Marines Errant

Marines Errant
Founding	23rd Founding
Successors of	Eagle Warriors
Chapter Master	Anton Narvaez
Primarch	Roboute Guilliman
Homeworld	Fleet-Based
Strength	Fucked
Specialty	Ship-to-ship boarding actions
Allegiance	Imperium of Man
Colours	Blue & White Halved

Someone at GW noticed after about 20 years of playing space marines, that virtually no chapter was specialised in actual boarding operations, one of the major duties of a real life marine. Thus, the Marines Errant fill that gap quite nicely and have a quite interesting storyline.

History

Decreed at their founding to ‘forever quest and give battle, knowing no home but the grace of the Emperor’s mercy’, the Marines Errant are a fleet based Chapter whose skills in boarding actions and rapid deployment from orbiting void craft are justly celebrated. Their close links to the Rogue Trader family of Ecale have only bolstered their expertise in the field of void warfare, and have no doubt helped to keep the vast fleet maintained by the Chapter space-worthy and the terror of the Emperor’s foes. After a secret agreement between the Chapter and the Rogue Trader House in M38, Battle-Brothers can be found operating on all of House Ecale's vessels, no doubt an arrangement that benefits the Rogue Trader immensely, though what the Chapter gets out of it is yet unknown, perhaps a debt remains to be paid?

From the very beginning, the intent of the Marines Errant was that they would engage in endless crusades, cleansing the cosmos of the filth that might offend the Emperor's nose. Because of this, the Chapter designed its organisational scheme around independent companies. During its existence, the Marines Errant Chapter has never established a formal fortress monastery nor has it designated a specific homeworld. Though it did settle the world of Vilamus to leave themselves a storage facility for precious gene-seed, rather than carrying it with them on the fleets where it could be destroyed or lost.

As with other chapters from the Sentinel Founding, the Marines Errant are crusading chapter beyond the territories of the Imperium and thus rarely returns to Imperial space to raise recruits, the Chapter collects it's initiates in the field from remote worlds that have had little to no contact with the Imperium at all, and the fledgling Neophyte will have to learn just as much about the Imperium as they have to absorb the training and battle rites.

The Badab War & Huron Blackheart

In 904.M41 the Marines Errant was summoned to the Badab sector to support the Fire Hawks as part of a policing action against the upstart Astral Claws chapter. Despite committing five companies to the action, the hot-headed nature of the Fire Hawks draws the Marines Errant deeper into the conflict, causing the chapter to steadily take severe damage before the Badab War ignites fully.

Over the course of the war, much of the Marines Errant fleet was damaged or destroyed and their senior officers were slain by the Mantis Warriors, eventually forcing the chapter to retire in 906.M41. In the aftermath of the war, the highest ranking officer remaining was Lieutenant-Commander Anton Narvaez who then had to take the position of Chapter Master.

Much later, as they were recovering from their losses in the Badab War, Huron Blackheart and his Red Corsairs struck a deal with the Night Lords to raid the gene-seed repository on Vilamus. Despite the Night Lords taking the opportunity to betray Huron and steal one of this starships during the battle, this scenario obviously did not go well for the Marines Errant, who were already hurting from their losses in the previous war and with the loss of their gene-seed has caused them to enter the slow decline towards extinction.

Special Characters

The aforementioned Anton Narvaez is represented in Imperial Armour during his period as Lieutenant-Commander of the Strike Cruiser Star Jackal. It was due to the fact that his vessel had been damaged in a previous battle that caused it's delayed arrival at the battle of Bellerophon's Fall, where the rest of the chapter's officers were slain by the Mantis Warriors.

He is armed with a master-crafted plasma gun and an Actinic Halo which gives him a 3++ invulnerable, but has a tendency to break if it fails to protect him. As a master of boarding actions, he can teleport/deep strike a number of units into battle along with him, and set himself (and squad) up in advance of the rest of his forces.

Though at this point in his career he is a bit inexperienced and doesn't quite have the statline of a captain (since he isn't).

Unique Wargear / Traits

Despite Forgeworld giving them a unique special character, their chapter tactics are identical to their forefathers: the Ultramarines. (You only do boarding missions in Zone Mortalis, which requires more money to make the board than it does to make the army, so boarding missions obviously don't come up often)

However, this hasn't stopped Fantasy Flight Games from giving them a little bit more colour with more minor details, such as each battle-brother being intimately familiar with the Imperial Navy and can undergo intense training as pilots no matter what their role actually is. (Techmarines are usually the pilots of Codex aircraft)

In addition, they also utilize a unique pattern of bolter: the aptly named Naval Boltgun. Which is a shortened boltgun with a 20 round magazine that can be used one-handed like a bolt pistol, but still retain the range and rate of fire as a full bolt rifle.

One relic item that the chapter has in their possession is a specially crafted Shotgun called Linebreaker with a reinforced shortened barrel that fires pellets of super-dense alloys, each of which maintains the force of a regular slug, meaning this shotgun can drop large targets with impunity AND maintain a slightly longer effective range.