Because I made the Luggage/Jurgen-meme. Here's the stinky boy himself. Cain's fragrant aide. His charming chauffeur. He would make fast friends with Plague Marines.
One of my favourite factions, and one I keep looking into ways of fielding for cheap.
Name a regiment and I’ll find a way for you to play it on a small budget, without sacrificing what makes it so characterful. Elysians, Steel Legion, Death Korps, Vostroyans, Valhallans, Cadians, something based on ancient or medieval times, the legendary Female Guards(wo)man, tanks for all of the above - hit me up and I’ll make it work, bonus points if you have some sort of restriction in mind.
No recasts (makes it too easy), the minimum of Citadel miniatures.
I would like to see something about the Salamanders as you envision them, rather than what they seem to have become. Something humanitarian, without shitting on the other Legions/Chapters.
The ebon ship cut through the clouds like a dagger, descending from the overcast sky and wheeling about over the broad, squat form of the fortress. The great, solid ‘I’ of the Inquisition was stamped on the front-facing doors of the landing craft, the only source of color apart from red slashes on its wings. A team of men in dull olive greatcoats stood on the landing pad as the blackstar set down, most of them nervously making last-minute adjustments to their uniforms.
The doors opened in a cloud of steam as the warm air within met the cold air of climate without, and from the cloud they emerged - a quintet of figures, each one larger than life and armored in gleaming black and silver plate. The leader of the band was a monster of steel, archaic and awesome terminator armor putting it head and shoulders above even the rest, such that the military men present - none of whom were short - barely stood level with the figure’s navel.
Though they wore the black and silver of the Deathwatch, each member of the team had a different emblem upon one shoulder. The leader bore the clenched golden gauntlet of the Iron Fists, whilst among the others could be found the white reptilian skull of the Salamanders, the wolfshead of the Space Wolves, the bleeding heart of the Lamenters, and the double-bladed axe of the Dark Hunters. All but the Salamander bore at least one servo-limb attached to their armor, the Iron Fist and the Dark Hunter each boasting a pair of the signature techmarine weapons.
As they dismounted from the transport craft and approached, the waiting men stood to attention and saluted. "Sergeant Razja, I presume,“ stated the man at the fore of the group.
“You are correct,” the terminator replied in a gruff, but unmistakably female voice, “situation report, general,” she replied.
If the man bridled at being addressed so, he was wise enough not to show it. "If you will follow me,“ he said instead, dispensing with pleasantries that were clearly neither demanded nor expected, and turned on his heel to lead the group into the bastion.
As they went, the Salamander subtly jabbed his elbow into that of the Space Wolf beside him, sending ripples through his drakescale cloak, and when his companion’s helm swung round, he nodded towards the figures patrolling the outer walls of the bastion, men and women dressed in flak and the same distinctive heavy coats of the Valhallan Ice Warriors, their breath smoking in the cold air. Most of them kept their heads low, their collars turned up to hide their faces, and their feet shuffled as they went about their patrols.
———-
“The rok made landfall approximately three weeks ago, local,” General Sokolov explained. "Nuclear bombardment saw most of the greenskins off proper, but a relative handful of them managed to survive, either because they had already scattered beyond the hot zone or having sheltered deep within the rok. We estimate somewhere between seven and twelve thousand of the swine left.“ The man said swine in the distinctive Valhallan svinya, nearly spitting on the floor of the chamber with the vehemence of the pronunciation.
"In any case,” he resumed, “the stragglers managed to group up and form a warband, and we didn’t have any nukes left to throw at them. They’re coming this way, and we expect them to arrive somewhere around midday tomorrow.”
“Seven and twelve is a very wide range, general,” said the Dark Hunter, whose name was Teruyori.
“We’ve been unable to get a good picture of them,” said Colonel Zima from his seat, with an apologetic nod towards the general for his temerity. "They’re coming towards us in a disorganized mess, a mob really, and their passage throws up snow clouds which are obscuring a good look at their real number. Sentinel recon have been doing what they can, but…“
"What is the defensive picture?” asked the Lamenter, a finely-made man named Levistas.
Sokolov’s tongue moved behind his cheek for a moment before he replied. "I have three regiments here in the bastion,“ he said, and the words themselves seemed to throw a weight around the necks of the military men and women. "The 71st and 245th Infantry, and the 109th Artillery. Approximately four thousand souls, all told.”
“Worst case, just means everyone gets three orks to themselves,” growled Yrsa the Space Wolf, but despite her bluff humor the Iron Priest’s face was grim, her fingers laced atop her axe as she stared down at the maps laid upon the table, seemingly urging them to render up some previously-undisclosed secret.
“I will be frank with you, General,” Razja said. The massive terminator had not taken any seat but had chosen to stand at the foot of the table rather than crush a proffered chair beneath her armored weight. The scars on her russet-skinned face rendered her countenance as brutal as any ork’s. "It was a stroke of good fortune that our ship intercepted the distress call from this world. This kill-team is not purposed to fight a siege. We have just enough time to inspect the bastion and the fighting-machines of your soldiers to ensure they are in readiness before the horde descends upon us tomorrow.“
General Sokolov thinned his lips, reading in Razja’s comment a veiled insult to his preparations, but he did not gainsay the Iron Fist. "Any aid at all is a gift from the Emperor, and I will not gainsay such a gift as a team of Astartes,” he said, and heads bobbed in agreement.
“To work, then,” Razja said, and the Deathwatch team rose to depart.
“A final question of General Sokolov before we go,” said the Salamander, and turned a set of eyes that faintly glowed crimson behind innocuous hazel irises upon the man. "What is the mood of the base?“
"Eager to give the damned svinya a good thrashing,” Sokolov replied immediately, and added only after a moment’s thought, perhaps compelled to speak more truthfully, “and ready to offer up their souls to the Emperor’s service.”
The Astartes departed, a clutch of demigods moving in a tightly-bound knot, and with them the Valhallans were left alone with their maps, watching hope go with them.
—————————-
The Deathwatch team threw themselves into the preparations with force. The various techmarines found a thousand little tweaks to improve the overall condition of the Valhallan’s machinery, while the Ironfather used her immense strength and paired servo-arms to hasten the bracing of doors and readying of defenses, accomplishing in minutes tasks that would have taken a squad of mortal soldiers an hour apiece to see off. The Salamander, meanwhile, consulted with various squad leaders and officers, judging the terrain beyond the bastion walls and comparing notes on ten thousand years of Imperial battle doctrine to tighten up fire-fields and kill-zones so that when the orks came they would be funneled into a series of death traps full of lasfire and plasma.
It was well after the bottom of the night that the Salamander came upon the Space Wolf as she finished attending to a humming chimera and slapped her lightly on the shoulder to get her attention. "The city this fort was built to guard is less than an hour’s run on foot for a soldier,“ he murmured to her.
She turned her head to look him in the face, seeing a crafty smirk forming on his lips. "And so? What are you plotting, Benyamin,” she prompted.
“The soldiers mentioned that before free passes were canceled, they would go into town and get food from a slaughterhouse not far inside the outskirts. Think we could sneak away before dawn?” He raised his brows.
Yrsa stared at him for a moment before grinning broadly enough to show her fangs.
————————–
It was just before sunrise that Razja tromped into the hall set aside for the Astartes to find a very unexpected sight. She’d ordered the team to change into the duty clothing they’d kept in the blackstar and run a final check on their wargear before the orks reached them, and had expected the lot of them to be present completing maintenance tasks. Instead she found Levistas looking over his conversion beamer while Teruyori had his hands buried in the housing of his grav-cannon, while the armor belonging to Yrsa and Benyamin lay silent and dark.
“Where are they?” she asked, her mismatched eyes with the left one glowing gold immediately swinging towards Teruyori with the ominous threat of a hydra cannon.
The Dark Hunter seemed a little too fixated on his gun to meet her gaze. "I do not know where they are, nor did I see them leave,“ he said with the kind of overly-precise diction that meant he was telling a flagrant lie by virtue of extreme truthfulness.
"Levistas,” she prompted. She did not make it a question.
The Lamenter, at least, had the grace - or foolishness - to look up into her face. "They ran their last-minute check, as ordered, Sister-Sergeant,“ he said.
"A very quick one,” Razja grunted, irked, noting that Benyamin had left his drakescale cloak behind. "Were they intending to be back by now?“
"I can’t say,” Levistas replied, looking back to his c-beamer. Razja nearly flung the nearest wrench at him, but instead grimaced and stomped off to find out where her errant marines had gone off to.
It wasn’t hard, truth be told. She followed the sound of raised voices and found an unusual gathering of the soldiery in one of the open courts. Their seemed to be some manner of party going on, and Razja shook her head. She had crossed the breadth of the Imperium more than once, and seen more than one culture with traditions of grand celebrations before battle, but the Valhallans had always struck her as a wiser sort. She smelled alcohol and the stench of meat, both burnt and bloody on the air and shouldered her way through men and women hastily devouring a last meal before battle - not a difficult task, even without her armor.
Sure enough, she found Benyamin, the Salamander stripped to the waist to bare his skin, so dark brown it seemed nearly true black, as he stood before an open, roaring flame, roasting what looked like a pair of entire grox and cutting haunches from one as it turned on a makeshift spit. The many golden rings that pierced his ears glittered in the firelight and sweat glistened in a manner that highlighted his myriad honor scars. He was nearly two hundred but had a handsome face that could pass for a man merely thirty, damn the man, Razja thought with a twitch of unreasonable jealously.
“Benyamin,” she growled as she drew near.
He had the grace to look sheepish as he caught sight of her, but it didn’t stop him cutting another steak from the roasting grox and passing it off to the regimental cooks aiding him in the task. "Steak, Ironfather?“ he asked, and if she could have killed him with a look she would strongly have considered the option.
"With me,” she said, and he followed her dutifully around the nearest corner before she rounded on him. "Explain.“
He seemed momentarily at a loss, but then shrugged his shoulders. "Sister-Sergeant, these people are outnumbered almost as much as three to one, and they know it. They hate the orks, they’ll fight them to their last breath, but they all know that they’re going to die doing it.”
“And so you indulge them?” she said, her frown unmoving.
He blinked his eyes slowly, lifting a hand to run it over his tightly-braided rows of hair. "Sister-Sergeant,“ he asked in a softer tone. "Do you remember the trials to become a space marine?”
“Like it was yesterday,” she said, brow furrowing as she struggled to see his point.
“Every chapter has its own way of doing things, but no matter the details, every one of us was pushed to the brink of endurance, threatened with death if we failed at the wrong moment. These soldiers are facing the same kind of trial right now, but without even the promise of being raised up as a space marine, just death or survival. They need a reminder of what good things they’re fighting for. Ironfather,” he continued before she could speak, “we’ve been over this bastion with a fine-tooth comb. We’ve looked at every pipe, every shell, every nut and bolt. There’s nothing left to attend to on the mechanical side. We can’t forget to run maintenance on the people as well.”
Razja could see his point, but still kept her frown. "So you snuck out in violation of my orders like a juvenile delinquent.“
"I had run maintenance as instructed and you never explicitly ordered us confined to the bastion-” he started to protest, but stopped when she waived a bronze-plated finger in his face.
“Don’t you dare technically at me, Benyamin,” she growled. "I am in command of this squad, and I will have my orders obeyed in letter and spirit.“
He briefly lowered his gaze in a nod of acquiescence. But when his face came back up there was still a hint of emotion - defiance? Concern? Razja had become an Ironfather chiefly in thanks to her unique combination of technical and tactical acumen, but she doubted any Iron Fist had even had to deal with such loose cannons as Benyamin or Yrsa. Where was Yrsa anyway? "Do you trust me, Ironfather Razja?” Benyamin asked quietly.
She didn’t have to think about it. "With my life.“
"I beg you trust me in this,” he said.
She grunted. "Very well, Benyamin, I will…indulge you in this. But those grox had better not be stolen,“ she added sharply.
”Granted, granted,“ he hastened to placate her, "granted most enthusiastically by the owner of a local slaughterhouse at the behest of one of the Emperor’s Angels.” His grin was infectious, and Razja had to roll her eye to break his gaze.
They returned to the ongoing fest just as the mysteriously-absent Space Wolf finally returned, lugging the skinned carcass of another grox over her broad shoulders. Like Benyamin she had stripped to the waist, and her scarred torso was streaked with blood, wild hair adding to a savage mien broken only by the implant plugs of a space marine. She glared defiance in Razja’s direction for a moment before throwing the bloodied carcass on one of the nearby tables where the cooks waited to cut it up and toss it on the open flame. "That leaves two,“ she said to Ben, prompting a round of cheers from the Valhallan men and women.
"Alright. I’ll get the next one,” he said, only to pause as a bronze-plated hand landed on his shoulder.
“We will get the last two,” Razja said, lifting her remaining flesh-and-blood arm to clench the remaining hand with which she’d been born, and another cheer followed. She shed the jacket of her duty uniform - though she didn’t prefer to strip down quite as far as her teammates, it still bared the heavy musculature of her arm and shoulders as broad as Benyamin’s own - and she and the Salamander began a run into the city to retrieve the final pair of promised grox.
————————
The sun hung high overhead, glinting sharply off the freshly-fallen snow as the clamor of the orks reached the bastion. The sentinel squadrons had done their job magnificently, drawing the greenskin horde right towards the stronghold and the prepared defenders.
Levistas and Taruyori stood on the walls, their long-range weapons ready to deal with the heaviest targets that presented themselves, whilst below, Benyamin racked his combi-bolter and touched the handle of his power sword and Yrsa swung her axe to loosen her muscles. Razja pressed a thumb to the rune of her mace, letting the blunted head flicker with lightning as she undid the safety on her stormbolter.
“Deathwatch…men and women of Valhalla,” she said on an open vox channel, hefting her mace as the din of the oncoming orks grew louder.
