The Knights of Ophar: The Birth of a Chapter

[Chris]

Hey, so with the rumours of the new Codex: Space Marines and its release just around the corner, I figured now is a very good time to get writing and creating a new Chapter! So I sat down and thought, 'Well, how about I make a Chapter, just as it is being founded. It gives a lot of scope for fluff and provides a nice blank page to write from". So, without further ado, I give you. The Knights of Ophar!


Knights of Ophar:



Located in the Decius system, Opharus prime is the smallest of three planets which makes up the Ophar Cluster. Surrounded by forge worlds, verdant farming worlds and a couple of planets classified as Death Worlds, the Ophar cluster has become a key trading point is of massive strategic importance.

Overseeing this sector and guarding it from the myriad enemies of the Imperium are the Knights of Ophar. A Chapter of Adeptus Astartes which call Opharus Prime their home. As a young chapter which was founded in the most recent founding, The Knights of Ophar do not have halls of relics and legacies of their own. Whilst their founding legion, the Ultramarines provided a great deal of support on the founding, donating a twenty Veterans and enough technology to enable the surrounding forge worlds to begin outfitting the chapter. With the aid of their parent Chapter, the Knights of Ophar are fast building a name for themselves and the legacy they leave behind is own of total submission and unswerving loyalty to the Imperium of Man.

Recruitment:
The Knights of Ophar draw their recruits from across the entire Ophar Cluster. With planetary diversity ranging from a sun blasted desert world and a dense, low oxygen mountainous planet, the Cluster offers a wide variety of men who each year present the best of their sons to compete in the recruitment festival.
Thousands of pre-adolescent boys will be presented to the Master of Recruits who will put them through their paces. Travelling between Opharus Secondus and Tertius, the recruits will be tested to the limit as they compete against each other and the conditions in a bid to survive and hope to join the ranks of the Knights of Ophar. Each young boy who survives the trials on Secondus and Tertius will then be taken to the Opharus Prime where they will need to prove that they have what is needed to take the life of another living creature. It is during this trial that the boys will fight in gladiatorial games. Fighting beasts and creatures to the death until only 100 boys remain. These games will be broadcast amongst the Ophar Cluster serving as propaganda building faith and trust in the might of the Knights of Ophar and building a desire in the children to aspire to take the challenge of recruitment when they come of age.
The final 100 recruits will be inducted into the chapter as scouts, it is from this position that they will learn the skills needed to become a Knight of Ophar. They will hone they abilities with gun and blade and they will serve in the wars alongside the Knights until eventually they will become fully inducted as Adeptus Astartes.

Campaigns of note:
As a young and growing chapter, the Knights of Ophar have not had the opportunity to participate in many of the campaigns of legend. However they have overseen the pacification of over fifty different worlds in the region known as the Halo Stars and they have led a crusade against the Green Skin menace in the nearby Sargin region. Currently the second company is deploying in the Cadian Gate alongside so many of the brothers from of Chapters and untold millions of Imperial Guardmen set to repel the forces of the Archenemy. The Third Company is deployed in a watchful garrison in the Sargin region and is continuing to persecute the Ork threat whilst the fifth company is refitting and replenishing their ranks after confronting a genestealer cult uprising.

Equipment:
As has already been mentioned, due to being a young chapter, The Knights of Ophar have very little of the ancient technology normally attributed to the veteran chapters. As such, there is only a single dreadnought in the whole chapter. However, due their unique positioning in the Decius system, The Knights have been able to commission the fabrication of Terminator Armour and much of their equipment from the two local forge worlds. With the partnership of these worlds, the Knights of Ophar are set to soon be able to field a formidable force of well-equipped and well-trained warriors.   

Current Heroes of the Knights of Ophar:
Chapter Master Targonis:
Chapter Master Targonis was one of the first recruits of the Knights of Ophar, trained under the Veterans of the Ultramarines, he quickly learned the art of death and the swiftly developed a mind for strategy and warfare. He progressed from the rank of Scout to Captain in a remarkably short period of time. However, it wasn't until the founding Chapter Master was brought down by the Ork Warboss known as 'Snarbad the Nasty' that Targonis was appointed Chapter Master. The former Chapter Master was retrieved in a bad state and was interred in the Chapters only suit of Dreadnought armour, however it was deemed that he was no longer in a state to lead and Targonis progressed from a simple battlefield promotion to full Chapter Master.

Venerable Master Aquilus:
Aquilus was chosen by none other than Chapter Master Marneus Calgar of the Ultramarines to head up a detachment of veterans who were donated to the founding of the Knights of Ophar. Acting the role of Chapter Master, he set about building the Chapter from nothing. Under his guidance, the Knights of Ophar were born and under his watch they have continued to grow. However, he Aquilus received a grevious wound during a campaign if suppression against the Orks of the Sargin sector, he was interred in a suit of Dreadnought armour and he now rises from his slumber only to fight in the largest of engagement and to offer his highly valued council to the now Chapter Master Targonis.


Captain Tertulan:
Tertulan was one of the twenty veterans led by Aquilus who were originally sent to aid the training of the Knights of Ophar. Tertulan leads the veterans of the first company. The first company of Veterans has been the slowest growing company of the whole Chapter. Naturally it takes a considerable amount of experience and skill before a Knight can be inducted into the First Company. Tertulan and his own personal body guard of Companion Terminators carved a path through a Space Hulk infected with Orks before Tertulan drove his Power Sword through Ork Shaman who was piloting the craft through the ether.
   

This is all still work is progress, I hope to be adding to it and fleshing it out a bit more. But as for now, any thoughts?

[Lord Sotek]

Hey, I'm going to offer what I hope is some constructive criticism on what you have so far. It will not be very sugarcoated, but hopefully it will be received in the manner it was intended.


COLOR SCHEME:
Huh, earth tones. You don't see that very often on Marines! It's an interesting and novel configuration, kudos.

RECRUITMENT:

No offense, but we kind of know this already. It is a given that a Chapter will put its aspirants through extremely rigorous selection and gruelling trials, and the sort of "Compete against each other and kill dangerous creatures" thing that you mention is pretty bog-standard for such tests. I would either flesh this out more, or if the trials aren't all that exceptionally different from what your average Chapter does, I would focus a little more on the diversity of recruits and the environments they come from, perhaps tie it into the chapter in some deeper way. For instance, perhaps it is a calculated decision to take advantage of all these worlds within their sphere of influence; rather than recruiting from one culture and becoming entangled with it, as many Chapters have, they maintain a broad recruiting pool, so that no one external culture will exert undue influence on the culture and practices of the Chapter itself. Perhaps they seek the best of each of many worlds in the hope that, since differing worlds may produce individuals with differing skills and specialties, collectively they will have a very well-rounded selection of recruits.

The central concept is to de-emphasize elements that are commonplace or generic between most standard, Codex chapters, because they are redundant; and instead focus your writing effort and attention on the things that most strongly indicate your Chapter's character or otherwise makes them distinct and interesting.

CAMPAIGNS OF NOTE:
A decent section, building some immersion and story-hooks for you. On behalf of the DIY-index-astartes-reading community, I thank you for not going into longwinded narratives of the campaigns that you mention, as those are more or less always exceptionally boring.

EQUIPMENT: It's rather neat that they only have one Dreadnought. It's a little peculiar that they have such secure and easy access to a full complement of Terminator Armor; due to the fact that the suits are extremely difficult and time consuming to make, it's the newest-founded chapters that are typically the lowest requisition priority, or otherwise most short-changed, in the TDA department.

CURRENT HEROES: Rosters of Chapter bigwigs can be a minefield to write, but you seem to have done okay here. The main thing is that, once again, your characters at the moment are rather generic.

Targonis is, I'm afraid to say, very bland. "A highly promising Space Marine prodigy who rose through the ranks faster than average and took over when his leader and mentor was put out of commission in a fight." This describes pretty much every Space Marine captain who's ever existed, and more than a fair number of Chapter Masters too.

Aquilus is kind of a neat concept, a 'founding father' who's still around to alternate between napping, kicking ass, and advising the current head honcho; but that alone isn't too dissimilar from other venerable dreadnoughts out there. Since Aquilus is a member of the founding cadre, I'd love to know what brought him to such a momentous decision as "quitting" his chapter of origin, the Ultramarines, in order to help start up a new Chapter. I would also suggest you buck a trend in that, instead of having him be judged unfit to lead due to being Dreadnought'd, Aquilius himself chooses to step down and appoint a Successor. It fits with him still being a wise and lucid advisor-figure. Usually, a CM-turned-Dreadnought is replaced because becoming a Dreadnought has caused him to become "out of it" to a sufficient degree that he can't lead reliably anymore.

As a head chaplan, Tertulan is currently also pretty bland; "He's a preachy Space Marine who leads the preachy Space Marines and hates him some orks. He once hated him some orks so much he stabbed their leader to death." However, he does have a potentially very interesting area for growth, and that is the fact that he's a still-living member of the Founding Cadre who still holds a position of very high authority. How does his originally being an Ultramarine bear on his interactions with the Marines around him? How do Knights of Ophar feel, knowing that the highest religious authority of their chapter is an Ultramarine by origin and upbringing? In another direction, if it's commonplace for the Knights' terminator detachments to be lead by TDA-equipped members of the Reclusiam, that's another noteworthy distinctive trait the Chapter posesses.

You said at the beginning that this was somewhat of a "blank page to start from," and you're very right. There is truly very little that makes this chapter stand out at the moment in terms of identity or character. At the moment, they're really kind of... forgettable. Your Average Reader (tm) reads this and says: "Oh, a chapter of Marines. They're brown. They recruit dudes. They fight bad guys. They've only got one Dreadnought. 'Kay. Seen most of this before. Next?"

You have a start here, but you really need to go somewhere with it. The Chapter is young and unlauded; how are they seeking to make a name for themselves? The Chapter has little history in the way of relics and exotic equipment; are they trying to earn themselves their own complement of better or more historied gear, and if so, how are they going about it? These are where the 'blandness' I speak of turns out to have a silver lining; developing them will serve as excellent jumping-off points for some plot hooks and characterization.

[Chris]

Sotek you babe!
Thanks for that input, its really helpful. I was aware of the blandness, and really wanted to do something with it. I'll do some work on it later and see what I can do.
Again, huge thanks!

[Lord Sotek]

Too often have I seen an earnest start to an IA languish without feedback. I'm happy to help.

For a 'warm-up' before you start in to the heavy lifting of developing your chapter, I'd love to hear what answers, if any, you might have had in mind for the questions I posed in my previous post. If you like, I can also link you to some fairly handy resources for fleshing out and outlining a DIY chapter.

[Chris]

Absolutely! Send those links my way, any help is great.

As for questions, I agree about the recruitment. I want to emphasize the fact that they are a Codex adhering chapter founded from the Ultramarines. They are going to be faairly standardised, but I'm going to flesh out the sort of recruits the chapter gets from the three worlds. Perhaps the recruits from the mountainous planet have a more natural affinity for Assault roles due their intrisic nature of being more reliant on the wind and sky for their previous life whilst the desert ones are more all rounders. Perhaps I'll flesh out the culture of tribes etc...

I want to expand on the link between the mechanicum and the chapter, why do they have such a close working relationship and such a readily available supply of gear.

As for Characters, I want to expand on the Veterans from the Ultramarines. It isn't that they were sent as a punishment, or anything. I can really unpack a lot of that... In hindsight, 20 veterans is a lot for a Chapter which lost its whole 1st company... Perhaps I'll cut that down....

Thanks for helping me think this through!