Jooses Space Marine Chapter Thoughts

[Joose]

I want to do a Space Marines horse, and quite fancy the idea of doing one of the entirely Primaris successor chapters mentioned in the Dark Imperium book. I am a long way from being at the point where I actually want to buy models, as there are a bunch of other things I want to do models wise first, but have been starting to think up a backstory for my guys. Basically, I like the idea of coming up with my own stuff, but I also want it to fit into the existing lore without too many issues. Space Marines (and the imperium in general) is probably my weakest area of lore-knowledge in 40k though, so I thought it would be a good idea to show you guys what I have come up with so far so you can tell me how it is wrong and bad, and maybe suggest fixes.

So, the idea hinges around a planet with the working name of Mortalis (because there are hints of AoS lore thrown in this thing a bit, and most of that is set in the Moral Realms. Feel free to suggest better names, im not entirely convinced by it). This is a human world, with an approximately medieval level of society/technology. The unfortunate unique thing that the world has (because most worlds in 40k and sci fi generally seem to have some unique thing) is that it is plagued by fairly regular, yet strangely minor daemonic incursions for reasons as yet unknown (read: I haven't thought of a good reason yet so im leaving it ambiguous so I can maybe do something clever with it later). They are never particularly devastating, with usually only a handful of relatively minor daemonic beasties getting though. The locals send their finest Knights (actual men in armour with swords, not Imperial Knights) who have some epic battle and eventually win, although often with significant casualties. Basically: Its survivable, but pretty horrid.

Its not a particularly interesting world other than that, and has so far flown under the radar of pretty much everyone.

Society on this world is broadly based around a legend they have, set thousands of years ago. The story goes that one year the incursions were especially bad, and it looked like that might be it for the planets human population. At the grimmest moment of the battle, just as it looked like everything was lost, they were saved by the arrival of people described as "great and powerful knights from the sky, clad in shining armour" who "arrived on bolts of lightning and commanded thunder to smite their foes". The greatest of these knights carried a large hammer, sparking with electricity, who was advised by a great wizard. After pushing back the daemons and closing their gates, the wizard taught the survivors that these incursions responded to sinful behaviour, and showed them that a life of cleanliness would repel the Daemons of Filth, a life of abstinence would repel the Daemons of Lust, avoiding excessive violence would repel the Daemons of Blood and being careful of thought would repel the Daemons of Lies. These four concepts became the cornerstone of their society, resulting in things like their chivalric code, most political conflicts being resolved through organised tourneys rather than open war and is also the explanation of why their technological level has barely moved in thousands of years. The incursions still come, but never to the same degree.

Fast forward to now (or at least, now in the 40k story) and Bobby G has a bunch of new primaris chapters. He needs them to have somewhere as a base of operations, and also somewhere to use for recruitment. He sees this world, which despite an ever present Daemon problem has managed to keep itself basically uncorrupted, sees that it has quite the culture for producing mighty warriors that would make good recruitment fodder, and also sees that their society seems to be based around the veneration of what appear to have been a bunch of Space Marines saving their asses thousands of years ago (arriving on lightning = drop pods, commanding thunder as a weapon = bolters, wise wizard that advised the leader = Librarian, and so on) and decides it would be ideal as a recruitment world for one of his new chapters. So, we have a chapter that is vaguely themed around an almost Arthuric knight society, with the people of the world accepting the Primaris who turn up as their one time saviours returned.

So apart from pointing out the bits in that which don’t work (other than the things about being good people repelling Daemons. I know that’s not quite how that works, that’s just part of their belief system. Maybe based on something the Librarian might have said, just slowly fucked with via the chinese-whispers game that is history?) the main thing im not sure about is exactly what Chapter they would be succesors *too*. I know technically theres no reason it couldn’t be any of them, but I want one that fits with the theme. My current thoughts are:

Smurfs: It’s the easiest choice, as theres unlikely to be much in the vanillamarines to clash with any kind of backstory. Only problem is that I would like it if these guys deviate a bit from the Codex, in order to more easily conform to the society of their adopted world (they are taking an approach similar to what Christianity did when it met paganism. Instead of just saying "You are wrong, this is right" they adopted pagan holidays like Easter and Christmas and turned them into Christian holidays. Im thinking something similar, with the Primaris taking on some conventions of the world to better ingratiate themselves with its population.) and deviating from the codex really doesn’t feel very Ultramariney.

Dark Angels: Im leaning pretty heavily towards this one, partly because they already kind of have a medieval thing going on, but also because I think it gives a good lore reason for this chapter existing. I can imagine a bunch of shiny new Primaris turning up on the DA doorstep and say "Hello! We are new, let us in and tell us all your secrets" and the DA saying "errrr, no."

I dunno, someone else?: I really don’t know the space marine chapters well enough to know if there is another one that would fit even better with the idea of non-codex compliant chivalric knight marines. Open to suggestions though!

How about not saying: I could do something like the Blood Ravens, and let the origin of their geneseed remain a mystery. That would leave me more options down the line if it turns out that GW do follow through with the hints they have been dropping that non-traitor Primaris based on traitor gene seeds could be a thing.

[Dog Pants]

Thematically your description is very similar to Dark Angels, so that would be the obvious choice. As you said though, statistically it could have been any chapter who discovered them and used them as a successor chapter. I don't know how bigmarine creation works, so I don't know if the chapter they're a successor of would need to be involved. Imperial Fists are pretty vague but go for the noble hero archetype, and fortresses are their thing. Salamanders started out kind of feudal on a world raided by Dark Eldar, so the occasional big bad thing happening vaguely fits.

You potentially have the option of leaving open the option of them being a traitor successor who are bred as loyal, since that's likely to happen in the future. Colchis was a feudal planet, and the background you've described is kind of religious, so Word Bearers could work.

You could, if you fancied, use one of the other chapters as the thematic base and use Dark Angels models to give it a bit of spin.