Grey Hunter Ydalir

I'm unsurprisingly with Ace on this one, I'll just quote "just because you can, does not mean that you should." While you can make the argument that the Imperium 'could' make use of them, what benefit does blue skin bring, besides a very obvious mutation to a very religiously charged, racially inflexible culture like that is present in the Imperium? They'd do no thing a regular human couldn't, and if they were too far beyond the template it might be problematic for integration with Geneseed. Even for the Salamanders who's radiation explanation is being thrown around, it's the geneseed that reacts with the radiation, not the human donor. Are they strong like Ogryns? No. Are they quick and dextrous like the Ratlings? Also no. It's not that it's not possible, it's more that hanging your hat on this and making it a front and center part of your IA is incredibly thin ice to walk on, as it supports nothing. To me this resembles the over-use of PC leanings that are absolute rubbish born out of social-constructionists. This has nothing to do with anything other than what fits the setting and what works as a true part of the defining character of a chapter. Pale skin doesn't make the Raven Guard or Charcharadons who they are, it's a tiny bit of visual diversity that sets them apart from their cousins, taking it away would not detract anything from the chapter's character, so how much is it truly worth? Other than as a narrative framing device for their descriptions in stories, nothing at all. You could say they had a blue 'tint' or 'hue' to their otherwise generic human skin tones which may or may not be exaggerated by the geneseed when it's implanted, but to say your recruits all look like the Blue Man Group I think in 40k is going too far, personally. Just how many calls for their eradication would they get just because they resemble the Tau? Sorry Lord Marshal, to derail your thread again, but I had to comment on this specifically. As an aside, I really like the colour scheme you've gone with. :tu:

I'll re-iterate, I dislike overt mentions of anything. I will say definitively in my opinion geneseed mixing and lost legion links are, if desired, best kept in the background and used as 'spice' to help the overall flavour of the chapter. It's seasoning that shouldn't replace a part of the main meal, which is something a lot of people tend to miss. I'm with Lunkhead here. Using the Deathwatch angle is great for showing personality and character, and how they interact with the character of other chapters, not so much for physical objects. Their service is essentially black operations, so any artifacts or objects would fall under the possession of the Inquisition, and I don't think they'd be swayed by something as inconsequential as proximity to a chapter homeworld get in the way of their mandate and to argue with the Inquisition over the actions of their chamber militant, especially when the chapters that are signed on to donate brethren also sign off on all the conditions required. I don't think they have a leg to stand on here, to be honest. It'd be down to a generous Inquisitor Lord signing something over to the chapter, though I don't know why they would, when it would benefit them more to simply keep them for use by the Inquisition/Deathwatch, and have no negative consequences at all, especially if a member of the chapter was on that particular Kill Team, they'd be sworn to silence just by their terms of service. If you want to throw around artifacts, keep the Inquisition out of it, unless you need to have conflict for some reason, but realize that it's walking on a knife-edge. Just look at the Celestial Lions, or even the reborn Primaris Soul Drinkers for an example, as well as the implied destroyed chapters that have broken their oaths of silence of the Deathwatch. Other than the maces since you know my opinion on relics from the Deathwatch, great concept. A small story like that can stand on it's own outside of the IA, or be a part of it, or just have a section of it used in the IA. It's up to you, but it's a good idea. And that's all I have for now, as I've got to get back to work. Sorry for the short reply, but I'll see if I can come back to this later and pick up where I left off.

Ok Let's take a look. I think that's a good idea to exemplify how they interact with other chapters. If they act like Thrawn did when he was in the Imperial Military proper, it'd be an interesting point of friction. You could even have their unique mutations be commented on by other more 'puritan' Astartes members negatively, but that entirely depends on whether you want to include that kind of commentary in your work. Other than that a cultural example is great. Due to the nature of the Deathwatch and it's role, it'd be hard to have this kind of work be front and center when talking about the chapter, especially when the Deathwatch members are sworn to secrecy - which is slightly idiotic as an aside, considering the nature of the Astartes and their role in 40k - when returning to their chapters. You'd end up telling a Deathwatch story that had a member of your chapter in it, as opposed to the story of your chapter with a sidebar or commentary on one of it's brethren's time in the Deathwatch. Right out of the gate I'll state I'm not a fan of mixed geneseed. Things like this were traditionally only done during, for example, the cursed founding and most of those chapters met with unfortunate ends. It's heretical in the extreme outside of sanctioned events like that as well. Narratively speaking, it's got to be specifically tied to the makeup of the story of the chapter, like how the Soul Drinkers story is for a large part dominated by them not being who they thought they were, and the narrative springing from there. In any other respect it never feels necessary and in most cases simply feels like it's 'rule of cool', to try and make something unique without actually writing them to be so, relying on the crutch of something like 'mixed geneseed' or 'lost in the warp' or simply 'dark secrets', rather than actually writing something compelling. Don't get the cart before the horse. Write something that you think is a compelling story and see what springs from building that road, rather than dropping down a bunch of pretty statues and writing your way around them, forcing people to look at the statues rather than enjoying the drive on your road, if that makes sense. This also applies to the 'azure chimeras' which naming wise, feels a little bit on the nose, as well as the second legion links. It'd be better to have something like that subtly implied in passing, but never stated anywhere if you were going to do it. If it were me, I'd also cloak it in suspicions around the Alpha Legion. On this I'd ask Ace Debonair for some tidbits of advice, considering his Knights Oracular are back and are Alpha Legion Infiltrators Alpha Legion hunting specialists. This falls into the same camp as above. You're getting attached to particular individual golden bricks and expecting them to form key structural components of the wall that is your chapter, when they'd just crush under expansion. I'll explain. I think having a set of ideas for unique parts of the chapter are fine, but should be far, far less specific. Instead of this mini-story about a fellblade, just have one word "Archeotech" and leave it at that. When you begin writing any story, you should typically start with broad strokes. It's fine to have a concept in your head for it, but start developing that idea as broadly as possible. Example: I want to write a story about one of my Astartes. I begin with; a man is born, he lives, he dies. That's your basic beginning, middle and end. A story has to have those elements and while an IA is not a narrative story per-se, I view it as being the 'story' of your chapter. It covers their beginnings, how they're founded. Their middle years, their trials, tribulations and how they have been formed by these experiences. Finally their 'end' which is where you write your conclusion as to the character and state of the chapter and where they're poised to go as of the 'current' in stasis moment of the 40k timeline. As I develop his story I flesh it out with each successive pass. I'll add his name, his tribe or birthplace. Then briefly mention the trials he suffered to become an Astartes before moving on to his early career, before finally heading to his death, or where the story will leave him. If you keep developing that character long enough, you can pull a moment, battle, campaign, crisis or whatever you want from his life and you will have everything you need to write a story about it. You have his character, what challenges he's overcome and how that defines him. This is how video game, movie and narrative franchise 'bibles' are developed as well, even if some of those are more a collection of ideas and development from multiple authors along the way. Any time you dive too deep into hyper-specifics, you're getting the aforementioned cart before the horse. Your chapter is founded. Your chapter overcomes challenges put before them and it defines their character, and culture. Your chapter and it's status at the end of the current 40k timeline, including consequences of their actions and character set up before. Not sure about the crescents, I'd need to know more about the event, but Necron ships tend to be croissant sorry, crescent shaped in nature and I find it odd that a chapter would adopt the symbol of a xenos race they're fighting, even if it is just in ship aesthetics, unless the crescent existed in their symbology before hand. That said, a cataclysmic event based around the Necrons is really cool and fitting right in with current 40k lore. I'm not sure, you have to be extremely careful how you do this. Older and first or second founding chapters can get away with something similar, but their inherited equipment and infrastructure is far different to a newer chapters. You also need to think about the logistics of it. The larger the manufacturing presence you have, the more bodies you need to run it as well as materials needed to pump out production. Secondly, given the relatively low number of Astartes in a chapter, even with Guillimans new reforms, and the again relatively low attrition rate of Astartes in battle (think of the fact that most tactical marines are a hundred years old at least, as well as being the chapters backbone of fighting men), 'large' manufacturing facilities are fairly redundant. Astartes chapters need to have a measure of self-sufficiency, this is true. Let's compare this to the real world, while I know the scale is different and operationally things change because of that, but stick with me here. A special forces group will have armorers in tow, but they won't have any local gun-manufacturing as part of the unit, or even division as a whole. They will have some extremely capable and knowledgeable members, but not all of them know their weapons as well as you might think, despite them being very proficient with them. (Hell, Larry Vickers despite being as knowledgeable as he is has made a couple of asinine statements before regarding some firearms that he's been raked over the coals for, despite being a former Delta operator.) Given how small a unit is, they need to be provided with the ability to repair and refit their weapons and keep them working. Where an Astartes chapter differs is in scale, since they also have to maintain working operation of powered armour, small arms, void-craft, atmospheric craft, transports and landers, tanks and so on and so forth. This means their operation of scale for the good operation of all of their assets naturally increases and to take a link out of their logistical nightmare of a supply chain, being able to manufacture on a limited scale greatly offsets some of this dependence upon the Mechanicus. But just how much do you need to manufacture for your two to three-thousand strong special forces division? I know this is a bit of a rant, so my apologies for that, it's just I see this pop up a lot in 40k lore and fan projects like IA's. On the other side of the coin, I'd perhaps frame it as a Great Crusade era Astartes forge ship, and it's ability to manufacture is perhaps more efficient than modern forges, the alloys are stronger, the forging and milling tools more precise. It allows gear to be maintained to a higher standard than is possible with modern forges, but also gets you out of being a mary-sue with an ability to create your own GC era super-heavy tanks for your chapter out of the blue. I'd stay away from this. I personally don't see it happening on a few levels. Again you're delving into hyper-specifics, but that aside I think all suits of Gorgon armour are unique to the Iron Hands themselves, extremely closely guarded as a secret, considering a lot of what the Iron Hands have done/are doing is tech-heresy in the extreme. To round it out, it's not known so far as I'm aware if there are any suits left, since the majority of the suits were deployed with the Avernii Clan, which were wiped out at the Dropsite Massacre, though I could be wrong as Iron Hands lore isn't my strong-suit. Also, do you really want to make your chapter unique by taking something that's unique to another chapter? On top of that the Chiss as far as I'm aware aren't huge proponents of cyborgs or heavy use of cybernetics. Unless you're as talented and capable as Ace (most aren't, I'm certainly not, much as I might try), I'd stick to fleshing and rounding out this chapter first before jumping into anything else, as you'll end up doing both chapters a disservice when things inevitably change on both ends and it becomes a mess. By all means keep the idea around and even work on it a little as an overall concept, but wait till this one has some concrete foundations before you jump ship, at least in my opinion.

To quote the Fugitive: "What is this? A moderator convention?" I think you might be getting the cart before the blue-skinned-horse. You seem to be looking at the Chiss from an entirely skin-deep perspective. You're focusing so much on the blue-skin and red eyes of the Chiss, you're kind of missing what actually makes them interesting as aliens in the Star Wars setting. They're isolationist, they have technology that is similar to established galactic standards, sometimes being parallel in terms of intended function, like Masers vs Turbolasers for example. Their isolationist nature means they are mysterious and misunderstood, sometimes deliberately by their own hand, the people of the unknown regions for example often speak with fear of the Chiss Ascendency. It's the entire reason Thrawn and his story arc exists, because they needed someone to both manipulate as well as learn from the major galactic powers to protect the Ascendency. They also have a very rigid class system and many noble houses, but instead of machiavellian politics, they push for service of the state and their own houses specialization, such as Thrawns household in the military. They tend to be very rigid in doctrine, such as never initiating conflict, to the extent of being unable to justify a first-strike on an enemy they knew was coming for them. As such you know they hold their households honour in high esteem. So to boil it down, what makes the Chiss who they are as a 'character' race in Star wars can be broken down to just a few lines: Isolationist to the point of secrecy. View everything through a utilitarian lense. Great warriors, proud and intensely loyal to one another. Oligarchic society of noble houses, but mandated both in law and culture to serve the whole rather than themselves. Unwilling to get involved in affairs that didn't directly relate to their people or security. I don't mean to come off as negative, that's not what I'm driving at. I'm a huge fan of Thrawn, huge fan. He's a military genius and badass who ascends typical martial character tropes and instead focuses on art and culture as a means of judging his opponent. What this isn't based on is his blue skin and red eyes, that's just a way to frame his experiences within the Empire during his time, to really bring in to focus how xenophobic the Empire could be, and in many ways illustrate how backward racism can be when you can discount someone's intelligence and experience just based on how they are different to you. Don't get me wrong I'm not slagging you off here, I'm merely trying to point out that there might be more to the Chiss than what you seem to be focusing on. I agree, it's a cool look, in Star Wars: The Old Republic mmo I have a Chiss Imperial Agent, inspired by Thrawn, just for this very reason. There are plenty of other Star Wars aliens who are infinitely less interesting, like the introduction of the 'sith' race of red skinned force users, which felt forced and unnecessary. Or cherry pick any other wild looking but otherwise minor species in the setting. Where the Chiss are a very minor species when taken as a whole in the setting, have gained some major inclusions and references in games and other media - due to the insane fan reaction to Thrawn and his cult status amongst the fans - that they otherwise would not have. If you want to do blue skinned marines, go for it. I don't see a problem, so long as you can write it well enough almost anything is possible. However, if you're basing them off the Chiss, I'd just suggest a deeper dive into their culture and character.

I know what you mean, it seems bone headed to simply leave behind your own personal gear, especially if all that needs to change for example is say, the pistol grip, trigger guard and trigger itself to support a bigger hand in it's use, with the same deal for some melee weapons. I can only hope the new codex will include a unit template for 'reborn veterans' or what have you and basically have Primaris Sternguard, built from those that have crossed the Rubicon, which would also solve some fluff issues. The only way I can justify it is being a 'rebirth' of sorts, that they leave their old life and legend behind to forge a new one, as a new Marine. The only other way I can see it working is to have the mortality rate being so high among the first volunteers that it leads perhaps to a ban on the procedure, and the only survivors becoming the squad leaders and lieutenants of their new Primaris reinforcements, to smooth assimilation of the new marines to their parent chapters culture and doctrine. Which in turn could also lead to some interesting tension between the older veterans and the newer Primaris, especially the psykers.

As for the chapter, I'm at work and I downloaded the PDF to my home computer. Can't really get away with that at work, so I'll try and get back later, everyone is talking about something I can't browse easily while at work! A chapter 'controlled' by the Ecclesiarchy is extremely interesting and seems very dangerous as well, as it'd be walking a knife-edge pretty much consistently. Anyway, less fluffing. I'll have more to say after I've read the thing! Not that I'm especially needed, but I'm curious now.

Ok, I have two immediate comments that I can bang out without having read too far into it. Apologies, my feral kids are going, well, feral this morning. One, the formatting. I understand it may have been different before, but the font choice and size is irritating to read. Despite what some might say, formatting matters quite a lot to how easy your work is to read. I like the standard formatting that the B&C has, and at least until you're happy and finished, I'd stick with it. Two, the Rhine. The more real world-places and names you put in your IA, the harder you make it for the reader to suspend their disbelief. Now, it is conceivable and possible that there is another world with a river also named the Rhine, but in an age where the older countries, continents and peoples on Terra have been forgotten and misremembered over the millennia, it seems unlikely that a simple name for a landmark would survive intact and recognizable to us now. Doubly so for the DaoT, Age of Strife and then all poor imperial record keeping afterwards. It's not that it's impossible, it's just that that link to our real world pulls me right out of your work as 40k related and slams me back into the real world. That's not what you want. I'll try to actually read more later. When my kids are placated, or imprisoned, either way.

Yes, but not many. Hence them being rare. Increasing the rarity is the lack of proper infrastructure links to the rest of the Imperium, as was previously commented on in regards to the regiments place of origin. If the tanks are rare in the wider Imperium, it'd likely count doubly so in an isolated region of space such as the Cluster.

Some kind of bronze armoured figure seems likely, right? I mean, there's nothing wrong with those Sons that, you know, Blaze around the galaxy.... I really need to get some models and paint myself. Until then however, I'll just prod everyone else to adopt my chapter instead.

I went back and did that last night after reading your replies! It is indeed your friend, Omnissiah be praised!

I know just how you feel. Another Arena of Death would be fun. Perhaps turn it into something more like the Feast of Blades undertaken by Imperial Fist successors. I'd follow with a quick rundown. Each user with a chapter in development in the Liber can pick one champion from their respective stable of chapters and must produce a model or piece of artwork to represent it. All aspirants would be standardised with a statline chosen from Codex Space Marines, no extra supplements to keep it not only relatively balanced but also in the theme of a competitive setting, where the choice of weapons and wargear would be of a certain accepted standard offered to the competitors. Though I do think giving the user the ability to distribute one extra point to whatever area they choose to best represent how their chapters Astartes would fight would be reasonable. Given that it's the Liber, I'd turn more to writing as the method of choice to weight the combat. (Interesting? Terrible?) Each entrant would be expected to write short excerpts from their champions perspective, after which they'd assign a selection of actions or tactics, weapons stances, etc for their champion to act out during the fight. Each written piece and subsequent mechanical breakdown of action is written and chosen blind. These entries would be submitted to the master of the arena (tourney host) and then each pair of fighters would be compared to one another to determine the victor. Each champion is assigned a hit point value and choose a certain set of actions, a thrust, then a parry to overhead strike and so on. Each action would be assigned a points value, each champion has X points pool to spend on actions. The only time the codex stat lines come into effect is when identical actions clash together, similar to when swordsmen come face to face across crossed blades, only to have the stronger (or usually the fighter the plot needs to lose/win at that particular moment) push him away. Whichever champion has the higher stat wins that particular clash, whereas if the stats are identical then a dice is rolled to determine the winner and only half the assigned damage of that particular action is assigned. When one champion reaches 0 HP, the combat ends. The users are then informed which side is victorious and are asked to write a short piece reflecting the fight and the outcome. I'd like to think it'd practically play out a little like 'Fantasy Football'. There would be X amount of brackets and others in the Liber, competitors and observers both could speculate on the outcome and the winners (though obviously no betting is involved, that would make everything painful). If two entrants come down to a draw, I think the points would be split evenly, however whichever entrant fought more 'in character' for their chapter would be given a slight advantage. Ideally I'd like it to play out as a battle of wits and written talent, more than stats, meta gaming and min-maxing. This is the Liber after all.

Hmm I apologise for my lack of visual ability there. I must have skimmed over it and just not read that particular bit properly. In terms of expansion, I'd feel remiss just going hog wild on something and not checking with the overall scope of the project. What events would you have them enter, where would you expect them to be fighting? I really need to re-read the first post and go over what I had obviously skimmed.

As an aside, with how far this project is going and the size of the area, does it warrant it's own Deathwatch contingent and Watch Fortress? It just struck me as being a token way for people to involve other chapters through a limited means. Not only that but a Deathwatch contingent would probably be used as a special strike force, allowing for an 'ace in the hole' type approach to certain situations the gathered Astartes aren't able to combat due to engagement issues with ongoing operations. If it doesn't work that's fine, but I don't imagine this sector is any safer than the rest from Dark Eldar and Ork interference during the campaign.

So is this part of your Path to Redemption eh SP? Didn't you paint up one of my Blazing Sons way back when? You were already more generous than most. I miss the Blazing Sons... maybe I should dig out my old notepad.....