The Iron Dragons

[NightrawenII]

double post - please delete

[NightrawenII]

 

See, all modern Slavic states descend from the same nation, the Kievian Rus.

↲I would like to note something. This forum has members from all over the world. Stupid and ignorant statements (and the level of ignorance of this statement is sky-high) like this are going to alienate people. So, please pay attention what are you saying.

[Dosjetka]

See, all modern Slavic states descend from the same nation, the Kievian Rus.

 

Wrong. Only the people of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia claim Kievian Rus' as their cultural predecessor. The Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia and other Slavonic countries do not have the same claim and were not part of Kievian Rus'.

 

Careful with such generalisations.

[Lord-Captain Cepinari]

Oops.  Fixed it.

 

Anyone have anything to say about the rest of that post?

[Lord-Captain Cepinari]

 

 

 

I think that looks a lot better, how about you?

[Sanguine_Knight]

I think you have a good idea going here. You should think more about how your leaders are chosen. Maybe a Feast of Blades type tournament would be good for choosing Captains and the Chapter Master since they are Sons of Dorn. This would tie in with the ad hoc way the companies are put together. And would also give the Chapter a clannish aspect as warriors would lean towards one powerful fighter or another. Just some thoughts. I like the color scheme. Keep it up!  And to those who may be a tad bit overly sensitive. I think Cepinari made a simple historical error not a racial statement. People should be careful with telling people to be careful with what they say. We wouldn't want to make false accusations would we?

[Uberlord Gendo]

Got to say, I really like the Errant and Crusade fleet concept.  I may steal it for my own dudes if you don't mind.

 

Now, how do you intend on mixing the stealth approach with the close range bolter stuff.  The vibe I'm getting is almost one of Spess Knights.  (Which I really dig, btw)

The sort of vibe where the Captain stands in the hall and takes an oath to complete some set of great deeds and asks who will be bold enough to join him.  Sometimes, the marines have a duel in the ring of honor  to see who gets to go or who gets to take a leadership position.  They take off on their ship and don't return until they have completed their vow.  Perhaps that librarian took an oath to slay the Hive Tyrant, not knowing the nature of the beast, with his dying breath, he gained the psychic knowledge that he only slew its mortal form and so prayed to the god emperor that he be granted vengance.  He died before he could be put in a dreadnought, but battle brothers say that sometimes before a fight with the Nids, a ghostly figure will come to them in a dream and give them advice, or in battle brothers will claim to have seen a dark figure guiding their blows and shots.

Alternatively, he had a psychic hood, which unbeknownst to him housed a soulstone.  Upon his death, he was taken into it, but being a mon-keigh, has little effect most of the time.  But when in battle with the Nids, his wrath is so great that he can invade the mind of the current bearer of the hood, driving him into a frenzy.   (Oooh! That's a good idea for my guys, actually.  May use that one, too.)

 

Anyways, do they drop pod in behind enemy lines and mow them down with bolter fire?  Take a more armored approach?  Aerial assault?

 

So far as the numbers go, it might help to take a looser view of the canon.  I prefer to think of it as Imperial propaganda because frankly, the numbers make little sense.  Earth would probably be a standard world, and if we did a full draft, we'd probably result in a 700,000,000 person army as a 1% tithe, so figure 70 million as an annual .1% tithe.  That means that armies raised from hive worlds, which would have populations somewhere between 10 billion and a trillion, would often number in several billion.  The average waaaaagh probably involves several billion to several trillion orks, depending upon the number of planets involved.  (A waaaagh would take the entire population more or less and even if it was sparsely populated, a planetary population of a billion is reasonable to assume.)  At that rate, I tend to figure that the average chapter numbers between 100,000 and 10,000, with some outliers like the Templars and Ultras going as high as a million.  I also find it helps to remember that a bolter round is basically an incendiary shell.  I also tend to assume that marine chapters coordinate their efforts whenever possible.

Of course, 40k is over the top, it isn't meant to be realistic, so all my numbermancy is pointless, it just helps me justify the sort of battles and resources I imagine being involved in a galactic Imperium.  This said, it is certainly easier to imagine a few thousand marines lined up taking down an army and subjugating a planet than it is imagining the same feat with like two hundred dudes.

 

Also, if you wanted to have some auxilia, Space Marines have been known to work along side their serfs and PDFs, so there is that precedent.

[Lord-Captain Cepinari]

I feel so popular, I'm all warm and fuzzy inside!

 

I might have made a mistake in saying that they were like the Raven Guard, in that by saying so I made it sound like they operated in the same fashion.  What I was trying to say was that they "fight smarter, not harder," preferring to hit targets of strategic importance in order to weaken the enemy forces as opposed to simply lining up on one side of the map and running to the other side while killing everything between the two points like the Black Templar.  What form their source of mobility takes depends to an extent on the situation, but I'm currently thinking Rhinos and Dropships are how they usually go, with Drop Pod assaults saved for special occasions.

 

It's a good thing that Clans were mentioned, because I've been thinking that, while it's still true that full and proper Companies don't exist, for every Captain there are certain Marines that it's a "given" will be serving under him.  The big thing about the Iron Dragon love for Bolters is the sheer tactical flexibility that they, and by extension Tactical Squads, offer.  More Assault-oriented Chapters can find themselves stuck in a situation where their reliance on Jump Packs and Close Combat becomes more of a hindrance than a help, while the more versatile Bolter is generally useful in all scenarios.  (I also happen to think Sternguard Veteran Squads are really cool.  Seriously, you get to swap in a special ammo type of your choice whenever you want, that's so awesome I'm surprised it hasn't been nerfed yet.)  Anyway, even though the Chapter as a whole likes tactical flexibility, on an individual level Marines tend to develop certain preferences, and tend to group together along those lines.  While younger Marines will drift from group to group, experiencing all the different ways they could die horribly in the name of the Emperor, more experienced ones start to develop a pattern in their choices in campaigns to serve in.  Eventually, most Marines wind up as part of a certain Captain's core ensemble, following him on his campaigns and mentoring the younger Marines who tag along.

[Sanguine_Knight]

Not at all codex compliant. It may put them at odds with other Chapters and the Inquisition. I like it. Each core group of warriors specializing in a different type of warfare, so by fighting with the various cadres a young Marine could become very well rounded and then gravitate towards the leader he most identifies with. Sterngaurds rule! And this way they wouldn't be confined to the First Company. I've always found The codex severely limiting as far as Chapter organization goes. I also dig the thought of destroying one's enemies with volleys of precision bolter fire, and then going in close to mop up any survivors.

[Lord-Captain Cepinari]

 

A bit more gold, but do you think I'm being too rigid with the color scheme?  Orange, white and bone wouldn't stand out from the gold, but black doesn't feel right to me here.  On the other hand, the more usual colors for a Space Marine Sergeant's helmet stripe would just look ugly here.

[Sanguine_Knight]

I like the original colors. I think if you add the gold it should maybe be on the trim for sergeants and helmets for honor guard and captains. Or get rid of the bone face plate and make the helmet all gold. Maybe you could make the Aquila orange and it would make the gold stand out more. Since you are not codex compliant you don't have to be too rigid with the colors. Pretty much everyone can look the same except for command structure. Are you planning on building a real army based on this chapter?

[Lord-Captain Cepinari]

Someday, maybe, when I have hundreds of dollars to spend on overpriced plastic, glue, paints, and sharp pointy tools that can't do the job they're made for worth a damn but can slice a finger to the bone just fine.

[Lord-Captain Cepinari]

I think I'll save fully gilded helmets for the First Company equivalent, while partially gilded helmets will be for Command staff and "almost veterans" that aren't quite there yet.

 

Before I decided to make things easy for myself and just have them be Imperial Fists Successors, I considered having them be the remnants of the Legion of a lost Primarch.  My idea for the Missing Primarchs was that they landed on inhabited planets in close proximity to each other, so by the time Dad showed up they had already worked together for some time.  The Primarch my guys descend from was patient and methodical.  His brother was Leeroy Jenkins In Space.  The majority of Primarch A's military career consisted of covering for Primarch B's lack of strategic thinking.  Basically A did all the real work while B did all the stuff that gets remembered.  Deciding that they had a good strategy going for them, Dad had them keep on doing what they were already doing, this time with Space Marine Legions.  As you might expect, a lifetime of heavy lifting while the guy who should be grateful but isn't gets all the attention is not conducive to a positive mental state.  Eventually, at a party celebrating another successful campaign, B said something stupid and A finally snapped and spent the rest of the night ranting and raving about how B was a moron who owed everything to A.  B took offense to this and went off to prove he didn't need A to win.  He promptly got bogged down in a protracted conflict that had no easy out for him.  The other Primarchs begged A to go help B, but he refused, seeing this as a well deserved lesson for B.  Then B and his entire Legion died horribly at the hands of some great and scary evil thing.  (At the time I was thinking this up I was thinking it would have been Chaos who was to blame, but since Chaos wasn't really known to the Imperium until after the Heresy it probably would have to be changed to some sort of Xenos relic.)  B became possessed by a Greater Daemon of Chaos, while his Legion became an army of daemonically animated Space Marine zombies, who then proceeded to wipe out all life in the part of space the two Primarch's home worlds had been in.  By this point, the EMPRAH was incredibly pissed at A, whom he blamed for the death of his other son and the corruption and destruction of so many Imperial worlds.  He basically kicked A and his Legion out, and told them not to come back until they atoned for their arrogance.  To make a long story short, A met B on the field of battle, and they killed each other, The End.  The Emperor was so upset with the whole thing that he did his level best to forget that both of them had ever existed, hence why neither are remembered today.  It had been thought that A's Legion had been completely eradicated while destroying the zombie remnants of B's Legion, but a small group secretly survived and remained on the distant edges of the Imperium, eternally seeking the Emperor's forgiveness.

 

So yeah, I thought that this was all a bit much and dropped it, what do you think?

[Sanguine_Knight]

haha! Yeah... a bit much. Its presumed that Russ and his puppies wiped out one of the unnamed Primarchs/Legions. That's in the books. And if the other Primarchs(even Horus) decided not talk about what happened to them, maybe we shouldn't either. On the other hand space zombies are always cool. I've always liked the thought of some Chapter being descended from one of the missing Primarchs but apparently its not an idea that's looked upon very favorably. I guess some things in 40K are just supposed to remain a mystery.

[Omega Striker]

Yeah, have to agree with SK. 

 

Don't do the missing primarch thing.  It's been Games Workshop's little design since the beginning, and most of us around here will tell you to respect that.

 

Secondly, the primarch tells you a lot about the chapter.  If you have essentially no information on the Primarch, then writing your chapter is going to be incredibly hard.

 

When writing an IA, you need a Primarch to tell you what your chapter is like, and then you need a homeworld to tell you how your marines are different from the primarch's first legions.  If you don't have either of those, you need to tread very carefully so you don't just start making up huge parts of the fluff (which is what you are doing here).  

 

There is a lot of room to play around with the 9 loyalist primarchs we know of, so don't be too eager to dive head first into what may be a shallow body of water.

[Warsmith Aznable]

A bit more gold, but do you think I'm being too rigid with the color scheme? Orange, white and bone wouldn't stand out from the gold, but black doesn't feel right to me here. On the other hand, the more usual colors for a Space Marine Sergeant's helmet stripe would just look ugly here.

I use orange and black in a quartered scheme, with gold trim. I think it looks fine. It is a righteous pain to paint, though, as Olisredan mentioned. If you have light and dark contrasting it is better. For the helmets I use a darker gold (Burnished Gold) and a lighter white (the old Skull White). Bone that isn't covered with a darker wash would be fine for a gold, I think.

I initially went with just the face plate painted white with the rest of the helmet a different colour. It didn't translate well from the SM Painter to an actual mini. The area was too small IRL, I thought.

When you get around to writing your IA, I'd suggest shorter paragraphs. Too much text in one block becomes a chore to read, and people will end up skimming and maybe miss an important bit of information you're trying to get across.

[Lord-Captain Cepinari]

I admittedly know jack :cuss about miniatures painting, but my working theory was that I could base paint it black, apply a white coat to every spot that wasn't going to stay black, and then paint the actual color on top of the white.

[Warsmith Aznable]

I admittedly know jack :cuss about miniatures painting, but my working theory was that I could base paint it black, apply a white coat to every spot that wasn't going to stay black, and then paint the actual color on top of the white.

 

In my experience, just painting white over the black isn't usually enough if you want the top colour to be bright. When I'm putting yellows or oranges over black or boltgun metal I go snakebite leather, bone white, skull white, and then yellow or orange. Otherwise it tends to be dark looking unless you use lots of layers of the top colour.

 

YMMV, and I know there are better painters out there who might give you different advice, but that's how I do it.

[Lord-Captain Cepinari]

I'm planning on doing a separate thread for the IA, with this one for all the brainstorming and figuring things out one.

[Lord-Captain Cepinari]

Well dang, it's been a few days and all I have to show for it is some more fluff about the Chapter's Home World.  YOU HAVE FAILED ME BRAIN!

 

Primarily feudalistic in nature, the home world's civilization is unique in that it is highly developed technologically, at least compared to other Space Marine planets.  Steam power is a frequent sight in highly developed areas, and weapons technology has advanced to the equivalent of the late 19th century.  This ties into the Iron Dragon's obsession with Bolters, as to the people of the moon the gun, and through association technology, represents Man's superiority to nature.  Man can create tools, alter his environment, and impose his will onto his surroundings.  Interestingly, the feudal society is also structurally communistic in several respects, a working paradox brought about by the moon's unique ecosystem.

 

Due to the peculiarities of the moon's orbit, it spends half of it's fourteen-month year between the gas giant it orbits and the star the planet orbits, while during the other half the planet is between the moon and the star.  Because of this, the world spends half of it's time in constant sunlight, either directly or reflected off of the planet, and the other half in constant darkness.  Natural selection under these conditions has brought about plant life with an unusually high rate of metabolic activity; plants on this world grow at a rate that could almost be literally described as 'explosive.'  Thus it is a daily task for the humans to clear away unwanted plant life from areas cleared for use; a seed that takes root in the soil can grow to a sapling the size of a man in about a week, faster if conditions allow for it.  Because of this it is nearly impossible for the satellite's inhabitants to maintain anything more complex than a simple network of roads connecting the major population centers; anything else would be too time-consuming.  The native animal life is just as explosively active during the 'Bright Months', with both multitudinous vermin and resilient predators endlessly plaguing the world's rural areas.  Special mention must be made of the satellite's atmosphere's oxygen content; due to the rapid plant growth during the long summer, the amount of breathable oxygen in the atmosphere increases drastically, often to levels unheard of on other worlds. (You thought the Carboniferous was bad?  Please.)  While the additional oxygen raises the alertness and quickens the mind of the humans on this world, it also causes many problems.  Like the humans, the animal life is invigorated by the extra oxygen, making the ones detrimental to the workings of humans even more difficult to deal with.  Worse still, an atmosphere with a high oxygen level burns far more easily than one without, thus every summer thunderstorm brings with it the chance of massive fires and lives lost as the very air surrounding them and pouring through their lungs explodes.  And finally, the increase in oxygen allows the planet's native invertebrate life to grow to massive proportions.  As the summer progresses, each generation of arthropod life increases in size, with the height of summer brings with it ravenous armor plated monstrosities big enough to rip a person apart.  As the satellite begins to cool, however, things start to shift into reverse.  Depending on what sort they are, the plant life either sheds it's leaves and enters hibernation, or dies completely after producing seeds that will wait the winter out beneath the soil.  While some of the animals will remain active during the 'Dark Months', the majority will head underground and sleep through the winter, either by subsisting off of a stockpile of food they spent the long summer preparing, or by hibernating and surviving off of a thick layer of body fat.  As the satellite freezes over and the plant life dies or shuts down, the oxygen level of the atmosphere begins to decrease, and continues to do so until the reawakening of the plant life next spring.  The largest invertebrates die, suffocating in an atmosphere that can no longer sustain them, while their descendants shrink in size until they reach the year's final generation, one capable of surviving the winter, either by hibernating or waiting until next year to hatch.  With the air weakening, the humans find themselves becoming sleepy and dull-witted.  Combined with the 24-hour nonstop darkness, depression is also a frequent occurrence.  Throughout most of the satellite's recorded history, the 'Dark Months' also brought with them monstrous creatures, less living animal and more nightmare made manifest, that would attempt to break into the places of habitation so that they could slaughter the humans as they cowered around what sources of warmth and light they had left to them.

 

The primary unit of civilization on the world is the 'Hold.'  Ruled by a 'Hold-Lord' who (usually) gains the title through the virtue of being the previous Hold-Lord's kid, a 'Hold' can be considered a rough equivalent to Medieval Earth's 'Fiefdoms' or 'Manors.'  'Holds,' however, differ from those greatly, particularly in size and organization.  The average 'Hold' is several orders of magnitude bigger in size than an equivalent fiefdom, and unlike the manorial system, even a Hold-Lord with a particularly large Hold is unlikely to have a large number of the equivalent of the actual manor building, also referred to as a 'Hold.'  The structure known as a 'Hold,' or sometimes 'Hold-Hall,' can best be described as a combination house, fortress, city, and crazy survivalist's bunker.  An incredibly massive single structure, as much of the Hold is built underground as the local topography admits.  Inside are hundreds of apartments and dozens of factories, storage areas, and public rooms of all sorts.  During the summer months the citizens of a Hold will live far away from the actual hold in villages and towns scattered about, where they grow crops and harvest lumber and mine ore and all the other sorts of stuff peasants do for work.  When winter is on the horizon, however, the inhabitants of these rural communities pack up everything they hadn't already sent to the Hold and race back there before the snow flies.  During the winter each Hold plays host to everyone feudally bound to it.  The people survive off of the food sent back during the summer, while craftsmen toil in the factories and workshops to convert lumber, wool, ore and other resources into finished goods.  The soldiers spend their time patrolling the outer areas, ensuring that no rooms or corridors have collapsed or been broken in to.  During the winter the farmers and ranchers get much needed rest and relaxation, while their children are forced to undertake basic schooling.  When a new Hold Hall has to be built, an effort is made to find a spot that allows access to geothermal vents.  Because of this, many Halls possess indoor plumbing and heating, and sometimes a geothermal power plant (which is generally considered a Holy Relic by most) allows for electrical lighting of the indoor rooms, which is nice because the alternative, lots of fireplaces and candles, drains the oxygen supply, and that's going to be at a premium until spring!  The need for cooperative efforts and efficiency is what has caused the satellite's humans to develop a strongly communal society, though one that is not quite so collectivist and utilitarian as the Tau.  The Nobility of the world are notably less corrupt, inbred and incompetent than the Nobility of other, more 'civilized' planets in the Imperium.  The harsh realities of day to day life on a satellite that's a borderline Death World means that people in positions of authority have much less room to screw up in than is considered usual for one of their position, as attempting to live a life of indulgence but no responsibility is a pretty good way of getting yourself killed.

 

Being a world primarily covered in forest, the most plentiful resources available to it's inhabitants are organic in nature.  Obviously, they have more than enough wood for their needs, and forests are full of fish and wild game, and during part of the year wild fruits and mushrooms can be found.  On the other hand, there are plenty of animals living in the forest more than willing to fight you for it.  Oh, and then there's the problem of agriculture.  I'd say forest soil is crap, but that analogy falls apart when you consider that, to a plant, said crap makes for an infinitely better meal than the aforementioned soil.  Basically, you have a thin layer of rotting vegetation, and then lots of stuff that's only really useful in that it helps the trees stand up straight.  So yeah, the patch of forest you painstakingly cleared through days of backbreaking labor?  You'll be lucky to get a single decent yield out of it before it goes fallow.  Even with crop rotation farmers have a difficult time producing enough food to both feed themselves right then and for everybody come winter.  A good percentage of the world's business class consists of 'Ash Merchants,' traders who set out from their Hold Halls early in the year in order to harvest volcanic ash from the geologically active mountains, then sell it to farmers in the forested lowlands to enrich their fields with.  Animal Husbandry is also problematic.  While it's marginally easier to turn a cleared patch of forest into a grazing area, there's the constant need to patrol it for invading trees and toxic plants.  There's also the carnivorous animals who look at a field of domestic animals and see it as an all-you-can-eat buffet.  This is worse than you'd think, because most carnivorous animals there like to eat their fill, and then kill a whole bunch more just so they can stash the carcasses away for later.  Life in the Holds up in the mountains is a bit different, but no less challenging.  Sure, you have easy access to volcanic soil, and there are plenty of alpine meadows to raise animals in, but you have to go to bed knowing that, by the time you wake up, a fresh patch of basalt could have replaced that field of vegetables or that herd of sheep you were counting on to get you through the winter.  There's also frequent earthquakes, as well as poison gas vents suddenly opening, to deal with.  The geological instability means that mountain Hold Lords have a harder time keeping their Hold Halls in functioning condition, though they do get the upside of having plenty of stone and metal to trade with the lowlanders for lumber and food (oh yeah, forest soil is utterly worthless for mining too.)

 

TO BE CONTINUED...

[LongGone]

Whoa, that is a giant wall of text. I would try to avoid using all of that info in the actual IA. It helps you personally to have the backstory when you are crafting the IA, but for the readers the Homeworld section is more of a brief description of the planet and how it has impacted the development of the chapter. The most important piece of info in the above post was how the cultural beliefs about technology have steered the chapter toward a preference of the holy bolter. 

 

It definitely shows that you have put time into this though. Looking forward to see where you take the Dragons. 

 

LG

[Lord-Captain Cepinari]

I'm so bad at this.  I'm either posting in tiny bits or disgustingly huge blocks of text, I just can't seem to hit the middle ground here.  And the worst part is that I'm still feeling the compulsion to post about the Home World, even though it's all pointless filler that no one gives a crap about.

[Warsmith Aznable]

And the worst part is that I'm still feeling the compulsion to post about the Home World, even though it's all pointless filler that no one gives a crap about.

 

That's a normal pitfall in making an IA, so don't worry about it. I think we've all got at least 1,000 words in our head for every 1 that actually makes it into our articles. It's good to generate a lot of information, then pare it down to the most interesting bits.

 

Have you read the Octaguide? It's got a lot of good advice.

[Lord-Captain Cepinari]

Ooo, that looks informative.

 

Also, screw it. Their dietary staples are buckwheat and beets, and their favorite drinks are vodka and tea. The in-universe explanation is their favorite alcoholic drink evolved from a recipe for industrial solvent the moon's original settlers brought with them, then as the tech level regressed they forgot what it was originally for and started drinking it. They drink their tea hideously strong, ornate tea brewers are family heirlooms, and elaborate rituals of hospitality center around them.

[Prefect Apollyon]

My eyes! They're bleeding!

 

Paragraphs. Moar paragraphs!

 

As has been said, focus on your Chapter; it's founding, history, doctrines and beliefs. The homeworld adds a lot to a Chapters doctrines and beliefs, but don't over-do it.