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Post by Kage2020 on Jun 22, 2004 0:27:55 GMT -5
Well, since Sikkukkut hasn't gotten around to this I thought that I would begin posting of this. As before, please don't post comments to this until I've gotten it all uploaded...Frost Bringers Index Astartes Conception and Birth As the thirty-seventh millennium reached its midpoint, the Cruciatine Sector was faced with the task of rebuilding itself after the shattering Waaagh!-Tuskragga blazed its way through the Sector from bottom to top and back again. The reconstruction process was slow and agonising, nowhere more than the subsectors on the border with the neighbouring Anargo Sector. Lying across a long, stable warp-tide easily navigated by the ramshackle ork spacecraft, these border systems suffered heavily at the hands of smaller warbands splintering off the flanks of the Waaagh!, and of the remnants of the main force, scattering away from the site of Overboss Tuskragga’s final destruction at Aliabor Secundus. By 512.M36 twenty systems were heavily infested and Master Inquisitor Hoska of the Ordo Xenos was co-ordinating the efforts of two Deathwatch Kill-Teams and elements of the Silver Skulls Adeptus Astartes in excising the toughest pockets of Ork resistance, while the exhausted Imperial Guard regrouped and recruited to begin the long process of cleansing. It was after seeing the Deathwatch in action first-hand that Hoska began to raise the issue of a dedicated Adeptus Astartes founding for that area of space in his dispatches, and his petitions only grew stronger after seeing the Silver Skulls break crucial points of greenskin resistance at the siege of Grett’s World and along the Amber Cordon. It took two decades of agitation, but the acting military governors of Cruciatine and certain influential Praefectural Officia within the Administratum threw their weight behind the requests as the fiercest fighting finally died down. The day after Candlemas in 598.M36 the Administratum nunciate cutter Tayallam’s Long Hand entered Sol space bearing a formal petition to the High Lords of Terra for a fresh founding, bearing the seal of now Lord Inquisitor Hoska and with Deathwatch, Munitorium and Administratum counter-seals. With the Inquisition working to short-circuit as many of the formalities as possible, the matter was tabled for deliberation less than three years later and late in 605.M36 the Fabricator-General transmitted an order to the chambers of the Genetor Militant on Mars to survey their stocks of gene-seed and begin the preparatory work for a new Chapter of Space Marines. The Chapter would not be created from raw material alone. The danger from the continuing greenskin presence that justified a new Chapter also meant that a newly-founded and barely-tried Chapter would not be turned loose in the Cruciatine warzone to fend for itself. As a reputable and distinguished Chapter which had already earned campaign honours against the sector’s greenskins, the Silver Skulls were the obvious choice to provide assistance for the fledgling Chapter; when word reached the Sector in 610.M37 that the new Chapter was going ahead, Imperial authorities began delicate diplomatic advances toward the Silver Skulls’ Chapter Master to that end. The audience with Master Nymean aboard the Silver Skull cruiser Aquila Dianatos was certainly not what the Adeptus envoys had been expecting. Nymean opened the meeting by declaring that the Skulls’ parent Chapter, the Ultramarines, had called upon them to aid in campaigning against the Eldar to the east of Ultramar and that the Chapter was honour- and oathbound to go. On the other hand, they had no intention of relinquishing the obligation they still felt to the Cruciatine Sector and were seeking counsel from Macragge with a view to splitting their fighting force and leaving some elements of the Chapter to continue their work. When the envoys revealed their own reasons for meeting, Nymean responded with delight: the opportunity for the Silver Skulls to father a new Chapter was both a solution to their own difficulty and a chance to earn honour for the Skulls and to leave their own mark upon the Sector in which they had fought. The night after the meeting, Nymean made known to his Chapter what he needed: a core of warriors to remain in the Sector and provide the core and backbone of a new Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. The first Frost Bringers The first volunteer made his way to the audience rooms almost immediately: Linnaeus Ashkel, of the Silver Skulls’ First Company. Ashkel was a quiet man, lean by Space Marine standards, with a watchful air to his grey and sunken eyes. To the Imperial envoys he cut an almost sinister figure, but his achievements as a warrior were beyond argument. He had distinguished himself as the sergeant of an assault squad for over a century before his elevation to the First Company, and had quickly risen to lead his own squad of veterans. He had served on the command squads of two successive Company Captains, the second time as a banner bearer; when the Silver Skulls spread their strength across several operations in the Cruciatine Sector Ashkel had taken command of the ship’s complement on board the Aquila Dianatos. Over the previous fifteen years of campaigning he had commanded and led a string of strikingly successful boarding actions against ork spacecraft, combining cool planning with astonishing attention to detail and finely-honed insight into how even the strongest ship might quickly be crippled and purged. The latest of these actions had almost claimed his life: as he led his command squad into the kill-krooza Gargnursnik at the Battle of Morran six months earlier the explosion of a flak turret on the ork craft had scattered his squad and sent Ashkel himself hurtling into space, injured and with his armour partially breached. It had been nearly a week before the Chapter had been able to recover him: although his sus-an organs had been able to combine with his surviving suit systems to preserve his life, he had been badly weakened by the ordeal and was only just returning to active duty. His few close companions within the Chapter had also begun to suspect that the effects had not just been physical. While the trials Ashkel had undergone before being cleared to return to the Chapter had shown his mind to be as sharp as before, he had found himself unable to enter a catalepsean trance during his long ordeal in space. Ashkel had spent the entire time conscious and aware, and the experience had marked him in the manner of a religious epiphany, a spiritual awakening. He had spent days on end in the ship’s chapels and shrines, and at the viewing ports staring out at the stars. The few operations he had conducted since that time had shown a marked change in his tactics: instead of the more orthodox approaches of using teleports or boarding torpedoes to drive deep into an enemy ship and attack it from the inside, Ashkel had begun to strike at enemy ships beginning at the hulls, systematically breaching deck after deck and using the cold and vacuum of space as a weapon. Against other enemies, perhaps, the approach might have attracted comment since it left a crippled ship far harder to salvage and repair, but Ashkel carried out his cleansings with his usual superb effectiveness and the Imperium had little use for the empty Ork hulks in any event. The ship’s complement of the Aquila Dianatos volunteered almost to a man to follow Ashkel into his new Chapter. There were a handful who remained behind: some had become uncertain about Ashkel’s change in demeanour and practices since his near-death at Morran, while others were ordered to stay by Nymean so that the Dianatos would not have to rebuild its complement entirely from scratch. Ashkel was well-known to the Silver Skulls’ tech-shrine, where he would often consult with the senior techmarines on the best ways to cripple the components of enemy ships, and he had impressed the staff of the Apothecarion with the speed of his convalescence and his determination to return to duty as a warrior. When the time came, Ashkel had little trouble attracting cliques of Techmarines and Apothecaries to the new Chapter, and Nymean had the foresight to ensure that the new Chapter would have Librarians of sufficient power and discipline to school the psykers they would have to recruit as their successors. That left only the religious corps to be assembled.
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Post by Kage2020 on Jun 22, 2004 0:28:21 GMT -5
Linnaeus and Seljun
Initially the idea of Linnaeus taking on the leadership of the new Chapter was met with great approval, but among the Silver Skulls there was one group that greeted the idea with outright suspicion: the Chaplains, and once it became clear that Ashkel would command the new Chapter Senior Chaplain Seljun sought out Master Nymean to voice his misgivings. Ashkel’s constant vigils in the ship’s shrines were not necessarily a mark of devotion, he told his leader: far from observing the traditional rites for spiritual strengthening after battle-trauma, with the special prayers, reading passages from Guilliman and speaking with the Chaplains, Ashkel was spending more and more time in silent, solitary meditation. The few attempts by Seljun and his fellow Chaplains to draw Ashkel into discussing his religious observances left them profoundly disturbed.
At first Ashkel had gone along with the psalms and litanies that they had assigned him willingly enough, although the Chaplain assigned to supervise his spiritual recovery reported that he showed little enthusiasm. To rectify this Ashkel was assigned to read from accounts of the Silver Skulls’ exploits at one of the Aquila Dianatos’ weekly feasts. The hope was that reciting stirring stories of Chapter heroism would rekindle some of Ashkel’s spirit and help him fully regain himself in the eyes of the Chaplains. But Ashkel’s readings were dry and colourless: he did not stumble or misread, but there was no hint of inspiration or passion in him either. The only reading during which he showed any real signs of life was a tale of the First Company’s exploits fighting alongside the White Consuls on the Pleiadyne Crusade in the Segmentum Tempestus, in which the crews of the Silver Skull assault-boats had been caught in a lethal radiation storm while fighting in the flare-zone of Naya-Quintilian, but had been spared by a vision of the Emperor that had miraculously manifested outside their ships and allowed them to close with their target, while the xenophile fighter-crews attempting to fight them died to a man. Ashkel returned to this reading to recite it twice over during the feast, and thereafter had begun to scour the Chapter archives for more accounts of the Silver Skulls’ battles in space.
Seljun’s own reaction to this initially was positive. He felt it natural that Ashkel should try and seek out some deeper meaning from his ordeal and survival, but the more he tried to draw the other Marine out on what meanings he was actually taking from the Chapter’s scriptures the more impatient Ashkel became. It soon became evident to Seljun from their conversations that Ashkel’s ideas about the Emperor and his own spiritual life were starting to take a form radically different from the Chapter’s old traditions, but when he finally openly confronted Ashkel about this the other Marine simply began avoiding him.
This was the point at which the declaration went out the Ashkel would be the Master of the new Chapter of Space Marines. At this point, although he had strong suspicions about Ashkel’s piety, Seljun had no firm evidence that the Master-elect was guilty of any definite spiritual crime. He and Master Nymean spent a day in Nymean’s chambers debating the best course, then Seljun spent another nine hours meditating in the ship’s Reclusiam meditating while Nymean summoned a Librarian into his chambers and watched while the psyker-marine cast the Emperor’s Tarot. By the end of their second day of deliberation, the two had decided upon their course of action. The new Chapter would be created under the leadership of Linnaeus Ashkel – and its chief Chaplain would be Chaplain Seljun, leading a religious cadre that he and only he would handpick, to guard the spiritual wellbeing of Linnaeus and the fledgling army of Astartes.
The Founding
In the meantime Ashkel himself had not been idle. The planet of Massil had been selected as the Chapter’s new homeworld, and a squadron of Astartes cruisers, both those of the Silver Skulls and those of the new Chapter, set out for the planet to lay down the foundations of their Chapter fortress. As they passed through the Warp the artisans and historians of both Chapters laboured over the design, which would echo both the fortress of the Silver Skulls and also the Temple of Correction on Macragge. The Librarians consulted with Ashkel on the treaty that would carve out the polar chains of Massil as a Chapter fief and govern the harvesting of its young population for recruits. Like most of the planets of the Castellan sub, Massil was still on a war footing from the campaign to contain and repel the orks spilling over from Cruciatine, and Ashkel intended to take advantage of the opportunity to mould the world’s culture into a thoroughly militarised one.
Over Massil the fleet hung while the Marines congregated first in the great chapel of the Skulls’ battle-barge and then on the windswept shale-plain where the foundations of the fortress were already marked out. The ceremonies went on for a day and a night: oaths of brotherhood and service, songs and prayers of consecration, rituals in which the officers of the new Chapter were ordained and the first of its banners and devotional plaques unveiled. The Lord Governor of the Castellan sub was there; envoys of Lord Anargo looked on. The fortress foundations were blessed by the Pontifex Militant of Castellan and Lord Inquisitor Hoska, now a bare ghost of a man, bowed by age, used an augmetic extension to fire a bolt shell into the head of a warboss his Ordo Xenos brethren and a Silver Skulls First Company honour detachment had captured from the ork-held worlds in the upper areas of the sector. The Frost Bringers Chapter – Ashkel announced the name at the height of the consecration ceremony – began its life painted in the blood of one of the greenskins who were to become its perennial enemies.
Within a day of the ceremonies’ completion, the Marines had dispersed. Envoys had set off to Anargo itself to present the Chapters’ new credentials to the Lord Anargo, while two Techmarines took ship for Meksum to begin formal relations with the Adeptus Mechanicus and to arrange for the laying down of new Strike Cruisers to bring the Chapter’s tiny fleet up to strength. Adeptus diplomats had set out for Earth with the formal documentation of the Chapter’s colours and the seals of its founding, so that they could be entered into the Administratum’s Librae Militas. The Silver Skulls had broken warp for Ultramar to join their crusade, and on Massil a great army of indentured labourers converged on the shale-plain and began to work.
The ships that had been left to the Frost Bringers remained in orbit over Massil, and the process of recruitment began. It was a scarring time for many in the Massilian population, one that the planet remembers to this day, for the Frost Bringers had caught their new Master’s cold, ruthless mood. There were none of the festivals and game-like trials that the Massilians had prepared themselves for, from which the best of their offspring would be presented to the Chapter. Instead, giant and grim Marines simply began sweeping the habs and scholae at the head of Arbites and planetary militia cull-squads, loading thousands of children into Rhinos to be driven away from their homes and never heard of again. The children were dumped out of their transports as they neared the site of the Chapter fortress’ preliminary excavations, and driven the rest of the way on foot as a pitiless first test of drive and endurance. Enough Massilians saw this to begin wondering what kind of defenders they had acquired in the Frost Bringers, and soon the Arbites and the Ordo Hereticus were working to root out the publishers of seditious leaflets asserting that the Astartes had kidnapped the children of Massil for purposes considerably more foul than recruitment.
Brutal or not, the Frost Bringers’ first great drive garnered them many promising recruits who began the implantation and gene-therapy processes in the Apothecaria of the Chapter ships orbiting above. The remainder grew into the first of the Chapter serfs, strong labourers who toiled over the walls of the Chapter fortress under the patient direction of the Techmarines. These years were an odd, scattered, introspective time for the Chapter, its Marines spread thin over the subsector and so much about it still half-formed. Seljun gave religious instruction to the new recruits and Ashkel made no attempt to interfere; although Seljun and his Chaplains sometimes wondered about the odd behaviour Ashkel had shown after his ordeal in space, it seemed that any immediate spiritual crisis was past.
And then, on the day that the first of the new recruits were due to be inducted into the Tenth Company, Linnaeus Ashkel spoke of his vision for the first time.
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Post by Kage2020 on Jun 22, 2004 0:29:23 GMT -5
Ashkel’s Creed
In brief: Ashkel outlines the broad beliefs listed later on; his closest associates within the Chapter begin to teach them to the recruits as received wisdom. Seljun’s teachings of more traditional Astartes creeds are incorporated into this where they fit, but he is sidelined in the process. After trying to influence Ashkel about this, Seljun loses patience when the second generation of recruits are brought in and start learning these new beliefs straight away.
The Massilian Schism
In brief: His open confrontation splits the Chapter: Seljun, most of his Chaplains, a number of ex-Skulls and a handful of novices on one side, Ashkel, his command clique, members of his old company and most of the novices on the other. All are aware of the dishonour of coming to blows only a dozen years after their founding, so the conflict mainly takes the form of heated arguments and honour duels which nevertheless leave the Chapter deeply scarred; this is known as the “Massilian Schism.” The Frost Bringers are able to paper over their differences when they are called on to counter-raid an ork fleet mustering in the upper end of Castellan which may be about to spearhead a Waaagh!; they break it and chase it into Cruciatine and disappear from Castellan records for several decades.
During their long campaign, in which both sides of the Schism take out their anger on the greenskins, Ashkel and Seljun are both killed in action. By the time the Frost Bringers get back to Massil they are back down to their pre-recruitment numbers through losses and dangerously disunited. Captain of the First Company Eskonel, in a desperate attempt to gain some guidance and unite the Chapter, voluntarily undergoes the same ordeal as Ashkel did and lets himself drift into space. Although he eventually loses consciousness and hibernates, which Ashkel did not, he returns to the Chapter with a new sense of purpose, remoulds most of its teachings to explain how Ashkel’s vision matches the old teachings of and about the Emperor and Primarchs, and takes over as the second Chapter Master.
One thing he has seen in a vision is that the Chapter must find a new home that is less cut off from the purity of space, and Eskonel orders the fortress at Massil, which the Chapter has never properly occupied, to be abandoned. He leads the fleet (now joined by new ships completed by the Mechanicus) back towards Cruciatine to found a new Citadel on a rogue planet between the two sectors that they found when a warpstorm forced them into realspace for a time when they were returning from Cruciatine. While the new fortress is being built, Eskonel travels back into the Anargo sector and begins laying down the network of treaties with Anargo worlds and authorities that will bind the Chapter to the Sector.
I've posted this separately since Sikkukkut indicated that this was only preliminary and subsequent to discussion/alteration... well, everything technically is, but this more so than the rest.
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Post by Kage2020 on Jun 22, 2004 0:30:38 GMT -5
Chapter Organisation: Although the Frost Bringers’ culture and religion have diverged almost to unrecognisability from the more mainstream Imperial beliefs of Chapters such as the Ultramarines, in their practical organisation they remain fundamentally a Codex Chapter, and their organisation still closely reflects the structure of the Codex Astartes: ten companies, the Chapter’s veterans concentrated in the first and its neophytes being trained in the Tenth, with a Chapter Apothecarion, Librarium, and Techmarines’ shrine. The only departure of note from the classic Codex Astartes model is the far less prominent role of the Chapel: because the Frost Bringers’ beliefs are recreated according to the visions of each new Chapter Master their culture much less resembles the fixed martial and theological traditions that the Chaplains of other Chapters study and teach in turn. As discussed below, the Frost Bringer Chaplains act more as guides and interpreters more than stern teachers; when they lead a force of Frost Bringers into battle they do so as a personal representative of the Chapter Master rather than as religious leaders in their own right.
Homeworld: The Frost Bringers still maintain their Chapter fortress on the world of Adliden, the rogue planet they discovered deep in interstellar space all those years ago. Adliden drifts in deep interstellar space between the Anargo and Cruciatine sectors, inert and lifeless, its core long cooled and frozen to rock. Across its surface, were there anyone to see, are the faint lights and steely glitter of the great Fortress-Monastery of the Frost Bringers, both built above the icy rock in squat, blocky fortifications and driven into it in great mazes of tunnels and underground chambers.
The fortress of Adliden is not a comforting place. The Frost Bringers cultivate ascetic lives and their fortress is a place of chilly air – there is not a room or passage in the whole place where a man’s breath does not steam before his face – and rough stone.
The highest building on the surface of Adliden is the Beacon Spire, a slender needle of silver-steel that juts out of the surface several kilometres away from the main fortress. Much of the Spire is solid metal, but in a cocoon hollowed into its tip is a psyker-choir of fourscore powerful Astropaths selected from all over the Anargo Sector. These psykers must constantly transmit a signal coded to as to be all but invisible to any listening minds, but which can be picked up by the warp eyes of the Navigators who guide the Chapter’s ships. Without the mass of a stellar body to resonate in the warp, such a beacon is the only way for Frost Bringer ships to reliably find their way home and the Chapter is scrupulous to the point of paranoia about keeping the beacon running. It has treaties with the Adeptus Astra Telepathica to provide its purest and strongest psykers as a tithe, and the Chapter does its best to recruit an above-average number of potential Librarians so that in an emergency there will be psykers who can maintain the Beacon for at least short periods.
The subtlety of the signal is also crucial, for the Frost Bringers are also scrupulous about keeping their homeworld’s location a secret. Aware that their strongest fortification will always be their enemies’ ignorance of the planet’s location, the Frost Bringers are not content with the already considerable difficulties of finding their homeworld by psychic means and use elaborate false vectors when flying to or from Adliden and plant false clues in their dialogue with the Imperium to ensure that suspicions about even the broad location of the world are wrong. Many authorities in Anargo believe that the Frost Bringers are a fleet-based Chapter with no homeworld at all; more believe that they have established a colony somewhere in the Cruciatine Sector. Both beliefs suit the Frost Bringers just fine.
Gene-seed: The Frost Bringers inherited the gene-seed of Roboute Guilliman from their Silver Skull forebears, and began their existence with a pure and stable gene-seed thanks to Adeptus Mechanicus and Inquisition vetting of the seed at the time of their founding. The Chapter has continued to monitor its genetic purity zealously, driven by its pride and aloofness: the Chapter loathes having to ask outside agencies for help, and having to return to the Mechanicus asking for help with its genetic base would be unbearably humiliating. Despite their vigilance, however, small flaws have crept in. The Sus-an membrane has become unstable and unreliable, and many Frost Bringers find that they can only enter a proper hibernatory trance under extremely low temperatures or with a similar artificial way of slowing their metabolism. The hibernation is apparently also not total, since most Frost Bringers report dreams or visions while hibernating and indeed the perpetuation of their Chapter culture depends on these. The Frost Bringers’ Oolitic Kidney has also become degraded, and while still far more resistant to toxins and contamination than unaugmented humans, Frost Bringers have a lower tolerance to these things than most Space Marines and more need for followup treatment after severe exposure.
Doctrines and beliefs: In their long and almost total isolation from their brother Astartes the Frost Bringers’ beliefs and Chapter culture have evolved into an unusual and complex form built on Ashkel’s original spiritual vision. These beliefs are further complicated by the way in which each successive Chapter Master makes it the first act of his reign to reinterpret and restate the Chapter creed. This practice originated with Eskonel’s attempt to recreate the vision that so transformed Ashkel just before the Chapter’s formation, and has continued with every Chapter Master since then. Being formed by warriors rather than scholars, such interpretations are often idiosyncratic if not downright illogical, but the Frost Bringers take them very seriously and the senior commanders and Chaplains will provide a circle of advisers who will discuss the new Master’s visions with him and work to clarify them into a cogent set of beliefs. They also make sure that they are true to the Chapter’s core teachings, so that although the details of the Frost Bringers’ doctrines may vary the basic character of their faith has remained fairly stable.
When a Chapter Master of the Frost Bringers dies, his funeral and the ordination of his nominated successor is combined in a single set of rites.
In brief: Ashkel believed that while he was drifting in space he communed with the pure spirit of the Emperor, which has risen from the Golden Throne and now fills up the cold, starlit and beautiful infinity of space. Ashkel believed that if the Warp was a tainted and distorted mirror of reality then empty space represented the perfect image of that reality, as proven by the way that it dwarfs and is implacably hostile to life – it is the opposite of the Warp in that only the perfect in spirit, ie the Emperor’s soul, can exist in it.
This is the source of the Frost Bringers’ reverence for the cold and vacuum of space: they equate this with a spiritual condition of grace, and attempt to live as close to that condition as possible. Hence their distaste for planetary fighting and their habit of breaching spaceships to let cold and vacuum kill their enemies. This to them is a significant act of purification: their enemies are being exposed to the Emperor’s purity and their deaths are the process of being purified themselves. To them, opening a hull and watching the enemy sucked into space is the equivalent of the hero of a horror movie throwing back the curtains to incinerate a vampire with sunlight, although with much more religious and cultural power. (This is where the Chapter name comes from.) That they also die when caught in space makes sense, since no mortal can approach the perfection of the Emperor and hope to live in His home.
Each new Chapter Master now marks his appointment by going into sus-an hibernation and cocooning himself within his (er, can’t remember the name, that weird secretion Marines can use to protect themselves from vacuum and radiation). Once in hibernation he is carried out onto the surface of Adliden by an honour guard of four veterans who stand watch with ceremonial breaching-spears at the ready. After a time he is brought inside, brought out of hibernation and announces to the Chaplains and veterans what visions he had while he was sleeping, which will become the basis for the latest interpretation of the Chapter’s core beliefs.
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Post by Kage2020 on Jun 22, 2004 0:31:44 GMT -5
Combat practices: The Frost Bringers were formed out of Space Marines who fought their engagements true to their name: by engaging their enemy in space and fighting them ship to ship. Their preference for space combat, born originally out of the Chapter founders’ experience in and preference for such operations, has been reinforced by generations of distaste for planetary operations and the Chapter’s religious attachment to deep space. Their specialty is in naval and space-based engagements and they excel at these even by the high standards of the Adeptus Astartes. In such battles they traditionally make only light use of Thuderhawks (of which the Chapter has relatively few) or boarding torpedoes (which they disdain in most circumstances as being imprecise and reckless with their occupants’ lives). Instead they will use their superior spacemanship and gunnery to close the range to enemy ships as fast as they can, to batter their ships and send them reeling with salvoes from their bombardment cannon. After the initial salvo, their priority becomes closing with the enemy craft to board in whatever numbers they can, relying on their expertise in such actions to ensure that even a squad or two can cripple the enemy ship in short order.
Although the Frost Bringers do use standard boarding tactics, such as attacking crucial life support or power centres, one of their favourite attacks is simply to work their way through a ship breaching deck after deck, opening the compartments to space. The Marines’ armour, equipment and training give them the edge in vacuum and zero-gravity fighting and they are experts in exploiting their enemies’ disorientation and unfamiliarity with such conditions. Not only does breaching the ship stack the odds powerfully in their favour under most circumstances, but it has religious significance for the Chapter as well: by fighting in the vacuum of space they believe that they are closer to the all-pervading presence of the Emperor and their victories are plainer to His sight and more pleasing to His spirit. As the bodies of their enemies are snap-frozen by the cold of space they believe they are sterilising the taint that those enemies brought to the universe, purifying their presence with the invasion of perfect cold.
Although the Frost Bringers always prefer to work in space where they can, they are mindful that they will never be able to neglect planetary operations entirely, and in fact their training emphasises ground operations precisely to compensate for the bias of most of their combat experience towards space.
When fighting on the ground the Frost Bringers still take care to use the strengths that shipboard fighting gives them: an aptitude for cat-and-mouse engagements and intense, close-quarter fighting. They dislike sweeping manoeuvres, mass engagements or static fights like sieges or holding actions: their favourite approach is a precision drop-pod assault to cripple crucial enemy positions such as headquarters, communications, supply dumps and so on, followed by immediate withdrawal to orbit to begin a new assault. Frost Bringers dislike remaining in a warzone for too long, preferring to leave the surface completely rather than move around on it at speed as a force such as the Ravenwing or White Scars might.
Frost Bringer attacks will usually try to catch their enemies in conditions similar to shipboard ones: poor visibility and terrain that makes large-scale cohesion or movement difficult. As such they will always try and attack in forests, densely built-up areas, canyon networks and so on, rather than more open manoeuvres involving armour. The Frost Bringers can make use of tanks when they need to – the ice around their fortress complex on Adliden is corrugated with the tracks from Marine tanks as they conduct exercises back and forth across the surface – but prefer not to get into the kinds of confrontations where they will need troop transports such as Rhinos or juggernauts such as Land Raiders. Their favoured armour units are the Whirlwind and Vindicator tanks, which can provide barrages to break up an enemy and create an opening for assault where the battle conditions fail to.
The Frost Bringers employ a fairly standard Space Marine armoury: although their semi-mystical fascination for cold would seem to bias them against heat weapons such as the melta or flamer, the Frost Bringers are too practical to handicap themselves on the battlefield (and usually do not care to dignify their enemies with spiritual considerations anyway). When the occasional more radical Chapter Master has tried to phase out heat weapons the decision has usually been reversed in short order. The only weapon type that the Frost Bringers do de-emphasise is plasma weaponry: their forges and Techmarine complement are smaller than many Chapters and lack the ability to support large numbers of such delicate weapons.
The one weapon unique to the Chapter is the breaching-spear. This signature close combat weapon started out more as an engineering device than a weapon, a heavy cutting tool that used a powered, chain or melta head to attack crucial points on a ship’s hull or deck, to create a breach or break vital components such as power cables or life-support engines. Over time the spears were made smaller and less cumbersome, so that Frost Bringers using them did not have to switch weapons if they came under attack. The breaching spear has now developed into a heavy, counterweighted shaft about the height of an armoured Marine, with a heavy cutting head, usually powered, and a socket to hold a krak-charge. This charge is shaped and tuned in a similar manner to the hunting lances used by many Imperial Guard Rough Riders: when correctly tuned and driven at an accurate angle the detonation from a breaching spear can punch a hole through metal decking, crack open rockcrete or deliver a concussive shock to body armour that can pulverise the bones of the warrior on the other side. The Frost Bringers’ storming-teams spend hours upon hours drilling and sparring with their spears until they can pick a target’s weakest spots with a glance, deliver a blow at precisely the right angle and force and change the blasting-head in a moment even in the heat of combat.
Battlecry: The Frost Bringers have no formal battle-cry and rarely if ever address their enemy in battle, a habit coming from a long history of space operations and campaigns against Xenos where direct speech will not carry and the enemy makes little or no use of vox-technology. Imperial operatives who have fought alongside the Frost Bringers and who have managed to briefly tap the Chapter’s own vox bands report a constant refrain of “Cold comes. Death comes. Cold comes. Death comes,” from all Marines, repeated in a soft whisper into vox, throughout the combat operation.
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Post by Kage2020 on Jun 22, 2004 0:33:40 GMT -5
Relations with the Anargo Sector:
In brief: The Chapter has a whole series of one-on-one treaties with worlds all over the Anargo Sector – with populous worlds for recruits, with others for resources, and so on. These were made according to whatever the Frost Bringers needed and felt prepared to offer at time of signing and so are often involve rather eccentric commitments. The Frost Bringers attempt to stagger their treaty obligations so that they can make one great sweep through the sector every seventy years or so, to keep all their formal diplomatic obligations and check in on all their treaty partners. The Chapter embodies what now seems to be the most common Space Marine mindset: they serve the Imperium and are loyal to it, but see themselves as standing outside it and have no problems treating with it as though they were an independent nation (which they essentially consider themselves to be).
Most of their treaties are with worlds in Castellan and with the Lord Militant Protector, but they have ones further afield. One or two worlds in each of the other subs should be allowed to have a Frost Bringer treaty of some sort.
Wargaming with the Frost Bringers: The Frost Bringers can be easily represented on the tabletop: however unorthodox some of their beliefs are, the Chapter has remained close enough to the Codex Astartes in their actual war-making that the lists and rules from Codex: Space Marines will represent a force of Frost Bringers with no problems. Although house rules for the Chapter can be drawn up if a player’s gaming group permits them, a few choices in army selection will accurately portray the Chapter’s particular circumstances and style of fighting using the standard Codex.
The Chapter has very few Terminator suits and is reluctant to risk them on ground operations. A Frost Bringers army should not contain Terminator-armoured squads, and characters should ideally only wear Terminator armour where the scenario background places the action on board a ship or in a similar environment. Although the Chapter’s forges are smaller than most, this does not affect their day-to-day operations and can be best simulated by de-emphasising more unusual or delicate technology such as plasma or master-crafted weapons in Frost Bringer armies.
The Frost Bringers’ preference for rapid assault followed by total withdrawal means that they prefer forces that can easily be deployed at speed from drop pods or Thunderhawks and equally easily be extracted. Crossing large stretches of land at speed is not something they do when they can help it: generally they prefer to return to high altitude if not orbit and launch another attack from there. Therefore, a Frost Bringers force will tend to be infantry-heavy, with fast attack units represented by landspeeders and assault squads rather than bikes, and troop transports such as the Rhino and Razorback will tend to be de-emphasised. Frost Bringer units should use the drop pod deployment rules as much as possible.
Where an orbital assault is not feasible the Frost Bringers like to break up the enemy with bombardment, either with their own ordnance, that of allies or support from the air. As such, Vindicator and Whirlwind tanks are generally the most common kind of armour in the Chapter. Predators are less common and only deployed where the Chapter knows it will have enemy vehicles to hunt. The Frost Bringers possess a very small and rarely-used pool of Land Raiders – if these are included in an army it should only be as the transport for a Mighty Hero commander.
The Chapter’s breaching-spears are frequently used in combat against enemies as well as to break open enemy vessels. This can be reproduced in a number of different ways depending on what individual gaming groups prefer and allow, but they can be simulated with existing rules by equipping Frost Bringer characters with a power weapon and krak grenades and performing an appropriate conversion on the model. Since the Breaching Spear is a two-handed weapon, such characters should only be given one other one-handed weapon from the wargear lists. (A minor quirk of this is that the character will count as having two close combat weapons, which can’t be helped.)
Given the Frost Bringers’ preference for orbital assaults, the Planetfall mission is obviously the most suitable mission for them. Other missions involving sudden assaults such as Blitz and Ambush also fit their style of warfare. They will do their level best to avoid being pinned down with the enemy in situations such as a Meat Grinder mission (on either side) or as a static defender in any situation such as Sabotage or Strongpoint Attack. The Chapter obviously does find itself in these positions from time to time, and would certainly then do whatever was necessary, but where the Frost Bringers’ strategic choices need to be reflected in a narrative or tree campaign their particular take on the various game missions needs to be considered.
And that's all I have for the moment, save any alterations that Sikkukkut might have created in the period between original receipt of this document.
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Post by CELS on Jun 22, 2004 4:09:18 GMT -5
*cracks knuckles* Alright.. I'm glad this is open for discussion. I'll post some my comments on the article, most of which are rather old, but they should still be valid, I think. 1) Why must the Chapter lay down new networks with the Anargo sector upon building their second fortress? They've already been on Massil for some time. 2) I don't like the Chaplain thing, nor the idea that each new Chapter Master recreates the beliefs of the Frost Bringers. Rather, it would be cooler if everyone was trying to accomplish what the original Chapter Master did, and spent a lot of time meditating. Chaplains should still be spiritual leaders, in my opinion, and it would be cool if they maintained chapels open to the void of space. I just like the typical image of Chaplains chanting liturgies of battle, rather than being dream-interpreters and strict theologists. 3) Proteus is the old forgeworld of the Anargo sector, not Meksum. 4) Why is the oolitic kidney degraded? 5) Most enemies have pretty thick hulls on their warships. It would make more sense for the Frost Bringers to first make one opening and then work their way inside the ship, making holes in blast doors and slowly draining the ship of air. 6) Not too happy with the breaching-spear. I don't think a single krak grenade would do much against the hull or blast doors of a space ship. I suggest a short range melta weapon instead, perhaps in the form of a spear because of the extreme temperatures (you don't want to be close when that weapon fires). If we were to write special rules for this weapons, one might put a blastmarker in contact with the wielder of the breaching-spear. 7) Too much focus on the space warfare of the Frost Bringers. That they prefer to engage an enemy in space is fine, and quite different from most Space Marine chapters, but make no mistake; the Imperial Navy is superior to the Adeptus Astartes when it comes to space battles, because of their superior range and numbers. Besides, Astartes ships are too valuable to waste on space combat. The Adeptus Astartes does not specialize in space combat, and though that is the whole point of this chapter, I suggest that they are used to compliment the Imperial Navy instead of replacing it. I also want to hear more about their planetary warfare. I have an idea for a story on the Frost Bringers, showing how they are deployed DareDevil-style 8) Why do they have so few Thunderhawks and suits of Terminator armour? Proteus should be able to give them this, and they should have a higher priority than other chapters, since they specialize in boarding actions and therefore need Terminator armour. 9) I'd really like to see a battle-cry. If not to discourage their enemies, then at least for morale. Unfortunately, I can't think of anything at the moment. 10) Maybe a section on RPing and writing fiction for Frost Bringers as well? ---- Having said all that... what I want from the Anargo Space Marine chapter is a rather glorious and "typical" Space Marine chapter. Of course, it shouldn't be boring, but I just want to steer away from the darkness and mystery common in most newbie home-made chapters (including my own... ) I want to see more of the brainwashed zealot Space Marines, crying "For The Emperor and the Primarch" as they cut heretics in two with their chainswords. A proud Chapter, saluted as saviors throughout the sector, not a group of mysterious outsiders. I'm not saying that I dislike the article, I just would like to see more emphasis on the standard Space Marine stuff. There are probably thousands of home-made chapters out there. Very few of them are standard in any way
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Post by Kage2020 on Jun 22, 2004 4:16:28 GMT -5
10) Maybe a section on RPing and writing fiction for Frost Bringers as well? Well, to be fair that would be fairly easy to do. Marines aren't the most difficult of characters to represent. Variation upon the standard template would be sufficient as well as potentially variable psychological framework, though I see little reason to go down that particular route. Of course, that depends on how you represent the Marines in an RPG anyway. (Most people tend to stick away from them.) Having said all that... what I want from the Anargo Space Marine chapter is a rather glorious and "typical" Space Marine chapter. Of course, it shouldn't be boring, but I just want to steer away from the darkness and mystery common in most newbie home-made chapters... Seems that the best way to achieve this is through the addition of text, rather than taking anything away from the Frost Bringers. The idea of specialist function along with broad experience is common throughout the wargame literature, IIRC. Both myself and Sikkukkut have commented upon the need for 'colour text' throughout the article as a means of representing such things.
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Post by Destecado on Jun 23, 2004 3:59:48 GMT -5
An interesting premise, but not one that I particularly care for. It seems that the chapter has been created to fight the xeno threat in the Sector. Personally I find this to be miopic in scope. There has been no mention of the Alpha Legion or of any of the other miriad factors currently taking place in the Sector. If the Alpha Legion was taken into account, then the secretive nature of the chapter as well as their actions upon first culling the new recruits could have been twisted to swell the ranks of anti Imperial cults. The choice of units or lack of units (Terminators) also sticks in my mind. The chapter instead wastes its time on tanks, which by the very nature of their combat doctrine and organization serve very little tactical purpose. The way that the chapter came about also stikes me as a bit odd, if not a little counter to the fluff. For fluff on the Space Marine implnats and on the founding of Space Marine Chapters click here. Also the schism between the two factions of the chapter seems to be resolved too easily.
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Post by zholud on Jun 23, 2004 5:22:28 GMT -5
Ok, first of all I’m so glad to finally see the IA that even decided to answer…and this means I’ll again work till midnight today I haven’t read up the whole text and my points are mainly polishing already high quality work and should be considered only as suggestions. - Master Inquisitor Hoska I am unsure but Master seems to be higher than Lord… according to Abnett Lord Master (or Master Lord?) is the administrator of a sector Inquisition, all three ordos. Maybe just Inquisitor Hoska… and longer time to lobby then or we should decide on hierarchy.
- Administratum nunciate cutter is not nuncios means priest? What priest in Administratum? Maybe Rogue Trader? They are overused as pony express but here we go.
- petition to the High Lords of Terra for a fresh founding – considering that Founding is the rare thing indeed I prompt to use another phrase, e.g. asked for a place in scheduled Founding list… rusty phrase I know.
- the seal of now Lord Inquisitor Hoska and with Deathwatch, Munitorium and Administratum counter-seals. awesome phrase, but maybe dropping Deathwatch that has too many things to do instead of paperwork and adding some Segmentum-level guys? If we have Crusade nearby - Marshal or similar.
- Genetor Militant on Mars – Mars is overused, what about transfer to Hydra Condratus?
- Ashkel was a quiet man, lean by Space Marine standards, with a watchful air to his grey and sunken eyes. To the Imperial envoys he cut an almost sinister figure, I am honoured to read my idea on indirect pointing on the Frost via cold eyes there as to his slim stature – we have either develop it or drop it. The suits of power armour are standard and I like the imaginary created by Abnett in Blue Blood short story (Inferno! 33 IIRC) – idea that for outsiders all marines look the same or nearly the same. By the way great story with wonderful ideas on how Marines think and act… even though he again has three-eyed Astropath there, but that’s another story. I’m thinking about giving him special, artificial power armour and some other distinguishing stuff.
all at the moment, more later.
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Post by CELS on Jun 23, 2004 8:07:41 GMT -5
Well, to be fair that would be fairly easy to do. Marines aren't the most difficult of characters to represent. In my opinion though, most people fail horribly in representing Space Marines. But I guess I'll deal with the way they're portrayed as it comes, through fiction and 'colour-text'. Yes, that's what I felt as well. Just couldn't find the words for it, in that late hour. Which is saying something On Destecados and zholuds comments... You both bring up some very good points, in my opinion. However... the chapter is not wasting its time on tanks. It's still got the Codex Astartes to follow, and it's still going to be assigned missions which require different types of tactics. You can't always rely on boarding actions and infantry heavy drop pod deployment. One thing I would NOT like to see, is a chapter that strays too much from the Codex Astartes. Not at all. Some special battle doctrines and preferances are cool, and even slight organisation differences, if explained properly and made believable. On the whole preference of boarding actions... I've just read in BFG: Armada that Space Marine chapters are often trying to make their fleets better suited for fleet battles in addition to planetary assaults, by getting more long range weaponry, for example. Perhaps the Frost Bringers, instead of just relying on boarding actions (which is risky business), are one of those chapters getting close to anger the Administratum and Inquisition because of their attempts to exceed their duty and thus violating the Imperial regulations. From BFG Armada; "Instead, a compromise was reached with limited the Space Marines to vessels whose primary role was that of transport, delivery and suppression designed to facilitate planetary assault. Only tre smallest of vessels would be permitted to act exclusively as gunships, with the larger battlebarges and strike cruisers remaining predominantly as aids to invasion, ensuring the Space Marines would never present a threat to the Imperial Navy proper. Inevitably, the wrangling over interpretation of a ship's 'primary role' leads to some chapters possessing rather more versatile fleets than the Imperial Navy is entirely comfortable with."On the 'administratum priest'. Remember that the Adeptus Terra is referred to as the Priesthood of Terra. Not only Ministorum preachers are 'priests'. On Mars being overused. Maybe, but Mars does have special significance for Space Marine chapters, especially for the founding, because of the whole geneseed vault-thing.
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Post by Sikkukkut on Jun 23, 2004 20:44:34 GMT -5
Okay, I think I got most of these. Let's see.
CELS
The idea was that the process of laying down their treaty network (anyone got a good name for this, by the way? The “Roll of duties” or something) was still barely developed at the time of the Schism and interrupted by it and by their setting off for Cruciatine; Eskonel was effectively starting from scratch. Most of the treaty work had been to do with the Chapter making its home on Massil, which was now no longer happening.
On the subject of the treaties, btw, who wants to have a crack at developing some? There would be some with individual worlds, some with organisations and some with miscellaneous authority figures. Treaties with the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, for example, have already been mentioned.
Well, the problem that the Chapter has is that its theology rests with the highly personal religious vision of its first two charismatic Chapter Masters, Ashkel and Eskonel. So you’ve got some problems when you try to create a stable tradition of leadership. Possibility one: you either open yourself up to debates on what is the “accurate” handing down of the original visions, and the Chapter already has the scarring experience of the Massilian Schism to remind it of how much can go wrong when people fall out over religious matters. The second way to make sure of your leader’s spiritual legitimacy is for every leader of the Chapter to have been through a similar ordeal and to have had a vision of his own.
Which creates problems of its own. What happens when you have a Master who is less sure of his vision and its interpretation than Ashkel and Eskonel were? What happens when you get a Master who is too confident of his vision and gives orders that everyone but him knows are suicidal, or which will shatter the Chapter all over again? So you wind up with a compromise solution: each new Chapter Master has to undergo a new ordeal and come back with his own vision for the Chapter, but the Chaplains act as keepers of the Chapter’s religious history and help guide the Master to an understanding of his vision that won’t represent a 180-degree turn from how things have been done before. In effect, this is the compromise that Ashkel and Seljun were unable to come to.
I like the idea of chapels open to space, though. That’s definitely going in.
My bad. I’ll correct it on the next draft.
Just one of those little “stuff happens” touches. I was pleased with the way the Sus-an flaw fits with the Chapter theme, but the one thing that worried me a little was that it seemed a bit too neat; this adds another little touch to roughen the edges a little, if that makes sense.
Pretty much what I was intending; if the draft gives the impression that they open every ship up like a banana then I’ll correct it. The longest of the fiction bits that I’ve finished shows this in action a little better.
I have two problems with that approach. Firstly, the whole idea of the spear is that it’s a shaped charge that funnels its blast into a tiny point, which doesn’t sit well with a huge great detonation that takes out everyone in front of the Marine. (It’s also far more powerful and applied with far more force than a standard krak grenade, and backed up by power blades, chainblades or, yes, cutting torches.) Secondly, I want the spear to be fully representable without house rules, which means proxiable with existing weapons. If you pushed me for a weapon equivalent I’d say they’d probably be closer to a thunder hammer than a meltagun, although with a bit of chainfist thrown in depending on what pattern you had.
I think we can get around this by clarifying the fluff for them a little. I’ll make it clear that the spear is not a weapon for initiating boarding: squads of FBs seek out weak points on the hull like windows, hatches or the holes left by gunnery hits. (Or they just ride in in a boarding torpedo.) So the spears are mainly for use inside a ship, not to break into one except in unusual circumstances. And even then, they’re not a “walk up to blast door, jab it with spear, BOOM, no more blast door” sort of way, but a “move down corridor, pick out location of power conduits in bulkhead with auspex, drive spear into bulkhead to sever cables, reach door, use two more spear-thrusts to break apart the locking mechanism and hinges, an extra stroke of the cutting head for good measure and then kick the door out of its mountings” kind of thing. We can make that clearer with fiction bits.
Fine by me, although I’m not sure I suggested them as a replacement force. (They do, however, have very much their own ideas about where and how they’ll fight. They’re like the White Panthers (?) in the opening of the SM Codex – you don’t order them into an engagement, you respectfully request their aid and suggest that your current plans would benefit from their assistance in this particular engagement.
Sounds interesting. Can you expand on this?
Your objections and Destecado’s are noted. My original intention was to try and reflect that as they started out they would have very few of either: they’re rare, hard to build and the Silver Skulls certainly wouldn’t want to part with a Chapter’s worth of them. Additionally, building new ones is a BIG deal – it’s not as if you can whip up a batch of new TD suits in a week. The existing suits are priceless relics for a reason.
On the other hand, I may have overplayed the difficulty in bringing the armouries up to par given that they’ve had a couple of millennia to do it in, after all, so I’m prepared to scrap that restriction, or limit it to “historical re-enactment” scenarios based in the Chapter’s early history.
That’s what the chant is for. The FBs are reaffirming their role as bringers of death to the alien, the mutant and the heretic, as merciless as the void of space.
The next draft will include quite a few fiction vignettes.
Cont'd
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Post by Sikkukkut on Jun 23, 2004 20:44:53 GMT -5
DestecadoThat’s because the most detailed section of the Chapter history to date is about their founding, and they were founded in response to a very specific situation that dominated their early campaigns. Since that time they’ve campaigned all over the Anargo Sector against all manner of enemies, and I’m sure that they’ve clashed with the Alpha Legion cell or its thralls many times (in fact, one of the fiction bits deals with exactly this), it’s just that those exploits haven’t been fully documented yet. See also the response to one of CELS’ comments below. And sorry, I can’t resist: “myopic”; “myriad”. Sounds good. See my post above re Terminators, CELS’ below for tanks. What aspect of it, specifically? In what way? I’m writing up the concluding phase of the Schism at the moment, and I’d like if possible to keep the idea of Eskonel undergoing a space ordeal and thus kicking off a Chapter tradition. Having the leaders of the two sides of the Schism both perish seemed like a way of allowing the Chapter to redeem some honour from the whole episode as well as removing the two men who were least likely to back down. Open question, then: would people prefer the Frost Bringers to come to open combat at some point in the Schism? ZholudThe mental hierarchy I was working on was Inquisitor, then Master, then Lord. We can shuffle the titles around as needed, I’m not fussed about that. I’m also relaxed about an explanation like “the Inquisition’s hierarchy and titling systems are fluid, and change on the whims of senior Sector Inquisitors; in M37 in the Anargo Sector they used a different system of titling to the one later used in, for example, the Helican Sector in M41”. Even if this is the kind of explanation that tends to earn a bitchslapping from Kage. They are, and such an important dispatch would not be given to a hired ship to run – it’d be like the Queen of England sending out a deed of knighthood via Bill’s Motorbike Couriers. I intended “nunciate” as based on the Latin “nuncio” which IIRC meant “messenger” – I meant it to be a craft owned by the Administratum to be used for ferrying messages and dignitaries too important to be put on just any old ship that happened to be going that way. Fair enough. All it takes is a single seal, and bear in mind that the Deathwatch are the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Xenos, the Ordo that Hoska himself belongs to. This is a ceremonial founding conducted with quite a bit of pomp and formality, so the officials on Mars would be enlisted for their prestige value. Hydra Cordatus is further away and super-secret into the bargain; Mars to my mind fits better. The crucial words being “by Space Marine standards”. I picture him as having the big frame of the Astartes but an angular, bony look to him, particularly to his face. Possibly it’s only another Marine that would notice the difference, and it would be invisible in power armour. I’m certainly not trying to make him into a skinny wimp. I agree with you on the Iron Snakes stories, though. Great pieces of work. CELS againExactly. We could even write an encounter into their early history in which such over-specialisations costs the Chapter dearly, so that they make a point of keeping their fighting abilities well-rounded after that. (Killing two birds with one stone, we’ll make this against the Alpha Legion, who after all are certainly competent enough to pick up and exploit such a weakness.) Exactly my own opinion and intention. As you’ll have seen from the “wargaming with…” section, I wanted a Chapter that could be represented by a Codex list (so that you could have a tournament-legal FB army, for example) so I too some care to work out distinctive Chapter traits that wouldn’t mess about with a fundamentally Codex approach. I don’t have BFG Armada yet, but that sounds good. I’d be loath to water down the close-quarters storm-and-cleanse tactic too much since it’s one of the main defining things about the Chapter (in fact if you remember our PM discussion on Portent it was the original defining image of the Chapter for me) but it makes sense that the Chapter would try to round out their space combat abilities in every way possible. Powerful gunnery means they can suppress anything that might try and injure their incoming boarding parties and makes lots of nice holes in the enemy hulls to get in through.
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Post by CELS on Jun 23, 2004 22:58:04 GMT -5
AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGH!!!! I HATE POST RESTRICTIONS!!! THE FIRST HALF OF MY POST WAS JUST DESTROYED!!! AAAAAAAARGGHH!! That's cool, but as you later say, the Frost Bringers have been around for some millennia (almost 4?) now. I imagine that they would be very much fully equipped. Yeah... it's just that I personally think battle-cries are cooler than chants / mantras as simple as this one. It's just a matter of taste though, I suppose. I don't have any arguments to back up one or the other. No. I imagine that even ritual combat as a way to resolve conflicts is pretty much unheard of in most Chapters. More than any other organisation in the Imperium, the Space Marine Chapters are close brotherhoods. The very idea of brethren fighting eachother would be abhorrent, with flash-backs from the Horus Heresy. But there are other ways to scale up this conflict. Seljun could go an complain to the Silver Skulls, for example. Some members could become disobedient, maybe refrain from participating in some rituals. There could be open argument between the chapter leaders, in front of the entire chapter. All of these are unlikely, of course, unless things go very far. They're far more likely than any open combat though, in my opinion. Good. It's not the hierarchy I'm working on, but I'll clarify that in a short article about the Inquisition, as soon as I get the motivation. With the lack of response to my Ork article, that might not be anytime soon. I don't remember that discussion, I'm afraid.. Still, I can see that you don't want to get rid of the concept that is important in defining the chapter, but I also don't want you to over-emphasize it by making it sound like the FBs mostly just hang around in space. "Sorry, Governor. We consider your planet filthy next to the purity of space. If you could have your chaos cultists meet us in low orbit, we might be able to help you." That they have a preference for space combat is fine, and even quite interesting when seen together with the quote I gave from BFG: Armada. But anyone who's played Space Marines in BFG can tell you that defeating your enemy by boarding parties, teleport attacks and thunderhawks is damned difficult!! Anyway, we agree on this as well, so I'll stop there.
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Post by CELS on Jun 23, 2004 23:23:35 GMT -5
The following reply will be very short as opposed to what I originally intended, because of the post restrictions that destroyed my post. (I will mentally torture and kill anyone who says I should have written my reply in Wordpad. Do not go there.) Most of the treaty work had been to do with the Chapter making its home on Massil, which was now no longer happening. That's cool. I just thought it sounded like the chapter had to establish its presence in the Anargo sector a second time, rather than just developing new ties with new worlds. I could have a crack, since I imagine they would need a treaty with Proteus. What did you have in mind, specifically? Oh, and where is the FB rogue planet again? Maybe some of my systems would have treaties with the FBs. I had a pretty long argument about the whole religion problem with this chapter, which was lost, to my unimaginable dismay. Let me summarize; 1) With new Chapter Masters introducing new interpretations, you still risk a division between younger and older Space Marines in the chapter. A centuries-old veteran or millennia-old dreadnought might not agree with these new interpretations, and you'll have different members with different interpretations. 2) Most SM chapters have had a rock solid creed that has remained unchanged since the times of the Emperor's Ascension. Their Chapter Masters do not interfere with questions of creed, at all. The Chaplains do not change the Chapter's creed either, they merely enforce it. It is an important part of the SM brotherhood that they have a common faith that has remained unchanged since the founding of their chapter, and maybe even traced back to the primogenitor chapters. 3) To avoid division, I suggest that new Chapter Masters do not follow Ashkel's foot steps, but rather leave questions of creed to the Chaplains, who would find the compromise between Ashkel's original vision and the standing of Seljun or the Silver Skulls. 4) I do like the idea of each Chapter Master going through the same as Ashkel, and then being guided by the Chaplains, but I don't like the idea of Chapter creed changing every century. It would ultimately create a lot of problems, in my opinion. Oolitic kidney... cool! Breaching spear... I've looked at it again, and realized that it's both a blade and a charge, which changes everything. I would urge that it's changed to melta charge rather than krak grenade, because A) melta charges are better, and you need all the power you can get when breaching bulkheads. B) melta tech is cooler than krak grenades I also love the way you described the use of breaching spear in close combat. Gave me another idea for my story. Oh, and I think it should be slight longer than a Space Marines. Short spears don't look as good, and especially on 40k models. The Terminator captain sword is already as long as a Space Marine. If you worry that it's too long.. they're Space Marines. They'll manage My story... To make a short story shorter, Frost Bringers are engaging an enemy with air superiority and AA-guns, making standard deployment with T-hawks and drop pods a bad idea. To get around this, a group of Assault Marines with jump packs enter the atmosphere with a T-hawk, and then jump out, many kilometers above the ground. (How many would that be? 12?) Dropping towards the ground like meteorites, the FBs bypass incoming fire and even enemy airborne interceptors with ease, activating their jump packs when they get dangerously close to the ground. The story ends with them appearing in the midst of their (surprised) enemy. The main character might have to take out some important enemy with a breaching spear too ;D On chants... I still prefer battle-cries over chants/mantras. It's a matter of taste though, so I can't really back this up with an argument
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