Hi,

Im running a DW campaign at the moment, and my players have been gagging to come up against some chaos marines, and as a "yes" DM im going to give them what they ask for.

As such ive been thinking on chaos marines a lot, and to me it doesnt quite makes sense that they are all veterans of the Horus Heresy so ive been breaking them down into three main groups.

1. "Dark" astartes who have never been loyalist at all. Forged in flesh vaults using stolen astartes geneseed (Storm of Iron style). These are going to the be the most common group. Im going to use the rules from the DW books for these, but take out hatred and bolter drill, and knock their strength down a bit.

2. Traitor marines who have turned either individually or as a chapter. These guys are going to use the rules out of the DW book.

3. Horus Heresy veterans. Rare and extremely powerful. I proabbaly always run these are some sort of cult marine (Khorge beserker, plaugue marine etc) with some pumped up stats. It makes sense if they are extremely powerful seeing as they will all be over 10000 years old.

Does this all makes sense and does anyone have any advice or comments?

Makes perfect sense to me, although I don't think that the Horus Heresy veterans are necessarily more likely to be Cult Marines. They should however more likely than not hold positions of power and prestige. I can't for one see a merely 200 year old turncoat giving orders to a veteran from the Horus Heresy - unless under very specific orders from the higher ups.

If you like to get down into the details about it, you could also show that the veterans and traitors are much more tactically adept than the Dark Astartes, who may be more bloodthirsty and single/simple minded. Hell, I could even see the veterans hold the others in disdain and participate in an Old Boys club which excludes newer recruits.

One thing to remember is that a veteran of the Heresy isn't guaranteed to be an ancient and deadly adversary - due to the vagaries of the Warp, such characters may only have experienced a matter of decades or centuries since the Siege of Terra, and while the most infamous and powerful of the Champions of Chaos are often veterans of ten millennia of conflict (and in a few cases, were actually born on Terra - both Kharn the Betrayer and Azhek Arhiman are Terran, having served with their Legions before the Primarchs were discovered).

Similarly, a post-Heresy renegade may be millennia old and have ravaged hundreds of worlds and butchered countless millions... some veterans of the Long War may have discarded their old Legion affiliations in exchange for pure service to the Dark Gods, or the service of their own ambitions, and most of the Legions have fragmented into scattered warbands built around the might of countless individual warlords, where those who once served Mankind when the Emperor still walked amongst them fight shoulder-to-shoulder with those whose flesh is the work of insane fleshsmiths, depraved alchemists and the sorcery of daemons, and those who have more recently forsaken the Emperor's Light.

It's all about context.

SPOILERS AHEAD (about the A Stony Sleep/Shadows of Madness scenarios)!

This is great stuff and naturally - the Chaos Marines shouldn't be one grey mass of heretic marines who harass the Imperium. Very good of you to start this thread, it's something that really needs attention. But, how to incorporate that in my on going Shadows of Madness/A Stony Sleep-mix, where the Alpha Legion is masquerading as imperial marines (I replaced the Black Templars with Subjugators - why should the Alpha Legion be as stupid as masquerading something NOT participating in the Crusade? Nooo...).

I totally agree that Chaos Space Marines shouldn't be a grey mass of heretics. A good idea is probably to remember what Legion they are from, or warband, and then let them fight and behave according to their doctrines. Fighting the Alpha Legion shouldn't at all be the same as fighting the Thousand Sons or the Iron Warriors. Same goes for warbands as they, like Chapters, probably have some preferences for their tactics, equipment and strategy, and perhaps write some notes about the local leaders and what they think and prefer. This will require a bit of fleshing out the background and reading up on the fluff for the GM but the results will probably be more rewarding than having just the heraldry differer between various groups of Chaos Space Marines.

You can also add Chaos gods, special circumstances, horrific mutations etc. that gives even more character. A warband of veterans from the Long War of the Black Legion will most likely operate very differently from a warband made up of fleshcrafted Marines empowered by warp sorcery and lead by a thousand year renegade warlord, even if the later group also flies the banner of the Black Legion.

the important thing to remember is, as no one pointed out, that Horus heretics are not necessarily 10,000 yrs old thanks to them being tossed about on the Seas of Fate...one could run into a traitor marine in Jericho c. 818 m41 to whom the Siege of Terra was only last week...and another warleader who has endured 10,000 yrs of constant, mind-shattering battle. Just depends on what the story provides. Beauty thing about the Warp is it is Chaos incarnate: it warps time, space, minds...heck, a chaos marine could even come from some future founding...

In theory most "Heresy" Traitor Legionairres would infact not be in the so named 'Cults'. The Black legion, The Word Bearers, The NightLords, The Alpha Legion, The Iron Warriors by their natures (even after falling to Chaos) generally lack the dispositions for the four Cults (not to mention the Four Cults were, before a 40K codex invented the cults, the 4 most common traitor legions in the game)

The Thousand Sons is, of course, populated exclusively by the Thousand Sons.

The entirety of the Traitor Death Guard ARE PlagueMarines, but there are most likely other Marines who've contracted Nurgle's Rot to join these ranks.

Not every Emperor's Child is a Noise Marine, but there are few others who are

Not every World Eater is a Khorne Berserker (probabley the biggest other legion following is here)

Mixing and matching the experience levels of the Traitor Marines is an awesome and very cool way to go ,

Although I don't recall exactly which book it was in, from the olden days of either 1st ed or Rogue Trader, chaos marines still posessed gene-seed technology and would create new marines just like the loyalists. Except it'd be a more chaos-type ritual as opposed to the (relatively) clean Space Marine processes. Although I havn't seen it explicitly mentioned since then, I don't recall anything saying it's no longer the most recent canon either. As such, you'll have chaos marines that are barely as young as any Battle Brother even in the truly ancient legions such as the original traitor legions.

Another thing you have to remember is that the Heresy veterans have not been around for 10,000 years due to the way time works in the warp.

Moirdryd said:

Actually mate, the Death Guard are one of the few traitor Legions who will only use their own gene stock. So only fresh humans augmented to be Death Guard would be used.