Hey all. I intend to have my kill team become stranded on a derelict ship, which will have chaos marines on it that they will eventually encounter. Being stranded will have the cut off from supplies, so I was wondering if there was any reason they wouldn't be able to scavenge ammo from any chaos marines they might kill.
I only ask because I'm sure it will come up...
Depends on how straight you want to play the whole Chaos taint thing and what chapters your PCs are drawn from. The Thirteenth Company of the SWs seems more than happy to salvage Chaos gear and use it for themselves for centuries or even millennia at a time. Similarly the Ultramarines omnibus has a couple of Ultramarines using captured Chaos wargear after removing defacing Chaos icons and with some distaste, but being stranded on a Daemon world they see no choice. You could represent the unhallowed nature of the ammunition with an increased misfire chance of some such if you are looking for a middle ground. I am personally a great fan of the purify and consecrate approach. That is, since nothing as valuable as SM equipment is thrown away lightly, I tend to hold the view that most chapters would recover anything not obviously tainted and have it ritually purified by a Chaplain and a techmarine or some such anyhow. Obviously armor that has daemonic possession or mutation and that sort of thing is right out, but especially in teh case of newer traitors or equipment recently captured by Chaos it is unlikely that the wargear is beyond redemption. You can just as easily take the "burn it all from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" approach. seems likely that different chapters or individuals might represent either point of view. Black Templars tend to be purists, a Blood Ravens, if DOWII:Chaos Rising is anything to go by, seem to be more willing to try and redeem wargear that might be tainted.
Aye - I'd echo that. Maybe a challenging test (+0) to purify it until the character is happy that it is 'safe' to use. If they fail it may end up giving corruption points or even effecting reputation (running around with 'bad guy' weapons = no no!)
No Space Marine would sully the firing rights of their holy weapons by using any ammunition that has been used/manufactured by the forces of chaos. Guard would, but Space Marines wouldn't want to risk the taint.
mcbale said:
No Space Marine would sully the firing rights of their holy weapons by using any ammunition that has been used/manufactured by the forces of chaos. Guard would, but Space Marines wouldn't want to risk the taint.
Right, so this dude would go with playing the Chaos taint thing to the hilt. This is certainly a valid interpretation, but given the considerable fluff for restoring and maintaining legacy technology in 40k I think its fair to say that this is not the only valid interpretation. I definitely have my killteam claiming chapter prizes from cold traders that they killed with xeno artifacts. After all, if something as vile as a true name or as xenos as a ctan phase sword is accepted by the Imperium, some means of cleansing or sanctioning should exist. They sanction psykers, they sanction xenos weapons, they sanction some to know dark secrets, they sanction books of daemonic lore, they sanction archeotech of most uncertain provenance, heck there are even weapons in listed in the relic section of deathwatch where it is heavily hinted they were used by chaos in the past.
There was another discussion of this subject on the forums in late May and early June. The thread can be found here . I hope it helps