Doom Eagles
Doom Eagles | ||
---|---|---|
Battle Cry | Woe Betide! | |
Founding | Second Founding | |
Successors of | Ultramarines | |
Chapter Master | Hearon | |
Primarch | Roboute Guilliman | |
Homeworld | Gathis II | |
Specialty | Jump Pack Assaults, Being sad | |
Allegiance | Imperium | |
Colours | Silver and Red |
|
- – Librarian Secundus Thryn
The Doom Eagles (stop laughing) are an official Space Marine Chapter, descended from the Ultramarines in the Second Founding.
They are extremely grimdark. What, the fact that they're called "Doom Eagles" isn't enough? Their homeworld is dying, and they only choose Gathians who have lost everything of importance to them to become Aspirants.
They use a LOT of Jump Packs and are considered to be some of the best practitioners of the Jump Assault, so just play them on the tabletop with Doom Eagle colors and the assault rules if you want to play a fluffy army. They once equipped an entire company with jump packs (including the Tacticals and Devastators) and dropped into combat from orbit. Ironically, or perhaps just as expected for a chapter with such morbid religious beliefs, they proved to be absolutely amazing for fighting Plague Zombies during the 13th Black Crusade, with not a single one falling to the plague. After all, you can't zombify what's already dead. Well, the canon reason was their faith and piousness, but their faith and piousness is centered around a religious belief that they're already dead so the theme still fits. Clap Your Hands if You Believe, after all.
Those Bloody Magpies "borrowed" a matching power axe and plasma pistol combo off them.
Their Fortress-Monastery's Reclusiam is somewhat unique in that it's stuffed to the brim with relics from battlefields where major tragedies or atrocities happened. Right at the very core is a chamber with bits of shattered stone from the Imperial Palace, a feather from the wing of Sanguinius, and a shard of Big E's personal battle armour.
Also not to be confused with the Doom Legion, another Ultramarine chapter with similar name and colors.
The above quote mentions that the Doom Eagles seek to prevent other people from suffering. This automatically makes them one of the few chapters to give a crap about the rest of humanity. Plus, imagine the manly righteous fury they feel towards the enemy endangering peoples' happiness (or close enough to happiness). Yeah, they fuck shit up with a wrath.
Recruitment[edit]
The Doom Eagles recruit exclusively from the population of Gathis II, in a manner designed specifically to fit their culture of fatalism and obsession with mortality. A Librarian and some Chapter Serfs visit the planet's capital city, with the Librarian hiding via psychic fuckery as he probes the aspirants' minds. If he finds one who's particularly depressed or fatalistic, the Chapter Serfs will drag him off to Brazil somewhere else and knock them out. These chosen aspirants will then be brought to a plateau in the Razorpeak Mountains, where a disembodied voice (the Librarian) orders them to enter the cave.
Once inside, the Librarian lectures them on the reason they've been chosen, the history of Gathis II, and the fact that scalding water will be filling the cave in a few minutes. Oh, and the only way out is through another cave, filled with thorns that can cut your flesh to shreds. Good luck contestants, your time starts now.
Assuming they get through that, there's another cave connecting to it that has a floor covered in hot coals and lava pools. And another beyond that with a huge chasm, filled with the echoing screams of those who fall and die. And another where you have to throw yourself into the abyss and hope you don't die. Repeat without rinsing a few dozen more times (since that boiling water's still coming for your arse), changing the obstacle or threat for each chamber.
On and on this goes, until the aspirants finally reach a ledge with a few gliders on it - and the Doom Eagles' Fortress-Monastery in the distance. Assuming they're brave enough, they have to buckle themselves in and use the gales to glide toward it; assuming they survive long enough to get close, they're directed to another ledge by the Librarian from before. When they land, the Librarian gives his whole spiel again about how you're dead and will die yet, blah blah blah, then pokes around in their brains.
If they've accepted that their lives mean nothing and no longer give two shits about glory, honour, jealousy, or surviving, then they'll be taken into the Doom Eagles' Eyrie to become proper (i.e.: dead) Neophytes. If not, sucks to be you; you're left behind on the ledge and will soon die of exposure.
TL;DR: Grimdark. (And you're dead.)
Gallery[edit]
-
Their color scheme.