Acacia Marines

[TheNewman]

Like a great many Imperial worlds, the story of humanity's first arrival on Acacia has long been lost to time and calamity. The Emperor's Crusade found the world in a state of near total collapse into barbarism, it's peoples having devolved into nomadic herders. Acacia was found to be both resource poor and ill suited to large scale agriculture, although it was notable for an unusual number of large Terrestrial bio-forms previously thought extinct.

 

Acacia's tough, nomadic population did make them a potential candidate to support a space marine chapter however, and they were eventually flagged during the 21st founding. Originally dubbed the Jade Lions, the chapter quickly renamed itself simply Acacia Marines as it integrated into it's new world. The chapter has adopted it's people's preference for ambush tactics, hit-and-run warfare, and disdain for the notion of glorious last stands. While such attitudes have done little to enhance the chapter's reputation, they may be responsible for it's survival to the present as the Acacia Marines have been plagued by the bad luck common to 21st founding chapters. Even so; the chapter has made notable contributions to several war zones over it's history, conducting campaigns of harassment and misdirection to destroy enemy supply lines and draw hostile forces either away from the targets of larger Imperial formations or into ambushes. Two campaigns particularly celebrated by Acacia Marines themselves are the evacuation and fighting withdrawal from the sparsely populated worlds of Fruno and Helgath in the face of Xenos invasions, the descendants of the original refugees of both worlds now mostly reside on Acacia despite both worlds eventually having been reconquered by Imperial forces.

 

The Acacia Marines' parent chapter is an open question, both their early name change and the curious mix of secondary iconography in their equipment making them hard to pin down, although most outside observers believe they are a White Scar successor. When pressed on their iconography an Acacia Marine will seldom answer with more than "it was a gift from my ally in the field". Whether the phrase means 'he told me to take his sword and win this war for him' or 'your kinsman fought well but died pointlessly so I'm keeping this sword' depends on who's asking. This has caused less friction with other chapters than one might expect since Acacia Marines will use the same phrase when refusing to accept recovered equipment that an ally is attempting to return.

 

The chapter symbol is a stylized tree in bright turquoise, and the chapter colors are a dark blue-green with dull orange for casings on guns, power packs, and other equipment. Acacia Marines are also non-compliant on squad markings, only displaying company badging on the right shoulder pauldron.

Edited February 8, 2022 by TheNewman

[Bjorn Firewalker]

You're off to a good start.

Acacia was found to be both resource poor and ill suited to large scale agriculture, although it was notable for an unusual number of large Terrestrial bio-forms previously thought extinct.

What "large terrestrial bio-forms previously thought extinct" are found on the Chapter planet? Saber-toothed tigers? Wooly mammoths? Ground sloths? Terror birds?

 

What impact do these bio-forms have on the Chapter? Do the Marines ride them in battle, the way the Space Wolves ride Thunderwolves? Do the Chapter's elite units have rites of entry in which prospects must hunt and kill one of these beasts? Do they have specialized vehicles named after these beasts, e.g., the Smilodon gunship, a Stormraven variant with twin Icarus Stormcannon arrays in place of the nose-mounted heavy bolters?

Edited February 8, 2022 by Bjorn Firewalker

[TheNewman]

Lions, bears, rhinoceros, elephants, the sort of large endangered animals that a modern trophy hunter would go after despite the risk of public shaming. Most such animals vanished from Terra ages ago. There are also a number of slow-growing trees (the Acacia included) that are found nowhere else. It's a nod to my deeper head-cannon about how the world was initially populated, no one documenting the Acacia Marines in-universe would have access to that information.

 

Acacians consider there to be no honor in killing such creatures and will not go out of their way to hunt them unless they threaten the herds. Acacia Marines are similarly indifferent, being more likely to name their relics for domesticated animals than wild ones.

Edited February 8, 2022 by TheNewman

[Bjorn Firewalker]

What kind of culture will the Chapter planet's people have? A mix of American Plains Indians and Mongolians, with much reverence for the horse?

 

And what is the Acacia's significance in this culture? A symbol of the Emperor's benevolence, for which the act of chopping down the tree is considered blasphemous?

[TheNewman]

Truth is I only just discovered The Liber and the opportunity to put some of my head-cannon down in writing so it would stop shifting on me was too tempting to pass up.

 

Acacians do consider the tree sacred, a reminder that ultimately all of them came from the same root.

 

I mostly imagine them as steppe peoples, mostly because Acacia won't support any other lifestyle, although there's a healthy dollop of middle-eastern desert nomad in there as well. It's a dry world with poor soil, so living off the animals that can live off the scrub was the the only option for a long time there.

Edited February 9, 2022 by TheNewman

[Codex Grey]

Welcome to the Liber then!

 

Is it your intention to develop a cohesive narrative or article about the Chapter or is more just to record  and develop the ideas you have/want for the Chapter?

Both are completely valid endeavors, but if it's the former, then I would ask what you think is the core ideas/concepts/things you want to get across, or is it mainly the nomadic influences?

 

Also, is there a specific reason for why you chose the Cursed Founding, aside from the general bad luck?

[TheNewman]

Eh, really more the latter than the former. If I'm being honest a lot of it is art imitating life; fluff justifications for models that I own and how I tend to build armies and play the game as much as than anything else.

 

The Cursed Founding is squarely in that territory, my dice are just abysmal and there has to be some sort of justification for it.

[Codex Grey]

The Cursed Founding is squarely in that territory, my dice are just abysmal and there has to be some sort of justification for it.

Fair enough