Red Corsairs
| Red Corsairs | ||
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| Battle Cry | A tirade of expletives and threats, transmitted across all vox-caster frequencies, "Shiver me timbers!", "Take what ye can, give nothing back!" | |
| Origin | Astral Claws, Tiger Claws, and various other chapters | |
| Warband Leader | Huron Blackheart | |
| Base of Operations | New Badab Formerly: Badab Primaris |
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| Strength | Roughly the size of a Pre-Heresy Legion | |
| Specialty | Piracy, infiltration, boarding tactics | |
| Allegiance | Chaos Undivided | |
| Colours | Red and black | |
Not to be confused with Barak-Mhornar, the Red Corsairs. A Kharadron Overlord fleet.
Space Pirate Space Marines? In my 40K? It's more likely than you'd think.
Who They Are
The Red Corsairs are a space pirate warband of renegade Marines; some following Chaos, some just in it for the plunder and self-aggrandizement. Even before their fall to chaos, these guys were considered the top-dogs in boarding actions, so piracy came pretty natural to them. Attacking from the Maelstrom, which is kind of like the anus to the Eye of Terror's vagina (no, really, the Blood Gorgons bitch about how filthy it is in comparison to the fucking Eye), they raid and pillage all over the Imperium of Man, stealing vehicles, armour, weapons, ships for their fleets, and basically anything in sight. Nailing it down does not help, as they would steal nails too, making them essentially the chaos Blood Ravens. They are well-known for their balls-out psychotic raids on Imperial Naval vessels and SPESS MEHREEN battle barges, in which they use boarding torpedoes to land and then assault the ship, taking it over to add to their makeshift navy. The Corsairs also have a number of not-marines, ranging from mercenaries and assorted scum to slaves captured by the Corsairs for the purposes of tending to their ships and equipment. They have a near-constant influx of loyalist Marines because once it becomes known that you're a fucking pirate, the ladies are all down with that shit, so it can be said that, like Tankred, they are in it for the bitches.
Their core is mostly composed of former Astral Claws, but much like the Black Legion they accept anyone who pledge his loyalty to their leader, and produce new marines from any gene-seed they can land their hands on, so you may find former loyalists (at lest a few Ultramarines and Space Wolves are confirmed), veterans of Heresy from the old legions, and a wide variety of Chaos-born neophytes, made with both traitor and loyalist gene-seed. With such a flexible recruitment policy it's not surprise Corsairs are the quickest growing Chaos force in entire Galaxy, and given time may even outgrow the Black Legion.
Leader
Whilst the Corsairs operate in smaller strike groups, the ultimate leader of the Red Corsairs is the Pirate Lord of the Maelstrom, Huron Blackheart. Formerly known as Lufgt Huron (a name which to this day, /tg/ is unable to pronounce), Huron used to be the chapter master of the Astral Claws. They were assigned to guard and patrol the Maelstrom, an area of warp/real space overlap in Ultima Segmentum.
While a decent leader, years of being left sidelined left him bored and pissed off, and he eventually said "fuck this" and decided to take over the planet Badab, where he and the claws conquered the world for themselves and demanded tithes in the name of the Imperium - which they then kept for themselves, getting three other Space Marine chapters to join them in holding the world and turning into their own private little vacation-spot. Huron became known as the "Tyrant of Badab" for his forceful style of leadership. The Claws (and Huron) finally rushed past the moral event horizon when the Imperial Navy sent a small strike group to Badab to kick his ass.
Huron's forces repelled it, but the Imperial Navy had finally had enough of their shit and brought in a battery of heavy-duty ships to finish the job, and sent in Stormtroopers, along with a shitton of Space Marines in the conflict that came to be known as the Badab War. Huron's forces took a major beating, and Huron himself got half of his fucking body blown off by a pissed-off Star Phantoms Captain packing a Meltagun. Legend has it, after a failed attempt at him he put his terminator boot on a dead strike team leader's chestplate (presumably to take a selfie), but the captain turned out not quite dead and shot him in the armpit point-blank with a melta instead. Oh, vanity. Barely alive, Huron's troops grabbed their master and hauled ass for the one area the Imperium wouldn't chase them through - the Maelstrom. After a few weeks, a shitload of bionics (he had to have most of the right side of his body replaced), and a little help from the Ruinous Powers, Lord Apothecary Garreon, Apothecary Secundus Variel, and Master of the Forge Armanneus Valthex (guys who had earned the nicknames "the Corpse Master", "the Flayer", and "the Alchemancer", respectively) successfully put Huron back together, and he began to rebuild his personal empire through piracy, bit by bit.
Huron himself claims to be Chaos' answer to Colonel "Vance Motherfucking Stubbs is my Poker Buddy" Straken, but everyone knows that's a load of bullshit.
Namesake
"Corsair" means pirate, and they use red "paint" to obliterate their former Chapter livery. Ergo, Red Corsairs. Not exactly a great name, but it's hard to argue that it doesn't work.
Rise of the Red Corsairs and Fifth Edition
Long before Matt Ward somehow managed to make the Smurfs more hated than they already were - something /tg/ had long since thought impossible - the Chaos Codex had gotten a reasonable update. Most of it was streamlining, pure and simple, but a lot of it was done with the intent to make Chaos forces of every stripe that much more viable and to put an end to the godless faggotry that was Emperor's Children Noise Marine spam raping entire armies in the opening salvo (for example). Players wanted more flexibility with their choices, more opportunities to play with unique options, (WTF are you smoking? CSM 4.0 took away so much stuff) and less ridiculously unbalanced exclusive shit that ruined everything (read: Iron Warriors fielding squads upon squads of Obliterators backed by Basilisks). With so many changes to the system, Chaos largely got nerfed and saw marked improvements in a few areas (at the cost of all the unique legion rules, pages of wargear and mutations, and anything else that made them stand out from vanilla marines), but since nobody liked the Black Legion or its retarded leader Abaddon, a long-available but largely unsung chapter, the Red Corsairs, got pushed into prominence.
Before being cunt-punted back into a paragraph and Huron's special character page, in favour of a bunch of no-name not-World Eaters.
Vigilus Ablaze grants them tabletop rules, which are quite possibly the best out of any of the Chaos Space Marine subfactions. Not only can they advance and charge (the old generalist Renegade Chapter trait which already was pretty good), but now they get extra command points from detachments with three or more units.
Gallery
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Red Corsairs Terminators.
