Sins of our Fathers

[Dedlok]

http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/130/d/5/spacemarine__1__by_velken0027-d64r9xv.jpg

 

What’s In A Name?

 

The Blooded Hands’ name derives from the induction ritual all of its novitiates undergo as part of their training, wherein the newly recruited battle brother is sent out to stalk and kill the largest/fiercest/deadliest opponent he can find. This is usually (though by no means always) a death world predator of some sort. Upon slaying their prey, the novitiate returns with a trophy of the kill, which will usually be used to decorate/augment his armour, whereupon his training master will slice open the recruit’s palm and mark the wound with the blood of the slain creature. Thus he becomes a ‘blooded’ warrior of the chapter. This overall notion of besting the mightiest of opponents, and seeking out battles that will test their mettle to its limits, is a major part of the chapter’s doctrine and outlook (and possibly also their greatest character flaw).

 

The chapter as a whole tends to eschew catechisms and battle cries when in combat, preferring to stalk silently, or charge with a straightforward roar as of the predators they favour hunting. The idea that a picture is worth more than words is embodied in chapter’s affection for trophies of worthy kills adorning their armour, weapons and vehicles. They believe that this makes a bolder statement of their strength and prowess than “boasting and blustering”, as Lord Atreides used to call it.

 

There is, however, a darker motive behind their apparent distain for ‘boasting’ – something which they feel stains their honour, a shadow hanging over their past, dating back to their founding, and the chapter that raised them into the force of warriors they are today.

 

The Founding

 

Though the Blooded Hands are ultimately of the Iron Hands gene line, the specific geneseed stock used to found the chapter did not come directly from this primogenitor chapter. It came from another Iron Hands descendent chapter – the Iron Shadows.

As well as geneseed, the Iron Shadows also provided a core command group to the newly formed chapter, designated Sigma 957 (the name ‘Blooded Hands’ was bestowed later). It consisted of one of their Company Captains to act as Chapter Master, several officers chosen by him to form a core command group, and ten Master Sergeants to train novitiates to become Battle Brothers. Once company Captains and Sergeants had risen from the ranks of new Brothers over the course of the chapter’s first campaigns, these Iron Shadows officers and sergeants became the chapter master’s personal guard and battlefield command squad.

 

This first Chapter Master was the instigator of the Blooding ritual, based on the coming of age rite he underwent on his homeworld, Predis. His was a verdant jungle world, classified as a death world by merit of it’s varied and extremely hostile fauna. The humans of Predis live exclusively in mountaintop citadels of ancient construction, far above the predator infested treelines. Travel between the various citadels is air-based, with large dirigibles being most common, though higher technology craft are not unusual.

 

In later years, the chapter would recruit from any and all worlds they found worthy warriors on, but at the beginning their initial intake of novitiates came from Predis, and the chapter’s fortress still stands there to this day, though it has stood derelict since the chapter took to its fleet many years ago.

 

The Shadow Over Tchylonia

 

One hundred and seventy years after the inception of the Blooded Hands, the first chapter master, Alexius Atreides, decided, at the close of the Akeley’s World campaign, that the time had come to nominate a successor, who would then promote his own chapter command from within the ranks. Thence the Iron Shadows officers would return to their battle brethren, having successfully and honourably concluded their responsibility in guiding the formative years of the fledgling chapter.

 

Atreides sent word to his chapter of his decision to return home. No reply was forthcoming. Further messages were sent. Still no response.

 

Having concluded the handover of command to the new Master, Allenius Layke, the command ships of the Blooded Hands fleet made course for the Iron Shadows fortress world. Upon arrival, the planet, Tchylonia, was found dark – no response was received from any of the fleet’s hails or scans. Atreides and his Iron Shadows brethren boarded a thunderhawk and departed the flagship for the planet’s surface. As they dropped into the murky cloud cover, vox contact became slurred with static, and was lost completely before the ship touched down.

 

Hours passed. Layke, anxious for news of his mentor’s fate, gave up trying to hail the surface, and summoned a fully armed terminator assault squad, which he led personally, accompanied by Brother Barinthus the dreadnought, in a second thunderhawk down to Tchylonia’s silent surface.

 

Layke’s gunship touched down next to its sister ship, on the forward receiving pad before the Iron Shadows fortess. The first ship appeared fully intact and functional, but powered down and deserted, it’s crew nowhere to be found. The fortress stood in the bleak expanse of the northern plains. At some point in the distant past, Tchylonia had been subject to some form of global catastrophy, which had scrubbed it clean of indigenous life, and left the planet with an environment of extreme temperatures, violent weather patterns and a perpetually murky, shrouded upper atmosphere. This harsh and punishing world provided excellent training grounds for producing tough and capable battle brothers, and privacy from the rest of humanity, these being the two main reasons that the insular chapter had chosen it for their home. The fortress complex of the Iron Shadows was thus the only centre of life on the whole planet, but the Blooded Hands found it brooding and empty. There was no obvious damage or indications of battle, not a single piece of evidence of what had occurred there. Banners still adorned walls, weapons occupied racks in armouries, vehicles rested in hangers, powered down and silent. The fortress seemed to have been inexplicably, and above all, suddenly, abandoned.

 

Layke and his men searched the fortress from top to bottom, but found not only no sign of the Iron Shadows chapter, but no sign of Atreides and his command squad either…

 

Having brought with them powerful vox-amplification gear, they communicated their discovery to the orbiting fleet, with instructions that it be relayed to the Inquisition. Layke then ordered his team back to their thunderhawk before they too disappeared without trace in this clearly cursed place. Once they were safely back aboard the flagship, the gunship would be sent back with a second crew, to re-power and retrieve Atreides’ thunderhawk.

 

They lifted off, and flew a brief sortie over the fortress complex, in a last attempt to find any signs of life, or evidence of what had happened here. Finding none, Layke ordered his pilot back to the orbiting ship. As the gunship made it’s final exit pass across the receiving pad where it had first landed, the fleet’s sensors registered an energy pulse from within the heart of the complex, a power surge that seemed to be directed at the pad. Before Layke’s ship could be warned, the first thunderhawk, still vacant and unmanned, suddenly burst into life and lurched into the air, as if it were a puppet violently jerked skyward on invisible strings. Hurling itself in pursuit of Layke’s ship, itunloaded it’s entire ordnance payload at the chapter master’s thunderhawk, blasting it out of the sky. It’s weapons were still firing as, strings seemingly cut, it simply dropped out of the air, to gouge an ugly rent in the windswept landscape.

 

A response team was assembled to attend the crash. A thunderhawk carrying Captain Bane of the Second Company and his command squad, flanked by a pair of stormtalons for cover, dropped immediately to the downed ships. The attacking thunderhawk was an immolated wreck – no answers would be recoverable from it’s machine spirit. Layke’s ship was similarly devastated. There was only a single survivor – the heavily armoured, yet still severely damaged, dreadnought Barinthus. Bane ordered him recovered quickly, and pulled the whole expedition back offworld as fast as possible. A cordon was established around Tchylonia, and the planet was declared off limits to all.

 

Following the Tchylonia incident, the new chapter leadership swore to discover the fate of their founding master and his vanished chapter. They quit their chapter fortress on Predis and took to their fleet, vowing that the hunt would not end until the dark truth behind it was exposed. Until such time, the remains of the bodies of Layke and his fallen men remain sealed in stasis, and shall be laid to rest in the fortress’ vaults upon the chapter’s eventual return to it’s home.

 

A New Order

 

Following the slaying of Allenius Layke, it fell to First Captain Edric Velken to take command of the Blooded Hands. However, Velken refused the rank of Chapter Master, instead deciding to instigate a council of Lord Captains, each commanding his own company, supported by a conclave of “Guardians”. With command of the chapter thus shared, the risk of it being left leaderless following another such loss as it had already suffered was safely eliminated. By bringing this sense of stability, Velken succeeded in reassuring his brothers that the chapter would remain steadfast, and committed to pursuing their search for the truth to its conclusion, wherever it may lead them.

 

The ten Lord Captains would each command their own company as an almost autonomous unit, each being responsible for recruiting and training its own novitiates and maintaining its own war machines, ships and relics. Each Captain would hold equal rank, and have an equal voice when decisions affecting the chapter as a whole were to be made. This council of ten would be supported and advised (and have deadlocked votes adjudicated) by the Conclave of Guardians. This group of individuals represented the specific concerns of the chapter, comprised as it would be of the following:

 

The Guardian of Faith

The Guardian of Lore

The Guardian of Blood

The Guardian of the Forge

The Guardian of the Past

The Guardian of the Way

 

The first four are the Blooded Hands’ equivalent ranks to what other astartes chapters refer to as the Master of Sanctity (the chapter’s most senior Chaplain), the Chief Librarian, the Master of the Apothecarion, and the Master of the Forge (the chapter’s most senior Techmarine). The Guardian of the Past is the chapter’s longest serving battle brother, and as such represents a living memory of their history. (This Guardianship has, thus far, only ever had one incumbent – Brother Barinthus). The final Guardian, that of ‘The Way’, is not held as a permanent office like the others. It is a position that is only occupied by a single individual at times when the Conclave is

convened as a group to attend the Council of Captains, at which time it’s occupant at the proceedings is chosen from the ranks of astartes present by the other guardians. It is always a battle brother of no higher rank than sergeant, and is meant to represent the spirit of the chapter, and it’s future.

 

Built For War

 

The Blooded Hands share their gene line’s affinity for the mechanical, and so bionic enhancements are commonplace, though they do not take the mechanisation of their bodies quite so fanatically as some. They also tend towards an affection for older pattern weaponry and vehicles, and many witnesses to the chapter’s presence have described their overall aesthetic as variations on the themes of “vintage” and “antique”. The chapter’s overall colour scheme consists mainly of orange and black, complimented by various shades of metal, from polished gold to plain steel. Standard marine armour is orange, with helmet, shoulder guards and chest Aquila in black, while for the chapter’s suits of Terminator armour this scheme is reversed, except for the Aquila, which is usually fashioned of stone to match the Crux Terminatus.

 

Librarians, apothecaries, techmarines and chaplains, rather than repainting their entire armour in the traditional colours of their offices (blue, white, red and black, respectively) either repaint only one or a few panels of it, or more commonly wear cloaks tabards, or other adornments coloured appropriately. As mentioned earlier, all brothers decorate/augment (and occasionally, field-repair) their own armour and weapons with trophies of battle, lending a certain tribal aspect to their appearance which reflects their Hunter attitude. Due in part to this approach to battle, and likely also because of their frequent associations with the Inquisition, many of the chapters veterans have spent time seconded to the Deathwatch.

 

The Sins of our Fathers

 

The Blooded Hands have always considered themselves more as Hunters than Soldiers. Following the disappearances on Tchylonia, the chapter, in addition to its commitments to the Imperium, has made the investigation into the fate of the Iron Shadows chapter one of it’s primary activities. This investigation, referred to amongst themselves as “The Shadow Hunt”, has drawn the chapter, in the pursuit of various clues and leads, into close ties with several other branches of the Imperium, notably the Guard, the Sororitas, and not least the Inquisition. It has become a not uncommon sight to see Blooded Hands take to the field with various allied detachments accompanying them, or to see small teams of them attached to other forces, as their hunt for clues to the truth surrounding the Shadow Hunt continues.

 

Recent developments in the Shadow Hunt have revealed the existence of numerous Chaos warbands, operating in apparently unconnected areas of the galaxy, seemingly independent of one another and giving allegiance to differing warlords and chaos deities, that have been confirmed to included amongst their ranks space marines of the Iron Shadows, corrupted to varying degrees. Whether these traitors are random fragments of their former chapter that have signed on with any warband they happened across, or if they still bear allegiance to each other and have deployed themselves across these disparate groups as part of some larger scheme, has not yet been determined. The fact that several have all come to light at the same time, however, would seem to suggest the latter. As yet, few have been captured alive for interrogation, and of those that have, none have provided any firm answers to the mystery…

[Leonaides]

Errr - formatting problem old bean. Can you fix it so we can read it a bit easier?

[Dedlok]

sorry about that - it was fine when I first put it up, but then this morning I edited it to add a couple of missing bits of punctuation and it suddenly went weird on me. All fixed now, I'll go back and redo the interactive painter when I have more time.

[Aegnor]

On a really quick skim through looks interesting with enough to make me want to sit down and read it properly.

 

One thing though - Captain/CM Atreides?? Really? Maybe name one of the captains Kirk and the chief librarian Skywalker as well? ;)

[Octavulg]

As well as geneseed, the Iron Shadows also provided a core command group to the newly formed chapter, designated Sigma 957 (the name ‘Blooded Hands’ was bestowed later).

I get it!

 

* * *

 

Not tons here, to be honest. What are you trying to accomplish?

[Dedlok]

On a really quick skim through looks interesting with enough to make me want to sit down and read it properly.

One thing though - Captain/CM Atreides?? Really? Maybe name one of the captains Kirk and the chief librarian Skywalker as well?

Just always liked the name.

Actually, since you mention it, Captain Bane of the second company - first name is "Tiberius"

[Dedlok]

 

As well as geneseed, the Iron Shadows also provided a core command group to the newly formed chapter, designated Sigma 957 (the name ‘Blooded Hands’ was bestowed later).

I get it!

 

* * *

 

Not tons here, to be honest. What are you trying to accomplish?

 

It's just a starting point, really, to tie the histories of a DIY imperial chapter and a DIY renegade warband together, because building armies is more interesting to me if there is a single narrative to follow. My building methods are rather haphazard, I just sit down at the bits box and rummage around until I get an idea for a model, so having a backstory helps me focus.

[Dedlok]

Update : There are now some pictures up in PC&A.