The Storm Wolves - The War Of The Deep Dark

No single event has shaped the Storm Wolves like the War Of The Deep Dark.  This was a 200 year accidental war that caught up a Prowler group in it's clutches.

Origins

Three hundred years ago, the 300-strong Prowler group was setting out to support a neighbouring world of Cadia in it's fight against Chaos.  Unfortunately due to erratic Warp Storms, the task force found themselves trapped in the outer edge of the Eye Of Terror.

Two hundred years would pass for the outside world as the Prowler Group faught its way in one battle after another.   In the end a mere 57 marines survived their journey to exit (although for them, less than 200 years had passed).

It was a war of desperation that shaped the lives of many of the survivors.  It saw a desperate alliance with the Meen Chompas Ork warband who were similarly trapped within the Eye of Terror. 

Ork and Space Marine banded together against a common foe, aiming to seek a way out.  Orks were ferried within Storm Wolf craft as they saught a way out.

Desperate Measures

As the campaign raged, equipment dwindled, and numbers fell, sometimes catastrophically.

However, Master of the Forge Freidrich Oppenheimer and Chief Apocathary Gerold Muller began to notice the behaviour of their Big Mek and Mad Doc counterparts.  The Orks lacked the Storm Wolves reluctance to scavenge parts, and so their number of Looted Wagons and walking wounded never dwindled to the same extent.

Both Oppenheimer and Muller worked closer and closer with their opposite numbers, and with it a change of thinking occured.  After battle, Chaos weapons, tanks. armour would be looted for spare parts, never mind it's heretical origins.  This was not about purity, it was about pragmatism.  Many Storm Wolf vehicles still contain remnants from this looting.

Most famous of all is the looted-wagon-turned-predator that Oppenheimer would call Loki's Guile.

Even after the War Of The Deep Dark, Oppenheimer would refuse to scrap this vehicle, which he considered to have a "strong machine spirit".

Muller, meanwhile, worked to reanimate dead marines into servitors, a practice considered with distaste by other chapters.

These pragmatic practices combined with the alliances with Orks serves as a reminder to many other chapters that the Storm Wolves are borderline heretical, and have potentially been tainted by their time in the Eye of Terror to become more like Chaos than they would accept.

The End Of The War

As the Warp Storm subsided, the task force finally made it back into the real universe some 200 years later.  Knowing how quickly their former allies would turn, the Storm Wolves massacred many of the Meen Chompas, with two exceptions.

Their dead allies were treated in death with respect, in line with Storm Wolf culture.  With their time as allies, the Storm Wolves recognised the Orks as a brutal and undisciplined tribe, but a warrior race worthy of some measure of respect.

The two Ork survivors are held to this day.  The Ork Big Mek code named "Mr Green" is held in Mitguard as a prisoner, and occasionally allowed to build devices from scrap, which Master of the Force Oppenheimer analyses.

The Mad Dok code named "Doctor Jade" is a more willing captive, he is allowed to experiment on captured Ork specimens, and the results analysed by Muller.

As a result, Storm Wolves are considered one of the leading experts of Ork technology and physiology.

The Storm Wolves - chapter culture

The Storm Wolves, although played as a variant of the Ultramarines from which they share their geneseed, have a unique history.

They are drawn from the Germanic peoples of the Ragnarok star system, and have a fundamental respect for the "old tales and legends".  By flesh they are Ultramarines, but in their heart they think back to the Space Wolf ways of their first chapter.  However in their minds there is something uniquely pragmatic about the Storm Wolves.  Unfortunately that pragmatism is seen are borderline heresy by some other chapters.

Here is the timeline of the regular initiation of a Storm Wolf candidate ...

Scout Initiation

The Ragnarok system has no major Imperial Guard unit, although Hellion employs a small private army.  This dates back to the Hellion Rebellion of two thousand years which the Storm Wolves brutally put down.

To combat this lack of man-power, the Storm Wolves encourages men throughout the star system to enlist.  Compared to other chapters the entry conditions are relatively lax, hence many are initiated as scouts, and receive initial geneseed.

This is seen as another form of heresy by other chapters, as they see the geneseed being wasted on the less worthy.  However the Storm Wolves see it as a necessity - they require a larger than 1000 marine chapter to function in their many duties.  It is unfortunate so many scouts die due to geneseed rejection, however the Storm Wolves aim to make good use of every candidate on the battlefield before this happens.  And even those who die often can provide extra geneseed before their premature demise.

Prowler Duty

The Storm Wolves main duty is to guard the resource worlds of Ragnarok.  However, guard duty does not make for glory.  Like the Viking longships of old, Ragnarok battleships prowl star systems looking for a fight in the name of the Emperor.

Typically three companies are kept "prowling" whilst the remainder of the chapter is kept peace keeping in Ragnarok.  This is why the chapter aims to keep their numbers above the standard thousand troops when possible.

This Prowler Duty is seen as the ideal test of combat, and duty lasts for ten years, with a mix of veterans and rookie scouts.

The Fate of the Fallen

The Storm Wolves have what is considered a ghoulish fate for fallen scouts.  Many have their geneseed carefully removed, and are then reanimated where possible as servitors, the mechanical servants of the machine spirit.  Hence even the fallen continue to serve in their own way.

It is a brutal reminder to many that service to the Emperor goes even beyond death.

Initiation

After a scout has completed a ten year Prowler tour-of-duty he can apply to become a full marine and earn his powered armour.

Due to it's infestation from a previous invasion, Muspell is unusual in that it "farms" Orks.  The Storm Wolf initiation has an unarmed scout placed in a combat zone with one of the young Ork Boyz. The prospective Storm Wolf needs to defeat and kill this Ork to find his place.

Whilst the Storm Wolves like many other chapters have no sympathy for Orks, and will kill them without a second thought, they also have a great respect for the powerful warriors Orks are.  This has been formed from several uneasy alliances with Orks against greater foes.

Hence when a Storm Wolf comes victorious from slaying an Ork, it is his duty to watch over the body overnight, and tell it tales of his deeds as a scout, and the life before being a scout in Ragnarok.  It is considered to be the last day he will talk of his childhood, sharing his secrets with a fallen foe.  When the morning comes, the Storm Wolf will cremate the body before the rising sun, and salute a fallen warrior.

This procedure is overseen by either the Chaplain or Captain of the Storm Wolves.  In addition, most Scout Sergeants feel obliged to be present, however none can intervene in the combat, however by this point most scouts are trained to the point that an Ork soldier presents little obstacle to them.

Golding of the armour

Storm Wolves use a silver piping for soldiers.  However when a marine is invited (after 50 years service) to join the Veterans, or if he makes officer, he is allowed to gold his armour.

For the love of conversion ...

I was originally a Warhammer 40,000 player in the 80s, but like many, sold my collection when I got older (truth be told I was more a role player than wargamer anyway).

About 7 years ago my son started to get into Warhammer, and I ended up joining in with him, as we built up our armies from scratch.  We were helped in this by picking up a few sets on eBay, and also my friend Steve needing to pass on all the pieces he'd played in the 90s and had no further use for.

I concentrated on Space Marines, with a small Ork army.  My son Cameron has focused on Imperial Guard and Tau.

Both of us have built up our own armies (and colour schemes) and developed the back-story which for us explains our army.  For myself, I have a Space Marine army which is a bit of the old and the new.  Including (heresy) the occasional thing I've bought and found it has a Chaos hatch.  Rather than feel limited by this, I'm forever trying to develop the history of the Storm Wolves to make this fit in with where they've been.

I play them as a standard Ultramarine army codex "vanilla Space Marines", but someone has suggested I could (with their back story) easily play them as Dark Angels ... we shall see.

What we are forever trying to do though is create armies with a unique look.  And play around with other model kits.  I love bits boxes to just rummage through and go "eureka!".  We're also trying to do our armies on a budget (Games Workshop is never cheap but here in New Zealand, it's crippling), so we buy a lot of stuff second hand and improvise - oh the people who when a new tank/flier comes out and go "we'll take 10".

So here is a walk through of some of our fun conversions ...

Imperial Guard Tank

This was a 1:35 M41 Walker Buldog tank that we then went to town on, adding Imperial Guard weaponry (a cannon, las cannon and various flamers and rocket launchers).  The result is simply amazing, and looks to be honest like a superb hybrid between a Leman Russ and a Baneblade.

My son will sometimes play this at home as an extra Leman Russ.  I love the way he adds graffiti to his tanks, naming them.

Predator Tank - The Shermanator

This one was a lot of fun to put together.  It's the unholy cross between a 1:48 Sherman tank, armed with a spare twin-linked lascannon from a Razorback kit (I used the heavy bolter instead).

The Ravaged Land Raider

This was a Land Raider I managed to pick up cheap, but ... the left lascannon was damaged.  I was thinking of replacing it, but had an idea to make it look battle damaged.

This has be a bit concerned - some purist players, esp under "what you see is what you get" can be a bit unpleasant over this.  Hence my Land Raider appearing to have a damaged left lascannon they might say "well that lascannon has to be gone".  I try as much as possible NOT to play with such people if I can avoid it (it's supposed to be fun).

My son has some fabulous figures done (he just needs to paint) showing instead of "parade condition" troops and tanks, tanks you can see are "in the middle of fighting a battle".

Hence I've added a couple of genestealers to the side, doing their best to damage the tank even further.  Again, purists might point out a genestealer can't damage a Land Raiders, but yeah, it looks good ...

Master of the Forge and his Servitors

Unfortunately I bought this Master of the Forge from a Games Workshop, and they didn't make it clear he's a Chaos (Iron Warriors) chapter.  Ooops.  But I really love him, so have tried to downplay the Chaos nature of him.

I've also last weekend found some spare old Space Marine scout parts.  I have a load of scouts already so thought it might be nice to try out something a bit different for them.  I thought it would be nice to give my Master of the Forge some Servitors.

I found genestealer claws together with a platemail arm from some old Warhammer kit made a half decent robot arm.  I then used a craft knife to shape the scout's head, cutting out a quarter of it, which I substituted Borg-style with part of an old plastic Necron.  The end result didn't look too bad, although it was fiddly as hell ...

Talking of scouts

I inherited from Steve about two sets of the old-school scouts with Mohawks.  They don't look too bad, but a whole set looks too much the same.  So sadly I had many of them decapitated, and used some Imperial Guard style helmets for them, which again makes them look unique.

Two of the sergeants I've made look unique.  The first sergeant is based on Daryl from the Walking Dead, so I gave him not only a power weapon, but a "kills silently" crossbow.  [No, he doesn't have special rules, he's just there to look cool]

The other sergeant is a part cyborg relic of bits and pieces - he's a survivor of multiple campaigns ...

Did someone call a doctor?

What do you do when you've a missile launcher marine without a missile launcher and a spare Sentinel close-combat weapon?

If you have a devious mind like mine, you probably think you can made up a medic who "grants feel no pain".  Seriously - the cure looks worse than the ailment!

[There's a similar version of this guy in my Ork army as a mad dok, but he needs painting]