Irene Hollander and the Galleon Daughters
By author StrenousActivity
The Twelfth Primarch: Irene Hollander
Name:
Irene Hollander, Bane of the Guilds, Tradeswoman Supreme, Merchant-Queen of the Marrus Sector, and former CEO of the Hollander Shipping Company.
Appearance:
Irene is a woman of believable, approachable beauty: sharp, yet kind eyes, fair skin marked with faint scars, and dirty blonde hair done up in a ponytail. Though the effect is ruined somewhat by her towering height and her Primarchical genetics' natural psychological effect on mortal humans.
During formal functions, she wears a suit befitting her office, dyed in the same gold and black colour scheme of her Legion, with a holographic badge indicating her status.
In more casual settings she wears a simple dress with coin patterns on them and a large, straw sunhat.
Her armour is painted gold on the chest and torso, with black colouring from the waist down, it is also painted with silver trimming. The pauldrons have built-in holoprojectors that flash different insignias, sometimes showing the mark of her Legion, sometimes showing the Imperial Aquila, and sometimes showing the familial crest cum company logo of the long-defunct HSC (which also serves as an alternate insignia for the XII Legion). The helmet is adorned with a Galea-style headdress on its top, while the rest of it follows the standard design of a Mark II Crusade Pattern helm.
Her main weapon was given to her during her final days training under the Emperor's Custodes, a Guardian Spear called Stryker. She later repainted it silver and had one of her siblings remove some of the overly ornate Imperial designs that had been grafted onto essential systems in the weapon in favour of a less garish look. Her sidearm is an archaeotech bolter with a plasma pistol attachment, also painted silver.
Talents and Personality:
Irene is calm, emotionally mature, not prone to any outbursts, even if her feelings are obvious.
She is good at thinking, planning, looking for advantages she can leverage or weaknesses she can exploit. She is very accomodating to people she cares about, but won't bend over backwards for their sake.
Freedom is extremely important to Irene. She holds it above all things, above most risks and she espouses this ideal to all who listen.
She loves her family, she doesn't see them as anything else but family, all she wants is to stay in all of their good graces without sacrificing her own principles, and it would take something incredibly heinous for her to reject any of her fellow Primarchs.
Irene, at some level, loathes the Imperium. She sees it for what it is: a monolithic, all-encompassing tyrannical government that places mankind in shackles, taking away what Irene believes to be the most vital right of mankind, to be free.
This hatred does not, however, extend to the Emperor. She respects him somewhat. Irene considers his methods antithetical to her own, but knowing how much more experience her father has and how long it took for him to intervene at all gives her some solace in that he is simply jaded.
She says nothing to anyone about her opinions of the Imperium. She would rather stew on it in silence than risk sanction on suspicion of treason.
Irene hates politics. She understands it well enough to play in those circles, but she would rather throw money around and bribe where she needs to go. She has no patience for stuffy and out of touch nobility.
Grand speeches do not come naturally to Irene, nor does she see much use in them. Inspiring others is done through action, through work done to the benefit of herself and the goals being worked towards.
Her background is one of money, how to spend it, how to make more of it, how to move it around, where to put money where it will be most effective. She is a master at it, a savant in the realm of business, success blooming wherever she judges worthy of investment.
In combat, she is a Primarch, a dominating force on the battlefield against anything that is not her siblings. In comparison to her siblings, she is middle of the pack; Irene has as much chance of winning as she does of losing, and anytime she may end up fighting would come down to the circumstances involved.
Homeworld:
The XII have no set homeworld, with bases set up in a wide perimeter around the Marrus Sector. Their numbers make it quite easy to answer most threats.
The Marrus Sector in the galactic east could be described by the average low-level Hive dweller as "filthy frakking rich", with vast reserves of raw materials which could have been even vaster were they not already depleted over their alleged twenty-thousand years of use.
There are around two-hundred and thirty planets in the sector, all of which are under nominal XII Legion control as areas of recruitment, while a scant few others have been completely set aside for use by the XII for things such as training grounds, decentralised gene-seed storage, or industrial worlds converted to produce Legion-specific wargear.
The sector is surrounded by a massive natural blockade of asteroids that have been mined extensively, the sheer number of asteroids present requiring the construction of massive space stations known as the Belt Gates in order to facilitate safe entry for sub-light craft.
According to a series of interviews with the Twelfth Primarch and the findings of Imperial scholars, the Marrus Sector was a great trade center of the ancient Terran Federation, with many Warp routes leading in and out of its vast collection of void-bound trading posts and planetary exchange stations which made up a vast majority of Marrusite planets. In addition to the mercantile planets there also existed simple agricultural and industrial worlds that produced raw materials, machinery for both military and civilian use, food, or consumer goods, all of which would either be exported or used by the system itself, making the Marrus Sector very self sufficient.
When the Cybernetic Revolt erupted and the mass birth of psykers and the rise of the Warp Storms plunged the rest of the galaxy into anarchy, the sector hunkered down, destroyed and replaced all of their AI-controlled infrastructure as needed, closed off as much contact with the outside world as was necessary, and turned its business-minded goals inward, so when the Warp Storms blocking them from leaving the sector dispersed, the Marrusites came out changed but not undone.
Under a new government, now headed by a collective of newly formed Guilds who restricted access to knowledge on trades and occupations, forcing industry to be funneled through those they deemed, meaning cronyism and corruption ran rampant.
The newly rebuilt nation-sector began reconsolidating their space, their military industrial complex slowly arriving at a point strong enough to once again defend themselves against pirates and invaders—human and xenos alike—that nipped at their heels.
Though the nation itself was stable, many who inhabited it still fondly remembered the sector's past glories, still remembered the glamour and lights of a thousand starships passing through its mighty Belt Gates and wished for the day they could return to their full glory, free from the shackles placed upon them by the Guildmasters.
Psychic potential:
Weak, all of it unconsciously focused into faster regeneration.
Background:
Irene's lifepod was found in the storage bay of a light freighter owned by one Horatius Hollander, the proprietor of a lowly black market shipping company, one of many formed in a bid to streamline the transport of goods around the sector without passing it through Guild-enforced customs.
"What's your name, little one?" Horatius asked, kneeling in front of the strange child whom he had sat upon one of the cargo crates. She opened her mouth for a moment as if to speak, but closed it soon after.
"I… I don't know," she finally spoke up, her voice a tiny whisper while she pouted in frustration.
"Do you at least know where you came from?"
The girl pointed a long thin finger at a shiny pod of some sort of metal hidden in a dark corner of the cargo bay, it looked small, too small to hold someone tall enough to be at least a teenager.
Horatius eyed her suspiciously and made his way to the pod in question, he looked inside, there was quite a bit of advanced tech inside, but nothing that pointed to it having enough space to hold someone as large as her.
"But mister, I was able to fit in there before."
"Oh really?"
She nodded her head. "Yeah, it's 'cause I was really really small."
Really really small? If she were small enough to fit in something meant for a toddler, she'd either have to been in there for years at the minimum or she just… grew that fast.
Horatius didn't really want to think of the second option, but it seemed much more plausible.
After their first meeting, Horatius adopted the pre-pubescent Irene as his own, teaching her the ins and outs of the company, a scant few months later, and Irene was mature enough to take on the responsibility of managing the company's finances. The effect was immediately noticeable, and in only a few years the Hollander Shipping Company became a powerhouse of the Marrusite black market.
Several decades would pass, and the HSC continued to grow exponentially under the direction of Irene Hollander, her adoptive father now an old man in the twilight of his life.
"Dad?" Irene whispered, seating herself the wizened old man lying down on a hospital bed.
"'Rene, how've you been?" croaked Horatius. A spindly hand covered in tubes reached out to caress his daughter's face.
"B-business as usual." Irene tried to keep a smile. It was hard seeing her father like this. "How've you been? The nurses treat you well?"
"As well as they'll treat an old geezer like me." Horatius's eyes lit up as he leaned in close. "Got a few good pinches in on those nice bottoms too. You got good taste, 'Rene."
She snorted. Of course her father would not let age stop him from being a womaniser.
The two sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, the muted holocaster the only thing illuminating the room.
"So… when're you going for the Guild?"
"Dad, wha—"
He raised a hand and motioned her to stop.
"You think I didn't read those files? Those transaction records for 'permanent private security contracts'?" Horatius Hollander gave a hearty chuckle. "I'm old, 'Rene. That doesn't mean I don't keep up with the internal goings-on of my company."
He gestured and a screen flickered to life. He flicked away some of the minutiae he had left open to scan through the aforementioned documents.
"I always knew leading the HSC wasn't enough for you. God knows how many times I've had to suffer through hearing you rant on about those sycophantic idiots."
"But Dad, the company—"
"You only ever tied yourself to it because you wanted to please me. You're much more than this. You already have plans for something bigger, something better. I won't live to see it but that doesn't matter."
He leaned forward and gripped his daughter's shoulder with what little strength he had left.
"I am proud of you, who you have become, and what you will build. Never forget that."
Horatius died in his sleep soon afterwards, the HSC's assets were liquidated into more funds while others were reallocated into more militaristic endeavours
Silently, Hollander also gained influence in the Belt Gates, reaching into the pockets and minds of the men who commanded them, with almost no word of it entering the ears of the incumbent Guildmasters, who lay comfortably in their seats of power, wholly unaware of the gilded cages their thrones had become.
In addition to her bribery, the Twelfth Primarch also funded many media companies across various Marrusite worlds with the purpose of circulating her ideas to the already unhappy populace, selling them on the idea of toppling the Guildmasters in favour of a freer means of doing business.
Irene herself left the sector on her own to hunt down pirates before they entered, mostly as a way to build on her exceptional if unrefined combat skills.
All these factors came to a head when an Orkish warband slammed through the asteroid belt and began raiding the eastern region of the sector, and while it was beaten back quite handily, the long-term effects were still felt.
Irene saw her chance to act, and she did, revealing herself at the head of an army built on the backs of many private security companies she had bought over the years. Irene capitalised on the Guild's inconsistent and insufficient response, while through her underground media apparatus the average Marrusite became unpleasantly aware of how the Guild prioritised the richest of the affected systems in their defence, and soon the entire eastern bloc of the sector was thrown into open revolution.
Agri-Worlds ceased delivering their mandatory food tithes to the Guild. Industrial worlds pledged allegiance to the Merchant-Queen. Hive Worlds ran red with the blood of Guildsmen, local rebels, and bystanders alike. Even the elites—as beholden to the Guild as they were—saw how the wind blew and turned their backs on their contemporaries, welcoming Irene Hollander and her armies with open arms when they set foot upon their planets.
The breakneck pace at which the Twelfth Primarch advanced cut a deep gouge into the heart of the Marrus sector, her vast fleet of battleships tearing through the disoriented loyalist fleets. Her deposal of the Guildmasters was ultimately anticlimactic, most of the violence ending with the imprisonment or execution of the Guildmasters.
The period of rebuilding that followed brought great changes to the confederation. Irene peeled away the many restrictions on trade, bureaucracy, and cut the red tape that had plagued the Marrusites since the rise of the Guildmasters.
She relinquished control of all state-owned business, putting them up for auction to be fought over by various industrialists, she also ruled in favour of heavy decentralisation, allowing individual systems to make decisions according to the needs and desires of their own populace, granted that they pay mandatory taxes which were now much less cumbersome.
The prosperity achieved in the years that followed were unmatched by all but the bygone Golden Age of Technology.
This success would not go unnoticed, and Irene Hollander soon came face to face with the Emperor of Mankind and a Legion of armoured, transhuman warriors he said were hers.
Of course many details would be discussed (especially in the realms of commerce and taxation) before the Marrusites joined the Imperium in full, but those would wait as Irene accompanied the Emperor to Terra aboard the Bucephelus. There she would get better acquainted with her new Legion of Astartes.
The XII Legion: the Galleon Daughters
Name:
Formerly the Goldhands, were renamed the Galleon Daughters after recovering Irene.
Insignia and Appearance:
A silver coin with an ancient Terran vessel filled to the brim with gold and weaponry. A large XII stands behind the galleon.
Galleon Daughter armour has a halved colour-scheme, divided along a vertical line from groin to helm. On the right side of their bodies, their armour is yellow; on the left side, it is black.
Gene-seed Status:
Immaculate. It features an extremely high compatibility rate, with some mental quirks which lead to the average Space Marine of the XII Legion displaying more independent thought and individualism compared to their brethren.
Legionary Assets:
—A Gloriana-class battleship named Horatius's Hammer.
—The Legion's numbers hover around 300,000 Space Marines at any given moment.
—The XII's auxilia is made up of the old Confederacy's most elite mortal soldiers, each one a weapon of war in their right, as much as they pale in the face of an Astartes. They number in the range of twelve to fifteen million in any given moment.
—When Hollander was discovered, some of the Marrusite Confederacy's mobile space stations were given up exclusively for the Legion's use. They have become extremely useful immobile bases.
—In addition to the space stations, the Galleon Daughters also claim ownership over a diverse collection of planets, all used to train their younger neophytes in every combat environment possible.
—Due to the spread-out nature of the Legion, the Galleon Daughters make use of just about every piece of wargear and war machines available to the Legiones Astartes, some with more frequency than others according to their internal combat doctrine.
Legion Organisation:
The Galleon Daughters as a whole follow the Principia Belicosa, the original standard Imperial template for Legion organisation, but differ in a few key ways.
One of these differences come in the form of their ten Great Companies, whose numbers wax and wane constantly. The Great Companies of the XII Legion—outside of the First Company, who are directly beholden to their Primarch—are all given the opportunity to operate with near-complete autonomy as long as they exhibit full cooperation with the other Great Companies.
The Legion also has no strict rules regarding the strategic composition of these Great Companies, resulting in a confusing mix of both hyper-specialised and incredibly versatile Astartes, depending on the strategic decisions of the Captains who lead them.
The Great Companies are as follows:
—Assault Executive, First Company: led by Hollander herself, the First Company are considered the most versatile of the purely offensive-minded companies. They carry the bulk of the Legion's Terminators.
The system of war they pride themselves on is a system built on the strategy that won Irene the Marrus Sector: heavy assaults cutting deep gouges into the heart of the enemy, the ferocity of their strikes leaving the enemy no chance to regroup or retaliate.
—Shadowshock, Second Company: co-led by First and Second Captains Anrya Hoiff and Malorri Kerr.
Shadowshock takes its name from the way it wages war, the copious amounts of stealth, expert marksmanship, and the almost random nature of their appearances behind enemy lines making them near unbeatable in the realm of stealth, outmatched only by the cousin Legions who specialise in it entirely. Their mechanised support is made up primarily of hoverbikes, warbikes, landspeeders, and Thunderhawks.
—Void Talons, Third Company: led by Captain Hellen Marzitsopolous. A Great Company that specialises in void combat, the veins of the Third Company run rich with the blood of prominent Rogue Traders. Indeed, many of them are older recruits with pre-existing experience with waging war in the darkness of space.
In addition to their pre-existing role, they also hold a large part in the upkeep of the many businesses and side ventures that the Legion has set up across the outskirts of the Imperium and worlds they bring into Compliance.
As the Legion's dedicated void specialists, they control a vast portion of the Legion's fleet and were even given full reign of the Horatius's Hammer for the duration of the Dar Lixxos Xenocide.
—Steel Chargers, Fourth Company: led by Captain Morraine Maxwell. Captain Maxwell is known as a firebrand in the Legion and her Company reflects that, their reliance on the crude, yet surprisingly effective Longhorn Hammerpod reaching legendary status to the point where it has become a sort of inner joke for the Legion as a whole.
They are extremely aggressive, their battle tactics a mirror of the First Company's own vaunted frontal assaults, only further refined and taken to its logical extreme. They make good use of Dreadnoughts, Terminators, Drop Pods, Whirlwinds, and the Longhorn Hammerpod, as is required for the full-scale assaults that they employ to the fullest.
—Crosshairhawks, Fifth Company: led by Captain Saoirse Avius. If the Second Company were masters of all things stealth, then the Fifth Company were the grandmasters of two aspects: marksmanship and fast attack. Taken from the broken, mutant-plagued forest world of Aviatrax, daughters of the expert marksmen that made their futile stand on the planet make good recruits for the Galleon Daughters, their exceptional skill with bolt rifle and warbike alike soared to new heights upon their ascension to Astartes.
—Aegisbreakers, Sixth Company: led by Captain Anastasiya Polistotsky. The Sixth Company are not siege specialists, their skillset may overlap but there is a difference.
Their base strategy, for example, is built for direct decisive strikes at the enemy's fortifications, each war machine, each bolt, each weapon at their disposal are dedicated to the sole purpose of ending sieges with as much haste as possible.
—Steelshell Matrons, Seventh Company: led by Captain Izybel Vanderrice. Where most other members of the Legion devote their talents to bringing the fight to the enemy, the Matrons do the opposite, their company doctrine instead focusing on the often underused art of defence. They have made stellar use of their gifted Marrusite space station, converting and improving upon its already considerable arsenal, turning it into a monument to their defensive prowess. Every potential second extracted from the barest inch of walling is a resource the Seventh Company covet.
—Greenroasters, Eighth Company: led by Captain Sallya Osterivić
"I frakking hate Orks, green-skinned bumbling xenos bastards."—An unnamed Eighth Company Battle-Sister in the dying months of WAAAAGH! Toofkruncha.
With liberal amounts of prometheum and sheer force of will, the Eighth Company have dedicated a majority of their strength to exterminating Orks wherever they may be, the Eighth have become incredibly skilled at fighting Orks and identifying the beginnings of an infestation. They have also offered their services to their cousins in the other Legions and their auxilia, promising the eradication of Orkish spores on their ships in exchange for general compensation. This practice has also expanded to xenos in general.
—Arcanum Executive, Ninth Company: ostensibly led by 'Captain' Brgitte Verovica
The most enigmatic and mysterious Great Company of the Legion, they also have no true organisation, instead opting to spread their psychic talents among the other eight Companies as needed.
While the Legion maintains an official Librarius, it is merely a formality. Arcanum Executive is where the truly psychically gifted Space Marines are found. Be it by manipulating the minds of their foes from the relative safety of their battleships to conjuring bolts of brilliant Warp energy that shred through the fortifications of those who dare stand against them, they are always a sight to behold and to admire. The Company that has the rare opportunity to bring a great number of them to bear will often be the most successful.
—Disruption Incorporated, Tenth Company: led by Captain Haruka Senko. As their title states, the Tenth Company are masters of sabotage, often inserted deep into the heart of enemy territory alongside their feistier Battle-Sisters. They assault communication hubs, Void Shield generators, weapons caches, and even locations that seem culturally significant to their enemies. All in an attempt to gain as much of an edge as possible for their Legion. They are one of the smallest Companies, second only to Ninth, who are a Company in name only.
Expertise and Combat Doctrine:
The ways the Legion's Great Companies operate have already been discussed, but what of the Legion as a whole?
One needs only to look at the Merchant-Queen's own machinations in the buildup to her eventual coup against the Marrusite Guildmasters to see how.
The Legion embeds itself into worlds of interest by having local proxies they hire or pressgang to form corporate bodies that they then operate through, the nature of these companies may vary widely depending on the material demands the world in question has.
Over a long period of time, these companies grow exponentially in strength, part organically and part under the XII Legion's influence. Their goods and services slowly encompass more and more of the planet before the existence of the Imperium is revealed to them. Such a method leads to immediate Compliance more often than not.
On worlds which are not advanced enough to grasp the idea of mercantile pursuits or which are simply under too much of an iron yoke to do so, the Legion instead perform standard Compliance measures.
The Great Companies are masters of the aspects they specialise in. Some of these aspects may overlap, while others complement or counter each other. These have led to both friendly rivalries and greatly deepened bonds of sisterhood. While they may operate as individuals, the Galleon Daughters are still a mighty Legion of Astartes, as fit as any to have their own pedestal on the pathway to the Imperial Palace on Terra.
Two examples of cross-company benefits include:
—The Seventh Company finding holes in their otherwise impenetrable defence, courtesy of time they spend training with and against members of the Fourth, Sixth, and Tenth Companies respectively, who all in turn find new and creative ways to bring low fortifications as the Seventh improves.
—The Fifth Company benefiting from the added fire support which fighting alongside the Fourth and Sixth brings, while the latter two benefit from their unnatural marksmanship bringing low high-priority targets.
While other Legions may treat the idea of fighting Astartes with disgust and immediate censure, the XII see no problem in it. It is difficult to find a challenge great enough to effectively practise certain strategies. It is a matter of convenience and quality that drives the Galleon Daughters to fight mock battles with each other.
Legion Weaknesses:
While Irene encourages the Great Companies to work in conjunction with each other, disunity is unfortunately very common. This is the tradeoff to the great degree of autonomy given to the differing aspects of the Legion.
The Captains, while mostly working well together, will often end up competing to some degree, whether it is over taking control over Compliances, battles that could offer greater glory, or access to better wargear.
While there has not been any outright bitter conflict within the Legion, internal strife under severe duress would not come as a surprise to any outside observers.
Beliefs and Practices:
Unknown.
Recruitment and Discipline:
Before the XII Legion reunited with its Primarch and began recruiting from the Marrus Sector, their earliest recruits were taken from the youngest daughters of Rogue Trader dynasties that attempted to rebel against the Imperium. And while the practice of recruiting from the Rogue Traders still continue, its existence is much more voluntary than its previous iteration.
In modern times, young girls are taken from every world in the Marrusite Confederacy and brought to one of the Legion's many recruiting worlds, where they are put through a rigorous screening process. Those who succeed are prepared for gene-seed implantation and further training while those who are meet with failure are given an opportunity to still serve the Legion as members of its auxilia.
Characters of Interest:
Unknown.
Battle-cry:
Unknown.
Legionary History:
The XII Legion's very first recruits were the youngest and middle children of prominent merchant families, gifted to the newborn Imperium as it began its first steps outward.
The XII saw little action in the dying days of the Unification Wars. The chance to show the rest of the Imperium their mettle would wait until the Emperor's treaty with Mars granted the Imperium a greater chance of reaching deeper into the cosmos.
They first saw battle on the planet Nymphatos, ruled by technologically advanced despots who actively stole the wealth of the population under the pretext of some nebulous "Greater Good", and the XII Legion would gain their first name, the Goldhands.
In a last-ditch effort to destroy them, the Nymphatosian tyrants attempted to envelop the courageous Space Marines who broke into their seat of power under a deluge of liquid gold, only for the Astartes to emerge from beneath the auriferous sea they had been trapped in. Their once silver armour now shone brightly with the metal coating them. The molten gilding left their weapons mostly useless, leaving the job of slaying the tyrants to the XII Legion Astartes' bare fists.
The Astartes left their brethren coated silver, and returned covered in gold. They would unabashedly use a collective full gold paintjob for the rest of their existence as the Goldhands.
This chapter of their history continued without much of note. They garnered many victories for the Imperium. Many worlds embraced them on first contact or fell to them when they resisted.
Though they all felt satisfaction knowing their place in the grand scheme of reunifying mankind, though many of them also felt empty. They chafed under the various rules and regulations placed upon them by their proxy leaders, wishing for a chance to expand beyond their own roles set upon their creation, and they longed for the opportunity to meet their Primarch.
It was only a matter of time.
Great jubilation and celebration was what followed in the wake of Irene Hollander's rediscovery. The idea of a Primarch that mirrored what they so deeply desired was thought to be a peerless dream by many of them. And now to hear her speak of independence, of freedom, of the riches that could be under her leadership… it was all amazing, and it was all true.
Notable battles:
—The War for Nymphatos: The XII Legion's first defining moment before their Primarch's arrival, it was here where they brought low a despotic autocracy that actively stole from their subjects through copious amounts of taxes and property confiscation. They received the title of the Goldhands after the strikeforce sent to eliminate the Nymphatosian autocrats returned to their battle-sisters in armour coated from helmet-to-sabaton in gold.
—WAAAAGH! Toofkruncha: Irene's first true test as the Primarch of her Legion, also the first appearance of the decentralised Great Company system that became synonymous with the reforged XII. Resulted in a pyrrhic victory for the newly crowned Galleon Daughters.
—The Bastard Sun: The Third Company's trial by fire came when a mysterious xenos supervessel began hunting Explorator Fleets in the galactic north. The Void Talons battled the Bastard Sun on and off for nearly forty years before finally destroying it near the Cygnus X-1 stellar anomaly.
—Ghostwalkers: A disaster of epic proportions, it bled the Legion so profusely that no Galleon Daughters talk about it, and the details shared by those encased in Dreadnought sarcophagi during the incident are so horrifyingly absurd that it is now an unwritten rule for Remembrancers to not bring it up.