Index Astartes Stoneburners

Panoply as chosen by Aetrion
The Third Company Master of the Angels of Vengeance was presented as the head of the training cadre for the new Chapter and de facto Chapter Master. He brought with him several members of the Angels of Vengeance First Company and other veterans from his prior Chapter to round out the trainers. The Angels of Vengeance Grand Master then granted Aetrion a large boon for the new Chapter and bequeathed him the prime recruiting world of Akhundras, the harsh desert planet of his birth. The Chapter was presented at the Rock in a new Battle Barge with a bare compliment of Marines. Aetrion was asked for the name and panoply of the new Chapter. Aetrion spoke quickly, naming it in the old form of Caliban as the Order of the Burning Stones and for the Imperium to know them as the Stoneburners. After the details of the Chapter were set down, Aetrion took the fledging Stoneburners to his former home world to begin a massive recruiting campaign.
Given the harsh nature of Akhundras and Aetrion's need to keep the world ripe for recruiting, only aspirants from families that had more than one son were allowed to be considered, and even then, the clans were decimated or worse throughout the pan, salt flats and ergs they inhabited, though they supplied fully half of all the Marines for the Stoneburners. Aetrion foresaw that any further recruitment too quickly would stress the already hard-pressed people of the desert world to a breaking point and possibly doom the clans, so he made a bizarrely sentimental oath to the leadership of the Stoneburners that his Chapter would not take any further sons from the clan until at least four generations had passed, an oath that became a ritual in its own right after each recruiting cycle. Aetrion guided the fledgling Stoneburners toward the Segmentum Obscurus, where they completed the initial build-up of Marines for the Chapter.
The Stoneburners were first truly blooded at Grayllon Four, where they confronted several squads of Death Guard twisted by their devotions to Nurgle. The initial confrontation saw the veteran Traitors tear through two squads of the Sixth Company and the majority of the Fifth. The First, Third and Seventh Companies were immediately deployed to the surface to support the remaining Marines and annihilated the Nurgle-tainted enemy. The remaining members of the Sixth Company made a point of finding all the remaining long bone fragments they could from the enemy and incinerating them with plasma and melta-weapons in an effort to cleanse the taint of Chaos from the battlefield and prevent it from spreading further through the planet. This action would be repeated afterward on multiple worlds and eventually even to people on the worlds where the battles took place in the Stoneburners' ever expanding efforts to stem the tide of Chaos in the arm of the galaxy they patrol.
Per their mandate, the Stoneburners' bolters and blades tasted Traitor blood repeatedly over the millennia, and the implacable advances and stubborn refusals to retreat in the face of overwhelming odds has reinforced the name of the First Company, Deathwalkers, many times over. Like their forebearers and due to the influence of the people of Akhundras, the Deathwalkers have flung themselves into the jaws of Chaos and repeatedly walked back out carrying shattered teeth and horns as trophies and the bodies of their brothers-in-arms, determined to sell their lives for as high a price in Traitor blood as possible. The battles have spurred several hunts for a Fallen, leading to more than one black pearl for their Interrogator-Chaplains.
After Abaddon's 13th Black Crusade and with the continued excursions from the Eye of Terror, the Stoneburners find that they have less and less time to replenish losses. Luckily the Chapter is girded with thoughts of duty in their war against Chaos and the hunt for the Fallen, enough that they bear up well under the cost, caring not for respite, for in their future, there is only war...

Deathwalker Panoply
The mark of the Angels of Vengeance on their descendants also shows in their overly developed stubbornness which can often override their battlefield judgement. While they have never suffered losses as severe as their progenitor Chapter, there have been several campaigns that depleted the majority of the Marines across multiple battle companies. The gall the Stoneburners felt from the lost combat time due to heavy recruiting and advanced training has caused them to seek out larger challenges that have repeatedly cost them further transhuman lives.
The use of the First Company, the Deathwalkers, is little different from other Unforgiven chapters, acting as the heavy mailed fist of the Stoneburners and the direct combat force when a Fallen is identified on the battlefield and confronted. The Second Company, the Boneseekers, is atypically larger than in other Unforgiven, exceeding the Codex Astartes proscription by a time and a half. Generally a quarter of the Boneseekers are left embedded amongst each Battle Company to act as a direct scouts, but are left with the freedom to leave and rejoin the Battle Company forces as their missions dictate. In this way, the Inner Circle feels they can better analyze information on potential Fallen without devoting Deathwalkers to each combat engagement.
Company Designators:
3rd Company:








Boneseeker Panoply
The legend on Akhundras says that the Deathwalker began as a death sentence for criminals condemned for the worst crimes, traitors against their clan, water thieves, and the like. The one declared Deathwalker would be taken out to the deep desert with both hands bound, no skin-suit or head coverings, and left near the den of an Achreshek in the path of a sand storm with a quarter day's ration of water. If the criminal could return to the clan with at least a single fresh Achreshek fang, then the traitorous act would be wiped clean by this redemptive act of bravery and toil. The legend says that the first man to survive this sentence met Death and broke his sword with the Achreshek's tooth after he fashioned it into a weapon such that Death could not strike him down until the Walker told Death he was finished. This changed slowly into a ritual for the truly suicidal young warriors of the clans who would make the smallest infraction that would warrant death in this manner (typically the theft of water given to a non-clan member that is also not a member of the same trade brotherhood) and and then they would go to their clan chief and ritually request a Deathwalk from the Elder's Council. Since the coming of the Dark Angels and then the formation of the Stoneburners, this has become the name of the deadly contests and trials assigned to those young warriors seeking to become initiates of the Chapter. The Stoneburners prize the legend of destroying Death's sword and the concept behind the legend enough that they named their First Company for the legend.
In a similar fashion, the Chapter also took the name of a legend of Ahkundras from a death cult of the clans there for their Second Company. The Boneseekers were believed to be both spirit and walking dead held together by a compulsion for vengeance that drives them to forever hunt. The legend states that they seek out the wronged and take up their vengeful thoughts, reforming them into a new quest each time that drives the Seekers even into the dreams of those that have wronged. They come in the night, walking from mists that billow before them like dust ground from the bones of those they hunt and drag the oppressors of the vengeful into the deep desert, stripping flesh from bone, which they collect for the next time they are reformed. The Boneseekers ride the beasts of the desert from place to place, driven by their hunt for vengeance, often taking wing as spirits on the backs of predator birds, causing the coloration to change to bone colored feathers, beaks and claws.
Scions of the Dark Angels Legion, pure in gene line and dedication to the Unforgiven.
"Until the stones run as blood!"
Edited by Bryan Blaire, 22 June 2013 - 11:52 PM.