Stone Men

Stone Men
Battle Cry	*The sound of meteors screeching through the atmosphere*
Number	XXVII
Founding	First Founding
Successors of	N/A
Successor Chapters	N/A
Chapter Master	Johannus Osmosius
Primarch	Onyx Lithus
Homeworld	Neolithus(sucked into the warp), now The Methuselan System
Strength	50,000 at peak, now between 2000 and 1000 (200,000 if auxiliary forces and allies are counted)
Specialty	Close combat/deep strike
Allegiance	Fedelitas Constantus
Colours	Brown and grey (sometimes steel blue)

This page details people, events, and organisations from the /tg/ Heresy, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe. See the /tg/ Heresy Timeline and Galaxy pages for more information on the Alternate Universe.

The Stone Men (AKA the Stone Legion, Legionem Ex Lapide) are 27th legion of the Adeptus Astartes, and were created by the Emperor himself. Characterized by their affinity for solid rock and hard work ethic, the Stone Men are one of the most honorable, brotherly, and just Legions in the whole Imperium. Both blessed and cursed by their geneseed, most Stone Men stand far above their fellow Legionnaires. However, their geneseed takes decades to mature, making recruitment a slow and arduous task. Still, they make great use of their stature to bring about swift and crushing victories in the name of the Emperor. Though many remark on their odd qualities and personalities after the Heresy, their devotion to humanity and the Emperor is unquestionable.

History

Sacred Band

The Proto Stone Men engaged in many battles during the Unification Wars on Terra, fighting with the rest of their brother legions’ progenitors. Back then, they were known as the twenty seventh squad, and excelled at underground/enclosed combat. Their unofficial name was the “Cave Crushers” due to their use of melee weapons, tunneling, and cavern systems as a way of sieging fortified positions. They used this method to great effect when faced with conquering the great fortress on mount Yerushabim, a massively fortified military complex with tunnel systems and scientific chambers leading down deep into the earth. The crushers fought against esoteric warriors who wielded ancient and terrible power, with mystical powers that bewildered even the Emperor himself. The battle lasted for 969 days, yet with the surface city long since sieged, the warriors continued to fight deep within the catacombs of the maze-like complex. With morale and supplies running low, Hektor ordered them to cease all fighting, and destroy any and all passages leading to the chambers below. The mysterious Yerushabic peoples were never seen again. The Cave Crushers were led by a grey-faced, nubile warrior with curly, golden hair and eyes like liquid gold, whose name was Ozymandias. Ozymandias disappeared mysteriously during the siege of Yerushabim, and is somewhat of a ghost-story to very old legionnaires.

Early Campaigns

Once the Unification Wars had ended and the bands were split up and fortified into legions proper, the Cave Crushers came together to form the 27th Legion, the Gold Masons. Led by a gold-and-silver clad prince-like warrior with rather avaricious tendencies named Dikasterius. They razed and pillaged countless xenos and human empires in an endless search for precious materials and artefacts, until a great defeat at the hands of an unknown elder empire killed Dikasterius, and decimated a large portion of their numbers. The battle was over a golden city that Dikasterius wished to convert to his own capital city, but was ruled over by mysterious elder lords. The battle was a complete disaster, and compelled the Gold Masons (now renamed simply “The Masons”) to cast off their greedy tendencies, and adopt a much more humble, monk-like existence.

Primarch Discovery

When Neolithus was discovered by Imperial forces, it was a fledgling space-age civilization with inter-planetary travel, but for some reason vastly advanced defensive capabilities. The Imperial forces fought the primitive but fierce warriors, and faced such resistance that the Iron Rangers had to be called in to support the campaign. Massive, monolithic machines of war, similar to those of the Homo sapiens rotundus, shattered Imperial attackers, and proved difficult for even the Rangers to handle. The Neolithian warriors towered above the Imperial Armymen, and had primitive power-armor that allowed them to hold their own even against the mighty space marines. When the battle went on for such a long time that the Neolithians had begun to steal and repurpose Imperial Battleships, the Emperor decided to call off the attack and personally meet with their leaders to discuss peaceful assimilation. Much to his surprise, Onyx, one of his primarch sons, was the leader of the Neolithian forces. After a long, weighty discussion, Onyx joined his father’s Imperium and Neolithus became an Imperial world.

The Great Crusade

When the Masons reunited with their Primarch, they found a new purpose and faith in Onyx; that of honest, resolute justice for all men and women in the galaxy. Onyx’s harsh training and rigid moral codes forged the Masons into a new and improved legion: the Stone Legion. Clad in super-heavy armor and wielding fists and hammers, the Stone Men marched across the galaxy toppling empires and liberating the people to join the Imperium. However, the greatest challenge they faced would not be that of an empire, or even one of flesh; for the Stone Men’s greatest foe would be the Colossi, a race of planet-consuming, space-borne, pathogenic, geological monstrosities, that wielded power beyond that of anything the Imperium had faced before. In a decades-long conflict of epic proportions, the Stone Men fought these towering behemoths of rock and fire all across the Segmentum Ultima during the Core Wars Campaign, taking a brief respite from the Eastern front to fight at Ullanor, only to reengage the Colossi soon after. This war lasted until the very end of the Great Crusade, when the very last Colossi fell on their homeworld, Jormundgandr. This war lasted a whopping 64 years of near-ceaseless fighting (940.M30-004.M31), and called upon numerous contingents of other legions.

Heresy

Isstvan V Massacre

After recieving word that Aubrey the Zealot was leading an insurrection (from information carefully leaked and censured by the Sons of Amok), the Stone Men prepared to lead a counter-invasion force along with the War Scribes and the Horns of Ruin. The War Scribes Rendezvoused with the Stone Fleet above Neolithus, but the Horns of Ruin were curiously absent. Undeterred, they made the journey to the galactic north without them. When they arrived at Isstvan, a much larger fleet immediately engaged them. Undaunted by the enemy, the Stone Men and War Scribes deployed planet-side en masse, raining metal fury and orbital bombardment from the sky. However, where they expected to find Aubrey and his legion, they instead were attacked by Hektor and his massive legion. The Scribes and Stone Men were just strong enough to hold off the immense horde, but the battle remained a bloody stalemate. Just as the Sons of Hektor pentrated the loyalisylt lines, the Horns of Ruin arrived as reinforcements. Expecting to be assisted, the Horns simply tore into the loyalists' flank, decimating the Stone Men and the War Scribes. Caught between two forces that outnumbered them 4:1, the Stone Men decided to allow the less combat-inclined War Scribes to escape first, taking the brunt of the attack. When the War Scribes had evacuated, the Stone Men began their retreat, bloodied and battered to a mere 30,000. As the Stone Fleet pulled out of the Isstvan system, the Horns of Ruin pursued them, eager to finish off the battered legion.

The Seige of Neolithus

The Stone Men exited the warp into the Neolithus System, only to find the Horns' fleet already attacking the planet. On the ground, massive behemoth war machines thundered against the attackers, but were no match for the sheer firepower the Horns of Ruin had at their disposal. The Stone Men, filled with rage and righteous fury, rained down upon the invaders and almost got the upper hand. Just as the tide of the battle had turned, a detachment of Hektor's Sons reinforced the traitors, reinvigorating the enemy. At the height of the battle, Kranios did sonething unspeakable, even for someone as treacherous as him. A massive, eldritch vehicle of destruction appeared from out of the immaterium, a relic cannon capable of unleashing literal hell in the form of a directed warp incursion. Neolithus, the planetside Horns of ruin and Sons of Hektor, and the majority of the Stone Men, were consumed in a purple and black maelstrom of crackling warp energy. Billions of souls, consumed by daemons in a hellish feast so immense and engorging, it attracted the attention of Slaanesh and her cohort. So horrible was Kranios' deed, that he ascended as one of the most powerful daemon primarchs of all time. The Only things left in the weapon's wake were the Indomitable Everest Battleship (although heavily damaged), Onyx, and the 1,000 remaining Stone Men along with a handful of recruits rescued from Neolithus. Driven to the edge by loss and resentment, Onyx launched the Everest straight into the heart of the Enemy fleet, colliding with the ancient void-weapon at it's core. There, Onyx alone battled Kranios as the Stone Men fought the chaos-inflamed Horns of Ruin in a void-battle the likes of which rival even the seige of holy Terra. Kranios in his daemon form was far more powerful than Onyx, but in a final act of sacrifice, Onyx destroyed the warp cores of the foul machine and sent the entire enemy fleet into the warp, killing himself and banishing Kranios in the process.

Culture

The culture of the Stone Men is that of hardened ethics, rigid minds, and unwavering faith. No matter what the cost, a Stone Marine will do whatever it takes to uphold what he thinks is right. The Stone Men do not hold themselves higher than an imperial citizen, and would rather give their own lives than let innocent men and women suffer. They often refuse to fight in urban occupations or against revolting populations, as killing citizens is taboo to them. While not a priority to achieving their objective, honor is rather important to the Stone Men. Respect is given to foes who fight with great prowess and respect for the unspoken rules of the battlefield, whether or not those enemies are human, xenos, or perhaps, (hypothetically) even chaos. The Stone Men Live very long lives, and because of their fickle gene-seed, they have a very real understanding and respect for death. If a Stone Marine dies, he is given the most honorable death ceremony possible, and any kind of stain on his reputation or service is wiped clean. This means that the practice of interring dead or mortally wounded marines into dreadnoughts is seen as disrespectful to the marine himself. Special exceptions are made, however, such as with marines who are disabled but wish to continue serving the emperor and their brothers in combat.

Homeworld

Neolithus

Neolithus
Segmentum	Segmentum Solar/Segmentum Ultima
Sector	Neolithic
Sub Sector	Paleogothic
System	Neolithian System
Population	1,000,000,000
Planetary Governor	Onyx
Orbital radius	0.8 AU ± .2AU
Gravity	1.987 G
Temperature	temperate-hot

Neolithus is a harsh world of craggy, rocky wastes, massive oceans, and storms that can last for years. Vegetation can only flourish on the banks of rivers leading from immense, far off mountains to the huge cliffs on its shores. In these mountains and cliffs, dark creatures stalk in the night and during the long, thunderous storms. The People of Neolithus lived in massive villages located within open quarries, like immense, inverted ziggurats dug into the stone plains. The daemonic beings that lived in the caves and crags, known as storm hounds, were a very imminent and very real threat to the quarry-villages, so with the stone dug from the village excavation, the Neolithians erected massive monoliths around the settlements, which warded off the creatures. These Monoliths were closely related to the ancestral worship the Neolithians practiced, and they were maintained every year by generation after generation, so they represented a link to the past. It is believed that the Neolithians descended from a space-faring colony from before the age of strife, as there are many stone-carvings of elder, squats, and other galactic phenomenon, as well as some strange carvings depicting unknown warp-entities, all within the many stone catacombs of the quarry-cities. Life on Neolithus was a constant struggle, despite the leaps and bounds in technology and society they experienced (especially under the leadership of Onyx), which is thought to be why Neolithians are much taller, stronger, and longer-lived than normal imperial citizens.

Methuselah

Now the Stone Men fortify themselves within a massive field of asteroids, shrouded by cold, dark clouds of dust and gas. They orbit a dead, zombified star, which has long since lost it's light. The star was named Methuselah, as calculations predict the star remnant to be over 10 billion years old. This dark, forsaken fortress is actually beyond the ghoul stars, as it's isolation shrouds it from the sensors of attacking tyranids, and is far from any webway for the necrons to stage a meaningful assault. On the larger asteroids and planetoids, massive stone fortresses are carved from the rock. about half of the remaining fleet (500 ships) as well as the remnants of the destroyed craftworld were cannibalized to create a massive network of functional strategic weaponry and facilities. The system has a few other cold, rocky dead worlds, and a single gas giant that emits strange signals periodically thoughout the year named "Jogsototh".

Methuselan System
Segmentum	Ultima Segmentum
Sector	Ghoulan
Sub Sector	Exodia
System	Methuselan System
Population	7,000-5,000 Marines 200,000 refugees, soldiers, technicians, etc.
Planetary Governor	Chapter Master
Orbital radius	3.4 AU ± 1.6AU
Gravity	N/A
Temperature	-100 C

Recruiting Worlds

The Stone Men recruited from all across the Neolithian Sub-Sector, and as such represented the Neolithian Peoples as a whole. This includes about 40 systems, with 52 planets in all.

Notable Members

-Captain Ozymandias, Sacred Band, 27th squad “Cave Crushers”

-Chapter Master Dikasterius, Golden Masons Legion

-Chapter Master Hammurab, Masons Legion

-Grand Admiral Regus Tungsten, Stone Fleet

-Captain Auron Augustus, Stone Men, 2nd chapter “Caementium Centurions”

-Chapter Master Johannes Osmos, Stone Men

Honorary Members

-Magos Explorator Spiros Xanis, Explorator Fleet “Precipice of Dawn”

-General Zeron Deathleaper, Terrancotta Regiments

-Canoness Laconia Virgae, Order of the Silent Script

Organization

Stone Men Legion Banner

The Stone Men are divided like the other legions, albeit with a much more centralized command structure. The Stone Legion’s Hierarchy is structured to facilitate operations on a legion-wide level, or small-scale operations on a squad-based basis. They also have a skill-based hierarchy within each company, consisting of 3 tiers: The Quarrymen, the new recruits of the Stone Men. Whereas most legions and chapters have a company of scouts, the Stone Men do away with such unnecessary frivolities and simply insert their recruits into combat. These Quarrymen are equipped with very basic and standard weaponry, so that they can develop and hone their skills as marines. The Stone Masons, the main force of the Stone Men. These are the bulk forces of the Legion, and are equipped with the Stone Men’s favored weaponry. They make up half of the company numbers-wise. The Golems, the veterans of the Stone Men. These elite warriors are the very best of the best within a company, and before they move up to the veteran company they lead their original company as a Golem. They are equipped with the best armor and weaponry available, and are often heavily customized.

Legion Tactics and Strategy

Standard Stone Legion doctrine for offensive maneuvers is to use naval auxiliaries to bombard the target from orbit, then use drop pods to insert themselves into the shell-shocked drop zone. From there, they hammer the enemy forces until they are destroyed, retreat, or surrender. They often employ (very) heavily armored vehicles and land-trains for long distance operations over land, as the Stone Men are not known for their swiftness. They are also adept at fortifying and defending stationary positions. The Stone Men are incredible inept at dealing with more agile adversaries, however, for they cannot attack them, and cannot effectively defend against an enemy who can break through their defenses before the marines even get there.

Arms, Armor, and Equipment preferences

Stone Men armor and color pattern

Standard Stone Legion equipment is double-layered ceramite infused with a special psykoreactive mineral called “Astral Obsidian” found deep within the mines and quarries of Neolithus, a power fist, and a meltagun. Heavy weapons units carry assault cannons, and sometimes heavy meltas for special operations. Captains and other Leaders within the legion often carry hammers as well as power fists, integrating storm bolters into their power fists.

Fleet

The Super-Battleship Mountain of Everest

Due to their reliance on orbital bombardment and the bolstering of their naval capacity by the Colossi wars, the Stone Men had a massive fleet by the end of the Great Crusade, which served as a massive obstacle to Hektor’s plans. It mostly consisted of Battleships and cruisers, with some frigates acting as missile boats to aid the larger vessels. This formation was created to fight the heavily armored space vessels the Colossi used, and was custom made for the legion.

Major/flagship vessels

Onyx’s and the Stone Men’s flagship is the Mount Everest super battleship, a custom-built cathedral of destruction, armored with pure Astral Obsidian and armed with the arsenal of an entire sector fleet. It was built in secret within the magnetic shroud of Jupiter at the Emperor’s request, and took 20 years to complete. The Mechanicus Ark “Precipice of Dawn” was built to explore the outer regions of the galaxy long before the Hektor Heresy, but became derelict and drifted through the warp for countless millennia. It was re-discovered along with its slightly unhinged crew of tech priests, and was saved by the Stone Men from falling into a black hole.

Successor Chapters/Warbands

After the Hektor Heresy and the disappearance of the Stone Men, the people of the Neolithian Sub-Sector and even other sectors began to erect statues of Stone Legionnaires and Onyx, constructing monuments, and in some cases even coming to revere them as saints. The fledgling Ecclesiarchy saw an opportunity to cease more support in this Neolithic Revival, and pulled many invisible strings to unlock the mysterious gene-seed faults on mars, and retrieve precious samples of the Stone Men’s lost gene-seed. Using this, they created a new generation of Ecclesiarchy-supported space marine chapters based on the Stone Legion’s gene-seed. These chapters acted as the Eccclesiarchy’s foothold in the area, and soon the Imperial Cult (with elements of Neolithian mysticism and Stone Men culture infused into it) was deeply rooted in the Neolithian culture.

Notable Enemies

In their battles among the ghoul stars, the stone men have acquired a number of enemies, many of which have fallen underfoot the mighty march of the Stone Men. The ones that have managed to last against the rocky bombardment of the Stone Men pose the greatest threat to the Imperium, and if the Stone Men were to fall, it is likely trillions could perish in the deluge of monstrosities that floods from the dark abyss.

Cythor Fiends

More of a pest than an outright enemy, These insectoid creatures are still a formidable and relentless enemy of the Stone Men. They fly on the tempestuous winds of the warp, hunting prey to feast upon. Normally, they are solitary and not a threat to any human with a working rifle, occasionally they can come together to make swarms of biblical porportions. They can use the warp to travel between planets, making them an even greater threats. The Stone Men can easily defend from these creatures, but theor greatest advantage is speed; they can ravage an entire planet before the marines can even get there.

Hive Fleet Azathoth

"So these creatures feed upon flesh? Let them come, for they will find only stone under this armor." -Captain Auron Augustus of the Caementium Centurions, 3rd Company, M.39

Coming from a separate direction entirely than the other hive fleets, Azathoth is as errant from normal tyranid biology as is physically possible. They resemble early encounters with the tyranids, in that they have more spindly appendages, hooves, spikes, and bulbous heads. They manage to use and harness all manner of energies in the form of weapons, such as psyke-rays, tesla-spines, plasma breath, atomic fire, and even stellar artillery. The biomorphs of Hive Fleet Azathoth are so incredibly divergent from known tyranid data, it is possible that they have even evolved into a seperate species. The Biomorphs of this Hive Fleet is almost entirely energy based. Plasma energy, usually reserved for artillery in normal hive fleets, is everywhere in Hive Fleet Azathoth. Even their methods of feeding are aberrant. They do not simply consume all edible materials on a planet, in fact many worlds they have ravaged have since regrown (albeit into mutant radioactive death worlds). The reason for this is unknown, perhaps some sort of allergy or intolerance as a side-effect of the heavy mutations? This should cause the tyranids to lose biomass and starve, however they seem to draw on some foreign energy source of a psychic/immaterial nature. Perhaps encounters with the unimaginable horrors beyond the stars have caused these harrowing mutations. It is possible that this Hive Fleet is a scouting fleet, much like the early encounters, but unlike the others this one has become unnaturally twisted and mutated in the vast abyss of deep space. A splinter of another Hive Fleet almost entered the ghoul stars; however, they encountered Azathothian tyranids and subsequently reversed direction and headed for the galaxy at large. In space, the hive fleets do not simply travel as a swarm of biomorphs, instead they fuse together to form colossal, horrific abominations similar in size to a space hulk. These monstrous forms are surrounded by orbiting biomorphs in similarly mutated fusions, and form what would appear to an observer like a giant, tentacled nucleus of flesh surrounded by swarms of billions upon billions of smaller monstrosities. The first tendril of hive fleet azathoth, nicknamed thsoggua, was encountered on the planet exodia, the first of the eldar exodite planets. The planet was ravaged, forcing the exodite inhabitants to seek refuge elsewhere. It was subsequently fought and defeated at the craftworld Sgathan-ra, albeit at the cost of the craftworld itself. The next tendril, once thought to be the main force of the fleet, was defeated on the planet Morghoul

Lord Valgul's Kingdom of Drazak

When the stone men first arrived at the pale wastes of the ghoul stars, they encountered the deranged flesh-craving kingdom of Drazak. These decrepit, flayed husks preyed upon the few remaining human worlds and exodite havens, lead by the (slightly less) deranged lord Valgul. These unorganized raids would be easily traced back to the original tomb world if these were normal necrons, but the minions of Drazak are far from normal. Drazak itself is a mystery, hidden in some unknown cataract of space-time, possibly even the warp. For every reaping the Stone Men and their allies fend off, the crazed flesh-consuming machines grow hungrier and more desperate, leading to larger and larger reapings. Soon the entirety of Drazak may descend upon the galaxy, and none may truly be prepared.

The Cult of Triangulum

Far beyond the boundaries of the milky way, past the black void of deep space, lies a distant galaxy named by ancient human astronomers "Triangulum". In the sparse regions of the outer edges of the galaxy, where signal interference is almost silent, one can faintly hear the whispers of distant stars burning with alien light. Beyond the touch of the chaos gods and their daemons, these whispers echo throughout the shadowy wastes of the dark warp. These echoes embed themselves into the minds of mortals living on the edge, driving them into insanity beyond comprehension. These prophets spoke of gods beyond the stars, lying in wait, slumbering in the dark beyond. Fanatical cultists, possibly even madder than their chaos counterparts, must be quelled or silenced before they can spread their seeds of madness across the galaxy.

Legion Strength

Great Crusade: 50,000

Heresy: 100,000

Post-Heresy: 2,000

Galactic Location

Before the Heresy, the Stone Men were located just north-west of the galactic core. After the Heresy, the Stone Men were marooned far beyond the light of the Astronomican, in a region of space known as the “Ghoul Stars”

Pro-Anti Psyker Status

The Stone Men have an uneasy disposition when it comes to psykers, and do not approve of using them within the legion. However, the Stone Men were fighting the final battles of the Colossi Wars during the council of Nikea, so Onyx could not comment.

Legion's Perspective on the Emperor/Perspective on their Primarch

The Stone Men see the Emperor as a chieftain of mankind, and follow his orders with the same diligence and duty they would with any other leader. Despite the obvious fatherly influences, the Stone Men see Onyx as an elder brother (most likely at Onyx’s request) and Onyx sees them as his equals.

Greatest Victory

The greatest victory of the Stone Men remains the final battle of Jormundgandr, where Onyx led his 100,000 brothers to victory against the great father of all the Colossi.