The Gauntlet, hijacked Chapter..

[dubHammer]

I´m working on a plot for my Space Marine chapter called The Gauntlet. I´m starting to zone in on a story, but I need some help.

 

Is it possible to hijack a chapter, pretend to be that chapter and then keep the Imperium from knowing for 9 - 10,000 years?

 

To have a little context for why I´m asking this question I´ll just explain the idea below.

 

The Alpha Legion joined the Heresy on the bad side, they went to war and fought in the crusade towards Terra. They lost, scattered and hid out of sight. They steered away from the eye of terror, and it´s a well known theory that they might in fact not be very Chaosy at all. After that, there is very little known about what happens next. Thats where I choose to join in.

 

My guys, a fraction of the scattered AL goes into hiding. While in hiding, they argue whether joining Horus was smart after all. They regret what they had taken part of (for those of you who have read Legion, you might understand why this is an argument they might have, considering Chaos lost and all). Seeing that other AL fractions does not agree with them, they choose to cut the ties with them.

 

Knowing they would never be granted forgiveness by the Imperium, and the fact that they had nothing to sustain themselves they chose to go out and fight traitor marines in a last ditch effort to regain at least some glory and honor for themselves. They stumble over a distress call from a space marine chapter thats being attacked on their home planet by Chaos forces. They go for it to try and help, and arrive at the end of a brutal battle that has both sides almost completly destroyed. They go in and help destroying the last chaos forces, but its to late, the chapter called The Gauntlet, a successor chapter of the Imperial Fists is destroyed.

 

Now my guys get a great idea. Being former AL they know a thing or two about faking things. They learn all they need to know going through the chapters history books and steels the whole chapters identity. They leave the planet with all they can gather including some of The Gaunlet fleet, then they divert an astroid to hit the planet, and run off. After a while they contact the Imperium, tell them a fake story about chaos bringing hell to "their" planet, and that they were able to run away before chaos blew the planet up with some awfully powerful planet-killer thingy.

 

They fully take on the identity of The Gauntlet, and now that they no longer need to hide (just lie) they can once again be proud Space Marines of the Imperium.

[Beta galactosidase]

The nice thing is that after a few hundred years they won't have to lie anymore. Presumably nobody in the chapter will know, after the original marines all die. It's entirely possible that another Chapter, an Inquisitor or a Magos could figure it out, and the Gauntlet marines themselves would have complete deniability.

 

Chapters do have to submit gene seed to the Adeptus Mechanicus for purity testing. However, I believe this is not something catastrophic. Maybe as long as the gene seed doesn't mutate while the mechanicus is culturing it, it passes.

[Bro Castiel]

It always peaks my interest when someone comes up with fluff-altering ways of creating their own mark on the universe. I love your start. Curvacious has already raised the issue of purity testing. However if you can come up with an idea to bluff/avoid the testing procedure the idea would be perfect. Very Alpha Legion to fool the Imperium and take on identities.

I commend you on your thoughts!

Regards

Cas

[Melmoth]

seems completely legit to me - i imagine that there are plenty of former alpha legionnaires in the shattered legions, and it would be a fine way of getting back onto the right side.  and you know, the imperium is a big place, they could easily repaint their armour and give themselves a new name and just act like imperial space marines and who'd know? if they were fleet based they could just disappear if some  inquisitor or other started poking their noses in.

[Lysimachus]

Seems like there'd be quite a few bodies lying around from the original IF successor Gauntlet Marines, maybe they could take gene seed to store/cultivate/replicate, purely to send off to the AdMech any time they ask for a tithe?

[bloodhound23]

Echoing above points: as long as they have some plausible way of consistent passing purity checks, I don't see any reason why it couldn't be the case. Seems perfectly AL in nature, to me.

[Halandaar]

My understanding is that Alpha Legion geneseed is free of corruption, in fact being at the higher end of the scale with regard to purity (certainly better than the likes of the Space Wolves or Blood Angels). Purity checks wouldn't be a problem for them. And it's not like the AdMech can actually identify the source of a chapter's geneseed if it doesn't have a record of what was used in their founding; otherwise there wouldn't be so many chapters of unknown lineage.

 

Anyway, this seems like a very Alpha Legioney thing to do; they were known to run false-flag operations as other legions and so you'd think masquerading as another Chapter would be second nature to them.

 

I'm a big fan of splinter-forces of traitor legions assuming the identities of destroyed loyalist chapters to slip quietly back into the Imperial fold; it's already noted in the Badab War books that various Imperial authorities don't believe the Minotaurs of M41 are the same chapter that went missing in M38, so there is actually a precedent (implied at least) in the official fluff for the type of chapter you are creating. (My headcanon for the Minotaurs is that they are the genetic descendants of a still-loyal Iron Warriors crusade fleet who operated out of view since the Heresy and used the disappearance of the "original" stripey Minotaurs in M38 as a way to rejoin the Imperium.)

[Servant of Dante]

This sounds really cool!