Alternate Heresy Community Project

[Conn Eremon]

So as of now, we've got Leman boasting that it would take a real man Primarch to take down the Laer (apparently he's known for this sort of thing, because didn't he basically do the same thing to the Exodus-ships whatchamacallem folk? Taunt Lorgar?), and Fulgrim accepts the challenge.

 

And methodically, mechanically deconstructs the Laer home world like it ain't no thang. Leman pulls a Not Bad Obama meme face, turns to Lorgar and asks him why he can't be more like Fulgrim. Need some help with those Exodus ships?

 

The Minotaurs, on the other hand, find a planet of sheer murder. They think it's so awesome that they name the world Murder. It then becomes one of the Legion's primary training worlds, much to the dissatisfaction of the Warmaster (going off of noctus' disapproval of using xenos slaves) and the Interex, the latter of which show up goin' all "What the hell, why are you on this wo--OHGODMYFACE!PLEASESTOPACIDSPITTINGONMYFACE!KAOSSPAWN."

 

Spoiler alert, it doesn't end well for the Interex.

[Wade Garrett]

The Diasporex.

 

Not "The Exodus ship people dudebros". Unless we're changing that too?

 

Also, I'm reading the original Index Astartes: Iron Hands translated off a Russian website, and it's a bit crazy how much Mordax has in common with IA Manus, who had the Clans fighting wars to make them stronger, constantly sought out new things to try and kick their butts, and left babies and old people out to die on the Ice Peaks because WEAKNESS. HE HATES IT. A LOT.

[Conn Eremon]

Right, I knew its name was something like Exodus and had an 'x' in it.

 

And that is a good thing, about the whole Ferrus Manus thing. We should have ties too their canon counterparts. We should look at our fanon Primarchs and see the canon counterparts within.

 

Though it does amuse me that our Mordax out-angers canon Angron, considering Ferrus Magnus out-angers our Angron. Makes it seem like Primarchs like Magnus, Lorgar, Vulkan, the Primarchs that were warriors second, would have been Angron-clones if they had been on Nuceria, considering non-Nucerian Angron is close to being in their ranks. Though I would still call him a warrior first.

[Wade Garrett]

I've said this before, but Angron is one of the Primarchs who is going to change radically if you put him on another world because so much of who he is

in canon is wrapped up in the Butcher's Nails and losing his gladiator army at De'Shelika Ridge.

 

Ferrus...I'm not sure angry is the way I want to take him. There's a quote from (professional mixed martial artist) Kenny Florian about fighting I've always had in the back of my head when thinking about how the Minotaurs handle business as opposed to the World Eaters.

 

"At the end of the day, you have to have a love for it, something that lasts forever, because that will carry you. You can only be mad for so long.

 

Whereas if I'm just focused on the techniques and strategy of the fight, on the fluidity of the fight, on what needs to be done tactically, then I'll make the right decisions. Instead of just being mad."

[Conn Eremon]

Right. Really, our only glimpse of what Angron could have possibly been is to look at the War Hounds. Because of that, we know Angron might have been predisposed towards aggression anyways, but we have no means of extracting what Angron could have been from the character himself. He was too shaped by his world and what happens to him there.

 

Hence why our Angron is a Primarch of tightly controlled aggression. Not Angron-level aggression, but War Hound-level. Which is why the former War Hounds feel leashed by Angron's ways. Which is why even Lasartine Bron is taken aback when Angron finally lets slip the leash on not just his Legion but himself as well.

[Wade Garrett]

With the Minotaurs...it's like, mmmm...they hate the xenos and want to destroy them, but at the same time, Ferrus sees the Necrons that tainted him on Nuceria as something like the heat and the hammerblows that turn raw ore into a steel blade.

 

The aliens are other, they must die, but at the same time they're a whetstone that keeps humanity sharp.

 

Without a conflict, without struggles and obstacles, without a drive to always move forward, a culture stagnates and dies.

 

Which is why they're loitering around Murder dropping Companies of iniates on it to see who comes out alive, and why they fall to Slaanesh.

[Ace Debonair]

I'm thinking I might have Fulgrim confronted with the option of taking the Daemon Weapon on the Laer world, but decide against it since he already has his fancy spear, instead letting one of his Captains claim the prize.

Predictably, said Captain quickly gets his crazy on, maybe killing a bunch of other Emperor's Children or attacking Fulgrim, prompting the rest of the Legion to quietly skip their usual trophy-gathering practices and instead smash up all the Laer-made things they find.

Later, while Leman's going 'cool campaign bro', Fulgrim's a bit distracted because he can't help but feel like he just dodged a major bullet by not taking the sword himself.

[Wade Garrett]

I've been thinking about Lorgar, the Imperial Hounds, and the First Black Crusade.

 

I know I've got some long winded posts somewhere in the depths of the thread detailing how Lorgar died during it...but I'd like to completely change the scenario.

 

Change # 1:

After returning to Terra and voting in Jonson as Warmaster and Angron as High Lord of the Adeptus Astartes, Lorgar drops off the face of the galaxy.

 

His Legion doesn't know where he went, his surviving brothers are clueless, all during the Scouring and for a few centuries thereafter he's MIA.

 

Time passes. More loyal Primarchs are lost. The Astartes are marginalized and ignored, the nobility are corrupt, the Three Faiths are eaten up with decadence and greed, the Mechanicum Hivemind is insular and reclusive, and the great civil war is receding into the realms of myth and legend.

 

And yet, for those who will look, there are signs. Seers and astropaths whisper of burning worlds, of the gate to Hell swinging wide. Suppressed cults scream of a new age of blood and death.

 

Madmen and women howl names deliberately purged from any record...and almost all ignore it.

 

The fortress worlds around the Great Eye have been steadily stripped of personnel and material to accommodate the needs of other wars, of matters far more pressing than guarding against a defeated rabble who doubtless died of corruption or old age hundreds of years ago...

[Wade Garrett]

Amidst all this, there is one who has not forgotten the lessons of the past.

 

A delegation wearing the armor of the Celestial Lions travels to an isolated settlement on a backwater world.

 

They want to speak with one of the elders there, a greybearded giant who has been there almost since the world was first settled...yet he holds no office, no authority or position of respect beyond that he has gained for his efforts at carpentry and keeping the settlement's archaic machinery running.

 

The Lions are stunned. The passage of centuries have taken Angron from a youthful firebrand to a man entering his middle years, and Jonson seems as unaging as avarice and ambition themselves...but this elder, though clearly once mighty, is just as clearly on the threshold of the grave.

 

How can this defeated, doddering ancient be the one their father sent them to find? Nontheless, they deliver their message, a warning and a plea for aid from one brother to another.

 

And they are rejected. Mocked, even. But that is not the end...

[Wade Garrett]

A rogue trader vessel orbiting the world fires on the settlement.

 

It is almost immediately set upon and taken by the Strike Cruiser that brought the Lions to this out of the way system...but the homes a Primarch's hands built, the children who would sit at his feet in the evenings and listen to stories of a dead world...they perish, engulfed by death from the void just as another world was, oh so long ago...

 

The furious Celestial Lions can find only one clue as to the author of this atrocity, a portrait sealed in the Trader ship's vault, depicting an elderly woman clad in chainmail finery, which has been desecrated with the emblem of two crossed swords.

 

They may not recognize its meaning...but the one they came to see does. A flame long dead ignites in his gaze, and the snarl that tears past his lips sets even Astartes hearts trembling.

 

Borrowing a blade from one of Angron's sons, the old man begins to hack at the beard and long hair obscuring his features, uncovering the monstrous scar that bisects his lower jaw...

[Wade Garrett]

And so, when the Chainsworn (would they still have that name? Or would they change it a la Sons of Horus/Black Legion?) explode out of the Eye the Seventeenth Primarch is waiting for them.

 

Not leading the Imperial Hounds...no, that Legion is scattered across the stars, and all the Astartes he knew, his sons, all of them are dead.

 

These Hounds may wear his old colors and wage war in his name, but for all that they are strangers.

 

He isn't alone, though. The Black Watch stands ready to blot out its eternal failure in the blood of its enemies and its members alike. Wings of the Order of Swords who read the skeins of fate, such Echelons of the Celestial Lions as heeded Angron's counsel...they all follow the Emperor's Hound.

 

The Cadian Gate is torn open, and the Traitor Legions own the void...yet to consolidate their breakout, they must take and hold the worlds around the Eye.

 

Lorgar knows this as well as anyone, so he doesn't mass his ships and Astartes and confront them host to host, as was down in the Great Crusade or the Coup.

 

Instead, he divides the Space Marines under his command and dispatches them to the dirt and dust, each squad serving as leaders, champions and rallying points for the beleaguered mortal forces.

 

Meanwhile, their fleets engage in repeated hit and run strikes against the Traitors's flanks. Each one is a mere pinprick, but even those can become a significant injury when multiplied a hundredfold.

 

The great breakthrough bogs down into a slow grind of attrition, and every minute the Chaos Legions are delayed brings the Throne's retribution closer.

 

In the end, two brothers, each changed in ways they never could have imagined confront each other in the night sky over St. Josiah's Hope, but one already bears the wounds from a thousand vanquished foes, and his slayer's blade falls with mercy, not hatred.

 

He dies feeling, not rage or despair, but confusion, his killer's words echoing in his ears.

 

"I've always said revenge is a sucker's game. You know that."

 

And far away, the Jackal draws a blade across the throat of one of his singulares. It is a shame to lose such a loyal and skilled servant, who has done his lord's bidding in the shadow games of Imperial politics for centuries.

 

But what this Legionaire knows, what he has done...Jonson well understands what Angron never could. Sometimes, to achieve a higher purpose, sacrifices must be made.

[Conn Eremon]

The last two lines about Jonson puzzle me. Who does he kill and why?

[Wade Garrett]

Consider the following facts:

 

A Rogue Trader ship bombards Lorgar's adopted...his SECOND adopted homeworld.

 

A portrait of High Queen Elanin with the Red Corsair logo painted on it is found in the hold, as if Barbedor was signing his name on the act.

 

Lorgar comes roaring out of retirement to fight the First Black Crusade.

 

"I've always said revenge was a sucker's game, Lorgar."

 

Jonson executes one of his singulares (personal bodyguard to a Roman general, sometimes used as spy and assassin) to keep the truth about SOMETHING buried.

 

See it yet? ;)

[Conn Eremon]

Wait.

 

...Wait.

 

 

Yeah, I got it.

[Wade Garrett]

If that seems out of character for your guy I don't mind cutting it, but I felt like it fit.

 

"Yeah, Angron, you go 'ask politely'. Let me know how that works out for you. I'll just be over here doing...stuff. Perfectly ordinary, innocent stuff."

[Rune Priest Ridcully]

That is awesome, yet tragic. 
Should be able to post something this weekend as long as my laptop does not bluescreen anymore.

[Wade Garrett]

Oh, and the Imperial Hounds? They and the Queen Elanin's Revenge do turn up with the rest of the reinforcement fleets.

 

And they react very badly to stories that Lorgar fought the Black Crusade without them.

 

Because the Emperor's Hound wouldn't just run off and do nothing for centuries! He's looking for a way to cure the Emperor! Or he went into the Eye of Terror hunting Leman Barbedor!

 

And whatever the truth is, he'll be back to lead the Hounds in the last battle! The very idea, him fighting with the Black Watch.

 

I mean, how would he fight without his armor? Which we've got displayed in a place of honor on the Queenship, look how ornate and artificed it is!

 

Look at the picts we have of this "Lorgar" that stood against the Black Crusade...that guy's armor was a hammered together mishmash of studs and rivets and his helm looked positively daemonic.

 

Actually, are we sure that wasn't a Chaos Champion who suckered all the Defenders of Cadia as part of a convoluted plan?

 

Yeah. Yeah, that could totally be it. After all, wasn't he last seen boarding a Chaos ship?

 

I mean, if we had a body, we could check it to verify OH WAIT YOU DON'T HAVE A BODY, CHECKMATE, HERETICS!

 

So yeah. Lying Chaos Guy, Lorgar will turn up at the QER to get his armor and lead us again any day now, and we'll declare a blood feud against anyone that says differently.

[Wade Garrett]

This whole thing has two sources of inspiration:

 

Me thumbing through a bunch of Siege of Vraks stuff and falling in love with the Defenders of Vraks and Servants of Slaughter/Decay factions, and ADB's taunting everyone with hints of Abaddon vs Sigismund in the second book of his Black Legion trilogy.

 

The first book of which has yet to be published. :(

 

Truly, Mr. Bowden was the right choice to pen tales of torture addicted sadists in the far future.

 

But I digress. My thoughts were to refluff the Vraks Lost and Damned List as ad hoc forces resisting the Chainsworn's Black Crusade, with the Defenders of Cadia (Vraks Renegade Militia), Black Companies, resistance/insurgent groups reinforced by the Black Watch (Servants of Slaughter) and as far as the Servants of Decay go...groups supported by the Order of Swords? Blight Drones as Watchers In The Dark that do more that carry Azrael's helmet?

 

Cormac? Thoughts? The Order are your boys, after all.

 

And now I want to run a Black Watch list of as many Khorne Berzerkers brainwashed and tortured Black Brothers as possible, led by High Overseer Schaeffer.

 

A former Chaplain of the First Legion whose zeal and combat skills are legendary throughout the Imperium, Schaeffer wields the Blade of Absolution and is committed to seeing that every one of his charges redeems themselves by dying in the Emperor's service.

 

He's so committed to this that when he assaults an enemy, any attacks he misses are absorbed by models of the unit he's currently part of.

 

Cookie to anyone who can guess what he counts as, chocolate chip cookie to anyone who knows the Overseer's story in canon.

[Astus]

That's pretty cool idea Wade Garrett, interesting to see Colonel Schaeffer of the Last Chancers as a Chaplain.
I'm guessing he counts as Khârn?

[Wade Garrett]

Indeed, promethean.

 

"I was not created for battle like you, but in his wisedom the Emperor has granted me a gift that is seldom seen. I have never failed, and as long as I live, I never will."

 

Although Col. Schaeffer might be getting a downgrade by being Khârn. We are, after all, speaking of a man who soloed a Hive Tyrant in hand to hand.

[Astus]

Maybe he just needs to solo something bigger, like a Titan perhaps

[Conn Eremon]

I'm only just now finishing the first of the Vraksian trilogy, so I am afraid I can't do much to validate or concur.

 

But I will say that in spite of my earlier confusion, brought on by my tendency to skim when it's a story I am reading, I do not disagree with your assessment of Jonson. Mostly, because I am willing to let the opinions and ideas of others shape him as much as I do.

[Wade Garrett]

Well, I knew you wanted him as cold hearted, I just wasn't sure if 'blew up an innocent city just so Lorgar would stop waiting around to die and actually CONTRIBUTE' was a step too far.

 

As far as the other...the Servants of Decay differ from the regular Vraks Renegades list by:

 

-Get Plague Marines as an Elite Choice

 

-Blight Drones as Fast Attack, they're little daemon engine fly things that are sort of like baby Heldrakes

 

-Plague Ogryns as...Heavy Support or Elites, I forget which.

 

-Can take the Nurgle Sorcerer Necrosius as an HQ, which gets you variant Plague Zombies (Faster and a bit better on the charge) as troops.

 

I was thinking the Order of Swords psyker nonsense could represent a lot of this (Solar Tigers & Iron Hoplites are also possibles) and given the Orders use a lot of divination it seems sensible they'd be on hand for

"Revenge of The Traitors: The Warmaster Strikes Back: Wrath of the Dark Gods".

[Conn Eremon]

While I don't disagree with it, the fact that it does seem like it would be obvious makes me kind of want to go in an opposite direction. Maybe they're taken by surprise, leading to an existential crisis. How the hell did they not see it coming? Because I'm just a contrary person, I guess.

[Wade Garrett]

While I don't disagree with it, the fact that it does seem like it would be obvious makes me kind of want to go in an opposite direction. Maybe they're taken by surprise, leading to an existential crisis. How the hell did they not see it coming? Because I'm just a contrary person, I guess.

Lassertine Bron:

"How, indeed. Laugh with me, Polux and Pugh! HO HO HO HO HO!"

 

But that still leaves the issue of which of the Loyalist Astartes factions could bring enough goofiness to the table to believably represent the Servants of Decay.

 

I've already sent the Imperial Hounds off, Celestial Lions are present...that leaves Iron Hoplites, Solar Tigers, Emperor's Children, Executioners, First Legion, and the loyal Olympian Primarch whose Legion I can't remember.

 

And if we go beyond 'Dudes with geneseed' there are the Brides of The Emperor and Ordo Dracul/Adeptus Mechanicus.