Help with a Created Chapter?

[BloodWolves]

I'm on a roll of creating a few new chapters. I need help with this one. How would you blend Blood Angels and Raven Guard together? 

[Claws and Effect]

Blood Ravens?

[SanguinaryGuardsman]

Blood Ravens?

Ravens Angels is clearly better!

 

Imagine a blood drop emblem with raven wings.  So good!

 

This sounds like the beginnings as a raven guard that counts as blood angels.  

[GreyCrow]

Blood Ravens?

Well, that was easy ! :P

 

Let me try something else by identifying the most important semantics in the chapters' iconographies :

- Blood Angels : Clearly, the key here is the angels. Sanguinius' wings, the purity, the saint michael's reference. Blood is here to add some grim elements to it. Clearly it's Angels

 

- Raven Guard : Ravens are surprisingly a secondary motive in the Chapter, despite Corvus Corax's obvious references to crows. The big motive is brooding, silence, gloomy, black. Clearly, it's Darkness

 

So how about the Dark Angels ?

[NiceGuyAdi]

Raving Angels? All battle brothers have white gloves and replace Bolters for glow sticks?

 

For my two-penn’orth worth, I think it’d be more interesting if you tied the chapter to Raven Guard and Blood Angels more visually and through backstory and came up with a more disconnected name. For me the most interesting Blood Angels successors are the Lamenters, and at first glance you wouldn’t realise where they came from.

Edited December 3, 2017 by NiceGuyAdi

[CCE1981]

A philisophical split in the Chapter. The ranged units rely on stealth and other shenanigans to bring death to the Emperor’s Enemies. The Blood Angels believe death should only be met in your opponents face. Death Company would be guys that took a vow of somekind, maybe they violated a tenat of the Chapter, maybe the Chapter is harsh disciplinarians.

[Knight of the Raven]

I'll go beyond battle tactics.

One common feature of both Chapters is secrecy, though not to the same degree.

Blood Angels, as far as I can tell, hide nothing from their allies short of the Flaw's more negative effects: when the Red Thirst proves too much to contain and the Black Rage.

Raven Guards, on the other hand, hide everything possible from their allies and don't hesitate to lie to them if they think the enemy's cracked their communications. I'm not even sure they tell their Successor Chapters, or indeed even their fellow companies, anything they don't consider absolutely necessary.

Why does each Chapter do that, though?

Blood Angels are afraid that wider knowledge of their geneseed's curses will lead to the purge of the Chapter, or even maybe the entirety of Sanguinius' bloodline, by the Imperium. There might also be an element of shame, even if they consider overcoming the Flaw one of their most important struggles and, possibly, something to actually be proud of.

Raven Guards, beside possibly subscribing to the "that's none of your business, brother" point of view that is so sorely lacking in our time, have learned the price of trust the hard way during the Horus Heresy. As far as they're concerned, theirs is the only primarch bloodline worthy of trust - at least the trust required to know their secrets.

After all, the captains of their Second and Seventh Companies are literally named Master of Secrets and Master of Lies, respectively.

Beside the two different nuances of this similarity, there's also a divergence of outlooks as far as I can see. Blood Angels are optimistic - and why wouldn't they be? Every single one of them was a rad-scorched, disease-ridden death world-dweller before being reborn into a literal angel. And even though this rebirth brought a whole new struggle in place of trying to survive a planet that wants you dead, it can be fought. Not necessarily beaten, but trying matters. It matters. Legends say Sanguinius inflicted the chink in the Archtraitor's warplate that allowed the God-Emperor to defeat his wayward son... but maybe they're just that, legends, and Sanguinius died for nothing. He might even have known he'd die for exactly just that.

And he faced the disloyal Warmaster anyway.

The Raven Guard, however, I see as more realistic. Not necessarily pessimistic, but much less optimistic than the Blood Angels, though that doesn't mean they're any less idealistic. They're fighting to free Mankind from every tyrant out to enslave it, after all. But as much as they will go out of their way to save civilians and beleaguered imperial guardsmen, they won't hesitate to use them as baits either - and that includes fellow Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes, though I don't know if that includes those from Corax's bloodline.

Though I suspect they wouldn't bat an eyelid either, whether from using trusted friends to gain an advantage on the enemy or from being that bait in the first place. They're not only realists, they're pragmatists as well. And they know they're tools of war first and foremost, though perhaps not to the depth Ferrus Manus did.

Their fathers share a mixture of similarity and difference for their parts. Sanguinius' sons were cursed with the Black Rage from Horus' utter obliteration of his soul (if I understood their duel correctly) whereas the sons of Corax were doomed by the Alpha Legion's tampering of the genetic works the Emperor gave him to rebuild his Legion or, in the older Index Astartes lore, Corax's choice to risk everything to take part in the Heresy once more after the Dropsite Massacre.

Their curses are not the same, of course; the Raven Guard's only struggle is to find uncorrupted geneseed. They don't have anything looming over their soul and self-control.

However, Sanguinius died before he had to deal with the consequences of his last stand whereas Corax... didn't. He had his conscience tortured (at least in the Index Astartes article, since I'm not familiar with the later works on the Raven Guard Legion) to the point he chose to give the Emperor's Peace to the monsters born from his apothecaries following his orders, then left for the Eye of Terror to seek the redemption only found in death... but not by leaving his throat open for the kill from the first legionary he stumbled across, but by butchering every traitor he met, from lowly cultists to the daemon primarchs themselves, because only in death does duty ends.

My imagination can be described as lacking if one is feeling particularly euphemistic, so I don't actually have an idea what your custom Chapter could look like, but I hope this post helped you.

[Race Bannon]

Dark Ravens :yes:

[seriade]

Blood Ravens?

Whoh what do we look like the Thousand Sons we do not want to take credit for those guys :P

[Knight of the Raven]

Dark Ravens

Considering ravens are black, or at most a very dark blue when the sun reflects on their feathers if they're anything like the magpies around here, this doesn't strike me as a name that makes any sense. It'd be like 'light swans,' and at least with that one you can joke about whether 'whiter than white' is see-through.

[WAR]

Going to make Race and me look old here but.

 

Night Ravens and go with black with red accents cause Coooobbbbra

[Shadow Captain Vyper]

KotR's post inspired me to pile-on:

 

Common themes shared between Blood Angels and Raven Guard:

 

Precognition

Empathy paired with Ruthless Pragmatism

A somber sense of self awareness

 

Commonality in their war of warfare:

 

Lightning fast raid/assaults

Jump Infantry

Economy of Force

 

Something they are VERY different on:

 

Symbolism (The Blood Angels are a living symbol, they are very aware of this, and harness it to their advantage, the Raven Guard actively avoid having a reputation/sense of symbolism tied to their actions)

 

Personally I would focus on Dark over Light (color palette wise). I feel like a commonality between a Raven an an Angel would be something like a Grim Reaper or Angel with tattered black/ravenesque wings. 

 

First name I could think of? Aphotic Angels

 

I imagine a Chapter that uses symbolism to their advantage but in a much darker/somber way than the Blood Angels do. Less Hope and Fury, and more Implacable and Cold. Burgandy/Black/Grey/Navy for color choices. Scythes, Winged Skulls, Tattered Wings, etc.

 

I can see them having immeasurable fury but totally silent in their waging of warfare.

[Knight of the Raven]

Common themes shared between Blood Angels and Raven Guard:

 

Precognition

Empathy paired with Ruthless Pragmatism

I wasn't aware the Raven Guard had the former and the Blood Angels had the latter.

 

Commonality in their war of warfare:

 

Lightning fast raid/assaults

Jump Infantry

Economy of Force

Fun fact: according to the Index Astartes article I mentioned, Raven Guards consider Blood Angels "brutish and clumsy," because "a swift dagger in the heart" (through a stab in the back, this being the Raven Guard) just doesn't occur to the sons of Sanguinius.

 

I can't see the Raven Guard refusing to resume fighting necrons after they jointly dealt with tyranids with "because they find turning on an ally distasteful," after all. For the other reasons Blood Angels stopped fighting (their forces being too spent and so on and so forth), yes, but not for that odd reason outlined in the 5th edition Blood Angels codex.

 

(The second paragraph might have been fleshed out/updated with Shield of Baal and all.)

 

Personally I would focus on Dark over Light (color palette wise). I feel like a commonality between a Raven an an Angel would be something like a Grim Reaper or Angel with tattered black/ravenesque wings.

Ravens are indeed carrion birds and bad portents in Western civilization, but they were good omens in the Norsemen's mythology and (I believe) some Native Northern American cultures. More specifically, they were messengers of God (more specifically, Odin) for pagan Scandinavians as far as I know, though I doubt there was such thing as an 'avenging raven' anywhere in their mythology.

 

(Incidentally 'avenging angel' is translated either as is in French... or to 'exterminator angel.' I know which sounds cooler to my ears. ;D)

 

Oh, and there's the obvious detail to work with: which Legion is this Successor Chapter descended from? Raven Guard means no Red Thirst and Black Rage (and probably scurrying about like headless chicken to find viable geneseed) whereas Blood Angels means they'll be there, unless someone tempered with their geneseed before greenlighting the Chapter... and we all know how lucky Lamenters are, don't we?

[Claws and Effect]

Couple things:

 

1) Of course the Raven Guard have empathy. If they didn't, Shrike wouldn't have spent so much time aiding Imperial worlds that had been abandoned to their fate.

 

Generally speaking, they are one of the humanitarian chapters.

 

2) Not all of the Raven Guard geneseed is corrupted. If they draw from the Raptors stock, it would be fairly pute. Remember the Raptors Chapter was originally composed if Corax's experiment that actually worked. The Alpha Legion corrupted rhe SECOND batch.

[Knight of the Raven]

I was asking about the Raven Guard's precognition actually. That's why I bolded in my quote. And like I said, I'm not familiar with anything post-Index Astartes about the Legion. At least not 'I read it with my own eyes' familiar.

 

I also like to exaggerate for humor's sake. I'm weak like that.

[Shadow Captain Vyper]

My comment about precognition is more anecdotal then a direct line for line quote. Here are some examples:

 

When Corax (and later on his Mor Deythan) cite using their Shadow Walk ability, they refer to a facet of that ability as a means to "feel" an enemies movements and attention. This coupled with their ability to will the person to not see them is what makes up their "power". (Ultimately this is an example very mild precognitive and telepathic ability in a warp user).

 

When the whole Branne/Marcus Valerius plot unfolds in Deliverance lots, while its a regular human having visions, its a recurring element, and while Branne himself is very skeptical, when the news is given to Corax he shrugs it off like its "no big deal". 

 

A lot of the battle/hunting squences with Nykona Sharrowkyn definitely drop hints that he is aware of whats going to happen before it does. 

 

Is all the above anecdotal? Sure. Could most of this be explained as just a Hunter's Instinct? I suppose so. I think the authors as of late have been trying to say that there's a certain level of latent/dormant psychic ability within most (some?) Raven Guard that enhances their stealth abilities.