Army for Medusa V

[Doghouse]

+++From the unfinished journals of Remembrancer Variden Thrace M31.

 

It is now my seventh month since I had been selected to chronicle the feats of the XII Legion. The Warmaster had assigned the Legion to quell the rebelious forces on Istvaan III along with elements from the Death Guard, Emperor's Children and Sons of Horus.

To see such an assembled warhost removes any doubt as to the true importance of our work, despite the protests of many senior Astartes. I know this day history is being made.

 

Despite the World Eater's reputation for brutality, having seen them in action first hand it is a reputation well earned, my sponsor Captain Varren has proven to be a warrior of nobility and virtue.

Many of his fellow Astartes originally saw me as little more than a hinderance, a view that has since changed. It seems that I have been accepted as a company mascot of sorts.

My prescence here is seen as one of good fortune and I have been given the nickname of "Thrice" or "Thrice Blessed" by First Sergeant Torbast.

 

Our planet fall on Istvaan III has gone without fault. Resistance has crumbled under the might of our forces. Some members under Varren's command have begun to question whether the hammer blow attack of three Legions was really necessary.

 

This morning the Vox channels were frantic with reports of an orbital attack. Even now I cannot believe what I saw, my mind unable to fathom such an unthinkable act of betrayal.

Terra help us.

The world burned as virus bombs rained down from the heavens. Had Sergeant Torbast not plucked me from where I stood, carrying me the way a child might carry a favoured doll and flung me into the Landraider then I would have surely be consumed by the flames that destroyed all before them.

Through the Landraider's viewing portal I saw Drakkus, one of Torbast's men, struggling with his helmet. One of the seals on his plate armour had failed as he tore the helmet free in anguish. I turned away as the potent virus released by the barrage began to strip the flesh from his face. No one should have to die like that.

 

We had taken shelter in a great cavern revealed to us by the bombardment accompanied by surviving members of the other Legions.

As we passed through the entrance to the cavern we were bathed in an unearthly green glow.

The dimly lit chamber made it difficult to see into the darkness but Trobast said that the walls of the cavern were lined with thousands of rows of metallic skeletal statues. I could make out several of the macarbe carvings near the entrance, it turned my gutt with fear to look apon them.

Captain Varran ordered us to fall back to the surface. Many of his gutt instict decisions had been proven right in the past and turned sure defeat into victory. Not of the Astartes questioned his order.

What we saw as we emerged into the daylight though none of us were prepared for that...+++

 

 

Basically I've made a Heresy Era army and want to use them in Medusa campaign on the side of the Imperials. The idea is that they took shelter in an ancient Necron tombship during the Istvaan Massacre and were transported through space and time to Medusa V to another buried tombship.

This ship however is damaged, part of the gate activation unit has been long since stolen by fool hardy tomb raiders and is now in a museum or private collection of one of the cities of Medusa V. In order to get back to Istvaan to aid their brothers fighting the traitors they must retrive the artifact and reactivate the gateway.

The irony is that should they make it back then they'll die alongside their brothers fighting against Horus, if they don't get back then they're stranded on Medusa V and die with the planet.

What do you think?

[Ferrata]

While it is a nice piece of work, it doesn't really fit in the GW Fluff web. There is no way of getting a heresy army on Medusa within the boundaries of accepted background, although you could always just use your models and pretend they are another chapter. The main drawbacks of this piece is you state that Ivstaan was a Tomb World, something I have never heard of in the background, surely something like this would have been mentioned. Next, you have the time travelling across the galaxy, something Necrons are unable to do.

[Severus6]

The story is very good but I dont think it fits the bill here. I think you could use this as a stand alone piece for Pre-Heresy background but not for the M5 campaign. Ferrata already touched on the main reason why this really wouldnt work,...I think you tag this too a Pre-Heresy Force and build upon it.

 

By the way, good to see back in Liber, Doghouse.

 

Severus6

[Commissar Molotov]

I might get painted as being harsh here, but in my view if you take the path of a pre-heresy army, you're accepting certain things. Along with the task of getting pre-heresy armour, pre-heresy weapons, old colour schemes and the like, you're accepting that your army is set in (and confined to) a certain historical time period. They haven't fought tyranids, the Necrons aren't stalking the galaxy and the Tau aren't even out of the water yet. Them's the breaks. You simply can't throw your army thousands of years further into the future without straining the bounds of believability. You can play for fun, no problems. But I think trying to rationalise it with fluff is dangerous.

 

It's like creating a Napoleonic army and then trying to use them in World War II.

 

So, in answer to your initial question of 'Is this plausible?' - I don't think you're going to get many hardened fluff-buffs liking your ideas. But don't let that stop your creativity! :wink:

[Doghouse]

Thanks for taking the time to read through it guys. :)

Just want to explain my logic behind the idea a little more to show how it is that I've come up with this idea because I have to admit the idea is pretty hard to swallow from a certain viewpoint.

I was thinking that firstly the Necrons have been dormant for millenia even before the time of the Heresy it's not necessarily impossible for a Tomb ship to lie undiscovered beneath the surface of Istvaan. If you concider that little is known of Istvaan other than the dropzone massacre and that even in the current timeline Necrons are emerging from stasis on human worlds that may well have existed from before the time of the Imperium it sounds a little more credible.

As for the Heresy Era Astartes running around I always cringe a little at the concept. The Heresy is in my mind the finest hour in GW history and to be honest should be left in the past. However having said that I kind of like the idea of a single detachment of Legion Astartes cropping up for one last bash.

Basically you need to look at it from their perspective rather than the perspective of the modern day marines. They are flung into the future just for a short period of time where they may make a difference. From history's point of view however they are already dead, they died along with the untold thousands of loyalist Astartes in Horus' trap. Because there is no way to account for the death of every loyalist who died on Istvaan then who's going to miss a single detachment of marines. The beauty of the idea is that either way they are screwed, if they win they return to Istvaan and die if they don't they get destroyed along with Medusa V.

It's kind of like that film, whose name escapes me right now, where the aircraft carrier travels back to pearl harbour and they have to make a choice whether to interfere or let history take it's course. The difference being here that they can't change the past, they are for all intent stuck in a insane world fighting to get back to aid their brothers with no knowledge of the fact that they are ten thousand years into their own future. Just imagine how they'd feel if they came across one of their brothers now who had spent the last ten thousand years slaughtering millions in the name of Khorne. It'd be impossible for them to comprehend such a thing because chaos only came to light after the Heresy was in full swing.

I went for Necrons mainly because they are so utterly ancient and the phasing technology isn't completely explained in the background material.

The time traveling aspect doesn't have to be an intentional byproduct of the phasing design, the proximity of the Warp in the region could short out the technology creating a temporary link between the two gates.

I thought the lost in the warp idea was a little too cliche and then you have the vessel they arrived in to contend with and why don't they just fly off an start their own empire, there's just too many implausible possibilities to contend with. I prefer to keep it simple, either way they die and have no lasting effect on the timeline. But having said that there is something to be said about the whole slowing of time effect of the Warp as it was the case with the traitors that fled into the Eye, they were only gone a short time by their perspective but from the Imperiums point of view they were gone for millenia.

For the most part they'd be mistaken for regular marines by Imperial forces, with the exception of the Inquisition of course. Then you've got cultural differences, armour and equipment differences, was their arrival an accident or orchastrated by the likes of the Emperor or the Deciever or the Ruinous powers or even the Eldar? New Xenos races wouldn't be quite so shocking to them as they had spent two hundred years liberating the human worlds from alien threats, a couple of new races isn't going to shock them much.

In the greater scheme of things they'd be recorded as an unknown chapter, if history even remembers their presence on Medusa V at all.

Don't worry about being too critical of the idea though as it does actually help the development process and every opinion helps. :)

 

Torbast prodded the corpse of the monster with the tip of his power axe dislodging flakes of ancient dry blood from it's armour.

"Throne, what was that thing!" Novian swore as he knelt to get a better look at their attacker.

The creature had emerged howling like a madman from amongst the ruins as it effortlessly cleaved Sergeant Frauss in two from shoulder to groin with a massive two handed screaming chainaxe. It had accounted for a further two of their number before their concentrated bolter fire had finally brought it down.

The skull face plate leered at Novian with dead eyes and despite the two huge metal studded fins that rose up either side of it's helm he almost swore that it was wearing stripped down MkIV Astartes plate armour.

"What do you make of it Karr?" Captain Varren said as he stepped forwards patting Torbast on the shoulder "Is it Xenos?"

"I honestly don't know Ahri" Torbast had served with Varren for nearly two centuries and both men knew well enough to ignore rank when addressing each other. "Damn thing would have got us all if Thrice hadn't tipped us off."

Novian stopped chipping at the corpse's armour with his combat knife. The others turned to see what it was that had stopped him in his tracks. Beneath the layers of caked blood covering the creatures single shoulder pauldron Novian had revealed a distinct image that the others knew to be impossible, an image that removed all doubt from their minds and left a bewildering sensation of fear in their guts. A world being consumed by two rows of iron teeth, the twelfth Legion emblem. As unbelievable as it seemed this monster was a fellow World Eater.