The mechanics of a Chaos Warband

[Tenebris]

Well I see raiding, as per organized forages into enemy territory are the daily business of every Chaos Warband. I quite see the raids as the training session for the astartes, as a way to test the initiates and acquire resources. 

 

Great job, Warsmith Gorrched, could you care to elaborate a bit more on the entries. They all sound awesome ways for a warband to do things, details would be much welcome.

[Goreshed]

Storm of Iron -

+The titan transport ship was once a hive ship of the Tyranids that was hit with an obliterator virus, dragged into the Eye of Terror and remolded for reuse.

-----

There really isn't much to elaborate on this. They were vague to begin with in describing it outside of the fact that it could house at least a couple warlords plus the Dies Irae. They were lowered on mechanical tentacles and were a combination of the obliterator virus and the organics of the Tyranid species. Sadly not much more was really put into that description outside of the fact that it hovered over the landing pad.

 

Siege of Castellex -

+Vat grown human slaves are used, when they die they are reconstituded into food....

--This is really more of a spoiler but...it is what it is. They don't get too gritty into the how things are done outside of the fact of what they end up as. A whole world who was raised up over a couple hundred years into the slavery of chaos were all they do is hear the dogma and such. When they die another group comes around and picks up the bodies to be brought back to a production facility to be turned into paste which those living eat.

 

+Pysker was used to poison the minds of other Navigators to prevent the fleet from leaving the planet and thus keeping them around to defend it or to prevent escape.

--Again, not much was said but it was pretty clear. Some powerful pysker was used to prevent others from using their powers to work inside of the warp and thus strand them in system.

 

Traitor General -

+Sons of Sek taking training from other traitors in tactics/basic soldiering.

--Basically...think boot camp multiplied a hundred fold. It is chaos, it is brutal but its boot camp. They pick the toughest guys out there and put them through grueling exercises to make a crack army.

+The use of warp creatures to move material around via the warp itself.

--The very nature of the creatures wasn't explained but they started out small, something in a glass vial that was easily moveable by a couple people. Said creature was then exposed to what was wanted to be transported and its twin somewhere else would regurgitate what its twin ate.

+"Scientist" advisors who interrogate loyal Imperial citizens to find out more about the enemy to gain more in the ways of infrastructure.

--Outside of being a massive slob with BDSM slaves by its side the 'scientist' this was basically a chump who would asked questions of those who were captured to find out the basics of how humans operated. ex. What humans eat, what they think, that sort of thing.

 

 

Dead Sky Black Sun -

+Chaos hot housing Space Marines via mutated women. Also using a enlarging and then deflating method to harvest skin for hopeful sucesses.

--Human women were enlarged in the needed areas so that young children could be implanted into their wombs where tentrils and other nastiness would turn those young children into space marines. Geneseed captured in Storm of Iron was used in this manner. Think of how the Blood Angels change their aspirants into space marines except its chaos...and not pleseant in the least bit. Most children ended up as the changed and warped monsters without skin that were discarded. Other human slaves were force fed food and steroids to grow extra large then hoses were used to suck all of that mater out of them and thus leave huge folds of skin. They were then forced to walk to the skinning racks where they lost their lives and skin. The harvested skin was then used to 'clothe' the newly created chaos space marines.

+Using a Greater Daemon to power the defenses of a fortification.

A Greater Daemon of Khorne was captured and then fed the blood of pyskers to dull it and create a null field as it were around the fortifications above to help protect the fortress from pyskic attack.

[Tenebris]

Awesome info, Warsmith. 

 

Ok, I have finished Ahriman: The Dead Oracle by John French

 

Ahriman's Warband has a fleet ranging made by two cruisers, of which there is only one named, The Sycorax, and a flotilla of escort class ships. He fought with Amon for the control of several "lesser" sorcerers and he went to search for an oracle, a member of the Thousand Sons who is indeed a former Corvidae. 

 

His warband is composed by several Rubic Marines, around two dozen, with some Aspiring Sorcerers as his lieutenants and with a host of mortal psykers as his thrall wizards. In the short story all we manage to glimpse is that the warband has the access to Thunderhawks and it is implied that the ship systems are as much arcane and esoteric as they are mechanical. 

 

The Thousand Sons also appear to be masters of various binding spells, runes and daemonology invocations. It is said that Ahriman is building his army not only with mortal servants but also by binding many major daemons to his service via True Names, not necessarily just daemons of Tzeentch. 

[incinerator950]

With Ahriman's magical aptitude, I'm amazed he's even aligned with Tzeentch.

[Kilofix]

Btw, are we consolidating and formatting all this info somewhere?

[Goreshed]

With Ahriman's magical aptitude, I'm amazed he's even aligned with Tzeentch.

 

Well look at it this way. Yes the Thousand Sons were pyskers however what is to say that Tzeentch hadn't already had its hands in the cookie jar so to speak about creating more instability in their gene seed from the begining? Ahriman has sided with Chaos, why? Because Tzeentch gives him the power he needs. Why would he ham string himself by tapping into the warp like some Emperor's lackey and possibly suffer greater damage by doing so when he could have Tzeentch's blessing and more power?

[Tenebris]

And lo, from the darkest depths of the Eye came forth the might Fantasy Flight Games with the tome of unholy knowledge and shadowy secrets. The Tome of Decay is the name of this unholy book of flayed skin sheets and blessed by the Lord of Flies. I has a full chapter about chaos warbands, how to build them and how to play them. In time, these unholy secrets will be prized open by the frater. 

[Kol Saresk]

Anyone remember the Fantasy warband builder? I wonder if there's a way to convert that to 40K. Who am I kidding? Of course there's a way. Just not sure anyone woul go for it.

[incinerator950]

Guys on heresy online rewrote the Death Watch RPG stats with dice tables to roll on loyalist and traitor IA/IT creation. It has a lot of info, so the fantasy Warband one can work so long as you remove X to represent Y.

 

Before anyone asks, both users are cool with me remaking the topics on this forum, but some users may think its bad because of how similar to preexisting rules it is.

 

http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=93501

[Tenebris]

Warband Generator

 

It is made with the same mechanics as they are used in the Deathwatch books to generate SM chapters. 

[Kol Saresk]

Yeah, I think the one I saw was like in Realms of Chaos or Slaves to Darkness.

[incinerator950]

As I'm trying to write down a warband, I cannot pin how high of a random number of expiditionary fleets or Grand Battalions the IW have.

[Goreshed]

Grand Companies for Iron Warriors from what I've seen is 12 fluff wise. Then again, this is also Pre/immediate Heresy levels of things.

[incinerator950]

Thanks. I'll be using the 7th Battalion, 2nd Company starting from a special formation similar to the Stor-Bezashk.

 

For my Nurgle Warband.

[Trevak Dal]

I kind of like to think that "Not very mutated/crazy looking" Renegades would just waltz right in and take the supplies they need.  To a normal human, Space marines probably all look a like: Giant dudes who are the grandchildren of the emperor (kinda).

 

"I'm brother Sargent Verico of the Adeptus Astartes Blood Llamas chapter.  My brothers and I are en-route to a campaign and I am requisitioning your food, weapons and equipment, The Emperor thanks you for your cooperation."

[Goreshed]

While I am sure that they could pull this off in some cases...there is a number of things working against them.

 

1) What is to say that their chapter's heresy hasn't spread to this part yet? Keep in mind warp travels both ways with time.

 

2) There is a reason they went to Chaos. Sometimes you just want to cause pain.

 

3) The Administratum, while slower then hell, can cause enough problems and most times are stretched thin. Violence will most likely be the answer to this.

 

4) Generally speaking in most terms SM Chapters are supposed to be self sufficient. Gone are the days of the pre-heresy set up where they are getting constant supplies. Sure they may get some shipments from the Mechanicus but generally they are supposed to be creating all of that stuff themselves. Which given most planets, that shouldn't be an issue.

 

While not a horrible idea, I just don't think they could feasably pull that off enough times to keep them stocked up.

[Kol Saresk]

Its kind of a yes and no. All munitions and major supplies that are Astartes-grade material seem to be kept under solid lock and key. For example, Blood Reaver and The Rewards of Tolerance all show situations of Space Marine Renegades seizing supplies from Imperial sources.

 

In Blood Reaver, it was a supply depot that was well acquainted with the Marines Errant, meaning that they could recognize Space Marines and more importantly, they could recognize the ones who were supposed to be there. So they had to infiltrate.

 

In The Rewards of Tolerance, they came as close as they could to an Imperial supply convoy. But since they weren't supposed to be there and were not authorized to retrieve the supplies, so eventually they had to raid for the supplies.

[Tenebris]

I think a great jump point for any discussion is simply to begin with the basis. In this case the aim of a chaos warband is linked to the ambition of a chaos champion and to the will of the Dark Gods, but in the end all warbands share the same basis, they have to transport, field and maintain a traitor astartes army, hence the building block of every chaos warband is the single chaos space marine. Now using some tables from FFG's Black Crusade, common background and lore knowledge as well as the wealth of information given to us from countless sources lets see what is actually this building block of ours.

 

Chaos Space Marine

- Power Armour

- Boltgun

- Bolt Pistol

- Combat Knife

- 3 Frag Grenades, 2 Krak Grenades

- 3 ammo clips for the Bolter

- 3 ammo clips for the Bolt Pistol

 

 

So this is the loadout of a basic chaos space marine. He comes equipped with the impressive Power Armour, he wields the tools of astartes trade, the boltgun and the bolt pistol and his main role is as an elite, heavy infantryman, mostly used as a shock trooper or as the component of many tactical formations.

 

Now what this means, what this "building block" implies. Well the interest of every chaos lord is to effectively field his chaos space marines in their role, at their most effective so a lot of things come in consideration. Consider the warrior above, what he needs to be effective, what support is he entitled to, how can he be deployed and what is his use on the battlefield. This legionary of ours comes with a power armour and this alone is already an impressive piece of wargear. A power armour needs a lot of attention to be effective and in top condition. The dress of a power armour requires specialized servitors, only things such as helmets and gloves are actually easy to use with minimal rituals required. Then we have the structure of the power armour itself, the plates need revetting and maintenance, the servo motors are a very fine and detailed mechanic component and the integrated systems require a constant cleansing, especially in such dire theatres of operation such as the Eye or Cadia. The power plant itself is a very dangerous piece of technology and again specialized labour is required to maintain it. What about the weapons, what about the combat chemicals and what about the ammunitions and heavy/special weapons in a chaos warband armoury...

 

All this requires specialized labour and an extensive network of technicians, chirumeks and warpsmiths. Lets say that the legionary in our case is part of a chaos warband, what this means in terms of labour and supplies. WARP PHENOMENA EXCLUDED... this means a lot of things. The legionary has the access to a chamber where he is dressed up in his battle plate by several servitors (some novels have something like three or up to five in number), he probably has one or two slave attendants who clean and maintain his weapons, he has the access to a chirumek and medical servitors who are responsible for his advanced biology, he also has the need to train in advanced training cages, live scenarios and in specialized facilities. In some more scholary warbands he can even have the access to libraries... in short ... my predictions:

 

- around 100 mortal slaves in support for every legionary, dispersed in various roles and tasks

- several thousand bolt rounds and entire stacks of combat stimms

- dozens of slaves either in medical or technical roles

- tons of foodstuffs and water

- a training facility (either on ship or in a fortress) for training, indoctrination, mental engineering and sacred rituals...

[Goreshed]

As much as you said 'take out the chaos' you really cant. Here is why.

 

No one is really loyal to one another any more. It's not a question of 'greater good' but instead 'will this get me more power?'. Your estimates seem fairly close to what I would also envision what someone would need to do it but again...chaos. It is apart of them now both good and bad which means that each situation would be different. For example in the Night Lords series we see our main character keep his slaves around and take care of them somewhat while others don't last more then a moment in comparison, only to be used and then discarded.

 

Not to mention the power of chaos gives just as much as it receives. Where one might not have the ability to say, power a plasma gun in an efficient or fast manner some demon spawn thing trapped in a machine might pump out extra explosive bolt shells like its a piniata. Its a give and take situation.

[Plaguecaster]

What about a warband's Fleet/ travel  capacity? part of a warband's continued existence depends on being able to make their way from one warzone to the next (including other worlds) in order to aquire the resources and followers so a warband can grow,  so what are some of the many ways a warband can do this? Also from a fleet perspective what would you say would make up a watbands fleet would a handful/ single cruisers or escort suit or would they require multiple ships like the larger cruisers or battleships (for example would just one repulsive grand cruiser be fine or does it require more ships to be useful). Generally curious as the fleet aspect the 40k setting interests me but I have no idea how a fleet would actually operate apart starting off one area and arriving at another point later on.

[Tenebris]

Well in terms of naval capacity Chaos has indeed the upper hand since it can innovate, integrate xenos or warp artefacts or even commission new ships on the many shipyards in the Eye. The upper limit are things like a floating citadel of the Iron Warriors (Sentinels of Terra) or the Planet Killer but Chaos being essentially a piratical force usually favours ships which are fast, pack a punch and can unload quickly troops on the ground so strike cruisers and wolf pack squadrons of escort class ships are the norm for a warband.

 

In terms of capacity the template for the classical ship of a chaos warband is a Strike Cruiser class ship. It can deliver up to 200 chaos space marines on the ground, it has assets like flight bays for Heldrakes, Helltalons and other fighter class interceptors as well as Thunderhawks or other equivalents of transport flyers. Also a cruiser has more than enough space to support a warband on mission, namely it has apothecarion decks, manofactorums, slave dens... in short all that a warband needs on the move. 

 

While most ships are somehow integrated with warp technology and mutations still mundane things like repairs, ammunition, fuel and technology are required so a warband is always on the lookout to salvage everything possible from defeated ships or even actively raids shipyards and Mechanicus facilities. A space ship is the lifeblood of a chaos warband, without it the only other option is either teleportation via warp portals or simply securing passage from another warband.

 

Also I think most warbands will be quite contained since being too big means stamping on your forehead a big target so consider a warband either company or chapter strength with the fleet elements which come with that. 

[Plaguecaster]

Though most warbands with  chaos marines would retain their strike cruisers is it possible for warbands to salvage other cruisers (eg imperial ones) like  and would these cruisers still be able to support a warband ( like a strike cruiser would be able to since they would be more imperial navy ships not suited to marines

[Strazhakov]

What about a warband's Fleet/ travel  capacity? part of a warband's continued existence depends on being able to make their way from one warzone to the next (including other worlds) in order to aquire the resources and followers so a warband can grow,  so what are some of the many ways a warband can do this? 

 

1) They can use a Navigator. Corrupted (Ezmeralda for example) or not (Eurydice/Octavia). [source: Night Lords Omnibus]

2) They can use a Sorceror to brute force them through the warp. [source: Thousand Sons, Night Lords and some others]

3) They can use Possessed Battle Brothers to guide them. [source: Codex: Chaos Space Marines 6th Edition]

[incinerator950]

I would think Khornate Warbands would have the latter.

[minigun762]

 

What about a warband's Fleet/ travel  capacity? part of a warband's continued existence depends on being able to make their way from one warzone to the next (including other worlds) in order to aquire the resources and followers so a warband can grow,  so what are some of the many ways a warband can do this? 

 

1) They can use a Navigator. Corrupted (Ezmeralda for example) or not (Eurydice/Octavia). [source: Night Lords Omnibus]

2) They can use a Sorceror to brute force them through the warp. [source: Thousand Sons, Night Lords and some others]

3) They can use Possessed Battle Brothers to guide them. [source: Codex: Chaos Space Marines 6th Edition]

 

 

Don't forget a bound daemon or piece of archeotech