The Sons of Ananta

[Sons of Ananta]

The Sons of Ananta
 

In M35, a combined battleforce was despatched towards the Halo Stars, drawn from the Varangians and the Knights Amaranthine and accompanied by Knight and Astra Militarum support. The fleet disappeared en route, and after several unsuccessful attempts to locate the battleforce, the parent chapters recorded the forces as lost and entered onto the Rolls of Honour.
 

In M38 the Varangians rebelled in the Marios Scourge. Chaptermaster Anderite Luzt led his forces against the Imperium in a sudden assault, and after some 30 years of combat and 3 planetary systems rendered uninhabitable the Varangians were declared destroyed.  Their records were seized by the Inquisition and remain sealed.

In early M41 the Knights Amaranthine were destroyed in a series of major battles in the Ghoul Stars.
 

In late M41 a single battlecruiser emerged from warp. The crippled ship limped towards Draconith and was intercepted by ships from the Star Dragons. This ship claimed to be the remnants of the long lost battleforce.  Held in quarantine until Terminators and Inquisitorial agents could test the veracity of their story, the tattered remnants of the force held true.
 

Aboard the battlecruiser the survivors held their vigils of remembrance for thier fallen brothers, tended the crippled casualties and tended the geneseed.  They learned of the fate of their parent chapters with sorry and anger. Some despaired.  Many of The Knights Amarinthine purified themselves and prepared for a mission to follow their kin into death at the Ghoul Stars, while in their shame, some Varangians even spoke of offering themselves to the inquisition to be purged.
 

But Brother Chaplain Adis Shanga of the Knights Amarinthine gathered the 327 survivors of the expedition. He spoke of the pride and eternal faith he had in their brotherhood, forged by combat in the unbroken centuries.  He looked out over the Marines, gathered, mixed together and said he believed they were stronger together than they had been apart.

He spoke of his joy in standing back to back with battle-brothers from the Varangians.  Of his pride in the limitless devotion that they had shown as at the heights of desperation when he had believed the battle was lost, the brothers from the infirmary rose from their medical vats and fought with combat knives, laspistols and improvised weapons against the boarders, even turning their injuries to their advantage – those with no legs squirming through ducts no battle brother could manage and emerging into areas the intruders thought secure, turning the battle and leading to victory even at the cost of any prospect of returning to full health.

 

Chaplain Shanga vowed he would see these brothers, still held in sus-an vats, reborn to fight again in dreadnought sarcophogai.

He spoke of rebirth from disaster, of the Emperor’s vigilance and their own pale mirror of that vigilance.

 

“We were Knights and Varangians. No More. We are reborn. We strode through death, and fire! We are the sons of eternity – of infinite faith. We are Ananta! And we will not allow this brotherhood to be broken.”

 

At the Chaplain’s urging, the remaining brothers began swapping their armour so each one carried the Purple of the Knights Amarinthine and the Bone of the Varangians. The Inquisition was unable to ever discover which Marines came from which parent chapter as all took on new names and refused to answer any questions that pre-dated the ill-fated expedition.

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Thanks for reading.  If there's any feeback I'd love to hear it. 

I have tried to keep the story in lore, but I may easily have made mistakes.

I am still in the early stages of developing mhy lore, but I want to develop in in conjunction with playing as my style develops.

[Doctor Perils]

Your colour scheme (judging by your avatar) looks quite nice, and it seems like quite a nice explanation of how it came to be.

 

The story itself seems like it could be a good start: even though a detachment being lost in the warp for millenia is often seen as mary-sueism and such, that is mainly when it is applied to detachments lost in the warp before the horus heresy, in an effort to make traitor legion successors possible; you haven't fallen into this trap.

 

The thing that seems much more complicated to justify in my mind is the merging of the two chapters, as marines are often seen as too proud of their colours to simply fuse forces like this. As they are supposed to have been fighting together for a long time, and with the death of their old battle-brothers, then this could work. You do however need to specify that both components have the same geneseed, and it would also make it simpler if they are both descended from the exact same chapter, not long before the beginning of the expedition.

 

Who is Ananta ? This guy would no doubt be extremely important and heroic, if he is able to unite marines from two different chapters. Note that this doesn't necessarily mean that he is an officer, he could also be a chaplain, librarian, sergeant, or even simple battle-brother.

In a recomposed chapter, the chaplains will probably take an extremely important place, in their role as "discipline officers", especially as I suspect that they have two very distinct homeworld cultures (ie the Varangians being part viking/russian part byzantine, and the Knights amaranthine being noble type knights).

The inquisition (of the ordos hereticus, astartes and chronos) might also impose some sort of inquisitorial supervision, making sure over a span of centuries that the newly formed sons of ananta are indeed trustworthy, ready to jump in and exterminatus the :cuss out of the Sons at the slightest misstep.

 

Would I be right to suspect that the Varangians are in fact not destroyed, but are in fact renegade, and will become the sons' archenemies ?

 

 

Finally, if you wish to make this into an Index Astartes article (the narration style seems this way inclined), I'd recommend a short introduction and table of important facts (like founding, geneseed, fighting speciality and so on) before getting into the thick of the history and other sections. You can also make use of the BBCode headers to make the titles more legible.

 

Good luck :)

[Sons of Ananta]

Thorn,
Thanks for the feedback, it really gives some good food for me to chew on.

I'm still in the early days of development, and I was planning on trying to develop this into an Index Astartes style article, but I didn't want to have big swathes of blank.  I will edit and backfill!  I had no idea the Mary Sue-ism of the warp storm...  I sort of meant they were trapped on their mission behind warp storms rather than time travelling in the warp.  I should make that clear.

In answer to some of your questions -
As the idea is that the Marines literally fought side by side for hundreds of years they were forced to combine commands and mix squads where necessary as their equipment ran low.  The geneseed point is a very good one. I hadn't considered it. 
Ananta - I realised - I never explained... I will!
The Chaplains are indeed meant to be the leaders of the new chapter.  As yet there is no chapter master, it's a council of 2 Senior Captains and the Chaplain.
The inquisition is very suspicious, and it gives me a reason why I might clash with other loyalist marine forces - either as trying to prove the Sons as hyper loyal, or as they are tested out by hostile factions.  The inquistion is also meant to be interupting supplys and otherwise hindering the chapter, hence the general shortage of heavy equipment - even Power armour is in short supply.

And ... maybe the Varangians aren't dead.  Maybe!

[Doctor Perils]

I had no idea the Mary Sue-ism of the warp storm...  I sort of meant they were trapped on their mission behind warp storms rather than time travelling in the warp.  I should make that clear.

 

Mary-sueism probably isn't the right term either, it's more of a recurring trope. However, if they haven't time travelled, then those marines that entered into the warp shouldn't be the same coming out...

[Sons of Ananta]

Marines live for hundreds of years, right?  So the only survivors of the mission will be the few hundred marines, everyone else would've died of old age.  And those left will be all my Veterans.

So it's a chapter of Old men and kids - scout heavy as they try to re-grow the chapter, veteran/Dread heavy with the survivors of the rebirth.

[Doctor Perils]

You have written down a difference of five/six thousand years, that's a bit longer than a couple of centuries for me...

In any case, if the marines experIenced a time longer than a few hundred years in the warp, mutations will start to arise. This could be a problem, but it could be an opportunity to show your chapter in a sneaky light (hiding the mutants from the inquisition)

[Sons of Ananta]

You're absolutely right.  I will adjust the fluff.