Garon Nebula Crusade: A Black Templars Blog

[Marshal Rohr]

Or use the legion list? :P

[Dragonkin Arenis]

This sounds absolutely brutal, Nocus! The "Keepers of Antioch" sounds like an interesting bit of fluff, but if and when you use them, what would you count the phosphex grenades and rad launchers as in the greater scheme of things?

I'll be perfectly honest man, I'm not quite sure. Maybe I'll just reserve them for Apoc battles or something.

Or use the legion list?

I like this option :P

I'm unfamiliar with the old 4th Ed Black Templars codex, and equally so with the upcoming 6th Ed one, so I'm not sure if I'm making a fool of myself, but couldn't you just count the rad launcher as a plasma cannon? Heavy 1, Blast, Gets Hot! all sounds good from a rules perspective.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

2 pages and no pictures?!

 

BLASPHEMY!

[Noctus Cornix]

” My methods are a means to an end, no different than severing a tumor from diseased flesh. Those who stand in my way are but vermin and blinded fools who fear what I bring, what I represent. Salvation.

 

Do you know what I despise?... Seeing my own race, my own people being slowly corrupted and weeded out like common animals. To see the fate of mankind decided by debauchery and the will of monsters who wear our skin. You may ask me why, but I will not allow the light of humanity to be snuffed out by another.

 

...The Emperor has shown me this 'future' these heretics, and xenos offer, and that path leads not but the complete annihilation of our race. These daemons offer us nothing save a future where all that remains of our world is fading cinder...

 

We stand on the brink of annihilation where but one further step will leave all in ruin, and I will not allow mankind to plunge into the abyss. Instead, my brothers and I will exterminate these vermin down to the very last one and hurdle their bodies into the chasm until such a valley becomes a mountain where Man stands united atop their dead. There is but one future where mankind will once more be redeemed in the eyes of the God Emperor, and stand upon our rightful place of glory.

 

Only by bathing in the blood of the unclean filth as we erase them from this galaxy will we find salvation. And only one voice can guide humanity back into the loving grace of the Emperor.

 

Mine."

 

- Brother Osric Domalde, Champion of the Emperor

 

 

 

I'm back.

[GhostMalone]

:cussing epic ;)

Lets see some real templars

[deathspectersgt7]

Can't wait to see what you are going to do with Osric.

[Noctus Cornix]

Peace. It was a strange sensation to feel for one who has only known war all her life. Elissa Hectair was born upon a distant world caught within the strife of Civil War. When the renegade Lord Governor Alatana declared himself free of the Imperium’s tyranny, her family was among those devote to the God Emperor who stood up against the traitor’s blasphemy and waged a losing war against those ignorant pawns of a Heretic. When the forces of the Imperium came to her world, the traitor Lord was put to the sword and those amongst the rebel forces still left alive were rewarded with a place amongst the Emperor’s finest. Elissa’s found her home in the Imperial Navy where she felt she could best serve her beloved God first as but a simple Officer until she rose to the rank of Captain, commanding the stern and proud vessel “The Immortal Sword”. Her career as a Naval Officer was long and arduous but her retirement was well-fought and well-earned unlike those who led more Decadent lives of nobility who lived in wistful ignorance.

 

Elissa took her retirement, and with her savings moved across the stars to the shrine world of Iskandria. The world of Iskandria sat at the edge of the Garon Nebula, a peaceful world that has known no invasion nor civil war millennia with enough armament and Planetary forces to stave off most minor invasions. It was here that she had settled down to the life of a civilian, sitting comfortably on her Officer’s retirement pension, found a young man who served in the city’s Enforcer department, and the two now had a young energetic daughter. It was uncomfortable at times, living the civilian life, no longer bound by strict and rigorous codes and regulations, no longer in the heat of Naval warfare. Yet she found her peace in the visitation of Chapels and shrines, paying homage to her Lord Emperor whom she had devoted her life and service to.

 

The distant Sun shined favoranly upon the City of Faith, towering sky scrapers of marble and gold gleaming in the warm light as the echo of Chapel bells and peaceful hymns filled the streets below. The visitation to the Hanging Gardens of Glorias was perhaps Elissa’s favorite weekly event. While her husband was away on duty, here she carried her bubbly child with her to the natural beauty of the gardens that sat atop elevated ground overlooking much of the city. The child played with her ball or their pet Mastiff while her mother enjoyed the leisure of her books or data-slate entertaining the different philosophies of famous scholars across the Imperium. Today was no different as Elissa lounged happily upon the simple wooden bench beneath a leaning fern tree that offered her shade from the shining star above.

 

“Mommy.” Elissa rose her head from her data-slate to see her daughter Lilith standing before her, the child of long golden locks holding one of her mother’s books in her hand. “Mommy, what’s an Astartes?” The girl asked with an atrocious attempt at pronouncing the term. Her mother smiled soft as she lifted up her child and sat the small girl upon her lap, taking the book from her and setting it out for both of them to see.

 

“Do you see what this is?” Elissa asked softly as she extended a finger out and motioned towards a somewhat inaccurate depiction of a Space Marine, the Warrior wreathed in angelic wings with a gleaming halo dancing above his brow as he held a sword of purifying flame with both hands in solemn guard. “These are the Adeptus Astartes, my child. They are the angels of the Emperor. “Of course she knew that they were no angels. She had met them once before, during her service. The Warriors in Black Armour who bore the white insignia of a Raven with outstretched wings. They were distant and quite, but selfless and pure Warriors, of that she was certain. Were it not for the warriors of the Raven Guard, the Imperium would not have broken the Ork horde that rampaged across the Severus Sector and she would not have been saved from the killing strike of a xenos blade. She smiled fondly on the memory as her child looked up to her with wide eyes while mouthing the word ‘Angel’ with a sense of awe and wonder.

 

“What do the Angels do, Mommy?”

 

“They protect us, my love.”

 

“Protect us from what?” She paused at the question, fumbling for words. She had seen the horrors of the galaxy and she knew what beasts hungered for the flesh and souls of men, yet she would not speak of this to her daughter. She did not want that life for her.

“They protect us from all the bad people who wish to hurt us and make us cry.”

“Will I ever see an Angel, Mommy?”

“Of course not, sweety. The Ang-“But the woman’s words were cut short as something caught her attention from the very corner of her eye. The eyes of the Naval Officer were keen and even though she no longer served, such skills still served her well. It was something feint and distant, something that could so easily been construed as birds flying in the distant, but she could see the specks, the miniscule dots that appeared in reality from nowhere; orbiting vessels translating out of Warp space. After first it was only three, her thoughts immediately running to the possibility of a simple Navy patrol. But as time passed, another dot appeared, then another, and another, and another. Elissa’s skin grew pale as her thoughts drew to the worst notions. Raiders? No, they never venture out this far from the Nebula. An invasion? A fleet that size would have been detected easily. A lmperial fleet then?...

 

“Mommy? What’s that?”

 

Elissa’s thoughts and vision was torn away from the specks in the sky to turn to her daughter’s question, eyes following the direction in which the young girl’s finger pointed to see a single slender bead of red light focused upon the grass just before them, a thin opaque crimson stream leading from the ground all the way up to the heavens above. If there is one thing that Elissa Hectair would never forget from her service in the Imperial Navy, years of combat, training, and life aboard an Imperial Warship, it was the tracer light of an orbiting Titanforge Star Lance. Elissa’s lips parted to issue a cry of warning, to demand her daughter in futility to run and find shelter, but the words would never escape her. In a flash of blinding, searing light, former Naval Officer Elissa was overtaken with an overload of senses before being consumed in the swelling light of the concentrated beam.

 

The Holy City burned at the onslaught of orbital lances and macro cannons, beautiful monuments of the God Emperor turned to rubble and cast upon the screaming civilians below. Citadels and Cathedrals were pounded into marble dust laying waste to centuries of construction and craftsmanship dedicated only to the worship of the Immortal God. It lasted for five minutes, a mere handful of minutes that seemed to last on for an eternity for those who suffered and bled below. An entire City-State spanning across the entire largest continent of Iskandria burned, a golden surface now scarred and bleeding fire from the deep wounds that cut into the earth below rockcrete and metal plating.

 

And, just as sudden as it began, the bombardment ceased, leaving the city to toil in silence as the skies once more became calm and a tranquil unadulterated blue. But that did not last for long. The city was not given time to grieve for the sky soon became dark, with rain. A storm came upon the wounded city not of water, but of steal and fire. Metallic seeds screamed towards the surface of the earth, hammering home into the building and ruins alike that soon blossomed forth like the grotesque petals of a death lotus. Warriors in Black Armour emerged from these dark pods, not a single word uttered from them as they waded into the masses of screaming and running people before raising massive weapons of war and opened fire upon the hapless victims. Ebony ships soared across the sky like some massive bird of prey, venting beams of light and salvos of bolter fire into what city defense turrets were left, picking off the constructs one by one until nearly nothing was left.

 

One of the Black Lotus seeds hammered into the scorched crater where a lance fire had all but annihilated the ground below. It shattered the brittle earth beneath it, hissing and whining as smoke exhumed from its searing surface. It was not long before the ramps slid down with a pressurized hiss, blossoming open to allow its occupants to roam free. Warriors in black armour emerged from the pod, their armour adorned in purity seals and tabards giving praise to the Emperor. Their weapons bore thick adamantine chains, binding the weapons to their gauntleted fists. And upon each of the Warrior’s shoulder was born the Black Cross of an ancient order.

A single warrior wore his symbol in red, a both hands reaching upwards to remove his helmet. He gazed upon the ruined city with a single eye, the other side of his face a mess of scar tissue and burn marks no different than the earth he stood upon. With a casual motion, he mag-locked his helmet and rested his arm upon the handle of his ornate blade while his other hand reached upwards to activate the com-bead surgically infused with his ear. “This is Sword Brother Godfrey signing in, my brothers and I have made touch-down within the city. We will commence the purge immediately.”

 

“Let the Emperor’s holy light burn these heretics.”

 

 

And so the Garon Nebula Crusade has begun and the Warriors of Lord Marshal Gwynn shall begin their merciless purge of the Hell Stars for its sins.

 

And I will leave you brothers, with a Work in Progress of Brother of the Sword Godfrey, a veteran of 400 years of service to the Emperor and the Eternal Crusade.

 

http://i915.photobucket.com/albums/ac352/Noctus-Cornix/WP_000022_zps228f9a5f.jpg

 

http://i915.photobucket.com/albums/ac352/Noctus-Cornix/WP_000023_zps612b5921.jpg

 

http://i915.photobucket.com/albums/ac352/Noctus-Cornix/WP_000024_zpsba77042b.jpg

 

http://i915.photobucket.com/albums/ac352/Noctus-Cornix/WP_000025_zpsb0e76d21.jpg

 

Enjoy.

[Brother Heinrich]

"Why yes Suzie, the Astartes are Angels... ANGELS OF DEATH!"

 

Good start man, very sinister. Not entirely sold on the positioning of his right hand though, it feels like he should be clutching the pommel of his sword instead of leisurely resting on it. Awesome stuff otherwise.

[Noctus Cornix]

Thanks, Heinrich. I'm not quite sure if I'm all for trying my hand at him gripping the pommel but I'll keep it into consideration.

[GhostMalone]

Noctuid brother I can't wait to see more.

 

It's time to take the witch the heretic the xenos and the mutant to a massive pyre

 

And I feel only you can truly do it :D

[HellChyld]

Nicely done. primer on the torso and legs seems a little thick but i like him. fire and steel brother!

[RolandTHTG]

Hmmm, I like the way you are going, and your models are as spectacular as always, but I think that with the last fluff you made them too 'black'.  With the current thing, I would have said that the Inquisitor would have been justified in declaring them excommunicate traitoris. Generally, even among the most paranoid Imperials, there has to be something that justifies the finding of "unclean". Either some cult/philosophical flaw or too high a rate of mutation (especially psychic mutation). The flaw could easily be so widespread as to justify a clean sweep of the area, as either genetics or knowledge can be concealed, so it must be rooted out and burnt, even if some innocents die too. Maybe your Templars could be too zealous, too quick to condemn planets. Did you crush the entire nebula for one star system's flaw, or burned the firebreak too wide when you cordoned off the area?

 

But first there MUST be that flaw that condemned the area. Otherwise it feels like "The emperor cares not from where the blood flows, merely that it flows"

 

The idyllic little town you described at the beginning sounded like the advertiser's version of a faithful Imperial city, especially with the peacefully retired naval officer. I think it would have been better if you had made it either a local (in-system, naval pdf style) officer or made the city a more average/dreary/polluted/overcrowded imperial city. What about making it from an officer on a starport? That would allow you to put in that quote from your Lord Marshall into the story, as the broadcast sent before opening the bombardment, while keeping the focus more narrowly on the doomed planet, instead of the background of the pov character.   The other thing would be the character mentioning that the gardent were a respite from the turmoil that was starting to seep up from the underhive or something.

 

The other problem I have is that the original quote from the BT codex mentioned the dead were settlers, people that I could see being out of touch, people that hadn't received the news that they were condemned before the Templar's arrival. Or people that may have missed the problems arising in them main city of the planet, being in podunkvillle, back end of the planet provence, before getting caught by the sweep of the BT cleanse squads when the judgement of the fleet arrives on planet and has dealt with the main threat in the city. But I guess it just didn't seem enough to classify a whole nebula's reaction to them, especially a city that will have passive/automatic defenses.

[Brother Heinrich]

No offense TJ, but your basically suggesting he rewrite his own fluff to suite your personal vision of how you would portray the crusade for the Garon Nebula. Noctus wanted to go full grimdark with this project and portray many similarities with our own historical crusades. There was no real justification that warranted Christian armies slaughtering everyone from Muslims to Jews on their way to the Holy Land. The same goes for Noctus' portrayal of the Garon Nebula Crusade, we, the audience aren't yet meant to know the reason for why these seemingly loyal and pure people have been purged with fire and sword, only that they have. Thats part of the shock value, we don't why this is happening, we can't understand what they did that was so wrong, maybe we aren't meant to. It's a cruel galaxy, and mortal lives are it's playthings.

Keep on keepin' on Noctus, I'm diggin it.

[Vazzy]

I love it, and can definitely see te real world parallels, and gotta agree with Brother H. Do what you want. Not what others suggest. 

[GhostMalone]

I want the darkness back for the black Templars.

 

Noctus don't change your vision please I'm begging you

[RolandTHTG]

Let's see if I can explain my criticism better. I've always loved noctus's work, and I think I've followed all his modeling threads. He manages to make such charaterful conversions i get inspired to work on my guys more. But I want a better understanding of why, in the Templar's minds, they are undertaking this crusade. What caused them to declare the nebula out of the Emperor's light? I put several speculations into my post that may have justified the decision, but I guess I just want to know more about the Templar's noctus's decision making process.

Brother Heinrich, the problem with bringing some of the crusade massacres into this (especially of the 4th crusade, the one most famous for christain-on-christian fighting) is that much of the reasoning for them was looting, something that I wouldn't expect 40k Templars to be motivated by. If it is something more along the lines that only the Templar's worship is the true worship of the Emperor (as implied by the quote of that Emperor's champion he posted) where is the option to " Correct or Die" ? Some of the other posts have described this crusade as being "lost to despair" and feeling that the only way to salvation is to kill everything that is wrong, but there is no explanation of what is right. I fully expect all Templars to put any mutant or heretic to the sword, even those that surrender or try to appeal for mercy. I would expect no less of them. Even those that may have a different view of the emperor (catholic vs protestant vs orthodox, to put in real world terms) such as some of the emperor sun cults or pantheon's mentioned in some of the fluff about Imperial missionaries that I've seen. They are Black Templars, their default reaction to too different is chainsword massacre. But I know nothing of his Templar's beliefs beyond "Dorn was weak" so I can't see why they attacked the city.

At the risk of making this another What is Grimdark? thread, I think my questions could be best put as "What is the hope?" What is the bright spot, the spark that casts the shadows in our protagonist's actions. It may be wrong, it may be futile, it may be entirely unreachable or something already lost, but that hope is still there, taunting and driving our protagonists. The Death Korps of Kreig clone soldiers by the vat-ful and drive them forwards in sieges, to redeem a rebellion long since ended. An Inquisitor will declare exterminatus on a planet to deny resourses to the enemy, so that the next one in the path of an invasion may be able to hold out a little longer. Noctus's old Shadows of Mysis chapter with Heathen's had that chapter trying to rebuild, rebuilding as a broken and defiled memory, but trying to rebuild none-the-less. Even Heathen's old Marines Malevolent (which this does remind me of, especially modeling stuff like that Sword Brother's scarred face) were in their minds holding to the ideals of the great crusade and the commands of the Emperor, as far from that as they may appear. Are the Templar's merely hoping that if they kill enough people that the Imperium will then be magically fixed, or is there something more to their crusade?

tl;dr: I love his stuff, I just want to know more of the why.

[Brother Heinrich]

Well I'm sure like any good novel or story, more will be revealed as we go along. For now I think he just wants shock value.

[Hyaenidae]

I got a better idea. Stop filling his thread with philosophy questions, and accept. He likes his 40k like I like my Metal; blacker than the blackest black, times infinity.

 

Critique his paintjobs or models. PM him such vast questions, which could easily ignite a debate (and has in the past), so his thread doesn't become a verbal slugfest and get locked. He puts his stories here to let you see into his thoughts, so you can see the path. It may not make sense to you, but it's his vision. His opinion. His OPINION. Let him have it.

 

Manners, gentlemen. There will be no fighting in the War Room.

 

 

The Templars looking good, noctus, though he looks a bit familiar. Wasn't pieces of him formerly your MM's? Also, careful around the neck with the greenstuff, looks a bit like his face is fusing to the collar

[Noctus Cornix]

Hey now, guys. I appreciate the support but there's no reason to get all up in arms about it.

TJWyrm asked a perfectly fine question, (though I admit your wording was rather unclear your first time around) but Brother Heinrich explained it perfectly. The truth will be revealed in time, but for now you're not meant to know. Bask in the terrible carnage and the horrors of slaughters as you drown in ignorance just as the helpless civilians do. This is just one world, the first in an entire Nebula to be cleansed by the purifying flame. They will not stop here my friends, this is only the beginning.

-Heathens. Yes, he was going to be a MM's Sergeant for my First Centuria squad but I liked his head too much to just scrap him.

[Brother Pheidias]

I really like the dark and merciless visison of the Templars presented here, and I trust that more will become clear in due time.

 

I'd like more pretty pictures, though :D