History and Origins
Founding: 8th Founding, M33-M34
In late M33, an Administrative conclave of the Segmentum Solar determined that reported levels of insurrection arising from within the great and empty expanse of the Solarus Void had become too high to entirely ignore. For many centuries the scattered worlds that bridged the gap between Terra and the vast arm of the Segmentum Pacificus had been quiet, their remoteness being their own defence. Whilst the warp-routes that traversed the realm to the critical hiveworlds of Methalor and Macharia were amongst the most stable in the entire Imperium, those that turned into the lightless realms of the Void quickly became fractious and unreliable.
Only when the ice-hives of ancient Ossurus had fallen to civil war did the call for a crusade reach the High Lords, and the eye of the Imperium did turn upon its own shadow.
Close though the Solarus Void was, few upon Terra were unduly troubled by its dissent. Proximally near, but locked within the chilled space of the galaxy’s arms, the Solarus Void was void in more than name alone. Ships that ventured from the great warp-routes were slowed for many a week, their machinery and their servants slowed by the black tarry night that suffocated the region. A full-strength crusade might never emerge once it had entered.
As heated debate continued for many a year, a petitioner from within the Solarus Void became well-known to the conclave, a captain of the vessel which had brought warning of Ossurus’s fall to their attention. She spoke of a clutch of stars upon the threshold of the Void, their small populations not yet riven by warfare. She implored the conclave to save them from abandonment and destitution. Her words caught the conclave upon the turning of their attentions, and the High Lords of Terra acted upon it and decreed the eighth Founding of the Emperors holy Astartes.
Along with an unknown number of others, a Chapter would be formed to guard the darkness.
Without resources, without clear objective, a contingent of the Adeptus Mechanicus, a number of core Astartes representatives, and a great number of Terran scientists arrived upon the nearmost planet of the Solarus void; the jungle-world of Comacha. With them came the only innumerable resource that Terran and its colonies had in any free abundance; its criminals and its convicts.
As the Astartes established a base of operations upon Comacha the Adeptus Biologus contingent began to sample the local population whilst they awaited the gene-seeds arrival. Tasting the genetic strains of the great convict convoys for stability and strength. During this period, more of the dark worlds of the Void turned silent and still as their foci turned inwards, bolstering planetary defences in fear of fermenting rebellion. The arrival of the Geneseed; Ultramarine in origin, on a lone Mechanicum runner heralded the implantation of recruits and the commencement of the campaign. Foundations were sunk and a great monastery began to take shape amongst the jungles of Comacha, the eyes of the fledgling Astartes within fixed firmly upon the empty sky above.
Early History
Many Chapters are characterised by their Founding Primarchs. Many by their founding Chapter Master or their homeworlds, some by their flaws. The Sons of Omega were entirely characterised by their early years amidst the darkness of Comacha.
With the small group of Astartes that accompanied the Genetor fleet occupied by the scale of the task before them, the as yet-unnamed Sons quickly found that their small numbers forced them to attach themselves to the probing squads of Astartes that sought to end the uprising on the planets of the Solarus Void. This sporadic form of warfare gave them a wide interpretation of the Codex Astartes, as the varied squads they accompanied prosecuted the rebellion in completely different ways. From heavy land assaults alongside the hammer hands of the Imperial Fists, to the rapid mechanised strikes and sallies of the White Scar’s successors; the Rampagers. But it was from an unexpected source that the true personality of the Chapter began to reveal itself.
The prison fleets.
As more and more Neophytes became Battle-Brothers the eldest among them noted that none of their number had arisen from the gene-stock supplied by Comacha, all had been pooled from the prison-ships and the penal fleets that had been pressed into the war effort. It seemed that for every hundred psychopaths that died to the rebels, a handful of iron-hard youngsters would survive, true in faith but false in law. These would be passed to the Biologus and the Ecclesiarchical contingent for screening, they, demonstrating purity of spirit unknown would excel throughout the training and implantation processes, and would emerge as the superhuman warriors that the burgeoning chapter needed.
After years of warfare the Campaign to reunite the Solarus Void ended abruptly, the remaining rebels surrendering to the whim of the Imperium and the arrayed Astartes. The initial instigator of the rebellion that had swept the region was never discovered, though fragmentary reports still exist in the monastery archives, closely guarded by the core Command staff of the Chapter.
It was with the dissolution of the campaign that the Sons were founded formally, their armour colour taken from the pale jungle surrounding the monastery, their name taken from a barrack-room story that had remained with them throughout their first warring years.
Brother Marine Kwayne Horcora;
‘’Sergeant Parhis tells the story best but if I must, I will tell it. When the Mechanicum broke the great seals of the gene-vaults to forge us anew they saw endless ranks of sealed vessels bearing the Ultramarines sigil. All sat uniform and ordered. But, when the geneseed reached us upon Comacha, somehow the flasks that had been upturned in their containers, and the emblem of the Ultramarines had been inverted. To those viewing, the upturned Ultra had become an Omega. Some saw this as an omen, some as a portent. However taken, the Mechanicum are pragmatics to the core and so nothing more was said.
Fortuitous or not, it was from this one simple misplacement that we Sons got first our nickname, our origins, and from there we have inherited it as our legacy.’’
Homeworld
The Sons of Omega still maintain a fortress-monastery upon Comacha, fused into the mountain ranges of the equatorial jungle-belts. For light-years around, the slow-moving trade in the Solarus Void is kept safe by the large fleet maintained by the Chapter and though the persistent depth of the warp within the Solarus Void still slow many a ship, the Captains of each know that the Chapter is watching over them.
On the most part, few Astartes dwell upon Comacha and due the nature of their recruitment the Sons rarely return to their fortress in any strength, preferring longer periods of self-sustained action. Coinciding with this , few relics are kept, the commonly held belief among the Chapter is that the glory of each artefact is only as long as its practical use.
The Chapter remains as a roaming collection of companies and squads that are swift to mete out the justice of the Emperor, while not necessarily that of the Imperium.
Recruitment
Instead of recruitment from deep hive-worlds and the most desperate of environments instead the Sons of Omega take the bloody-knuckled flotsam from whichever prison or colony will spit them out. Sergeants from the Chapter are frequently sent to dredge Imperial facilities of their entire complement of human flesh, throwing them upon the guns of the nearest conflict to see who will survive. From there, the Apothecarium strip away those deemed too heretical, too bestial, too far beyond repentance or remorse and begin the process of implantation and indoctrination.
Once they have satisfied the Apothecary’s stringent processes the scouts are attached to whichever conflict has most need of their skills, honing their lethal repertoire to aid wherever they can. This attachment persists throughout the Chapter wholesale, so it is rare that more than a Company be despatched as whether a border dispute or a decade-long crusade, each taskforce will remain attached until the current need is satisfied and their duty to the Emperor is done.
Combat Doctrines
In war, the Sons of Omega are a malleable force. Able to adapt to the changing course of battle with lightning speed, reordering formation and deployment in a moment, fluidly and without hesitation. This flexibility stems from the extensive secondment training they experience during their formative years and beyond, though their ability to adapt to the battlefield amidst wholesale carnage a legacy of the manner in which they were initially captured.
Another remnant of the brutal manner in which the Chapter ranks are populated is a healthy disregard for Imperial rule. Whereas the upper echelons of the Chapter may infrequently be required to deal with the bureaucracy of Terran politics, a Son of Omega is taught to remove themselves from the politics and the Imperium and to focus on the will of the Emperor over all others.
Many an Imperial authorities has been removed from power by the very force they requested aid from, should the Chapter find them wanting in the eyes of the Emperor. This means that any Planetary Governor must choose carefully before calling for them, lest they be deposed for the less corrupt, or the more pious. Aside from combatting Xenos incursions in the Solarus Void and protecting the many planets therein, the Chapter have been known to despatch aid to the smaller colonies of the Imperium, the taskforces self-sufficiency being of great aid in such remote systems.
Organization
Without a clearly defined Primogenitor chapter to align to , the Sons of Omega have come to have no adherence to the Codex Astartes in formation or function. At any one time, there will be a standing body of a thousand Marines, dependant on recent conflict. When one or more formations are made there is no one structure that the Chapter maintains for any period of time, other than that of the ‘the twinning of strengths’.
A well-honed methodology, this core principle of twinned force permeates through the Chapter and ensures that no one force has a weakness or an overt strength which the enemy may easily counter. In open conflict, this may mean a Devastator company may be deployed alongside an Assault company, a Scout squad may be joined by a Terminator armoured Veteran. Through this manner, the Sons Of Omega rarely find themselves without the support of a familiar Brother or Squad.
It is due to this twinning that the Son’s of Omega chose to specifically not add unit markings to their armour, for what need does an Astartes have for identification than the knowledge of their Brother-Marines. Aside from venerating the Emperors insignia and the wearing of purple to signify rank, the Sons are bereft of device or heraldry.
Another notable legacy from their proximity to the Sol system is that the Chapter maintains a high number of Techmarines and rarer variants of esoteric Mechanicus machinery and few Sons of Omega on prolonged deployments will venture afar without the access to the works of a Techmarine. As a mark of respect for the Chapters patronage of the Red Planet, any augmentations and repairs made upon the battlefield will be used over and above a more elegant replacement, until such time as the original augmentations function fails.
Beliefs
In devotion to the Emperor the Sons of Omega are near-fanatical, the Chapter’s legacy as a true servants of the Master of Mankind cemented during the age of Apostasy and the fall of Cardinal Vandire.
During late M33 and the first few hundred years of M34 the Chapter entrenched its hold over the Solarus Void and began to take an active involvement in the defence of the Imperium’s wider borders. As the newly cemented Imperial Creed began to become Holy law the Sons found themselves too often fighting with those that resisted the heavy-handed tactics of the Ecclesiarchy. Whereas the Ecclesiarchical fleets would ride rough-shod over the populace of any planet whose manner of devotion did not fit with the newly-writ creed, the Sons more often found reason to protect those they saw as faithful to their Lord.
Those few planets that the Sons had granted their protection not only retained their cultural idioms, but were then able to contribute more and more to the Imperium and the Emperor both. When the Reign of Blood erupted, the Sons sped to the aid of the few solar systems in the Solarus Void which had shown signs of disruption, their very presence in a disturbed system enough to calm any who doubted their safety, for who but the Sons of Omega knew those below to be true servants of the Emperor?
During the final stages of the conflict, the Chapter openly refused to draw blood upon Holy Terra. Instead, in rare form their entire strength was fielded in combat, first to protect (some would say needlessly) the Emperor’s palace and his holiest of temples, and secondly to hunt down the few fleets of Vandire that preyed upon the Mechanicum and its outposts. Whilst this earned the Chapter the approval of the Adeptus Custodes and the blessing of the Fabricator General, it earned the ire of the High Lords of Terra that felt they should have added their strength to the siege of Vandire’s stronghold, rather than sitting sentry.
As ever, the Sons of Omega cared not, the Emperor knew his own.
Geneseed
Since their inception almost six millennia ago, the Ultramarines geneseed from which the Chapter is derived has remained as stable as expected. The only slight mutation of note is a slight bronzing of the pigment of the skin, perhaps inherited from the verdant jungles of their homeworld.
Some observers would note that the Sons Of Omega are only truly raised to wrath when the sanctity of the Emperor, or those that uphold it is put at risk.
The Mechanicus have noted that the Geneseed tithe that the Sons supply is returned with Ultramarine emblems, inside inverted containers.
Battlecry
‘For the Emperor above all!’
No comments:
Post a Comment