Renegades - But loyal to mankind

[AyanamiKun]

After painting and playing for a while I wanted to bring more divergence into my army. I disliked the UM fluff anyway so the decision was easy: I would incorporate alien technology and equipment from different chapters to mix up the uniform look while keeping my color schema (which is not exactly the UM schema anyway). At the moment I am working with Black Templar, Grey Knight, Dark Angels and generic Marine bitz to create some mixed up models. I also have some Tau weaponry which is going to be used as bolter replacements (counts as bolter) on some marines.

 

So now on to the fluff. THis is a first idea and not completely fleshed out or anything.

The chapter was created a an UM successor chapter a long time ago. After many years (centuries) of combat in the name of the Emperor many within the chapter, most notably the Chapter Master and his Captains, noticed a perculiar thing: The Imperium does not care about its citizens.

 

In the end the Chapter's loyalty and devotion to protecting humanity won over the loyalty to the Imperium and the chapter began to protect worlds also from enemies within. The chapter's most well known saying is "The Imperium Destroys - The Emperor Protects" and is the baseline for all chapter operations. This way of thinking can lead to conflict with the Imperium and other Chapters and already lead to several violent clashes. The chapter's homeworld was declared exterminatus and the chapter itself had to flee or be destroyed completely. They are now fleet based and relatively small because there is no dedicated recruiting world anymore.

 

The chapter also lacks constant supplies which is why they had to start using alien technology are face destruction. Tau rifles have been modified to fire bolter shells by the chapter's tech marines and equipment of other chapters which they encounter in battle, be it as allies or enemies, is scavanged afterwards for usable parts. The original chapter symbols are left intact to honor the "donator" and their effort in fighting for what they believe is right.

 

The chapter also keeps its appearance close to the Ultramarines because it often helps to conceal their real identity for a while. All contact with planetary officials is sometimes done by marines wearing purely Ultramarine looking power armour and symbols because the Ultramarine's reputation can be very helpful to request supplies or to requisition troops and recruits.

 

Here are two examples (please ignore mold lines) for bitz mixing. Some more are under development :huh:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hPD9H6ACU_E/T4Gv...00/marine+1.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SS52hrSpihc/T4Gv...00/marine+2.jpg

 

So what do you think? Is this idea viable? Comments are very welcome!

[Chengar Qordath]

Fair warning: the whole "loyal to humanity, but not the Imperium" is one the bigger cliches of DIY chapters, and has a bit of a bad reputation. Not to say that you can't write your chapter that way, and do a good job of it, but the ideas has been done badly so often that a lot of people won't care for it.

 

Modifying Tau rifles to use bolter shells would be just about impossible. Pulse rifles are energy weapons; you'd basically have to rip out all the innards, and replace it with imperial tech (so all you'd end up with is a weird-looking but otherwise standard bolter).

 

Also, if they're going around trading off the Ultramarines' reputation, I'd have to think that the Ultramarines are going to be very, very unhappy about that. As in "send out fleets to hunt those renegades down" unhappy.

[War Angel]

I agree with chengar. Could you possibly expand on why they think the imperium doesn't care about its citizens? I think of you can go into some detail as how this has come about would probably prevent you from ending up as a cliche.

 

To add on to the alien weaponry, there are marines out there that take alien weapons and simply use them. So you're marines don't have to modify them for bolter use. And to expand on you're scavenging of armor, there was once an eye of terror codex, in which a company of space wolves was forever combatting trators in the eye of terror. Marines would have random Peices of armor replaced with world eaters or thousand sons armor, but would remove all chaos star's from the armor.

 

Hope that helps

[AyanamiKun]

Thanks for the feedback! I will think some more about it and post an updated version maybe tomorrow or the day after! I appreciate it! ;)

[soddinnutter]

Why not have them go all the way and join the Greater Good?

 

If they were a Salamander descendant chapter with a similar way of thinking as their progenitor and they bounced from one war-zone to another and so the blatant disregard for its citizens well being that the Imperium has they might start to think.

 

They could have had a few squads in the area when the 1st War for Armageddon started and so they went there to help. Only one out of the twenty survived and he bore witness to the treatment of the loyal survivors at the uncaring hands of the Gray Knights. They could have seen too many broken guardsmen who having given their all for the Imperium they love are cast aside without thanks or care. Warriors who have seen too much and whose minds have gone condemned to servitorhood. Men and women who survived the slaughter of warp-things executed for surviving. The ideals of the Emperor betrayed by His successors to preserve the parody of His dream that the Imperium has become.

 

They take part, the whole chapter, in the Damocles Gulf Crusade and they make great strides against the alien hordes and their enslaved human pets. They are doing the Emperors works and putting these poor slaves out of their misery so that their souls may be saved.

 

They capture many enemy soldiers and hold them for interrogation. Most die with curses upon their bloodies lips and blasphemies upon their tongues. One prisoner is tortured by the High Chaplain. They interrogated the poor sod for many days and nights in many, many ways. Trying to get him to swear loyalty to the Imperium, trying to save him, trying to get information out of him. He would not break. His final words "For the Greater Good, for the Emperor" and spat his bloody teeth in Preachers eye with his dying breath.

 

Some time later the rest of the Crusade is diverted south to go Bug Stomping as the hive fleet makes its debut. They never got the message and were left high and screwed when the Tau caught up with them.

 

Whittled down to a mere hundred and a few marines and about 300 serfs the survivors were dragged before one of the Ehtereals. The High Preacher is the last member of the command brass left and the words of that dying ruined man have haunted him. The Ehthereal who is young and ambitious desires the prestige of managing to enlighten the legendary post-human warriors and so offers them a place on the sept world he oversees (making sure as hell his elders don't find out before he can declare success).

 

The Preacher and his dwindled congregation see this as a way of getting time to fix the Barge and set sail for civilisation at the first opportunity. But as they walk around the sept-world they see strange thing. Humans and xenos of half a dozen different kinds working together, living in close proximity to each other, socialising and not trying to murder or eat each other. They see temples to xeno gods and they see temples to Him on Earth and one of the Serfs claims he has seen xenos praying to the Emperor just as some humans have adopted heathen gods. And working together they have become mighty enough to bring his chapter low, they have held each other high as the Imperium left them up sewage creek. The Emperor wanted humanity to be more than it was, to strive, to be safe.

 

The Tau and their philosophy have achieved it. The spirit of the God-Emperor has left humanity in disgust and now blessed the Ethereals.

 

When they are given the opportunity to run back to the Imperium they scour the Eagle from their armour. In their mind following the Greater Good and serving the Emperor are the same thing.

 

Just an idea. Feel free to dispose of it.

[AyanamiKun]

Half a year passed since I posted this and my ideas have changed. WIth the advent of allies in 6th and my now growing Tau army I will go pretty much the way depicted by soddinnutter.

 

My Chapter is a distant descendant of the Ultramarines but so distant that they diverged from the Codex Astartes over time. Before I write this more closely I will put down some bullet points.

 

- Deployed in the Damocles Crusade

- Mainly fighting against traitor guard supplemented with Tau advisors in the Regaldo system

- Supplies dwindle to almost nothing when the main part of the crusade is redeployed against Tyranid incursions

- Forced to salvage enemy weapons and components and to scourge past battlefields for left over equipment of other chapters

- Retreat becomes impossible because all ships in orbit are driven off or destroyed by Tau warships or have been redeployed

- Orks appear on Regaldo IV and overrun remaining Tau and chapter forces

- Orks spread to Regaldo III. In a desperate attempt for survival the remaining Marine forces ally with the Tau and retreat into the last fortified location on the northern hemisphere

- 2 years of defensive battles rage around the fortress while the number of marines and tau dwindles constantly

- Regaldo I, II and VI are overrun by Orks

- Tau forces arrive to liberate the system

- After two years of constant battle as allies both sides agree to not continue the fight

- Marines agree to stay in the system in lieu of not having any transport capacity and after cleanup operations begin to experience the diverse culture of Tau settlements

 

Basically that's it for now and before I define the details I would really like to get some comments on this. Any thoughts?

[Torva Minoris]

That actually sounds really cool. Back in the day I once modelled a marine who instead of having the usual power plant/back pack on his armour had a tau drone body instead. I eventually created a background that his chapter had been isolated durning the damocles gulf crusade and as their resorces ran out the had to scavenge tau technology to keep fighting.

 

even though they did this to keep fighting the foul xenos tau I doubted the imperium would have seen it this way, much like how the relictors tried to turn chaos weapons againt chaos. using xenos weapons to kill xenos would most likely be considered heresey if implemented on a large scale by a chapter.

[AyanamiKun]

Thanks :)

 

I will really ally them with Tau and I depict their fight against the Imperium and their lack of proper marine resources by adding in armors and insignia of other chapters because after battles they scavange whatever they can get. They started out as normal Space Marines but by now have assembled gear also from Black Templars, Dark Angels and even some rare Grey Knight equipment. Next step model wise is to add in Tau bitz (my secondary army is Tau so I have enough of them).

 

I really like your idea with drone parts as backpacks, I will attempt to do this! I might also replace my scouts with Fire Warriors who count as Space Marine scouts after being trained by the chapter.