A Relictor Leiutenant. A Primaris Space Marine of a powerful and effective Chapter with a clear purpose and mission statement.  But still regarded as a heretic in some places.  So might carry out some missions in a clandestine manner.

 

Evorun Dullet had ordered his armed guardians to secure the entrances to this part of the space dock after his pair of locally engaged fixers had paid off the local gangs to be somewhere else.  The orbital yards around Hydrapour had more than enough forgotten corners to satisfy his masters that their meeting could pass unmarked.  

He reached inside his jacket and switched off the twanging, thumping drum beats of the tribal electrofunk that he was partial to.  The Thunderhawk transporter slide quietly into the space, even its immense presence still nowhere near filling the dock.  The blast doors beyond the atmosphere seal closed and the transport settled down with a soft but very noticeable 'crump'.  Evorun was sure that the only people near enough to hear or feel it were those engaged by him.  And his masters paid so very well.

The front ramp of the incredibly purposeful, brutal looking craft cracked open in a hiss as the slight overpressure inside the space craft vented into the dock.  Evorun, sure that his attire was in order (he'd checked it several times) strode out to meet his master.

The huge, hooded and cloaked figure stomped down the ramp and made a few meters into the empty dock and came to a halt, waiting the mere human coming to meet him to arrive.  Evorun stopped five meters away from the spectre and swept the tails of his long coat back with his left hand as he dropped to one knee before the giant.

"You have what we seek?"  the voice rasped out synthetically through the grill on the front of the giant's helmet.  Evorun knew that the helm under that hood was surmounted by a white edged broad red band but could not see anything under the cavernous hood.  Not even a glow from the eye pieces.

"Yes Lord, the Hisitee Nou were uncommonly accommodating, as if they did not care for the relics.  With your permission ?" Evorun stood up, the giant gave a subtle gesture and Evorun keyed the communicator once.  

The one burst of transmitter signal set Evorun's default plan into action.  Two cargo eights, one on the heels of the other, drove into the dock and made a wide circuitous pass behind the Thunderhawk, then slowed and moved up at walking pace into position below the portage stations under the transporter.  

"There was no talk of payment ?"

"No Lord.  I half expected them to ask for geneseed, or forbidden weaponry or something like that."

"They made no demands ?"

"The one I spoke with said 'as with the Executioners and the Astral Claws we may call on your masters in the future.'"

"And you know what that means ?"

"No my Lord." replied Evorun truthfully.  But he could guess. And he knew that the giant knew. 

There was a pause.  Evorun changed the subject;   "The only thing I wanted but could not obtain was automatically releasing clamps on the cargo eights.  We'll have to unbolt the containers manually."

The giant nodded towards the cargo eights and their containers "Are they manned ?"

"No Lord, they are automata"

"Leave them then, I will depart now."  The giant turned on his heel, as he did so the ramp cracked open once more.

"You have done well."

The space marine left with his containers of illicit Templar relics, cargo eights still dangling.  The Thunderhawk would blend with the other traffic around the space port rings and rendez vous with the 4th Company cruiser "Arc of the Covenant" as it refuelled on the other side of the gas giant.  

All Evorun had to do now was pay everyone off and ensure they were adequately dispersed around the sector before the arbites, criminal gangs, other chapter's spies, spyrers and lastly the Inquisition (in that order, most likely) figured out what was going on.  And of course he'd have to disappear for a decade or two.  He knew full well that he would wake up in a week or so with a new identity and only vague recollections of who he was.  He was pretty sure that he was supposed to have no idea at all, but after all this time, the multiple persona overlay was possibly stretching thin.

Perhaps he'd be someone with a more comfortable lifestyle next time ?

At some point, just as before, some deeply implanted thing would go off in his head and he'd make his way to a blank bit of space to suddenly meet another Relictor to get his next mission.  

Protagonists by Siph Horridus and Da Masta Cheef.

Outrageous skullduggery by yours truly.

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” — Yoda

The brothers of the Lostwithial believe that they are not afraid of anything.  After all, they know that they are made to the Emperor's design, and they shall know no fear.

But this isn't about so much about Space Marines and their relationship with fear, as the Black Templars and their relationship with the rest of the universe.

There were once some rhino APCs, made to the usual STC on some Forge World and duly supplied to the Imperial Fists.  As bits wore out and replaced, in common with a lot military assets, Marine, Guard and Navy, the designated items may well have been reconditioned and refurbished so many times that there are possibly no original parts left.

These Imperial Fist vehicles eventually became Black Templar vehicles, honoured and revered for their history and venerated service, after more time has passed, damage is repaired and worn parts are replaced, there is no part of any of these vehicles left which ever saw an Imperial Fist. 

In the way such things work out, the Black Templars who had these vehicles no longer needed them.  Perhaps their crusade suffered losses which meant that these vehicles were surplus to requirements.  Perhaps the Black Templars were supplied with brand new vehicles to replace the bitsa parts and chop shop tired old rhinos they had.  And on a long campaign against a formidable foe, these old vehicles could be given, however grudgingly, to other Space Marines, however unworthy, to prosecute the cause and carry out the will of the Emperor.

But Black Templar crusades, even strike forces, are largely self governing.  What is established lore for some may be unknown to others.  The brothers of the Lostwithial have been made away that the Incandescent Coyotes (Hisitee Nou in their mother tongue) have three Black Templar rhinos.  And that the parts of those honoured and venerated vehicles which identified them specifically as Black Templar vehicles have now been removed and replaced, thus dishonouring those probably stolen vehicles.

Castellean Brodeep discussing, in a prayer fuelled war council, the three ancient Imperial Fist rhinos, lovingly cared for by the Black Templars, and the dishonour done to them now.  He is outlining the retribution to be enacted should the brothers of the Lostwithial ever come across the Incandescent Coyotes during their travels.

Not that I'm suggesting these valiant upholders of the Emperor's will angrily roam his empire, leaving nothing but suffering and ruin behind them.  All in his name.

Carcharodons Outer Darkness

Some may remember my review of the first Carcharodon book.  On the strength of that one good experience, when this caught my eye, I stuck my hand in my pocket.

If you've spent long, lonely hours, sat in your cell, pondering the ins and outs of how any of multiple types of Space Marine chapters might work as you illuminate letters in your hand written Libram Imperialis by the light of a tallow candle, then this might be for you.

It's been out a while (I picked this up at the beginning of February), so hopefully there are no spoilers here for anyone who might have been hanging on out there for it to be published.

As with the previous book, what Robbie MacNiven has done here is explore the functioning of a fleet based chapter through the medium of an operational deployment. This is done in a considered, engagingly paced way in a manner which makes logical sense within the context of the fluff.

As with the previous book, there is a cast of 'normal people' as contrast and to compare to the genengineered super soldiers.  In this case, an inquisitor and his retinue straight out of the Daniverse - exactly the type of writing BL should be peddling, IMHO.  And a useful conduit to introduce common characters (and hence plot points hinting at a greater story arc) from the previous book. 

As with the previous book, the Carcharodons themselves are carefully presented as both a Space Marine chapter and also the scary bogey men from the FW Badab War books.  Tyberios the Red Wake is there in character, which can't have easy to write and might or might not have been rewritten more than once to get right. There are hints and tit bits, about them as shadowy outsiders and as a fleet based chapter, in there to inform and entertain.

If you want to know what a blackshield chapter might look like after ten thousand years, one permutation is presented here.  They are certainly interesting and hopefully someone in BL who enjoys the FW insights into the 40K universe will ask for them to make a re-appearance at some point.  Perhaps even Mr MacNiven has a plan for them; through the course of the book, I certainly saw more than one future for them. 

It makes perfect sense as a stand alone book, you don't need to have read Red Tithe first, you could read it afterwards and it just make even more sense.  The story is nicely paced and the action is consistent with the game mechanics and fluff;  It's also a set up for a third book...

Carcharodon Book Review

I bought this (actually from Banbury GW) for a holiday read.  But then Mrs Zzzzzz stole 'Arthur' which was the next book I was going to read and so I picked up the trashy holiday read.

Were I a BL author and they said "We want a Space Marine book and its...." my heart would sink. How to make one dimensional post human super warriors interesting ?  Like Dai says, there's a lot of stuff out there which is little better than fanboi fan-lit.

Now, I know that the HH stuff is different.  But that's it, it's different - different times, different outlook, different ethos, different people.  This is 40K.

Robbie MacNiven has my admiration.  His portrayal of both the Night Lords and the Carcharodons is considered and true to the fluff.  But both sides are still recognisable space marines.  And the 'tithe' aspect, the main (only) plot driver is not only explicable, but more or less demanded by the fluff.

So nothing phenomenally way out happens.  The story unfolds in not unexpected way, but is nicely paced and references all of the right things to make you give that internal nod  -  the author knows his subject, so when he takes poetic licence to make (what is in a 40K game a simple mechanic) things happen, one allows it to happen in that way (ie captured psykers still taking an active part in events).

I spent £18 on this, because I wanted to have the hardback to whack the small people with when they try to tip my lounger into the pool.  The ebook is probably worth the money.  If Robbie MacNiven is allowed to write about anything other than Space Marines, I might be inclined to have a look at it.

World Book Day

It's world book day, so here we go again.  I blew ~£30 on this.  And I'm not too sure about it being VFM or not.

Let's address the production values bit first:  The Horus Heresy books are being knocked out for anything from £70 to £90ish.  These are high end art.  If you go to a a bookshop which does High End fine arts books and find something with comparable production values then the FW books actually don't seem too bad in terms of cash price.

But the hardbacked mainstream GW Codices, whilst lavishly illustrated on quality paperstock etc do seem to be a slightly cynical way of cashing in.  The older softbacked books were perfectly adequate for a table top wargame.  And quite frankly, if the rate of issue and re-issue is just going to continue to rise then surely going the other way, making the product more accessible as the rate of refresh accelerates would be better for the customer (and hence long term better for the producer ?)

I'll point you to Bolt Action - Admiral Drax recently showed me a book he'd picked up which seemed beautifully produced, illustrated and laid out and was immediately engaging and certainly up to the job of being a wargaming rule book.  Like the older codices.  Go figure.

So from 2003 I reveal this:

                                              

So we are supposed to accept that the events in the new book run directly on from the events in the 2003 book.  And to fair, all of the elements are there: the various SM Chapters are represented; the Imperial Guard appear to have been thinned down to a few Cadian formations, which is disappointing.  Name checking different Guard formations always raises a smile here, one of the best bits of EoT is the list of units on each side, which in itself spawned more then one thread of fluff which we all now know and love etc.

In the new book the writing centres around the three new character pieces which, in as much as any 40K character ever can be, are adequately brought to life in furtherance of the narrative.  A diminishing cast of SM Characters are given bit roles.  Which is a subject for a whole new post.  The narrative itself is obviously a scene setter for some future development in the 40K canon (I hope that wasn't a spoiler).

Did I enjoy it ?  Not really - the battles are all huge cataclysmic events where no one on either side ever seems to need to reload, run out of loo roll, catch 40 winks or display any other Maslowian frailty, the like of which we know actually wins and looses wars.  I know that that its just a game and that that game is a piece exchange table top game of over the top heroes and gribbly beasts.  But.  It's contextual basis is a human society, albeit hopelessly distopian.

So one or two lines where the defenders retreat to the under ground, sub pylon catacombs where they rest and re-arm and behave like a beleaguered army would have that little bit of depth - similarly having a line about the vast hordes of renegades scavenging the ruins for food (which the Black Crusade did not bring with them because they don't care that their minions starve) instead of actually assaulting the Imperial positions would also have added depth, character and believablity to what is otherwise quite a dry account of events.

That the Eldar wait until the last Imperial Forces are not a threat to them before effecting a rescue is entirely consistent, bravo !

There is a clear purpose and intent to both of these books - the EoT book introduced the Cadian Shock Troops and Kasarkin AND gave a background and reason d'etre for people to use their existing Imperial, chaos and Eldar armies - it provided a pattern for the few years of 'world campaigns' which followed on from this, Medusa V et al.  What it left out was as important as what it included.  It was clearly inspiration for gamers and hobbyists.  Inspiration derived from a few lists and half a dozen tenuously connected pieces of prose which might not have written specifically for this publication, just include because they were good (?)

The fall of Cadia book does more and different things - it advances the entire 40K narrative - the Eldar get a new god, the Imperium get a Primarch and Chaos actually win something.  Making all of those previously random Black Crusades be about destroying the pylons is an interesting maguffin to explain the apparent waste of the last 10000 years by Abaddon and his homies.  And of course it promotes sales of the three new Character models as well as the armies mentioned therein.  And I think that's how the book reads - it was written with these purposes in mind - if you have a Dark Angel, Imperial Fist or Black Templar army then this book gives you immediate licence to be involved.  If you wanted an excuse to start a Mechanicum army, here it is.  Excetera for the other armies mentioned.

So I think this is reason that the book is a bit flat, ever so slightly missing the viscerality of that piece from EoT where the Commissar is talking about training with a Cadian Youth Army Platoon or the Aspect Warrior goes into the Avatar Chamber and does not come out again.  The 'whole narrative' thingy feels forced in a way that the previously stand alone articles within the older books did not.

It's not in any Codex ! You can't do that !

Balderdash,

GW had a long history of codexing units it then didn't produce models for.  "Codexing"  - so totes a wurd.

I've built a squad of jump 'zerkers.

 Lined up on the Brick of Scrutiny: Anvil and GW bits.

So, then tossing some ideas around for actually painting them - here's my quandary:

1. Classic mostly bright red with metallic detailing (like other 'Zerkers)
2. Brass (a bit like Minotaurs) A sort of Khornate Elite [Sanguinary] Guard
3. Black with red crosses on their shoulders and legs

I'm thinking of a sort of Sanguinary Guard.  Once they're painted, they will be virtually indistinguishable from blood for the blood god angels anyway.  But I am open to other suggestions.  

Blood for the blood Emperor an' all that.

And because they're wearing jump packs, they can be artfully arranged like a flower.  It's not all blood and death then.  Oh, wait...

Deathwatch Kill team

OK, so on the Brick of Scrutiny now are the Deathwatch Kill team figures.  They're here so we can talk about painting. 

Red.  Blarrgh !  I know a lot of people grumble about painting red.  Here are some red ones.

Ultrasmurfs.

Now the green team.

There he is, looking for Alpharius within the ranks of the deathwatch.

Lighter colours.  Yellow.

Metal.

More yellow, he actually looks slightly better from the back.

Hell's Spangle.  I was feeling quite pleased with my progress here and thought to myself "I'll look at Karitas' Whitescar biker as a point of reference."  I won't do that again.

And my fluffy ffaves, the grey team.

So what you're looking at here are ten unfinished Space Marine figures.  I get so far, and then run into the law of diminishing returns.  By the time I get them to this stage, I've burnt through my mojo.  One of the reasons they are in their Chapter colours with black arms is that the variety of colourschemes are what maintains interest.

But I get 'em to here and then the steps required to finish them seem just beyond reach.  Picking out those final levels of detail is something I tend not do.  Long time readers may remember me talking about not enjoying painting (hence contracting it out), having neither the time nor inclination to practice in order to get to a level I'm happy with.

Now let's avoid a load of bollox where we blow smoke up someone's arse about their minis deserving a better paintjob than the one I'm currently putting out.  Two girls of primary school age eat money.  I need to improve my painting because contracting out painting is expensive.  There are a certain bits out there which I'm still getting help with, but I need to improve my painting to a point where these guys can look finished.

One thing which will need to improve is paint discipline - applying it where I want it, currently it goes a little bit further which means touching up.  Sometimes the touching up goes too far and needs touching up.  Better paint discipline in the first place would be a good start - go back up the picts and look at where the lenses are.  see ?

But I have a plan.

My Space Wolf Army...

Will be grey, not blue.

Will not have Fundawolf cavalry; cause they are silly.

Hummm.

OK, so over Mordian 7th there was a little bit of chatter about Mord's Deathwatch list.  He's said his vow, taken the black and is off to wall until the Wildings turn up.  Anyway, his list is:



Which obviously is a viable Knight's Watch army.  Did I write that ?  I meant Deathwatch, of course. But it doesn't seem much for three and half thousand points.  I have had a quick play with Battle Scribe.  I won't pretend to know what an "Unbound Army" is, but ten minutes dicking about gave me a viable list which I appear to unable to export by any means known to Adobe.  Oh well

• Gen Odon with a tricked out command team in a Chimera
• Three Platoons of three squads of Scions
• Three Platoons of two squads of Infantry with two mortar teams each
• Two squadrons of three Valks (with Hellfires) to move it all around 
• A squadron of three Vendettas
• Two Avengers with Hellfires
• Two troops of three hydra platforms
• a troop of three Leman Russ MBT

3540 points.

I reckon that's enough AT and AA for most situations as well as 121 squishy bodies and 35 semi-hardened bodies for most things.  Admittedly the only pies are the LRMBT and the 18 mortars, but with that many birds in the air, and the ability to pick up nearly all of the army and dump in someone's backyard (esp if you start with as many as possible embarked and in reserve), it should give most pause for thought.

Would you take on Mord's Knight's Watch list with this bunch ?  Of course, you know that I'm not interested in army list top trumps (do you have top trumps where you are ?  Does this reference make sense outside the UK ?);  but these two, at this scale, over 3000 points, are at the scale where it has become viable to field units in the size which armies would deploy.

If you consider a 1250 point engagement - those couple of squads of marines (of either persuasion) are holed up in a building somewhere; the IG, Tau, 'Nids (or even one of the other MEQ armies) is unlikely to send a small force to winkle them out.  Given the resources, you'd send a formation like that list above, or just deploy a blocking force* until you could bring a big enough hammer.

Now I know that in order to have fair pick up games etc that more or less equal points values (nearly everyone I've ever played has not been too bothered about a couple of points either way) but those last stands and unequal ambushes are staples of the fluff.  And fun to play, almost all of the time. I'm just attracted to the bigger picture.

I'm not trying to persuade you one way or the other, its just food for thought.  So there you go, a pointless post about points.

*ie not to attack or engage; just maybe harass from a distance and definitely to run away if seriously compromised.   Their mission is to simply fix the enemy in place until the big hammer arrives.

Adeptus Astartes likely to be in the vicinity of Devos IV

The Blood Angels were the Adeptus Astartes contribution to the war against WAAAARGH Burkett 800 years ago.  There are Blood Angel artefacts in the Xyphonica Basilica of the Emperor Restored.  Mauven 158, another world in the Dynorwic cluster, saw a Blood Angel strike force deploy to hunt down a detachment of the Emperor’s Children three years ago.  The Long War does not only persist in the minds of those traitor astartes in the Eye of Terror, it is remembered by the descendants of their foes as well.  The ancient fight between the Blood Angels and the Emperor's Children continues - And Eidolon escaped Mauven 158.

PVP's Blood Angels.  4000 point here.  Karitas has some too.

Rune Priests, following their own arcane predictions, have led possibly more than one Great Hunt into the Dynorwic Cluster, ready to respond to further casting of the runes.  Wolf Scouts are not a common sight, naturally, but they are at large on many worlds, sniffing out the situation and following up on leads and sightings, building up a larger and more comprehensive picture than many other of the agencies involved.  The Rune Priests have seen that failure on Devos IV could jeopardise the whole Dynorwic cluster, the attentions of a Deamon Prince from the Horus Heresy make this a fight they will take on.  The presence of Lone Wolves on Devos IV already is no accident.

One of Karitas' Rune Priests.  Gregarious fellows, Rune Priests - they have lots of friends

The Brothers of the Lostwithial, a splinter of a Black Templar Crusade, have come directly to Devos IV in order to fulfil an oath to Inquisitor Blingnor of the OH.  They have already managed to alienate many of the senior command teams at the front line, even if their incessant rituals are indulged at High Command. The mysterious Adeptus Astartes of ‘One Force’, who have previously ‘punished’ Black Templar formations for over enthusiasm (when the Brothers get carried away dispensing the Emperor's Justice in population centres) are possibly shadowing the Brothers.  Only time will tell. 

Andy BG's mysterious One Force, 

Through various agencies (possibly radicals in the OH), the Relictors have learned the fate of the War Griffons Canis Fidelis, now the Khornate Belligera Rex.  Securing any of the Aroctech from a debased  titan could possibly advance their schemes quite some way.   If your purpose is to understand how the warp can effect the laws of nature, the fundamental laws of the universe, then something like a titan, even a small one, amounts to a substantial sample.  Even if it has to be picked up off a battlefield by a thousand men with buckets.

Siph's Relictors - just the middle bits.

The Brothers of the Lostwithial may be already in situ, but their force is likely already depleted by the actions they have already undertaken on Deovs IV.   They view the Blood Angels as heretical.  The view the Relictors as heretical.  When they meet the Sons of Russ, the chances are they won’t take to them either.   Relationships between the other Astartes factions remain a matter of conjecture.  For the time being. 

My vast collection of Black Templars.  Gonna need some more....

And if something attracts four disparate Chapters, then it is almost certain to attract others...

The punisher of errant Astartes. 

Just before Operation Dragonfire, in orbit.

There are reasons that the imperial Navy would not drop troops in position around Xyphonica.  And that they would only drop troops at Fort Nuttar when the FLOT was already in the Western Suburbs of the city, hundreds of Kloms away.  All of which date back to the time when it is alleged that the Blood Pact arrived on Devos IV.

Investigations after the event determined that the mass conveyor пелерина Интрига[1] had been converted to a troopship at the Imperial Navy’s Belis Corona naval yards nearly 500 years ago.  It had lifted troops to warzones around the Galactic Core for 157 years, before being attached to the Imperial Navy’s 876^th Fleet at the outset of the Sabbat Crusade.  After seven years, including hot dropping onto Balhaut[2], the пелерина Интрига disappears from the record[3].

The ship, all three and half thousand meters of her, appeared at the Naval Way Station at Aurent[4] early in 857.M41 reporting for duty, carrying the Mordant 303^rd “Acid Dogs” as a ‘ready to deploy’ Astra Militarum formation.   They were issued with the appropriate codes, assigned an escort[5] and despatched to the Devos system.   All of this is pretty usual.

Two months later, longer than the standard journey time from Agripinna to Devos, but not remarkably so, the пелерина Интрига slid into orbit.  Her escorts remained in their allotted positions as she moved into low orbit, all the time following the instructions delivered by the task force flagship, now the Dictator Class Cruiser “Slaydo”.  The пелерина Интрига announced that she was ready to discharge her cargo and then reported a minor fire in the lower decks. 

The lead ship of what had been her escort detail reported that the four Dencara class escorts[6] were still hot (to move, having not yet powered down to their geo-stationary orbit) and therefore available to move to collect escape pods should the worst occur.

The Slaydo turned her augurs on the пелерина Интрига and failed to locate the reported fire.  In spite of this, she issued the order to move the escorts into rescue positions, even as she demanded that the пелерина Интрига confirm the location and extent of the damage.  The troopship swung into an ever lower orbit, complaining that it was becoming harder to maintain her position. 

Listening in, the four escorts, 11,000km closer, turned their augurs on the supposed location of the fire and also could not detect any damage.  However, what they could clearly see, which the fleet commanders on the Slaydo could not, was her drop ships beginning to cycle through their launch patterns, over the wrong hemisphere of the planet.

The master of the Captain Gunnerson reported this to the Slaydo who challenged the пелерина Интрига; the troops were supposed to be landed at the starport, not directly on the battlefield; this had already been communicated and acknowledged, why were they now disobeying instructions designed to keep Imperial Navy assets safe from ground fire ?  The reply was that if the fire on board became too big to contain, the troops could be saved by disembarking now, before it was too late.

Whilst ostensivly  plausible, this was not consistent with the initial reports of a small fire.  The reports of a small fire were not consistent with the lack of any sign on the augurs, either.   Not the close up view from the escorts nor the powerful sweeps of the Slaydo.   The drop ships dropped.  Taking 22 minutes to make planetfall, 30 minutes to disgorge their load[7] and then 38 minutes to re-dock and then begin loading again.

72AG were immediately on to their Imperial Navy liaison teams.  Why wasn’t the regiment being delivered to the star port ?  If the prime mover was in distress, why could the drop ships not push further west and allow the unit to be extracted later ?  Close Orbit Command, suitably embarrassed, immediately sent as many assets as they had to discern the situation and help where they could.

The пелерина Интрига’s dropships went through three cycles.  The ship was still not giving satisfactory answers to the Slaydo’s questions, the first marauders over the scene reported taking fire from where they expected to find disembarked guardsmen. 

Marauder Destroyers - two Punisher cannons under each wing... Why not ?

The Ordo Hereticus delegation had made sure that one of its members was on duty on the Slaydo at all times.  At this particular moment, that person was Inquisitor Hallas Blingnor.  Having been warned by his immediate superior about spoiling relationships with the other agencies involved in the campaign, he had, perhaps uncharacteristically, refrained from ordering the Captain of the Slaydo, Rear Admiral Devolt, to carry out what ever thing first popped into his reactionary, puritan mind.

Instead, taking advantage of his personal relationship with Castellian Brodeep, Inquisitor Blingnor ordered the Black Templar Strike Cruiser, the Lostwithial, to fire on the  пелерина Интрига.  Un accountably, the troop transport seemed to have been watching for ships powering up their weapon systems.  The troop ship was designed, like a space marine battle barge, to do its job in low orbit under fire.  Its shields went up.  The last round of drop ships departed.  Whoever those people were, barring the usual casualties due to shaking and impact, they were now down[8].

The пелерина Интрига ran away from the Lostwithal and the rest of the Imperial Fleet[9], largely in geo-stationary orbit would take hours to make ready and get underway.  But the Dencara Escorts were close and ready for action.  Flipping from rescue to attack was a change of thought and attitude, with no requirement to change any system.  Already at action stations, they raised their shields and joined the fray.

Whilst they did not have enough fire power to take the пелерина Интрига down straight away, it could not evade or outrun them and didn’t have the firepower of its own to do more than superficial damage to the Commissar Yamoto and Colonel Jacka.  Targeting the drives,  the escorts subjected the пелерина Интрига  to 54 minutes of constant strafing; the troopship was soon drifting.  An hour and seventeen minutes later, the first Black Templar drop pods hit the embarkation decks.  The last four squads of Black Templars from the Lostwithial would assault and clear the пелерина Интрига.

What they found there was evidence that the forces allied to Magister Sholen Skara had seized the vessel in the massive Naval Engagements around Parthenope during the Sabbat Crusades[10].  The vessel had quite obviously, since then, been used by the Great Enemy to ferry his soldiers around.  There was every indication that those landed were kin to the Blood Pact or Sons of Sek.  The Black Templars set the hulk on a course to the sun and recovered their drop pods.

Inquisitor Blingnor had scored a famous victory through his eternal vigilance and keen instinct for confronting heresy[11].

---

[1] “Cloaked in Intrigue”

[2] 765 M41.

[3] Obviously it remained a part of the Imperial Navy until the Naval Battle at Parthenope, despite the loss or destruction of pertinent records.

[4] The Imperial Navy’s waystation in the Agripinna system.  The major travel nexus into and out of the EoT warzone as well as the home of Klestor Sector Command.

[5] Four Dencara Class Fleet escorts, the Captain Gunnerson, General Estra, Commissar Yamato and Colonel Jacka.

[6] The Dencara class fleet escort is essentially a Firestorm class frigate with the engineering decks configured differently to accommodate an increase in shield generator capacity.

[7] The Infantry units were landed almost in the western suburbs of Xyphonica. An ideal position to assault the city, perhaps, but not much good if you wanted much of the regiment left after the action.

[8] Estimates range from 4000 to 8000 soldiers. 

[9] Taking into account the atmosphere of Devos IV, the пелерина Интрига was over the horizon within 12 minutes.

[10] A notable disaster for the Imperial Navy, 767.M41.

[11] In all his years of shooting them all and letting the Emperor sort it out, it has never once occurred to him that he might be wrong.  

Black Library Audio Books

  

I've got one, "Black and Red" (I know, I can see it too) which is about SoB being called in to assess a world's piety immediately after first contact.

Anyway, the voice actors do the best they can and the direction is what it is and it's all a bit, er, how I would have wanted it to sound had I produced it in 1982.  Lots of forced reaction and caricature with a predictable shoot out at the end.  Now the idea behind the audio book was a good, solid premise for a Grim Dark story.  But it could have been a bigger story, in a book and been quite the piece, instead of being crammed onto one planet in an audio book.  Jus' sayin'.

So they're now offering this:

Which I am really interest in - I really quite liked 'Flight of the Eisenthing'.  Any way.  Here's the rub; I have almost no time in my life to listen to things (really  listen, I mean.  The radio may be on the background, but that's background stuff).   Whereas I do read.  I'd like this as a book.  Or books.  Or e-book or e-books.  And having been disappointed by 'Black and Red' I'm not really in the place where I'm gonna blow £50+ on a punt that this might not be as awful.

Another thing is the way in which I consume my hobby product - bit of weird language there, but I hope you get what I mean.  I would want this to sit on my shelf, with the other books I like.  Not be crammed and lost in with the Jason Donovan and Take That CDs.  Oh well, £50 saved, I suppose.

Do I have a point ?  Not really, just sharing an opinion.

OBTW, Astrubel Vect has a facebook page !  Who knew ?

USMC Orbital Assault with jet packs.

Drop pods and assault muhreenz ?  Phooey !

Get a load of this

Dorn vs Gulliman - why Chapters are so small

In the wake of the Horus Heresy there were those amongst the Primarchs who recognised the need for a system of checks and balances on the power of the Legions (cf Bureau Astartes).  Despite the predicable difficulties, Gulliman figured out that 1000 Adeptus Astartes would still be a significant military force. An easy spilt of any Legion[1] using existing quasi autonomous fighting units, hiving them off from their Legion hierarchy and formally making them independent.

Sons of Gulliman

The size limit would also greatly assist those monitoring the Chapters (Inquisitors of the Ordo Hereticus) in that the Chapter would not be so great an entity that it could not be thoroughly investigated.  A politically autonomous Chapter Master would answer to no one for the disposition of his forces, but was still subject to scrutiny regarding his policies and devices.

Dorn’s argument appears to be based on the idea that the Primarchs are the Emperor’s Sons and that therefore the Astartes themselves are from the Emperor’s own genetic material; and that also they are bound by common purpose (the safeguarding and furtherance of humanity) and being beset by traitors, their motives should be beyond question and that therefore continuing to wield the power of Legion was necessary; their opponents were still theoretically Space Marine Legions and itty-bitty little Chapters would just not cut the mustard.  Dorn recognised that having unified command and overwhelming force was pivotal to military success, Gulliman believed that the combination of unified command and overwhelming force was too great a risk for the Imperium to bear; that a multitude of Chapters, all still loyal to the Emperor, would suffice.  Could Dorn's Legion have saved the Orpheus Sub Sector ?  We will never know. 

Ultramarines - not all pink and fluffy.

The level of political autonomy they have is down to compromise.  Gulliman must have had such a hard time getting (for example) Corax and the Great Khan on side that his carefully balanced to be sustainable bands of warrior monks in space that he’d given little thought to their governance.  Not enough, anyway.  Dorn’s eventual capitulation on the brink of another civil war (his ships had been fired upon by the Imperial Navy) must have given him a strong position from which to insist that that a Chapter Master should have the absolute right to deploy his warriors as he saw fit; size of force deployed, force composition and choosing who to fight and when.   

Imperial Fist - Son of Dorn

This may well have been expressed in terms of picking one’s own fights, there is every chance that no thought was given to force size and composition; there may have simply been an assumption that the new Chapters would deploy en masse, as they had before, and therefore no definitions were given for deployments; allowing later Chapter Masters to scatter their force across space according to their own whimsy.

In the immediate post heresy these new Chapters in all probability deployed as formed units; each of them being a sub division of a pre heresy Legion anyway; used to fighting as a body of 1000 Astartes plus attachments.   It is only as time passes and the Chapter Masters (perhaps the second and third generations of Chapter Master) become more used to their autonomy and begin to see their Chapter as the focus for their loyalty, rather than themselves as simply collective inheritors of the might of their first founding Legion.

Once this mindset has taken hold, that the 1000 warriors become an ideologically isolated brotherhood, each having its own doctrines and belief system that become more and more divergent over time.  Just look at the number of Chapters in the ‘modern’ Imperium who do not know who their primarch is.

After ten thousand years of autonomy,  the Chapter Masters are much less likely to risk their entire force in one engagement.  Also as their autonomy drifts to isolation, their need larger fleets and to cover more territory, which itself leads to smaller deployments and more of them.  Soon it becomes difficult to mass a Chapter for an en masse deployment; their Legion staging posts have evolved into a fortress monastery which has become the hub for the Chapter’s recruiting campaign.

All pictures randomly culled from t'interweb with apologies to the owners. 

I'm still posting on Tuesdays and Fridays, at least until the end of September. 

---

[1] P30 of Horus Heresy Book 1.  It is clear from this that Gulliman’s idea was not actually that radical at all.  He possibly intended each Chapter to take a larger Auxillia with it.  Oh well…

Bureau Astartes (post three of two)

In case you need to refresh your memory:

Bureau Astartes (post one of two)

Bureau Astartes (post two of two)

To take this a little further then;  We're going to look at one of these modest deployments that a Chapter Master ordains in order to project his force out where he wants it to be; ie to position enough of his assets in patterns he finds useful across territory he wants to influence.  A penny packet SM force is sent out into the warp; Two squads (our troops choices) a junior Chaplin (our HQ choice) and a Storm Drain (dedicated transport) to get them down to the planet and back up to the Strike Cruiser.

Paint by Golem

There may well be one senior sergeant and one more junior one; just to spread experience and opportunity around in equal measure.   The force is this small because it has to fit into the Strike Cruisers described in the fluff, in this case a Space Marine ship as described in BFG (which I don't play or have a copy of) and the Black Library books (which I don't read) and Lexicanum (the source of all my knowledge).

They leave the Chapter fortress and are consigned to the warp.  Perhaps their mission is to show the flag at a world that is suffering from piracy.   The warp jump takes a year, they spend a year in system, pulling over every space farer they encounter for a year and have a few fights.  Contacting the Chapter by astropath, they are directed to rendezvous with a Chapter Battle Barge - another mission encountered stiff resistance from the arch enemy and suffered a defeat and the stain on the Chapter's honour must be restored.

This paint by golem as well !

The little task force joins with others to make a larger force and they take the fight to the scions of the traitor legions.  A Chapter Captain is KIA and our senior sergeant is promoted to junior Captain and has to remain on the Battle Barge (to return to the Chapter fortress for his career interview with the boss Chapter Master).

The little task force moves off onto its next mission, spending another year in the warp.  They emerge to fight heresy on an Imperial World (perhaps they wanted free speech, or universal education or some other heretical nonsense).  They move off and fight some minor xenos incursion and then, because their Strike Cruiser is not very big, need replenishment.  Arranged by astropathic communications they undertake another warp journey to rendezvous with a larger ship from an allied chapter to take on bolter rounds and SM issue missiles and so on.

The little tasks force sets off on another mission and probably due to the vagaries of the warp, is not heard of again for a century.   When they are contacted, the Chaplin (leading from the front) is reported as KIA.  The two junior sergeants report that they are still confident and motivated and so are set another mission; another punitive mission in concert with other Chapter assets.

However, due to either resourcing issues or, again, the vulgarities of the warp, they miss a rendezvous and find themselves isolated on another human inhabited world, that has not had interstellar contact for a thousand years and remembers the Imperium as Myth.  Here the SM are hailed as gods (or at least angels).  Their astropath (who is NOT functionally immortal) is now old, tired and has much less range than he used to.

There are three ways this can go;

• the SM remember the mission, stay true to their vows and return to their fortress monastery.
• they set themselves up as planetary rulers and usher in a new age (one way or another)
• their old, weak, astropath becomes a conduit for the ruinous powers and the little team go over to the other side.

You can see how, with variations in time and scale, this might play out again and again.  This is how bodies such as the Black Legion and the Red Corsairs recruit; they in probability still have limited capacity to create their own (C)SM, but things like this are going to get them more stable geneseed and result in better quality CSM.

The point of this post is, that driven both by operational necessity and the notoriously fickle nature of warp travel and communication, these little teams are going to spend a lot of time feeling isolated and abandoned.  And that's when allegiances change.  So, in terms of attrition, boredom and isolation are going to rob the Astartes Chapters of as many highly trained genetically engineered super soldiers as combat will.  The more out of the way worlds of the Grimdark 39th Millenium are probably liberally peppered with such dangerous rogue individuals.

And welcome to Gonewild, my 50th reader.

The Black Templars, incidentally, according to the existing codex, are possibly not going to be prone to this type of attrition - they bimble about mob handed; they believe they are being true to Dorn, but as discussed, on a fundamental level, they are probably being true to what Gulliman intended as well.  But these guys (the minis in the pictures) look cool, in an intolerant, purging sort of way, so they get a bit of bandwidth.