Dark Sentinels

[Son of Iron]

Dark Sentinels

 

Founding - 2nd Founding

Geneseed - Ultramarines

Homeworld - Defiance

Specialist: Infiltration, Assassins, Outflanking, Drop Pod Assault

Battle Cry - For Guilliman, For the Emperor, We are the Dark Sentinels, To War

 

The Dark Sentinels are a 2nd Founding Chapter from the Ultramarines. Their armour is black, with blue trim and blue below the waist. The Chapter symbol is (don't know, if you've any ideas please post).

 

History

 

During the Great Crusade, the 88th expeditionary Fleet was made up of a small contingent of Night Lords and Imperial Army. The Space Marines were decemated when the Army lost control of one of the flanks, and as a token of brotherhood, Guilliman sent a group of Ultramarines to fill in for the losses while the Night Lords sent word back to their Primarch. while only there for around 3 years, the 13th Legionaries quickly saw just how effective the Night Lords terror tactics were, yet also how unhonourable the Marines were. When the Ultramarines left, they belived that such tactics could be used, but still honorably and with glory.

 

After the Horus Heresy finally ended and the Legions split, the Dark Sentinels went off on their own. They harboured an extreme hatred for Night Lords, as they had once called them friends and brothers, and Word Bearers, who had sought to completely destroy their Legion.

 

Homeworld

 

The planet of Defiance, Segmentum Pacificus, is a planet that is quite strange in it's layout. The planet is extremely distant from it's system's sun - a giant gas ball that gives out high levels of radiation and heat, so much so that the closest 3 planets are all but uninhabitable to humans. Defiance however is an almost perfect distance, getting not too much radiation or heat. It has 5 main continents, only one of which has been given up for inhabiting. There is one covered in equitorial jungle, one covered in desert, one covered in polar tundra, one covered in mountainous hillside, and the smallest, covered in hive cities and manufactorums. These manufactories provide little for the Chapter, but still create arms and armour for the Imperial Guard. The world is almost perfect to train recruits, as it gives the Chapter almost every type of terrain.

 

On Defiance the Dark Sentinels established a ring of fortresses, 1 on each continent. They also set up a central Fortress-Monastery, but it's location is known only to the Chapter. It is refered to simply as The Sanctum.

 

Tactics

 

Every Marine in the Dark Sentinels takes care of his own weapons and armour, and as is the Chapter's way, hides many weapons with in them. Captain Runeatos of the 2nd Company, for example, has exactly 88 blades and lasers hidden with in his weapons and power armour. To be found totally unarmed is a great dishonour, which lead the 6th Chapter Master Hartlorn to make this comment:

 

''If a Dark Sentinel is truly unarmed, then he is dead.''

 

Something that a group of Dark Eldar found out a little too late. Managing to develop a poison that works even against Astartes, the Eldar captured three Marines, each of which were stripped of their weapons, but didn't take off their armour. Their 1st mistake. The Marines were then left alone. The Eldar's 2nd mistake. That they had captured a Captain and 2 Veteran Sergeants was their 3rd mistake, and the Dark Eldar paid for it with their lives. Emerging through a hidden Webway Portal, the 3 Brother's blue and black armour covered in xenos blood, they returned to their Company after a mere 2 hours 'imprisonment'

 

 

Each Battle-Brother is an adept assassin, each perfecting the art while part of the 10th Company. The Dark Sentinels favoured method of attack is a drop-pod assault, using scout's locator-beacons to guide them in after they have assassinated any leader. This tactic works especially well against Tau, who's resolve crumbles when they lose an Ethereal, and Orks, who fight amoung themselves when a Warboss is not there to lead them. If the enemy is harder to crack, or is dug in so as to make a drop-pod assault unwise, the Sentinels have other tricks. Using scouts to find suitable pathways, Land Raiders, the Chapter's favoured heavy armour choice, outflank the enemy, deploying Terminators while scything down bastions and troops alike. The Dark Sentinels have a large number of Land Raiders - of all patterns - and a high amount of Tactical Dreadnought Armour, both for this reason. The Sentinels believe that other Astartes tanks are too slow, and while they have a few proto-type engines in manufacture, they are yet to be tested in combat. That does not mean that other tanks, such as Predators or Vindicators are not used, merely that they are not used widely.

 

On many occassions Regiments of Imperial Guardsmen who have fought beside the Dark Sentinels before have petitioned for merely one Space Marine to act as an assassin. Without a leader and with a full Regiment of Guard shooting and shelling you, many enemies will give up, their morale gone.

 

Many other Chapters, notably the Black Templars, have raised arguements against this form of attack, claiming it to be dishonourable and cowardly, and awfully similar to the Night Lords or Alpha Legion. However the Dark Sentinels merely respond by an old saying,

 

''Cut off the head, and the body withers and dies''

 

 

 

41st Millenium

 

The Dark Sentinels

[Son of Iron]

-reserved-

[voi shet magir]

It's not really a problem that you didn't use spellcheck. Maybe you wrote this on your phone during a twenty minute train ride, or at least in whichever browser no still doesn't spellcheck for you. It also doesn't matter that you didn't use "first" and "second," in the conventional way, or use apostrophes. I am saying this preemptively, in case some poster is bothered enough to comment, or you yourself ever become concerned or embarrassed. It's all intelligible and you can use it however you want to.

 

You also don't have the problem of having written a boring story. It isn't a story at all. Describing all the continents wastes your time. Say this: some of the people who livedon defiance at the time were jerks, or nice, and this is how that went down. Part of it happened on the planet's one snowy continent.It's pretty simple.

 

Here's a thing to think about with Night Lords, and it ties in to your multiple fortresses. Even against enemies who don't have feelings like fear, the Night Lords can use terror tactics. They confuse the enemy into not knowing when and where or even if the Night Lords will attack next, so they have to reinforce all their positions and jump at every shadow. Even necrons or tyranids have to act scared, regardless of whether they actually feel scared.

 

The Sentinels use their terminators in the same way. Say they attack at different directions at different times with three small forces, but in the end only one of them has terminators waiting to make the real attack. That's almost a story. Add something in about how combustion doesn't work (what?) on Defiance, so instead of shooting things, people have to hunt by appproaching prey from multiple directions and chasing(beating?) them toward the actual hunting party.

 

You might not be responsible for not knowing how the language usually works. You definitely can tell when something is not interesting. Replace those parts, and it'll be better.

[NightrawenII]

It's not really a problem that you didn't use spellcheck. Maybe you wrote this on your phone during a twenty minute train ride, or at least in whichever browser no still doesn't spellcheck for you. It also doesn't matter that you didn't use "first" and "second," in the conventional way, or use apostrophes. I am saying this preemptively, in case some poster is bothered enough to comment, or you yourself ever become concerned or embarrassed. It's all intelligible and you can use it however you want to.

 

You also don't have the problem of having written a boring story. It isn't a story at all. Describing all the continents wastes your time. Say this: some of the people who livedon defiance at the time were jerks, or nice, and this is how that went down. Part of it happened on the planet's one snowy continent.It's pretty simple.

What did you just say...? *snicker*

---

@Son of Iron

What you have here is pretty much standard tactic for Space Marines, 'Decapitation of Enemy' is in Codex Astartes and don't get me started on Drop-pod insertion...

 

Second, I would be more prone to believe the 'The Sentinels believe that other Astartes tanks are too slow,...' provided that Land Raider was NOT the slowest vehicle in the SM arsenal (source: Imperial Armour II: Forces of Space Marines and Inquisition).

 

I've noticed this in your other attempt and I'm going to put it very bluntly. If you want to create a compelling Chapter, then you have to introduce motivation, personality or character to your Marines, otherwise the Article feels like 'artificial construct', so to speak.

 

 

~NightrawenII.

[Priamus]

You cannot make your chapter a 2nd founding because all 2nd founding chapters are set in stone by GW

 

the Ultramarines had 10 successors aspar the Codex

Eagle Warriors

Doom Eagles

Novamarines

White Consuls

Black Consuls

Praetors of Orpheus

Genesis

Aurora

Silver Skulls

Sons of Guilliman

 

other than that great story

[Wargamer]

You cannot make your chapter a 2nd founding because all 2nd founding chapters are set in stone by GW

 

Bull to that notion! The Imperial Fists only had two Second Founding chapters (Crimson Fists, Black Templars) yet there's at least one more of them in the Badab War books!

 

2nd Founding is open to anyone who wants it. Simple as that.

 

 

As to the IA itself... my personal moment of cringe was the utterly ludicrous geography.

 

I would like you to take a moment to go onto Google and look at the world map. Please note how none of the continents, bar Antarctica, is a monoclimate. South America might have a lot of jungle, but it's also got big mountain ranges (and probably other climates; I don't know SA very well). Africa has a huge desert to the north, but it also has mountains and savannah. Europe and North America have just about every climate short of tropical rainforest if you know where to look.

 

In short, please don't make silly claims about basic geography. I can live with monoculture planets when only a small part is colonised, and I can live with monoclimate when said climate is extreme (ie: Mars is one huge iron oxide desert, Valhalla is a giant ball of ice), but when you're creating an Earth-like planet please try to make it like the real thing; have a continent dominated by desert, or containing a vast rainforest. Emphasise this is the most prominent feature, but don't make it the only one.

 

 

...so... Tactics...

 

...This really does not make any kind of sense whatsoever. The idea that a Chapter that favours stealth and assassination would have a large quantity of Terminators (slightly more stealthy than kicking the door down with an Imperator Titan) and Land Raiders (slightly less stealthy than said Imperator Titan) is a contradiction. You then go on to mention how the Chapter doesn't like other Astartes vehicles because they are 'too slow', despite the fact the Land Raider is the slowest vehicle in the Astartes armoury bar none, and can be outrun by a Chimera.

 

Here, the first thing you need to do is drop what is outright wrong - Land Raiders are not fast. They are not used for outflanking enemies. They are not used for anything besides smashing headlong into the enemy because that is all they are good for. They are huge tanks, heavy armoured and (comparatively) slow; outflanking is for Speeders, transports and maybe the Predators.

 

Next, you need to decide what your theme is, and stick to it. Personally, I'd stick with assassination - we've already got plenty of Terminator spam in canon.

[Dosjetka]

2nd Founding is open to anyone who wants it. Simple as that.

Couldn't agree more with that.

 

Ludovic

[Captain Juan Juarez]

2nd Founding is open to anyone who wants it. Simple as that.

 

Yes and no.

 

Nothing really stops someone choosing the Second Founding but, at least for me personally, it always smacks of "hah, I'm so much better than you!" when people choose it - though this might be coloured by the amount of IAs I've read that are written in this way.

 

Just as there's no reason to not use the Second Founding, there really isn't much within it that any other Founding can't give you.

 

But it's all about personal choice *shrug*