User:Not LongPoster Again/Index Astartes Knights Inductor Mk. II

This is where my revision (recreation, really -- I'm not going to be keeping much from the original) of (my vision of) the Knights Inductor background is going to be assembled. It's going to come up here slowly, seeing as everything builds on the origin and that's been completely redone. Nope, not so slowly after all.

Origins

“The fires of purgation burn brightly, but they all too easily engulf those who set them. The present circumstances call for a different approach.” - Inquisitor Lord Jaeger Magruder, excerpt from speech to the High Lords of Terra advising the founding of the Knights Inductor.

The Knights Inductor were founded during the Nova Terra Interregnum, a time during which the Imperium was nearly split in half by civil war. While many worlds outright cast their lot with Nova Terra, a much larger fraction of the Imperium wavered, waiting to declare their loyalties when a clearer victor emerged. Some voices within the Imperial leadership called for some of these insufficiently loyal planets to be burned, to push the others into line, but cooler heads realized that destroying them would only cause the Imperium to lose legitimacy, driving other planets directly into rebellion. Inquisitor Lord Jaeger Magruder argued that to not only defeat the rebellion, but heal the Imperium, a balanced approach was required. The Imperium needed an entity that could engage recalcitrant rulers peacefully and openly, yet back their negotiations with force if the situation turned.

His initial vision was that a new Adeptus or Inquisitorial Ordo would be founded to handle these affairs, but to gain support from the High Lords of Terra, he entered pacts with several Adepti, modifying his plan to satisfy their leaders. The High Lords were not eager to hand more authority to the Inquisition, or to any Adeptus not their own, but a Space Marine Chapter would be suitably independent to pacify them. A Genetor Magos who had the ear of the Fabricator-General of Mars requested that she be allowed to select the gene-seed to be used for making the new Chapter. The deciding vote came from the Lord General Militant of the Imperial Guard, who extracted a promise that the new Chapter would be brought up to cooperate with the Imperial Guard chain of command, rather than operating according to their own whims. The name “Knights Inductor” was chosen because they would serve as an example and lead (induct in High Gothic) wayward planets back into the service of the Imperium...or lead the charge to put them to the sword if they were uncooperative.

Eventually, a distinguished Company Command Squad from a descendant of the Ultramarines was chosen to bring up the new Chapter in the ways of the Codex Astartes, and the Founding was complete.

Homeworld

“Citizens, your planet will be brought into compliance one way or another. If you will not comply, you will be destroyed, and this world will be resettled with more cooperative inhabitants. Your leaders have sealed their own fates; you may still choose to remain loyal to the Imperium.” - Excerpt, general address to planetary inhabitants prior to compliance action.

At first, the Knights Inductor were a fleet-based Chapter, the spearhead of a crusading fleet retaking the Imperium. They would identify worlds at risk of rebellion or wavering in loyalty, and lead two-pronged efforts to restore them: on one side, pursuing diplomatic and political solutions to resolve grievances and ensure balance, and on the other, identifying (or creating, in some cases) weaknesses to be exploited should diplomacy fail. Being fleet-based, they recruited from each world they visited, even those where they had to resort to force. In fact, many of their recruits from worlds which had to be forced back into line proved to have more valuable insights for improving their methods.

Eventually, the crusade fleet reached the Eastern Fringe, where the Astronomican's light pushes against the intergalactic calm in the Warp, setting up a great turbulence; in the yearly years of M40, the turbulence erupted into a full Warp Storm, enclosing the sector. The leaders of the fleet quickly fell into disagreement as to their next course of action, especially when some of the worlds in the Aprior sector proved reluctant to pledge loyalty to an Imperium which seemed to be cut off from them. The Knights (supported by most of the Guard and Navy, and some of the Ecclesiarchy, Adepta Sororitas, and Inquisition attached to the fleet) argued that their reluctance was entirely justified, given the relative absence of the Imperium in this part of space, and that it was up to the fleet to show them that joining the Imperium was in their best interests. However, the Cardinal Astral (and the majority of the Ecclesiarchy and Adepta Sororitas, and the ships of the fleet which hosted them) argued that the sector's struggles were punishment for their lack of faith, and that the fleet was to exact the Emperor's final judgment upon the disloyal worlds. Debate and compromise broke down, and matters came to a head when the Cardinal Astral caused a purge of the ships which mostly hosted those loyal to him and fled the fleet. It is rumored among the Inquisition that the Chapter Master of the Knights Inductor and other leaders of the fleet allowed the schism to occur so that the conflict could be brought into the open and settled definitively; the Knights presently argue that the records used to justify this rumor do not indicate advance knowledge of such a split, but rather acknowledgment after the fact that it was inevitable.

The Cardinal's faction fell back to the world of Dvi-Marion to be their first example; it had minimal orbital defenses, and so had acquiesced to the crusade fleet's demands when they first entered the Sector, but was deemed to not be sufficiently faithful. The Cardinal's fleet immediately seized control of Dvi-Marion, burning the city of Dalton to “encourage” the rest, and set about converting it to their image and service. Meanwhile, the Knights' part of the fleet divided itself among the systems surrounding Marion, establishing a cordon. The Cardinal chose to mass his fleet and force a breach at Norion (the system which lay closest to the border of the Sector, so as to be in the best position to request and receive reinforcements when the storm abated), inflicting grim losses on its defenders, but the Knights' faction could not consolidate there without leaving greater gaps elsewhere in the cordon. Instead, the Knights appealed to the other worlds of the Sector. The citizens of the Sector saw clearly who was fighting to defend them and who to burn them, and swiftly declared their loyalty to the Knights. They raised what navies and militias they could, some going directly to Norion and others to the other cordon systems to free up the crusade fleet, and the Cardinal's fleet was overpowered and repulsed.

Returning to the Marion system, the preachers and Sororitas who supported the Knights attempted to persuade their brothers and sisters to lay down arms and surrender, but the Cardinal and his fleet refused, and so their ships were all destroyed and their fortress-cathedral burned from orbit. The Canoness of the Sisters who had sided with the Knights, now Canoness Perceptor by default, decreed that the surviving Sisters would rename themselves the Order of the Guarding Light, rebuild Dvi-Marion as penance, and not engage in an active Crusade until the rebuilding was done. The Knights' faction had unquestionably won the day, and they would go on to improve the rest of the Sector.

Because the worlds of the Aprior Sector specifically pledged their support to the Knights Inductor (as opposed to the Imperium as a whole – and understandably so, given the confusion at the time of which faction had overall Imperial authority), the Knights could arguably claim the entire Sector as their “homeworld”, exempting it from Imperial tithes and placing it under their direct authority. In practice, the worlds outside of the Aprior Subsector are left alone and unclaimed, so long as they meet certain standards. For Civilized Worlds, for example, these include regular screening of citizens for genetic mutation, and extensive public education programs and civil defense training, to ensure that all Apriori citizens can contribute to their worlds' defensive efforts.

Today, the Knights Inductor use these programs to identify children who are compatible with their gene-seed and have the potential for combat aptitude (based on performance in various public service and education programs). On Civilized Worlds (as opposed to Feral or Death Worlds), there is not an easy way to identify which of these children are truly Space Marine material without actually putting them through training, so the Knights, Guard, Navy, and Sector Defense Forces simply train them all: when flagged children reach age twelve, their parents are contacted and offered the opportunity to allow their child to go through training. There is no penalty for refusal, but having a child in the Knights Inductor is a high honor, and those who do not become Knights are often well-placed to join the Chapter Staff, the Guard, Navy, or Mechanicus, or almost any other technical or military career field, so most parents accept.

Beliefs

“Let us admit to our own errors, that we may refine our ways.” - Excerpt, Knights Inductor invocation

Like most Space Marine Chapters, the Knights Inductor do not worship the Emperor as a god, but as a man, and even then, although they believe that he is powerful, worthy of admiration, and in many ways the best that mankind has to offer, they believe (though they would say that it is not so much “belief” as awareness) that he is not perfect. They are scrupulously careful to avoid blind devotion, so as to avoid the risk of being blinded to their own imperfections. A significant part of the Chaplains' sessions with the Space Marines is spent in reflection, to recognize and learn from their failures and shortcomings and improve going forward. Seldom are Knights punished for failing to achieve objectives – so long as they do not repeat their mistakes.

The Knights Inductor's practice of recruiting from the worlds they pacify has given them a personal understanding of and respect for the diversity present in the Imperium, not to mention several millennia of experience in forging a viable alliance out of many disparate members. They believe, from personal experience, that every Imperial world and citizen is able to contribute to the Imperium and worth protecting, and that protecting the Imperium, rather than seeking and destroying the Imperium's enemies, is their primary purpose.

Some Inquisitors have been alarmed by reports of Knights claiming to fight “For the Imperium” rather than the Emperor; the Chapter leadership insists that any such cases are, if true, of no significance other than as a semantic quibble.

Combat Doctrine

“TBD.” - Captain Roland Darren, Third Company??

Knights Inductor gene-seed makes them steadier but not as quick, relative to other Space Marine Chapters, and they use tactics to play to their strengths. Rather than making high-visibility close-quarters assaults, they use camouflage and more exotic stealth techniques to mask their deployments and strike from long range, usually with heavy mechanization thanks to the Aprior Sector's thriving industrial base. The Knights Inductor amplify this advantage through advanced electronic and psychological warfare, tricking enemies into reacting to forces which aren't really there, or even surrendering in the face of apparently overwhelming opposition. Then, while the enemy is jumping at shadows, they employ surgically-precise strikes to eliminate enemy leadership or destroy enemy linchpins.

The most peculiar “combat doctrines” of the Knights Inductor have to do with their preference to limit or even avoid combat if it is reasonable to do so; they have found that a nonviolent resolution is preferable to a bloody war, and that, by not exterminating the enemy, prisoners taken can supply information and be used as bargaining chips, or even defect entirely. They may also leave a detachment behind after major combat operations are complete to help build a stable situation, rather than perpetuating needless and wasteful conflict. These practices have earned the Knights Inductor the moniker of “Reasonable Marines” among Imperial citizens.

Sometimes, this involves tolerating or cooperating with people (human or otherwise) whom more puritanical chapters would have exterminated; the Knights Inductor (and Apriori) are not picky about their allies, so long as they behave. When the encroaching Tyranids and Necrons calmed the Warp storms surrounding the Aprior Sector, Inquisitor Rightina Immam was sent to identify any deviations which had developed over the thirteen hundred years of isolation, and she was alarmed to find such tolerance; she immediately called an Inquisitorial council to examine the Knights and judge them (see An Investigation into the Heresy of the Reasonable Marines).

Radical Inquisitors, exemplified by Johannes Krieger of the Ordo Hereticus, advocated cautious acceptance of the Knights Inductor. Krieger acknowledged their deviations, but argued that their experience made them useful to have in the Imperium, and that their Warp-resistance and, in extreme cases, Warp-nullifying effect is especially valuable to the Inquisition. As a Recongregator, he also suggested to his like-minded colleagues that some “deviations” might be put to good use in the Imperium, such the Apriori genetic screening and public education policies. On the other hand, the more Puritanical Inquisitors, led by staunch Monodominant Inquisitor Lord Avius Damnos, claimed that no utility can justify the degree of Apriori deviation. He and his colleagues in the Ordo Malleus tried to rouse the Imperium in a Crusade against the Aprior Sector.

The Radicals gained the upper hand, if only through bureaucratic inertia: the Aprior Sector did not appear to be threatening enough to expend the effort to initiate a Crusade and the costs of eliminating an experienced and firmly-entrenched foe, especially when more immediate threats are always all around, though Inquisitor Rightina was re-dispatched to monitor the Aprior Sector as a concession to the Puritans.

Teron I

Captain Darren has earned the honorific “Master of the Deal” for his successes in defusing conflicts without bloodshed; the “Non-War of Teron I” is one of his more famous accomplishments. When a Tau strike force claimed to own the Imperial world of Teron I, the local Imperial Guard Regiments were provoked to mobilize, which would invite a weightier response from the Tau Empire, and could only escalate from there. A long meat-grinder war was in the making, but cooler heads within the Administratum realized that the regiments were needed to fight the Tyranids, and that driving out the Tau would leave them dangerously under-strength for such a deployment. Fortunately, Darren's Battle Barge was in the vicinity, and the Administratum asked him to handle the situation.

Rather than preemptively striking the Tau, as the IG force commander suggested, Darren established a defensive perimeter against a sudden Tau attack, and used some technological trickery to give the appearance of having many more Marines deployed than he actually had on hand. When he engaged the Tau diplomatically, he was able to convince them that the resources required to take the world by force would be better spent colonizing non-Imperial worlds, playing on the fact that the Tau desired expansion more than bloodshed.

In the debriefing session thereafter, Darren was asked what he would have done had he not convinced the Tau to leave without a fight. For his answer, Darren gave a battle-sign, and three Terminators deactivated cloaking devices, appearing as if from thin air, while the remainder of their squad teleported in beside them. After the flustered leadership calmed down, Darren assured them that he was “well prepared for a hostile reception.”

Organization

“There is no specific regulation to the number of Marines in a chapter.” - Sergeant Aeron Sacres, Fourth Squad, Fifth Company

For the most part, the Knights Inductor operate under the Codex Astartes, but in the millennia since their founding, they have diverged slightly to adapt to changing circumstances.

In order to be flexible, the Knights tend to separate their forces. It is very rare for a whole Company to fight together; they frequently fight as individual Squads, in fairly separated battles -- on many occasions, a Company has found itself split across multiple fronts of warfare. Because of quirks in their gene-seed (see below), Knights Inductor require more time to train Aspirants than most chapters, and so losses are more difficult to replace. To ensure that each detachment has enough Marines to fight effectively, and minimize the risk of losing entire Squads, the Knights gradually increased their standard squad size from ten to its present (and likely final) value of twenty-four. A squad of this size can divide itself into two, three, or even four combat squads depending on the tactical needs of a particular mission; thus, even a squad that finds itself alone can instantly become a four-fold threat. This organizational change has the additional effect of allowing the Knights to increase their numbers without technically violating the Codex Astartes, though this was not their original intent.

The Third Company takes this division to the extreme, dispersing individual squads (sometimes with support from the Chapter Armory and Reserve Companies) to seek Imperial forces in need of Astartes assistance. While lending their support, the squads gather intelligence on the tactics and technology of their allies and enemies; often, they will be supported in these efforts by a Techmarine or Librarian. After the conclusion of the campaign, the squad returns home with an impressive record of victory, battle experience, and information to be shared among and dissected by their battle-brothers. This practice is highly regarded as the biggest source of combat information for the greater Chapter and may even be adopted by one of the Tactical Reserve Companies to increase the intake of knowledge and provide more advanced training opportunities for new Knights.

The First Company is entirely composed of Veterans, but not all of the Knights' Veterans are immediately moved there. When they are at full strength, the Knights prefer to retain enough Veterans in the Battle and Reserve Companies so that combat squad A of each squad can be composed entirely of Veterans. When Battle Companies are deployed, they may be lent a number of Terminator suits from the First Company, leading to unpleasant surprises for foes accustomed to fighting Chapters which adhere more closely to the Codex Astartes.

Joint Force Operations

As one of the concessions made to ensure the creation of the Knights Inductor, it was agreed that Aspirants would spend some of their training time alongside Imperial Guard regiments of the worlds that hosted them. It was hoped that this would reduce the friction that often resulted when Imperial Guard and Space Marines were deployed to the same conflict – tales abound of Marines ignoring operational plans to pursue their own inscrutable goals, and then leaving the planet when their true mission is complete, regardless of the state of the wider conflict. The program worked, and the Knights extended it further to include other Imperial armed forces in occasional joint exercises. When they settled in the Aprior Sector, they formalized this joint training along with the Sector's Guard and Navy training programs, and eventually the Order of the Guiding Light came to join them as well.

While combined forces are occasionally dispatched from the Sector, consisting of Apriori Navy, Guard, and a squad or two of Knights, the three services usually do not have the luxury of synchronizing their deployments to support such actions. That only tends to happen when large forces are mobilized to high-priority conflict zones, like the Damocles Gulf Campaign. More often (and before settling in the Aprior Sector, always), the Knights have to integrate themselves into whatever command structure is already in place around a planet in conflict. There is a trade-off between speed and integration – on the way towards a planet, the Knights can use the limited (and possibly outdated) conflict summaries try to guess where they will be most effective and deploy as soon as they arrive, leaving the greetings and information-sharing to their Chapter Staff, or they can approach the command staff directly, study operation details and battlefield dispositions, and then deploy. Their experience with such matters has honed their instincts as to which approach is correct for each mission, but they do not always guess correctly, occasionally resulting in deployments to zones with less Imperial support than they had expected. This is part of the reason that they have taken to increasing their squad sizes.

Under the Codex Astartes, Space Marines are forbidden from having authority over any not of their Chapter, so overall operational command almost always lies with the Lord General overseeing a planetary conflict (though it is a foolish General indeed who does not heed the advice of a Space Marine). Occasionally, a squad has deployed into broken Guard platoons and taken command for the duration of the journey to the objective (or the retreat to Imperial lines), where their joint training has served them well. Such endeavors are usually unplanned, but not always, and the facility with which the Knights take command of Guardsmen has left some Inquisitors uncomfortably reminded of the traitorous Astral Claws.

Gene-seed

“Stability from previous tithe: 99.5%. Ultramarines commonality: 95%. Dark Angels commonality: 90%. 4% of sequences remain no match to any known chapter.” - Excerpt, Magos Biologis report monitoring Knights Inductor gene-seed variance

Officially, the Knights Inductor are descendents of the Ultramarines, but if this is so, then their gene-seed was heavily modified before the Chapter's founding, most likely without the Ultramarines' knowledge or permission (probably by the Magos who made a bargain with Inquisitor Magruder). From the outset, it seemed to have a peculiar deadening effect on their psychic presences, reducing the likelihood that they could be scried or manipulated and giving them increased resilience against enemy psykers' powers. On the other hand, their own Librarians were markedly less powerful than their counterparts in other Chapters; many of them found that abilities they could use with ease before being implanted now gave them great difficulty. Eventually, the chapter resolved that those with psychic potential among their recruits would not be implanted with the full set of gene-seed; through experimentation, they determined that it is the organs that affect the brain, as well as the Black Carapace, that interfere the most, and so the chapter Librarians do not wear the true power armor that their battle-brothers do.

By a stroke of fortune, one class of Aspirants included a psychic blank, and after being implanted with gene-seed, the strength of his “null field” was enhanced dramatically, and he gained the ability to manipulate its shape to some degree. He became the first of what the Knights eventually called “Silencers”. While blanks are much rarer than psykers, the Knights place a high priority on finding and training them, so that they may have psychic warfare specialists who can wear full suits of armor and take to the front lines of battle. Even blanks too old to be made into Marines are offered sanctuary by the Knights, so that they may bear children who are blanks without the risk of their off-putting auras inspiring others to cause them harm. The Order of the Guarding Light has also taken to recruiting women who are blanks, after finding fragmentary records of a silent sisterhood of anti-psychic warriors around the time of the Great Crusade.

While the Knights' increased resilience against the Warp endears them to the Deathwatch, it comes at a cost: training can take years longer as Neophytes are less susceptible to hypno-indoctrination, and a Knight's reaction time is between 10 and 15 percent longer than that of the average Space Marine.

There is a persistent rumor that the Knights Inductor are actually descended from Dark Angels gene-seed, created to spite the Dark Angels by making a successor that could not be brought up in the Inner Circle. The Dark Angels appear to take no more interest in the Knights than they do in any other Chapter besides their descendents, which leads some to believe that the rumor is itself a ruse to slander the Dark Angels and their practice of secrecy.

Null Knights

The mutations in the Knights Inductor gene-seed make them resistant to Chaotic corruption, but have left them open to other fates. It seems that the Necrons have taken the same interest in blanks that the Knights have, and when they meet on the battlefield, the Necrons do not fight to exterminate, as they usually do, but to capture. Over the years, some three dozen Knights Inductor have been captured, augmented with Necron technology, and conditioned to see all life as essentially chaotic; they now serve the Necrons, reborn as Null Knights.

These Null Knights have caused much grief to the Knights Inductor, as they superficially appear to be Knights in a remarkable likeness and wreak havoc where they tread. Elements of 6th Company are tasked with tracking down and eliminating their cursed Necron counter-parts. However the galaxy is vast and clues to the Null Knights' whereabouts scarce, and over the millennia only approximately a third of the Null Knights have been successfully eliminated. An early attempt at containment and rehabilitation of a Null Knight proved to be unfeasible, to the cost of two whole Tactical squads of the 6th Company.

Each encounter with the Null Knights is seemingly always marked with gruesome violence upon the discovery of one. They are invariably found in high positions of power, having achieved their status through intimidation and manipulation. The cost of apprehending a discovered Null Knight is depressingly high, but the costs of leaving them unchallenged are much, much higher. Upon discovery, a Null Knight will not attempt to flee until it has done maximum damage to the subsector or planet it is in, even if doing so increases its chances of being destroyed. It is not known why they do this, though amongst the 6th Company hunters it is attributed to the Null Knight's programming that causes them to inflict massive chaos.

Battle-Cry

“Ex Tenebras, Lux” (“From Darkness, Light”)

Some (especially leaders of Guard units working with the Knights) are known to render the battle cry in Low Gothic as “Light 'em up!”