand the orders of the artillery regiment's own chain of command, or on occasion forcibly commandeering the guns from the Guard, which has brought the Spectres into conflict with more than one Imperial Warmaster. When battle is joined, the Spectres prefer the brutal close-range firefights sought by their Salamander forebears, and their Terminator-armoured brethren demonstrate a strong preference for Thunderhammers and Storm Shields rather than ranged weaponry. Even still, despite the dwindling of the chapter, the Grey Spectres still proudly send warriors to fight in organisations such as the Deathwatch, valuing both the goodwill which results from such actions almost as much as it does the expertise that such marines bring back with them should they ever rejoin the chapter.

 

The most notable divergence from the Codex Astartes, however, is that the Spectres field no Scout squads. The light armour worn and dangerous work generally undertaken by such squads has been decreed by the Chapter command to be too great a risk to the chapter's valuable marines. Instead, new recruits are mixed into normal tactical squads. The veteran sergeants leading such squads are charged with ensuring that the valuable young marines come to no harm. This practice represents the chapter's clearest effort to provide as much protection as possible to those who carry with them the dimming light of the chapter's future.

[NightrawenII]

Hi guys, I've been playing about with some ideas for a homebrew chapter, and was curious what you guys would make of what I've got so far. Feedback is most appreciated, and please do point out the (inevitably legion) places I've conflicted with Canon, been unoriginal, what you think of the colourscheme, or anything else you feel like saying!

Hello and welcome in the Liber. For the author's guidance the Liber supports the Guide to DIYing and Octaguide 2.0, both of them are good and helpful read.

 

First, you are using Deathwatch RPG sourcebooks for this, aren't you? I can see 'certain' influence in the text.

 

Now...

The core concept is good and solid, it's technically what the GW did with Blood Angels and RavenGuard + I have seen few other Chapters with "Dying, but Unbroken" theme, but it's unusual enough to be called 'original', and it also depends how do you develop these ideas further.

 

That's the good news. :P

 

The bad ones: The flow of text somewhat resembles 'Hansel und Gretel' bedtime story, in the way how sketchy and fragmented it is. Also there is a lot of 'random' elements present in the story.

 

The colourscheme:

Black and red are not cool and unique

Observe.

 

Of the twenty founding legions and thirty-four known Second Founding Chapters, we have color schemes for eighteen legions and twenty-eight of their successors (not counting Chaos chapters/warbands/what have you). This gives us a remarkable pool to draw from. Doing some simple calculations (assigning a quartered or halved scheme 50% of a color for each and giving 25%/75% of a color for shoulders and head being one color and the rest another, while silver is counted as grey), this gives us the following results (note that having multiple schemes means they all get counted):

 

12% of chapters are blue. 2% are purple (that's the Emperor's Children). 23% are red. None are orange. 6% are yellow. 14% are green. 18% are black. 7% are grey. 18% are white. None are brown, and 1% are pink (that's half the Emperor's Children post-heresy). Thus, from most common to least common: Red, black and white, green, blue, grey, yellow, purple, orange.

 

What does this show us? Red, black and white are inordinately popular colours when GW makes chapters (with red ridiculously common). A little looking around the forums will also show that black and red are inordinately popular colors among DIY chapter creators, too. I would honestly guess that at least a third of DIY chapters are black. Grey is also remarkably popular, though not nearly to the extent of black.

 

What this means is that red and black are poor choices for creating a memorable chapter scheme that stands out in the crowd of IAs in this forum. Use black or red, and your chapter will start to blend together with dozens of others in people's minds. This can be avoided through the use of other colors, different patterns or particularly interesting badges (though other colors is by far the easiest method). A scheme quartered between black and another color is far more memorable than a plain black one, and so is a red color scheme with a unique and interesting chapter badge and a bit of wargear. Making your color scheme interesting helps make your chapter interesting – especially on the tabletop, where reams of prose can't save them.

What he said.

 

 

~NightrawenII.

[danking86]

Hi Nightrawen, and thanks for the feedback!

First, on the paintscheme. On reflection, I'm inclined to agree about the un-originality of Red-Black. I was actually going for a Grey/Red scheme. What do you guys think of these alternates?

Closest to the original. I lost the red head, as I didn't think it went as well with the grey scheme. Alternatively,

Alternative shoulder/acquilla colours. Avoids the Red cliches, and makes it a nice reference back to their Salamanders origin. I also wondered about

or

which is more of a white scheme, kinda like pre-heresy dusk raiders. Any you guys like? Got a favourite?

Next, the style. I get what you're saying about the fragmentary bit. I don't want to give everything away (the genetic curse, for example, is meant to be a mysterious plot-hook to explain the chapter's wanderings), but if you guys think clarity suffers, then I'd be happy to change things. Is that what you mean? That there need to be a few more "facts" about the chapter established early on before the more "impressionistic" recounting of the howling and the curse kick in? I might have a go at working something up. If I do I'll post below to avoid the confusions. Thanks again, and keep the feedback coming, it's most appreciated!

[TredHed]

danking,

 

I like what your doing and agree with the feedback already given. More fluidity in the story would be great. I will be watching with interest as I am a new Salamanders player and would like to eventually create a Successor Chapter too.

I would like to add some input on the color scheme. I like the Grey and Green the best of the extra schemes you have. Grey to go with the name of the Chapter...I think that is a must, just makes sense to me. Also, if they are a Salamanders successor Chapter then I think Green is the way to go for the contrasting color. But, these are just my opinions. ;)

 

Jonathan

[danking86]

OK, big re-do. Let me know what you think!

Grey Spectres

Remember, brothers, the first credo of our Chapter. Whether our time comes today, or tomorrow, on Holy Terra or the dark and sightless reaches of space, we are bound by a sacred duty. A duty unto death.

--- Chapter Master Sigismund Finnegan at the siege of Rausten Hive.

F

ormerly known as the Grey Dragons, the chapter now known as the Grey Spectres was once renowned throughout the Imperium as the saviours of innumerable Imperial worlds. But that was in another time. Now, the Grey Spectres are a dying chapter. Numbering less than five hundred battle-brothers, their days of glorious service to the Imperium are growing ever shorter.

Origin

T

he Grey Spectres can trace their lineage back to the 10th Founding of Space Marines, the oldest of their records dating back to the 35th Millennium. These documents, which some even within the chapter now hold to be half-remembered legends, claim that the chapter was founded in response to dark predictions from the Emperor's Tarot. It is claimed in these ancient records that the high seers' readings of the Tarot warned of a turbulent time of chaos to come. The gene-seed of the Salamanders, a chapter known for its ruggedness and famed for its endurance and stoicism, was therefore selected by the Magos Biologis to form the basis for the Grey Dragons.

After their decree of founding was issued by the High Lords of Terra, the Grey Dragons were given the world of Helmoed on which to make their home. Located close to the Salamanders' homeworld of Nocturne, Helmoed could not have been a greater contrast to the rocky, volcanic world of the Grey Dragons' parent chapter. Covered in verdant jungles Helmoed is a deathworld where primitive humans battle daily with the giant carnivores which roam the endless forests of their world. Huge and terrifying, these giant lizards resembled the Dinosaurs of ancient Terran legend, with some reaching over a hundred feet in length, others being armed with great horned crests or clubbing tails. These were the dragons after which the new chapter would model its heraldry; great, sinuous, leonine-headed beasts with mighty, bone-crunching jaws.

The local population of Helmoed had been thoroughly investigated by the Imperium long before the first marines arrived on the world. Might was all in the primitive culture of Helmoed. The strongest in a tribe would be found through vicious annual pitfighting contests held between the young men of a tribe. These were lawless, bareknuckled events held in literal pits dug into the rich, alluvial soil of the forest clearings. The fights would end only when one warrior dropped limp to the ground, unconscious or worse. The winners of these contests would be held in the highest esteem by their fellow tribesmen, and acted as champions of their people, leading them in their hunts of the monstrous beats which roamed the forests. Perhaps surprisingly, humans were relatively numerous on Helmoed, due in part to the sheer size of each tribe, which could number scores of families and hundreds of individuals, as the emerging humans banded together to combat the scaled horrors lurking in the jungle. Another factor in the human population's favour was that large scale inter-tribe warfare between humans was all-but unknown, with matters of honour, territorial dispute or conflict resolved through the pitfighting system, with each tribe's champion standing in for the tribe as a whole. The Magos Biologis team assigned to Helmoed remarked in their testing notes that the humans of Helmoed showed a remarkable genetic purity for all their barbarity and strange rituals, including a remarkable resistance to mutation and corruption. Helmoed promised to be an exemplary homeworld for the new chapter.

Founding Father Gunnar Kai

In a chapter known to particularly revere its ancestors only Vulkan and the Emperor himself are held in higher regard than the Grey Spectres' first Chapter Master. Young and fiery, Gunnar Kai was a great warrior, orator and strategist. It was Gunnar Kai who led the chapter through the worst fighting of the Howling. It was he who personally led the daring planetfall which broke the siege of the Iron Fortress on Haraam, landing accompanied a hundred of the chapter's finest warriors within the citadel of the Fortress itself and driving the defending forces before him into the waiting guns of the Salamanders and 112th Cadian Imperial Guard. His death at the close of the Howling Wars at the hands of a Dark Apostle of the Word Bearers Legion resulted in a Blood-Feud the chapter maintains to this day.

It was around 150.M35 that the first marines arrived to take possession of Helmoed. A great forge-monastery had been built on a high plateau overlook the endless rolling canopy under the guidance of legendary Salamanders Master of the Forge Su'Matr himself. Why the Salamanders themselves took such an active role in the founding of the Grey Dragons is unknown, but the Salamanders treated the new chapter as a favoured son, perhaps foreseeing the tragedies to come. The small contingent arriving into the vast forge-monastery were led by Salamanders Captain Gunnar Kai. Barely two centuries old, Kai had been promoted to captain of the sixth company of the Salamanders chapter after the death of his predecessor in Abaddon's fourth Black Crusade. Gunnar Kai was regarded as an exceptionally promising leader particularly known for his oratorical skills and his devotion to the Imperial creed. He brought with him the great thunder hammer Urtiel and the ancient storm shield The Escutcheon of Drakes, both masterworks of Salamanders craftsmanship gifted to the new chapter and still carried into battle by the Grey Spectre's Chapter Masters to this day. Accompanying the young and energetic Kai came the aged Chaplain Ashutosh, charged with training the Grey Dragon's religious leaders, Techmarine Li'Kung, Librarian Lun'Ang, Apothecary Jin'ho and around thirty veterans drawn from across the Salamanders chapter.

It would be many decades before the newly-formed legion would we prepared for battle. Slowly, meticulously, Kai built his chapter, drawing from the best and bravest of those competing in the Helmoed pitfights. The natives, aggressively resistant to the marines' presence at first, soon came to revere the mysterious armoured warriors who lived high above the forest canopy, calling them the Validus, the strongest. Of those who came from the Salamanders only Gunnar Kai, Apothecary Jin'ho and ten of their followers stayed. Chaplain Ashutosh, aged when he came to Helmoed, went home to the Salamanders to find death among his old battle-brothers. The others slowly drifted after him, retuning one by one as the new chapter gained strength and confidence, allowing those marines raised from Helmoed itself to take their place as captains of the newly-formed companies. Even Chief Librarian Lun'Ang, whose devotion to the training of those under his care was legendary throughout the chapter, left the Dragons to return to the volcanic hills of Nocturne. Those ten Salamanders who saw out their days as Grey Dragons and participated in the great battles to come become revered as the “first ten”, a name which would bless the honour guard of all the chapter masters who followed Gunnar Kai. In those early days, the chapter fought many small-scale engagements, often fighting alongside the Salamanders themselves, who still seemed keen to take an active hand in raising the new chapter, teaching them much of their ways of war and of respect for their sacred tools of destruction.

If the Grey Dragons were indeed raised to aid the Imperium in weathering the storms the Tarot had forecast, then those predictions could not have been more timely.

The Howling

I

n 403.M34, just as the newly-formed Dragons were approaching full strength, a psychic event on a scale never seen before or since threatened to rend the Imperium apart. Records from the time are fragmentary at best, but what scattered reports remain speak of the sudden death of millions, if not billions of Astropaths and Navigators. The full saga of this turbulent time would consume many weighty volumes, and is one best left for another time. Suffice it to say that the mass deaths of the Astropaths weakened the light of the Astronomicon, making interstellar travel and communication across the vastness of the Imperium all-but impossible. Entire fleets of ships were suddenly blinded and lost forever among the stars and thousands of Imperial worlds erupted in open rebellion, siding with planetary governors, rogue traders or even the ruinous powers as the far-flung systems of the Imperium threatened to fracture apart.

This was to be the fledgling Grey Dragons' finest hour. Fighting alongside dozens of chapters of their brother marines, the young chapter threw itself into the fires of the internecine wars plaguing the Imperium. Gunnar Kai rallied the fledgling chapter, and, leaving behind only a token guard to tend the the forges and recruits on Helmoed, deployed the entire chapter to its fleet. Relying on the prognostications of their Librarians, several of whom literally burned out their minds searching for the faint light of the Astronomicon, the Grey Dragons raced to save the Imperium.

The chapter's rolls of honour from this time read as a gallery of their greatest heroes. In warzone after warzone the chapter proved itself time and time again to be a worthy ally in the struggle to hold the Imperium together. The Grey Dragons became especially known for their incredible endurance and willingness to absorb the worst punishment the enemies of the Imperium could throw at them. On the Ice world of Molen the Grey Dragons Fifth company under the command of Captain Maol Eoin battled both the freezing temperatures and the ceaseless bombardment of the artillery of a traitorous guard regiment to take and hold a crucial pass over the Giantsback mountains. On Vergift, where the Adeptus Mechanicus had fallen to the Dark Powers, the Dragons fighting under the command of Gunnar Kai himself fought through a blasted and sunless hell of rusting mounds of half-completed warmachines between which buzzed the noisome plague drones of Nurgle, filling the air with a toxic haze which ate through even power armour. Fighting day and night without respite or resupply, the Dragons picked their way on foot through the maze of manufactora and munitoria, fighting building to building and trench to trench to finally breach the citadel of the fallen fabricator-general and reclaim the world for the Emperor. It was here that the lessons learned from the Salamanders came into their own, as the vicious close-range firefights of such wars played to the strengths of the Dragons' way of waging war.

After Vergift the Grey Dragons became especially sought after during siege and trench warfare, where their effectiveness in brutal close-quarter firefights seemed to invoke the very finest qualities of their Salamander ancestors. The Grey Dragons' willingness to absorb losses combined with a simply uncanny hardiness made the chapter Forlorn Hope and breaching troops without peer. It was for these reasons that the Grey Dragons were chosen to lead the assault on the Iron Citadel on Haraam, the breaching of the Brass Gate on Einde, and the storming of the mountain-fortress Lijst, where the marines of Captain Carnak storming the trenches of the foothills fought toward others dropping from orbit, who, led by Gunnar Kai, fought their way downhill from the highest point of the vast granite fortification.

Chapter Master Gunnar Kai seemed to be everywhere in those days. Whether leading the charge into the heart of the enemy, inspiring his young marines with his fiery speeches invoking Imperial and Premethian Creed, or participating in the meticulous planning of campaigns across a hundred warzones, the indefatigable Gunnar Kai seemed the very epitome of what it meant to be a Space Marine commander during the cataclysm of the Howling. It is perhaps fitting, then, that Gunnar Kai fell in what proved to be the last battle of those dark days the Dragons would be involved in. Fighting to retake a huge ecclesiastical palace from the forces of the Word Bearers legion Kai and his squad found themselves set upon by a howling mass of cultists led by a mighty Dark Apostle. The Dragons fought with grim fury against the overwhelming odds, but were slowly pushed back by the sheer number of their assailants. The second wave of Grey Dragons, led by one of the first marines to be raised on Helmoed itself, Captain Noriah of the second company, arrived just as Gunnar Kai fell in single combat with the Dark Apostle, his defences finally overcome by the fury of the traitor's assault. Fighting his way through the press of shrieking cultists, Captain Noriah sought out the Dark Apostle, fighting with a fury born of true grief. Noriah rained down blow after blow onto the ancient armour of the fallen chaplain, tearing the ancient helmet from his head and battering the snarling face beneath it to a bloody and unrecognisable pulp with his power fist. As the apostle fell the cultists scattered. Casting aside his own arms and taking up the great hammer and shield of his lord, Captain Noriah ordered that the Chapter Master's body be recovered, and swore a mighty oath that the death of their lord would be revenged upon those who had inflicted it. The chapter still carry a hatred of the Word Bearers deep within its very soul even to this day. Even as night fell on the day Kai perished, and the building crumbled about them, squads of flamer-armed Dragons stalked the halls of the palace, hunting down every traitor and purging them with cleansing fire. This dark day marked the first, although not the last, occasion on which marines of the Grey Dragons chapter mounted the severed heads of traitors on tall spiked poles embedded deep into the soil of the world which had fallen to the dark powers. The grisly display served as a reminder to the survivors of the terrible cost of betraying their oaths of loyalty to the Emperor. Not one world upon which this ritual display has been undertaken has fallen prey to chaos a second time. The day won, and the wars following the Howling finally dying down, the Grey Dragons retreated to Helmoed to mourn and rebuild.

Beliefs

T

he Grey Spectres are now a grim and fatalistic chapter, a far cry from their days as the ebullient defenders of the Imperium who fought in the Howling. In those days, influenced by the teachings of the First Chaplain Ashutosh, the Grey Dragons followed both the Promethian Cult of self-reliance and respect for the machine spirit and the teachings of the Imperial Cult, for who but the Emperor, who alone united the tribes of humanity and brought them to their destiny amongst the stars best exemplifies the teachings of the Promethian faith? This Promenthian faith was, as with the Salamanders who inspired them, manifest in the Dragon's preference for thunderhammers, and the flame and melta weapons best suited to the close-range firefights the chapter most eagerly sought. The particular strand of the Promethian cult taught amongst the Dragons emphasised the stoical and self-sacrificing aspects of Promethian belief. It was for this reason that the chapter accepted the heavy losses associated with their way for fighting, refusing to give ground even in the face of the worst of enemy resistance. It is from around the time of the Howling, as the religious beliefs of the Dragons matured following Ashutosh's return to his chapter that the Grey Dragons adopted the motto Duty unto Death, a credo they still uphold today, albeit for very different reasons.

Chapter Master Sigismund Finnegan

A gaunt and pale-skinned man, Sigismund Finnegan is the latest Grey Spectre to hold the title of Chapter Master. Like those who came before him, Sigismund Finnegan carries into battle the sacred thunder hammer Urtiel, and the great Escutcheon of Drakes. Confronted by the slow destruction of his chapter, Master Finnegan has devoted his every waking minute to maximising the effectiveness of those battle-brothers left to him. It was Finnegan who renamed the chapter and ordered its warriors to abandon their homeworld in order to embark upon a crusade for a cure to their affliction, forever changing the identity and battle-tactics of his chapter. Finnegan is a melancholy man, but a mighty warrior and one determined to either find a cure to his chapter's ills or drive it to do as much damage to the Emperor's enemies as possible before its glorious legacy is lost forever.

The beliefs of the Grey Spectres now centre around a deep sense of duty to the Emperor and a respect for their ancestors, especially those heroes who served with distinction in the days of the Howling Wars. Increasingly, however, the Grey Spectres have formed an almost cult-like fascination with death. This cult has gained additional support since the election of Sigismund Finnegan as Chapter Master. It was Finnegan whose first act as Chapter Master was to order the chapter to change its name to the Grey Spectres, reflecting their status as a dying chapter and who commanded the chapter to abandon Helmoed and take to their fleet to search for a cure for the malady which is slowly killing the Spectres.

If the chaos of the Howling made the Grey Spectres, it has been the Millennia following that cataclysmic event which slowly broke them. As the Ecclesiarchy slowly healed the wounds of the Howling, and the rule of Imperium was restored to the stars as the light of Astronomicon gained strength once again, the full extent of the legacy left to the Dragons from their forebears slowly became clear.

The Grey Dragons had always recruited slowly, taking to heart the advice of the Codex Astartes regarding the careful training and indoctrination of new recruits. It was in replenishing the heavy losses of the Howling that the chapter's genetic curse became evident. As the chapter's Apothecaries worked to implant the gene-seed into new recruits, the survival rate among those selected began to fall. The stock from which the chapter drew its recruits had always been of the highest quality, the jungles and pitfighting tournaments of Helmoed weeding out all but the strongest aspirant youngsters. The hardiness of these recruits, combined with the skill and care of the chapter's Apothecaries had meant that the survival rates of the chapter's neophytes had generally been high, with as many as one in five of those selected from amongst the local population surviving to full battle-brother status. Slowly, however, as the Millennia passed this success rate slowly fell away until today as a few as one in a thousand recruits survive the process of becoming a Grey Spectre. Combined with the attrition of an existence of continuous combat which comes with their endless search for a cure to their condition, the falling success rate of new recruits damns the Grey Spectres to extinction within its current chapter master's lifespan.

Combat Doctrine

A

s the Grey Dragons, the chapter sought out the most dangerous warzones of the tumult following the Howling, seeking to prove their names under the guidance of Founding Father Gunnar Kai. It was for this reason that the chapter involved themselves with siege and trench warfare, seeing these conflicts as places which not only suited their preferred style of warfare, but also offered the greatest chance to test and prove themselves in the fires of battle. Typical combat doctrine at this time called for large numbers of Dragons deployed as foot troops armed with devastating close range flame and melta weapons to stand firm as an “anvil” while the assault troops of the Grey Dragons, typically deep striking jump-pack-equipped troops when conditions allowed, or an armoured assault by close-combat-equipped Terminators carried in Land Raider Redeemers, formed a “hammer” to take the fight to their enemies. The results of these tactics were often crushingly decisive. Caught between the guns of the “anvil” foot troops and the rampaging close assault forces of the “hammer” contingent opposing armies found their escape routes cut off and were forced to fight on two fronts as the Grey Dragons closed their trap. The cost to the “anvil” troops was often extraordinarily high, as they were forced to weather the concentrated firepower of the opposing army while the assault “hammer” troops manoeuvred into position. The Grey Dragons accepted these losses, however, embracing the self-sacrificing credo of the Promethian cult, and considering a death in battle to be the ultimate expression of duty unto death.

The Battle of Panazee IV

The battle to wrest the Panazee system from the clutches of the Word Bearers Legion was one of the first warzones the newly fleet-based Grey Spectres encountered during their search for a cure. Attracted by the vast and ancient Magos Biologis facilities located on the planet, the Grey Spectres responded quickly to the calls of the beleaguered Planetary Defence Forces. Alongside its sprawling Biologis facilites, Panazee IV featured many heavily fortified and labyrinthine hive-cities which promised many months of costly fighting. It was here that Chapter Master Finnegan demonstrated his chapter's new combat doctrine. Where the Grey Dragons would have fought a conventional siege on the planet's surface, slowly retaking the Hives street by street, Sigismund Finnegan ordered the chapter's battle barges to bombard the heavily populated hives. Bombardment cannons rained down death upon the hives, killing civilian and traitor alike, including all the remaining loyal PDF forces who had called the Spectres to the system. After six hours of constant shelling, the attack halted and into the devastated hives drove Land Raiders, which disgorged thunderhammer-wielding Terminators, which swept the hives clean of all life. Within hours it was done. Panazee IV was devastated but returned to Imperial rule.

As their number have dwindled, however, the Grey Spectres have been forced to change their combat doctrines, seeking to preserve their dwindling numbers and make the most of every marine. They retain as best they can a codex formation of companies, though their numbers restrict them to five companies, all equipped and operating as full battle companies. The Grey Spectres cling to the teaching of the Codex Astartes as a cornerstone of their identity as Space Marines. The chapter still accept losses, sometimes on a truly alarming scale, and once an objective has been identified the Spectres will not be dissuaded from attaining it, regardless of the cost to accomplish their goals. However, whereas the Grey Dragons celebrated these losses as glorious expressions of their beliefs the Grey Spectres now accept them with a stone-faced resignation to the fate which awaits the chapter as a whole.

In even starker contrast to their previous practice of seeking glory and victory by breaking the enemy where he was strongest, the Grey Spectres now prefer the tactics of shock. The Spectres are known to commonly presage their ground assaults with extensive and often costly bombardment. The Grey Spectres will utilise the guns of their powerful fleet, which will enter low geostationary orbit above the Spectres' objectives to maximise the destruction they can wreak upon the enemy. The Spectres also utilise a large fleet of Thunderhawk gunships, both to transport elite assault troops into the heart of enemy formations under attack in relative safety and also to add the weight of their own firepower to the Spectres' bombardment. The Grey Spectres have even been known to commandeer the guns of those Imperial guard detachments fighting alongside them. In these cases, the Grey Spectres will either countermand the orders of the artillery regiment's own chain of command to specify their own targets, or on occasion forcibly commandeer the guns from the Guard, which has brought the Spectres into conflict with more than one Imperial Warmaster.

When battle is joined, the Spectres still prefer the brutal close-range firefights sought by their Salamander forebears, and their Terminator-armoured brethren are deployed as breaching and line-breaking troops, typically carried in Land Raiders and equipped with thunderhammers and storm shields, both to ensure the veterans' survival and also to invoke the sacred emblems of the Promethian faith. Despite the dwindling of the chapter, the Grey Spectres still proudly send warriors to fight in organisations such as the Deathwatch, valuing the goodwill which results from such actions almost as much as it does the expertise that marines sent on secondment bring back to the chapter should they ever rejoin it. It is whispered by some Imperial commanders embittered by the Spectres' destructive tactics that the willingness of the commanders of the Grey Spectres to join such organisations stems not from a desire to do good for the Imperium so much as it does from a desire to repair the damage that the chapter's bombardment tactics, which result in often catastrophic collateral damage, inflict upon the reputation of the Grey Spectres.

The most notable divergence from the Codex Astartes, however, is that the Spectres field no Scout formations. The light armour worn and dangerous work generally undertaken by such squads has been decreed by the Chapter command to be too great a risk to the chapter's valuable marines. Instead, new recruits are mixed into normal tactical squads. Veteran sergeants leading such squads are charged with ensuring that the valuable young marines come to no harm. This practice represents the chapter's clearest effort to provide as much protection as possible to those who carry with them the dimming light of the chapter's future. The chapter also hunt ceaselessly for a cure for their mysterious malady. The Apothecaries of the Grey Spectres, which the Spectres train uncommonly many of, attaching them to many squads of both tactical and terminator-armoured marines, comb the planets the chapter encounters in its journey through the stars, relentlessly hunting for a way to save their chapter before it is too late.

[Andrew J]

I just read through most of your newest post. I really liked the origin and howlign section about the grey dragons. It is well written but after that I felt as though you lost it trying to change them into the grey spectres. I was following your logic until you started talking about how the chapter had a flaw and was a failing chapter. That does not seem to fit with the earlier portions of your IA at all. The beliefs section should be moved around to me or changed entirely.

 

After reading through it I feel like you have 2 chapters and are trying to mash them together. I like what you have for the grey dragons and feel like you could just maintain most of what you have now for after the howling but without the flaw and focus on how they are grim and fatalistic.

 

Just my 2 cents. Hope it helps.

[Captain Juan Juarez]

Tip:

 

Edit the IA you're currently going with into the main post - everyone can then see what you're working with and what they should be reading, rather than scrolling through versions and wondering "Is this the one?"