Space Sharks
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"He could sense the Company Master's fury, the rage he was battling to keep in check. The Blindness was beckoning to him, that precipice poised above a black sea of hatred and needless slaughter-sacrifice" - Chief Librarian Te Kahurangi's assessment of 3rd Captain Akia
| Space Sharks/Carcharadon Astra | ||
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| Battle Cry | "From the void we come - darkness there, and nothing more" Alternatively: [1] | |
| Founding | Either 2nd (according to a GW article) or 23rd (according to FFG) Basically Unknown | |
| Successors of | Either the Raven Guard, Night Lords or World Eaters | |
| Successor Chapters | None | |
| Chapter Master | Believed to be Tyberos the Red Wake | |
| Primarch | Probably Corax or more likely Konrad Curze | |
| Homeworld | Fleet Based | |
| Strength | 1000 (ish) | |
| Specialty | Terror and scorched earth tactics, with brutal close combat preference. | |
| Allegiance | Imperium | |
| Colours | Grey, with black pauldrons and white helmet faces (and the occasional blood splatter) | |
This is what happened when someone from Games Workshop watched Street Sharks and thought "there oughta be some spess mehrens like that." These guys call themselves "Carcharadons" (Carcharadon, pronounced "car-care-uh-dawn" is the scientific name for a family of big sharks), or Carcharadon Astra if they are being extra formal. They have light-grey skin and black eyes like sharks, and according to FFG they increase the resemblance by filing their teeth to be shark teeth. Their chapter logo is a white shark on its side and their colours are grey with black/dark grey shoulders. Once upon a time, they were light grey with a red stripe down the middle of their helmets and their logo was a stupid looking cartoon of a black shark with red eyes. Luckily, IA10 broomed that silliness under a rug and gave us what we have right now.
They're as mad as hell, even the Angry Marines might wanna think twice before cutting in front of them in line (perhaps this anger stems from their recruitment practices, see below). They're described as sneaking into place before going batshit insane with killer rage. But, their rage is always controlled and stuff. So they're like Khorne Berzerkers (though maybe the pre-Angron War Hounds are a better comparison) mixed with the SAS. They also like to cover their armour with Polynesian looking tattoos (hunting sharks was a major rite of passage in some Polynesian societies). Also they try to stay quiet in combat, because they think it makes them cool sharks can't talk, however they do tend to roar loudly when charging. Their specialty seems to be committing indiscriminate genocide, sparing only children they can enslave into being Chapter serfs or turn into more Carcharadons (said children have to fight each other to the death). They also like to wear Heresy-era armour to give people more incentive to buy from Forge World.
The Carcharadons come up in the Badab War, where it's kinda hinted that they're Raven Guard mutants or descended from those other deranged genocidal space marines - the Night Lords. Anywho, they're deployed to Afghanistan in space to fight the space Taliban and they solve the problem that the Fire Angels had been having by killing everybody to root out teh terrorists. Grimdark. Then they go over to Badab and blow the place up, ending the Badab War. Then they go back to the ashes of space Afghanistan and make a bunch of boys kill each other to become the next generation of Carcharadons before heading back out to smash someone else's planet. Also, according to rumor, they helped to trash Failbaddon's 7th Black Crusade.
Their leader is Tyberos the Red Wake, a terminator who couldn't decide if he liked lightning claws or chainfists better, so he made Lightning Chainclaws...IN SPAAAAAACE! He can destroy just about anything in the game in close combat. His Scent of Blood rule makes him and and any Carcharodon unit subject to Rage +1 strength for the rest of the game. He is reasonable enough to wear helmet and do not carry banner and shitton of flashy trinkets on his armour, unlike most other chapter masters, whose wargear just screams "Shoot me down, sniper!" Also, allows you to take a unit of lightning claw equipped assault terminators as troops; and he and any unit he joins have preferred enemy (infantry). Why aren't you taking him again? He's never explicitly said to be Chapter Master, but its a forgone conclusion since he's got the same stats as one.
Not as cool as the Saharduin, who are actually sharks from space. They do, however, share the same battle cry.
Their beakies look fucking amazing.
Organization
The Sharks are assumed to be a fleet based chapter. They follow the battle half of the codex but ignore everything else about organization. Cruising around in the void between beyond the galaxies edge can be nasty business. Years without resupply or any kind of constant reliable resources means they must be resourceful. Because of this each company practices high self-reliance, salvaging, repairing and re-purposing stuff to make sure it lasts as long as possible. This is why they sport so much working Heresy-era gear and why stuff like vehicles and Terminator armor are often kept together using a variety of patterns and models. Because of this, Techmarines are seldom seen on the battlefield. They also don't use reserve companies (realizing that having 100 of the finest warriors sitting around doing nothing is fucking stupid). Each company is thought to be a self-contained force, with their own scouts and veterans, ensuring they've got guys for every situation on hand. This has drawbacks of course as they can't simply ask for reinforcements from a reserve company and must make do, and for this reason Apothicaries are prized and kept off the front lines since every Marine makes a difference. At the same time it means that they've got all their companies actively doing stuff.
It could be theorized that part of the scorched earth campaign the Chapter did during the Badab War was in fact them violently restocking their inventory after having spent so long outside known space. Filling up on ammo, weapons, supplies, and grabbing anything and everything that could be useful, before destroying anything the enemy could possible have and inevitably returned there. We do know that they claimed a bunch of recruits post-Badab, and they probably do this after all their big campaigns (maybe every time they come back into contact with the Imperium).
Gene-Seed Speculation
Initially, many fa/tg/uys speculated that the Carcharadons were of Raven Guard or Night Lord descent, or possibly a loyalist remnant. A minority also speculated that they might be World Eater remnants, though since that seems to be the old Minotaurs' schtick it's probably not true. Moreover, given that they are believed to have been founded by M32 and most of their wargear appears to be Heresy-era, they are most likely of the Second Founding or a product of the Heresy.
Most of the evidence for these theories is based on their military tactics and the few descriptions we had of marines outside of their armour.
Their favored tactics, relying heavily on stealth and surprise, would seem to fall in line with the Raven Guard's combat doctrines. However, their preference for close-combat, total slaughter, and the strategic use of terror put them at odds with the "tacticool operator" style of the modern Raven Guard. Their method of war is closer to the pre-Heresy Night Lords, if substantially higher in body count, or the World Eaters, if they were a little more subtle.
Physically, the Carcharadon's displayed pale white skin and black eyes with black sclera. These were common traits of people living upon Lycaeus and Nostramo, the homeworlds of Corvus Corax and Konrad Curze, respectively. While the modern Raven Guard exhibit these traits as a result of mutations within their gene-seed, Imperial Armour states that the Space Shark's gene-seed is unusually pure, i.e. stable, and that these traits are unlikely to be the result of mutation. However, their Chief Librarian has toothy denticle growths on his elbows and around his neck which comes from a "degraded genetic inheritance" which essentially gives him sharkskin, though it is made unclear whether the trait is unique to him alone or to his lineage.
This makes their appearance all the more unusual, as the Carcharadons are known to take recruits from the worlds they conquer, meaning there is no common genetic source that could explain their development other than through their gene-seed. Interestingly, the Chief Librarian also seems to make a note of the 3rd Captain's particular genetic heritage, as if it were somehow significant. It may very well be that the Carcharadons have more than one gene-seed source; Corvus Corax was noted for his snow-white skin, and Konrad Curze for his black eyes.
Raven Guard
Following the publication of Imperial Armour 10, new evidence was published to support the Raven Guard theory by Games Workshop's licensors. Presumably the idea that every Traitor Legion has a secret Loyalist Successor was too much for them.
Fantasy Flight Games' Deathwatch RPG included rules for playing the Carcharadons (Honour the Chapter). Among the fluff, it is stated that Deathwatch Apothecaries have occasionally had the chance to analyze the gene-seed of Carcharadon's slain in the service of the Deathwatch, and that they bear certain genetic markers unique to the Raven Guard. Of course, this being the Imperium of Man, you can never be certain what they're actually finding or if the records are accurate.
Forgeworld's Horus Heresy Book 3 included a bunch of new information on the Raven Guard, and their predecessor Legion, the Pale Nomads. The Pale Nomads were noted for being the Emperor's preferred operators, often stealthing their way into enemy fortresses and armies to slay their leaders should they refuse surrender, and adopting multi-angle strike-and-fade tactics if the enemy continued to fight on. The latter is a favored tactic of the Carcharadons on the battlefield. The Pale Nomads were known for crushing any hint of resistance, which some have equated to the Space Sharks decimating entire star systems in order to sow terror. Their tactics evidenced a disdain for humans that the Raven Lord couldn't stomach, which is similar to the attitude adopted by the Space Sharks during the Badab War when they Exterminatus'd Badab and hundreds of Loyalist Space Marines along with it. The Pale Nomads were also slavers, who would take children from defeated worlds to raise as Legionnaires, a practice that the Space Sharks have adopted. The Xeric tribesmen from which the Pale Nomads recruited also had a tradition of tattooing their bodies and painting their armor with tribal markings.
This could possibly explain why the Space Sharks have an abundance of MkVI armor alongside their other Heresy-era tech, since the Raven Guard were the first to get their hands on them when they entered production during the Horus Heresy and that they're unusually stealthy with a variety of sensory systems to assist them in the void of space. Additionally, the Raven Guard were revealed to suffer from a gene-seed defect known as the Ash Blind or Sable Brand. Similar to the Black Rage, this defect caused otherwise normal Space Marines to charge into battle seeking only to destroy all trace of their foes, whether they lived or died. Those afflicted would develop eyes of solid black, and would neither speak nor reason until the condition passed.
Finally, it is stated that Corax would divest the Raven Guard of the surviving Terran-born Pale Nomads, whom he found too similar to the cruel lords he overthrew on Deliverance. One of the many branches of Raven Guard he sent off on isolated, never-ending crusades contained the Battle Barge Nicor, (an old English word for a water sprite or monster) later to be found in the fleet of Space Sharks who ended the Badab War.
Tellingly, in Horus Heresy book 3, Corax had no idea what happened to the fleet of Terran Exiles or to its master Akhas Fal and made no effort to contact them in the build-up prior to the Isstvan Dropsite Massacre. There is no evidence that these exiles were recalled after the massacre either, despite the 4000 men "officially" counting towards about half of the size of the remaining Legion, so they were considered an entirely separate force. They could simply have been designated a new Chapter following the end of the civil war.
Loyalist Traitors
Contradicting the Raven Guard theory are some logical inconsistencies, the issue of their battle tactics, and recently published material from Horus Heresy Book 6 where it is revealed that a band of around 4000 Terrans exiled by Corvax from the Raven Guard turned full renegade, calling themselves the Ashen Claws and abandoning the Imperium to build their own domain in the Segmentum Tempestus. With no contact from the Imperium, no support from the Emperor, and no reward for their loyalty, it seems likely that other Raven Guard exiles could have turned. Interestingly, this band of exiles raided the fortress worlds of the Night Lords for supplies before returning to the darkness beyond the Imperium.
The fact that the Carcharadons adhere to a known pattern of crusading behavior, the "Nomad-Predation Pattern," would seem to indicate that their "recruiting" practices aren't unique to any Legion or Chapter, but an established Space Marine tactic for dealing with long crusades beyond the supply lines of the Imperium. Rather than being a relic of Xeric nomads recruited by the Emperor, it seems likely that the Space Sharks are only unique in that they utilize this pattern exclusively, obeying the order to "ravage the foes of Mankind" in the darkness beyond the galactic plane. It also points to them either being formed prior to the implementation of the Codex Astartes or an utter disregard for it.
If the Space Sharks were founded during the Second Founding, you'd expect them to have roughly equal portions of their gear granted to them from their original Legion, and thus have higher proportions of more "modern" gear such as mark VI (Corvus) & VII (Aquilla) plate, yet it is older mark V (Heresy) plate alongside Phobos pattern boltguns which predominantly fill the ranks. This points to the Space Sharks resupplying during the throes of the Heresy and their access to more recent patterns of wargear have come from salvaged or reclaimed equipment gathered over the years. Even their revered terminator suits seem to be modified in unorthodox ways just to keep them operational. If they descend from any other Primarch, especially considering their tactics and manner of deployment, it's possible that they simply salvaged Nicor and other wargear from some distant and bloody battlefield.
The Space Shark's preferred tactics are bloody and brutal, far more so than expected from any pre-Heresy Space Marine Legion besides the Night Lords and the World Eaters. During the Badab War they had no qualms about using the exterminations of worlds and systems loyal to the Mantis Warriors to draw them into battle by the scale of their horror, and they would use the shattered survivors of their bloody attacks to demoralize and weaken rebel forces.
The history, as known, of the Space Sharks points to their being present during the Second Founding. Whether the Raven Guard exiles were recalled or returned on their own, or if they were a Loyalist remnant of the Night Lords, or more unlikely the World Eaters, and were given the chance to forge a new life and history, it seems odd that they would've been dispatched to such distant battlefields if they weren't regarded with mistrust by the High Lords of Terra. And assuming they possessed a reputation for such brutality that "ravage" is a more appropriate word for their orders than "harry" or "destroy," they should be descended from a Legion or portion of a Legion with a particularly bloody reputation.
Amusingly, the same Honour The Chapter splatbook that posits that the Carcharadons are descended from the Raven Guard also says they are of the 23rd Founding, descended from the Eagle Warriors. And the Chapter immediately preceding them in the splatbook, the Reasonable Marines, are definitively stated to be a Second Founding descendant of the Raven Guard. While the Raptors skin grows translucent and their hair grows darker as they age, the Space Sharks gain gray, shark-like skin and their hair turns whiter as they age. In addition, the Carcharadons by implication have a fully-functioning set of gene-seed organs, unlike the Raven Guard and Raptors who lack functioning Mucranoid and/or Betcher's Glands, as do other Raven Guard Successors.
Night Lords
The Carcharadon's deliverance of bloody and total judgement upon the followers of the rebellious Badab Chapters is in line with the Night Lords' pre-Curze and pre-Heresy role and attitudes towards those who failed the Emperor in loyalty or deed. Brutal purges of the disloyal would build into a reputation that became one of terror and bloody death under Konrad Curze, and his use of fear and fluid, almost wild maneuvers in battle are seen by some in the descriptions of the Space Shark's battles.
The Space Shark's apparently fractious nature and their manner of giving personal titles of distinction and honor could be echoes of the Night Lords' practices as well. Many commanders and captains would have personal honorifics, like Zso Sahaal, would either earn idiosyncratic titles or have lurid and unique ranks within the Legion's organizational structure. Likewise, The Red Wake could be an honorific specific to the Chapter Master, or a personal one. As the Night Lords were grouped into semi-independent Companies with individual names, traditions, and markings, it's possible the Carcharadons could be one such Company that rejected the Heresy or returned to the Emperor's light. It would also explain why their forces never seem to gather in full Chapter strength; having passed down this tradition of building brotherhood solely within small, tribal bands like the gangs of Nostramo and fighting in semi-independent units as preferred by the Night Haunter, they would see little reason to fight together while other conflicts and enemies require their notice.
The Chapter's preference for close-combat is in stark contrast to the Raven Guard's preference for long-ranged and quick-moving strikes, especially as they prefer stealth and speed to the roar of assault jetpacks and jetbikes. However, these tactics were favored by the Night Lords and their Terror Squads. Indeed, the enforced silence and refusal to coordinate with Imperial forces of the Space Shark's is similar to the silence that Terror Squads would work with during the latter years of the Great Crusade. Rather than being a gene-seed curse, as with the Raven Guard, the Carcharadons simply isolate their vox nets and refuse to speak to anyone unless it is truly urgent and necessary.
As with the Space Sharks, the Night Lords were infamous for stealing the youth of conquered worlds for rapid implantation and hypno-indoctrination. While the former could also be a hallmark of the Nomad-Predation deployment pattern, the latter is a practice that seems to have been preferred by the Night Lords since it was the fastest and quickest way to make a new, battle-ready Space Marine in spite of the risks of instability and insanity it engendered.
World Eaters
Yet another possibility may be World Eaters, since Space Sharks are silent and brooding outside of battle but go absolutely batshit crazy when in battle, no questions asked, and they seem to have a preference for chain-axes, which is somewhat unusual among Loyalist Space Marines. Their predilection for close-combat and bloody melee, to an even greater degree than the Space Wolves, would be in keeping with the attitudes of the World Eaters and the War Hounds. Like the World Eaters, the Space Sharks have a preference for Drop Pod assaults, fast vehicles like Land Speeders, and Assault Terminators, and it can be argued that Tyberos's Terminator bodyguards, the Red Brethren, are reminiscent of Angron's own Terminator posse, the Devourers. Some of their ships also possess Ursus Claws, which only World Eaters used (but then again, it could just be a salvaged ship).
The main problem with this theory is the Butcher's Nails. We can assume one of two things when it comes to the Nails:
- The Space Sharks learned to control their urges outside of battle, lest they snap and massacre each other, since they're out in the void of space for long periods of time doing nothing.
- Or they could have simply phased them out of their recruitment process after the Horus Heresy, seeing as it drove the other World Eaters fucking bonkers and was detrimental in the long run.
And whilst there were very few loyalist Night Lords (only two examples in the canon thus far), there are canonically loyalist World Eaters, both at Istvaan III and scattered around the Imperium during the Heresy.
Chimeric Geneseed
As another wrench thrown in, in Robbie MacNiven's Black Library novel Red Tithe, it is heavily hinted that there are, in fact, multiple geneseeds utilized by the Space Sharks, primarily Raven Guard, Night Lords, and World Eaters. Given the typical canon conflicts that the Black Library in known for, this should be looked at with skepticism at least and as a half-assed excuse to explain why they have traits of all three Legions at best. Hopefully this will be elaborated on in the future but for now we can only theorize what this entails.
It is possible that the Carcharadons once consisted of Blackshields of Raven Guard and both loyalist Night Lords and World Eaters during the Horus Heresy, and after a time they were reformed into their own chapter and the traitor aspects of their origins were buried away. This could explain why their combat doctrine is an odd hybrid of their three supposed predecessors, any mutations they have are hard to connect to any one Legion, why their equipment is so old and haphazard, and why they were sent out in the void of space due to their origins. Until we have hard evidence from Forge World itself on any such Blackshields, however, this is up in the air.
Another, simpler explanation is that, given the nature of the Space Sharks to scavenge whatever they find, it's possible that they harvested the geneseed of the fallen marines they have killed. It's never explicitly said that their geneseed is comprised of only the three suspected Legions; rather, it just happened to just be mostly the aforementioned three. For all we know they could trace back to every Legion through a small percentage of their geneseed. Though admittedly, this train of thought makes their origin even harder to pinpoint as we don't have a clear-cut predecessor.
And it should be kept in mind that a good chunk of this information in the novel was divulged to one of the Space Sharks by a daemon. A daemon, for shit's sake. As we've seen with Magnus, Chaos usually doesn't give accurate information.
This said, this is practically confirmed in HH6, where the Ashen Claws (Raven Guard) raid the Nostromo Sector to take their gear and geneseed. So if the Carcharodons are the Ashen Claws or a related group/successor, then they're Raven Guard and Night Lords. Given how things were during the heresy, it's perfectly reasonable that there's some World Eater geneseed in there, as well as some "loyalists" who joined up as Blackshields, seeing as they spent the Heresy as an independent force at the edges of the Imperium.
TL;DR
The first mention of the Carcharadons says that their gene-seed might be Raven Guard, but doesn't expand on that. Given that this was during the time that the Blood Ravens were really in the popular vogue, the idea that the Carcharadons are secretly Loyalist Traitors was pretty popular because their tactics are more like the Night Lords than anyone else's. GW has tried to walk it back a bit by saying the Raven Guard were basically the Night Lords only with Corax instead of Curze since then, but the debate still rages on because most of the documents supporting the Raven Guard hypothesis are speculative in-universe, and the Imperium would probably cover up a loyal Chapter being descended from Traitors if the Blood Ravens are anything to go by.
On the Tabletop
Carchadons Chapter tactics gives all Space Marines models Fear, and allows Tactical marines to replace their bolters with a chainsword or keep it and buy an additional close combat weapon for 1pt each. In addition they gain Rage after destroying or forcing an infantry unit to fallback in close combat, however they must consolidate towards the nearest unit they can hurt (after all, the rape train has no brakes!). This can make stuff like Vanguard Veterans, Assault Marines, or even bikes surprisingly dangerous. Even a full batch of 10 footslogging Tacticals with extra CC weapons can be a pretty scary thing to face up against. Also, Dreadnoughts with Fear and Rage? Yes please.
You can only ally with Imperial Forces and all of those are bumped down to Desperate Allies. All this means that, with them, you play Horus Heresy World Eaters with Fear and all the shiny new toys of the 40k arsenal of Space Marines.