Editing Ashen Claws (section)

==Combat Doctrine==
Unlike their more loyal brethren, the Ashen Claws are entirely in favor of closing the distance between themselves and the enemy as quickly as possible, subtlety be damned. In this case, it's via the generous application of Drop Pods on top of the next poor bastards to pop up on their Auspex.

From what little evidence has been gathered from this Chapter's raiding activity, it appears as though these Marines prefer to soften their targets with waves upon waves of screening craft; mostly fighters, bombers, and the odd gunship or two. Following this, the Ashen Claws deploy a ridiculously huge swarm of Drop Pods from their fleet, after which they participate in more traditional hit and run attacks to whittle down their foes.

Interestingly, unlike most other Chapters, the Ashen Claws don't give a rat's ass about taking land or destroying their adversaries outright. Like Blood Ravens with a coat of black paint, these sticky-fingered pirates prefer to attack worlds simply to seize ammunition, supplies, and (more often than not) new cannon fodder, rather than any particular long-term objective. However, that's not to say that the Ashen Claws aren't up for some good old-fashioned purging: during the [[Great Scouring]], a Retribution Fleet of the [[Blood Angels]] found on multiple worlds evidence of Space Marines rampaging through entire hive cities and fortresses, with any survivors being permanently sealed alive underground as a warning to surrounding planets. Despite the fact that this was a dead ringer for the barbaric acts committed by the Sons of Horus during their daddy's temper tantrum, what made these acts of wanton violence particularly interesting was the fact that all of these affected worlds were already aligned with the Traitors' cause to begin with, via their oaths of service to the Night Lords; it was as if the Ashen Claws were singling out these worlds for a healthy dose of karma.

Along similar lines, it's telling that the modern-day Ashen Claws have conspicuously passed over Imperial worlds in favor of attacking Chaos-aligned or xenos territory, even if it might be more convenient for them to steal from loyal subjects of the [[The God-Emperor of Mankind|God-Emperor]]. Whether this is due to their fragile relationship with the Carcharodons, a lingering sense of loyalty to the Imperium, or some other reason, we'll probably never know.

Despite, or perhaps because of, their lack of support from the Imperium at large, the Ashen Claws possess a wide array of rare equipment that one would be hard-pressed to find in modern Imperial forces. Besides Voss-pattern [[Lightning Fighter|Lightning]] Strike fighters, [[Storm Eagle|Storm Eagles]], and Hoplon-pattern Assault Cruisers, these renegades have a huge hard-on for [[Kharybdis Assault Claw|Kharybdis Assault Claws]] and [[Dreadclaw|Dreadclaws]] to assist their dynamic entries from orbit. Either the Ashen Claws have somehow managed to tame the Loyalist-munching tendencies of these particular craft, or perhaps these guys are a bit more Chaotic than they'd like to believe...

The Ashen Claws' fleet consists of at least thirteen capital ships and dozens of smaller void craft; an impressive amount for a lone Chapter. Their capital ship, the ''Wicked Claw'', is an ''Infernus''-class battleship dating back to the glory days of the Great Crusade, and has the absurd size and OP armament to match. The Imperium retired this class of ship ages ago, fearing that just one of these monsters is too powerful to be left in the hands of any one commander; maybe the mere presence of this fucking thing is to thank for the Ashen Claws' continued existence.

The Ashen Claws employ unaugmented human crews (by this point, probably all press-ganged or recruited from worlds under their direct domain) for their fleet of warships and their remaining squadrons of Lightning fighters. One such plane somehow managed to shoot down ''four'' Ultramarines [[Xiphon Pattern Interceptor|Xiphon-pattern Interceptors]] during the Horus Heresy... ''in the same battle''. You know, the Viper expy that can canonically solo entire squadrons of [[Eldar]] aircraft? I know the Voss-pattern Lightning is considered an "upgraded" model, but this is downright ''comical''.

While it's almost a guarantee that the Ashen Claws have pretty much the entirety of [[Forge World|FW's]] lineup of Heresy-era tanks and ground vehicles, this isn't exactly a focus of their M.O., given their rapid method of deployment and tendency to not want to stick around too long for a proper ground assault. Therefore, any armored vehicles are more often than not left to gather dust on Atargatis Prime, except in extreme circumstances.