Silly question, but are there any homeworlds in the fluff (RPG or tabletop, basically anything in any 40k fluff ever) that resemble the US old west or chapters that have a "western" background?

Answering your questions in reverse order:

There's no official chapter with an old west theme. I would guess that they'd probably end up looking very close tactics-wise to the White Scars, so would be nearly redundant.

As far as old west world? again, nothing official that I know of, but any agricultural world that was a bit behind on tech could fit the bill. Certainly you could have Grox drives while mounted on bikes or some such. Ultimately, I think it depends on what you consider "old west". If you mean 1880s tech, certainly that is a possibility, but if you mean gun slingers and such, that's a different story.

Gunmetal City has a bit of an old west feel, with everybody armed and carrying pistols. They have showdowns, famous gunslingers, and small towns in the 'Wilderness'. Scintilla even has land trains and a ghost town.

I don't care how many daemons I'd have to cram into it, if I could have an Angel Arm, I'd play old West . Personally, I'm rather glad that there isn't an old West setting; the Imperium has enough other myriad themes under its jack-boot wearing umbrella. As it is, they don't even have IG Bikers, but instead Mongols on horses. Still, one supposes they could be an interesting variant of Rough Riders, and fit in a smidge better with all the other American-looking grunts, being led around by Russians. I think my biggest problem would be, while you certainly see a number of good and bad men whip out a shotgun, or a scatter gun/long barrel something, so many old west gunfighters liked pistols, and only Space Marines should be using pistols, with their armor. Billy the Kid, himself, couldn't kill enough Nids before they swarmed him.

Still, an anti-hero cowboy, with a cybernetic eye and a plasma pistol, wearing knife-concealing boots and a reinforced duster could be pretty awesome, sort of like Jonah Hex meets an Inquisitor.

andrewm9 said:

Good call. When I was thinking "old west", I was thinking about small town worlds, not hives.

Gun metal city is going to be the closest yoru going to come in canon as someone else said, other then that it's a big universe. Also looking at my DH stuff, the knave of pistols (a background/advancement package mostly for gunmetal characters) seems to personify the western pistol using gunfighter to the a T. Yes there is a problem with big enough ordinance to kill a serious nid, but to be honest the last rifle has that problem and nids are not the main enemy of the Imperium. A gunfighter that emphasizes accuracy over caliber could get the job done, especially once they get their hands on plasma or some exotic pattern pistols areotech (the colt patter warmaker) or xenotech pistols.

Any Frontier-class world could have a 'Wild West' theme, with undeveloped infrastructure necessitating use of indeginous materials for construction (i.e. wood); and with all promethium having to be imported from off-world, horses become viable transportation options. -But I doubt any Space Marine homeworld would be classed as a Frontier world, since supporting the Chapter would be pretty much their only industry.

There is no reason there couldn't be one, as stated by previous posts. With all of the different historical settings that have been given a 40K treatment, I'm surprised that this has never come up before. I could see an astartes gunfighter using some of the more powerful pistols, such as plasma or inferno. While he's not Old West flavored, Cypher comes to mind.

WOOT! six shooters and spaceships!! I would just use firefly as inspiration, I would even have a promethium rush with boomtowns, that sounds like a great start for a story.

I'm considering some sort of Deadlands mashup with a version of Deadlands earth serving as a chapter's homeworld. The characters would start out, run through the selection/aspirant process on planet, and then go out to terrorize/save the galaxy.

I am going to wait until I get First Founding though, because the White Scars sound like they'd require very little work to become cowboys instead of mongols.

WOW that would work perfect !! huckters would be rogue pskers, mad scienitists a lost arm of the techpriests and all supernatural stuff can be explained through chaos taint.

jbuck said:

That would be a cool setting for Black Crusade , but I don't see how you can make it work in Deathwatch ...

Yeah. It'd be real easy for Black Crusade.

What I had in mind for DW was something along the lines of the chapter being set up like an old west law posse.

The chapter itself is based FAR from the Imperium, possibly serving some sort of scout/early warning function for the Empire out on the fringes.

Using the old west/Deadlands frame, contorted into 40Kdom:

The Imperium found, and settled, their home world long ago with colonists. It's an old eldar maiden world, but the process didn't quite stick/has regressed. So, it's not lush, but supports life. The eldar themselves maintained a small presence on the world (but, as it wasn't nearly as nice as other maiden worlds, not too many chose to stay). At the time of the Imperial colonization the humans (who really didn't even know the eldar were there) and the eldar basically left each other alone (there was a great distance between their settlements and there weren't too many people on either side, so there wasn't really any competition for space or resources). The humans were ignorant, the eldar didn't care.

Fast forward....

The eldar maintain their rather small population. The Empire forgets about the settlement, which regresses to an old west farming/ranching tech level.
Drought/famine or some other problem rears its head, but doesn't immediately have a negative impact on the populations...but the resources to keep those populations up are now insufficient. Now, there's competition for dwindling resources and all the old xenophobia lights up.

The humans, though valiantly fighting a foe they greatly outnumber, but can't understand (and who have access weaponry our cowboy humans can't come close to matching and can call reinforcements through the webway) aren't doing too well.

What successes they have do not come from “army” type engagements (the eldar love it when the humans bunch themselves together!), but instead from guerrilla warfare/small group hit and fade on horseback type attacks. A tradition of heroism is born into the human culture.

Despite the heroics, five guys with six-shooters on horseback are doomed when the reapers show up. The humans find themselves faced with a Alamo type situation (yes, I'm mixing the Native Americans with the Mexican army and the eldar, leave me alone )when the space cavalry arrives (a new chapter! patrolling the outer fringes! conveniently looking for a habitable world!).

A thousand space marines looking to settle a world and remove the xenos taint from it change things...rapidly.
It takes the chapter several years (due to the eldar being spread out and far more familiar with the terrain), but the eldar are crushed, horrifically. As this is ongoing, the chapter makes the necessary preparations to use this planet as a home word (the humans are tough and resilient, the planet is rich biologically and resource wise).

Additionally, one of the farseers sees that the humans will gain accesses to the webway if it is left in effect. So, the farseer goes a little crazy with panic over what may come and hatred over the genocide which has been occurring and decides to show the humans what's what.

Straight rip-off from Deadlands, said farseer pops the far end of that webway channel right into the warp ( I don’t know if this is remotely possible in the canon, but it works for me), exemplifying the “If I can’t have it, neither can you!” creed. Raven would be proud.

Of course, now the planet goes to hell, literally. Just like in the galaxy at large, the eldar find their nice home completely screwed up and become nomadic, fully embracing the old west Native American stereotype. The warp taints all kinds of stuff, and the space marine chapter is too stubborn to burn the planet or abandon their new home, but they basically stop interfering and fade into myth. It helps that their monastery is on a different continent and the cowboys are too busy fighting demons and the undead to worry too much about exploring the oceans.

So, the traditional heroic things in Deadlands (lone gunman, lawmen, etc) become what the chapter looks for (as I’ve posted before, I don’t like the pre-pubescent aspirants thing, the people taken by the astartes in my 40K are all old enough to have accomplished something) in their recruits.
The persons they select already likely have experience in dealing with the eldar, chaos, being under equipped for their missions (because of the relatively low tech level), but having experience in firearms and experienced in small group tactics (the posse).

This influence has gradually changed the way the chapter wages war, specializing in fast, hit and fade style assaults (as I said earlier in the thread, similar to the White Scars) executed by small 5-10 man squads.

So…see you, space cowboy!

Now I just need to figure what exactly it is that the chapter does.

lurkeroutthere said:

And of course if you're liking westerns to hive gangers you could go the whole hog and be an Imperial fist from Necromunda.