Void Kings

[Sigil]

This turned out way longer than I initially expected. It may be a problem. All C&C welcome, especially with fluff inconsistencies (of which I am sure there are many) enjoy.

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The Coming of the Void Kings:

“Accuracy? What nonsense! Beings of steel and war make their own history. Your revisions are baseless and I shall not waste a crown on your newest book.” –High Scrutinizer Adolfo Racht debating a rival on the subject of the Void Kings, Societus Historica, 432.M41

As with many of the later founding chapters, the precise history of the Void Kings Astartes has been largely lost in the immensity of Imperial record. While exact dates are, for practical purposes, indiscernible in a historical sense, Imperial scholars generally agree that the founding of the Void Kings probably occurred sometime between M33 and M36. The majority of historiographical analysis has been gleamed from the Chapter legends themselves. These are the tales which ring through the sacred halls of The Abbey; the battle monastery which orbits the chapter’s homeworld of Castillon. They are the seeds of the war-hymns chanted from atop the battlements of the great castle-cities of the Castilloni as they invoke the favour of their protecting chapter in times of petty inter-kingdom warfare.

Any telling of their history must therefore begin with that ancient odyssey.

Lost in the Void

“There it only peace. It is enough to drive a man mad.” – Attributed to an unknown Black Templar

Astartes aboard the Terra’s Rage, date unknown.

Scholars have come to blows in the past over which crusade the Black Templar strikecruiser Terra’s Rage was returning from when it was lost with all hands. No official records remain, of course. Amongst the great banquet halls of Castillon and in the Chapels of The Abbey the account of that lost ship is well known.

The legend tells that it began with the ship’s astropathic choir. The quiet hum of their chorus as they traversed the Terra’s Rage through the madness of the warp was struck without warning by screams of blood and the boiling of brains. The astropaths found themselves engulfed by the horror of unreality. Eyes popped like grapes in their sockets and many dashed their skulls against the iron walls of the ship rather than have them hold the images defiling their minds.

As officer serfs rushed to subdue the gibbering choir and word of the disturbance reached Marshal Vergauf, the situation took a nightmarish turn. The ship grew bizarrely dim, it was not a technical malfunction for the illumination globes continued to glow. It was as if the properties of light failed to fulfill their physical promises. Corridors twisted, compartments disappeared. Men became one, or were split, or found themselves in green fields rooted in a soil of wet sinew. Without warning the Geller Field had shut down.

The Templers found themselves surrounded by an infinite array of horrors. Not even the legends can say how long the Battle of Terra’s Rage lasted. The maddening screams of the daemon-things through the steel hollow of the ship were punctuated by the deep grinding of bolter fire and the growl of chainswords. Unnamed gods twisted the material of the ship to their unknowable whims, creating an ever changing battlefield that brought the Space Marines into intimate contact with the violent nightmares of Mankind. Entire crusader squads were pulled into walls and devoured by grinning death masks. Some opened blast doors, weapons drawn for combat, only to be engulfed by eroding tides of blood. Tales are still told of Marshal Vergauf’s heroic slaying of the Bloodletter in the Reclusiam and of Fallhirm, a lowly initiate who smote the herald of Archonis with nought but his combat blade all while his left arm had been reduced to a weeping mound.

And as quickly as the insane violence had begun, it ceased.

The daemons entities evaporated back into the warp as Terra’s Rage was vomited back into real space. The Black Templers found themselves lost and depleted. Dozens of battle brothers had fallen or were terribly mutilated. Further, the surviving astropaths were somehow unable to make any contact with Imperial worlds or star ships. Their frantic calls through the warp remained unanswered or were echoed back to them with the haunting signatures of otherworldly laughter. Even the stars had gone as the strikecruiser limped through complete blackness.

The Space Marines struggled to make sense of their predicament. Galhurn, the Reclusiarch of the ship, managed to discern bits and pieces of information through interrogation of the astropaths. Before the Geller Field failed, they received strange words from the depths of the warp. The speaker identified himself as the New King. Visions of stone towers awash amidst a torrent of blood and of a great golden crown burning the brows of dead men had been burnt into their minds.

Marshal Vergauf reinstituted daily routine in order to restore normality to the bloodied strike force. With the passing months a cult of vengeance began to formulate amongst the ranks of the Black Templars. Brother Fallhirm was the centre of this new doctrine. He spoke to the wounded pride of the Templars. He denounced the New King as a cowardly warpthing. He railed about the debt they owed to their fallen brothers whom had died before they had been able to meet the enemy in combat. The Marines spoke with hushed reverence of the day when the Templars would receive what they referred to as The Emperor’s Boon; the moment when the Terra’s Rage would be delivered to their new eternal enemy and they would be able to visit their terrible vengeance upon him.

For fifteen years they waded through the ocean of the void, alone and simmering. Vergauf grew increasingly uneasy as this ideology of vengeance began to grow in appreciation throughout the ranks of his Astartes. He felt strongly that the Templars must be ready to meet whatever threat their duty called them to face when they eventually made contact with Imperial space. To become obsessed with a single foe was to dull the mind of a Space Marine, he thought. There would still be the witch, the xenos, the heretic.

Yet despite his fear, the discipline of the Terra’s Rage remained razor sharp as its payload of warriors continue to ready themselves to receive the Emperor’s Boon.

The Cleansing of Castillon

“Your every action is but a service in the name of my master!” – The New King at the Siege of Kallerak, Chapter Legends.

Deep in the wild fringes of the Mordant Zone, on the edge of Segmentum Tempestus, rests a small star system bearing the name of XI-494-T1 on most astropathic charts. Its only inhabitable world; Castillon, is a fractious puzzle of warring techno-kingdoms under allegiance to the ceremonial High King, who holds the office of Imperial Governor.

The rolling ineptitude of the Imperium’s vast bureaucracy has left Castillon largely untouched in terms of tithe collection. In fact, no Imperial official had visited Castillon for over a thousand years at the time of the disappearance of the Terra’s Rage. Despite their remoteness, the Castilloni were fierce adherents to the memory of the God-Emperor that had brought their planet back into the fold of Humanity.

This belief was all that sustained them during the Sanguine Wars.

Over a period of centuries, several noble houses across a multitude of Castilloni fiefdoms had warped their ancient traditions of martial discipline into the worship of warfare itself. Secret sacrifices to unknowable deities were committed in the dungeons of royal manor estates and heirs to entire dynasties were conceived in huge vats of blood as white cloaked priests looked on in relished sickness. Those who followed this dark path used their influence in councils and mediations to push the petty rulers of Castillon into brutal wars of attrition that waxed and waned for decades.This continued for generations and the number of converts grew until the rapid successions which occurred due to inter-kingdom marriages finally put an adherent to the war cult on the throne of an influential kingdom. The New King immediately declared a war of extermination on several small duchies and fiefs.

The bloodshed caught the attention of the Archenemy. Whatever mortal the New King had been at the time of the first wars of extermination, he was soon made Aggronax the Lifesplitter, Daemon Prince of Khorne. Castillon was made a beacon for the Blood God, who poured his minions onto its surface in order to engage his enemy in slaughter. The loyalist kingdoms formed a grand alliance to defeat Aggronax. Fifteen Years after the daemon’s ascension, Aggronax was no closer to defeat. It was at this time that Terra’s Rage finally limped into sensor range.

The astropaths called out familiar curses and babbled at the sight of the distant world. The New King spoke, as clear as the bark of a boltgun. It was he that had plucked them from the warp. He that had flooded the ship with horrors and so mutilated their brothers. Aggronax grew bored of the combat on Castillon before I had even begun and so in the moment of his birth had beseeched his deity to bring him a worthy enemy to slaughter. The Space Marines had come, and Aggronax spoke no more.

The ancient Black Templar strikecruiser reverberated as the sword brothers aboard began to chant the litanies of hate at the announcement of planetsight. Drop Pods were immediately fitted. Thunderhawk gunships were primed and armour was being loaded up for planetfall. Marshal Vergauf had not uttered a singe command. Some said he was communing with the Emperor himself, others whispered that his resolve had dimmed over the long voyage in the void. They said that some violation visited upon him during the battle in the warp had left him broken.

It was however, Fallhirm that took the lead in his absence. Without even consulting his Marshal, Fallhirm brought the most prominent sword brethren of the strikecruiser for council. He relayed his visions of the night prior to contact, he claimed the Emperor had visited him and presented His Boon unto the sword brother. The New King was here, he said, it is our duty and our pleasure to see it destroyed. The company’s Reclusiarch bestowed upon Fallhim the Black Sword and the Armour of Faith, and he was named Emperor’s Champion.

Fallhirm outlined his plan of action. He called for the rapid assault against Aggronax’s strongpoints; the massive dynastic castles of the Castilloni nobles. He surmised that the daemon’s foul witchcraft was the cause of the astropathic blackout impeding their contact with the Imperium and that only through the cleansing of this world could both their honour be restored and the crusade continued. Many of the Marshal’s swords chose to remain on the strikecruiser until their true commander could relay his own orders, they implored Fallhirm to err on the side of caution. The maddened fatalists, honed into vehicles of vengeance by their long years in the void, would hear none of it.

The Astartes struck the world with horrible veracity. Bristling daemon warpfire blasted their assault craft from the skies in bursts of gut and vein, tearing the Templars into nothingness, but still they came. The Castilloni yeomanry, stuck in the mud of their fortifications and clutching their primitive weapons watched as the black skies rained great armoured death knights who towered above them and slew the enemy, howling madly the name of the Emperor. Their lost father had returned to Castillon.

The enemy was being pushed back. The daemon hosts retreated. Out of the leaderless Castilloni armies many came to treat with ‘kings from heaven’ and claim to represent the battered coalition of the feudal world, but none commanded the authority of Sacritas. Nothing was known of the man’s youth, only that he lived and breathed for the God-Emperor. Sacritas was a priest from the Middle Mountains whose devout zealotry had kept large numbers of the populace resolute in the face of the horrors which beset them. Sacritas came to Fallhirm and knelt before him as his servant, begging the man to allow him to continue to do the Emperor’s will. Fallhirm, impressed with the man’s stone faced hatred, allowed him to wear the cross of the Templars and commanded him and his followers to accompany the crusade against the daemon prince.

As the Black Templars liberated the fallen kingdoms of Castillon, it was the Sacritites that put those suspected of participation in the cults or collaboration with the warp-things to the sword. The war continued as the planet burned.

Finally, at Kallerak, the fortress seat of the New King himself, the Imperials prepared to take the final fight to the enemy. In the days before Aggronax’ incursion, Kallerak had been a formidable fortification. At the time of Fallhirm’s arrival, it had been twisted by the whims of the Blood God into an impossible realm of iron flame. Fanged artillery bastions poked their evil snouts to the front and death pits dancing with lustful daemons ready to venerate themselves in the blood of their enemies lined the killing fields.

It was here that Fallhirm’s men met the daemon hosts, and it was here that they were thrown back. The Templar’s doctrine of endless frontal assault had cracked the lesser defenses of Aggronax yet here there could be no victory. Men were torn from their ceramite. Daemons popped from unreality into the midst of landraiders and eviscerated their crews before burning back into the safety of the fortress all while the trapped souls of the daemon guns pounded the attackers.

As the orchestra of violence continued, the shadow of Aggronax played about the killing zone as he flew high over the battle, laughing with insane calamity as blood flowed for Khorne. Fallhirm, maddened with rage at the sight of the enemy that had drawn them so far from the God-Emperor’s light. He roared a challenge to the daemon prince through the din of battle and the foul thing accepted.

The carnage of their great duel is remembered by the the Void Kings, the Black Templars and in the babbling of insane Chaos sorcerers half a galaxy away to this very day. Amidst the broken bodies of his command squad Fallhirm had been brought low by his enemy. Though his foe was bloodied, Fallhirm found himself pressed beneath a great cloven hoof, his augment arm crushed into nothingness. Aggronax loomed over the Space Marine, ready to tear his spine out through his eye socket.

And at once, the central keep of Kallerak erupted in a terrifying explosion. Far below the mile high battlements the Black Templars turned their gaze upwards. Silhouetted against the burning yellow sky the beleaguered and fatigued Astartes saw the hulking forms of their fighting company’ terminators as they butchered the squealing daemons and raised high the death’s head banner of Marshal Vergauf. The Marshal’s swords and the returning commander had teleported directly into the enemy strongpoint and detonated a huge cache of explosives. Aggronax roared in anger. He gripped Fallhirm’s broken body in his claws and posed to him a single question.
“Would you like to see your master die?”

And with that the prince carried him off to Kallerak.

The Saint

“Cleanse the bone of malice and rot,
Allow me pain and battle sought,
Cleave the foe in the only name,
His is might, bare the iron rain”
-Litany of the Swordbringer, XIX Saga, Verse XXI

Specifically, the events at the keep of Kallerak remain lost. They have become legends amongst legends. Some things, however have become canon in the founding myth of the chapter. The first is that Vergauf was killed, smashed into a mound of gristle so severely that his geneseed was thoroughly unrecoverable. The second is that Fallhim was wounded and almost pulled from consciousness. The last facts were attested from the mouths of the few Space Marines who had managed to fight their way into Kallerak as well as the hundreds of Sacritites that had marched to war alongside them and Fallhirm himself. What is certainly upheld by the chapter is that a violent flash of light brightly tore its way through the bloody darkness of the crumbling keep’s courtyard. Hundreds of daemons were cast back into the warp in an instant. When the blinding blaze finally subsided, the corpse of Aggronax lay strewn in a thousand pieces, burnt by the holy flare.

The Imperial soldiers then bore witness to the glowing body of Sacritas, arms aloft to the sky in the direction of Holy Terra, who smiled upon the assembled warriors and breathed, it is said, the true name of the God-Emperor before collapsing into a lifeless heap on the ground.

The Templars immediately fell to the blood soaked stone. Some wept, others prayed jubilantly to the Master of Mankind. The Cleansing of Castillon had been completed.

For months dozens of Space Marines, most who had seen the Saint’s manifestation but some who had been convinced by their brothers, refused to leave the sacred ground of Kallerak. They were convinced that the Emperor had revealed Himself in the form of Sacritas and the Templars would not return to the Terra’s Rage and leave the remains of the Saint. The newly appointed Marshal of the company by council decision was Hrulgar, one of the Terminators who had been locked in combat below the ruins of the keep at the time of manifestation and had not witnessed Sacritas. Hrulgor ordered the devout Space Marines –including Fallhirm- to return to crusade at once. As time lapsed, Hrulgor, who thought little of Fallhirm already because of his hot headed and costly assault on the planet, became increasingly violent in the tone of his demands.

Fallhirm was torn. He now recognized that his high spirited rush into combat had left many of his brothers dead and that a return to discipline was necessary for not only the crusade to function but for an Astartes to do so as well. In his brief look, the Saint had told him this, and that was why Fallhirm could not leave Castillon. He was convinced that salvation lay here with the beati. And so the crisis continued and tensions began to flare.

The Banner is Struck

“A blade needs a body.” – Common Void Kings saying.

With the destruction of Aggronax, the powerful warp magics that had kept Castillon and its surrounding space cut off from astropathic communication were finally dissolved. Contact was made with the Imperium and reports from the war at Castillon, the supposed manifestation with the saint as well as the stand off at Kallerak began to circulate through Imperial circles.

Eventually the news reached the Inquisition and the High Lords of Terra themselves that violence between Astartes on a remote feudal world seemed imminent. In addition the Ecclesiarchy grew interested in the Saint and slowly the machinations of the Imperium’s higher organs began to turn. For decades the High Lords debilitated the issue amongst their millions of other concerns as the situation on the ground at Kallerak remained in heightened constant. The Saint was entombed in a wondrous monument of towering marble. The walls of Kallerak, now cleansed by Sacritas’ piety, were rebuilt and enforced in case of violent action by Hrulgor’s forces. Pilgrims flooded through the Saint’s gate in their thousands to kiss the tomb of Sacritas. Fallhirm and his warriors continued their uneasy watch.

Some records remain of contact between the Ordo Hereticus, several higher Ecclesiarchical officials and Fallhirm and his lieutenants. The fact that these organizations, as well as their representatives on the Council of Terra were the ones to take the initiative in regards to the situation on Castillon ahead of the Administratum leads many historians to theorize that the authorization for the founding might have taken place slightly before the Age of Apostasy. This theory is supported by the fact that the Ecclesiarchy might have seen the formation of an Astartes chapter which believed in the Emperor’s divinity, yet was bound by adherence to the Codex Astartes (unlike the unruly Black Templars) might be found useful or more open to negotiation than most chapters.

Whatever the reason or the nature of the exchange between Fallhim and the Ecclesiarchs and Inquisitor, the High Lords of Terra agreed to give the followers of the Saint dominion over Castillon and the right to found a new chapter, on the condition that they accept the Codex Astartes as their doctrine and all that that would entail. This was accepted. Obsessive protection of the Saint and the memory of the trials of the void odyssey would come before the eternal crusade. Saint Sacritas was canonized and Castillon was named the homeworld of the new chapter.

Fallhirm, who was named Chapter Master, met this event solemnly. For his chapter, he took the name uttered by the Castilloni for the warriors who came from the sky to reap their violent revenge from the enemies of man. They called themselves the Void Kings.

In the following decades the newly christened chapter spent its time reordering their new world. Fallhirm declared himself High King of Castillon and was sworn in at a grand ceremony of the surviving noble houses at the foot of the Saint. Four veteran sergeants of the Imperial Fists were dispatched to Castillon to help instruct the former Templars in the doctrine of the Codex Astartes. The process proved relatively painless despite the differences in the warriors approach to warfare. While the base progenoid matured, the chapter continued to consolidate their gains.

The Chapter Strikes Out

“Let their screams be your prayers to the God-Emperor!” – Chaplain Coallon at the Disalle Salient, 382M39.

The later millennia of the Void King’s history is much more readily detailed by Imperial scholars. As the chapter began to reach full strength it began to participate in campaigns across the eastern galaxy with growing enthusiasm. It was the Void Kings that broke the back of Waaagh! Gullrokk on the tip of the Sagittarius Arm. The Void Kings who slew Sselnath the Tyrant and drowned his noise marines on the floating platforms of Hive Indrus. It was their ships that had launched the boarding pods to scour the Uldinor Corsairs from the Giullard Nebula. The Hive Tyrant of Carthago, the Peiron Insurrection, the Tombs at Jhirul. All of these battles are well remembered and their names emblazon the hundreds of banners which decorate the Master’s Sanctum in the heart of The Abbey.

The chapter worked in concert with several other Astartes chapters in a variety of theatres. Notable relations remained from the founding with the Imperial Fists, the original veteran sergeants who had joined the Void Kings were long remembered as honoured founding warriors of the chapter. The Void Kings strode the battlefields of the Danurian Campaign with the Salamanders whom the Void Kings regarded as thorough and practical makers of war. It is said that Chaplain Felixar shared a stick of Castilloni nicoleaf with Captain Drelze of the Raven Guard after the successful lightning assault on Erezt IV.

However, the rigid nature of the Void King’s single mindedness and tendency toward obsessive persecution of the enemy has led to friction in the past. Rivalry exists with the Ultramarines over a perceived slight arising over criticism of the Void King’s charge against the Tau lines during the Asurite Crusade. Events concerning the standoff at Ghoron II with the Blood Angels are often not spoken of amongst the chapter.

By M41 the chapter has become a full strength, 10 company Astartes Chapter. The current Chapter Master is Alvarro Tyrannon, an aged and venerable Space Marine. Tyrannon is characteristically vindictive as well as pragmatic, in the truest sense of Void King contradiction. He is wary of psykers, a throwback to the ancient link with the Black Templars, yet holds Chief Librarian Luscio in close council. Luscio has proven himself a wise and capable tactician. His enmity for the xenos is fueled by the psychic link he sometimes shares with their witches on the battlefield and is adept at hunting them across the stars.

Currently, the chapter is engaged with the forces of Waaagh! Krull in the Iyas system perched on the edge of victory and already looking ahead toward the next challenge.

On Castillon

“A good ale and a good king, anything more is greed” – Reinult XV, Duke of Maiorc.

The homeworld of the Void Kings is a planet as beautiful as it is war scarred. It is a world of rolling green and temperate forests, high mountains and wide, dusty badlands around its equator. It has but a single continent amidst its azure ocean. Its flora are mostly stable mutations of the original livestock brought by the planet’s ancient colonists countless millennia ago. Two moons; Gauyar and Heroclus, sweep across its clear, milky night sky. Ancient ruins of an advanced civilization can be found littered across its surface, remnants of the original spacefaring colony. Whatever catastrophe destroyed that society and sent the inhabitants of Castillon into millennia of regression has been lost to the local records. The evidence of this bygone era can be seen all over Castillon. An example of this graveyard of civilization is the Great Crater at Uleghean, an eight hundred kilometer wide gouge in the planet’s surface, strewn with buried remnants of a long destroyed proto-hive. Archeologists throughout the Imperium often scramble to beseech the Void Kings for permission to excavate the wonders of their world. Only those deemed the very purest in intention are allowed to tread the sacred soil of the Saint’s resting place. Those found or even suspected of removing artifacts from the planet for off-world study or sale are immediately brought before the statue of the Saint and decapitated.

The Castilloni are a hardy people, shaped by the feudal system they have toiled under since the unknowable colonial civilization collapsed. There are over 300 Duchies, Kingdoms, Fiefdoms, Marquisates, Free Cities and any myriad of independent dynastic states across the single continent and its small islands. The Void Kings care not whether the Castilloni make war on each other. So long as their commands are obeyed instantly and without delay, it is none of the chapters concern. And the Castilloni do make war. Blood feuds between the noble families run thousands of years deep. The armoured techno-knights will ride to war with their neighbors at the smallest provocation from a rival, blast-lances is hand at the head of their vast peasant Yeomanry armed with electoblades and primitive las weapons.

The Folk, as the Castilloni commoners refer to themselves, are at heart a jovial and communal people. They form close and wide knit family units which in turn fosters intense loyalty amongst its members. This can sometimes cause vendettas between clans that can rival the dynastic wars of the great houses in ferocity. Yet, they are lovers of food, dance, feats of prowess and drink.

In military terms, each Castilloni kingdoms field their own private armies, referred to as the Yeomanry. As with all wars across the galaxy, it is commoners who bear the brunt of the fighting, and Castillon is no different. Though technology has somewhat accelerated on Castillon following re-contact with the Imperium, the fighting force maintains a crude armament, being outside the jurisdiction of the Munitorum. While their practical function is to fight the wars of their lords, their official function is to serve as the PDF of Castillon in the event of an enemy incursion. Should the need arise, they will rally to the Void Kings and follow them to whatever end.

The Abbey

“Duty is Reverence.” – Words inscribed above the primary docking port of The Abbey.

When the Void Kings began to extend their influence and grow their numbers, it became obvious that Kallerak no longer functioned properly as the chapter’s headquarters. Mighty though the citadel was, it could not properly facilitate the vast armaments, serfs, lodging and training grounds for the Space Marines. It was decided by Chapter Master Welyan in late M37, that while Kallerak would remain the chapter’s seat of power on Castillon itself, and serve its purpose as the holy site of the Saint’s burial, a new location was required to serve the military and day to day functions of the Void Kings.

Intense negotiations were opened between the chapter and the Adeptus Mechanicus. Eventually, the Mechanicus agreed to sanction and assist with the construction of a great orbital fortress monastery in exchange for excavation rights to several promising archeological sites on Castillon, in hopes of finding STC artifacts. Similar orbital stations from throughout the galaxy, some derelict, others actually still in service, were dismantled by the Mechanicum and towed to Castillon for reassembly. Construction of what would later became known as The Abbey took almost 600 years to complete.

It is a great pyramid structure orbiting the homeworld. Brazen and stark in the void and serves as a defiant beacon of the chapter’s authority, standing guard for all eternity over the graveworld of the Saint.

Battle Doctrine

“I see all ends, mon’keigh. You will not walk away from this!” – Last words of Farseer Kanota, spoken to Captain Caliphus, 2nd Company (then First Sergeant), Third Battle of Y’lanor 862M41. Note: Caliphus was accorded the Commendation of Sacrifice for the loss of his legs in the duel with the xenos and for subsequently crawling eight miles across the battlefield back to the Imperial lines.

Following the Cleansing of Castillon, it became clear that gaps had surfaced in the tactical dogma of the original Void Kings that had to be filled in order for the chapter to move forward. The horrible death toll at Kallerak proved that unyielding frontal attack was not a feasible strategy without the huge numbers of the non-codex adherent Black Templar crusades. The influence of the Imperial Fists served to balance the obsessive hatred of the Void Kings and channel it to a reserved, burning flame to be released only at the most precise moment.

A new doctrine of mixed armament has since been developed over the millennia. The Void Kings adopted the siege and artillery tactics of their teachers and blended it with the relentless direct assaults of their parent chapter. Void Kings strikeforces usually comprise of large numbers of devastators and siege armour. These elements hammer and lock down the enemy with volleys of high powered, long range firepower. This coupled with rapid close quarters insertion via drop pods and assault vehicles whose objective is to catch the enemy in the mid field. Here the Void Kings forward units hold the enemy in place while their own heavy weapons rain death upon them. It is a brutal tactic of dangerous close order fighting amidst bombardment from friendly units. It is a perfect focus for the obsessive fury of the Void Kings that strikes a violent balance between control and savagery.

Recruitment

“A Recruitment! Did you hear that, my dear? It’s been decreed! Oh, how wonderful I feel.” – Solitary memory Brother Largo, 2nd Company, Bastion Squad, holds of his mother.

Recruitment for the chapter occurs solely on Castillon. Typically, the Chapter Master will decree an order of Recruitment to the noble houses of the many independent states on the homeworld. Each house will select a male member of the family, in any branch, between the ages of ten and twelve. The houses consider this a moment to display the prowess of their bloodlines. They will select the most fit and mentally agile of their lines and send them by on the long journey to Kallerak. The caravans of Recruitment toward the citadel are great processions for the nobles, rife with pomp and splendour. Recruitment is considered the debt owed to the chapter for the cleansing of their world aeons ago and the dynasties answer in force.
The boys are divided into groups of ten and put through the Rite of Ascension. Each group is brought before the Saint and each boy is given a shortsword. Only a single boy from each group can earn the right to become a Void King. The rest are given rest in the tombs beneath Kallerak.

From there the victors are sent to The Abbey to undergo initial indoctrination and geneseed implantation. Here they train in the vast recesses of the cavernous Abbey. They study the teachings of Sacritas, penned amidst the very days of the chapter’s war against Aggronax. They are instructed in slights and grudges that the chapter holds for its enemies which run back thousands of years. Each Void King learns of every death aboard Terra’s Rage, every rival chapter that has spurned them, which ones to venerate as brothers, which Imperial Guard regiments fled in moments of looming defeat and which stood beside the Void Kings in disciplined hatred. For the Void King, combat is only as satisfying as the motivation behind it; service to the Saint, the Emperor, to right the wrongs of the past and carry out their own brand of retribution against the foes of Man. They have seen war for war’s sake and choose rather to make it with conviction.

[Sigil]

Eh?

[Darman Vallerius]

A decent lore for the Chapter, however it suggests that the history of the creation of the chapter is in between 33 and 36 millenium, that is a very very large time continuum, probably a little too big to be true... as every chapter was created in a selected millenium, or if it is unknown develop a bit of extra lore on why the chapter's creation period is unknown:

 

e.g.

 

"The creation of the Void Kings was all but lost and destroyed as the sacred documents were being taken to Terra the cruiser disappeared into the warp" 

 

Or maybe

 

"The creation of the Void Kings was all but destroyed as the sacred documents containing the earliest details were evaporated as the cruiser containing the chapter's details to Terra never reached it, the cruiser was destroyed by forces of chaos"

 

However apart from that the mini history of the chapter was very interesting and enjoyable to read. I'm intrigued to see what the chapter is doing at the moment and whether you will be making a codex all home made units of the army. 

[dusara217]

Very well done, though I find the tactics employed to be in conflict with the Codex Astartes due to it balancing the number of Devastator, Tactical, and Assault Squads in a Chapter.

[Sigil]

Thank you,

 

I did mean to infer that the timeframe has been lost to record. I plan to redo the earlier origin story some in the coming weeks and I should probably highlight that fact more directly. Thanks very much for the input.