Against the Greater Good

Game Master Browman

Astartes power armour 1d10 ⇒ 9 Armor History: Bring Death from Afar: Borne into service amidst great sieges, this armour has become accustomed to the arduous duty of brandishing heavy weapons. Whether it is the continuous impacts that come with keeping a heavy bolter steadily firing on target, or the raw power required to withstand the ferocious effect of firing a plasma cannon, this armour never fails under stress. While wearing this armour, the wearer never suffers any penalties for moving and firing with a pistol- or basic-class weapon on semi- or fully automatic fire (see pages 239 and 242). Additionally, the wearer may count any heavy weapon he wields as a basic weapon for the purposes of moving and firing on semi- or fully-automatic fire., Astartes bolt pistol, 3 Astartes frag grenades, 3 Astartes krak grenades, Astartes combat knife, repair cement, one Chapter Trapping, Astartes chainsword, Astartes jump pack.

Skills: Awareness {Per}, Ciphers (Chapter Runes){Int}, Climb{S}, Common Lore (Adeptus Astartes, Deathwatch, Imperium, War){Int}, Concealment{Ag}, Dodge{Ag}, Drive (Ground Vehicles){Ag}, Forbidden Lore(Xenos) {Int}Intimidate{S}, Literacy {int}, Navigation (Surface) {Int}, Pilot (Personal) {Agi}, Scholastic Lore (Codex Astartes){Int}, Silent Move{Ag}, Speak Language (High Gothic, Low Gothic, Techna-Lingua){Int}, Tactics (Assault Tactics){int}, Tracking{int}
Basic Skills: Barter {Fel}, Carouse {T}, Charm {Fel}, Chipers {Int}, Command {Fel}, Contortionist {Ag}, Decieve {Fel}, Disguise {Fel}, Evaluate {Int}, Gamble {Int}, Inquiry {Fel}, Logic {Int}, Scrutiny{Per}, Search {Per}

Talents: Ambidextrous, Astartes Weapons training, Bulging Biceps, Deathwatch Training, Heightened Senses (Hearing, Sight), Nerves of Steel, Quick Draw, Resistance (Psychic Powers), Swift Attack, True Grit, Two-Weapon Wielder (melee), Unarmed Master

Special Ability: Wings of Angels

Traits: Unnatural Strength (x2), Unnatural Toughness (x2)

Squad/Solo Modes: [spoiler]Cohesion: 4
Solo Mode abilities (pg 216-217):
Righteous Zeal
Burst of Speed
Feat of Strength

Weapon Skill +5, Agility +5, Two Weapon Wielder (melee). 100 XP remaining, total XP 12000.

Power Armour attributes
Enhanced Strength
Auto-senses: Dark Sight, Heightened Senses (Sight, Hearing)(+10), called shot is a half action
Input filtering: Immune to photon flash and stun grenades
Osmotic Gill: While functioning produces infinite oxygen
Bio monitors & Injectors: +10 to resist toxic quality, 6 doses of pain suppressor which last 1d10 rounds each, can be stunned for a maximum of 1 round.
Vox link
Magnitized boots
Nutrient Recycling: Only take toughness tests for hunger once every 2 weeks.
Recoil Suppression: Can fire basic weapons 1 handed
Giant among men: Hulking, +1 movement, no bonus to hit due to hulking
Poor manual dexterity: -10 penalty for delicate tasks

Space Marine special rules
Lyman's ear: Heightened senses (Hearing)+10
Occulobe implants: Heightened sight (Hearing)+10
Larranman's Organ: Only suffer blood loss from warp weapons
Catalepsean Node: Does not suffer from sleep deprivation
Promnor: +20 to resist ingested poison
Omophaga: By eating a creature's brain can retrieve some of it's memories
Multi-lung: Reroll failed toughness tests for drowning or asphyxiation. +30 to resist gas. Can breath water
Sus-an Membrain: non-functional
Neuroglottis: May detect any poison or toxin by by taste with an awareness test, or by smell with a(-20) hard test
Mucranoid: May reroll failed toughness tests related to temperature.
Belcher's Gland: non-functional

Hektor began his life as just another peasant working the land on the backwater planet Corus. Tilling the earth and raising crops was all he knew, aside from the cultural teachings of honor, justice, personal strength, and belief in the God-Emperor. He had no idea he lived on a world cultivated and seeded by the Black Templars, a training and recruitment ground for new inductees into the Chapter.
As a youth, Hektor grew strong and tall, minding the rules of the community and always striving to be the best, no matter the task. Shortly before his 10th summer, the generational Selection Festival was announced, a regional tournament and competition to determine the best and brightest of the young men in the land. Naturally, Hektor attended, and there found himself constantly out-classed by older, stronger, more experienced boys. The only place where he excelled; the hand-to-hand fighting ring.

Lasting (and surviving) through the week-long Selection Festival was tough enough, but the final test seemed all-but-impossible to the young lad. 50 youths, ranging from 7 to 14, all stood near an elevated platform, 3 meters tall and 15 meters square. The task: ascend the wooden platform, and remain on top. The last one standing wins.

After a brutal week of similar challenges, Hektor had a plan. He ascended near the middle of the pack, climbing hand-over-hand and refraining from engaging anyone on the way up. Once on top, he warily scanned his adversaries; several larger boys began pairing off and forming groups, picking on the isolated smaller ones and beating them or throwing them off. Keeping mobile and constantly engaging then disengaging them, Hektor stayed on top until only 8 youths remained.

Somehow, he found himself surrounded, older and stronger boys closing in and ready to eliminate him. In the moment, he saw his opportunity to succeed, and took it. Instead of cowering or begging, as expected, Hektor launched a furious attack on the largest boy. Catching him by surprise, Hektor dropped him with blows to the knees and groin, allowing the fallen boy to create space against the remaining foes. Lightning quick, he moved from enemy to enemy, closing the distance and confounding their strikes. He took punches and kicks, naturally, but nothing enough to stop him.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, but likely was all of a minute, Hektor stood atop the platform, bloody, bruised, exhausted, and victorious. A huge, robed man took him that very day, inducting him into the beginning of a new life, that of a Black Templar.

The Black Templars operate on a very different paradigm than most of the other great chapters of Space Marines. Forgoing the traditional structures laid out by Guilliman in his Codex, their squads form more for mission-specific goals and priorities, rather than along dogmatically prescribed lines.

Hektor has been part of just such a "fighting company" for the past decade-and-a-half. Elevated from Neophyte to Initiate more than 25 years ago, Hektor has proved himself a capable warrior and savvy tactician, as well as a tireless hunter of the corrupted and dangerous; WitchSpawn. The company he has been attached to, the Point Trackers, have traveled wide and cooperated with such agencies as the Ordo Hereticus, the Silent Sisters, and the Administratum of individual worlds. With their strike cruise Speartip they have been used as a rapid-reaction force and infiltration team to track down and eliminate threats born from the warp.

Hektor himself trains constantly on his close quarters skills, honing his abilities with blade, fist, and pistol to a razor edge. He relishes his role as Assault Team Leader, charging in fast or dropping from above to tear out the heart of the enemy. The Marshal of the Fleet to which Speartip belongs has been watching his men, waiting for one or two to rise. Because of his skill and tenacity, Marshal Quintus recommended he be seconded to the Deathwatch for a time, expecting Hektor to return to the Crusade better experienced and ready to assume a leadership role.

Is that all there is? Will I be left alone, my brothers dead, picking at their corpses, the taste of my brothers oily blood in my mouth, looking unto war unending…

For the Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes, whose lives become extended over centuries, whose countless battles and conquests extend through and past the ages, whose lives as regular humans are expunged after being raised to the rank of a brother in the Astartes, time seems to dilate and become irrelevant. Years and centuries pass. Brothers fall and others are raised in their place, a constant waxing and waning of strength that so markedly categorizes the life of the Raptors chapter. The Raptors have faced more than their share of hardship in their time, having first lost too many when still a part of the Raven Guard chapter during the Horus Heresy and again after their fortress monastery was inadvertently destroyed during one of Abandon’s Black Crusades. Seemingly disappearing for two millennia and presumed dead, the Raptors returned in M39, restored in strength and again waging war against humanity’s enemies.

Decades grind away into centuries and in it Brother Serlar Vultur continues grimly in the determination to accomplish his duty to the Emperor and the Imperium. Vultur, who like the rest of his brothers had his memories of his past life long since washed away, recalls fondly his days as a recruit as if these were the years of his childhood. The Raptors’ doctrines of tactical malleability, stealth-work and espionage were ground early on into Vultur’s memories and, as expectant, hopeful and ambitious as he was at that age, Vultur made sure to embody his training and live up to the example of his forbearers. Brother Vultur, one of a legion of stealth experts, stood out for his quiet competence and taciturn mien. An excellent marksman and gifted in stealth work, Vultur eventually grew to a position of leadership as a sergeant in the Raptors 10th company. Sergeant Vultur became famous for his unyielding stare and his quiet voice that never before yelled or screamed in fury. Cold, calculating, yet strangely protective of his squadmates, Brother Vultur was recognized for his prowess and was soon enough promoted. His time finished as a neophyte, Vultur moved on through the ranks, gaining full status as a Space Marine and moving on to fight in battles unceasing.

Participating in more campaigns than he could count, Brother Vultur ground out more than a century diligently facing off against humanity’s enemies, yet, at the end of a particularly grueling and costly series of engagements, requested reassignment as a veteran sergeant training and working with the scouting elements of the 10th company. Though competent as all Astartes as a tactical marine, whose tactics too reflected much of the Raptors’ idiom, Serlar Vultur had preferred the silence of stealth-craft and missed the familiar feel of a needle sniper in his hands. But more than anything, beneath his competence with the work of the scouts, Vultur desired anything that could remind him of his time as a neophyte. Optimism, ambition, eagerness, those were the characteristics of his brothers in the 10th company, but with every engagement since his promotion the weight of his chapters pathologically grim acceptance of fate wore more and more the edges of his sanity. Vultur, above all, desired to see a purpose to endless war, to find once more the merits of heroism and an end to robotic war craft.

For more than three decades Vultur worked alongside the neophytes of the 10th company, teaching them, honing their skills. The recruits that served under him eventually gave him the nickname, “old ironface,” and although his face would never betray a lick of emotion, Brother Vultur felt the greatest amount of pride for his pupils. Many perished, for such was the way of war, and although each death brought to mind the great burden they all faced as Space Marines of the Raptors chapter, Vultur pressed on in the hopes that his guardianship might allow his neophytes the abilities to survive and thrive in the hostile galaxy at the tail-end of the 41st millennium.

That was until the ill-fated assault on the heretical forces of the Severan Dominate in the Spineward front of the Calixis Sector on the planet Aesop Primary. Dug in to a nigh-impregnable stronghold and sitting on a captured munitorum stockpile, the mission was considered a high priority. Elements of the Astra Militarum, along with several chapters of Astartes, including the Raptors chapter were sent in to liberate the Dominate stronghold. From the moment the Imperium’s combined forces began the assault, the fighting was intense. Bogged down, the fighting became a slog through blood-infested trenches and sickly hostile jungle. According to Raptors’ combat protocol, the 10th company was sent ahead of the main force to scout the immediate area and sabotage enemy armor battalions and defensive emplacements. Vultur’s squad was one such that was sent ahead on a mission to cause discord and interrupt supply lines deep into enemy territory.

Although more often than not regular power armor was rarely used on scouting missions, the fighting had become so intense and casualties were often high enough that veteran sergeants such as Brother Vultur were sent in using their full power armor instead of their scout-issue carapace. Vultur and his squad trekked through mile upon mile of pestilent jungle, resting nary a moment for, as reports told them, the Dominate forces were said to have hired xenos mercenaries, the excellent and stealthy Dark Eldar. Approaching their mission site, unwilling to compromise his squad’s cover with his overlarge armor, Vultur sent his squad to an overlooking hill, using himself as a distraction to draw out the enemy and open them up to a fusillade of fire from his waiting scouts. It was a maneuver they had performed many times before and would have been executed perfectly had the enemy already been waiting for an opportunity to strike.

Vultur entered into the camp and immediately began drawing the enemy into fierce combat when he heard over his vox-link the bloody cries of his squad butchered on the hill-top. Stuck in the midst of an enemy emplacement, armed only with bolt pistol and combat knife, and knowing too the fate of his beloved squad, Vultur seemed to lose all sense. He flew into a blind and maddened rage, massacring his way through the enemy towards the hill-top where he knew his squad was already lost. Blood clouded the air, raining droplets that flew into Vultur’s eyes and mouth, bathing him in it. Vultur reached the top of the rise, blood dripping off his armor, to find his squad butchered like animals, skewered into trees, bisected at the waist, heads piled on stakes. Unthinking, Vultur set off in pursuit of his brother’s killers, tracking through the jungle for days and presumed dead by chapter command. He found the Dark Eldar, a witch cult preening and cleaning their blades. Vultur had never relished killing, viewing war as a necessary duty and a means to an end, yet with uncalculated and barbarian fury, Vultur flew into his enemy with reckless abandon. He butchered the Dark Eldar just as they butchered his squad.

Drenched in blood, the same blood that still marks his armor to this day, Vultur made his way back to his chapter’s headquarters and was confined in a cell on the Astartes Battle Barge, “Death Among Us.” For weeks he sat there, unspeaking and unmoving, until a chaplain came to fetch him. The captain of the 10th company was not pleased by the loss of his entire squad, and was even more displeased by the failure of Vultur’s mission, yet, seeing the look in Vultur’s piercing eyes, now filled with a horrible anger, decided that as a form of punishment, Vultur would go on to serve a term with the Deathwatch. It was a course that perhaps saved Vultur from conducting himself in a penitent crusade against the Imperium’s enemies, alone, which would surely have been the death of him. Vultur has since calmed down, reverting back to his taciturn and analytical self, yet the blood on his armor still serves as a constant reminder to what he has lost, and what he yet may lose.

Acrobatics, Awareness, Ciphers (Chapter Runes), Climb, Command, Dodge, Common Lore (Adeptus Astartes, Deathwatch, Imperium, War), Concealment, Drive (Ground Vehicles), Forbidden Lore (Xenos), Intimidate, Literacy, Navigation (Surface), Scholastic Lore (Codex Astartes), Silent Move (+10), Speak Langauge (High Gothic, Low Gothic), Tactics (Recon and Stealth), Tracking,

Ambidextrous, Astartes Weapons Training, Bulging Biceps, Heightened Senses (Hearing, Sight), Killing Striek, Nerves of Steel, Quick Draw, Resistance (Psychic Powers), True Grit, Unarmed Master, Deathwatch Training

Astartes Bolter with fire selector, One Clip of Stalker Rounds,

Ceaser was born on the Hive world of Zevran 2, a despotic hellhole where the local nobility oppress the poor until the poor rise up in a wave to take their place. The violent and cyclical nature of the political upheavals makes it a perfect recruiting ground for the Blood Drinkers Chapter as they scour the planet for the cream of the crop of both sides. After all, if some children go missing during a rebellion who is going to notice? As long as the Planetary Governor keeps sending the tithe to the Guard, the sector doesn’t care.
Ceaser formed a gang of street kids called the Tiger Sharks after he ran away from the shack that passed as a home. For years he defended his territory from older kids, scions of the rich looking to make some trouble for the lower class, and the half-hearted attempts of the authorities. By the time he was 13 revolution had swept across the planet and the Tiger Sharks, even though they were not the largest gang, were ready to get the most out of the chaos.
For a month the Tiger Sharks were at the forefront of the fighting taking on the nobles and other gangs through ambushes and sheer ferocity. Eventually some of the noble defense forces cornered the Tiger Sharks in an abandoned factory that they had converted into their headquarters. For a week straight the Ceaser lead his gang in fending off the numerically superior and better equipped invaders. He did not sleep as he fired stolen autoguns or swung shock batons when the defense forces got too close. As the week dragged on though more Tiger Sharks were killed until only Ceaser was left. Filled with rage as his friends and comrades piled around him, Ceaser rushed into the enemy ranks for a suicide rush.
He slaughtered the twenty men left after the week of battle. As he started to bleed out from his wounds and death began to embrace him, a huge shadow passed over him. A Blood Drinker recruiter had watched the battle with interest and had decided to take the lone survivor for the chapter. When Ceaser awoke, he found himself thrust into the training of an aspirant. He threw himself into his new life and became a Space Marine.
He was assigned to the assault marines due to his predisposition to tearing into the enemy. For two decades he and his comrades were assigned to the most dangerous fights that his company were involved in until one afternoon on an agriworld being invaded by Orks. After his squad’s Sergeant was killed, Ceaser took control and forced his men farther into enemy lines. As the hours passed he realized that more and more of his men were lost until one other marine was left. They held against the green tide until the other marine was mortally wounded. Ceaser defended the marine until reinforcements arrived. However, the last marine bled out just before help could arrive. In the aftermath, his company felt that he could be leadership material but needed more experience. For that, they are sending him to serve in the Deathwatch.