The Emperor's Immortals

[Andrew J]

Wow love the short story. Great perspective and love the way you describe the chapters accepting their fate and how different it seems to a mere human. I think it would work great as a sidebar.

 

Didnt really see any changes after Nightrawen and my suggestions, but maybe they were that well done....

[Kastellan Kong]

Only if horribly mispronounced by an American (or well, any other native english-speaker...) :P

It's actually more like 'Koun-tó', with the rythm being akin to 'junta'. I forgive you for not knowing this ;)

I might change it to 'Kunje', for a number of reasons but I'll see about that later on. It's hardly very important at this stage.

 

I'm a bit short on time right now, so I'll have to get back to your points, NightrawenII.

 

Thank you for keeping an interest, and thank you all for taking the time to comment!

 

Cheers

*edit*

 

Kunye, Much better :)

[Malthe]

Hi guys, thanks for taking the time to comment ^_^

 

I'm glad you like the short story, Andrew. I figured that such a monumental event in the history of the chapter deserved a bit of fleshing out. I don't think I'll go into more detail than this, though.

 

I'm also glad you like the new name better, Kingkong :D

 

Any other comments are very welcome!

I could really use a sencond pair of eyes on this one.

 

Cheers!

[Rezial]

So I've been checking this out since you joined in on the Vorpal Swords topic. I applaud your efforts and quite a bit of your writing seems a good approximation of the style and verbage common to the genre. That being said I mostly agree with Nightwrawen.

 

Not only does your chapter's recruitment world seem to worship the ways of chaos while believing them to be honorable but the chapter itself is woefully negligent of proper respect to Imperial traditions of the Astartes. When a human successfully ascends through the trials of biological change to become a space marine their previous lives are largely washed over. More eccentric chapters may get away with an altered version of tradition but there's a reason that Space Wolves have virtually zero successful descendants. Your remaining examples are BA, BT, DA, and GK. All of these have some pretty major organizational differences or other serious issues as well as great power at their disposal. In short there are very solid reasons they get away with it and I don't see anything quite that concrete here. If they're part of the Codex Astartes then write them that way. If they deviate go wild, but back it up.

 

All this plays into the fact that I don't see the setup as believable. There's no way the Inquisition lets them off after showing up the way you describe. If they altered themselves that much while on crusade it's going to stand out, they won't just adapt back in 5 years. Unruly? Survival through enhanced aggression? Would a space marine who is only in check because his Master forced him into submission going to take anything off an Order that probably erroneously sent his chapter on a suicide mission? His brothers probably almost all died out there for no logical purpose. Chaos marines are described as giving in to their emotions and that's what it sounded to me like you described of them. Also they arrive back to a chapter planet as you laid out after that long and it is not going to resemble what they remember. No one to protect it zealously as you describe. I don't see the civilization there sounding as if it has a chance to survive anyway when they engage in that type of ritual combat on what is basically a death world. The desert is for people who are survivalists but nobody would engage in that behavior intelligently when there is no oasis to fall back on, no safe havens of abundance. You have to be able to thrive in a place before you can start killing able bodied men. The Aztecs didn't live in a desert, and all the earth civilizations that did weren't living in the type you have written about. If they exhibited any traditions like these it is because they could afford to.

 

So, I have ranted a bit. Very sorry if it's not what you expected I might think. I expect you will find all points arguable or able to be deflected. I want to say that in function I do like the chapter. Tactics and combat doctrine are pretty cool. I'm a big fan of Assault over Ballistics myself and the colors and icons sound really good too. I promise to put as much work into my project as you have here in the hopes that it will be at least half as imaginative.