The Outsiders:I had the idea this week after re-reading one of the Nihil Rifles stories. Null (big, obscene monstrosity of a Major) is described as an aborted attempt at a Space Marine or some sick experiment that was never put down. It got me thinking about what an Anomien-derived chapter would look like. Sure, they're got the martial skill and the psychotic violence, but not the 'soul' of a Loyalist Marine, being blank and uncaring.
Given that their home planet, Anomie, later goes all Chaotic and is purged, the Marines themselves naturally get a bit strange and flee into the Warp. Not Chaotic as such, more like Relictors combined with a faceless grey nanite tide of Marines.
Here's the speil:
An army where every Marine is an echo of another, to the point where it's impossible to tell what is real and what is simply white noise. Very open to suggestions, themes, colours. Can be devastating if they manage to coordinated themselves.
Names like: AjA61**7048#
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Quite possibly, the suit AI has been corrupted by eons old electronic junk, passing from star to star and black hole to black hole, never created or destroyed, just changing form. Some whisper of codes, of mechanical torment, the dying screaming of a million million machine minds, the screaming void noise turning them insane and washing away any personality. The repeated number '6' holds some special significance. Others say it is just that, meaningless junk. Obscure things learned in Warp-speak, some echo of modern-day machine and mainline.
Practice excision, if something become corrupt, you cut it off. Due to psychogenic effects and the Warp, you get a working phantom limb. Their minds are destroyed by this very process.
Some grand figure in charge, the only sane one, 'e'. Speaks in long, baroque sentences, using words beginning with E (Like V). Some sort of anti-Librarian? A Chaos list, using infiltrating Possessed, 1k Sons for the basic troopers (formed around nuclei of ego, the 'Sorcerer' equivalent) and Noise Marines for the sou-shredding heavy music of the insane spheres? Almost all infantry, just this wave of MEQs.
Heavily damaged armour, more often than not the person is dead inside it, animated only by a dead soul and the machinations of hate.
Can't erase the memory of corruption, can't erase a scratch on an overdub, it simply becomes part of the music. Names for the Chapter? Something like 'Outsiders' or 'Outriders'.
'...':The Dreadnought itself is just a soul repository for all those killed, so they can be re-animated in fresh Power Armour, used as weapons or to possess vehicles. Originally it was gifted to e's right-hand man after a raid on the Ultramarines who attempted to start a Second Founding chapter on Anomie, but he tried to double cross e, who then forced a million million dead souls through him, washing away every atom of ego. His existence is bound to this insane wreck, and he shares the death pangs of every new kill.
His firefrenzies and blood rages are just an expression of that pain, but for every kill he makes, it's torn right back through him like jagged thread trying to suture a hole in the void.
There's no body or anything, just sheared spirit, dead mechanical flesh driven on by the machinations of hate. Written on the side with credit cards and letters on sprue is 'FRAMED E'. He's not a man to cross.
Scritches. Psychotic, even for an Outsider. Has most of a Khornate sword within him(in his back), he feels his own 'movements'. Unclear whether his wounds are self inflicted.
ANgle#. Like an Iron Maiden turned inside out. Speaks in static screams and the marine himself is a CCW.
Babyhands [Sane]- Meltagunner. Close relationship to Aspiring Champion, Oldstyle. Has the hands of thousands stapled to him, most of them underage.
Oldstyle [Sane]:The Aspiring Champion of First Squad. Keen to distance himself from his Loyalist identity, he killed another Chaos Space Marine and stole his armour. The loyalist helmet on his trophy rack may in fact be his own, something he actively denies. If you ask him, he'll say he was there at Terra in M.31. His old helmet whispers to him. He screams out at night 'I'M HAPPY.' Orders everyone else to relishes their new Chaotic selves, as much as he does.
He secretly inflicted matching scars on his stolen helmet.
Hollow, with blastmaster.
Hollows:(Noise Marines)
They attack with sound, their enemies driven insane by irradiating promises of consumerist satisfaction, tearing each other apart over the dead whispering ghosts of power showers and vacuum cleaners, or turned to bleeding slush by massive, rapid tumour growth.
Failing that, these Hollows bare themselves in waves of screaming feedback, overloading nervous systems and stripping away the atoms of the soul with the joyous music of hate and void.
The Commissar [Insane]- Took the hat and red sash of a slaughtered commissar, as the Chapter is so open to themes and suggestions, he became a Commissar and dillgently upholds the Imperial Creed, honours his battle gear and spurs his squad onto greater things, chanting litanies of Hate and Faith as he beats Guardsmen to death with the iron bar called 'Commissar'.
The Idiot [Insane]:The Ultramarine Force Commander originally overseeing the Recluses, Captain Crassus was taken hostage and later mind-drilled by e himself. Humiliated and then co-opted under psychic control, his body passed numbly into the ranks of the Outsiders. Became insane like ANgle#, spikes began to grow from his undead flesh. It was around this time he became possessed by a Hollow. He sought out his original power sword and storm bolter, and seized command of the squad he had drifted into. Torn between what he once knew and what he is now trapped in, Zuvassin can only smile at his plight. Just as planned...
He's still a WIP, toying with the idea of putting a drill bit through the hole where his right eye was and giving him the usual Outsiders treatment. He'll be finished at a much later date. Salvaged from an IG commander.
AjkA61**7048#[...]: *Cough* Sort of a looted Ork... A Khorne Berzerker was slain while fighting alongside the Outsiders against an Ork Waagh that had become trapped in the Eye of Terror. By some confusing process... God, I don't know. Basically, the Berserker was trapped in the backpack that the Ork had looted along with some power armoured legs. The Berzerker became self-aware and used the Outsider's traits to grow tentacles with which to control the Ork. He slapped a multi-melta where the Ork's face used to be, and uses the Orkish ability to make anything work by simply believing in it, combined with the Outsider's traits, to exist and to remain alive, for the simple joys of indiscriminate slaughter. *Cough*
The little tube on the hand cannon is from a 2nd edition plastic guardian, the body is an Ork torso, the legs are assault marines. The backpack was a Berzerker's, noticed a little face on it, jacked it up on the torso and began greenstuffing a brain coming out of the backback, representing the Berzerk's will to live.
Scoop [Sane]:Insanely bloated Havok who lost the use of his legs in the Shelliac Purging, replacing them with a landspeeders anti-gravity unit. Envious of other, more psychical receptive Marines gaining promotions, he drilled his squad until they reached 90% combat efficiency.
Following the Heresy, he drugged his little lads, butchering them with electronics, augmetic tissue stuffed with fibre optics, proud Marine flesh made anew in graven machine image. In the confusion, he settled his score with Jecht, and corrupted the Devastator sergeant and his squad, making them utterly thrall to his ego.
Scoop now floats above it all, directing dead hands, dead eyes and dead brains through electronic junk. The blunt will grind you down.
Despises and desires e's powers. A tyrant.
Armed with rocket launcher, Jecht is the sergeant.
Still a WIP, missing major greenstuffing and plenty of wires and antennae.