Index Astartes - Tempus Aemulatori

[Brinnan]

When was it formed?
The Tempus Aemulatori were formed in the late 36th Millenium, making them the unfortunates known collectively as the Cursed Founding. They were first created in order to protect the Segmentum Obscurus from the predations of the Halo Devices, and hopefully, wipe them out – they have mostly certainly failed in that regard, considering the state of their home world.


Homeworld
Their homeworld is located in the Lordran Sector, specifically on the planet Lothric-IV. Originally, it was a temperate world, with small jungles forming at the equator, and tundra advancing downwards from the poles. They lived among the feral inhabitants of the world in a relatively benign manner, and were seen in good light by the populace if only because of their services to the people – their Fortress Monastery doubled as a site where the Apothecaries passed on small amounts of knowledge to doctors that made the pilgrimage, and many of the knights saw the privilege of viewing a Space Marine training duel as a great honour. In short, it was a quiet, peaceful land, with the Marines viewed as martial, spiritual, and technological leaders.

However, as it turned out, this may have been a bad idea. For the Marines kept many artefacts deemed too dangerous to destroy sealed below their Monastery. The most numerous of these were the baleful Halo Devices, the very reason for their creation. The Marines were attempting to research them in secret, in order to better discover ways of seeking out and destroying them. After some time, the Devices had begun to corrupt the planet itself, feasting on its energies just as the Marines unknowingly feasted on it (more on that later). The first sign was a pervasive sickness – the tribesfolk began to lose energy, becoming tired and hollow. They began to die, one after another. Not fast enough for the true problem to be noticed, but quick enough for concern. However, by then, the problem was too entrenched to remove.

Around the planet, the grass began to wither and die. The winters grew longer and colder than usual. The planet was dying, and it was then that the Marines truly realised the gravity of the situation. They eventually discovered the root cause of the problem, but as they burned the Warp-tainted abominations to cinder, they found one last surprise in stock (detailed in the gene-seed section).
Destroying the artefacts most assuredly ended the problem, but the damage was already done. There was no way for the planets biosphere to recover, and within the next century, the only life on the once idyllic planet was found within the ice-coated Fortress Monastery, in the centre of what was once the most beautiful jungle on the world.


Combat Doctrine
The Tempus Aemulatori fight swiftly, and without mercy. They charge in with a nearly reckless abandon, destroying all in their path, leaving only shattered ruins and broken, soulless bodies in their wake. You see, their curse puts them on somewhat of a timeframe, and so they will carefully plan and prepare for the battle, give thanks to the enemy for allowing them to bring life into their eyes once more, and then charge, chainsword and bolt pistol in hand.

They are used to fighting heretics and Corrupt creatures, and so have learned to target the big ones first, before any further damage can be dealt, while the chaff is run down by sweeping advances of their vast Assault Marine companies.


Organization
They mostly follow the Codex Astartes, with the only exception being that the 7th and 8th Companies are both composed of Assault Marines, whilst their 1st Company is always woefully undermanned.


Beliefs
They have a very strange belief system, organized around the Emperor being a God of Death and the Afterlife. They think themselves as truly blessed by the Emperor, what with his forewarning to them, and so ritually inscribe their time remaining on a purity seal or dataslate before battle, their mechanical hearts configured to display the time of death when it occurs. Should they die, the two will be compared, and both etched into the great stone wall of their monastery that serves as their record of the fallen.


Geneseed
They are unaware of which Primarch they are descended from, although they are surprisingly unconcerned by this in recent years – they have more pressing matters on their mind.
For a Cursed Founding chapter, they bear surprisingly few mutations – in fact, their only one was a recent addition, their Chapter cursed with two things by the Halo Device that destroyed their world.

Firstly, their heart will slowly rot. This is easily taken care of, though the method links into the second mutation, as well as their chapter belief.

The second mutation is that they have their time of death etched into their backs, by non-physical means. The moment that the first don the helmet, they black out from an excruciating pain, and wake to the sight of the Apothecary, holding an image of their still-bleeding shoulderblades, a time carved into it by a polite hand. Normally, this time will simply be a date. However, when that date arrives, it will change to a 24-hour standard time display. The scarring ‘updates’ every day at midnight, making their famed tolerance to pain somewhat understandable – it is rarely the nicest of things to feel the flesh of your back rearranging and splitting open once more.

They will ritually replace an initiates heart with a mechanical replacement, a timepiece linked into it that automatically stops when the marine dies, allowing the Apothecary to record the time of death so that the administrative staff can see if someone has finally managed to cause it not to match up with that which was etched onto their backs that morning – to finally cheat the fate that their father blessed them with, and their foe cursed them with.


Battle Cry
Deficio Et Tempus (Time Failed You)


Paint Scheme

Below is an image of a War-Brother of the First Company

Any feedback is appreciated, as I am still fairly new to trying to make SM Chapters with anything resembling a decent fluff. I tried to make a different one earlier in the week, and it turned out that I had failed because I had essentially ended their story in the planning phase, so I tried to leave this more open - they still have a goal that they are actively working towards, even if it is rather long term

[Olis]

Greetings, brother, and welcome to the Liber. Let's dive in, shall we?

 

Firstly, if your home world and its inhabitants are dead, then where do new recruits come from? Do they come from the population of serfs under the employ of the Chapter? Or does the Chapter recruit (temporarily) wherever it fights? Or maybe something else. I like the idea of the Chapter standing guard over the ashes of a dead world, as it seems to tie into the theme reasonably well, and the thought of them lamenting the loss of their people adds an extra dimension of depth.

 

Secondly, their beliefs. So they believe the Emperor to be a god of death. Where did they get this belief from? The natives (from back when they still existed)? Or was it something that developed as a result of the traumatic experiences the Chapter has had? Regardless, it sounds like the Ecclesiarchy would deem it to be somewhat aberrant, if not downright heretical (which could be something to think about for further material).

 

Food for thought.  

[Brinnan]

For the first question - I'm still trying to figure that out myself. I know that they are losing marines faster than they are gaining them, so it is most likely an over-complicated and inefficient system. There are other inhabited worlds within the sector, so they possibly have small recruitment centres that draw a very low tithe from those planets that they have an amount of influence over? I am thinking that, for instance, if they save a world and enough of it is still suficiently Imperial, they may request, say, a few hundred people per year take part in a martial competition, and the top ten are chosen to enter the Chapter as neophytes? Maybe place an age restriction on it, because while I know that there is no technical upper limit on age for training (there have been a few stories of particularly good guardsmen and the like being recruited, I seem to recall), it stands to reason that it is much more difficult to do as the chosen warrior increases in age.

 

For the second question, I don't think that seeing the Emperor as a god of death is actually that far from how the Ecclesiarchy view him anyway. With my inspiration here being deities such as Anubis and Osiris, the nature of a death god is normally that of a judge (in the Emperor's case, deciding whether or not you are worthy of spending your afterlife at his side, which is part of normal Imperial Creed), a king (which is essentially how the Emperor is viewed anyway), and a protector (preventing demons and the like from attacking Imperial souls after death, and helping to prevent Imperial troops ending up with him before their time is due). On top of that, there are some older pieces of fluff I recall that show the Ecclesiarchy usually accepts the faith of most colonies and then tries to slowly and subtly change them over the millennia to be more in line with the Imperial Creed. Seeing how close I view it at the moment, I think its a case of 'well, we almost had them, and then they all died, so not much point continuing there when we can just warn them every now and then if the Astartes start getting out of hand'

[Cryptix]

You might want to reconsider the halo devices. They're probably an integral part of your planet's history, but unless they have a dispute with the mechanicum (see Blood Angels), they'd be better off destroying them or passing them along. Space Marines are warriors, not scholars.

[Conti]

"The Tempus Aemulatori fight swiftly, and without mercy. They charge in with a nearly reckless abandon, destroying all in their path, leaving only shattered ruins and broken, soulless bodies in their wake."
 "You see, their curse puts them on somewhat of a timeframe, and so they will carefully plan and prepare for the battle"
 Does not really fit together imho

"They are used to fighting heretics and Corrupt creatures, and so have learned to target the big ones first"
Im not sure if relevant/noteworthy

"The second mutation is that they have their time of death etched into their backs, by non-physical means. The moment that the first don the helmet, they black out from an excruciating pain,
and wake to the sight of the Apothecary, holding an image of their still-bleeding shoulderblades, a time carved into it by a polite hand. Normally, this time will simply be a date.
However, when that date arrives, it will change to a 24-hour standard time display. The scarring ‘updates’ every day at midnight, making their famed tolerance
 to pain somewhat understandable – it is rarely the nicest of things to feel the flesh of your back rearranging and splitting open once more."
 Here I would go with more subtle signs than a clock; Maybe it spreads withering on the body (like the husks of the former inhabitants of the world)
 "their heart will slowly rot."
 Bear in mind, that SpaceMarines have two hearts.
 
For the recruitment; since the halo-stars are relativly unexplored and isolated (irc) I would suggest, that they work with rogue-traders, that buy/abduct children and sell/exchange them to the Chapter(or they do it themselves)
After the childs are chosen, they will be released into the ruined cities/villages of the former inhabitants. Those who survive a certain amount of time will be recruited.

For the primarch; Maybe consider to be an BloodAngels-Successor (with the twin-curses) or the Excoriators (ImperialFist-Successor) which have fitting symptoms to your curse.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Excoriators
 
 Overall, i feel quite a DarkSouls-Vibe from your fluff and I would orientate this curse more along the lines of the hollows.
 I like that your Chapter is definitly grimdark.