Index Astartes - Chained Hounds

Index Astartes: Legion XII, Chained Hounds

Origins

Unusual among the founding legions, the Twelth was not drawn from any particular region or cultures of Terra, but from the most competitive and aggressive potential recruits who were considered for any of the other legions. They displayed more ruthlessness than any legion but the Eighth, and more savagery than any but the Sixth. They were the Emperor's wrecking ball, rarely used but devastating when loosed. For this, he gave them the cognomen "War Hounds". After their first few engagements, they did not take the field for several years, their fast being broken with the brutal Second Pacification of Luna, retaliation for the poisoning of the Third Legion's geneseed. This established the War Hounds as being a vicious tool of reprisal against anyone who pretended fealty to the Emperor and then betrayed Him. Their second deployment was the Cerberus Suppression, sent in to subdue the rebelling prison colony of Cerberus after the Imperial Army who responded first was routed with tales of giant supermen leading the rioting prisoners. The fighting was legion-wide, and they found the tales were true: left-over Thunder Warriors were alive on Cerberus Station, and they were greater in strength and skill than the astartes sent to subdue them. After five long hours of cramped-quarters melee, the Legion Master reported the asteroid cluster was secure. When asked how many enemy combatants needed to be processed, Legion Master Ibram Ghreer replied "We were ordered to deliver the Emperor's wrath to Cerberus. No return shipment was requested." From a prison population before the rebellion of 500,000, the Imperial Army cleanup battalions found only 703 remaining alive.

After this legion-wide blooding, the War Hounds ceased to be as single-purposes as they had been. They were split in many small companies, acting as speartip assault groups for many other legions. Other legions considered them fine company and excellent allies, and from the cerebral gaming tables of the Iron Sages to the boisterous Mjød halls of the Space Wolves, the War Hounds proved themselves capable of fitting in with every legion they served with. The core of the legion not seconded to others was the 13th Expeditionary Fleet, and its specialty remained crushing rebellions and bloody vengeance on recalcitrant foes. From their primary muster world of Bodt, a volcanic training ground for their recruits and early conquest, the fiercest elements of the Great Crusade attached themselves to the War Hounds core. The Legio Audax and their Titan-hunting Ursus Claws, the Numen Gun Clans and their Ork-like reckless enthusiasm for massive firepower, modern-armed tribal warriors from a dozen Feral Worlds, and many more, all joined the Bloody Thirteenth. The War Hounds acceded to this with good grace; they did not revel in pointless slaughter, but in a common phrasing, they felt "a good soldier must necessarily have a large part of his mind which enjoys murder". They felt they made less attempt to hide this sadistic rage than their cousins, but thought this was simple self-honesty. Accordingly, they did not separate out Destroyer marines from the rank and file; any marine present in a theater where prohibited weapons had been authorized was permitted to wield them.

The Crusade eventually found their primarch, but this was not a reunion. The rebel gladiator known as Angron, Lord of the Red Sands, wished to die alongside his brothers in battle rather than serve the Emperor. The Emperor tried to insist, but through means never truly understood, He was thwarted. Dawn came and Angron led his slave army against the high-riders of the slaver cities. The hardened ex-gladiators and their superb tactical leadership allowed them to take down four militiamen for every death they sustained, but they were outnumbered six-to-one. It was a peerless feat of arms, the greatest in the history of Nuceria, but it was not enough for a victory, only a pyrrhic draw. The Emperor and some of his Custodes roamed the battlefield, trying to find with exhaustive search what He could not divine by psychic might, but throughout the battle, Angron eluded them. As dusk fell, one of the Custodes scouts finally found his trail. The battle had nearly ended; the city armies were scattered and leaderless, but it was difficult to find a single living rebel anywhere on the battlefield. The Emperor had hope, for if any of the ex-slaves lived, it would surely be his son.

But Angron had gotten his wish. In a cave, he had died with three slaves behind him and the corpses of dozens of city soldiers before him, fighting to the end to protect his brothers and sisters. The Emperor's soldiers took his body and departed immediately, leaving iterators and Imperial Army to secure the compliance of Nuceria. A team of medics and a remembrancer, Eurykidas DeMartos traveled the field, looking for survivors; they found nine men and three women of the slaves, and DeMartos arranged passage for the twelve to Bodt once they were recovered. The War Hounds called them The Twelve Parasods ("bearers of tradition"), and revered them as their link with the man their gene-father had been.

While he was no longer alive, he still existed. The Emperor had constructed the first dreadnought, modeling it after the Albian Ironsides, and while much of Angron's brain was unsalvageable due to deterioration and the excision of the Butcher's Nails, he was not an entirely lost cause. His Father greeted him as Angron, but he refused that name, and any other. He suggested he be referred to as the Fettered, tied as he was to the world of the living. His nearly-living body was sufficient to revitalize the geneseed stores of the War Hounds, but he did not rejoin them; he was kept by the Emperor's side as a powerful weapon.

The Hounds knew little of the Fettered. They learned some of Angron's story from the Parasods, and heard from speaking with cousin marines who had fought alongside the Emperor that their gene-father was a half-living tool of the Emperor. From the story of Angron's fight to free his enslaved comrades and the rumors of his current state, they inferred he was unhappy with his lot. In his honor, they renamed their legion the Chained Hounds, and their heraldry added a three-link chain painted on top of the red hound rampant they had claimed when the Emperor gave them their cognomen. They mourned their father's absence and tried to emulate his virtues, destroying tyranny where they found it and forging deep personal and emotional bonds with the Imperial Army divisions and other allies they fought beside. During this time, they became less known for their viciousness; they were still a wrecking ball, but a targeted one, which might utterly obliterate a capital city but would leave other parts of the rebellious planet untouched unless they fired upon the legion.

After the Triumph of Ullanor, when the Emperor left the field to return to Terra, the Chained Hounds were placed under the personal command of Warmaster Horus, alongside his own legion and the other legion without a primarch in the field, the Thousand Sons. Also in Horus's fleet was the Fettered himself, and squads of Hounds eagerly sought him out, delighted to speak with their progenitor. This delight was short-lived; they learned that he was ill-content, and served the Crusade only grudgingly. They were torn; they believed in the cause, and wished the Emperor’s Crusade to succeed, but they were also loyal to their father. Ultimately, they held a secretive congress of marines, every man of the legion having a say. They agreed that to allow him to remain in bondage, even for the most noble of causes, could not be borne, but that they could not stomach wholesale desertion, especially in the face of the newly renegade Ultramarines and rumors of the Death Guard and the Salamanders joining them in organized rebellion. The companies drew lots; one-fifth would abduct the dreadnought-primarch, while the rest continued the Crusade. The chosen companies approached the Navigators attached to their fleets to sound them out for willingness to go along with their rebellion; the camaraderie they had fostered made this comparatively easy.

While Horus’s fleet was docked with the Phalanx for repairs and refitting, and the Warmaster was off the station on a diplomatic mission, the chosen Hounds struck. They overpowered and subdued the guards on the chamber of relics, activated the dreadnought containing their father, and bid him follow them. They "forcibly abducted" the chosen Navigators, seized several uncrewed battle-barges of the Sons of Horus, not yet fully refitted but safe for travel, and set a course for an unknown destination, with their precious cargo in tow. By the time Horus was alerted, they were far beyond the system, and a significant effort would have been needed. The Warmaster made a token effort and put the remainder of the Hounds under Custodes guard, but did not press the issue. It is an article of faith among the Chained Hounds and their successor orders that Horus understood the loyalty they felt toward their father and let them go.

Certainly, it would have been easy to find them had he acted quickly. Their first destination was Nuceria; it had been inducted into the Imperium by diplomacy in the wake of the war against the Eaters of Cities, but the slaver lords and their high-riders still ruled the planet. Finally fighting with their primarch, the Chained Hounds liberated their slaves, leveled their palaces, wiped out the noble classes, and installed aggressively populist democracies in their places. They taught the populace how to rebuild their cities, and only then withdrew, to a nondescript planet called Balthor Sigma. The Fettered thanked them for helping him complete the work he could do accomplish in life, but made it known that he did not truly wish to live. They pleaded to get to know their gene-father before he died, and he acquiesced; he would get to know every son who had rescued him before making his irrevocable decision.

Far away, the Heresy War raged. The remainder of the Chained Hounds gave no further reason to doubt their loyalty, but remained mistrusted. Seeking to prove their fervor, Legion Master Kharn demanded to be in the spearhead of the offensive at Isstvan V. Warmaster of Retaliation Fulgrim granted this requests, and so the casualties in the Drop Site Massacre were heavier on the Chained Hounds than on any other legion; only Macer Verren's 12th Company escaped the surface, though it's said that Kharn and his command squad continued the first for seven days after the remainder of the loyal legions were dead or fled. This quieted the suspicions for the remainder of the Heresy War, and largely ended their part in it.

A century after his abduction, the errant Hounds could stall the Fettered no longer; they had all grown to known him well, and he to know them in return. His wishes were unchanged; he thanked them, and said that while he ached for his brothers still, he could not have asked for worthier sons. They returned to Nuceria and disinterred him, conducting a funeral where he was deposited into a volcano of Nuceria not far from the place where his first death had occurred. By this time the dust from the Heresy War had settled, and the reconquest was reaching them once again. Mindful that they were still renegades in law and deed, if not at heart, they disappeared off the planet, wandering the stars fighting alongside Guardsmen who did not know the difference.

Their brothers who had remained stalwart through the Heresy had, as the other loyal legions save one, been split apart, but they shared the secret among the successors. The Black Beasts, the Red Teeth, the Attack Dogs and the Muzzled; all kept the story going, hidden among their company captains and other leaders. As their lost comrades made contact, they trickled into the ranks; a squad here, a Land Raider there. Their brothers were sworn to secrecy about their unusually-seasoned new comrades, and pains were made to conceal the arrivals from any outside the organization of successors known as The Kennel. To further this concealment, they avoided suspicion by taking on any task from the Lords of Terra, no matter how bloody or inglorious. Like the hounds they took their name from, they would go wherever they were led and attack whatever quarry they were set. The last of the Wild Hounds were integrated into their brother companies around M35. As of M37 the Kennel still accepted whatever dirty jobs they were given, perhaps because they were all numb to the futility and pointless bloodshed that they had acceded to for so long.

Homeworld

Both Nuceria and Bodt were hit by Space Wolf pogroms. The Nucerian attack came during the tail end of the Wild Hounds reconquest of the planet, and since they outnumbered the Wolves significantly and were unexpected, they led the new armies they had raised in its defense, blooding them and unifying them with a common enemy. On Bodt, no such astartes garrison was present, and it had little native population. All residents, baseline and astartes, were killed and their bones piled in huge cairns, and since this did not sate the bloodlust of the Wolves, every manmade structure on its surface was leveled before they departed.

However, Bodt was never chosen as a recruiting world, merely a muster world. So in effect, the Chained Hounds lost almost nothing in the pogroms, unlike all their loyal allies except the Hydra. However, given the scrutiny they were under and the Nucerian records written during the Reconquest which told how the renegade Hounds had conquered it, they did not use Nuceria as a recruiting world, though periodic pilgrim ships would arrive at Bodt from Nuceria with devoted followers begging the honor of becoming chapter serfs, and these requests were often granted.

Since the division of the legions into orders, Bodt is not a muster world for any particular group of the Kennel. They use it primarily as a meeting ground, where cousin orders renew alliances and settle grudges with honor duels.

Combat Doctrine

The Hounds have always preferred close combat, relishing the visceral destruction of personal violence. They do not field an unusual number of assault squads, but their main-line tactical squads use melee weapon over bolt pistols, and where available will trade their standard boltguns for the assault variant. The Hounds favor hitting a small number of picked targets with excessive force to open a front in a new campaign, in the manner of the Night Lords, after which they fight more akin to a crusading Fist successor.

Through to M40, due to their willingness to use Destroyer-grade weapons in wide deployment across the legion and their frequent role as the attack dogs of the High Lords of Terra, their devastator heavy support squads still have access to melta, phosphex, and rad missiles.

Organization

The Kennel is fairly unremarkable in its organization. They have some small peculiarities in structure, which stem from the practice of referring to companies and squads by role or by officer's name, not by number. The reason they give is an egalitarian impulse, not wishing to imply that, for example, 2nd company is senior or superior to 4th. In actuality, this started in order to conceal the addition of the Wild Hounds trickling into the loyal orders.

As a result of the lack of numbering, they have a more explicit command hierarchy than most orders; in a line company, the tactical squads will be grouped by threes under Master Sergeants, and one sergeant each for the devastator and assault squads is designated Master Sergeant and his name invoked when the company captain wants to send both squads to a purpose. Reserve companies usually have twelve squads under four Master Sergeants, and two Lieutenants sit above them. The Kennel also preserves the Crusade-era title of Centurion, which denotes a specialist skilled in commanding a mixed formation for specific purpose. The formations needed for commonly-occurring circumstances have a set group and Centurion commander, so that battle-cant can quickly invoke the formation and send them on a task. Largely to maintain the fiction of their egalitarian reason for refusing numbering, orders of the Kennel rarely have veteran companies. Veterans are grouped into squads and those squads are split among the reserve companies; terminators in the reserve tactical companies and vanguard/sternguard squads in the reserve assault/devastator companies.

Beliefs

Like the Dark Angels and some other legions, the Chained Hounds have a strong tradition of honor duels. Unlike the Last and First, these are not artful dances, but traditionally are fought with leaden hammers and conclude after the first crack of bone.

Geneseed

Psychologically, the Hounds have two known flaws. The better-known is their bloodthirsty, violent nature. The less known is their tendency toward extremely strong emotions; greater joys, deeper sorrows, stronger rages. This has been noted as shared with the Eldar xenos, though this is in all likelihood purely coincidence.

Physically, the legion and its descendants have a stronger adrenaline response than most, and the catalepsean node works at reduced effectiveness. It is believed by their apothecaries and various genetor-savants that these are related phenomena, but attempts to replicate it in new orders have had unpleasant side-effects. The neuroglottis and occulobe are also inhibited and often nonfunctional, with resulting limited senses compared to other astartes. Genetors of the Mechanicus speculate that this is a partial cause of their preference for close combat.

Battlecry

During the Crusade and Heresy eras, the Hounds called "Death is here!"

From a few centuries into the new era of the Imperium, they have changed to "For the Throne! By the sword!"

Submitted November 20, 2019 at 08:02PM by VorpalAuroch https://ift.tt/2D22HeA