[WIP] IA: Lords of Avalon

[Dante Infernal]

Hi all, I've been toying around with a new chapter for the past while, and am beginning to settle on an idea.  The core principles of the chapter's history are below, and I'd really appreciate feedback on it! I've tried to go with a rather more tragic take on what would otherwise have been a noble Ultramarines successor, and in further fluff I'll try to play on this theme, and build on the Grimdarkness.

 

There'll definitely be more coming (probably using the Deathwatch tables to flesh it out), but these are the 'essentials'. Is there anything that works or doesn't? Any areas of improvement? Anything that makes you go But what about this with that?

 

Thanks!

 

Background

The Lords of Avalon are an early successor chapter, of XIII Legion heritage, dating back to the 3^rd Founding in M.32. The chapter's Fortress Monastery is based on the lush but uninhabited world of Avalon, located on the Eastern Fringe in the Ultima Segmentum. Here, it was to guard part of the frontier between the edge of Imperial space and the unknown void that lies beyond. As an early founding of the Ultramarines, the Lords of Avalon hold closely to the Codex Astartes as the direct word of their Primarch; as such, it heavily influences the chapter’s structure, principles, modes of operation and tactics.

 

Origins

Beyond this, the chapter also sought in some small way to echo the success of the realm of Ultramar, and to establish a small bastion of productivity and stability in the relative wilderness of the Eastern Fringe. As the chapter established itself on Avalon, it began to become heavily involved in the administration of the system, establishing trade routes, stable systems of governance and sustainable population policies. At its peak in M.37, the Avalon system was a small but flourishing jewel in the sector crown, reflecting the majesty of Ultramar on a smaller scale, and serving as a trade nexus for multiple systems. However, as is often the sad truth in the Imperium, such prosperity was not to last.

 

Failure

At the outset of M.38, the planet was washed in a rain of dust particles blowing in from the Galactic East. Deemed inert by AdMech surveyors, the chapter did little in response to the cloud, believing it to be harmless. After several weeks however, billowing clouds of suffocating fog started to gather and spread across the planet’s surface, eradicating the minds of any unmodified humans exposed to it. In the face of such a nebulous threat, the guns of the Lords of Avalon were silent and helpless. The chapter was forced to look on as its homeworld was rendered inhospitable to human life before its eyes. Now, the chapter remains guardians of a planet without a population, pacing through grand, echoing halls and temples, surrounded by the memories of its greatest triumph and failure, and wreathed in a constant mist that embraces their millennia-long sense of loss.

[Minigiant]

Good foundation, nothing glaringly wrong or anti-canon establishment.

 

Arthurian legend is a good place to build from, do they consider themselves knights? Are the Captains of the round table?

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Why didn't Avalon's atmosphere block the "dust cloud," and did something capable of piercing the awesome defense a planetary atmosphere provides, fail to affect the Marines? Is the "dust" Daemonic, simultaneously present in and absent from the material and immaterial worlds, explaining why it was material enough for AdMech sensors to detect it, but immaterial enough to pierce conventional defenses? (Void shields and mystic defenses, built into the fortress-monastery walls, can protect the Marines within. Naturally, the Marines who were outside the fortress-monastery when the "dust cloud" hit, were screwed.)

[Commissar Molotov]

Hi,

 

I'm a little cold, personally, to Arthurian Chapters - but I do believe there's a great deal that could be done with them. Perhaps it helps to consider what aspect of Arthurian legend you wish to borrow from? Are you trying to create a noble band of warriors, renowned sector-wide for their honour and their skill-at-arms? Is it about fraternity, or trying to create a better world? (There are elements of the Ultramarines' 500 worlds here.)

 

Whilst I'm not entirely sold on the way in which your Chapter's homeworld meeting its demise I think there's something exceptionally evocative about the Chapter still dwelling in its fortress monastery on a poisoned world, the fog like a funereal shroud weighing down on them like the memories of their failure.

 

I think there's a lot that could be done with the Chapter spreading across its home sector, recruiting from many worlds - and yet their homeworld is a blight on their honour that they can never truly erase. Does it spur them on further? Does it perhaps allow us a glimpse at a darker side behind their bright facade?

 

 

[Cèsar de Quart]

I like it. I also have an Arthurian Chapter, but yours is more grounded.