Codex Adeptus Astartes: Ardent Swords (WIP)

[Knightsword]

December 2023 update - It's been a long time since I've posted any updated versions of this Codex. It's been revised many times, and depending on how the End of the Death III plays out I may have to revise the chapter origin ideas I have again, or just go with head cannon for certain elements.

 

Also here is the work in progress thread for the actual models. Please click here.

 

Teaser:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 24, 2023 by Knightsword

[Knightsword]

The formatting seemed to be the victim of scrap code on this post so I've deleted it in an effort to not ruin anyone's eyes.

Edited December 24, 2023 by Knightsword

[Bjorn Firewalker]

You need to write two versions of this IA, one for the Imperium's general public, and one kept secret from all save the Chapter's leaders (and us forum members, as we're behind the Fourth Wall).

The loss of their records is accredited by the Chapter to a legendary battle in which the Captain of the 1st Company fell to Chaos and led a host of daemons against the Chapter, tearing the Fortress Monastery asunder.

If the Inquisition gets word an Ardent Swords Company turned traitor, it WILL order the entire Chapter purged, "just in case." For this reason, loyalist Chapters tend to deal with such problems on their own, unknowingly aping the Dark Angels in the process.

 

The Ardent Swords need a cover story to tell any outsiders who ask. Best say, "The [insert Chaos Space Marines of choice] attacked our Chapter keep, and our then First Company was wiped out to a man in its defense. The then First Captain's name? Captain... Bob. Brave man, the very model of a Space Marine, he died like a hero."

[Knightsword]

I'm working on an IA length one too, it's just taking a long time to decide what to cut/how to shorten.

 

It should read that only the first company captain fell to corruption, not the entire 1st company. It does state that the defence is composed of the 1st and 6th company forces still on the homeworld. If this isn't how it reads then I will look at rewording it. I was going more along the lines of Constantinius of the Ultramarines.

Edited January 20, 2018 by Knightsword

[Brother Lunkhead]

Very fine work Brother Knightsword I really like what you've done. Brother Bjorn makes an interesting point about making two IA's. It definitely has merit. In the end however, you are the Master of your DIY Chapter, so stay steady on coarse and enjoy your work. 

[Sugarlessllama]

This is outstanding work. 

[Knightsword]

Timeline section added to the bottom of the original post along with a short story entitled "Homecoming".

[Bjorn Firewalker]

The additional details are well done. I have questions regarding the following, however.

Artair had fallen and was now in league with Morgan.

"Long live Artair!"

As Gwain knows Artair is fallen, why is he honoring a traitor before his battle-brothers? One possible explanation is that Artair actually fell in battle; the "Artair" that presented itself as in league with Morgan, is actually a Daemonhost, the Daemon bound within Artair's corpse. (Their are literary precedents for this. See Borchu, a loyal White Scar whose body was similarly desecrated after his death.) Gwain can thus rightly claim Artair remained loyal unto death, and the Pendragon deserves to be honored.

 

I'm curious about Caliburn's sentience and anti-Daemon properties. Is a fragment of the Emperor's essence bound within the blade? A Daemon of Malice, whose hatred of all other Chaos gods makes it anathema to Daemons who serve them? A Necron creation, its construction material sharing the Cadian Pylons' anti-Warp properties? An anti-Warp device with integral (and manmade) AI controls, from the Dark Age of Technology?

[Knightsword]

Pants, you've just found bits from an older draft that has slipped through my net. Thank you! It was just an impostor in my latest draft and a corrupted Artair in the draft previous to that, but I love the idea that it's Artair's corpse that is possessed. I'm going to amend it to that when I get chance.

 

As for Caliburn you've hit the nail on the head. I have a short story about the forging of Caliburn during the Age of Strife. It can either be read as a Daemon/fragment of malice or something akin to a living saint being bound to the sword to fight an apocalyptic daemonic invasion. I haven't decided which way to go yet, though the Daemon of Malice holds more potential for story telling I feel.

Edited January 24, 2018 by Knightsword

[Knightsword]

I'm thinking of majorly re-hashing the format of my OP. I've caught the bug after doing the timeline in the codex page style and now have almost the entire codex done this way. I'm tempted to do something more like Commissar Molotov's Castigators page and link out to the codex proper or add all pages as images (although I'm aware that could possibly cause people issues). What are people's thoughts?

[Knightsword]

Big edit to the original post. Many thanks to Bjorn for the idea of an IA article as well as the full Codex. Please give both a read.

[Minigiant]

That is pretty sweet, I am impressed.

 

The Codex idea is my idea ;-) Bjorn has been helping me with it as well.

 

I have not done anything to do with graphic design or layout really yet, how did you do it?I have just been really busy just writing content, planning artwork, and prepping to build the army for the pictures

 

I would love to pick your brain

[Wargamer]

Wow, you put a lot of work into this!

 

I'm not going to comment on the lore just yet, in part because the format isn't ideal for looking at on screen - having to scroll up and down while reading a single page is off-putting. However, I did want to give some feedback on the rules you made.

 

Lord Gwain:

So first point - he's a Chapter Master with a Bs of 3+? That's very strange. Even if he's meant to be combat focused, it should be 2+.

Next, he's a Terminator so he shouldn't have grenades or a bolt pistol. You simply do not see these weapons on Terminators. Also, he doesn't have an Iron Halo in his wargear, but his special rules say he does.

Speaking of, Soul Blaze is a clunky rule that doesn't fit with the design of 8th. It's really not clear how or when you determine whether a unit is on fire, it seems bizarre that the fire can kill models he never hit, and it just produces unnecessary book-keeping. His weapon is already incredibly powerful - a power-fist with no -1 to hit that has bonuses vs Monsters? That's more than enough! He doesn't need Soul Blaze on top of that! Especially considering he has 6 attacks.

Lastly... Prydwen. I really do not like the fact you've basically given him a better version of the Armour of Antilochus. Calgar's armour is meant to be one of the finest suits of Tactical Dreadnought Armour the Imperium has ever produced, and you just happen to have an even better one. Not a great approach.

 

I think you need to settle on what this guy's gimmick is - is he utterly unkillable? Is he an amazing fighter? Or does he swing an Uber-Fist? One of these alone is more than enough for a homebrew Chapter Master.

 

Knight of the Sword:

So it's a Dark Angels Champion with a 2+ save and bodyguard. Okay... but he doesn't seem to be paying for it. 44 points to essentially give your already uber-tough Chapter Master an additional four wounds? That's not enough, not by a long shot. These guys need to be in the 60 point range just because of how utterly broken they have the potential to be.

[Knightsword]

Apologies Minigiant, credit goes to you then for the codex idea  Its done with Photoshop and lots of patience, depending on what's on the page it can take a couple of hours to get everything just right. I have the codexes as hi-res PDFs so I can directly import the pages into Photoshop and split everything into different layers so they can be changed more easily. The only downside to this is the lack of spellcheck in Photoshop which means constant amendments to grammar. I've got the blank page bases saved as jpegs if you'd like access to them for your own project? I imagine you can get open source software similar to Photoshop to work on them with.
 
Thanks Wargamer. Sorry for the scale of the images, I've amended them in the original post to 990 pixels tall so they should sit a bit nicer on a screen.
 
I have to say that was more critique on the rules than I was expecting, thank you. On a side note if you think the Chapter Master is bad in these rules, you should have seen his alpha rules when I initially ported them over from their 7th edition format 
 
This is exactly why I asked for comments on the rules. It's all well and good me writing something and trying to bring my fluff to life, but without outside opinion something that I think is fine might not be due to my bias. Initially I did look at Calgar's profile as inspiration for what a Chapter Master should be like, however the shield is just the Shield Eternal relic with a name change which is available to any Character with a combat or storm shield. If this is treated as a balancing act I'm guessing in order to keep the rules for Prydwen as they are then the sword would need to be made a simple beat stick with no rules and 1 damage or adopt the power fist or thunder hammer stats with -1 to hit? I am however keen to find try and find a way to keep Soul Blaze as it's a core piece of fluff for the character. In your opinion do you think there's a way of making something like Soul Blaze work? And if so how to balance this with the Shield Eternal rules? Suggestions  on how to make him work are very welcome. Ideally I'd like to go more towards the amazing fighter route with him.
 
As for the Knight of the Sword, that should actually be 3+. I've probably copied the layer for the WS text and forgot to amend it. With that as 3+ how many points do you reckon the bodyguard ability is worth? Still clocking the overall cost at 60ish? What if bodyguard is made a 3+ rather than 2+? Would that be more around 50ish points?

Edited February 15, 2018 by Knightsword

[Minigiant]

Apologies Minigiant, credit goes to you then for the codex idea  Its done with Photoshop and lots of patience, depending on what's on the page it can take a couple of hours to get everything just right. I have the codexes as hi-res PDFs so I can directly import the pages into Photoshop and split everything into different layers so they can be changed more easily. The only downside to this is the lack of spellcheck in Photoshop which means constant amendments to grammar. I've got the blank page bases saved as jpegs if you'd like access to them for your own project? I imagine you can get open source software similar to Photoshop to work on them with.

 

 

Thank you very much, lots of help. I was trying to avoid having to learn Photoshop, it is a little bit daunting to be honest. I have a high res pdf version. I was worried about grammatical errors so have everything written in microsoft word. If you think either of us can help eachother in anyway send me a PM

 

I have to say that was more critique on the rules than I was expecting, thank you. On a side note if you think the Chapter Master is bad in these rules, you should have seen his alpha ruleswhen I initially ported them over from their 7th edition format 

 

Have you considered you are going about this the wrong way. Instead of scratch building special rules, have you thought about just "reskinning" existing rules. For example my codex Chapter Master is Marneus Calgar in disguise with an alternative weapon that happens to work the same way as two giant power fists. My entire chapter is reskinned Ultramarines with rule names with descriptions changed

[Wargamer]

This is exactly why I asked for comments on the rules. It's all well and good me writing something and trying to bring my fluff to life, but without outside opinion something that I think is fine might not be due to my bias. Initially I did look at Calgar's profile as inspiration for what a Chapter Master should be like, however the shield is just the Shield Eternal relic with a name change which is available to any Character with a combat or storm shield. If this is treated as a balancing act I'm guessing in order to keep the rules for Prydwen as they are then the sword would need to be made a simple beat stick with no rules and 1 damage or adopt the power fist or thunder hammer stats with -1 to hit? I am however keen to find try and find a way to keep Soul Blaze as it's a core piece of fluff for the character. In your opinion do you think there's a way of making something like Soul Blaze work? And if so how to balance this with the Shield Eternal rules? Suggestions  on how to make him work are very welcome. Ideally I'd like to go more towards the amazing fighter route with him.

 

As for the Knight of the Sword, that should actually be 3+. I've probably copied the layer for the WS text and forgot to amend it. With that as 3+ how many points do you reckon the bodyguard ability is worth? Still clocking the overall cost at 60ish? What if bodyguard is made a 3+ rather than 2+? Would that be more around 50ish points?

Something to consider is that an army is only meant to have one relic. If your Chapter Master effectively has the Shield Eternal, that still means another character could have a relic as well. This is important to keep in mind, but I think it's also done deliberately so that "ordinary" characters can feel in some way comparable to named ones.  The thing to keep in mind from a balance perspective is that your army could in theory run the Chapter Master and another model with Shield Eternal or some other relic. I'd personally go with making Prydwen a relic unique to the Chapter, and that if you field the Chapter Master he is required to take it as the army's Relic. This would probably justify a drop in points on the model as well.

 

As to the sword... here are a few ideas for Soul Blaze:

 

Option 1: On a roll of 6 to wound, the bearer inflicts 1 Mortal Wound on the target unit in addition to any other damage caused.

Option 2a: The bearer of the sword gains +D3 S4 AP -1 D1 attacks.

Option 2b: As above, but the attacks hit automatically.

Option 3: Soul Blaze is a ranged attack with the following profile: Range 3" Pistol D3 S4 AP-1 D1. Ranged attacks made with Soul Blaze hit automatically.

 

Personally, I'd go with #1 or #4 myself.

 

For the sword's rules myself, I think the bonus vs monsters on top of Soul Blaze is a touch overkill. Either ability would be enough on its own to make a unique and powerful weapon worthy of a Chapter Master.

[Knightsword]

 

 

Thank you very much, lots of help. I was trying to avoid having to learn Photoshop, it is a little bit daunting to be honest. I have a high res pdf version. I was worried about grammatical errors so have everything written in microsoft word. If you think either of us can help eachother in anyway send me a PM

 

I felt the same years ago when I had to learn it for uni, but it's not as daunting as you may think. I only use the basic tools with the exception of quick masks for selecting specific areas to cut or copy. It's worth a play around with if you get chance.

 

 

Have you considered you are going about this the wrong way. Instead of scratch building special rules, have you thought about just "reskinning" existing rules. For example my codex Chapter Master is Marneus Calgar in disguise with an alternative weapon that happens to work the same way as two giant power fists. My entire chapter is reskinned Ultramarines with rule names with descriptions changed

 

 I had considered this method at first but the lure of scratch building rules was too strong.

 

 

 

Something to consider is that an army is only meant to have one relic. If your Chapter Master effectively has the Shield Eternal, that still means another character could have a relic as well. This is important to keep in mind, but I think it's also done deliberately so that "ordinary" characters can feel in some way comparable to named ones.  The thing to keep in mind from a balance perspective is that your army could in theory run the Chapter Master and another model with Shield Eternal or some other relic. I'd personally go with making Prydwen a relic unique to the Chapter, and that if you field the Chapter Master he is required to take it as the army's Relic. This would probably justify a drop in points on the model as well.

 

I get where you're coming from with this. That would make it work more realistically indeed. You've also just given me the idea of making a Chapter relics page for the Codex 

 

 

As to the sword... here are a few ideas for Soul Blaze:

 

Option 1: On a roll of 6 to wound, the bearer inflicts 1 Mortal Wound on the target unit in addition to any other damage caused.

Option 2a: The bearer of the sword gains +D3 S4 AP -1 D1 attacks.

Option 2b: As above, but the attacks hit automatically.

Option 3: Soul Blaze is a ranged attack with the following profile: Range 3" Pistol D3 S4 AP-1 D1. Ranged attacks made with Soul Blaze hit automatically.

 

Personally, I'd go with #1 or #4 myself.

 

For the sword's rules myself, I think the bonus vs monsters on top of Soul Blaze is a touch overkill. Either ability would be enough on its own to make a unique and powerful weapon worthy of a Chapter Master.

 

I really like these ideas and I agree that #1 and #4 are the best out of those. I do feel that #1 has been used a quite a lot so I'd lean more towards #4 being what I would go with. Also I keep forgetting that you can fire pistols whilst in combat. Can you fire pistols at the unit you are in combat with or does it have to be a different unit? Getting rid of the monster bonus is a given with these ideas.

[Wargamer]

If you are within 1" of the enemy you can fire your pistol, but it has to be at the nearest enemy unit.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Chaplains aiding the Librarians in their task, and recounting deceased battle-brothers' deeds at prayer, are good details that help make this Chapter distinctive.

 

I wish to know what the "Knight Dreadnoughts" look like. Will you model them with Forge World's Leviathan Siege Dreadnoughts? The Space Wolves Dreadnought, which has a power axe and shield as options? With the Grey Knights Dreadknight, which has a force sword as an option? Or will you mount a Dreadnought sarcophagus to an Imperial Knight?

[Knightsword]

Updated the rules per Wargamer's suggestions and also uploaded the beta rules for 3 more units.

 

I wish to know what the "Knight Dreadnoughts" look like. Will you model them with Forge World's Leviathan Siege Dreadnoughts? The Space Wolves Dreadnought, which has a power axe and shield as options? With the Grey Knights Dreadknight, which has a force sword as an option? Or will you mount a Dreadnought sarcophagus to an Imperial Knight?

 

Not quite sure of that myself yet. I've been thinking on one of 2 combos so far; 1) using the Galatus as a base with the Dreadknight's sword hand, or 2) making an unholy combination of the Leviathan, Galatus, and Dreadknight. The Telemon dreadnought could also look fantastic for part of this.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 18, 2018 by Knightsword

[Minigiant]

Updated the rules per Wargamer's suggestions and also uploaded the beta rules for 3 more units.

 

I wish to know what the "Knight Dreadnoughts" look like. Will you model them with Forge World's Leviathan Siege Dreadnoughts? The Space Wolves Dreadnought, which has a power axe and shield as options? With the Grey Knights Dreadknight, which has a force sword as an option? Or will you mount a Dreadnought sarcophagus to an Imperial Knight?

 

Not quite sure of that myself yet. I've been thinking on one of 2 combos so far; 1) using the Galatus as a base with the Dreadknight's sword hand, or 2) making an unholy combination of the Leviathan, Galatus, and Dreadknight. The Telemon dreadnought could also look fantastic for part of this.

 

May I offer up these as an option

[Bjorn Firewalker]

With Strength 7, it seems a Contemptor Dreadnought is the most appropriate base for the Knight Dreadnought. (Forge World's downloaded rules for the Custodes' Telemon Heavy Dreadnought give it Strength 9, so if you want to use the Telemon as the Knight's base, you should raise its stats as well.)

[Commissar Molotov]

Hi, 

 

I just wanted to post that you've put a great deal of effort into giving your Chapter the visual polish that I think all DIY creators aspire towards! As someone who has been attempting on-and-off to create a PDF of my Chapter for years, I'm envious! 

 

You should be very proud of what you have achieved thus far. 

 

Mol. 

[Knightsword]

 

May I offer up these as an option

 

You may offer that up indeed. That looks awesome, as do the Confessor suits you've converted. I'm going to bookmark that for another idea later on the down the line when I've practiced my green stuff skills more thoroughly. I definitely can't achieve that level of smooth and even surfaces for armour plating yet.

 

With Strength 7, it seems a Contemptor Dreadnought is the most appropriate base for the Knight Dreadnought. (Forge World's downloaded rules for the Custodes' Telemon Heavy Dreadnought give it Strength 9, so if you want to use the Telemon as the Knight's base, you should raise its stats as well.)

 

Contemptor base it is then. I can use the Telemon for the Knight Dreadnought named character if I ever get round to him.

 

Hi, 

 

I just wanted to post that you've put a great deal of effort into giving your Chapter the visual polish that I think all DIY creators aspire towards! As someone who has been attempting on-and-off to create a PDF of my Chapter for years, I'm envious! 

 

You should be very proud of what you have achieved thus far. 

 

Mol. 

 

Thank you very much! I must be honest it was partly because of your thread for your Castigators chapter that I decided to re-do the layout in my first post and host the Codex on dropbox. I've been dipping in out of the Castigator's thread for ages now, and trying to work through Minigiant's IA too. Not enough time to read everything at the moment.

 

On a seperate note; I've uploaded the blank pages for both the Index and Codex to my dropbox as jpegs, as well as PSD file versions with the text boxes, titles and layers in place if anyone is interested in using them. I think I'm going to post them in a dedicated thread later. Would the main Liber stub be best for posting these or just make a new thread in the Liber Astartes section?

Edited February 19, 2018 by Knightsword

[Knightsword]

Updated original post. See for details.