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The Liber Challenges part Six - Chaos Space Marines


Aqui

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OK Folks, heres my entry. Its i need of a little fleshing out, and probably some more pictures, but as it stands I don't think its too bad.

I offer up for your perusal, the grubby tale of thwarted ambition and bitterness that will introduce the Sons of Spite.

Name: The Sons of Spite

Geneseed: Ultramarine, as an offshoot of the Harvesters chapter.

Idrin of the Harvesters had served his chapter since he was little more than a child, when the chapter plucked him from the hellish aftermath of the greenskin invasion that shattered his birth-world of Nuncio Lateran. Over his years as an Astartes warrior his tenacity and diligence had seen him find a position in the tenth company, training the newest recruits and preparing them for service in the chapter and then higher still, to spend sixty years as personal equerry and standard bearer to captain Teleas of the VIIth company. Upon the death of Teleas it had seemed that Idrin would be elevated to the captaincy but instead the commission fell to a younger officer, and former student of Idrin's.

At first the old veteran kept his resentment at the rise of captain Nebril hidden but over time his distaste became more overt, if never slipping into insubordination.
In late M38, the seventh were engaged in purging an Ork infestation from the Librant system when Idrin's squad were cut off from the main forces while attempting to sabotage a Stompa production facility. Despite heavy losses, the sergeant led his men clear of the enemy lines, but in the process was sorely wounded.
The chapter's apothecaries were unable to save Idrin's left eye and arm and implantation of the augmetic devices that replaced his injured parts was only partially successful, leaving Idrin in near-constant pain.
Returning to the battle on Librant towards the end of the campaign, Idrin became separated from his comrades during an extermination exercise when the company came under attack by what appeared to be a force of human auxiliaries under the command of astartes warriors in archaic power armour. When Idrin's squad were able to fight through to the sergeant's side, he had one of the renegade marines pinned down in a shattered hab-block. Captain Nebril ordered that the traitor be retained for interrogation, but acting against orders, Idrin executed the heretic, blasting the body apart with a meltagun in a seeming fit of rage.
It was shortly after the Librant incident that Idrin brought about Nebril's downfall. For millenia, the forges of Geferit had provided the Harvesters with the airframes for the dropships that were so key to their methods of warfare, but for many months deliveries had ceased. The Harvesters responded in strength, deploying a battle barge and two strike cruisers to the vital fourth planet of the Gaferitii system. Their worst fears were confirmed: the hives and forges were in open rebellion, and the planetary defence forces were occupying the space ports and firing upon all imperial traffic. The Adeptus Terra quickly authorised the deployment of three regiments of the Imperial Guard, and the inevitable invasion began.
The rebellion did not last long against the might of the Imperial forces, and within weeks the renegades held only the primary hive spire with its associated forges. It was during the final assault on the hive, with imperial forces under captain Nebril in the lead that Idrin betrayed his chapter. The traitors in the forge had been corrupted by chaotic influences, and at the eleventh hour destroyed the hive spire using corrupted machineries that resulted in horrendous casualties and terrifying mutations in the imperial guard forces. Those that survived broke and fled, and in the aftermath of the fighting, the unfortunate casualties rose up in a tide of the unliving to attack their former comrades. So rapid was the spread of this contagion that Nebril reluctantly ordered a retreat to orbit with the intention of bombarding the infected region. It was as the Harvester's dropships returned to orbit that Idrin struck.
Having somehow wrested control of the Battlebarge Seed of Destruction from its crew, Idrin and his co-conspirators trapped the thunderhawk carrying Nebril in the landing bay as it docked, and then turned the batteries of the ship first upon the remaining dropships, and then upon the rest of the fleet, gutting one strike cruiser with lance fire and causing a core overload that destroyed the second.
Against the might of an astartes battlebarge, the vessels of the Astra Militarum had little chance, and one by one they were either crippled or sent plummeting to their destruction in the atmosphere of the planet below.
Over many years, Idrin's anger at being supplanted by Nebril, and his pain and bitterness at his injuries had slowly driven him to a point of cold rage and determination that he would wrest control of the company he believed was rightfully his from what he could only see as a usurper. Slowly he had convinced others within the chapter of his claim, playing on their own resentments and miseries to sway them to his cause; offering them hope of the advancement they had not yet achieved and the power they craved. Following the massacre he perpetrated at Geferitii IV, Idrin rounded up what survivors he could from the crippled strike cruiser and those of the surviving cultists from the planet below who would follow him.
Idrin's plan had extended far beyond the mere capture of his captain however. Fleeing to a neighbouring star system, the battlebarge led a half-dozen ragged and barely spaceworthy vessels. On board what had been an Imperial guard troopship, the renegade astartes marched along barrack rooms thronged with chanting supplicants. Among the cultists were the surviving agitators and orators of the rebellion, giving voice to a thousand muttered curses and pleading entreaties for salvation from the myriad agues and fevers that wracked the horde. At a given signal, Idrin's men laid hands upon every seventh cultist and herded them towards a loading crane by the embarkation gates. These unfortunates were hauled upon filthy ropes and hanged, choking out their lives as they danced the jerking ballet of the gibbet. As the last of the hanged men twitched their final spasms, the ragtag fleet made its translation to the warp. In that instant the embarkation gates opened into the void and the Geller fields were deactivated, allowing the immaterium to flood in as the decompression sent the surviving cultists cartwheeling out into the void to be consumed by the swirling horrors outside. Only Idrin's astartes, their boots mag-locked to the deck, remained inside the ship, the hanging corpses fluttering in the wind of escaping atmosphere like obscene banners.
When the hull of the ship was repressurised the hanged men were left to rot, a myriad of glittering flies and crawling things feeding on their defiled flesh. Idrin's men took to walking among the festering cadavers, their helmets off as they breathed the heavy odours and sickly pathogens. When the corpses began to whisper is not known, but before long their rotting teeth chattered prayers and hissing breaths rattled from lungs that were little more than slime. "The grandfather comes" "count your blessings".
When Idrin heard the whispering, his sour brooding demeanour decreased. He directed those few he trusted among his men to record and document the words of the apparitions to search for any hidden meaning. All the time, the sergeant and his men sickened. Grey pallor took over their skin, and many began to feel tremors and shaking in their limbs. Idrin began to visit his captive former commander, taunting Nebril and promising that the rest of the Harvesters chapter would fall under his command in time, and that the captain would have to watch his comrades forsake the emperor.
When the first Astartes succumbed to the sickness, the renegades began to panic. The marine's armour was found in a corridor, his body little more than a viscous mass. Idrin however, was not disheartened. He called together his followers and simply stated "Count your blessings brothers. Our flesh sickens as our spirits fight these afflictions... It is the struggle that weakens us. Accept the many gifts bestowed upon us and glory in the strength they offer. We have nothing to fear, not death, not weakness or pain. The grandfather gives constancy... He preserves us from the despair of decay." A mumbled assent rippled around the assembled marines, and in a heartbeat, the chattering of the hanging corpses fell silent. One by one, the foul fruits burst asunder, a glistening wash of wet ichor and bone-dry corpse dust erupting into the air and coating Idrin and his men, their tremors stilled, their pain ended.
Idrin has attempted many times in the past millennium to bring the remainder of the harvesters chapter under his sway; Most notably when his renegades tried to use Nebril's thunderhawk to transport a cargo of deadly pathogens to the harvesters fleet having drawn them in using the drifting Seed of Destruction as bait. Had the Captain not escaped from his cell and accessed the gun deck controls, the ruse would surely have succeeded.
On every occasion that the harvesters have encountered Idrin and his Sons of Spite, they have made every effort to hide the evidence of his treachery. Their shame at the defection of so large a number of their own has made them a more ruthless fighting force, but also one that is more aloof from its allies. Suspicion and cold fury are their trademarks, and as far as the Imperium at large is aware the seventh company were casualties of the war on Geferitii IV, and nothing more.
Idrin and his followers have eluded the searching eyes of the Harvesters for fourteen hundred years, gathering manpower from the disenfranchised and outcast in several sectors. They exist through scavenging and piracy, raiding settlements for slave labour and mercenaries and preying on shipping. Most of their activities seem to centre around a region of space known as the Gorthir nebula, a turbulent and trackless waste of unpredictable topography, impenetrable to the light of the astronomicon. Idrin sits on the bridge of the Seed of Destruction, brooding and plotting as the creeping vermin scuttle around his feet and between the plates of his rusting armour. When the mood takes him, he visits his Captain in the bowels of the vessel to make mockery of his fall from grace. What Nebril thinks of his former mentor's command is unclear however: since Idrin had him wired into the rotting carcass that was once a dreadnought sarcophagus, all he really does anymore is scream.
In appearance, the Sons of Spite have altered their colours little since the time that they marched as Harvesters. Where once their armour shone with glossy black and regal purple, now it is split between the dull grey of charcoal and the livid puce of a festering bruise. Corrosion and unrepaired damage pockmark their battleplate, lubricants drip from creaking joints and coolant hisses from fractured conduits. They have abandoned the hourglass imagery of their parent chapter, (for what is time when the great father replenishes you through the constancy of everlasting decay?) but retain the motif of a scythe, which they associate with bringing death to their enemies in the name of the plaguefather.
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Notable characters:

Idrin, Sergeant-at-arms. A former veteran of the Harvesters seventh company, now leader of the Sons of Spite and determined to take command of his former chapter, or destroy it in the process.

Dromond, a former techmarine who now experiments with twisted amalgamations of fetid corpse matter and machinery.

Nebril, former captain of the Harvesters seventh company and now the unwilling interee of the Helbrute "Eternal Pity".

Notable engagements predominantly include Idrin's attempts to outmaneuvre his former chapter and cause disruption to their operations. It was the Sons of Spite who used Cyclonic warheads to level the Hives and Forges of Geferitii IV, and it must be assumed that the destruction of the Harvesters Strike Cruiser Emperor's Bounty was also their work. Most of their further operations remain unrecorded, although at least two Inquisitorial investigations are underway in the regions surrounding the Gorthir nebula, and more information will no doubt be discovered.

Well, there we go. Hopefully its a good base to expand upon.

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I was going to close the challenge once I got home, but for reasons I won't go into, I'm not feeling my best (putting it mildly). So, there'll be an extension until 6pm tomorrow (18th) September. It'll (hopefully) allow me to get back on track and get the next challenge ready.

My own Challenge is still a fail and will be picked back up on the last month.

Sorry if this causes any complications sad.png

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How will having an extra day cause complications? xD

I will sacrifice a few more enemies, hopefully you'll feel better!

Complications might have been the wrong word. I just didn't want members to feel that they've missed out on an extra day and had to rush to finish when they didn't need to (if that makes sense)

Yes! A reprieve for my laziness! Now watch me totally squander it. laugh.png

Hmm...I have no doubt that you'll find a way to procrastinate laugh.png

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I would like to say that today's work deadline has kept me working too many extra hours the past couple weeks, and just kept me in a stressed out mood.

 

I would like to say that the troubles at home, and home-related preparations, have kept me busier than normal after work.

 

I would like to say all of that is the reason why I am not going to finish, and all of that really is happening.

 

But honestly, it's because I have been spending way too much time playing Fallout New Vegas. Not entirely without loss, though. The Big Empty has given me a lot of ideas on how to portray an abandoned Forge-turned-Feral World as a home to my Iron Hunters Chapter. Why the Mechanicus built and released so many amechnids and lobotomized servitors upon abandoning the planet, nobody will ever know.

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Apologies for not being around to formally end this challenge sad.png I haven't been well and the last day or so, I found that my internet connection decided to screw around.

Needless to say that it has ended. I'll go through the topic and add in all of the completed topics to the first post.

Regarding the next challenge, it will launch this week, but I need to get my act together, so it might not be tonight...

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Don't worry too much, brother. This has been a constant thing - a consecutive series of challenges for half a year now. A week to recoup is not something to shy from if you need it. :)

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So f i read correctly we will get a chance to redeem ourselves if we have a failed challenge? I was so close to finishing before work got in the way

 

Yes. Toward the end of the year iirc.

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So f i read correctly we will get a chance to redeem ourselves if we have a failed challenge? I was so close to finishing before work got in the way

Yes. Toward the end of the year iirc.

Olis has it right - there is the next challenge (Loyalist Space Marines, including Space Wolves, although in their case, it'll be the creation of a Great Company), the Age of Darkness and then the "Mop up" month smile.png

EDIT: As far as I can see, I have at least added all of the links to the topics entered for this challenge. I've still got the "Complete!" tag to many of them. If I have missed a link then please let me know smile.png

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Looking forward to the next one, though I'm still at a loss which Chapter to do.

 

I'm glad you posted this now, because I am one paragraph away from being "done" with the Highborn. But it would have been a terrible post, and rushed. I would rather give it more time and let it be a part of the mop up month.

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Looking forward to the next one, though I'm still at a loss which Chapter to do.

Maybe one of your Liber Cluster chapters?

I'm going to go with one that I've given the least attention to.

I'll leave you to work out which one that is msn-wink.gif

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Do I want to return to the unfinished Iron Hunters, redo the Crimson Specters, double back to the skipped Brazen Bears, or do an IA for when the Conclave was still loyal or from a narrative perspective that doesn't know the Honored Brethren aren't loyal?

 

Or do I keep going down the list and do the Storm Bearers?

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EDIT: As far as I can see, I have at least added all of the links to the topics entered for this challenge. I've still got the "Complete!" tag to many of them. If I have missed a link then please let me know smile.png

my completed's are on posts 65 and 67.

I wasn't sure which one was the final one. If you could, could you make a post with both parts in it? smile.png

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