Editing Setting:Cloudburst/Blue Daggers (section)

==Wargear and Tactics==

The Blue Daggers conform to the most general paint and marking schemes of the various Ultramarine Successor Chapters from which they descend.  Each Company uses a unique kneecap and pauldron paint scheme to distinguish the Company, then a number on the opposite kneepad to distinguish individual squads.  Within each squad, every Battle Brother marks the backs of their pauldrons and the center of their gorget collar with a number to indicate their position in the squad, and each Sergeant adds a single red pip to these markings, plus a red helmet if they wear one.  Veterans denote their armor with bone-white markings.  However, the trim on the armor that Battle Brothers wear uses Company-specific coloration only on the front half, with the back half using solid dark blue, the same color as the hulls of Blue Dagger aircraft and space interceptors.<br>
The extra-sized Honor Guard that the Chapter employs mark their armor exclusively with the Veteran pauldron and breastplate decorations, save the Ancient if there is one present.  Because the Chapter withdraws all of its non-Deathwatch personnel to the Cloudburst Sector during the Glasian Migrations, the Campaign Badge of the Migration Defense they are serving overrides all others.  The Chapter does not grant Marksman Honors in normal service, but if the Battle Brother in question earns them while serving with the Deathwatch or Inquisition, they are allowed to keep them.<br>

The Brother-Lieutenant is a position that existed in the Chapter for centuries prior to their institution in the greater Adeptus Astartes.  Lieutenants in the Chapter use Sergeant Red for their Lieutenant helms, save for a single gold line down the middle of the helm, bisecting the eyes, as well as a single gold square on the left pauldron, facing forward.  Any Marine who serves on the Council of Masters also wears a single bright green armband while in their normal dress robes, but otherwise is allowed to customize their armor as they see fit, although few do, and most simply use the same markings they had prior to elevation to the Council, unless the position they vacated had unique markings.<br>
As part of uniform dress, the Power Armor of the Battle Brothers does not include any fabric accoutrements, unless it is part of a specific decoration or Battle Honor that that Brother has earned.  Some Veteran Sergeants and Lieutenants prefer a small half-cape over the strong arm, but this is officially discouraged for reasons of uniformity.  The one exception is the Chaplaincy, as their standard Power Armor often includes a tabard and knee-length loincloth worn over the armor, displaying events and icons significant to that Chaplain’s past.  Librarians may wear small masks that cover their noses and mouth if they decline to wear a helmet, but these are purely ceremonial, not part of the armor.  Scouts are the only part of the Chapter battle line to use cloth, and it is usually part of their camouflage scheme.

Members of a dispatched force of Marines and serfs usually don Campaign Badges on their left kneepad, and put squad markings on the right.  Since the genetic, cybernetic, and hypnotic alterations made to Marines during their creation often imparts ambidextry, the Chapter, like most, does not mandate which hand be used for any given task.

The Chapter employs Mark 7 Aquilla Power Armor almost exclusively.  The youth of the Chapter means that it has no armory of ancient Marks of armor to deploy as its progenitors did, and the Cognomen and Solstice arsenals are small compared to the vast fabricators of Lucius and Voss Prime that arm many other Chapters.  However, the Chapter does have a small stock of Mark 8 Errant armor and a few customized suits of older marks, generally gifts from Forge Worlds or Chapters from which the original pool of geneseed and gear was collected at the Founding of the Chapter.  The Mark 8 pattern was recently delivered to Cognomen, meaning that it is now slowly making its way out to the greater Chapter.  For now, its use is restrained to Brothers in descending order of service duration, so it is quite rare outside of the Council of Masters, the Honor Guards, and the Company Officers.

The fact that the Chapter can barely equip half of its First Company Veterans with Terminator armor somewhat limits its ability to enact Space Hulk boarding actions, or confront the very largest of Tyranid or Necron foes.  The Daggers make up for the lack of Terminator armor by outfitting their First Company with as much in the way of specialized ammunition as they can use.  The presence of Vengeance, Kraken, Dragonfire, Flux, and Metal Storm bolts being issued to their Veterans is standard.  Techmarines of the Chapter have less common access to ancient and potent technologies than their forbearers have, and often equip their Servo-harnesses with simpler weapons – the Chapter has but one Conversion Beamer and three Infernus pistols total.  As partial compensation for the lack of diversity of arms among the Battle Brothers, the Daggers make common use of Combi-attachments.  Meltas and grenade launchers are popular for their flexibility, but the most coveted are Combi-Gravs, as useful in boarding actions as they are in infantry battles.  Of course, these are amazingly rare.  The Chapter has no Volkite weapons.

The Chapter, like many others, has preferred weapons for their Marines in the field.  In deference to their frequent task of boarding alien ships designed for beings smaller than Marines are, the Blue Daggers use Chainfists and Chainswords whenever they can choose equipment, although individual Marines are not required to wield them if they have a personal preference for some other melee weapon.  The Chapter’s combat doctrine calls for every Marine outside the Council of Masters, even those who have specialized roles in the Chapter like Apothecaries, to carry some kind of bolt or plasma weapon, also in deference to the Chapter’s tactical situation: they are always outnumbered.  Losing ranged capability is a terrible idea.  Members of the Council of Masters are generally exempt, since they have Honor Guards, but most comply anyway.  Combi-attachments are quite popular here, as well, with heat-based weapons being the most common, like flamer and melta-weapons.  Also common are looped bandoliers of grenades and extra ammunition, issued to at least one member of every Squad, with some volunteering to bring more extras, just so that squads cut off from their Brothers during Glasian Migrations or by other horde-styled enemies are never without resupply.  Bolters with mounting rails are quite popular, as opposed to those that have unadorned barrels.  Because the senses of a Space Marine bolter or pistol integrate directly into the data-feeds of the operator, not all Blue Daggers bother affixing iron sights or other simple targeting optics to their weapons, but many do.  Scopes that can scomp-link to helm autosenses are very popular, as are small flashlights that can be attached to the heat shroud and turned on and off with a thought-impulse through the helm senses.

Company Captains in the line Companies and Squadron Commanders of the Gunship pool usually tend to prefer the use of energy weapons when available for their mounts.  For example, the Thunderhawk pilots of the Chapter generally tend to mount Turbolaser Destructors over Battle Cannons in their dorsal turrets.  They have less dispersal, are unaffected by a planet’s gravity, and their power cells can recharge from the power plant of the Thunderhawk; the same can’t be said of one hundred-fifty-five-millimeter smoothbore cannon shells.
Similarly equipped are the Escorts of the fleet.  The Glasians are, obviously, the primary spaceborne threat to the Chapter, and thus most of its fleet is outfitted to repulse them.  The Glasians employ extraordinarily potent plasma weapons and wings of fighters as their primary anti-starship defense.  Thus, the Daggers outfit their ships with as much Void Shielding and Point Defense as possible.  However, the Daggers aren’t the Grey Knights nor the Imperial Fists.  They lack access to the vast archeotechnological power of Deimos, Mars, Terra, and Titan.  Having but two small, simple yards to build ships, the Daggers are forced to compromise on their vessels, installing their preferred two upgrades to the exclusion of all others.

Sniper weapons are not common outside of trained Scout units, even among Marines who have kept up their marksman training.  Squads are sometimes issued Stalker Bolters in lieu of dedicated sniper platforms, and Stalker Bolters that retain their burst- and auto-fire modes are highly prized among Tactical Brothers.  More rarely, squads may equip as many as six of its ten members with non-bolter weapons.  The squad of Brother-Lieutenant Jonas, for instance, has a large array of weapons among its members.  They carry a Stalker Bolter with a custom scope, a plasma cannon, a plasma pistol and Power Axe, a missile launcher and twin pistols, a Heavy Flamer and pistol, a heavy grenade launcher and bolter, a Storm Bolter, and three bolters with chainsword bayonets among them, with a variety of melee weapons distributed across the squad.

The wargear of most Astartes in the Chapter follows a strict template, determined first by the Angels of Fury and later by Magos Sneth of Solstice.  Space Marines in Tactical squads employ a mixture of Godwyn Vb Bolters and Godwyn Vs Stalker Bolters.  Assault Marines prefer the use of Ultima Bolt Pistols and Sunfury MkIII plasma pistols, accompanying chainblades of various types.  Devastator Marines in the Blue Daggers employ the Mark 1vc Heavy Bolter in the main, but their love of Devastator combat styles ensures that they field a dizzying variety of other weapons as well.  Marines on boarding actions prefer the use of Meltas, including when dispatched on missions to scuttle the Glasian Cylinders.  Storm Bolters are not a popular squad-level firearm, but they do make the occasional appearance.  Sergeants are free to choose whatever arms they want from the arsenals, save Relics of the Chapter unless authorized.  The few Hurricane Bolters and Flamers in the arsenal are of the Voss Prime model.

Both Marine and human crewers of the vehicles and ships of the Chapter motor pools and flotilla are under standing orders to bear a loaded firearm at all times.  The Glasians may be easy to predict, but the many pirates and aliens of the Imperium’s borders are not.  The preferred weapon for vehicle crewer Marines is the Ultima V bolter, while human crewers prefer the Ocelot PDW and Bluebird sealed revolver.  Both the Ocelot and the Bluebird have their chambers and ammunition wells sealed as fully as possible, so that both can be suppressed with muzzle-screw sound suppressors, which are rare on weapons of their size.

Combat dogma for the Daggers emphasizes mass suppression only when they have assembled the numbers for it.  Lacking the scale of force of the Legions of old, the Daggers use groups of camouflaged Scouts and Devastators to provide cover fire and recon, push their armor and infantry through the targets they need to engage, and then leave as quickly as they came.  Since the Glasians have little discernable hierarchy and are both mobile and individually fragile, the precision insertion and assassination tactics of the Raptors or the Raven Guard are simply not as useful against them as they would be against Orks or Eldar.  Instead, the Daggers frequently make use of a mixture of old Legion-style tactics and more modern Speartip tactics.  They may employ a light artillery barrage to slow or scatter an enemy formation, lay down fire from Devastators and Scouts, then drive armored transports into fresh gaps in enemy lines to deliver Tactical Marines straight into the fight.  Alternately, the Chapter’s abundant Scouts and Devastators may shoot their way into the deepest, most solid cover available; then, when the enemy has encircled them, call in teleporting Terminators or a wave of Assault Marines.

In normal engagements against Glasians – inasmuch as anything about them is normal – the Daggers prefer anti-wave tactics.  They will equip their squads with as many anti-tank weapons as they can, then split up into individual squads and move to solid cover.  When the Glasians arrive, the Daggers begin picking off vehicles as quickly as possible, while those equipped with Flamers and grenade launchers will keep any disembarked infantry at bay.  Mobility is therefore often sacrificed for cover, though the large number of Rhinos and Land Raiders in the motor pool ensure that it is never sacrificed entirely.  Additionally, the Daggers employ their respectable aerospace forces to provide saturation cover for their forces on the ground.  They focus on breaking up formations on the ground and shooting down transports with long-range weapons, as well as providing cover for disembarking Marines.  The Daggers also practice boarding tactics, since that is an integral part of their anti-Glasian operational methodology.
The expansion goal of the Chapter remains one of the near-mythically potent Achilles-Alpha Land Raiders, but that prize remains beyond their reach, for now.

When performing boarding actions against ships or stations that are worth keeping, in contrast to the Glasian hardware that is useful only as target practice, the Daggers prefer rapid-advance and shock tactics rather than a slowly-advancing wall of armor and guns.  The techniques they employ were originally developed by the Terran Federation’s Armada during the Golden Age, and have barely updated since.  The Daggers make use of what they call a Prize Team, consisting of a few Techmarines and an Apothecary, to take control of the target once a beachhead has been seized.  These Prize Teams, being as much Space Marines as their less specialized brothers, are perfectly capable of fighting, and do not generally require an escort.  The local Navy began the practice of referring to similar formations of boarders as prize teams, but the Daggers formalized it.

A Prize Team may make use of small, magnetic cargo containers that affix to the exterior attachment points of a Space Marine’s Power Armor backpack generator, filled with whatever devices are needed by the Prize Team during a capture mission.  Common items include data-spikes, uplink cables, self-deploying vox transmitters and range boosters, extra Melta Bombs, bulkhead cutters, and capsules of poison to be used on ship life support systems.  These containers are available to any other Chapter, of course, but the Blue Daggers only use them commonly in Prize Teams and on missions where supply in the field will be impossible.