Conservators

Conservators
Needed
Battle Cry	"Stand Fast!"
Founding	20th
Successors of	A less famous chapter
Successor Chapters	None
Chapter Master	A guy
Primarch	Lost Primarch
Homeworld	Dekara
Strength	~800
Allegiance	Imperium
Colours	Brown and Tan

The Conservators are a /tg/ custom chapter, based around the concept of a chapter of Astartes who must make do with the bare minimum of supplies, in a technologically primitive area of space. Humble and proud at the same time, the Conservators are the badly equipped defenders of a series of Agriworlds on the edge of Imperial space, making up for their cobbled together arsenal with a peerless dedication to the well being of the common man, willing to do anything to protect the average people of the Imperium, even if they must engage in practices other chapters would deem disgraceful.

Origins, and fall from grace

The Conservators began as part of a wide ranging plan to bring a number of worlds, known as the Asharn March, into the wider Imperium. The worlds of the March were loyal and obedient agriworlds with a roughly medieval technology level. While they understood a little about the Imperium as a whole, they just knew that they were the subjects of a greater kingdom. This kingdom taxed a portion of their crops, and nothing more. An ambitious plan was underway, however, to bring the worlds of the Asharn March into the Imperium proper, uplifting the tech levels of the worlds in question to produce more helpful tithes of men and material than corn and grain. This plan included the upgrading of a Mechanicum held world called Chiron IV to a true forge world, the establishment of trained PDF forces, and lastly the founding of a new Astartes chapter to act as the cornerstone of the March's defenses.

Created in the 20th founding, the Conservators' birth was a little rocky from the beginning. Created hastily, the force was initially equipped with arms and armor cast off from other chapters. The primary armor worn was the Mk VI Corvus pattern armor. These suits were mostly donated by various other chapters who had since replaced the suits with newer Aquila pattern armors. From the beginning the Conservators were built from the cast offs of a dozen other chapters. However they were Space Marines, and their armor was fine and sturdy, and nothing else mattered. The chapter was formed, and mobilized to the Asharn March to begin overseeing the construction of their fortress monastery. But the foundation had barely been laid when the first signs of disaster were seen.

The Asharn March, normally one of the more peaceful areas of the nearby Imperium, was torn asunder by the terrible fury of an Ork Waaagh!! Unprepared for such an attack so early into their deployment, the Conservators nonetheless rushed to defend the people of the Asharn March from the fury of the greenskin horde. Fighting valiantly, even when lacking in armored support, the Marines were able to hold the enemy at bay while a full task force of Imperial Guard were deployed to aid them. However, before the needed reinforcements came, the Conservators were faced with a terrible choice. They could defend the helpless agriworlds of the March, who's weapons were restricted to swords and bows, or they could divert forces to defend the forge world Chiron IV, securing their source of supplies but sacrificing several planets to the greenskins. The first Chapter Master of the Conservators then made a choice that would forever shape the future of his chapter.

Chiron IV was left to fight on its own while the Astartes defended the helpless farmers, saving as many lives as they could. While the Skitarii fought with bravery and skill, the full might of the Ork host was focused upon their one world. By the time the Conservators had cleared the agriworlds of greenskins and dispatched a force to aid the Mechanicus, the damage had been done. The forge world was a wasted wreck with most of its population slaughtered. However the Skitarii had dealt terrible damage to the xenos horde, and the vengeful marines slaughtered the weakened Orks in vast numbers, ending their threat to the March for the foreseeable future.

In the aftermath of the Waaagh, the plan to recolonize the March was abandoned, all support pulled out. While it would have been comparatively easy to uplift a number of thriving low tech worlds, those planets had now been burned by the Orks, and the forge world meant to supply them with advanced machinery lay in ruins. The Mechanicum in particular was irate over the loss of Chiron IV, losing such a facility after having just poured so much manpower and resources into upgrading it. All support from the Imperium proper was pulled out, leaving the medieval farmers to lick their wounds and regrow their crops on their own. At least, that was the plan.

The Conservators refused to abandon their mission of improving the worlds of the Asharn March, and chose instead to stay and continue to defend the otherwise helpless farmers who called the March home. They did this fully knowing the consequences of their actions, to be cut off and isolated from any proper support for the foreseeable future. The Mechanicum, seeing them as incompetent rookies directly responsible for the loss of a forge world, refused any form of aid towards the newborn chapter. The Conservators would receive no power armor, no weapons, no vehicles, no supplies. The Magos responsible for the embargo was explicitly clear, not so much as a single bolter round was to be delivered to the Conservators. If the marines had judged the lives of their fellow techpriests unimportant, then they would be treated in kind.

The hard times

Never fully equipped in the first place, the Conservators were now faced with a grim prospect, defending the worlds of the Asharn March with no supplies, no reinforcements, and only a fraction of the fighting force they had started with. Fighting for an extended period of time with little more than battle brothers and the weapons they carried had taken a terrible toll on the young chapter, leaving only about 200 of the roughly 700 founding members still alive. These few surviving marines quickly set about rebuilding their chapter as quickly as they could. While many suits of Corvus pattern armor had been lost, too badly damaged to be salvaged, or having to be left behind in Ork territory, the chapter apothecaries were able to save the vast majority of gene seeds from the fallen brothers to preserve for the next generation.

As such, the Conservators undertook an aggressive recruitment campaign, using what few ships they had to deposit small units on all March planets to test for gene seed compatibility. The ranks slowly began to swell again over the next several years as comparatively large numbers of recruits were inducted, the Conservators having somewhat loosened their entrance criteria in order to refill their lost numbers. However this presented a major problem, they were faced with having more marines than could be supplied with what they had left. The few spare suits of Mk VI armor they had quickly ran out and soon there simply was no more armor to go to the new recruits.

Lacking a vast fleet, these new marines often were stationed on the same planets they had been recruited from, their organ implants being carried out onboard chapter ships which carried the needed medical facilities, which made constant tours across the March to graduate the new marines as they completed their training. These marines were clad in simple plate armor forged by the most skilled of human blacksmiths, wielding blades the finest their planet had ever produced, and often carrying a bolt pistol, or a bolter if they were lucky. However despite their lack of Astartes gear, they were true marines at heart, and took the defense of their small territory with the utmost seriousness, battling against what Orks showed their faces. Thankfully though these were just the remnants or new births from the old Waaagh, and were few in number and armed with little more than stone axes and animal skins, and even with their primitive gear were little match for the Astartes.

The time of rebuilding

Many of the later traditions of the Conservators can be traced back to this time, when the chapter was forced to adopt radically unorthodox practices to survive. The new marines usually all stayed on the planets they had been recruited on, and lacking any specialized facilities continued to live with their families, or in their own homes and villages after their transformation into Astartes. This had an interesting affect on the planets of the March. When the wars began, they saw the Astartes as angels of fury descending from the heavens to battle terrible beasts from beyond the stars. As the Conservators settled into their new home however, this awe slowly faded away. The marines became another part of daily life, certainly to be respected, but they were not the distant figures they had once been. They lived in the same towns, ate the same food, dank at the same taverns as everyone else. The people saw the Conservators as part of their society, and the Conservators came to see themselves as simply physically enhanced humans, no more or less important or special than anyone else, at the end of the day they were all just people who lived together and did their jobs.

Over the century the quality of life for the average citizen of the Asharn March improved markedly. The Conservators brought with them their techmarines, and some techpriests who chose to stay on with the chapter even after the Mechanicum cut all ties. While they did not have the infrastructure to replicate their advanced technology, their knowledge of chemistry, agriculture, architecture, medicine, and a number of other topics advanced technology in the March considerably. Windmills, fertilizer and basic mechanization greatly improved crop yields and extended the average lifespan. A sense of their importance and duty to the Imperium, and the presence of the Conservators on all the varying planets, bound the Asharn March together as it had never been before. Where once had been a scattered group of disparate planets was slowly emerging a cohesive civilization.

Technology advanced in general during this time, metallurgy in particular as better furnaces and forges were created to create stronger steel to armor and equip the marines with better armor and blades. What few marines remained on the most populous world, known to its people as Dekara, set about creating as much of a industrial base as they could. The techmarines and techpriests were hard at work building workshops with what supplies they had managed to recover from Chiron IV to attempt to supply the chapter with even the most basic of gear. Bolters could be recreated, though with painstaking care as they were slowly built, each one by hand by a techpriest and the most skilled blacksmiths on the planet working as his aides. Alchemists were gathered and trained to mix chemical propellants for bolter shells, distilleries to produce alcohol based fuel to feed what few vehicles the chapter had available. Thankfully beyond the occasional Ork resurgence which could be dealt with locally, no further threats plagued the March during this period of slow rebirth, the chapter and people they protected maintaining tenuous optimism as the situation developed.

Relations with the wider Imperium

The situation of the Asharn March had many members in the nearby Imperium a tad upset. Many planets there had intended to supply colonists to the region, the planetary governors seeing it in most cases as a way to extend their influence to other worlds by populating them with people loyal to themselves. As they were providing trade and technology to the primitive locals, it would be only natural that they would be looked to with adoration and obedience. So it was much to their consternation that they discovered the people of the March had been infused with a sudden new sens of nationalism for their little interplanetary kingdom. The presence of the Conservators on every world in the March had naturally brought with it interplanetary governance, with the people coming to understand that they were part of a multi-planet kingdom, a concept they embraced enthusiastically.

Causing some further annoyance was the fact that the Conservators had claimed the dozen plus planets as their own chapter territory, something that was well within their right to do, though it was somewhat audacious for a chapter to claim such a fiefdom when they had barely a dozen marines per planet. However the declaration was honored, mostly because the administratum couldn't be bothered much about such a backwater, and the territory of the March was exempted from the Imperial tithe and placed under Astartes dominion. The Conservators created a stewardship government style, with high ranking marines serving alongside normal humans on ruling councils, with the primary governing body located on Dekara to decide matters which affected the entire March.

Free from having to pay the tithe for no recompense, the people of the March began putting their crop output to more locally productive use, namely selling it off to the people who had once taken it for free. While the prices were low, anything was better than nothing, and some advanced services were bought, namely astropaths for each star system, binding them even closer to each other as the governments were able to communicate with each other much faster than before. The administratum in the end saw this as a fair trade. While they did lose the tithe from a few worlds, a few shipments of grain and corn was hardly going to unbalance the sector, and they avoided paying anything to repair the damage caused by the Waaagh, and the Conservators would at the very least serve as a speed bump for anyone trying to invade the sector. In the end, the quill pushers patted each other on the back and decided they'd gotten the better deal.