Setting:Cloudburst/Blue Daggers

Blue Daggers
Battle Cry	"For Septiim and Terra!"
Number	0983
Founding	Special Circumstances Unnumbered Founding
Successors of	Ultramarines
Successor Chapters	None
Chapter Master	Ranult Arden
Primarch	Roboute Guilliman
Homeworld	Deep Void platform Gargantuan (Septiim system)
Strength	Thirteen Companies
Specialty	Mass infantry repulsion, urban defense, absurd Honour Guard
Allegiance	Imperium of Man
Colours	Dark blue and pale blue

History and Composition

The Cloudburst Sector has stood resolute against the Glasian menace thanks largely to the presence of its own Space Marine Chapter: the Blue Daggers. They are a Loyalist Chapter, founded in an unnamed Special Circumstances Founding in M41.525 from Novamarine and Angels of Fury mixed stock. Their Chapter Number is 0983. The Chapter is largely Codex-compliant in general modus operandi and formation, save for their anomalous 9th and 10th companies. The Daggers own 63 Terminator suits, divided between Apothecaries, Chaplains, First Company Veterans, Techmarines, and Librarians. Their advanced equipment supplier is the Castle of the Forges on Cognomen, and they have only three non-Indomitus Tactical Dreadnought suits. Building more is presently beyond the capability of Cognomen and Solstice. Their Honor Guards are, per unit, of average size and gear, though they have neither psykers nor Terminators. The nineteen Dreadnoughts housedhad five occupants, two of them Angels of Fury, prior to the Seventh Glasian Migration.

Company Captains never have an Honor Guard, and instead integrate their command teams directly into their Squads. For the 2nd through 8th companies, this consists of the Company Captain, the Venerated Senior Sergeant who seconds him in turn and distributes orders to each Sergeant, the Company Champion, the Company Standard Bearer, and six troops equipped with whatever combination of combi-weapons and blades they desire. Each of these could easily have been a Sergeant in their own right in another squad. Members of the Council of Masters do have Honor Guards. No Master’s Honor Guard, however, is larger than six Brothers plus the man they protect, to ensure that the Chapter is not too large to maintain Codex compliance. In practice, this is meaningless, since the Chapter is already far larger than the Codex dictates. Furthermore, the Chapter actually had the rank of Brother-Lieutenant prior to the post-13th Black Crusade reforms. Captains and Lieutenants serve as members of normally-sized squads instead of serving as single officers to attach to squads as needed, except for the Captain and one Lieutenant of the Veteran Company, who serve alone since it can be fairly assumed that their squads can look after themselves. The Scout Company Captain serves as part of the five-marine Command Scout squad that directs the entire oversized Company. The Devastator Captain serves in the same way, since he has so many more troops to direct than most. Each pair of Lieutenants outside the First Veteran Company is simply an elevated Squad Sergeant who is in the running to be the next Company Captain, and has extra leadership responsibilities. The First Lieutenant position is the most prestigious, since their command is larger. The Second Lieutenant commands the four squads left in the upper half of the Company after the Captain’s squad is discounted, while the First Lieutenant commands the other Demi-company. When a Captain dies, the First Lieutenant succeeds them.

When the call comes from the greater Imperium to aid them in battle, the decision about which force to send, how many Marines should accompany it, and how many ships should ferry them is made by the relevant members of the Council of Masters. As a call becomes broader in scope, the forces that respond become more complex, and so a wider variety of Masters are required to weigh in. A simple request for aid to defend a planet from raiders or common rebels might merit a single squad and an Escort, while the Glasian Migrations require the mobilization of the entire Chapter. For missions in-between, any dispatch of forces is traditionally led by the Lord Gwinnet Eiger, Master of the Ships, whose task is to command the space fleet while the Marines are led by one or another of lesser Masters or a Company Captain.

Among the Daggers, there are protocols that are universal, and some that are constrained to the practice of a single Company or even Squad. The Daggers, for instance, may not, collect trophy weapons from fallen foes for their use. The Blue Daggers practice a strict and unyielding habit of never collecting trophies in battle, under any circumstances. Partially installed to prevent competitions between brothers, this also cuts down on the risk of a brother being tainted by Chaos. This is also for the mollification of the Adeptus Mechanicus, without whom the Daggers would be all but helpless after a costly battle.

The Daggers lack several of the traditional Master roles of the more Codex-dependent Chapters, such as a Master of Signal, Lord Victualer, and Master of the Watch. They delegate these tasks instead to Company Captains or to their unique Masters. The Chapter also selectively ignores the prohibitions against use of Land Raiders by non-Veteran Marines, as the Blood Angels do.

The most obvious unusual interaction between the Chapter and their home system is the tithe. Despite being theoretically exempt from the Imperial Tithe as a Space Marine Chapter Home, the Zone still pays it. This was resolved by a tense but decisive vote by the Planetary and System Governors and Overlords after the Chapter’s foundation. The region is in chaos and its defenses are straining, and the Septiim system did not want to accidentally contribute to that downslide of standards by withholding resources from the rest of the Sector. More practically, the Chapter can also glean some benefits from the fact that they pay the tithe when they don’t need to, like some preferential treatment from the Adepta Mechanicus and Administratum. There are also some precedents for the tithe being paid despite exemption, such as the homeworld of the Salamanders, Nocturne. They pay so that the Mechanicus will continue to maintain the massive Void Shields that protect each Sanctuary City, even though they are exempt. Septiim has a similar arrangement. They pay the Imperial Tithe, and the Mechanicus built Solstice. This mutually beneficial arrangement also aids the Mechanicus, who got a Forge Moon out of the deal, and allows them to more easily dispose of Glasian wreckage after Migrations. For the Daggers’ part, they don’t especially care either way, since so little of their actual equipment comes from the human population of the system, but they see the arrangement as useful and outside their ultimate concern, so they have registered no comment upon it.

The Angels of Fury and the Novamarines both hold the Codex Astartes as nigh-religious dogma. The Blue Daggers do not, although this is a byproduct of later circumstance. Neither of their predecessor Chapters could have handled the responsibility that now faces the Chapter with their limited numbers.

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.

Recruitment

The Blue Dagger recruitment protocols are tightly kept secrets within the Chapter. Because of the multi-Chapter nature of their original Founding, the Dagger leaders chose to create an entirely new recruiting protocol instead of copying the Angel of Fury or Novamarine ones.

Those who aspire to become Blue Daggers must be no older than twelve years old, and are thus usually nominated by their parents or their educators. Aspirants are taken in at the three massive spaceports that connect the Septiim garden worlds: Stellar Gateway Spaceport on Primus, Astia Grand Ports on Secundus, and Monarch Processional on Tertius. Those who dwell in the outer platforms or moonbases must fly to one of those first, as do those from the rest of the Zone’s sparse colonies.

Aspirants are taken by their instructors in shuttles to the Gargantuan. Because of its enormous size, the Gargantuan has much internal space it does not need for combat or life support. The Daggers use these chambers as training grounds. The individual chambers have a variety of air pressures, gravities, internal atmospheric compositions, and light levels, to simulate the worlds of the Cloudburst Sector.

The Aspirants are forced to live in these and similar chambers for several years, and undergo a barrage of complex tests. These include psychological and psychic screenings, memory recall tests, athletic and academic exams, and various combat drills. However, the Blue Daggers also insist that Aspirants undergo extensive instruction in the history and complexity of the Imperium, both to instill a sense of respect for how things work and to ensure the Daggers are able to perform their role of liaising with the rest of the Sector’s institutions.

After these several years go by, the Tenth Company Captain and the Master of Recruiters then separate those boys who have failed in their testing in some way. Those with a certain tendency towards heresy or severe genetic defect are quietly executed, while all others are given a choice. Those who wish to press on and become Blue Daggers are given the chance to try, while those who are functional but genetically unable to progress, or have chosen another path, are shunted sideways into the Serf training programs to learn a trade. There is no stigma attached to this, at least not among the actual Marines. The size of the Gargantuan, the many bases the Daggers have throughout the system, and the fleet the Chapter fields demand a larger population of serfs than most non-First Founding Chapters require. Furthermore, those serfs stationed off the Gargantuan proper are encouraged to start families and have children, providing the Dagger with a pool of pre-indoctrinated boys to recruit.

Other serfs train in combat and become the human component of the Blue Daggers’ forces, crewing the vehicles and vessels that the Daggers don’t do themselves. The Daggers may have more Marines than most Chapters outside the Black Templars, but they are not so flush with troops that they can spare them to crew every one of the hundred-plus gunships of the fleet, for instance.

Serfs are expected to wear uniforms on duty, and robes that cover all but the face and hands when off duty. On-duty serfs may wear their robes over their uniforms on-duty, but few do.

Those Aspirants who do press on to become true Marines are taken away to a separate series of chambers in the Gargantuan and subjected to further testing. The Tenth Company officers subject the young men to teamwork and leadership tests, as well as a final screening for psychic awakening. Finally, as the boys near seventeen years of age, the first stage of organ implantation begins, overseen by the Apothecarion and the Librarius.

Those who survive are given the Black Carapace and entry into the Scouts. Those who fail usually die, but some simply reject the organs and are sent off to the Fourth Company to serve in the Fleet as crew for the Sharp Edge.

Survivors who accept all of the organs (the Dagger gene regimen has no missing organs) enter the final stage of their training, to compete for the position of Fireteam Scout Leader and gain command of the five-person Fireteams that make up the Scouts. In addition, each Squad of two Fireteams may have a Scout Sergeant who is among the most experienced Marines in the Chapter, to lead the Scouts through the battles that forge them into true Battle Brothers. Because there are thirty-three of these Fireteam Scout Leaders and only three commissioned officer positions among them, the competition is not fierce, and there is no penalty for simply choosing not to try to become the leader of each Fireteam. The Company Command Squad of the Tenth is a five-Marine squad and consists of those Scouts who have completed all training, physical metamorphoses, and spiritual developments expected to become Devastators, but have not yet had the chance to do so. The squad of the Brother Lieutenant who commands the second half of the Company is a standard five-Scout Fireteam, and the Lieutenant himself is the most experienced person in the Company after the Captain. They are usually drawn from the Command Squad.

Scouts rise to the Devastators after they have either served a length of time defined by the circumstances of their service, or after meritorious service under the discretion of their Captain. Once in the Devastators, the progress of the Marines is defined by the same methods as other Codex Astartes Chapters. The only notable exception is that Blue Daggers can abandon their Company to enter the Chaplaincy, Techmarine Brotherhood, Apothecarion, or vehicle crewers at any time they wish.

The Chapter’s battlecry of “For Septiim and Terra!” has rung from the walls of Subsector Capitals, from the steel and glass façades of office towers in the port hubs of Septiim Secundus, and from the very heart of dying Glasian Cylinders for hundreds of years.