IA Munnum Draugarinn; The Death Ravens WIP

[Uberlord Gendo]

IA Munnum Draugarinn, The Death Ravens

 

 

Chapter Origins:

 

The chapter originated under mysterious circumstances in the 21^st founding.  Rumours abound of experimental gene seed for many chapters of that period and the Munnum Draugarinn, or in the common Low Gothic translation Death Ravens, are no different,
and their geneseed curse would support the notion.  Created to defend the far frontiers of the Imperium from incursion, particularly the few stable lanes in to the Forgeworld Tindalos, the Death Ravens were, from the outset, unorthodox.  Their initial officer cadre included, according to chapter legend, members of several chapters, including a Space Wolves Rune Priest and a Forgemaster from the Raven Guard.  However, most of the initial cadre seems to have been seconded from several Blood Angels sucessors.  Confirmation now is impossible because the remains were supposedly returned to their chapters and their only depictions are in a frieze over the chapter crypts, which only has a single niche dedicated to ‘The Founders’.

 

The origin of the gene seed is still a subject of heated debate.

 

Homeworld:

 

In order to more effectively protect their assigned region, the
Death Ravens have been assigned a cluster of a dozen stars as a fiefdom, as
well as a sizable chapter fleet.

 

The cluster seems to have been settled since the Dark Age of
Technology, as the worlds share linguistic and cultural ties.  Before the return of the Imperium to the
sector, sporadic contact had been maintained through radio and crude sublight
starships.

 

Since the Death Ravens have taken over, the area has been
fortified, many of the planets modernized. 
The PDF of the cluster techinically reports to the Imperial Guard
command in the Cygnus Cluster, but due to distance, they are more or less
autonomous.

 

Since the Badab War, oversight has increased, but a close
relationship with the Sororitas Order of the Obsidian Mirror, elements in Ordos
Xenos, and the Imperial Navy, all of whom see the Chapter as an effective
forward listening post, seem to put any worry to rest.

 

Most of the recruits to the Death Ravens are from isolated communities
on the technobarbaric world of Surtheim. 
Surtheim had once been a verdant paradise world, until a meteor strike
plunged the world into an ice age.  For
years, agriculture could only be carried out underground, and to this day, the
largest cities lie below the surface. 
What makes Surtheim truly harsh are what came with the meteor.  A xeno beast, sometimes theorized to be a
tyranid splinter that lost contact with the hive mind seems to have arrived
with the cold.  Often fighting in the
tight spaces of the underground cities, the people of Surtheim have mastered
martial arts to give them the chance to slay the beasts.

 

Other worlds in the clusters send their young men,
particularly from the aristocracy to train in martial arts in monasteries.  Those who are not selected to become astartes
often have careers in the PDF and planetary government.

 

History:

 

Insert stories of ass kicking here.

 

Organization:

 

Due to the distance from the rest of the imperium, the
chapter diverges significantly from the codex. 
Instead of the traditional companies, there are instead Crusade Fleets
and Fleets Errant.  The Crusade fleets
are created with a specific goal in mind, while the Fleets Errant patrol the
region, looking for and handling potential threats.  In this way they often stumble upon and
destroy potential threats before they have a chance to attack.

 

Under ordinary circumstances, the fleets are on continuous
patrol, with Crusades being made up of ships assigned to operate together.

 

Instead of companies, groups of marines who have
complementary fighting styles are assigned to a ship.  These groups range from 15 to 40 marines,
depending upon the vehicles and aircraft involved.

 

The ships are then assigned to fleets centered around strike
cruisers and are transferred back and forth as needed.  This allows  forces to be redeployed quickly and effectively
as the situation demands.

 

Geneseed:

 

Due to a mutation in the omnophagea, the Death Ravens can
only acess memories from eaten brains by reliving the experience in front of a
librarian.  This is compounded by an issue
of a more diffuse nature.  At the back of
every Death Raven’s mind, is a prowling predatory beast.  Every marine experiences it differently, but
it is commonly compared to a wolf or one of the predatory [velociraptor]
species native to the area.  The beast is
the ruler of the night forest, it hunts in packs, terrifying its prey,
splitting them into easily attacked groups, and then pounces from the shadows
to tear the prey apart with claws, enjoying the rapture of fresh, hot,
blood.  Normally, this beast can be kept
at bay, but as a marine ages and eats more memories, their connection to
themselves weakens.  In the heat of
battle, there is always the risk a battle brother will forget who and what they
are and become The Beast, Draugarinn. 
Sometimes, they recover after the battle, finding themselves drenched in
blood and not remembering anything after leaping from their transport.  More often, the beast does not let go, and
the Death Ravens are transfigured into something altogether inhuman.  Teeth become fangs, hands to claws, and the
afflicted marine descends into bestial fury.  For the Death Raven, the fear is not death in
battle, but that they will lose the battle within themselves and come through
unscathed in body, but utterly destroyed in soul.  Thus is the chapter’s curse.

 

Chapter Beliefs:

 

The chapter’s beliefs are largely drawn from the local
variant on the Imperial Cult and deal with handling their curse.  The region has an idiosyncratic set of
traditional rituals which have been reconciled with the Imperial Cult.  Local religion is shamanic in nature and
emphasizes channeling nature in the form of an animal totem via meditation and
marital art.  To do Wolf Meditation is to
become as a wolf temporarily.  These
totemic animals are seen as reflections of the God Emperor, and so a worshiper ‘rides
the wolf’ to glimpse the nature of the God Emperor.

 

So it
is that battle brothers 'ride the wolf' in battle, they let ferocity of the
predator flow through them and around them, but use the strict discipline of
form and ritual to keep it from consuming them.  Thus though they may tear
out their enemies' beating hearts with their bare hands, it is part of the form
and the rage of the beast is seen from a detached perspective.

 

If the battle brother eats the heart and savors the taste,
transformation into a beast is not far off.

 

 

 

For the Death Ravens, this practice is a double edged
sword.  They see the internal beast as a
manifestation of The Emperor’s Wrath and thus try to channel it, rather than
outright fight it.  On the one hand, this
makes the marine’s job far easier, but on the other, it dictates their entire
modus operandi.  So far as they are concerned,
they are the embodiment of the pack hunter, the night predator.  This is what they are, but the Emperor has
given them the duty to channel it well, a task that can prove overwhelming,
even for a space marine.

 

Chapter Tactics:

 

 They
deviate from the codex, not so much because they think their system is better
than the codex, but because they hope their changes will help them better
harness the beast within.

 

They use a lot more stealth tactics so as to set up ambushes
where they brutally eliminate the enemy, shying away from siege actions,
instead preferring to handle those by using a strike cruiser to shell the
entrenced position from orbit and place artillery positions around the foe.
 These sites are left apperantley unguarded.  Mostly their there to
show that the wolves are watching and lower enemy morale.  If the
positions are targeted, the artillery is either moved, or it is used as a site
for an ambush. Either way, the siege cordon is simply a tool to keep the enemy
in place while the wolves destroy infrastructure.

 

This is only possible because of the large number of flyers
used.

 

The chapter avoids standard whirlwinds in general, preferring
thunderfire cannons and aerial artillery due to their quicker deployment, but
will occasionally use guard artillery as bait.  They've also shown a
fondness for Scorpius Pattern Whirlwinds simply due to their overwhelming
damage output, often hiding them in camo and keeping them hidden until they can
release a devastating surprise salvo.

 

Razorbacks are preferred over Rhinos due to the greater
firepower and as such the standard unit is the demi-squad.  These work in
pairs, the draugr and the shadow.

 

Whenever forces can be deployed from their air, they are, a
habit picked up from the Blood Angels.

 

 These tactics work great against many enemies, but they
are poorly suited to some situations, such as massive Tyranid swarms or
Daemonic incursions.  In these situations, they fight according to codex
tactics, but loses are often higher than another chapter's would have been, not
due to a lack of prowess, but due to battle brothers falling to bestial rage.

 

Quite simply, the prolonged high intensity slaughter, surrounded
by foes without end and tasked to slay until there is only a corpse covered
field is too much for many and before long, they become drunk on the blood.

 

One notorious incident saw the loss of nearly a full company
whilst fighting a Khornate Warband, the Crimson Revels, feared for their
ecstatic slaughter.  The Draugar slew the berzerkers and their cultists to
a man.  Horrifically, half the loses were not due to wounds, but due to
madness.

 

 

 

Similarly, though Geatagardr has been purged of Tyranids for
over a decade, there are still rumours amongst the populace that strange and
horrible creatures roam the woods.  Chapter records record several squads
as having been lost on that world, but while at least partial corpses have been
found for most squads, no trace of squad Grendel has ever been found.

 

Note---Raven is a bad translation into Low Gothic of a local
animal.  A better translation would be
akin to the Death Velociraptors.

[Growler67]

Colors and heraldry/iconography?

[Uberlord Gendo]

Not a clue. Any advice?

[Omega Striker]

IA Munnum Draugarinn, The Death Ravens

 

 

 

Chapter Origins:

 

 

The chapter originated under mysterious circumstances in the 21^st founding.  Rumours abound of experimental gene seed for many chapters of that period and the Munnum Draugarinn, or in the common Low Gothic translation Death Ravens, are no different, and their geneseed curse would support the notion.  Created to defend the far frontiers of the Imperium from incursion, particularly the few stable lanes in to the Forgeworld Tindalos, the Death Ravens were, from the outset, unorthodox.  Their initial officer cadre included, according to chapter legend, members of several chapters, including a Space Wolves Rune Priest and a Forgemaster from the Raven Guard.  However, most of the initial cadre seems to have been seconded from several Blood Angels sucessors.  Confirmation now is impossible because the remains were supposedly returned to their chapters and their only depictions are in a frieze over the chapter crypts, which only has a single niche dedicated to ‘The Founders’.

 

This is interesting, but you are going to step on a lot of toes by coming out and saying "multi-geneseed".  I like your depiction idea, though.  Instead of coming out and saying it, say "The chapter records are lost, and only one chapter relic dates back to the founding: a frieze with aparently a lot of other chapters involved.  What this means no battle brother knows".

 

 

 

The origin of the gene seed is still a subject of heated debate.

 

 

Homeworld: 

In order to more effectively protect their assigned region, the Death Ravens have been assigned a cluster of a dozen stars as a fiefdom, as well as a sizable chapter fleet.

 

The cluster seems to have been settled since the Dark Age of Technology, as the worlds share linguistic and cultural ties.  Before the return of the Imperium to the sector, sporadic contact had been maintained through radio and crude sublight starships.

 

Since the Death Ravens have taken over, the area has been fortified, many of the planets modernized.  The PDF of the cluster technically reports to the Imperial Guard command in the Cygnus Cluster, but due to distance, they are more or less autonomous.

 

Since the Badab War, oversight has increased, but a close relationship with the Sororitas Order of the Obsidian Mirror, elements in Ordos Xenos, and the Imperial Navy, all of whom see the Chapter as an effective forward listening post, seem to put any worry to rest. 

 

Most of the recruits to the Death Ravens are from isolated communities on the technobarbaric world of Surtheim.  Surtheim had once been a verdant paradise world, until a meteor strike

plunged the world into an ice age.  For years, agriculture could only be carried out underground, and to this day, the largest cities lie below the surface.  What makes Surtheim truly harsh are what came with the meteor.  A xeno beast, sometimes theorized to be a tyranid splinter that lost contact with the hive mind seems to have arrived with the cold.  Often fighting in the

tight spaces of the underground cities, the people of Surtheim have mastered martial arts to give them the chance to slay the beasts. 

 

Other worlds in the clusters send their young men, particularly from the aristocracy to train in martial arts in monasteries.  Those who are not selected to become astartes often have careers in the PDF and planetary government.

 

Okay, you have a lot going on here.  You talk about your chapter very little and everything else a lot, which is a common trap many fall into (myself included).  Try cutting back on everything that isn't the chapter either claiming one world or recruiting, since those are the big points that this part of the IA is supposed to cover.  Also, space marines don't need a sizable fleet.  They need fast ships that can put marines where they need to go, not giant fleets that can bomb planets into submission.  Why is the Badab war important enough to mention?  Was your chapter involved somehow?  The "underground ice caves tyranid fights" is actually a cool idea, can you go into a little more about how that changes the chapter's recruits aside from saying martial arts?  Also, marital arts are not going to cut it against Tyranids.  Martial arts are for fighting other humans, not genetically perfected killing machines.  Talk about weapons used to fight them, tactics, abushes, ice mazes around the cities where the fights happen, something like that.  Warrior school are perfectly fine, just make sure you incorporate 40th millennium tech into it.  Mention guns and power weapons and explosives training.  

 

History:

 

Insert stories of ass kicking here.

 

Whoa.  Stop right there.  Every Space marine kicks ass.  Seriously, one million space marines, and one million ass kickers.  A story of asskicking tells us nothing new about your marines.  One of the best ways to give a chapter awesome flavor is to tell us about what happened when asskicking wasn't enough.  something like "We like to stab things with our swords.  But one day, we found something that our swords couldn't kill.  So we dropped huge icicles on its head and then it died.  Now, our chapter like to stab things AND drop icicles on our enemies."  That would make a good story.  show us a unique tactic or skill that comes from your homeworld, and how your chapter first learned this tactic.

 

Organization:

 

Due to the distance from the rest of the imperium, the chapter diverges significantly from the codex.  Instead of the traditional companies, there are instead Crusade Fleets and Fleets Errant.  The Crusade fleets are created with a specific goal in mind, while the Fleets Errant patrol the region, looking for and handling potential threats.  In this way they often stumble upon and destroy potential threats before they have a chance to attack.

 

Under ordinary circumstances, the fleets are on continuous patrol, with Crusades being made up of ships assigned to operate together.

 

Instead of companies, groups of marines who have complementary fighting styles are assigned to a ship.  These groups range from 15 to 40 marines, depending upon the vehicles and aircraft involved.

 

The ships are then assigned to fleets centered around strike cruisers and are transferred back and forth as needed.  This allows  forces to be redeployed quickly and effectively

as the situation demands. 

 

It sounds like your chapter is replacing the Imperial Navy, which is both incredibly hard to do manpower and materials-wise, and a huge no-no.  After the Horus Heresy, no legion or chapter or whatever is allowed to have much more than some high-performance transports with guns on them.  If you want some ship-to-ship action, just mention that the Imperial Navy has a great deal of trust with your chapter, and when things get dicey, the Navy calls for help and your marines love to answer.  Keep in mind that the power of the Chapter is in its marines, not in its ships or its planets.  Marines well versed in boarding actions and space hulk clearing are perfectly fine and awesome all in their own way, and you don't need to steal the Navy's spotlight to make a Chapter cool.

 

Geneseed:

 

Due to a mutation in the omnophagea, the Death Ravens can only access memories from eaten brains by reliving the experience in front of a librarian.  This is compounded by an issue

of a more diffuse nature.  At the back of every Death Raven’s mind, is a prowling predatory beast.  Every marine experiences it differently, but it is commonly compared to a wolf or one of the predatory [velociraptor] species native to the area.  The beast is the ruler of the night forest, it hunts in packs, terrifying its prey, splitting them into easily attacked groups, and then pounces from the shadows to tear the prey apart with claws, enjoying the rapture of fresh, hot, blood.  Normally, this beast can be kept at bay, but as a marine ages and eats more memories, their connection to themselves weakens.  In the heat of battle, there is always the risk a battle brother will forget who and what they are and become The Beast, Draugarinn. 

Sometimes, they recover after the battle, finding themselves drenched in blood and not remembering anything after leaping from their transport.  More often, the beast does not let go, and

the Death Ravens are transfigured into something altogether inhuman.  Teeth become fangs, hands to claws, and the afflicted marine descends into bestial fury.  For the Death Raven, the fear is not death in battle, but that they will lose the battle within themselves and come through unscathed in body, but utterly destroyed in soul.  Thus is the chapter’s curse.

 

Huh.  Sounds like a mix of Blood Angels and Raven Guard.  Perfectly fine, but try to keep this section to a clinical, medical explanation of what happens.  What your chapter's beliefs about this "back of the mind beast" are should be covered in the Chapter Beliefs section of the IA.  Also, does not eating things for their memories starve the beast?  Some battle brothers might eat a lot and some might eat only a little.  What happens for these brothers?  And what does the chapter do with the brothers that go crazy?  Do they kill them?  Do they make a Death Company?  Can it be corrected with surgery or meditation?  How does the chapter deal with this problem in their gene-seed?

 

Chapter Beliefs:

 

The chapter’s beliefs are largely drawn from the local variant on the Imperial Cult and deal with handling their curse.  The region has an idiosyncratic set of traditional rituals which have been reconciled with the Imperial Cult.  Local religion is shamanic in nature and emphasizes channeling nature in the form of an animal totem via meditation and marital art.  To do Wolf Meditation is to become as a wolf temporarily.  These totemic animals are seen as reflections of the God Emperor, and so a worshiper ‘rides the wolf’ to glimpse the nature of the God Emperor.

 

So it is that battle brothers 'ride the wolf' in battle, they let ferocity of the predator flow through them and around them, but use the strict discipline of form and ritual to keep it from consuming them.  Thus though they may tear out their enemies' beating hearts with their bare hands, it is part of the form and the rage of the beast is seen from a detached perspective.

 

If the battle brother eats the heart and savors the taste, transformation into a beast is not far off.

 

For the Death Ravens, this practice is a double edged sword.  They see the internal beast as a manifestation of The Emperor’s Wrath and thus try to channel it, rather than outright fight it.  On the one hand, this makes the marine’s job far easier, but on the other, it dictates their entire modus operandi.  So far as they are concerned, they are the embodiment of the pack hunter, the night predator.  This is what they are, but the Emperor has given them the duty to channel it well, a task that can prove overwhelming, even for a space marine.

 

Okay, this is where the description of the psychological problems of the curse go, and good job expanding on that.  Change wolf to beast thought. Sometimes, something that is vague is more terrifying than something that is understood.  We already have have "wolf of the wolf wolf wolf".  The Space Wolves and their descendants have pretty much cornered the market for wolves.  Try keeping it vague, and add a little personality to it.  Maybe "Some battle brothers see shapeless horrors, and others see tryanids or orks or some other heretic thing (whatever they have eaten the most of) and if they relax, those memories take over and the battle brother goes "WAAAAAAAAAGH!" or mutates or all kinds of other craziness."  That would be a cool drawback for an omnophagea to have, and would be a cool source of tension in your chapter.

 

Chapter Tactics:

 

They deviate from the codex, not so much because they think their system is better than the codex, but because they hope their changes will help them better harness the beast within.

 

They use a lot more stealth tactics so as to set up ambushes where they brutally eliminate the enemy, shying away from siege actions, instead preferring to handle those by using a strike cruiser to shell the entrenced position from orbit and place artillery positions around the foe.  These sites are left apperantley unguarded.  Mostly their there to show that the wolves are watching and lower enemy morale.  If the positions are targeted, the artillery is either moved, or it is used as a site for an ambush. Either way, the siege cordon is simply a tool to keep the enemy in place while the wolves destroy infrastructure.

 

This is only possible because of the large number of flyers used.

 

The chapter avoids standard whirlwinds in general, preferring thunderfire cannons and aerial artillery due to their quicker deployment, but will occasionally use guard artillery as bait.  They've also shown a fondness for Scorpius Pattern Whirlwinds simply due to their overwhelming damage output, often hiding them in camo and keeping them hidden until they can

release a devastating surprise salvo. 

 

Razorbacks are preferred over Rhinos due to the greater firepower and as such the standard unit is the demi-squad.  These work in pairs, the draugr and the shadow.

 

Whenever forces can be deployed from their air, they are, a habit picked up from the Blood Angels.

 

 These tactics work great against many enemies, but they are poorly suited to some situations, such as massive Tyranid swarms or Daemonic incursions.  In these situations, they fight according to codex tactics, but loses are often higher than another chapter's would have been, not due to a lack of prowess, but due to battle brothers falling to bestial rage.

 

Quite simply, the prolonged high intensity slaughter, surrounded by foes without end and tasked to slay until there is only a corpse covered field is too much for many and before long, they become drunk on the blood.

 

One notorious incident saw the loss of nearly a full company whilst fighting a Khornate Warband, the Crimson Revels, feared for their ecstatic slaughter.  The Draugar slew the berzerkers and their cultists to a man.  Horrifically, half the loses were not due to wounds, but due to madness.

 

Similarly, though Geatagardr has been purged of Tyranids for over a decade, there are still rumors among the populace that strange and horrible creatures roam the woods.  Chapter records record several squads as having been lost on that world, but while at least partial corpses have been found for most squads, no trace of squad Grendel has ever been found.

 

Note---Raven is a bad translation into Low Gothic of a local animal.  A better translation would be akin to the Death Velociraptors.

 

Okay, quite a few problems here.  They stay away from siege actions, but they have siege actions?  Stealth, but heavy artillery?  I don't know if you play the RPG Deathwatch, but it's about space marines, and the "Shock and Awe" space marines are quite segregated from the "Stealth" space marines.  Working in smaller groups seems to be more about stealth.  Thunderfire cannons are definitely not quicker than Whirlwinds, but those and airborne bombing are not subtle.  Again, you have the noisy and the quiet side by side.  Orbital strikes are also noisy and rather difficult to continuously do (see my notes in the homeworld section above)

 

Keeping an enemy pinned with artillery is a good idea, but not if you are going to have your Space Marines get up close and personal with the target at the same time.  Again, either just destroy them with big noisy guns, or in your face stabbing.  

 

Razorbacks over rhinos is fine with the small squad sizes from above, but why does your chapter prefer demi-squads, and what does "These work in pairs, the draugr and the shadow"  All I know about draugr I learned from Skyrim, so you may need to illustrate this more clearly if you don't want some to assume there is some Skyrim in your chapter.

 

Being deployed by air can go either way, but you'll have to choose: noisy or quiet.  You'll also need to explain how a bunch of recruits from ice caves decided they liked to fly.  Usually people from caves hate the sky.  

 

Battle brothers eventually going kill crazy is a problem for most any chapter.  It sounds like you are talking about the Blood Angel's Black Rage, though.  specifically the phrase "drunk on blood", since that can literally happen to Blood Angels.

 

Your notorious incident needs a lot of expansion.  Khornate warbands don't usually have fancy names, either.  They just appear and kill.  Crimson Revels sounds more Slanesshi.  And half of who's losses were due to madness?  The warband's, or your chapters? 

 

Geatergardr a planet?  Space Hulk?  Asteroid?  You need to confirm that.  Tyranids are incredibly hard to purge for good, too.  Was Squad Grendel the first to disappear?  Are they suspected of killing the others?   

 

If Raven is a bad translation, then get the good one and use that instead.  Velociraptors have more in common with hawks and eagles than with ravens, so if you want a more action-packed bird instead of the more ominous doom-y raven, then so be it.  

 

 

 

 

Final notes:  It seems like you are torn between several options.  

 

Problem 1: Gene-seed.  

 

You have your chapter doing two things here: a loud and crazy Space Wolves/Imperial Fists boom siege boom approach, or the quieter Blood Angels/Raven Guard "kill you all with my claws and heap up your bodies" approach. You need to limit your gene-seed mixing to two chapters max.  Anything beyond that will just get you mutation prone Ultramarines, and you will lose out on what you are trying to get.  Either combination is fine, but you can't shove both into one chapter. Something that might help is looking around and learning about the different main chapters, and if you really have to have two, pick two, but don't go higher than that.

 

Problem 2: Tactics 

 

Do your guys sneak around and terrify their opponents, or do they blow them away with superior firepower?   How much aircraft do you use, because you could say gunships and thunderhawk bombing runs (which fits with option 1 above), or drop pods and land speeder storms (which would be stealthy and fit with option #2 above)  Also: do you want ranged, melee, or a mix of both?  The military phrase "combined arms approach" may be what you are looking for.  It's what my chapter does, but I make it a point to say that the chapter as a whole does not specialize, but has a little bit of everything.  This may be what you have to do if you want stealth and siege and shock and awe.  

 

Problem 3: Homeworld

 

Your homeworld tells us a lot about your chapter, but your homeworld section is weak, and thus, the rest of your IA has little direction, and you spill out a lot of ideas, but don't have a lot of coherency.  Before you are going to save your IA, you need to fix squarely on your homeworld and how it affects your chapter.  Underground cities do not make for good aircraft and siege weapons pilots, but would make awesome ambush tactics melee-oriented marines, and so i strongly urge you to go with the "stealthy ice demons what blow you up" angle.  Stealthy marines could sneak explosives anywhere they wanted, and get much the same result as your siege marines, only they would do it with your homeworld style.  So, nail down your homeworld, and I think this IA can come together beautifully.

 

 

Good luck with your Chapter, and Glory to the Emperor!

[Lord-Captain Cepinari]

Not a clue. Any advice?

No, no, and OH DEAR GOD MY EYES IT BURNS!!!

Also, Omega Striker has several good points. I know I said "Death Ravens" was an awesome name, because it is, but your desire to build your chapter around Dromaeosauridae means the name doesn't work here. A translation error wouldn't produce "Raven" from "Raptor", you'd get an actual bird of prey from that like "Eagle" or "Hawk." I know you want to do a Space Wolves spin-off based on Odin instead of the more typical Thor, but I'm not seeing a strong thematic connection here. Yes, Odin was a god of war. So was every other Asgardian. You need to focus on what makes Odin different. In a family of complete and utter chunkheads, Odin was the smart one. Like Loki, he possessed magic and the power to shapeshift, it just didn't get played up in the myths as much as Loki's powers. In the myths, Odin sacrificed his eye in order to get a single drink from a Well of Knowledge. He hung himself from the world tree in order to discover runes, thereby inventing the Runic Alphabet. Hell, the quintessential appearance of a Wizard is based on the form he would take when walking among humans. A "Death Raven" Chapter based on Odin could still work, but you'd have to drop several elements you've had since the beginning of the thread, and I'm sorry to say the Raptors are looking to be one of them.

[Uberlord Gendo]

A quick reply before a more complete one about the strategic/tactical end.

What I'd been thinking, and doesn't seem to have been clear, is that these guys are pretty much out there on their own, tasked to generically guard this section of the frontier.  Since its them and their PDF and sometimes a nearby forgeworld, they end up borrowing heavily from the Carcharodons way of war, with the prowling fleets.  Does that clarify a bit better?

Reason Badab is important is that these guys were given a lot of priviledges because they're so remote that Badab made people rethink.  Basically, they're pushing what they can get away with and have thus far been allowed to do so because they're out there in the middle of nowhere and better to have a slight risk with the Chapter than to retask an entire Naval Fleet, Guard, etc etc to go out there.

 

So far as tactics go, I'd been thinking its primarily ambush based, so terrify, sneak, etc until the enemy is right where you want them and then BOOOM.  The mention of sieges was mostly because they have to be able to handle an entrenched foe, with the intended focus being on the fact that they use artillery as a lure.

Really what it comes down to is that if given the choice, these guys would probably really like to do the whole IF thing, but they can't, as it tends to drive them mad (too many targets, too much blood), so what they do is draw their enemies into the ambush and then hammer away with everything that they've got, hidden whirlwinds etc etc.

The aircraft are useful because they allow for a quicker deployment and retrieval, since they may need to get out of there very quickly.  (Sneaking off into the woods after an ambush is an option, but you run the risk of leaving heavy equipment behind and, more importantly, it runs the risk of the beast taking over.)

Hopefully that's mildly coherent.

[Omega Striker]

Okay, that's much clearer and better.  Maybe in your history section you can outline a battle where this combined-arms approach was the first epic battle of your chapter, and so now the Captains try to emulate this approach, and each company is a mix of stealth squads with artillery support.  Also, consider stealthy demolitions missions as opposed to artillery fire.  You can lure out forces by making an enemy outpost go boom, and then when they are lured by the kaboom jump out and kill them, and it's heavy weapons free and fits beautifully with the stealth approach.

[Uberlord Gendo]

The Purging of Glaum

 

Of the Purging of Glaum in the nearby Jotun stars, little in definite record survives.  Even in the pieces that remain bear the marks of the censor.   What can be put together is this:

 

In the early days of the Chapter, it was organized on markedly different lines and there was still dispute over the optimal tactics.

Brother Captain Grettir lead the assault company.  Records indicate he had been leading the company on a routine patrol of the sector, when energy spikes indicated habitation in the Glaum cluster.  Assuming that a full assault company and a strike cruiser would be sufficient whatever they would find, Grettir went to warp.  Grettir soon found that the xenos of the Glaum cluster were horrific creatures with yet more terrible technology.  Finding a well maintained orbital defense network, Grettir signaled his findings and charged, chiding that by the time the forces had been organized, all that would be left would be corpses.

There is a hint in the records that perhaps Grettirs' warp drive had been taken out with the initial salvo, which dramatically changes Grettir's legacy, but what is known is that he ordered the strike cruiser to ram the largest of the defense platforms.  The warp drive was set to overload, and the marines ran to the Thunderhawks and Drop Pods.  Interestingly, it seems as though some of the chapter serfs were taken along.  Most of these were able to make planetfall in the ensuing confusion as the strike cruiser crashed into the platform.

What precisely happened at this point is unknown, but data gathered upon the arrival of the main crusade fleet a standard month later indicate indiscriminate orbital bombardment.  The crusade found that several dozen military and infrastructure indtallations had been utterly destroyed, alien remains disturbingly mutilated, as  though they'd not been killed with bolter and chainsword,  but with claws and fangs.  For all this, the first few sites seem to have been subjected to orderly frontal assaults, with thunderhawk weapons being used as artillery and improvised heavy weapon mounts, often found with slain chapter serfs still manning them.  However, as the campaign continued, it appeared that orderly strategy had given away to headlong rush to shed blood.  Grettir's company appeared to have survived, against all odds, for a week, in the end, done in as much by mad agression as by their foe.

It seems as though the remains of Grettir's company were confiscated by Chaptermaster of the time-- thought to have been from the flesh tearers.

After beating back the counter attack, the rest of the campaign was conducted carefully, with the full knowledge that though impetuosity could overcome this foe, no back-up would come.

Macrocannons were unlimbered from strike cruiser turrets and used as siege weapons manned by chapter serfs.  Chapters were broken up and de-specified, so that no company would be cut-off without proper supplies as Grettir's was, for none could mistake what was written in Grettir's blood-- none of the great fortresses of the Xeno had fallen to Grettir.  (Though they had severly disrupted the poorly protected infrastructure.)

Civilian freighters were requisitioned for fleet needs, so that scouting runs could be made and an emergency exfiltration would be possible.

However, it was not until Waaaagh ------- that the chapter morphed into what we see today.

 

What do you think of that as a start?

[Uberlord Gendo]

Some scattered thoughts about the Homeworlds, given that they do recruit from across the fiefdom.

 

GIven that most of the worlds stayed in contact with near luminal spacecraft and were modernized upon the coming of the Imperium, I could see the nobility having developed a feudal society, with aerial combat being one of the preferred means of displaying wealth.  It takes a lot of training, air power is devastating, and it is expensive, perfect for the domain of nobility.  Also WWI and II dogfighters liked to think of themselves as cavalry and knights of the skies.  So that could explain the affinity for air power.  Given that the rest of the chapter is from an icy wasteland broken only by the remains of cities, this may cause a mild internal rivalry, I imagine that training and conditioning would wipe out anything stronger than that.

 

The technobarbarian world

Was in contact with the rest of the cluster before the impact... first impact, so the shamanism and martial arts pop up throughout the cluster, but on the technobarbarian world, they're taken to an extreme, as you might expect.

Several distinct schools, with varying degrees of rivalry, but they share teamwork, particularly due to the totally-not-genestealer infestation.  They use powerweapons when available, but they're hard to make and maintain, making them more like relics--Marines have increased availability, as gifts for notable leaders and masters, to compensate that they're basically taking the best and brightest out of the population.

Shock weaponry is more common.  Weapons often incorporate a stubber.  Precise armament varies by school, but common themes are broadswords, double headed mace staves, monks poles, twin swords, short pole ax and stun shield, and sword and stun shield, all with built-in stubbers.

Emphasis not just on kata, but also alternative ways of assualt, particularly the art of fighting the enemy on your terms, because humans are outmatched by the xenos.  settlements are inside of mazes designed with defense in mind and heavily trapped.

Schools also emphasize thinking like a predator.

 

 

On the tactics

The paired demisquads, idea is that one half feints and draws out the enemy, the other strikes where they don´t expect it.  One razorback might do something that looks suicidal, drawing out the enemy who find that the marines are better covered that they´d suspected, also lots of flanking.

Idea is to keep it flexible with minimal numbers needed.

On their situation

The general idea is that these are marines out on the edges of the Imperium.  They've got some Naval support, some Guard support, a nearby Sisters group, but for the most part, they're on their own, they're sort of like the Carcharodons in that regard, but with an assigned area to defend and more infrastructure, hence the larger than average fleet of small ships, which are more akin to bigger and more robust, warp capable, Tau Mantas than anything else.

Anyone have any idea how big a warp drive is, anyways

[Omega Striker]

As far as ships and ship part sizes go, have you ever heard of the tabletop RPG called Rogue Trader?  It has rules for owning a space ship, and buying the different parts and pieces.  Given those rules, the warp drive may take up anywhere between 25% of the space in a smaller strike destroyer to about 10-15% in a larger vessel (Grand Cruiser - a rough Battle Barge equivalent).  They are pretty big, and also take a lot of power.

 

 

Also, your ideas for demi-squads sound a lot like you are pairing up the 'Kauyon' and 'Mont-Ka' tactics of the Tau Empire.  Was that your inspiration?

 

 

Your techno-barbarian world has an un-techno-barbarian amount of tech in it.  Stubbers and shock shields are still marvels of technology in the Imperium.  Do you want to make them actual techno-barbarians and have them fight with sharpened bones and sticks, or do you want a death world where people fight with the tools you outline above?

 

 

A chapter that spends a lot of time on it's own develops a combined arms approach almost as a necessity.  You can handle it the way I did and have companies that specialize in various tactics, or you can have the Chapter be an Ultramarines style jack of all trades.  If you really want your chapter to specialize in a method of fighting, try and write about one time when their preference for a kind of warfare left them at a disadvantage.  Long range fighters clearing a space hulk, assault marines charging across an open plain, that kind of thing.

[Uberlord Gendo]

Ah, thanks! I'll have to check through to see what the smallest warp capable ship I can design is, as I imagine them doing that.  Worst case, I'll just give them a carriers for sublight torpedo boats

 

Actually, no.  Now that you mention it, I see the resemblance.  At base, it certainly is the way I tend to fight--Dark Eldar is all about sacrificing your things in a way that serves you, fencing is all about the little things you do to put your opponent off balance, go is about misdirecting their efforts so they don't infringe on your sphere of influence, but I also play guard that way, using overlapping fields of fire to attempt to force my opponent to move where I want them too.  Granted, its guard, so they seldom hit and its 40k, so I've not got the MASTER CONTROL to pull of Vauban level coverage, and its me, and I'm no Aramaki.

But for the most part, its the way I see them fighting given their whole emphasis on fighting on their terms.  Also it strikes me as very wolfish/predatorial.

 

Huh, I'd imagined that technobarbarians would still have some of that stuff.  Like wasn't earth technobarbaric before the big E united it?

I'm thinking they've got a tech level where they can make guns, electricity, etc, but live in a rather tribal 'barbaric' style.

 

Yeah, given these guys take defense in depth to the max by necessity, when they don't get to do that, things get very bad very, very quickly. 

[Uberlord Gendo]

So I did some research and it seems like it should be viable to make a warp capable ship about 600-800m.

On an 800m vessel, I'm thinking 1/5-1/4 would be warp drive and reactor.  Throw on two 200m long by 40 meter wide fly-through launch decks for Thunderhawks, Fireraptors, and Caestuses? Caestusi? (Idea being you can launch on one tube while recovering on the other), 6 launch tubes for Stormtalons and Drop Pods, and a hangar deck for the assorted planes and vehicles, and you should have a fair armory.  Devote the rest of the space to armor, weapons, and other essentials.

I'm thinking such a vessel would be able to carry 2 thunderhawks, a fire raptor, 4 stormtalons, 4 razorbacks, a pair of whirlwinds, and perhaps a modified Stormraven, and a few other assorted vehicles like landspeeders.

The big issue I keep coming to is getting everything down and up reliably, as more than two thunderhawks per group seems a bit much.

 

Anyways, such a ship would have about 30 marines, a pair of macrocannon batteries, and 8 forward torpedo tubes, 4 to the rear, as well as sundry defensive las-cannon turrets.  And perhaps a laser destructor turret.  Mostly, though, they depend on speed and stealth to get around any ships of the line, with the weaponry designed to allow preparatory orbital bombardment and control local airspace, akin to a Tau Manta's elder and far more bellicose brother.

 

Sound reasonable?

For comparison an Imperial Navy escort corvette is 1.5km long and is much more heavily armed.

[Lord-Captain Cepinari]

Part of the reason Imperial ships are so ridonkulously huge is because of their colossal crew requirements. A single Macrocannon requ requires dozens of crewmen to operate, and there's also hundreds of jobs along the line of "choir for singing 'Hymns of Not Screwing Up.'"

 

Also, a single Macrocannon on each side of the ship would basically do crap-all against enemy vessels. Seriously, it wouldn't even dent their Void Shields, which is the main reason you have Macrocannons in the first place. Even as an emergency "Oh crap we've been spotted" weapon it's lacking.

 

That's a lot of missile tubes for a ship that dinky. You do realise that all the missiles used by the Imperium for space combat are larger than Touring Buses and have to be brought to the launch tube from a central armory AND loaded BY HAND, right? If Missile Spam is your thing, maybe you should just play Tau.

[Uberlord Gendo]

Hmmm, well, how would you arm such a vessel?

It shouldn't be able to hold up in a straight fight, but should be able to something nasty if it gets the drop on the enemy.  Equally, if you have several, they ought to be able to hold off a frigate or even cruiser.

[Lord-Captain Cepinari]

Standard Astartes Space Combat tactics generally involve either leaving it to the Imperial Navy, or using their ships to soften up targets enough that boarding parties can be deployed.   Despite Astartes ships generally being faster and better armed than their Imperial equivalents, Chapter Fleets are too small to engage in most Naval actions.  Chapter Fleets are comprised of Battle Barges and Strike Cruisers, Capitol ships designed primarily for transport and planetary assaults, but capable of engaging other ships if necessary.  These ships are protected by large numbers of comparatively tiny Escort craft, generally Frigate sized or smaller.  These ships lack the capability to land forces on planets, and often lack any actual Marines as crew, but are fast enough to zip by larger enemy vessels and shoot them up.  Only one Space Marine ship is a pure combat ship though, and the Inquisition gives any Chapter that owns one hell for it, because it violates the Codex and challenges Imperial doctrine revolving around Separation of Power.

 

It sounds like you want some sort of Blockade Runner, but I honestly don't think that's possible with this technology.  Everything Imperial made is big and bulky, this includes both ships and ship components.  You're talking about arming something smaller than any ship that's ever been statted or modeled with a complete wing of surface to air vehicles, as well as enough armaments to defend itself from anything capable of accelerating to a fast enough speed to catch up to it, and I honestly don't think you can cram all that into an Imperial ship less than a kilometer long.  From what I've seen, any ship big enough to carry enough forces and equipment for a planetary assault has to at least be Cruiser sized, as anything smaller can't contain all the necessary storage space or flight deck components.  Remember, Imperial technology is really poorly designed, so anything they make is going to be a heck of a lot bigger than it should be, and have lots of unnecessary ornamentation on it.  It's not Imperial-made if it doesn't have alcoves holding shrines to Imperial saints taking up space inside each and every maintenance duct.

[Uberlord Gendo]

Well, 1km long, I suppose is suitable, though assorted fluff seems to suggest that Admech and the Inquisition have much smaller ships with long range warp capability.

At any rate, since we're going for a groups smaller than a company, the reduced storage space doesn't seem to be much of a problem.

 

I suppose, more than anything else, stealthy strike cruisers seem a bit off and 10 ships spread out over the distances involved with no back up seems like a bad idea.

How about adding a second chapter in the same region?  Perhaps it was created and deployed after Badab, when the Imperium realized they'd better back up their sentinels.  (Which would, incidentally, explain how some of those chapters in the Praeses have 13+ companies.)

The result of doubling up like that would be that you could have more ships for more redundancy, since in such an environment, being able to recover your guys if things go wrong would be important.

 

Another option is xeno or archeotech.

 

(And on a tangent, doesn't Admech violate seperation of powers like crazy--or would if it were unified?)

[Lord-Captain Cepinari]

Technically, the Adeptus Mechanicus isn't actually part of the Imperium so much as joined at the waist with it.  They get to field their own armies, operate their own navies, and rule their own planets because without them nobody knows how to fix anything more complicated than a door hinge.  They also never tried to conquer the galaxy, which is a point in their favor, while the last time any genetically enhanced transhuman super soldiers got to have so many ships and weapons and manpower that they could operate completely independently of any other authority ended pretty badly.

[Uberlord Gendo]

>_>

<_<

So... if Admech wanted to give these guys some gifts and it just so happened that the Admech was benefitting from them keeping the sector stable, then we might just get around the typical problems.

The idea basically being that since the mandate is defend the remote borders, and as mentioned earlier, the only worlds out there of any notability are a forwards listening post run by some sisters dialogous and the forgeworld of Tindalos, and perhaps a naval base Terra-wards of Tindalos. it's not crazy that the Lords of Tindalos might give toys to the Marines, but that balance of power would be retained by the larger concerns of the Admech, who seem like the sort to stay neutral in imperial affairs, a doctrine which would probably extend to any gifts they might have given.  Further, even if the marines fell to chaos and stole the ships, they'd have to make it past Tindalos and the Imperial fleet before they could be a serious threat to the Imperium at large.

 

All this said, I may consider stationing a second chapter out there, perhaps fleet based and specializing in siege/attritional warfare.