Charnel Raptors
Hounds of Surmah - Luke
Legion Number: VII
Legion Strength: 100,500
Primarch: Strixari
Tactics: Unremitting savagery, Aerial warfare/ mass jump pack usage, lightning-strike assaults
Flagship: Aquila Mortis
Native Tongue:
Domains: Irkalla
Battlecry: "Timore Caelum!" "Flesh for the Larder!" Vox-amplified death shrieks
Strengths: While all Legions make use of aerial combat units, from Xiphon Fighters to jump pack equipped Assault Companies, the VII have an obsession with such methods of war. Taking any and every opportunity to take to the heavens and from there to tear their foes from the skies before crashing down into the huddled masses below. Though once a Legion who valued martial prowess and tenacity, since the reunion with their Primarch, the Astartes of the VII have become little more than geneforged monsters. Whether by wishing to emulate their bestial father or a new quirk introduced into the lineage once fresh geneseed was harvested, all former care for discipline and cohesion has been lost. With shocking violence the Charnel Raptors crash into their foes, tearing the hapless victims apart with roaring chainblades and clawed gauntlets; flesh, viscera and blood covering their already abhorrent armor, giving them the appearance of demons from ancient Terran myth. There is an urgency to their method of combat that goes beyond the simple desire to kill, a hunger to rend their enemy asunder as though they suffer from a kind of famine-like malady. After a battle has concluded and even during such engagements, Astartes of the VII have been seen not only bathing themselves in the remains of the slain, but consuming the dead and dying, gorging themselves on the butchered with an repugnant voracity.
How Strixari gained his wings is of little consequence to the Charnel Raptors, for like him, they too have an biological imperative towards flight. To feel the caress of wind as they soar above the world untethered by the trappings of gravity, the rush as they plummet from the heavens towards unsuspecting prey, little compares to such sensations for them, save wanton and unremitting slaughter. As such, the Legion makes excessive use of jump packs, allowing them a modicum of their father's capability, as well as arial fighters; the Legion boasting some of the greatest pilots amongst the Legions as a whole.
Geneseed: A finicky geneseed, it seems to take better to aspirants harvested from harsher climes, the changes it inflicts proving overwhelming to a larger degree than standard. This would normally make recruitment more challenging, given the preference other Legions have for recruiting from their Primarch's homeworld. However, due to Irkalla not having a human population, the VII recruits from wherever they can; drawing initiates from worlds conquered whether by them or their brother Legions. Thus, despite the less stable geneseed and higher than average casualty rate, the Charnel Raptors manage to stay reasonably well numbered.
A few minor quirks exist however, one being their predilection for flight; observed since their inception, it was only with the discovery of their Primarch that such a curious attribute finally made sense.
The other, whether brought about when the Primarch was returned to his sons or it merely lurked within their genetic code, the Legion seems to suffer from an increased appetite despite their physical forms showing the opposite, the need to consume growing more and more potent as time went on.
Tactics: The idea of tactics is a bit of a generous label to how the VII operates. Much to the chagrin of the mortal commanders who serve alongside the Charnel Raptors, as well as their brother Legions, the VII descend upon their foes with appalling animalistic savagery. Led by their murderous father, the Astartes crash into the enemy lines like a rock grinder. Whether dropping from the skies on screeching jump packs or charging on foot, the Astartes' only thought is to close with the enemy and tear them apart with any and every implement available to them. Chainblades make gruesomely quick work of their foes as the field of battle is rapidly turned into an abattoir; the clawed fingers of the more elite sons peeling apart flesh and armor with equally alarming ease. Only once every last enemy lies dead does the frenzy of slaughter end, the fields of the butchered then picked over as meat is transported to the larders of the ships hanging above in the void.
Stormbirds and other aerial fighters streak through the sky providing withering cover fire while also removing the heavier armored assets of the enemy. Due to their preference for melee and aerial combat, heavy land-based armor is a rarity among the Legion, flying transports taking the place of more common assets such as rhinos and landraiders. These vehicles being cumbersome and slow hinders the preferred method of combat, and given the close confines while inside a tight hullspace, makes the Astartes feel an uncomfortable amount of claustrophobia.
Personality of the Legion: Before the reunion with their genesire, the Astartes of the VII were much like any other; disciplined and loosely defined by their recruitment zone but as a whole, a more refined, if still brutal weapon with which the Emperor slaughtered his foes. The only truly notable quality to them being a fascination with flight and thus a more pronounced use of aerial vehicles from which to bombard and drop upon their enemies. And as time went on, this quality became their hallmark; from their brief service during the end of Unification, to their spread across the stars, the VII made a name for themselves by honing such methods of warfare. With the Crusade stretching ever onwards, the tales of their skill as pilots and drop troops spread across the expanding Expeditionary Fleets, like the hunting falcons of Old Earth they ravaged their foes, and thus did they become known as the Imperial Falcons.
After being reunited with their Primarch however, the Legion became an entity that, aside from their preference toward aerial combat now becoming an obsession, resembled nothing of the former template. Where once brutal stoicism marked their methods, now savage butchery seethed in its place. With the introduction of the Primarch, those who came before adopted his methods and integrated them into their own, becoming more bloodthirsty as they followed him into engagement after engagement, while those who came after simply emerged as beasts from the apothecarions of the VII Legion. Discipline fell to the wayside, the murder lust of the Legion ever shifting from a choice, to an imperative, as their father's predatory mania spread to all of them. And, as time wore on, so too did his endless hunger; a need to feast on the flesh of their enemy overtaking their minds, as a soul-infecting famine seemed to slither its way into the geneline of the VII. No longer to be known as the honorable hunting falcons of yore, they renamed in the semblance of their carrion eating king, the Charnel Raptors.
Where duty and commendable service once marked out those fit for command, now only the strongest and most deadly of the Legion could rise through the ranks to captaincy, a brutal hierarchy of Darwinism overtaking the structure of the Legion as a whole. Those who wished to lead were welcome to try and take it by any means necessary, Strixari caring little for the warring among his own brood, for as he learned on his homeworld, only the most lethal were fit to survive. Thus were duplicitous means of ascendence allowed, if rarely used, for if one relied on such means to attain a position of command, they were unlikely to hold it for long. Natural selection seeing to those unfit to lead culled by their more capable brethren.
As there was no human population from which to draw aspirants for the Legion, the VII took to recruiting from the worlds of those conquered, though these were often ones that had been brought to compliance by non Legion forces or with limited presence from such assets, due to the predilections of the Charnel Raptors to turn the worlds they descended upon into abattoirs from which they could feast and stock their larders.
After the reunion with their father, a new custom spread throughout the Legion, as any son would wish to prove himself to his father, so they took it upon themselves to do so. Journeying to Irkalla, the original legionaries created a tradition in which they would travel across the Raptor's Descent and embark upon Trahentium Cicatrixes, the Trail of Scars. Setting off from where the Primarch's pod gauged its furrow through the landscape, the Astartes would travel across the mountain ranges and up to the cave in which Strixari had made his dwelling, taking only simple fatigues and a cowl. On their sojourn, they were expected to fight every beast that came for them, fashioning tools from the remains as well as collecting trophies from the slain, such trinkets later adorning their armor and weapons as testament to their skill. Those who survived the journey to the near-summit, staving off the elements as well as the predators that hunted them, would then return to the Legion and be so marked. A blade crafted from the talon of a great Ossifragi the former Legion Master had slain during the first such trial would be used to carve a geometric rune in their left cheek all the way down to their left pectoral, denoting they had survived on the world that had forged their father into beast he had become. Those aspirants who survived the implantation process were then expected to partake in the same trial, such action ensuring that only the strongest would find their way into the Legion, the weak left as carrion to nourish the denizens of Irkalla with transhuman meat.
Primarch: Cold white light. A seething tear in reality. Uncolors coiling out like blood dispersing in water. A lurching sensation of dislocation. Visions of a putrefying garden. The caress of primordial rot. Darkness.
The howling tempest that churned in the heavens above the cold world cried aloud as a spear of Terran alloy and eldritch science lanced into the hard stone of the world beneath. Vapor fumes drifted up from the behemoth furrow carved through the mountain pass, a capsule of so unique a design only twenty had ever existed, standing inert in the base of the pit. Months passed, and the predators that had fled during its titanic entry returned to the devastation, reclaiming their domain as they squabbled among themselves. The potentiality of danger thought long since passed, though the true threat lurked within the cold, adamantium casket, growing and writing until hunger forced its emergence into the world of the living.
Metal buckled as impact after impact rocked the capsule, the fury of the unborn trying desperately to free itself from the prison of its creation. The titanic avian creatures that had made their roost upon it shrieking as they hauled themselves aloft to higher perches upon the rocky crags. Steel screeched in torment as the exit-portal was finally ripped from its placement; gangly limbs gripping for purchase as a thin frame of corded muscle pulled itself free, wild eyes darting about the surrounding terrain, seeing for the first time outside the perpetual darkness in which it had grown. Tiny and frail by comparison, the beasts began to close in for the easy meal before them, too ignorant to comprehend the show of power that had just been displayed with the pale-thing's birth.
Throwing its head back, a shriek of its own tore at the firmament, great wings of coal-grey spreading from its back, the feathers yet bearing a velvety sheen to their lustrous color. With startling alacrity it leapt at the nearest one, iron-like finger latching onto a beastial skull with titanic pressure, the crushing force pulping the thing in an arterial spray of blood and brain matter. Before the others could respond, it leapt heavenward, murderous efficiency aiming it towards those avian predators that had thought themselves safe amongst the clouds, and with such an act, altered the global predatory echelons of Irkalla forever. A new beast had come to the cold world of sharp stone and hard light, one whose fate would lay unsettled for decades to come, until a golden king came to claim His missing angel.
Years turned to decades and as the sons of the Emperor were found and reunited with their Legions, the Imperial Falcons often wondered what their father would be like. Would he be stalwart like hawkish Nemiza of the V or warmly paternal like noble Theseon of the XI? Would he exemplify their methods of warfare or would he reshape them to better mirror his own? Endlessly the thoughts plagued them, for as each Primarch had returned, so had his Legion grown stronger and new, the cultures of the homeworld influencing change within the newly reforged Legions. However, such hopes would turn to ash in their mouths, as word came to them to make all haste to the Abzu sector in Segmentum Obscurus, there they would join the Emperor of Mankind at a world known as Irkalla, the homeworld of their father.
There, among the frigid and imperious mountain ranges that split the land like scars upon the world's flesh, they found no trace of civilization. No structures, much less cities, were to be found, only the hyper-aggressive megafauna that dwelled there and an environment nearly inimical to human life. Surely had a son of the Emperor landed upon such a planet, they would have transformed it into a place worthy of being Mankind's hearth, a place to strike out from and return to after successful campaigns; yet none of that was present, only the chill bite of scathing winds and the promise of a painful death from the ever-present predators. However, further scouting revealed a semblance of advanced intelligence. A cave entrance, roughly a kilometer from the peak of the mountain that dominated the landscape of the entire planet, bearing the skewered remains of various predators, their skulls and bones long having been picked clean and polished, there upon display for all others to see.
With their famed speed, the Legion command made for the cave entrance following in the wake of the Emperor's own stormbird, the rest of Legion amassing upon the slopes just below, their anticipation at finally meeting their father stripping them of their usual discipline. At last would they know their sire, at last would they be elevated as the other Legions had and know the glory of such unity. The culmination of a century's worth of crusading had brought them to this vital moment of ravenous anticipation.
As the Emperor stepped onto the outcropping, flanked by the captains of the VII and surveyed the massive opening, a shriek colder than the winds that buffeted the Legion below pierced the quietude, malice and murderous hunger laden about the cry as thickly as the opulences at a libertine's feast. With one final step, a blurred shape darted skyward out of the abyssal mouth, faster than even the eyes of the onlooking Astartes could track. Psycho-indoctrinated hands rushed to the handles of their weapons before halting, as above them, suspended in the heavens upon ashen pinions, was demigod; born of arcane sciences and eldritch invocations, a son of the Emperor looked down upon his Father and sons, but none of the majesty that had been seen in the others was there. The others had been potent, of that there was no question, they were sons of the greatest mind and warrior the galaxy had ever known, but there was more to them than that. Grace and exceptionalism, a nobility, however humble their beginning… Humanity personified and amplified. Absent entirely were such qualities from the creature that drifted above the armored host of the Imperium.
Predatory eyes flitted about the assembled warriors taking in every threat and the potential vector from which they would assail it. Scars littered its pale flesh, the traceries of wounds showing decades worth of fighting for survival, it's massive frame corded with hard muscle. The nails upon its hands and feet had grown long and pointed, the caked blood and grime of countless hunts long having seeped into the crevices. Malice, so pure and unpolluted by human emotions, radiated from the scion of the Master of Mankind, and as he turned his gaze upon his sons, despite their conditioning, they felt ice crawl into their veins. Yet unperturbed was the Emperor, only with calm certitude did he look upon His son, the briefest moment of regret flashing across His eyes as He took in the full measure of how far his radiantly-intended son had fallen.
With measured cadence did He address His son, yet the response from the Primarch was one of shock and bewilderment; for the first time in its existence, it heard something other than the growls, shrieks and roars of those it had grown to maturity alongside. It heard language and though it had never spoken, it somehow knew what was being said. Eyes alight with agitation calmed as the words that suffused its mind began to take shape in the form of understanding, the message conveyed so clearly that they pierced through the feral shroud that had built itself inside its the Primarch's mind and spoke the truth of its nature.
"As you were taken from me long ago, I set out from a distant world. I journeyed across the stars in search of you and your brothers; to return you to your rightful place by My side, so that we might finally unite the lost tribes of Humanity. To shepard the species were you created; to protect them from the monsters that surround us and through conquest, claim our birthright that is mastery of the galaxy. You, My son, My Rex Angelis, were to be the symbol of our noble cause, the face of Great Crusade's benevolence. Though your time here has altered you from the vision in which I had crafted you, with you now returned, we might yet refashion you into the resplendent scion of the Imperium you were intended to be . Come, My son, and take your place at My side."
Cold eyes stared back at the luminescent being proclaiming dominion of the galaxy, and as the Primarch slowly descended to the stoney outcropping, the animosity was replaced with a curious trepidation. The captains who had followed the Emperor knelt behind Him, and though they wore their helmets, the stunned awe in which they beheld their genesire was still evident in their composure. Unease and fascination warred within them all as they beheld the template from which they had been wrought, the ideas of what they were to learn from such a being abhorrent and enthralling in equal measure. None dared to move further, lest their act disturb the perfect quiet of so auspicious a moment, a myth in the making that future generations would tell their grandchildren for millennia to come.
Skulking towards its Father, the Primarch fell to perfect knee, wings furled tightly against its back, its head bowed in obeisance. Like a painting of an angel bowing before the Ahdonae of Old Earth, the Primarch paid fealty to his creator in marked silence. Moments passed before it lifted its head and gazed upon the Emperor's countenance, and with a voice like frozen wind rustling through dead branches, it spoke for the first time.
"So... be it... Father."
Homeworld: Irkala; a mountain ravaged death world of cold, sharp stone, ancient forests and arid tundras. Never before settled by humans, nor any other species for that matter, the only denizens of the planet were the native fauna and megafauna, forever replaying nature's course at its most brutal and simplistic state, hunt or be hunted. Though horridly cold nearly all year long, the brief stint of a summer season sees the planet rapidly heat to levels anathema to baseline human life, as the world passe so close to the star it orbits that the gravitational pull and undiluted rays would set about a planet-wide, near extinction level event. Earthquakes and tidal waves of enormous proportions batter the landscape, tearing apart and reforming the world as though clay in the hands of an angry god. Even the great avian predators of the world are not spared such malevolent changes, as the normally storm-wracked heavens are churned into maelstroms of typhonic savagery; deluges of rain cascading down the endless mountain ranges, flooding the landscapes below as lattices of lightning dance across the heavens and spear down to the earth below.
All manner of beasts call Irkalla home, even the prey-beasts who eat the otherwise toxic vegetation and fungi of the world posing a lethal threat to any who would challenge them. Roving packs of massive canid, Ursari and felisaur can be found all over, with more unique reptiles and arthropods lurking about as well. The oceans are no less terrifying, their vast expanses capable of housing truly leviathan beasts of all manner; mammalian, ichthyesi and cephalopodic all living in an endless war of opportunistic prey and predator. Though most notably, and to whom the Primarch, and by extension, his sons, found a kinship with, are the great avian predators that hold dominion over the world. Found in every environment and on every continent, their supremacy is unmatched upon Irkalla, several species having even adapted to diving into the depths of the oceans to hunt their prey. However, it is to the Ossifragi that all others bow; their size and strength seeing them capable of lifting even a baneblade into the skies while their talons and serrated beak tear through the armored hull like pneumatic claws. Though Strixari never named the beasts of his homeworld, the ravenous consumption of the bones of their prey gave rise to their designation, Mechanicum biologos aptly naming them for such a trait.
Equipment: There is little the Charnel Raptors enjoy more than the feeling of ripping and tearing through their opponents, the more brutal the means, the better. As such, chain weapons are the preferred armament of the Legion, as the level of destruction such tools wreak on a body is truly abhorrent. Lightning claws are another favorite found throughout, allowing them the literal hands-on experience of ripping apart their foes with the savagery that has become synonymous with the VII.
Shrike-patter Flesh Render: Rather than utilizing the standard machine-forged adamantine micro-blades, the teeth of various megafauna native to the Primarch's homeworld are incorporated into these monstrously savage chain weapons instead. The horrifying efficacy these blades rend through powered armor with is astonishing, the ease of which belies their more barbaric nature.
Stryx-pattern Jump Pack: The ultimate piece of equipment within the armories of the VII, this variant of jump pack is of a design not seen outside the Legion in any capacity. Fashioned in mimicry of the Legion's Primarch, great articulated wings sprout from a refined jump pack design. Synaptic-integration cables connect the bearer's mind via haptic uplink ports to the machine, creating a symbiotic connection between the two, as though the wings were their own flesh and bone. This is further enhanced with anti-grav plates housed within both the jump pack and the armor of the marine, allowing them to soar through the heavens, defiant of gravity's laws, like the predatory birds for which they are named.
Ul'lamah Fighter: While a huge swathe of the Legion desires nothing more than to feel the freedom the pseudo-flight a jump pack brings the bearer, there are many still whose calling to skies manifests in a greater connection with that of aerial fighter ships. By chance did the Legion happen across a functional fragment of an STC that contained schematics for a flight cradle akin to that of the Throne Mechanicum used by pilots to interface with their Knights, as well as a redesign of the plasma exhaust ports for an engine, forcing the expelled energy through a narrower field. As a result, a redesign of the Xiphon fighter went underway and from there, a magnificent transformation. With such components in place alongside a more streamlined fuselage, the result was a pilot who was fully integrated with his craft, experiencing everything as though it was his own body. Such a connection thus yielded a higher level of maneuverability and speed, allowing the newly christened Ul'lamah to outperform the capabilities of the fighter it had ascended from.
View on the Imperium: A concept entirely foreign to Strixari, he and his sons serving it solely through the fact that they butcher the enemies of the Imperium with savage abandon. To them, the Crusade is a means to see their murder lust and endless hunger sated, with the hopes of its culmination holding no sway among the Legion as a whole. With no world to truly call home, Irkalla merely acting as a forge to hone them into greater weapons, the idea of hearth and home is a threat to their perception of existence. It represents stagnation, and through stagnation, one grows weak, becoming easy prey to greater individuals.
Citizens: Meat at worst, fodder for the Legion's induction process at best, the life of a human is measured solely on the amount of nourishment it supplies the Legion or the strength of arm it lends them.
The Mechanicum: Baffling if inspiring, the Legion sees the wonders it creates as a means to grow closer to their genesire, Strixari himself undergoing the ministrations of the Red Priests to fix the perceived failing on his Father's part, that of being deprived of the predatory legs of other avians.
The Imperial Army: Baseline humans serve one of two purposes to the Legion, food or fuel, and with that kind of mentality, the Imperial Army keeps its distance from the Legion as often as possible. The horror stories of those Regiments who lingered alongside the Charnel Raptors speaking of atrocities committed against them, as the VII, in their muder-lust, slaking their hunger upon the flesh of their allies as well.
Psykers: A curious concept, the Primarch cares little one way or the other, with the Legion seeing them as just a continued evolution on the path to a greater predator. Those bearing the genetic quirk seem to suffer from a more acute form of the famine that plagues all Astartes of the VII, and like their father, they have learned how to channel that hunger into a weapon akin to his own unique quirk. To satiate their own hunger, they have learned to drain the essence of their enemies, consuming their very soul in the process and leaving a desiccated husk in their wake.
Closest Legion Allies:
Thunderers of Kral
Summary: A Legion of unsuppressed savagery and merciless slaughter, the Charnel Raptors exist solely to reduce the enemies of the Imperium to a mangled mass of meat and bones from which they may feast. There is little in the way of nuance to the VII, their preference for such methods of war and indoctrination marking them out as pariahs among the other Legions, the vast majority shunning their company as they in turn shun that of the others. Even Strixari himself is set apart from his brothers, none bearing the same kind of gift as him, he alone the freak among a pantheon of demigods. That the endless hunger that gnawed at him would come to rule his being surprised none; that it could only be stymied through his quirk of draining the vital essences of his victims soon became an abhorrent truth his siblings grew to loathe… Nemiza in particular harboring vehement distaste for it, perhaps stemming from his own quirk that functioned in so similar a fashion.
While most other Legions are noble in their bearing, some harboring more brutal or tribalistic influences than others, the Charnel Raptors are carrion-feeding animals to their core; their armor, weapons, vehicles and even vessels reflecting this aesthetic. Every tool of the Legion is fashioned to cause the most egregious of wounds imaginable, ensuring the greatest amount of leavings are there for the Legion to pick apart at their leisure. The interiors of their void vessels reflecting this more so than any other; the gothic architecture of Imperial nature being desecrated into horrifying ossuaries with the remains of the fallen and captured from every field of battle. Gobbets of flesh and splintered bone litter every corridor and causeway, with cadavers in various stages of consumption, mutilation and decay suspended upon chains, hooks and spikes from nearly every surface. Great charnel pits can be found within every vessel, the reek of spoiling meat and rancid blood ensuring none but the Legion and mindless servitors can stomach being in such locations. Those few mortals managing to make it so far being forever scarred by the vision out of the worst myths of Terra's past, as they bear witness to the eventual fate of all mortals; transhuman creatures squatting in behemoth corpse-trenches, slavering over meat and gnawing upon the bones of their victims in gore-spattered battleplate.
This theme translates even to the Legionaries themselves, the remains of the fallens either spiked upon their armor or suspended from the numerous barbed & hooked chains they adorn themselves with. The armor of the Legionaries is abhorrent to look upon; limb, heads, skulls, tongues and all manner of remains in between can be found as "trophies" upon their armor, though whether this is due to such killings being particularly noteworthy or simply just because, none outside the Legion truly know. In truth, few within the Legion likely know, as the Astartes upon their induction into the Legion simply follow suit of their elders, who have long since likely forgotten or stopped caring about the notion and simply do it out of habit.
With their far more bestial tendencies, it comes as little surprise to the other Legions that they keep the avian predators from Irkalla in their havens, most notably among these the trio of behemoths that roosted alongside Strixari. Ever perched in the recessed heights of their vessels, these raptors have formed strange, symbiotic bonds with the Astartes who dwell alongside them, living and fighting alongside them not as pets but as companions. It is a sign of great strength and tenacity for an Astartes to keep one in their personal confidence, their connection forming on the deepest of instinctual bonds. So it is what when one is threatened, the other reacts intuitively, as though a part of their own body has been put in jeopardy.
As the Crusade fell apart and the civil war would grip the Legions, their flaw of the famine would see them drift further and further from a tactically viable force, their need to feed overcoming all else. And when the Grandfather finally revealed himself to Strixari and the VII, they quickly fell into his grasp, devolving into something far worse than ever intended; carrion feeders of transhuman lethality and hunger-driven by the famine that had been passed down their geneline since the Primarch had been hurled away from Terra upon his inception.