Lacere's Reivers (40K Campaign faction Background)

[Stoneface]

Lacere’s Reivers

Lacere is the current Captain of the Flesh Tearers Space Marine Chapter’s 5th company, and leads them from his flagship, the strike cruiser Golgotha. A violent and fanatical devotee of the Imperial Creed, he is considered something of a butcher, even by the standards of his fellow Flesh Tearers. A disciple of the infamous Chapter Master Gabriel Seth, Lacere is a veteran of a thousand wars, and with each passing decade edges closer to the gene-madness known as the Black Rage which threatens all Astates of Sanguinius’s bloodline.

 

That was until the onset of the Indomitus Crusade launched by the returned Primarch Roboute Guilliman. When Gulliman’s forces reached Baal they revealed their precious cargo, thousands of new ‘Primaris’ Space Marine’s, created using the same gene seed of their blessed Primarch Sanguinius, they reinvigorated the ranks of the sorely depleted Blood Angel’s and their successor chapters. Not only this, but with their fresh gene seed, free of the millennia of degeneration suffered by the Blood Angel’s and their kin, it was thought that this ‘fresh blood’ would bring an end to the nightmarish fate the Black Rage had for long ages inflicted.

 

Not everyone was happy to see these newcomers however. Gabriel Seth and most of his Flesh Tearers were immediately distrustful and disdainful in equal measure. What did these new upstarts know of the proud history of the Blood Angel’s and their successors? They had remained in stasis since the Heresy. They certainly knew nothing of the cruel ravages of the Black Rage. To the Flesh Tearers the grim trials born merely from existing had become hard wired into their identity. Their chapter consciousness shaped as much by a kind of bitter pride than the noble repose indicative of their parent chapter.

 

Lacere was even more contemptuous than most, sneering at the ‘Kul-raada’ as he called them, an epithet from the Flesh Tearers home world Cretacia meaning ‘Friendly foreigners’. Still it was decreed that the Flesh Tearers should be brought up to full strength with the Primaris Marine’s, and so it was. Attrition rates suffered among the new Primaris was high, especially within Lacere’s 5th Company. Some darkly whispered that these new units were being thrown into frontal meat grinder assaults with reckless abandon, some even called it a purge.

 

Whatever Lacere’s feelings towards the original Primaris brought by Gulliman, the gene strength they wielded by these new warriors was obvious. Larger, more resilient and robust, Lacere and many of his men lusted nakedly for and craved the abilities the Primaris exhibited, if not for their own personal glory, then for the potential benefits they would bring to their bloody war-craft. Lacere and his retinue of battled hardened 5th Company veterans eagerly submitted themselves to the brutal ordeal known as the Rubican Primaris, a grisly and dangerous medical procedure whereby the old Astartes could be ‘re-made’ piece by piece and transformed into Primaris Space Marine’s.

 

Lacere emerged quite literally a new man, re-forged and strong in power and confidence. Most of his followers survived the Rubicon procedure too, and together Lacere and his men launched themselves forth from Cretacia in their battered vessel Golgotha with new found vitality. He now wages war amongst the stars once more, savage and utterly merciless in his persecution of war against the alien, the heretic and the witch. The exploits of Lacere and his men inspire awe and fear in equal measure, and has earned them the nicknamed ‘Lacere’s Reivers’ by local Imperial Commander’s.

 

The 5th Company

When originally founded the Flesh Tearers Chapter was comprised of 10 companies as with all Codex compliant chapters. As the Black Rage took its toll so the ability of the Flesh Tearers to field full companies gradually shrank. By the time of the Siege of Baal in M40.999 by the Tyranid armada called ‘Leviathan’ the Flesh Tearers numbered less than 400 marines, whom were condensed into just 4 companies. The 5th company, despite being a battle line company with millennia of traditions and battle honours, was retired along with the 6th through 10th companies.

 

When the Chapter was brought back up to full strength with the arrival of the Primaris Marines these companies were again revived. Lacere, a senior Veteran Sergeant of the 3rd Company at the time of Baal, was one of several Flesh Tearer survivors who found themselves promoted to Captain as a result and placed in charge of one of these re-formed companies. Lacere immediately began by reviving the traditional contests, customs and festivals of the 5th Company and by retrieving the Crimson Rubaiyat – the tome containing the lore and history of the 5th Company – from its casket deep within the fortress monastery on their home world Cretacia. Written in the poem like ‘rhythm speak’ of the tribes found south of the equalitarian jungles of Cretacia where the 5th company traditionally takes its recruits, the Crimson Rubaiyat holds much significance to the 5th Company, and its presence back in the hands of a 5th Company Captain is lauded as a momentous occasion by the 5th company’s men, who eagerly look forward to expanding the company’s history with fresh tales of bloodshed and war.

 

The 5th Company wage war from their flagship, the strike cruiser Golgotha. Named in an extinct pre-Imperial Terran dialect and meaning ‘Hill of Skulls’, Golgotha is a battered testament to the aggressive nature of Flesh Tearer void tactics. Not an old vessel by Imperial standards, Golgotha was laid down in the shipyards of Forgeworld Onygar in M40.897 and was ‘gifted’ to the Flesh Tearers after their intervention in stopping a greenskin advance into the Onygar system earlier that decade. Given over the Lacere with the revival of the 5th company, Golgotha is as much home as Cretacia itself to him and his men, and its halls are replete with the many war trophies and storied history of the company. Its potent machine spirit is greatly revered by the 5th for its stubborn and bellicose nature, and its weapons seem to roar with greater ferocity and accuracy the closer to the enemy the great ship is. With Golgotha under his command, Lacere’s Reiver’s have cut a bloody swathe through several sectors of the embattled Imperium Nihilus, and ever hunger for the chance to destroy Heretic forces in particular.

Edited April 17, 2023 by Stoneface