Cawl's Folly- The Second Cursed Founding

[Evil Eye]

I've always found the "Cursed Founding" (21st?) fascinating; a whole load of Space Marine Chapters being formed from altered gene-seed with the goal of improving His great work...and all turning out horrendously wrong. From terrible mutations to more esoteric but no less crippling problems (such as the Lamenters and their seemingly genetic bad luck), there's something intriguing about the whole thing. Maybe it's the rooting for the underdog nature of such doomed heroes, or maybe it's the horror of unimaginable science going tragically wrong, but either way, it gave rise to the question- what if Cawl, in his infinite "wisdom", decided to push his experiments just a little bit further and, in "playing Emperor", ended up with a repeat of the tragedy of the 21st Founding? Presumably, given his immensely high status and partiality to skullduggery, he'd get away with it, but it would certainly make for an interesting scenario.

 

So anyway, dear Fraters and Sororitas, here is my idea for a collab project- come up with your own "Cursed Chapter" and post them here! Anything goes, the only "rules" are:

1: Being made in the 42nd Millennium by Cawl, such Chapters should ideally be Primaris (though this is not necessarily a hard and fast rule, see below.)

2: The Chapters should be formed with a particular "improvement" or other experimentation in mind. This could be anything, from new Astartes organs to trying to augment older applicants, or even pushing the Firstborn anatomy to its limit to try and reduce the strain on Primaris-specific equipment.

3: There must be some form of problem with the Chapter that would justify the Founding being "cursed". This again can be anything from horrendous deviation of the flesh to mental trauma to low survival rates or, well, anything else.

 

Other guidelines and suggestions:

>Post some fluff about your Chapter. You don't have to go overboard and write a novel, but obviously the more descriptive the better!
>Imagery, be it in model or art form is welcome but by no means necessary.

>Be sure to mention what gene-seed the Chapter uses (unless it's a secret, or maybe Cawl tried making his own from scratch? Either way, best detail that!).

>The fate of the Chapter is entirely up to you. Whether they entered service regardless of their shortcomings, were mercy-killed by the Inquisition or turned traitor, it doesn't matter.

 

I'll post a short(ish) example. Warning, contains female Astartes!

 

The Daughters of Russ, the Thunder Maidens and the Keepers of Wisdom:

Fluff:

It is a well known fact that only males can be made Astartes- the particular bioalchemical processes and new organ implantations, for whatever reason, do not seem to take well to the female body, and as such the Space Marines are exclusively men. Cawl, recognizing that this excluded half the human population from being potential Astartes material, believed it was in mankind's interest, and within his talents, to fix this flaw, and endeavoured to create the first true female Space Marines, utilizing an altered version of the Primaris template.

 

As such, in true Astartes recruitment fashion, girls were drafted from three separate planets- the temperate, civilized world of Lothriackt, the tropical feudal world of Alaho III, and (to no small amount of reluctance from Logan Grimnar) the Space Wolves' home planet of Fenris. There was reasoning for these choices- of the gene-seed available, three candidates had been earmarked as promising for this project. Ultramarine stock was extremely stable and therefore would be unlikely to result in mutations. Space Wolf seed, meanwhile, was chosen as due to the sheer dominance of the Canis Helix, it was theorized that it would be able to overcome the zygote keying problem and bond successfully. Finally, White Scar geneseed was found to be some of the least aggressive with its reliance on male biology and was selected as such. Lothriackt's girls would be given Ultramarine geneseed, Alaho III's White Scar and Fenris' daughters would of course be given Space Wolf DNA.

 

A vast amount of girls were abducted, as it was believed that in order to solve the problem of producing female Astartes, many would not survive the process even compared to standard "volunteers". Cawl was confident, however, that it would be worth the loss- if he could perfect the process, future batches would be much safer to produce.

 

Alas, things did not go smoothly at all. Nearly three quarters of applicants did not survive the process, and of those that did, most were either horrendously traumatized by the process or suffered rapid tissue degeneration or organ rejection and soon expired. In total, nearly 99.98% of the applicants failed in some regard. Most notably, the Ultramarine descendants were some of the least successful, as the stability of the geneseed worked against them, refusing to adapt to female bodies. The Space Wolf applicants had higher survival rates, but a great deal of them suffered from unacceptable levels of mutation. Interestingly, the White Scar geneseed was found to be the most viable, albeit by a small margin and not enough to classify the experiment as anything other than a complete disaster.

 

The 0.02% that survived were able to be made into fully-fledged Space Marines, albeit it was found that, whilst still superhuman by any mortal standard, they were slightly weaker than a "standard" Primaris Space Marine, about on par with Firstborn. Whilst Cawl was convinced he could refine the process further and produce a successful formula for female Space Marines, his requests for more applicants were denied due to the sheer costliness, both in resources and human life, that his experiments had entailed.

 

The surviving Space Marines were at the very least not wasted. The Ultramarine-based Astartes were named the "Keepers of Wisdom" and were mostly appointed as guardians of Inquisitorial stations- of the three groups they were found to be the most compliant, and also the most disciplined and cool-headed, which made them ideal allies to the Inquisition. The White Scars descendants became known as the "Thunder Maidens" and of the three were the only ones to become an independent chapter under Chapter Mistress Persephone Indra, albeit a very small one that would mostly work in conjunction with other Imperial forces. The Space Wolf survivors were returned to Fenris, and named the "Daughters of Russ" were effectively folded into the larger Space Wolves chapter.

 

Whilst the survivors of Cawl's experiments have fought with the valour and zeal of any pure servant of the Emperor, the whole affair was a major blot on his record, and has strained relations with the Mechanicus and other Imperial institutions severely.

 

OOC details:

An attempt to try and justify lore-friendly female Space Marines without breaking the tone of 40K or causing too many fluff-violations, pretty much. I figured that if anyone would try and do it (not counting the Dark Mechanicum) it would be Cawl, and it would make for an interesting case of the classic "Why did nobody try this- oh, that's why, it doesn't work!" blunder we've all run afoul of...just, usually not with such dire consequences!

 

As for the individual Chapters, the Keepers of Wisdom are semi-inspired by a dream I had (albeit they only appeared very briefly). I was thinking their colours would be predominantly burgundy-purple with white accents, and would have an overall Greco-Roman theme much like their parent Chapter, perhaps pushed a little bit towards the Greek side. Being closely tied with the Inquisition, and due to their overall demeanour, they would have a somewhat scholarly focus; each Marine would be considerably learned, with intellect and wits prized above sheer brawn, and would work to recover and guard sensitive archives too valuable to destroy. This could always be represented with books and scrolls if you wanted to model them.

 

The Thunder Maidens would be quite similar in colours to the White Scars, but with the red accents replaced with green maybe? I was thinking of a vaguely Southeast Asian theme to them for a "similar but different" vibe to their ancestors. Specifically I was thinking of Indonesia, Vietnam or Cambodia for inspiration (also to differentiate them from the tragically extinct homebrew Sororitas Order of mine, the Virtuous Deed, who prior to falling to Nurgle and becoming the Rotten Heart were basically from Space Philippines).

 

Finally, the Daughters of Russ are quite simple as they would to all intents and purposes be female Space Wolves. If you needed to differentiate them a bit, you could always either play up the barbarian aspect (Red Sonja, except with actual power armour and not a chainmail bikini!) or go for Norse Valkyries for inspiration. Either works!

 

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Over to you!

[Gamiel]

Crimson Bulls

The Crimson Bulls are a Chapter of warrior-scholars, students not just of warfare and personal combat but of philosophy, mathematic and architecture. They have a focus on discipline, self-control, keeping calm and meditation. The interior of their fortress-monastery and ships are full with libraries, mediation chamber, sand mandala creation rooms, and geometric pattern that they use to centre themself, or just simple symbolism, which is sometime hidden - what many think of as simple decorations may in fact be an indication for the anointed that something hidden is behind it, as a battle-brother rises in rank he learns more and more about the real meaning of those symbols.

The labyrinth is a returning symbol for the Crimson Bulls and as a battle-brother joins a new company, or is given a rank of office he is let into a labyrinth that he has to traverse, one way or another. With each new labyrinth being harder to solve then the previous one. Many of the battle-brothers design labyrinths, or more practical buildings, in their free time (it's not unusually for a new brother to be given a dead brother's unfinished plans to work on) and some even begin to build them.

 

Their symbol is a crimson bull head on cream, and their armour is crimson and cream, often with bronze as spot colour. Horned helmets are common. [use Minoan, and Vedic period names]

 

The Crimson Bulls are a in most ways a Codex Chapter, even if they have an unusually large Librarium (larger than the Blood Ravens, themself known for their many Librarians, if reports are correct) and their Librarian are trained to ground themself, not unlike the Rune Priests and Stormseers of the Space Wolves and White Scars, even if the Bulls Librarians in most other ways are similar to the Codex standard. One of the other ways they are different are that it's not until the rank of Epistolary that the Librarian is expected to focus only on the Librarius discipline, and even as Epistolary, or even Chief Librarian, they are expected (and trained in) to only use the Fulmination discipline for wardings. They do this because they see the offensive use of psyker powers as something that a Librarian can easily lose himself into and draw to much of the Warp for his own good.

 

This caution has its reason in that when one of the Crimson Bulls' Librarians loses his control, even by a little, he uncontrollably mutates, this has also happened to battle-brothers with undiscovered psykick talent when they let their discipline slip (and therefor the Bulls regularly screen their members for any kind of growing talent so they can be taken to the Librarium for training). This is the Chapter's dark secret and something they have sullied their honour to protect. Thankfully the mutations more often than not are not so severe that they destroy the brother's armour, even if it often makes his body spasm around before stopping in a unnatural pose. But sometime the curse have led to the creation of what best can be described as a Chaos Spawn that survives the breaking of its former armour. It is also not unusual that as the change begin the Librarian loses control of his power and kill himself (and anybody near him) in a Warp explosion. This curse have also led the Bulls into highly investing in psy-focis and any kind of wardings they can get their hands on, be it esoteric markings on their armour or psy-dampening tech. All to often the Chapter find that they have more psykers than psy-tech, to help them control their powers, and at those times they have had to slay their own to prevent them from losing themselves to the Warp.

 

Maybe because of their curse, maybe because of their high amount of psykers, maybe something else, but many Chaos Sorcerers and daemons seems to find them naturally interesting and want to use them in rituals, for possession, or just eat them.

 

The Crimson Bulls are an attempt by Cawl to fix the gene-seed of the Thousand Sons so they don’t suffer from the flesh-change, he succeeded in a way but not fully. As for now he has secret agents among the Crimson Bulls that keep tabs on them and what they do, and have all their gene-seed tithe secretly shipped to him for further studies. He also tries to get his hands on fallen Bulls when he can and any brother that has fallen to the curse especially. All this is done for further studies so maybe the next version will be more successful.

Edited September 3, 2021 by Gamiel

[Gamiel]

Bone Cutters

Symbol: in red, a knife and a bone crossed, [use Space Wolves’ Swift Claws transfers] usually on white, even if variations on other colours (usually green or green and white) do appear.

Colours: Helmet, left pauldron, and left arm (including hand) are white, the rest of the armour is green [sons of Medusa green more than Dark Angels green], with company colours on right shoulder plate rim. Any kinds of personal/honour/similar markings are often in red. Many of them decorate their armour with the scrimshawed bones of their fallen brothers.

 

Highly stoic and unemotional, as a Chapter they don't know how to read human faces, body language or emotions, and even have problem reading fellow space marines many times. This makes it hard for them to interact with non-transhumans and many baseline humans (even some transhumans) find them uncomfortable to be near and find them less human than servitors. The Cutters are cold and methodical, what they do they do because that’s what they have been created for - no hatred, pride, anger, or love motivates them of fire up their souls, they are as cold on the inside as they are on the outside. This makes many unwilling to work near them, and the Cutters find it easier to interact with allies over vox.

 

But this emotionlessness seems to have a point where it breaks. It has been observed by a few but during times of prolonged high stress situation (by astartes standard) have some of the battle-brothers snapped and either gone completely berserk – running toward the nearest enemy in a fury and then continued until the marine dies, either from wounds or from exhaustion – or just become completely apathic – just sitting or standing there doing nothing until they die or their brothers take them away.

 

The Bone Cutters are a Codex Chapter in all ways possible, and it have actually been noted by those that know astartes that they have little in the way of culture of their own: they do little but study, train, maintain and/or repair their wargear (including their ships) and do the ceremonies that are mentioned in the Codex. Beside their tendency to scrimshaw the bones of their fallen brothers (usually squad mates), and decorate their armour and arms with it so is their only one thing that others have found to be not of the Codex: when they are with others do the Cutters have a tradition of only eating the bones and marrow (they are not too picky if their some flesh left on the bones) of prey or cattle that they have slain, and give the real meat to those they are with.

 

 

 

The Bone Cutters are of Angron’s stock, manipulated by Cawl to lacking his rage and bloodlust but it come at the price of them being nearly without emotions. This is what makes them hard to read by others, and they themselves being unable to read others, and makes their decisions never blinded by emotions. It also makes it impossible for them to draw upon their hatred (or other emotions) to give themselves a boost when they need it. That some of them mentally crack under prolonged pression was something that was only discovered after Cawl had let them lose in the galaxy and the Bone Cutters chapter had served for decades. This interest Cawl, as the scientist he claims to be, and he have agents keeping him informed about how things are developing.

Edited October 2, 2021 by Gamiel