Editing Setting:Cloudburst/Blue Daggers (section)

===Origins===

Historically, the Blue Daggers are the byproduct of a unique Founding circumstance, one over which they had precious little control.  In M41.400, a force of technologically-powerful aliens attacked the Cloudburst Sector, known only by the common phrase found in their cogitators: Glasians.  The aliens savaged three systems in the Sector without mercy, hesitation, or clear objectives.  Although a combined force of Novamarines, Red Templars, Angels of Fury, Carcharadons, Celestial Knights, and Imperial Navy forces successfully drove off the monsters and blew up their massive flagships, they left Cloudburst reeling.  The presence of this race of dangerous aliens had no precedent, and worse yet, Chaos tainted every single alien somehow, without exception, plus most of their technology.

The Inquisition held an emergency conclave of the Ordos Malleus and Xenos on the mighty Watch Fortress Pykman.  After much deliberation, multiple consultations of the Tarot, and extensive testimony from the Adeptus Mechanicus, an agreement coalesced.  A force of one hundred twenty Novamarines and Angels of Fury from nearby Sectors would remain in the Cloudburst Sector to defend it from further incursion.  Led by brilliant Novamarine tactician Brother-Lieutenant Augustus Alderoster, this force of Primogenitors would withdraw in one hundred years if no sign of more Glasians emerged.  The detachment was officially dubbed Exigent Task Unit Cloudburst, and settled into the Septiim system under strict Inquisitorial observation.  The Task Unit formally began their mission in M41.425.

The force of Space Marines worked tirelessly to fortify a base on an abandoned Mechanicus asteroid mine, and dug in.  Periodically, members of the detachment joined the Deathwatch to hone their skills, and the Brothers harvested their own gene-seed as all Marines do.

After seventy-five years of total inaction by either the Glasians or their dark patron in the Sector, the Inquisition was growing impatient.  Though the Task Unit had stayed flawlessly loyal and vigilant, and had collected their own gene-seeds with commendable punctuality (actually sending some back to Honorium when the Chapter needed it to replace the missing company), the Task Unit had effectively nothing to do.

The Inquisition’s Ordo Xenos was debating with the Ordo Malleus in the Conclave Cloudburst about shortening their mission when the panicked Astropathic signals arrived.  Four systems were under siege this time, by more Glasians than before.  The Inquisition scrambled its assets, aided by the Basilikon Astra and Navy.  During this invasion, to their horror, they faced three huge colony ships, and one even larger one that seemed to command the others.  The larger colony ship attacked the Daggers’ asteroid base directly, destroying it and killing ten Marines.  The aliens besieged Septiim for almost a year, while the Agri-world of Chlorit was destroyed by the activation of a Glasian FTL drive.

When the aliens finally lost at a staggering cost to the Cloudburst Sector, the stark truth came clear: the invasion had occurred precisely one hundred years after the first, and had been ten percent larger than the previous.  Their forces had been more widely spread, but the sequential increase was impossible to miss.  Consultations of the Tarot and careful psy-autopsies of Glasian leaders pointed to the same result: Tzeentch was using the sector as a test bed for something.

The Ordo Malleus and Ordo Xenos debated for years.  Barely-civil arguments over jurisdiction, policy, and Imperial survival raged for months in the subterranean audience halls of the Cloudburst Palace at Maskos.  Finally, in M41.429, they reached a tentative decision.  The Lord Inquisitor Cloudburst at the time, a nearly five-hundred-year-old psychic of the Ordo Hereticus, signed and manhandled the other Ordos into signing a binding Conclave Assent to treat the alien incursions as the jurisdiction of the Ordo Xenos.  He added a caveat that jurisdiction over repelling the beasts would default to the Ordo Malleus if anything changed in the circumstances of the invasions, formally titled the Glasian Migrations.

Meanwhile, a new problem confronted the Novamarines and Angels of Fury.  While a great, bloody victory over millions of evil aliens was, obviously, a triumph for the ancient Chapters, the Marines could hardly be expected to hold an indefinite depletion of one tenth of their ranks.  Furthermore, Cloudburst was not secure by any means, they pointed out to their Inquisitorial allies.  Honorium was not in Cloudburst; the Novamarines Chapter had no formal ties there.  Moreover, Rogue Traders and Explorators were constantly finding new threats, treasures, and colony opportunities in the Cloudburst Circuit – who was to say that only the Glasians and Orks would threaten Cloudburst in the future?

When the Lord Inquisitor Cloudburst heard these arguments, inspiration struck.  After some more consultation with the Novamarines and Angels of Fury, he declared that the detachment of Successors in Cloudburst would establish themselves as the core of a completely new Chapter.  This Special Circumstances Founding, one with no number, would formally establish the Exigent Task Unit Cloudburst as a true, equal Chapter of Space Marines.  Officially, they would be counted as formal Successors to no other Chapter.  They would build their headquarters in the only system the Glasians had hit twice: Septiim.

Surprised by the generosity and prestige of this pronouncement, but delighted at the chance, the Novamarines and Angels of Fury accepted at once, and began the logistical processes of giving a tenth of their fleet and equipment to their kin.  The newly minted Blue Daggers settled in another, far larger asteroid base, one with room for thousands of Marines and thousands more support personnel and serfs.  Declaring the pre-Apostasy Battle Barge ''Sharp Edge'' their new command ship, and formally elevating Alderoster to Chapter Master, the Blue Daggers took back the hundreds of gene-seeds they had sent the Novamarines and Angels of Fury and began rapidly expanding their ranks.  Due to this circumstance, the Novamarines can honestly continue to claim they have never had the chance to create a Successor Chapter, since the Angels of Fury donated the majority of the geneseed.

Since then, there have been new invasions of Glasians in M41.600, 700, 800, and 900.  Each is a cumulative 10% larger than the previous, and each time, the Daggers have smote them into the ground, alongside their allies in other branches of the Imperium.  Had things continued to improve for the rest of the galaxy, the Daggers may well have outlasted the Glasians.

Things have not improved for the rest of the galaxy.

Between the arrival of the Tyranids, the Necron Reawakening, the start of hundreds of catastrophic Waaagh!, heresies and rebellions unnumbered, Hrud migrations, and the explosive expansion of the Dark Eldar, the Imperium strains so much that barely any help can be spared for Cloudburst.  Thousands of other Crusades and Wars of Faith or Reclamation drain the Imperium’s coffers and garrisons.  The stirrings of Abaddon the Despoiler in the depths of the Eye are not helping, nor is the shrinking area of the Astronomican.
The Daggers do not yet stand alone, but that may change.  The Age of Ending is upon mankind.