Black Dragons successor?

[Zephaniah Adriyen]

I was thinking, and... I want to convert some Black Dragons models. However, I don't want to run actual Black Dragons, because then I have to stick to regular lore. I was thinking Reivers rules for specialized Dragons melee models. However, I'm not sure if the Black Dragons can have a successor. Thoughts?

[Zhiv]

Well, your miniatures, your fluff.  GW has implicitly said that they want people to develop their own fluff.

 

That being said, it is unlikely that the Black Dragon gene stock would have been used during 22nd founding as the issues became evident rather quickly (?).  Meaning that the magos who keep stock of the geneseed would have been very aware of the abnormalities and thus... not allowed the geneseed to be used.

 

So how to work around this?  Mislabeled geneseed - a chapter was founded and someone messed up.. and now we have Black Dragons successor.  Unlikely but at least within the realms of plausible.

[Brother Tyler]

Alternately, since the 21st Founding was very large, perhaps you have another Chapter with similar mutations from that founding.

 

Or you might have [elements of] an Adeptus Astartes strike force that, through exposure to the Warp, has suffered some mutations.

 

Or you might have a Chapter that is in the process of turning to Chaos - they haven't fully turned yet (i.e., they use one of the loyalist codices vice Codex: Space Marines), but they're on the path and are suffering mutations.

 

Or you have a Chapter that has incorporated iconography and armour attachments that are similar to the mutations of the Black Dragons.

[Ryltar Thamior]

The main questions are when you're setting your chapter [i.e. is it post Cursed Founding, or post Ultima Founding]; and who's had the chapter created and why. 

There are a few possibilities, including  that it wasn't a 'proper' successor chapter - but rather, in a kind of inversion of Tiger Claws into Astral Claws, a splinter of Black Dragons that've developed their own heraldry and panoply for some reason ["Why, of *course* we're not the Black Dragons ... we've heard unfortunate things about those guys .. we're the uh ... Sable Dragonnes .. yes, that will do!"]. Another possibility to examine is how or whether the Salamanders have anything to do with all of this - if i recall, there's an instance of a Black Dragons scout being accepted into the Salamanders post-Armageddon, although i might have some details wrong. 

Some AdMech, Inquisition, or other Imperial factotum high-up might have decided that the Black Dragons have 'potential', but due to tarnished reputation, and the relatively less predictable nature of the mutations in question, chosen to do some 'refinements' and start from another slate with the same basic template. 

Or maybe a chapter's ranking master apothecary decides to make some 'tweaks' to his brethren's geneseed in a bid to correct a flaw in his chapter's lineage's ossmodula ... and accidentally prods it a bit too far in the other direction. Or somebody's just trying to get a more resilient Marine and starts with the ossmodula, and takes it from functional to potentially hyperfunctional upon occasion ... but only in particular ways, hence arm-blades, occasionally. Or, in either case, 'test-bed' alterations on geneseed never meant for implantation .. wind up making their way back into the chapter's 'gene[seed] pool' either via accidental mixup, or the curious 'warp/psychic resonance' of geneseed. [hence why you get geneseed all undergoing spontaneous corruption at the same time , despite significant separations in physical location and local situation] ; thus leading to occasional flare-ups. 

If it's (post) Ultima Founding [i.e. Primaris], then who knows *what* shenanigans Cawl's gotten up to, since turning up again in the wider Imperium. It might even be a case of the Magnificat in Primaris geneseed interacting 'curiously' with a latente gene-flaw in an otherwise regular Astartes chapter's geneseed [ossmodula again, most likely] when they start rolling out Primaris upgrade procedures. 

The underlying genetics of a recruitment population of aspirants might *also* cause "unpredictable" but "stable" mutations once Marine geneseed implantation takes place in some cases. 

Or maybe the arm-blades aren't even bone-spurs and are just external armour fittings because they're useful in combat or derived from the homeworld's traditional duelling culture, or somebody saw some Black Dragons once and thought "that looks pretty legit/killy".