IL XVI - The Drowned

[Sigismund229]

Ideas you have as you're trying to go to sleep: you know what would be a cool supplement to the Drowned's ironborn theme? Maori influences

[bluntblade]

Hmm. Maori culture befits a more boisterous army than The Drowned, I think. Be worth looking into the Bloodborne stuff Raktra mentioned way back

[Raktra]

SQUIIIIID.

But yeah, BB has a huge theme about water being a bulwark between dimensions and guarding dreams etc.

[bluntblade]

Is there much cultural stuff we can draw on?

[Raktra]

The only real culture shown is the Yarnhamites, who'd not really fit at all. Though the Byrgenwerth Scholars might have something worth looking into.

[simison]

I'm making it official. I'm opening the Drowned open to any who are interested in developing them. Hesh retains overall power over them as it stands right now.

[Kelborn]

Though they are a very interesting Legion and I think that working with them does make a hell of fun, but I'm out. Currently can't afford enough time to work on my own Legion.

 

Eager to see the Drowned rising again. :)

[bluntblade]

I'll try and think up something today

[bluntblade]

First idea - owing to the frequency with which they deploy to the most hazardous of warzones, the Drowned employ unusually large numbers of servitors both on and off the battlefield. These are frequently harvested from prisoners-of-war and, it is whispered, civilian populations of conquered planets in the rumoured "flesh harvests".

[simison]

Interesting, but wouldn't that make them the only Legion, canon or BotL, to rely on servitors as part of their war effort? Wouldn't that be embarrassing?

[bluntblade]

Well, the Iron Hands preferred Mechanicus detachments and servitors over weak mortal troops, so there's a canon precedent. I'm gonna try and build on this - thinking what'd be fluffy, both the Scions and Drowned would probably have relatively few Dreadnoughts owing to the difficulty of retrieving their mortally wounded warriors in time to inter them; more so the Drowned. The Scions answer this with large numbers of Cybernetica cohorts.

 

Plus, it's not like the Drowned care vastly about seeming nice.

[simison]

Fair points, carry on with this line of thought.

[Raktra]

It's not a lot different from 'serkers sending in penal troopers to be fair.

[bluntblade]

I'm thinking specialised servitors, akin to Ordo Reductor thralls but also Penitent Engines, only more sensibly designed. This could also dovetail with Morro's dabbling in cloning and genhancement.

[bluntblade]

In particular, vat-born clones might serve to pilot Dreadnoughts or their counterparts, less intelligent and versed in war, but without the psychological baggage of a life lived before internment. Also less difficult to construct and maintain, as you're not having to keep the best part of a Space Marine alive in spite of all his injuries.

[simison]

How is that different from the Eagle Warriors' clone use?

[MikhalLeNoir]

Morro uses gene enhancement and the help of rakarth to improve himself. At first he is physically underwhelming compared to other primarchs. This fact drives him If I remember correctly and relying on Rakarth is one major point to his downfall.

[bluntblade]

Ok, here's what I have so far.

 

Styxian Pragmatism

"Our wars take us into climes where the exercise of morality stands to harm us. Our battlefields often deny the Legion any chance to resurrect its champions as pilots for its revenant behemoths. Squeamishness may not be permitted to bar the way of necessity, therefore we cast it aside and find something to fill the vacuum.”

- Artificier Copperheart Verron

 

Proportionally, the only Legion to field fewer Dreadnoughts than the Drowned were the Grave Stalkers, but the void created in the arsenal of the XVI formed a much greater impediment to their campaigns. The Drowned prided themselves on deploying to the harshest environments known to the Crusade, and like all their cousins they relished combatting the most formidable enemies. These problems were exacerbated if the Legion lacked the power of these walkers. Equally, the worlds on which they fought had such lethal climates that mortal troops could not be expected to fight effectively or even survive.

 

Morro set his Techmarines and the Mechanicum Adepts under his command to solving these difficulties from the first year of his command. The first and simplest of the steps taken was to increase the secondments of Thallax and Ursurax thralls from the Ordo Reductor. Servitors also came to be used in far greater numbers among the XVI, both for warfare and more mundane matters.

 

However, it is the Drowned’s use of combat servitors that merits the greater scrutiny, for in this area Morro granted the Magos the opportunity to delve deeper into the arts of technological resurrection, keeping them from the scrutiny of more conservative elements.

 

Initially, the organic material for these endeavours consisted largely of replicae. As the Legion moved beyond the range of easy supply from the Forge Worlds, the corpses of human foes were used, along with the remains of failed aspirants. Fragmentary records of extensive flesh-tithes on conquered worlds were taken to indicate that the Drowned, known to recruit in this way, must suffer from a high rate of Aspirant fatalities during implantation. Archives captured during the Insurrection, however, now reveal that many of these harvests were undertaken largely for more bodies to use in the creation of the Drowned Men’s slave armies.

 

Many servitors became the pilots of otherwise unremarkable vehicles such as speeders and tanks, or the more durable equivalent to rank soldiers. Others became Kataphron combat models, or other, new designs akin to those fearsome machines. These took a variety of shapes, whether they moved on tracks, a pair of legs like Army scout walkers or even strange, insectile forms akin to the Dunecrawler tanks.

 

Most noteworthy of all were those used to supplement the meagre numbers of Dreadnoughts fielded by the XVI. Dubbed Revenant Engines, they were a compromise, crude imitations of Dreadnoughts made viable by ease of construction and maintenance. They lacked what might be called the human factor of a fallen ancient; an Astartes’ intellect and aptitude for violence, honed by a lifetime of savage experience. On the other hand, they came without the need to preserve the peculiarly fragile husk that such warriors were reduced to, and were controllable, with neither pride nor mental instability to lessen their functionality.

 

An additional advantage commented upon by the Magos who documented these endeavours - a clear sign of how their deviance had accelerated, and kept secret until civil war ripped aside the veil of secrecy - was that the servitors had no need of a pseudo-human ironform. Dreadnoughts were constructed with a humanoid shape to give the subtle illusion that the warrior within retained something of their old form. Freed from these limitations by their blank-slate pilots, the Magos delved into a variety of shapes for the XVI’s war machines.

 

At the time of the Insurrection, these were denounced as blasphemous creations in their own right, but in hindsight they are mild infractions by comparison. When the veil between worlds was breached, these dread creations would become a cornerstone of the Drowned Men’s damnation.

 

Which gave me an idea for later:

 

Excruciant Engines

 

With the pledge of Morro to the Youngest God, the ways in which the Drowned crafted their cyborg thralls changed vastly. The Legion dedicated themselves to the torment of their foes with all the tenacity Astartes could muster, and their slaves were hardly exempt. The Revenant Engines were no longer blank slates, but prisoners of war, robbed of their motor functions and forced to experience every second as they were used as weapons against their own side. The process of internment became a tortuous ritual, with the unfortunates kept conscious to experience every second as they were mutilated and grafted into the machines. Advanced sensory equipment and narcotics were used to amplify the victim’s agony to a hyper-real excruciation that obliterated all other thought and emotion.

[bluntblade]

So, thoughts?

[MikhalLeNoir]

I like. Makes sense and imho fits to the drowned. Concerning the Excruciant Engines you could add that they had not simple their limbs removed but maybe added to the mwchanical limbs so that the user sees them rot away. Or give them some sort of controlled pain when they don't move and to be really cruel only a lighter one IF they move. That is something slaaneesh would welcome I think.

[simison]

I like it, but I'm curious where this fits in. Also, after doing a quick search of material I've submitted to Grifft, I don't think any Drowned material has passed muster. I think the Drowned title page is done, and some rules have been crafted. But none of it has reached the PDF, supposedly. 

 

Just letting everyone know what work needs to be done on the Drowned. 

[bluntblade]

Where it fits in the PFD? A box, and some examples in the Legion's War Machines section (if we can get Drak to give us some designs), I think

[simison]

[Got it. Found the title page.]

 

THE DROWNED

Numeration: XVI^th Legion Astartes

Primogenitor: Sorrowsworn Morro

Allegiance: Traitoris Perdita

Cognomen:  "Lanterns in the Darkness", or more casually "The Lanterns" became a term for many of the tendril fleets attached to the various legions prior to the finding of their Primarch.  "The Drowned" have never officially taken a name for themselves, "The Drowned", or "The Drowned Men" being adopted informally by the Legion and it's Primarch. 

Observed Strategic Tendencies: Combined Orbital Assaults and Subterranean Assaults; Marine, Submarine, Void and other 3-Dimensional Theatres; Tactical and Strategical Suffocation; Ambush Tactics; Brutal Pacifications; Decimation and Punitive Campaigns

 

Noteworthy Domains: The Styxian System, Terra (Tertiary), recurring incidents of forced drafts on conquered planets.

 

Through me you pass into the City of Woe;
Through me you pass into eternal pain;
Through me among the people lost for aye;

Justice the founder of my fabric mov'd;
To rear me was the task of power divine;
Supremest wisdom and primeval love;

Before me things create were none; save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure;
All hope abandon, all ye who enter here...

- Childrens poem, found in Sorrowsworn Morro's old room in the Orphanage on Styx.

 

[My next Drowned post will focus on putting together the first section, if no one beats me there first. Did Hesh leave notes what the Drowned were like originally?]

[bluntblade]

I'll trawl the thread. If not, we want a point of origin and/or early battles that would make underwater expertise desirable.

[bluntblade]

Your answer, Sim