Void Angels

"And the guardians, who guards them?"

Void Angels
Battle Cry	"For the Imperium!"
Number	V
Founding	First Founding
Successors of	N/A
Successor Chapters	Angels Imperious, Angels Vigilant, Chastisers, Covenanters, Eyes of the Void
Chapter Master	Phan Van Ty
Primarch	Gaspard Lumey
Homeworld	Ciban IV
Strength	140,000 at the beginning of the Heresy, growing to over 200,000 before the Scourging.
Specialty	Terror tactics
Allegiance	Imperium of Man
Colours	Pale blue and dark blue

This page details people, events, and organisations from The /tg/ Heresy, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe.

The Void Angels are a Loyalist Space Marine Chapter, once led by the Primarch Gaspard Lumey. Their history is clouded with controversy. Almost from their founding they have been regularly accused of cowardice, rebellion, and especially cruelty. Yet the Void Angels are also among the foremost defenders of the Imperium, credited with re-establishing its borders at the end of the Hektor Heresy and countless other military victories.

During the Second Founding, the Void Angels were divided into two Chapters. The first and by far the largest retained their original name, colours, and organisation, while a second Chapter, the Angels Imperious was founded in accordance with the Codex Astartes.

History of the Void Angels

The Void Angels are one of the greatest of the Space Marine Chapters. Like all of the original Legions, they were founded by the Emperor himself to serve in the Great Crusade. Separated from their Primarch by the meddling of the Chaos Gods, the Fifth Legion - nicknamed "Winged Victory" - still bore his gene-seed. This, perhaps, explains the Fifth's reputation for caustic replies and difficult questions.

Primarch Gaspard Lumey

While the lives of the Emperor's warlike sons are mostly lost in myth and legend, Lumey's lifelong habit of writing has preserved his thoughts for posterity. The great corpus of his works prohibits its mastery in a normal human lifespan, but the Iterators of the Void Angels strive to read every word of their great founder.

Appearance

Like all the Primarchs, Gaspard Lumey has the stature of a giant. Spending much of his life outdoors and physically active gave him broad shoulders and olive skin. He has a high forehead, prominent nose, and expressive, thoughtful eyes. Lumey usually wears his curly black hair long, loosely tied back from his face.

He is a difficult man, but one with a great presence. While other Primarchs far exceed Lumey's ability to inspire trust, loyalty and respect, he is the master of sowing suspicion and discontent. When speaking he often emphasises his points by gesture. He rolls his eyes and sneers so often that these expressions are almost habit.

Youth

Ciban IV, often known as Ciban Felix or just Ciban, is a Civilised World in the Segmentum Pacificus. At the time that the infant Primarch Gaspard Lumey appeared on its surface, Ciban had attained a level of culture and technology approximating that of Second Millenium Earth. The planet was dominated by large, sophisticated states ruled by hereditary aristocrats.

The Primarch of the Void Angels landed in Fennechia, a colonial region of the petty empire of Gallia. His capsule crash-landed close to a farming community named Nouvelle-Havre and was taken in by the Lumeys, a childless middle-aged couple. It was quickly apparent to the close-knit villagers that the child Gaspard was something more than human, but the elders of Nouvelle-Havre counselled tolerance and encouraged the youth to see his strength as a gift to be shared with all.

As Gaspard Lumey absorbed the morals of his adoptive community, he learned the martial skills of a frontiersman. Hunting trips honed his natural talent for the stealth, outdoor survival, and marksmanship. Lumey also became deadly with an axe, whether thrown or in close quarters. Contented with this simple life in Nouvelle-Havre, the young Primarch was surprised when his foster parents insisted that he take his great talents out into the world to seek equally great challenges.

Plain Truth

Dutiful to parental advice, Gaspard Lumey travelled to the townships and cities of the colonies. If his first jobs are lost to history, his first and defining career was as a journalist in the dissenting press of the day. He issued a steady stream of broadsides and pamphlets condemning first the excesses of the colonial government, then the degeneracy of the aristocracy. The effectiveness of Lumey's works is still evident in the full title of his most popular pamphlet, Plain Truth: An Honest and therefore Illegal account of Fennechia's Misgovernance.

Growing unrest resulted in the formation of quasi-legal Committees of the Common Good, a kind of shadow government that gained the trust of the public as colonial governors became increasingly unpopular. Lumey, as a wanted man, did not participate in the Committees at first, but when open war broke out with the motherland he quickly volunteered his services to the rebel army.

Fennechian patriots initially suffered severe defeats at the hands of their oppressors. Gaspard Lumey achieved some renown as a guerilla leader, but he quickly realised that the colonists lacked the strength to triumph in a purely national struggle. Undeterred, Lumey smuggled himself into Gallia and circulated pamphlets denouncing not just the oppression of Fennechia but the whole regime of privilege. His message struck a chord. Even before Lumey arrived, Gallians were reading copies of Plain Truth and similar pamphlets written by figures such as Margarette Poisarden and Didier Bonchance. Political criminals, including Bonchance, flooded the Donjon, the great prison at Gallia's capital of Saint Vercy, but a jail cannot hold a whole people. When the imperial government attempted to raise a new tax for the war effort, ordinary Gallians began to revolt in their homeland, declaring that they were just as oppressed as the Fennechians.

(still need to write a Not!Bastille)

On Virtue

As Speaker of Ciban's Senate, Lumey was one of the first citizens to learn of an approaching vessel. He insisted that the public had to be informed immediately and gave a great speech to the Senate in which he announced the coming of spacefarers.

The Emperor approached Lumey openly, explaining their relationship by way of introduction. This did not convince the Primarch, who began to question his father on his views of morality, testing the answers against what he had come to believe on Ciban. Their debate, which lasted three days, was collected in a series of texts entitled On Virtue.

During the debate, Lumey initially took the role of protagonist, outlining the moral sensibilities that he developed on Ciban. The Primarch particularly stressed the rule of law and the importance of government serving the needs of the people, and explained himself by examples from his homeworld's history. In reply, the Emperor began with an assertion of the destiny of mankind to rule the galaxy, then sought to prove how the Imperial Truth and its doctrines of atheism, reason, and science would serve that end. While One Virtue is a particularly fine explanation of these points, its centre is Lumey's attack on the Emperor's position. The Primarch particularly questioned how an autocracy forged through conquest could be the embodiment of a rational culture. In answer, the Emperor artfully drew from Ciban's recent history, noting that the means used by the rebellion and those used by the old order had differed but little. What set the two apart was that one pointed towards the future, the other to the past. Past this pivot in the argument, Lumey and the Emperor spend a great deal of time further clarifying points of ethics and civics, but the Primarch's questions are clearly those of a student, not a rival.

The Great Crusade

Unlike many of his brothers, Lumey did not rename his new Legion when he took command. Although they were not the largest or fiercest Legion, Winged Victory racked up a fearsome reputation for ruthlessness during the Great Crusade. They consistently met resistance with brutality, punishing those who dared to defy the Emperor as an object lesson for other peoples.

998.M30: Core Worlds Campaign

The Core Worlds confederation was one of the most developed human space realms encountered by the expanding Imperium. Conscious of their strength, the Core Lords expected the Imperium to make an accommodation. The Emperor's policy towards the Core Worlds confederation can be best understood by the two Primarchs dispatched to resolve the matter. Uriel Starikov, affable and charming, opened the negotiations. Gaspard Lumey stood back until the Core Lords' arrogance and greed ruined any hope of peace, then called an end to the talks with a sharp, bitter denunciation. "You have answered every concession with another demand. Your greed will be your end." Even as Starikov concluded the formalities, Winged Victory moved to attack.

Until the coming of the Imperial Legions, Karaza was said to rival Terra itself in its technology, industry and population. The greatest of the Core Worlds was dominated by immense underground cities and its citizens were confident that they had little to fear from a direct assault. They did not count on Lumey's resolve. The Primarch opened his attack with a horrifying fleet bombardment that fractured the crust of the planet and killed tens of billions. A petition to surrender brought not relief, but the descent of the Fifth Legion, the slaughter of the remaining defenders and the destruction of the planet's installations. Karaza never recovered and neither did the Core Worlds confederation. Collective defence evaporated as every Lord sought to defend their own realm; the meekest threw themselves at Starikov's feet in the hopes that the Children of Armok would show mercy, their proud cousins were slain by the Astartes.

003.M30 to 004.M30: Political conflicts

At the Council of Nikaea, Lumey took the podium to demand strict regulations of psykers. However his bitterness towards The Voidseer drove his case into extremism and a universal condemnation of "any and all traffic with the Irrational." Darius Cyaxares, speaking immediately after Lumey, declared for regulation as a compromise between the bickering Primarchs. If the immediate decision of the Emperor was to his liking, the outcome of the Council was costly for Lumey. His tirade turned many of the other Primarchs against him and the action at Kazara was put under investigation after the ascension of Hektor Cincinnatus to the post of Warmaster. Eventually, the War Council ruled that the Fifth had employed excessive force in subduing the Core Worlds and Winged Victory was dispatched to the Galactic fringe, where worlds were less populous.

On the long voyage out, Lumey circulated an essay among his men explaining his acceptance of Imperial censure. The Primarch's concluding phrase, "If we are to dwell in the Void, then let us be its Angels!" was eagerly taken up by the Fifth Legion: the Void Angels.

004.M31 to 009.M31: The Dispatches

Fifth Legion faced great difficulties in their exile. Operating at such long distances from Ciban, let alone Terra, required careful husbanding of resources.

The best records of the Void Angels' sojourn in the galactic fringe are Gaspard Lumey's correspondence with Uriel Starikov. While Starikov's replies were not preserved, Lumey's letters were published and often republished in a collection known as The Dispatches. Military matters were recorded, but the discussion is far-reaching.

His best-known Dispatch, the so-called "Julius Caesar letter", begins with Lumey expressing his gratitude for a copy of Shakespeare's drama. The Primarch then gave his own thoughts on what constitutes the central part of the work, recounts campaign details including tactical experiments against the Orks and passes on a summary of ethnographical and archaeological findings with particular reference to architecture on newly-conquered Dellator. Lumey passed from his reflections with a self-deprecating joke about a senior officer's newborn child "escaping my name by being born female", then sought to make apology for ending his exile without orders, due to the breakdown in Imperial communication. The letter is dated three years after the infamous Drop Site Massacre.

The Heresy and Scouring

While the Void Angels' exile kept them out of the initial fighting, they still played a significant role in the struggle against the Traitor Legions.

Void Wraiths

During the Fifth's journey back towards Sol they encountered a mysterious group of warriors who came to be known as the Void Wraiths. These soldiers were incorporated into the Void Angels, forming the first Commando Squadrons. They also contributed a full combat Corps, the so-called Wraith Corps, under command of their own leader, "Fallen Angel".

The reinforced Void Angels only arrived at Sol in time for a token clash with the Black Augurs. But doubts remained over the controversial Legion's real loyalty, especially when the Fifth concentrated their full strength of over 200,000 marines together with their supporting army and naval assets in the outer Solar system. A week of terse communiques went by, hampered by Lumey's refusal to attend his brother Primarchs at the Imperial Palace. Humanity held its breath - then the Void Angels departed the Solar system and dispersed their great fleet across the Empire.

The ruthless campaign Lumey led against every trace of Heresy and betrayal became known as the Great Scouring. No account of the casualties of the Void Angels' purge was never made, as the traitors had already made their lives forfeit, but there can be no doubt that hundreds of billions perished. Few protested Lumey's actions. In fact, during the years of the Scourging, the Void Angels and their Primarch became the popular face of the Astartes. Victories, especially the hard-fought battle against the Life Bringers at Rai, were a greater source of hope than the memories of Bohemond and Kleisthenes.

Void Wraiths took on many of the most difficult combat assignments during this period. It is not clear whether they were deliberately used as cannon fodder or volunteered for these duties. Most point to Fallen Angel chasing the Traitors into the Eye of Terror itself as a sign that the Void Wraiths were seeking redemption or vengeance against the forces of Chaos.

Leading the Great Scouring of Traitors and Renegades made the Void Angels seem indispensable to the Imperium. While the Void Angels' defiance of the Codex Astartes caused great friction with the Lords of Terra, the other Loyalist Primarchs slowly grew closer to their difficult brother and came to appreciate the man behind the barbed words.

Lives of the Primarchs

This era of good feelings was buoyed on by Lumey's Lives of the Primarchs, the first volumes of which were surprisingly glowing tributes to the fallen Loyalists. Arelex Orannis, whose Legion Lumey had once dismissed as "the scribes of war" assisted as editor of this series, up until his own untimely death.

The most important of Lumey's friendships was with Brennus, Primarch of the Thunder Kings. The two had fought together in the Saturn campaign and would exchange many letters in the decades after. As their siblings died or vanished, the two Primarchs grew to cherish one another's company. After Brennus disappeared during the First Black Crusade, Lumey laid down command of his Legion.

Culture

Uniquely sheltered from the fighting of the Hektor Heresy, the Void Angels never felt the need to drastically alter the beliefs and methods that they had cherished during the Great Crusade.

Lucky Ciban

Ciban IV
Segmentum	Segmentum Pacificus
System	Ciban System
Population	10,000,000,000
Orbital radius	1.58AU ± 0.12AU
Gravity	.98G
Temperature	Temperate

Ciban IV is one of the few loyal worlds in the Imperium on which the Imperial Cult has little traction. Reason, scepticism, inquiry and atheism are the cherished values of a Ciban native. When the people of this world declare that "The Emperor protects!" they think of the Imperium's mighty armies, not a divine saviour.

This realism comes at a high cost. The people of Ciban believe themselves deeply isolated, even within the Imperium, and their culture has become increasingly paranoid and militarised. Great libraries, filled with priceless cultural treasures such as Plutarch's Lives, the works of Shakespeare, and Pai's Philosophy of the Space Age, are little patronised. Children spend their early years being groomed for military service, indoctrinated into the Imperial Truth but rarely given a broad education in its heritage. Most go on to spend five years or more in the regiments of the Ciban Chasseurs and Ciban Fusiliers. Even after their military service is over, citizens must work to support an immense burden of armaments.

A typical Ciban native is neither pessimistic nor optimistic about their place in the Galaxy. They are proud of their homeworld as a last sanctuary for humanity's authentic culture, but know that ushering in a new Golden Age of mankind is beyond Ciban's power.

Due to the manpower demands of the Void Angels, a majority of Ciban's senior administrators and politicians are women. This has led to a popular portrayal of the Republic as mother and the Legion as father.

The Void Angels and the Republic

In the eyes of the Imperium, Ciban IV is a fief of the Void Angels and the Speaker of the Legion is its absolute ruler. In the eyes of its citizens, the world is a ruled by an elected republic, with the Speaker of the Void Angels serving as a military leader and interlocutor to the Imperium. The truth lies somewhere between. Although some Void Angels are impressive scholars of civics, the Marines have little interest in administering a civilian government. However, debates over the expense of maintaining the Legion are never more than formalities. The Republic always assents to the Void Angels's requests.

Legion Organisation

When Gaspard Lumey relinquished control of his Legion, he sought to check the ambitions of his successors while still allowing the Void Angels to act swiftly and decisively. The Primarch's solution was terrible but effective. He would linger on, spending decades at a time in stasis and emerging periodically to slay the head of the Legion. Lumey believed that this promise of death as a consequence of rulership would allow the highest officer of the Legion to set aside his own future and think only of the needs of the Empire.

The doomed head of the Void Angels carries no grand title, being known simply as the Speaker of the Legion. Beneath the Speaker are fifteen Senators at the head of a Marine Corps and extensive supporting forces. An additional five Senators are given command over the Legion's Armoury, Civilian Relations, Naval Reserve, Recruitment and Training, and Security. In matters of extreme gravity, these twenty officers, together with the Speaker, form the Void Angels' supreme consultative body.

Specialist Ranks

Chirurgeon These specialists perform the same role as Apothecaries do in other Chapters.

Clerks Recruits who wash out of training are not enserfed by the Void Angels. Instead, they are taken into the Chapter's administrative and logistical staff. Clerks are generally well-respected and have a similar rank structure to Marines. The Senators responsible for the Legion's Armoury and Civilian Relations are often Clerks.

Commandos The Fifth modified their tactics during the Heresy period, adopting specialized light infantry units of full Battle Brothers. These sections use similar equipment to Void Angels Scouts, but they are all experienced warriors and excellent marksmen.

Iterators Uninspired by the Imperial Cult, the Void Angels draw their strength from speakers of the Imperial Truth. Iterators are mighty warriors of great strength of will, trained in logic and rhetoric. The presence of such an exceptional individual on the battlefield fills his Battle-Brothers with a sense of their part in Mankind's destiny. Iterators also serve an important role in the life of the Legion, counselling their fellow Marines, acting as judges on matters of internal discipline, and often serving as envoys to other Chapters. The Prime Iterator is the Legion's chief justice and carries out certain ceremonial roles, while his counterpart, the Master of the Collegium is the chief of the Void Angels fortress-barracks on Ciban.

Wraith Corps A clandestine body reporting only to the Prime Iterator, the Wraith Corps is charged with actions against other Imperial forces. They are particularly active against the Children of Armok.

Order of Battle

While the Fifth Legion began its life organised in the same manner as its fellows and never accepted the reforms of the Codex Astartes, Primarch Gaspard Lumey introduced several shifts in its structure following the Core Worlds Campaign.

Operations in the sparsely populated reaches of the Galactic fringe had required delegating far more authority to his subordinates than previous campaigns. Accordingly, Corps Headquarters were invested with new planning responsibilities and further delegated strategic tasks to their subdivisions. By the time of the Scourging, each Corps had three Marine Brigades of three Battalions apiece. The Battalion somewhat resembled a cut-down Codex Astartes Chapter, with a Veteran Squadron, Four Battle Squadrons and Four Reserve Squadrons.

Squadron specialties are similar to those of Codex Companies. Veterans are grouped together in the First Squadron, although the Void Angels rarely deploy their Terminator armour. Commandos form the Second Squadron. Third, Fourth and Fifth are flexible Battle Squadrons, with Sixth and Seventh in Reserve. Eight Squadron specializes in Assault while Ninth carries the Battalion's heavy weapons. Squadrons vary in their strength, each composed of four Sections with five to twenty Battle Brothers and a fifth Section of Scouts. Veteran Squadrons usually lack a Scout Section.

Two Brigades of ordinary soldiers, raised from Ciban and organised along similar lines to Marine Brigades, were attached to each Corps, with other Imperial Army formations distributed ad-hoc. Since the end of the Scourging, deployment of Ciban's ordinary brigades has become far less common, especially to Corps operating in other Sectors. However, the Speaker of the Legion still has the formal right to request that the Republic's regular forces are seconded to his command, and this amounts to full authority over their deployment.

Tactics and Equipment

All of the Astartes are instruments of the Emperor's wrath. The Void Angels go one step further, knowing it is not enough to destroy the enemy. They seek to prove the futility - and terrible cost - of opposing the Empire. The many atrocities carried out by the Void Angels have often attracted censure and complaint, but none can deny their effectiveness.

Rebels and living xenos are the Void Angels' primary targets. Infiltrators precede the main assault, killing targets of opportunity and leaving the bodies in the open so that the enemy may know what awaits them. During the Scourging, the Legion developed particularly fine marksmen and snipers. These specialists are despised and feared for their practice of inflicting mortal but slow-killing wounds. The Void Angels are well aware that a downed comrade screaming in agony is a detriment to morale.

The Void Angels arsenal is as immense as their manpower suggests. Prized equipment such as Terminator armour is generally held in reserve on Ciban and rarely deployed to expeditionary forces. While ancient technology is respected for its efficacy, the Fifth make no fetish of it and attach little significance to the history of their weapons and armour.

Gene-seed and Successors

While Lumey refused to break up his Legion during the Second Founding, he did assent to a tithe of the Void Angels' gene-seed. However, despite the stability of the Void Angels within their own chapter, the gene-seed of their successors is prone to degeneration and defects.

Angels Imperious

Second Founding, led by Lumey's favourite. Angry. Oh, so angry.

Angels Vigilant

Fourteenth Founding, last Chapter to be directly associated with the Fifth Legion

Chastisers

Eighth Founding.

Covenanters

Third Founding.

Eyes of the Void

(placeholder for the re-establishment of the Eyes of the Emperor in the Third Founding)