Alternate Rubric Marines

[Warsmith Aznable]

I've got an DIY warband, and the Lord has with him an eclectic mix of lesser personalities that lead squads of the cultic variety, those who are not part of the warband proper (they have different color schemes and whatnot).

 

For Rubric Marines I've got the Shield Thralls (pic here), a group of brainwashed/enchanted Marines who follow around a fallen Sister of Battle, who counts-as Aspiring Sorcerer. The idea is that she was a witch hunter who just got too close to what she was hunting and ended up one of them. I like her a lot, and I think she and her unit add a lot of character and color to my army when I deploy them.

 

So I was fiddling with my IA the other day, and a link with a Radical element of the Ordo Xenos became a part of the story. I got to thinking about Radicals and the fine line they have to dance on, and then I thought it would be awesome to find a way to include this bit of fluff on the table top. What I did was to buy a Reaper model that looked like an Inquisitor that I could easily convert for 40k purposes, that was the easy part. The more difficult part is how to get him to lead a cult troop on the table.

 

Option 1: A Radical Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos (counts-as Aspiring Sorcerer) leading a Death Watch Kill Team (counts-as Rubric Marines). The Death Watch Marines would have a few Black Shields in there, but also the shoulder insignia of some rather border line Chapters, like the Marines Malevolent (inspiration taken from the Salamanders trilogy), for example. The AP3 bolter rounds are "special ammunition", and "the sorcerer commands" rule would show how they're unsure of their mission and circumstances, getting worse once the Inquisitor is gone.

 

Option 2: A Radical Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos (counts-as Aspiring Sorcerer) leading a group of actual Rubric Marines. He's somehow acquired actual Rubric Marines through Inquisitorial thieving and conniving, and this is simply an excuse to risk buying the Finecast Rubrics or wait for the rumored new cult bits.

 

Option 3: The same Radical Inquisitor/Aspiring Sorcerer, but instead of corrupted/confused Marines or stolen Rubrics, he's got some other wildly converted alien technology, probably Tau.

 

Option 4: Same Inquisitor-Sorcerer, but instead of any of all that above, some kind of heavy Storm Trooper or other Imperial type non-biologically augmented human who wears normal sized Power Armor to represent the Rubrics.

 

These all sound cool to me, but I'm not sure which seems the coolest because I'm not 100% sure how I'd model options 3 or 4.

 

Has anybody here done anything like this, or even seen anything like this, and can offer any opinions?

[Ah-a-nothepsis]

I would go with option 3.. I'm a Doctor Who fan soooooo.

 

Convert some studded Mechanicus Robots!

 

Option 4 would be easy as well. Use the old metal storm troopers and just say they're super crazy awesome super big infantry with good Ap3 pewpew guns.

 

Honestly I would wait until the codex drops before thinking of Thousand Sons. IF they have new minis, you might be all over them!!

[*Furyou Miko]

Well, my first recommendation would be to decide if your Sister there is a Fallen Sister, or a Witch Hunter.

 

As a Sisters player (even if my Sisters are deluded), I would have to say make her a Witch Hunter. She looks awesome. Sisters just don't fall like that.

 

For the actual question you asked... I'd go with a mishmash of alien mercenaries. If you want it to be GW-usable (IE; using all Citadel models) then I would recommend classic Necrons and Chaos Androids mixed with Stealth Suits and maybe some Gue'vesa.

[Warsmith Aznable]

She looks awesome. Sisters just don't fall like that.

 

Thanks! This one did. It was tragic, really, she was so young and promising, but damningly naive...

 

If you want it to be GW-usable (IE; using all Citadel models) then I would recommend classic Necrons and Chaos Androids mixed with Stealth Suits and maybe some Gue'vesa.

 

I'm not really worried about "GW-usable", or anything related to tournament rules. My new Aspiring Sorcerer is already a Reaper model (I'm going to convert the sword to a bolt pistol), so the squad is already borked in that respect anyway.

[Crimson Hawk]

I would go with option 3.. I'm a Doctor Who fan soooooo.

 

Convert some studded Mechanicus Robots!

Ohmygodyes

[*Furyou Miko]

She looks awesome. Sisters just don't fall like that.

 

Thanks! This one did. It was tragic, really, she was so young and promising, but damningly naive...

 

No.

[Rune Priest Ridcully]

Not this can of worms again.. admitably I once used a cannones model as an aspiring sorceress, but my fluff for her was she was the daughter of one of the remembrancers with the legion. All your ideas have merit, though the robots of DOOOM! idea sounds fun, perhaps pluck a load of bits out of your bits box and make a few before deciding?

[Pavement Artist]

She looks awesome. Sisters just don't fall like that.

 

Thanks! This one did. It was tragic, really, she was so young and promising, but damningly naive...

 

No.

 

As simple as that is it?

[*Furyou Miko]

I have a whole rant if you'd prefer.

[Warsmith Aznable]

I have a whole rant if you'd prefer.

 

Not really. Sister Brunhyld the Jealous and her Shield Thralls were just an example of the sort of thing I meant by oddball auxiliaries, not something I wanted to debate. I honestly thought more people would be against the idea of a Death Watch Kill Team being corrupted or led astray, which was the idea I was leaning toward.

 

As far as Daleks go, there are these miniatures I could use, but while I will happily corrupt the daughters of the Corpse God, I'm not so sure about bringing other franchises into my warband.

[*Furyou Miko]

Thing about the Death Watch is that when you get down to it, they're just veteran marines, and therefore just as corruptible as any other terminator-honours-bearing marine.

[Warsmith Aznable]

any other terminator-honours-bearing marine.

 

Are all Death Watch members holders of Terminator honors?

[*Furyou Miko]

It's not explicitly stated, but that's what marks a Veteran from a Brother Marine, and the Deathwatch only induct veterans and the unusually talented.

[Pavement Artist]

I have a whole rant if you'd prefer.

 

The point is, 40k is set in a horrendously crappy universe. Acts of genocide are being perpetrated on a daily basis. I always imagined one's faith to be constantly challenged in a setting as unrelentingly depressing as 40k. I understand that Sisters aren't exactly a pushover to break, they're raised from an impressionable age, when many are vulnerable, to believe with absolute conviction in the power of the Emperor.

 

So they're unfailingly devoted servants of the Ecclesiarchy right? All good? Not so much

 

The background lore pretty much states that the Ecclesiarchy is an organisation of disparate elements that all hold many varying interpretations of the Imperial creed. I'm sure it's not uncommon for one of these branches of faith to become corrupted? There are elements of Imperial society that worship the sun as Emperor, that's treading water in some pagan territory there.

The Adeptas Sororitas are there to maintain the purity of the Imperial creed. They're damn good at rooting out heretical elements and showing them what for. However, chaos is a very insidious thing, it could very easily creep through into these far off branches of the Imperial creed, twisting ever so gently, until it becomes something far darker.

 

What if the Sororitas couldn't see this degradation until it was too late? What if they realised that a branch of the Imperial creed that they had been championing had actually become a sick parody of their life's beliefs? I could imagine that knowledge breaking a few. Not a canoness maybe, but perhaps one of the younger order members.

 

Falling to Chaos isn't just an aesthetic choice, it's not a case of someone willingly casting aside their old beliefs in exchange for something much darker. It's a force that's constantly lapping at the shore like a wave, searching for a way in. The Sisters are supremely faithful, there's no getting around that. The point is, in 40k, countless atrocities are being committed damn near constantly. All it would take is one younger Sororitas to question why her God would allow such things to happen and then we have a seed of doubt, something Chaos is very good at exploiting.

 

TL;DR- No one is hyped about the idea of their favourite faction falling, so i understand your resistance to the idea. However, when we say that it is possible for a Sister to fall, it is no way the same as us suggesting a Sister would fall willingly. I don't buy that either, their entire lives are based around such a strong bedrock of faith that the notion of willing heresy would be utterly appalling. Sadly, Chaos doesn't operate quite so blatantly in this universe and it may be the chaos that even the most faithful soul would be damned before they even realised they were on the wrong path.

[*Furyou Miko]

It's canonically stated in the only codex that brings up fallen sisters that Mirael Sabathiel is the only one.

 

If it's possible for Grey Knights - who, as Psykers, are more vulnerable to chaos taint than regular humans - to be completely incorruptible, then why should the Sisterhood be any different?

 

If you want to bring up secondary sources, then I will point out that the Order of the Blessed Inquiry of Daemonifuge fame remained loyal to the Emperor even after being turned into a pseudo-daemonic flesh abomination, and they are the ones people usually point to when arguing 'for' chaos Sisters.

 

As for the seeds of doubt, the Creed is very cunning about such things. The Emperor is a god, yes, but he is not all-powerful. They understand that the Imperium is the beleaguered underdog in the war against Chaos. He doesn't 'allow' things to happen. This is, in part, why the Sisters' faith is so strong - they know that their god can't fix everything and they have to work for salvation and fight their hardest for His cause, and they still believe in him anyway.

 

The only way for Sisters to work towards the cause of Chaos would be if something like an Order Minoris founded for a specific purpose, misled from the start by a false prophet, and it's debatable if you can call them 'Fallen Sisters' in that circumstance because they still believe in the god-emperor, and they still abhor the daemon and the witch. I don't count the Sacred Tome as 'chaos Sisters', even though their long-term goal will result in the reconstruction of Tzeentch's staff of ultimate power because they are still devout Imperials, they just don't realise that the knowledge they're recovering and storing belongs to the Changer and not the Emperor.