Knights Inductor (Rewrite)

In older times, the 21st founding created a great number of flawed chapters. In one such attempt at creating a superior chapter that would fight against chaos, The Adeptus Mechanicus took a mixture of the gene seed of Imperial Fists, and Ultramarines to create the Codex_-_Knights Inductor. These marines were corrupted and twisted in spirit by the mysterious introduction of the Null Gene, which brought up far greater than normal death rates in initiates.

These newly created marines were sent on a single ship to the Halo Stars, and abandoned to history alongside most of the other Cursed Founding Chapters. Many years later they returned broken, but not defeated by warp storms into what is now known as the Aprior System. These are the tales of those with souls of steel, otherwise called the Reasonable Marines.

• Author's Note: This is the COMPLETE rewriting page for the Knights Inductor. There will be absolutely no copying of any of the old fluff what-so-ever for anything below this note. For the time being, let's pretend now that the "Return of the Reasonable Marines" story never existed, and all of it's fanfictions were never written. We now have only a Codex: Knights Inductor, that explains how the chapter works, and what they do on the tabletop. Below this note, shall be only the fluff of why they are here now, and why they are fighting whoever is the unlucky sod sitting 24" away from them across no-mans-land.Evilexecutive (talk) 20:12, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Anything resembling the old fluff will be Mercilessly removed. Anything that paints them as Mary Sues will be mercilessly removed. As writers, it is our job to fit the Codex: Knights Inductor into a grimdark world, filled with misery and war. And Remember, write in SUPPORT OF THE CODEX, not the other way around!Evilexecutive (talk) 20:12, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Chapter Generation

• Basic Info

  - 21st Founding

• - Mixed founding from Ultramarines and Imperial Fists: This forms the basis of their Gene-stock, from which modifications were made as part of the 21st founding. While it is notable that as Successors of the Imperial Fists; they could claim their right to recruit from Tera, in practice this is completely impossible. A combination of their tech heresy, and the position of Aprior being a full 50 Years Journey by the warp to Tera, means that they're pretty much on their own in the ass-end of the universe.

• - Loyal to the Emperor Himself, Best interests of Mankind: As usual for nearly all space marine legions. The Knights Inductor; like the Inquisition, answers only to the Emperor Himself. In practice however, the Inquisition is permitted to requisition squads, or in extreme cases entire companies of Knights Inductor for their purposes. In addition to this, like most Loyalist Space Marines, the Knights Inductor tend to serve the Best Interests of Mankind, usually by actively seeking out and destroying threats to humanity.

It is noteworthy that in all cases where the inquisition requests the use of Knights, Zakis Randi has given them every single request; no matter how upsurd, without complaint. He knows of his chapter's status as Tech Heretics, and does everything in his power to maintain decent ties with the Inquisition and Deathwatch. Historically, this has even lost the Knights the use of nearly half of all Silencers ever recruited, when inquisitors requested their use for what was actually suicide missions, too dangerous even for a Culexus assassin.

• - System Based Chapter, all planets in Aprior are categorized as Tithe Astartes

• - Believes the Emperor to be a great role model: Space marines; unlike lowly guardsmen, are given great leeway in their beliefs in the Emperor. In the case of the Knights Inductor, they do not outright worship him, choosing instead to believe in the God Emperor as a role model, to which all Knights must strive for.

• - Questionable Loyalty(Outright Tech Heresy): While the Knights Inductor do serve the Emperor Himself, like nearly all loyalist chapters. They are openly known as Tech Heretics, and as such are often found warring with groups that disagree with them. It is questionable as to whether or not the Knights would be willing to put aside their tech heresy for the good of the Imperium, and as such their loyalty is in question.

• - Knight Themed

• - Absolute hatred of Chaos

• - Semi-Codex Compliant: The Knights Inductor favor fire-teams of between 6 and 12 marines, whereby 5 marines carry standard bolters, and the 6th brings either a special weapon, or a heavy weapon. Outside of battles, the chapter remains organized into 10 companies of 100 marines each, as stated in the Codex Astartes.

6th Company, Silent Hands: The 6th Company of the Knights Inductor is entirely unique in it's purpose. Rather than maintain an organization of standard marines, this company is formed exclusively of specialized Sternguard Veterans called "The Silent Hands". These marines are led by Captain Xavion, and they specialize exclusively in strategic action; taking the lives of enemy commanders after long stealth deployments. Outside of battle, it is their duty to hunt down and terminate all of their brothers that have fallen against Necrons, lest the necrons steal away their brothers to create abominations known to Aprior as the Null Knights. This is also the only company besides the 10th that maintains Scout Marines within it's ranks

• - Numbers(As of M40:989), 500 Marines. The Chapter lost a great many marines due to warp storms and travel, but have recovered somewhat over the years. Considerable losses to combat with the Black Templars and Eldar have further reduced their numbers to the current amount as of the latest date.

• Flaws:

  - Will often make great sacrifices of the chapter to protect civilians: This can often be seen as the Knights might abandon a significant strategic position, in order to move their forces in to protect a civilian center. Or refusing to use Orbital Bombardments whenever innocents are nearby, even if doing so would stop an attack on them immediately. They simply will not sacrifice their civilians for any reason.

• - Tech Heresy: As a direct result of their lack of contact with, and lack of ties with the Mechanicus, the Knights Inductor were forced to turn to innovation for solving some of their more critical problems. This unfortunately has been seen as outright Tech Heresy by the Mechanicus, and has permanently soiled any and all chance for the Knights to obtain the technology that was regained in their absence from realspace. Now the Mechanicus sees them as a direct threat to mankind. The Inquisition and it's more radical elements tends to ignore the Knights for this; given their inherent usefulness to Deathwatch, but most of them cannot stand to fight alongside the knights for it as well.

• - No Augmented Psykers (All Psykers use the Base-Human Statline): The "Null Gene" is extremely lethal to individuals with even the slightest psychic ability. Humans with a psychic potential as low as even 0.01 will find that implanting the Null Gene in them causes a fatal alergic reaction, resulting in permanent brain death within minutes. As a result of this, Knights will train ordinary human psykers to extremely rigorous standards, and whichever ones survive will be permitted to wear a stripped down form of power armor. It is also notable that because of this, the Null Gene similarly has a massively increased fatality rate over other gene-seeds. Often-times, humans with such a low psychic potential go undetected until it is too late for the knights, at which it is discovered simply because of the ensuing reaction.

• - No Grav-Weaponry: As a chapter that has been inactive for a great length of time, the Knights Inductor do not possess some of the more recently acquired STCs in widespread use. As of M40:989, the Knights have been unable to acquire the technology from the Mechanicus(Who are in turn quite weary of the Knights). For similar reasons, the Knights Inductor also do not posess Stormtalons, or Stormravens.

• - No Vanguard Veterans: Extended conflicts with the Black Templars over accusations of Tech Heresy has resulted in the Knights losing the life of every Vanguard Veteran in the chapter. When the time came for Zakas Randi to commission more Vanguard Veterans, he put down a decision that no more would be made, in favor of training their veterans more extensively in ranged and strategic warfare. For nearly 100 years, the Chapter's Vanguard has remained completely empty out of a need for more strategic purposes in their veterans.

• Unique Aspects

  Cult of Innovation

  Silent Hands

  Silencers

• Chapter Tactics

  The Unseen: Shooting from cover causes pinning, preferred enemy against fearless models.

  Empyrean Anathema(+2 Points per model). All Knights are corrupted with the Null Gene. In great numbers, their collective null aura can produce negative warp charges, referred to as 'Null Charges'. These Null Charges can be used to deny powers, or power Silencer powers.

Aprior System

The Aprior System is the current home for the Knights Inductor, and consists of a warm star orbited by 11 planets, two of which exist in it's habitable zone, while a third dwarf-planet orbits just outside of the habitable zone. The system contains exactly four Gravity Pauses: areas where warp travel to and from can be considered 'Marginally safe'(by the Imperiums terms). One travels in the direction of Craftworld Llyanden, one to the Halo Stars, and two more point directly towards the Galaxy Center.

Aprior exists within 80 Light Years of the Tau Empire, and roughly 700 Light Years from Craftworld Llyanden. By Warp Travel, this equates to a 2 month journey to the Tau Empire, and a 20 Month Journey to Llyanden. The Halo Stars on the Galaxy's edge are approximately 55 Light Years away, making Aprior a prime spot for Mechanicus Explorator Fleets, as well as Rogue Traders to stop and refuel on their journeys to uncharted space.

• Aprior Primus

The First of Aprior's habitable planets is a lush agricultural world, with most of it's citizens living in Rural Cities in a ring surrounding the planet's primary Space-port. This world produces only a tiny number of Knights Inductor candidates due to its status as a Agri-world. Those that are tithed usually come from the townships existing on the polar regions where life is harsh, and Orks are a common threat.

• Aprior Secundus

Aprior Secundus is a Hive World, by imperial standards. Most of the system's government exists here, where it is ruled by a Bipartisan Parliament, one side of which consists of humans, while the other contains seats for the Knights Inductor Council. The Knights maintain the absolute ability to administer laws and veto decisions for the human half of the parliament, but in practice this is done only on exceedingly rare occasions. In exchange for this arrangement and an expectation of non-interference on daily business, the Knights maintain the right to take any individuals they wish from the planet's population, as well as the right to claim all psychic nulls born on the planet from the moment of their birth.

Most of the Lords of Aprior Secundus generally accept this arrangement, as it means they do not have to bother themselves with Tithing bodies, equipment, or food to the Imperium. So long as the Knights Inductor remain active, they need only submit to the infrequent demands of the Astartes.

Developed Technology

The Knights Inductor make use of a wide variety of unique technologies to assist them on the field of battle. However, each individual advancement is the result of much struggle and hardship. Massive amounts of time and resources have been spent in the development of each innovation, with many failures. Frequently, each piece was only developed after a suitably massive struggle that mandated the creation of a unique technology to fill some gap in the Knight's forces that was exploited by the foe.

• Astartes Anti Material Rifle/Array (AAMR/A) -The Astartes Anti Material Rifle is a weapon favoured by the Scouts and Sternguard Veterans within the Knights Inductor Ranks, as well as some leaders. It is a massive weapon, easily the size of a missile launcher and launching rounds not entirely dissimilar in calibre. It is capable of killing a marine from a considerable distance, designed to penetrate power armour and kill important, tough, targets in a single round.

Why It Was Developed -The project to construct a weapon heavy enough to kill traitor marines efficiently at long range while being light enough that multiple marines would take one in a squad was mandated post the battle of Axiom 2. The Knights, shortly after the disaster of the Warp Technology Workshop, were mopping up renegade Chaos cultists corrupted by the warp field when the cultists succeeded in summoning a Chaos Sorcerer Lord through an extended ritual. The marine then proceeded to open a portal to the Empyrean and flood the planet with more and more Chaos Marines. At the time, the Knights Inductor primarily relied upon the use of Plasma guns to deal with Marines. However, these weapons lacked the range to hit the sorcerer and heavier weapons could not acquire the precision needed to take him out over the horde of marines. The Chaos incursion rampaged over the planet, razing two cities to the ground right over the guard before a Desperate action by Xavion and the 6th Company led a stealth team into the Chaotic Ranks to eliminate the sorcerer. They succeeded at a 70% casualty rate. And for a marine, that means dead. Of the 12 veterans and Xavion that went in, 4 marines and Xavion came back out, the other 8 gene seeds lost forever to chaos.

History of Development -Post the battle, research commenced into the development of a weapon that could have eliminated the sorcerer from a distance before the incursion got out of hand and stopped the problem at its core. Two primary paths appeared to the researchers - to modify a sniper rifle to launch special rounds, or to develop a smaller kind of missile launcher with lower calibre rounds, much like the Eldar Dark Reaper missiles. Initially, the sniper path was frustrated while the missile path looked promising. By simply scaling down the missile launcher and shrinking a krak missile's warhead, the missile team quickly developed the type of missile that would be required for the job. The Sniper team had encountered a difficulty in scaling up the existing sniper rifle in that the barrel was being torn up by friction due to the size of the slug fired. Shortly after this, the Missile team also encountered problems as their base platform, the missile tube, lacked the capacity to direct the missiles to the degree of precision that the project demanded. They could get the missile on track within a roughly 2m radius of the target, but no better. Field Testing of the prototype missile launcher was a mistake, as the inaccuracy of the missile quickly proved to be a fatal flaw and the prototype launcher was captured by the very Orks who had been targeted for the test. The two teams had been at each others throats since the beginning of the project, each insisting that their method was the correct way. This stalemate continued for over 5 years, with each team too stubborn to admit their design was flawed. It took the direct intervention of Tech Maestro Gajet to knock their metal skulls together and get them to blend the design. By incorporating the small scale missile and loading features into an even larger sniper rifle of the same kind as the first team had originally envisioned, the AAMR was born, firing the small rocket, larger than a bolt shell but smaller than a krak missile, with sniper rifle accuracy. The AAMR took the field for the first time shortly after that, quickly finding favour with the Scouts and Sternguard veterans as an excellent way of dealing with targets normally too heavily armoured to be easily dispatched. The AAMA was a simple step in logic from there, by fitting a rotary gun array of the same system as the AAMR together, the rate of fire could be increased significantly, although at the cost of sniper accuracy.

• Null Weaponry
• Autosenses modifications
• Plasma Weaponry
• Bolt Ammunition
• Guardian shield
• Marauder Armour
• Trooper Armour
• Shock Weapons
• Valkyrie Repressor/Avenger
• Grav Manipulation technology
• Hitori Pattern Armoured Landspeeder
• Predator Avalon
• Maxima Pattern Marauder Warsuit
• Anti Air Marker