The Warriors of Sparta

[Aidan]

I've been screwing around with this idea for a long time now, and I'd like to get some feedback. I know there are a lot of marine Spartan Chapters out there, already, but I like to think that mine offers something fresh. Who knows.

 

 

 

The Space Marines of Sparta go by many different names. In their home system, Lacedaemon, they are hailed as Spartiates. Loosely, this means 'Warriors of Sparta' in common language. They refer to themselves only as 'Spartans'. Their armour is Bronze, with red trim, and lambdas as an insignia.

It is important to note with the Warriors of Sparta, that their soldiers bear no battle honours. Only a lambda. To the Spartans, to be a Spartan is honour enough. As well, their home system of Lacedaemon yields more Space Marines then most other systems.

 

Origins:

 

The Spartans came to be shortly after the 'Iron Cage' incident. Rogal Dorn split off the Space Marine legions, and from these beginnings, the Spartans were formed. Imbued with the gene seed of Rogal Dorn, the Chapter began operations out of the system of Hellas. Within this system, there are several planets. Lacedaemon, the planet which the Spartans settled on. Ath

[Darrell]

I like your stories included in your fluff. I was planning on doing something similar when I submitted a DIY Chapter I'm working on. Adds a lot of character to your army, and helps to make them feel real. Spartan Marines are an idea I've seen before, and considered myself (Particularly whenever I play Spartan: Total Warrior), but you seem to have handled it pretty well. I have a couple of things to bring to your attention:

 

1) The 300 Spartans. With the entire Chapter eliminated, how did they rebuild? You mention the Imperial Fists arriving...did they help rebuild the Chapter from scratch? Why did they want to rebuild a Chapter that had been completely annihilated? Generally, from what I know, those Chapters are essentially abandoned and they try something else. Also, did the Imperial Fists originally train the Chapter? If so, how did they take having to retrain them again?

 

Another note, you state that there were 300 Marines involved with the Chaos Forces that wiped out the Spartans. You then say that 300 of them were interred within Dreadnoughts, while the bodies of others were preserved and stored in the Halls of Heroes. What bodies were left from 300 Space Marines, 300 of which were put into Dreadnoughts? You should raise the number of Marines involved, or drop the number of Dreadnoughts to make it sound right.

 

2) Small mistake. When the Spartans assist the Cadians, there is a line that says "All across the field, Spartans mixed with Spartans charged." I think you meant for one of those Spartans to be Cadians. Nothing major, just something you might want to correct. :wub:

 

3) It seems that the lack of a navy, especially for planetary defense, would be a major disadvantage for the Spartans. An enemy could simply stay in orbit and bomb the planet to dust and never land on the surface. Plus, how do they handle enemy fleets on the way to objectives? Perhaps their navy is taken from one of the other planets, namely the Athinians? Whereas the actual Space Marines would be taken from Lacedaemon.

 

4) That brings me to my next point. I think you borrow a little too much from Spartan history, and this is a problem a few other Space Marine Chapters suffer from as well (Namely the White Scars stealing a lot of stories from Genghis Khan's life ver batim). Leonidas? Athinians? The name "Warriors of Sparta" in particular. This Chapter lacks a lot of personal spark because a lot of it is just Spartan history kicked into the 41st century. You might want to try to keep the Spartan feel while replacing the names with something much more original. I understand your intrigue with Spartan history, but I think you could stand to make this Chapter a lot more personable. Then people will say "Oh, these are the Such and Such marines" rather than "Oh, they're Spartan Marines". A big part of DIY is to personalize every bit of your Chapter from your own tastes and imagination--run with that!

 

You do offer a lot that is different from your typical Spartan Chapter, and I really like the stories you included (As they can tell as much about your army as the IA-style fluff does). I still think, however, that you could stand to further differentiate yourself from being obviously Spartan without losing the Spartan feel. The lambda is a nice symbol (Reminiscient of the Ultramarines' Omega), although you may want to alter it in some way so that you personalize it for your army, but it's still easy to tell it's a lambda.

[Aidan]

I like your stories included in your fluff. I was planning on doing something similar when I submitted a DIY Chapter I'm working on. Adds a lot of character to your army, and helps to make them feel real. Spartan Marines are an idea I've seen before, and considered myself (Particularly whenever I play Spartan: Total Warrior), but you seem to have handled it pretty well. I have a couple of things to bring to your attention:

 

1) The 300 Spartans. With the entire Chapter eliminated, how did they rebuild? You mention the Imperial Fists arriving...did they help rebuild the Chapter from scratch? Why did they want to rebuild a Chapter that had been completely annihilated? Generally, from what I know, those Chapters are essentially abandoned and they try something else. Also, did the Imperial Fists originally train the Chapter? If so, how did they take having to retrain them again?

 

Another note, you state that there were 300 Marines involved with the Chaos Forces that wiped out the Spartans. You then say that 300 of them were interred within Dreadnoughts, while the bodies of others were preserved and stored in the Halls of Heroes. What bodies were left from 300 Space Marines, 300 of which were put into Dreadnoughts? You should raise the number of Marines involved, or drop the number of Dreadnoughts to make it sound right.

 

2) Small mistake. When the Spartans assist the Cadians, there is a line that says "All across the field, Spartans mixed with Spartans charged." I think you meant for one of those Spartans to be Cadians. Nothing major, just something you might want to correct. :)

 

3) It seems that the lack of a navy, especially for planetary defense, would be a major disadvantage for the Spartans. An enemy could simply stay in orbit and bomb the planet to dust and never land on the surface. Plus, how do they handle enemy fleets on the way to objectives? Perhaps their navy is taken from one of the other planets, namely the Athinians? Whereas the actual Space Marines would be taken from Lacedaemon.

 

4) That brings me to my next point. I think you borrow a little too much from Spartan history, and this is a problem a few other Space Marine Chapters suffer from as well (Namely the White Scars stealing a lot of stories from Genghis Khan's life ver batim). Leonidas? Athinians? The name "Warriors of Sparta" in particular. This Chapter lacks a lot of personal spark because a lot of it is just Spartan history kicked into the 41st century. You might want to try to keep the Spartan feel while replacing the names with something much more original. I understand your intrigue with Spartan history, but I think you could stand to make this Chapter a lot more personable. Then people will say "Oh, these are the Such and Such marines" rather than "Oh, they're Spartan Marines". A big part of DIY is to personalize every bit of your Chapter from your own tastes and imagination--run with that!

 

You do offer a lot that is different from your typical Spartan Chapter, and I really like the stories you included (As they can tell as much about your army as the IA-style fluff does). I still think, however, that you could stand to further differentiate yourself from being obviously Spartan without losing the Spartan feel. The lambda is a nice symbol (Reminiscient of the Ultramarines' Omega), although you may want to alter it in some way so that you personalize it for your army, but it's still easy to tell it's a lambda.

 

1) That's an oversight, I must have missed editing it. It's a bit of a WIP, you see.

Basically, the original idea had the 300 all die and then the Imperial Fists help them rebuild, but I thought that was a little dumb. So I said that they were made in Dreadnoughts. I'm still pretty sketchy on the idea, I'm considering saying that the main army of Spartans were off on some religious expedition, because Historically, that's where the main Spartan Army was.

 

So, to that end, there were 300 Spartans involved in the Battle, who perished, and most were made into Dreadnoughts. And the remainer of the Spartans were left alive to continue the Chapter.

 

2) I'll fix that, thanks :)

 

3) The City of Sparta had no walls. It had no real navy until the Peloponnesian War, and Lysander. The Spartans believed that in the event of invasion, they stand a batter chance without their walls. That's just how they roll :P

I wanted to represent this in the fluff. Also, the Athenians had an amazing fleet. And Thebes had an outstanding army. This too, I wanted represented.

 

4) Point taken. But the reason why my fluff is so similar to Spartan history is mainly because I'm a Classics student. It's just where my interests lie. I changed subtle things that I didn't like in Spartan history, for example, in the actual history, after the Persian invasion, the greek city states went back to fighting each other. I didn't like this. So, in the fluff, they all ally and stay allied.

 

The lambda is the mark of Sparta. I see your point with changing it, but do you have any ideas?

 

 

Thanks very, very much for your constructive critisim.

[Zhivago]

So, to that end, there were 300 Spartans involved in the Battle, who perished, and most were made into Dreadnoughts. And the remainer of the Spartans were left alive to continue the Chapter.

Most would mean x where x > 150 ? Right ? So where on earth they get 150 dreads ? They are aracen pieces of wargear and most chapters have dozen or two at the most....

 

And yes I can see link to Thermopylae ^_^

 

Point being it would be much more credible to entomb the 'king' or the leader of thoose three comanies to dread.

 

3) The City of Sparta had no walls. It had no real navy until the Peloponnesian War, and Lysander. The Spartans believed that in the event of invasion, they stand a batter chance without their walls. That's just how they roll

 

Then you could notate about having massive amount of anti-ship missile silos and anti-ship laser on the planet surface ?

[Aidan]

So, to that end, there were 300 Spartans involved in the Battle, who perished, and most were made into Dreadnoughts. And the remainer of the Spartans were left alive to continue the Chapter.

 

Most would mean x where x > 150 ? Right ? So where on earth they get 150 dreads ? They are aracen pieces of wargear and most chapters have dozen or two at the most....

 

And yes I can see link to Thermopylae :P

 

Point being it would be much more credible to entomb the 'king' or the leader of thoose three comanies to dread.

 

3) The City of Sparta had no walls. It had no real navy until the Peloponnesian War, and Lysander. The Spartans believed that in the event of invasion, they stand a batter chance without their walls. That's just how they roll

Then you could notate about having massive amount of anti-ship missile silos and anti-ship laser on the planet surface ?

 

Point taken on the Dreadnoughts. I'll rewrite that.

And the wall thing, I rather like it the way I have it wrote. Remember, it's incomplete. Basically, the Athenians would provide any fleet defence and whatnot.

 

Had a good victory against Tau to day, I'll probably write a short story on it later. Stay tuned!

[Race Bannon]

The lambda is a nice symbol (Reminiscient of the Ultramarines' Omega), although you may want to alter it in some way so that you personalize it for your army, but it's still easy to tell it's a lambda.

 

The neat thing about the Ultramarines is they took the Omega and put it upside down to make a stylized "U". It was genius.

 

But Lambda is a bit more challenging since it is basically an upside down "V". :)

 

I got a chance to see "The 300 Spartans" this past week. Decent film. The portayed the Spartans to have the Lambda on the shields. That was pretty cool.

 

It's your chapter ... keep what you want. Persoanlly, I'd keep the Lambda as is .. it's EASY to paint ;)

[Aidan]

I got a chance to see "The 300 Spartans" this past week. Decent film. The portayed the Spartans to have the Lambda on the shields. That was pretty cool.

 

It's your chapter ... keep what you want. Persoanlly, I'd keep the Lambda as is .. it's EASY to paint :)

 

Don't you just love how obviously Cold War is was? Awesome movie, I own it on DVD :blush:

 

Unfortunately, I suck at freehand. So it's going to be a little hard.

 

A couple more paragraphs of fluff:

 

 

Skiritai:

 

The Skiritai are the Spartan rangers. Armed with Sniper rifles, these scouts go ahead of an advancing Spartan army, and locate dangers, and deal with them. They are not Space Marines, however. In the Agoge, the best sharpshooters are given the option of joining the Skiritai squads. This is an honourable position, however not as honourable as becoming a Spartiate. Many decline, and join the battle-brothers, but still many will become Rangers.

They are stealthy and quiet. They will head up hit and run missions, assassinations, and reconnaissance. They are a separate entity entirely, and the Spartans have nothing but respect for these killers.

 

Oracles:

 

The Spartan

[Darrell]

I must admit, when I offered up the change of the Lambda, I didn't exactly have an idea in mind. I am not the most creative of people, so I try to just throw out suggestions and hopefully someone will find something interesting and run with it. However, I did find this while I was searching Google:

 

http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:DBFi...ages/lambda.png

 

It's not a major change in the symbol (Kind of reminiscient of Pi), but it is different than the upside-down "V" you see depicted on Spartan shields. It's still easy to paint though (Just extend a line), so if you're bad at drawing (Like I am) it's not a major hassle to freehand.

 

Also, you could do something like putting two Lambda symbols (The upside-down V's) together and flip them, which would make a sort of crude W, which in turn could mean "Warrior", as in "of Sparta".

 

Just throwing some possible ideas out there to back out what I mentioned previously. :wub:

 

As for your new content; the Skiritai are essentially those who are worthy of being Space Marines but choose not to be? Why would they choose not to be a Space Marine? It would obviously be a great honor, I would imagine there would have to be a good reason why they would turn down the offer. Also, if they are not Space Marines, does that mean they don't wear power armor (Since they don't have the Black Carapace)? In game-terms, would they have a standard human stat-line? This is all assuming they're not the Spartan version of a Scout, of course.

 

The Oracles I like, although I'm curious how you plan on combining the Librarian and Chaplain roles, as the two seem to be quite different to me. Sort of like the Iron Hands' Techmarine/Chaplain (Forgive me, I seem to have forgotten the actual name of the unit), except for the Librarium. It's definitely something new.

 

One question I would like to ask is, if the Skiritai are not your Chapter's version of a Scout company, where do they put new recruits? Are they like the Black Templars, who have their Neophytes join the Initiates in battle so they can learn first-hand the ways of war? Or perhaps like the Space Wolves, who group their new recruits together into special combat units that charge headlong into the enemy, instead of skulking in shadows and fighting in camouflage?

 

A final question: I was reading through your original fluff again when I noticed your Chapter has a preference for fighting Chaos, and that "The affairs of the Xenos species are of no concern to the Spartans". To what extent do you mean that? I assume you don't mean they ignore the Xenos threat entirely, but rather they don't engage Xenos with the same vigor as they do when fighting Chaos. How do other Chapters think of this? How do the Spartans justify it, especially in the wake of the expanding Tau or the lumbering Hive Fleets moving towards Terra?

 

On a positive note, I like that you threw in the part about the Chapter refusing to go to war without the Master (A lot of people don't use the Captain/Master HQ because they think he's too weak compared to the other two ^_^ ), but I think the Chapter Master might be too much. A Chapter could be on any number of campaigns at any given time, and very rarely would a Chapter commit all of its Companies to one battle, unless it was particularly important. That would mean the Master would only be able to accompany one of these battles, leaving the others untouched! A better line might be to say they will not go to battle without their Captain, as that would allow all the campaigns to have access to their Commander (Which I think might be more of what you were going for, rather than the Chapter Master specifically). In a world of Jump Pack Chaplains and FotA/FotD Librarians, I'd say this definitely makes you stand out.

 

I'm excited for you. :( I've wanted to do a Spartan Chapter for some time, but decided against it for numerous reasons. I hope you make it work for you, and I hope the army comes together to give you a truly entertaining experience both on the table and off.