Avenging Sons

Avenging Sons
Founding	19th Founding
Successors of	Ultramarines
Chapter Master	Unknown, but is probably not a high-watt bulb.
Primarch	Roboute Guilliman, though clearly the tactical brilliance didn't pass on to them.
Homeworld	Traekonnis Major
Strength	800+, usually falling by the minute
Specialty	Losing, strategical fuckups, Getting Reamed by Authors
Allegiance	Imperium of Man
Colours	Light Blue and white

The Avenging Sons are the Space Marine equivalent of Jobbers; a chapter seemingly designated to be beaten down and blown up in hopelessly idiotic ways, leading to their inevitable defeat, and is usually shorthand for letting you know that a story you're reading isn't about the Imperium of Man. Why they haven't been wiped out is a mystery...possibly, Tzeentch keeps them around and messes with them for his own amusement at low-effort.

History

An Ultramarines Successor Chapter, they are fanatic followers of the Codex Astartes, but with a key exception in how they deploy their forces. Unlike other chapters who will send an appropriate amount of force depending on the foe, The Avenging Sons opt to drop whole companies worth of marines onto any battlefield that will have them. While most of their history is only built from partial records of the 41st Millennium, the Chapter is very active, and appear to be involved in all sorts of Imperial battlefronts, dumping company after company wherever the Emperor needs them.

But that's not a good thing.

While yes, this is a lot of Space Marines at once and for an Imperial warfront that's usually a good thing, they're apparently run by complete smoothbrains, frequently making so many rash, pointless and tactically disadvantageous decisions that they're usually a blight on whatever sector they ended up in, rather than a boon. Their penchant for glory-seeking also means that they are often hopelessly outnumbered as they're dropped into battle in places no sane person would put valuable members of the Astartes, and in general are led so poorly by even sergeant-level marines that they almost always end up in protracted conflicts, and almost always dying pointlessly; often losing whole companies in the process and accomplishing precisely everything their venerated holy book is supposed to be preventing in the first place. In short, they've clearly inherited whatever recessive bit of Guilliman's geneseed was responsible for creating Cato Sicarius en masse.

Seriously, it is a minor miracle that this chapter manages to get out of bed in the morning without losing whole companies to holes in the ground. It is an extremely major miracle (or maybe just Guilliman's second largest oversight error) that they were thought to be good enough to act as one of the ten Shield Chapters of Ultramar, considering the abilities and reputation for such an honor.

Seriously, these guys are working the same role as the Silver Skulls and Scythes of the Emperor- how the fuck did they manage that when literally every single battle they've been involved in, they've lost or disgraced themselves?

What charitably passes for Campaigns

• Liberation of Antillis IV - A company of the Chapter gets overwhelmed by forces of the Black Legion. They fight to the last and detonate their position before being overrun. Their sacrifice was not entirely in vain however, as the larger campaign to retake Antillius was won by the Imperium, and a single Scout escaped on board of a Thunderhawk containing much of the Gene-seed lost during that battle. That being said, the Apothecary left behind left valuable gene-seed via his own progenoid glands for another World Eater Apothecary to analyze and replicate to prevent his warband from degenerating their geneseed to the extinction point. Give credit where credit is due: this one was almost not as big of a fuckup as the rest- had they not found literally the only Astartes still on planet, that World Eater warband would be kaput and the story would be considered a heavy victory.
• Battle of Archimedon - The Chapter's 3rd company was deployed to Archimedon. Their mission was to defend a spaceport on the planet; However, after the company suffered heavy losses, they destroyed the spaceport themselves rather than let it fall into enemy hands. The Chapter Master didn't approve of it, but refrained from censuring the company. Instead, he sent them to fight a gruelling campaign in Helmabad, which leads us to...
• Helmabad Rebellion - The 3rd company was given the opportunity to redeem itself fighting against Chaos Cults, where they spent months dealing with non-stop fighting and the unprofessional PDF. But when the Captain learned from the company's Librarian that Helmabad was mere hours away from a full scale Demonic invasion, he got cold feet. Deciding that dying for the Emperor wasn't its own reward, he proposed abandoning the doomed world. The Chaplain obviously wasn't on board and had to be killed along with the rest of the loyal Marines. Not only that, but the Captain turned on the PDF to take the Planetary Governor hostage and turned him over to the Chaos Cults as a bargaining chip to secure safe passage off-world. The remains of the 3rd company, knowing well what they had done, decided to set course for the Eye of Terror.
• Harrowing of the Night Reapers The Night Reapers Chapter had been sent on penitent crusade to a dangerous backwater nebula as punishment for abandoning a Shrine World to the forces of Chaos. They went radio silent after a while, and steadily started to deviate from Codex doctrine, tactics, and equipment. Six years after last contact and many suspicious raids in the area, irrefutable proof of their attack on a Rogue Trader vessel earned them an Excommunicate Traitoris. A staggering four companies of the Avenging Sons went after them, but our chapter can't do anything right and got ambushed by the Night Reapers, who captured one of their Star Cruisers and mauled another. They blamed their humilliating defeat on "Warp flame weapons" that bypassed Void shields, so the High Lords had to send someone who could actually get shit done: The Minotaurs and the Red Hunters.
• First Taros Intervention - The desert world of Taros gets investigated by the Administratum, as its tithe and production estimates are out-of-date. The delegation finds that, while Taros is meeting its quotas to the local Forge World, it seemed to be mining much more without growing its stockpiles beacause the Planetary Governor had been cutting a deal with the Tau. The Chapter's second company answered the request for punitive action against Taros and assaulted the Governor's palace... only to find he had already been evacuated by the Xenos. The Tau forces on the planet quickly converged upon the Astartes and kept them pinned down for two days before the Avenging Sons finally decided to evacuate after losing over half their initial force. This failure to slay the treacherous Governor would set the stage for the following invasion of Taros, and its eventual failure.

Need a bunch of Space Marines to lose against your faction? Look no further!

Daily rituals of an Avenging Son

04:00 - The Avenging Sons wake up by all falling out of their beds, because they just can't do anything right.
05:00 - The Avenging Sons review the Codex Astartes to find guidance toward victory, except due to the designs of Tzeentch, all of their copies of the Codex have been direly misprinted and also rendered in High Gothic while the chapter only knows how to read in Low Gothic.
06:00 - The Avenging Sons begin training according to their manuals. Unfortunately for them, their manuals were provided by an agent of Tzeentch posing as an Estate Imperium adept named Retsam Gnat.
07:00 - The chapter assembles to decide upon a place to die in droves atgloriously fight for The Emperor. Whatever intelligence they have for on prospective war zones is undoubtedly completely falsified by Tzeentch's trolling hand.
08:00 - Battle brothers deploy to another war zone and idiotically get mired in a protracted conflict that lasts the rest of the day.
09:00 - Throughout the day-long battle, many battle brothers die horribly. Very little avenging is actually achieved.
21:00 - The surviving battle brothers retreat from combat.
23:00 - The surviving battle brothers swear they'll avenge their fallen brethren.
24:00 - Daily Rest, which is greatly simplified by how the surviving Avenging Sons don't have to go back to their personal rooms to sleep off the asskicking they just received since many of the beds that were in use at the start of the day will now be vacant.

Gallery

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  An Avenging Sons Space Marine in an inconsistent shade of blue, proving that even their maintenance crews can't do anything right

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  One of their Dreadnoughts, likely minutes from being dropped from a great height by his company commander into a horde of Tyranids or something.

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  A prometheus-pattern Land Raider, likely gathering mothballs for being too useful

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  One of their trusty thunderhawk gunships, flown by their untrustworthy pilots