Kronos Consortium

Renegade Space Marine Chapter & Chaos Warbands Articles

Born in the fires of the Horus Heresy, the Kronos Consortium is an alliance of renegades and heretics that make their home in the Space Hulk Kronos at the center of the Vortex of Despair. Its original members are made up of Word Bearer Legionnaires and a Cabal of Thousand Sons who grew disillusioned with the Heresy as their supposed brothers-in-arms fell to the ways of treachery and malice. Although many brothers of the Host still believed whole-heartedly in the Teachings of Lorgar it became apparent to all that in his preoccupations the Legion had become increasingly under the thumb of Erebus and other unworthy corrupters of the Faith.

Warband History
Since before the Heresy their existed a series of rifts in the Chapter of the Black Hand born of divergent goals and interpretations of the will of the gods. Although the Chapter had its origins on Terra and was later reinforced with sons of Colchis, in the late Crusade their numbers were drawn from the conquered planet of Gerringaurd, a system empire that had resisted the Emperor’s False Truth and paid for their defiance in blood and fire. As punishment and as a false redemption, the Noble Houses of Gerringaurd had to pay a tithe of their children to the Emperor’s Army, the best of them being taken in the “Old Way” of Terra. The House of the High King DeTortor itself was sentenced to a living death by Imperial Decree, taking the entirety of their surviving youths into the Space Marines, raising their sons to near immortality, but ensuring that their line would not continue on into the Age of the Imperium.

High King DeTortor’s three sons, Mallkus, Yuri and Edmund were ever reluctant servants of the Emperor. Mallkus the eldest accepted his fate with serene conviction. He had never been interested in rulership, electing to join the priesthood instead of claiming his birthright to lay first claim to the position as High King. With the destruction of the Old Faith of Gerringaurd these plans were too laid waste, and in their stead, he found a greater destiny among the Astartes when his training uncovered his blossoming psyker potential. Unlike his brothers he was taken into the Thousand Sons to train in the ways of the warp under the guidance of his newfound mentor Baraz Akash. Although the Emperor’s Crusade was a cause his heart never accepted, the pursuit of wisdom and the goal of peace assuaged his soul.

His younger brothers Yuri and Edmund, on the other hand, found neither acceptance nor peace with their new destiny. Before the coming of the Imperium the younger DeTortors had great plans for their father’s kingdom. Yuri, as the elder brother, would take his place on the throne, and Edmund would take command of the Gerringaurd Military, taking their fleet to colonize new systems and grow their Empire to heights their ancestors had only dreamed. Although they did their duty, they did so in resentment for their stolen birthright, with the eventual censor of Lorgar on Monarchia a vindication of their once secret disquiet at the Emperor’s False Truth. With the Legion’s once unshakeable faith in the Emperor broken the younger brothers were able to give voice to their true minds and quickly became figureheads of the lost sons of Gerringaurd,

By the completion of the Pilgrimage a rift had developed between the Gerringuardians and those elder Marines of Colchis and Terra. Gerringaurd’s wayward sons desired to return to their stolen home and reclaim the world the Emperor had taken from them, rebuilding the Kingdom their ancestors had left them. Those of older stock largely kept their faith in their gene-father Lorgar, trusting in his wisdom and awaiting his Word. These Old Guard were led by their Chaplain T’subdai, who would often butt heads with the ascending brothers.

None know when Lorgar himself caught wind of the evolving situation, but just prior to splitting the Legion to lay the foundations of their own Crusade against the Emperor’s godless Imperium he met with the then quarrelling leaders of the Black Hand to quash the growing feud among his wayward sons. By fate or by chance the position of Chapter Master had become vacant during the Pilgrimage. T’subdai would retain his role as Chaplain, teaching the Black Hand the new Faith and discretely spreading the Word of Chaos to each planet they made contact with from that day forward. Yuri, in recognition for his service and to secure the loyalty of the Gerringaurd System in the coming days was then named the Chapter Master of the Black Hand. His first mission was to rendezvous with the 99th Expeditionary Fleet. His elder brother and a small force of Thousand Sons accompanied the expedition and it was to be Yuri and Edmund’s primary task to sway their blood brother and his Legion brothers to their cause. In addition, they were given leave to increase their Chapter’s relations with their home planet, drawing as many fresh recruits as they could muster in preparation for the war to come and promising the brothers that once their own Crusade began they would be given leave to reclaim the lands the Emperor had stolen from them. So long as they kept the faith and remained loyal to their brother Legionaries of course.

This offer they gladly accepted, and once the Heresy began the Black Hand returned to Gerringaurd this time as liberators rather than conquerors. Sentiment among the commoners and a majority of the noble houses had never quite swayed in favor of the Imperium, largely due to the greed and incompetence of the Planetary Governor left in charge in the wake of the Imperium’s conquest. A few of the noble houses had been quick to abandon their beliefs in favor of the Imperium’s raw power, and these sycophantic few had lorded over the rest when they had been awarded power in exchange for their new loyalty. When Chapter Master Yuri informed the Governor his rule was at an end none raised a weapon nor a word to stop him.

From then on, the Gerringaurd System became the Black Hand’s base of operations to engage in attacks on Ultramar in conjunction with Lorgar’s Shadow Crusade. During this time the 99th Expedition focused on hit-and-run scorched-earth raids on Imperial Planets, stripping them for resources and destroying anything of strategic value before moving on, sending raw resources and stolen vehicles back to Gerringaurd. In this way the Kingdom of Gerringaurd grew prosperous, their forges feeding Horus’ War Machine with resources to spare.

The Black Hand was at Terra when the Heresy failed. Seeing their Primarch's dreams turn to ash before their eyes Chapter Master Yuri abandoned the route to the Eye of Terror and gave the order to return to Gerringaurd to attempt to save his reclaimed kingdom.

Soon enough the Scouring came for Gerringaurd and the system found itself once again burning in the fires of war. Hopelessly outmatched by the unstoppable tides of the Imperium's vengeance the defense was doomed from the start. Naval, Army, and Astarte forces ran fighting retreat from the system, evacuating as much manpower and material as they could muster before the Imperial onslaught drove them from the system.

In parallel to their fellow Renegades the forces of the Black Hand retreated to the Warp for refuge in the relatively nearby Vortex of Despair, a pit of spiraling Hell the Imperials believed they could never return from.

The Great Hulk Kronos
Deep within the depthless tempest of the Vortex the Black Hand found a Space Hulk unlike any they've encountered before or after. The Great Hulk Kronos is a spherical amalgamation of ships from time immemorial fused together into a crystalline superstructure bristling with colossal spires that jut out like the spikes of the ancient Morning Star. Its smooth warp glass exterior encases a planet-sized labyrinth of vessels lost throughout the millennia. The Black Hand made their base within the Kronos' endless halls, converting but a fraction of its interior to their purposes, repurposing ancient machinery into foundries and ships of forgotten civilizations into habitation blocks.

Inside the Eye of the Vortex time returned to a state of near-normalcy and these Lost and Damned forces set about turning their prize into something in between an impenetrable fortress and a nation.

Forming the Council
It did not take long before the leadership of the Black Hand found themselves diverging in how best to utilize their new home. The Dark Apostle T'subdai led the largest opposition to Chapter Master Yuri, believing that they must strike out to the Eye of Terror to rejoin the Word Bearer Legion proper. Additionally, in their isolation a large minority of the Astartes started to gravitate to one particular Chaos God or another, forming dedicated Cults to their patron rather than continuing to follow the Undivided Path. As the Chapter fractured the schisms threatened to break out into a civil war that none could afford if they were to survive outside the Vortex.

Before the factions fell into bloodshed their Thousand Sons allies were able to mediate a tolerable compromise, formally fracturing the Black Hand. Loyalists to Chapter Master Yuri, consisting primarily of Astartes recruited from his home planet Gerringaurd, retained the sigil of the Black Hand. The Old Guard that followed the Undivided Path of their Primarch Lorgar renamed themselves the Desolate Heralds and fell under the command of Dark Apostle T'subdai. Each of the God Cults then appointed a champion, and together these Lords of Chaos formed the Council of Deimos which would from henceforth rule over the forces of the Kronos Consortium.

In the following centuries the Council would expand to include representatives from their mortal vassals in the Mechanicus, Navy, and the reformed Imperial Army. Though technically given an equal vote in Council decisions in practice these lesser Lords new that they would only survive their positions of power in the good graces of one of their Astartes Masters or another. Control of the Consortium throughout the millennia in essence comes down to which Astartes Lord is able to best maintain puppet rulers of the mortals.

The Long War
The Desolate Heralds of Dark Apostle T'subdai were the first of the Consortium's forces to strike out from the Vortex in 781.M31. When Abaddon's Black Crusade spilled out upon the Imperium the song of his war echoed through the Warp, signaling to the Kronos Consortium that the Imperium had become vulnerable. The Heralds engaged in a scorched earth campaign on the edges of the galaxy as they made their way back to the Eye of Terror. There they found to their disappointment Lorgar had remained in seclusion following the Heresy and that a Dark Council under Erebus and Kor Phaeron now ruled in his absence. With some difficulty they were able to break away once again from the Legion and return to the Vortex of Despair to wage the Long War their own way.

Despite their hopes of joining Lorgar's new crusade leading to naught, the Desolate Heralds returned with news of an Imperium that had weakened. The Imperial Primarchs were gone, the mighty Legions broken, their strict leadership corrupt, and their progress was halted. Although the Imperium was still mighty, it had entered a period of stagnation and decline. The Emperor's realm had fallen into an Age of Darkness, and to the Kronos Consortium that spelled opportunity.

By sword and by subterfuge the Kronos Consortium joined the Long War. Although the Consortium would engage in countless raids and engage in periodic campaigns on the fields of battle, it is the war they waged in the shadows that the Inquisition would secretly grow to fear most. Lord Yuri believed that the best way to lay the Imperium low was not brute force, but from within. Throughout the millennia the Black Hand forged diplomacy as their deadliest weapon with help from the Thousand Sons Cabal they sheltered, reaching out to lost and desperate souls throughout the galaxy. In silence they seeded cults in the murkiest depths of Hive Worlds, in backwater Agriworlds, and even corrupting the leaderships of the occasional Shrine World.

The Eye of Terror Opens
Their Under Empire spread across the stars, a network of conclaves and cults maintained in secret by Rogue Traders and Guilds often ignorant to who their true masters are. When the Great Rift opened many cells saw this as a sign from the Gods that the time for secrecy is at an end. Now as Chaos spreads throughout the Galaxy, Consortium grows at an exponential rate, their followers on the fringes able to openly declare their fealty with little fear of Inquisition retribution as even more dire threats ravage Imperial holdings from all sides.

Too many this is a time of victory, their ancient foe stands on the brink of defeat and in some areas the Consortium is more concerned with administering their holdings than bringing war to their enemies. However, in a galaxy plunged in Chaos and Xenos running rampant there are whispers that the main question on the Council's mind is how to ensure their Renegade Empire survive the Fall of the Imperium?

Warband Home World: Gerringaurd
While original Legionnaires were from Terra and later Colchis, recruitment shifted to the Gerringaurd System, located in the Segmentum Tempestus on the Galactic East near the border to the Ultima Segmentum.

Gerringaurd is an arctic, mountainous world with a temperate equatorial belt. Hive Cities supported by large agricultural zones dominate the equatorial regions, while the north is comparatively sparsely populated with mining settlements.

Warband Recruitment
Due to the relative stability of the Warp surrounding the Great Hulk Kronos the human population of the Naval and Imperial Army units that accompanied the Black Hand during the days of the 99th Expedition have grown into a large population under the control of their Astartes Overlords. Largely left to administer themselves this mass of mortals has spread deep into the Hulk, forming various tribes and communities that revere the Chaos Space Marines.

Over the generations the selection of viable candidates from this excess population has developed into a sort of Grand Tournament where the tribesmen, cultists and various servants of the Astartes compete for the opportunity to become one of the Masters. The Cult of Khorne hosts a series of trials, gladiatorial combats, and blood sports to ensure only the greatest young warriors are allowed to receive the Holy Gene-Seed.

In addition, whenever possible the Sorcerers of the Black Hand attempt to convert Imperial Space Marines and fellow Renegades alike. However, this later method is not relied upon to maintain and expand fighting strength.

Warband Gene-Seed
Fabius Bile taught the Black Hand's Apothecaries how to clone gene-seed in exchange for a large quantity of fresh samples of Dark Eldar Trueborn and other rare genetic material. Cloning Labs dedicated to gene-seed production are housed deep within the Great Hulk Kronos. Occasionally, fresh samples are harvested from defeated Loyalist Astartes forces and added to the production cycle in an attempt to prevent or minimize Gene-Seed Degradation, but these are considered inferior to even the most diluted Gene-Seed of Lorgar.

Problems stemming from over-cloned Gene-Seed largely include increased mental instability and susceptibility to mutation.

Warband Organisation
The Kronos Consortium is split into various subfactions that operate largely autonomously.

Main Forces

The Black Hand: Led by Lord Yuri and a Cabal of Sorcerers. Operates similarly to a Heresy Era Astartes Legion with human Auxiliaries. Legionnaires are supported by trained Cultist Infantry and Amored Units.

The Desolate Heralds: Led by Dark Apostle T'sobdia and his Acolytes. Follows the ways of the Word Bearers, Astartes Coteries are led into battle by a Dark Apostle and Coryphaus.

Mono-God Cults

The Court of Blades: Khorne Cult

The Deathmarch: Nurgle Cult

The Siren's Symphony: Slaanesh Cult

The Rancorous Cabal: Tzeentch Cult

Lost and Damned Forces

Consort Navy: Formerly the 99th Expeditionary Fleet

Phobian Enforcers: Made in the image of the Adeptus Arbites, maintains a core of human enforcers to maintain enough order for production of supplies and armaments. Levies cult militias when needed.

Kronos Mechanicus: Mechanicus forces that supported the Black Hand during the time of the 99th Expedition and the Heresy. Provides weaponry in exchange for Astartes protection.

Warband Combat Doctrine
Prior to a major offensive the Black Hand, when possible the Black Hand will infiltrate the target location with Cultist Agents to gather information, sabotage critical infrastructure, and recruit native allies. They see the most success in Hive Worlds where Cultist activity is able to conceal itself in the teeming masses of humanity, and find sympathetic ears in the impoverished hordes and criminal underground.

When engaged the Consortium models themselves after the Imperial Legions of the Crusade. Human infantry and armor maintain offensive and defensive lines while Astartes largely commit themselves to breakthroughs, surgical strikes, and reinforcing actions.

Warband Beliefs
The Kronos Consortium believes that in order for humanity to survive they must learn to utilize and control the Forces of Chaos. The Lies of the Imperial Truth was a fool's errand that would see mankind damned in ignorance, for ignorance of the Gods and the Warp would not protect them from it. Like the Eldar before them Mankind would destroy themselves. Enlightenment and understanding the warp are the path to mastery, man needs not condemn themselves to ignorance, for man has the will to conquer Hell itself. Only then will Mankind be strong enough to defeat any enemy that threatens to destroy it, be they Ork, Eldar, Necron or Tyranid.

Notable Members
Lord Yuri DeTortor: Leader of the Black Hand

Lord Edmund DeTortor: Second in Command of the Black Hand

Lord Mallkus DeTortor

Baraz Akash: Thousand Son Sorcerer of the Athanaean Cult

Dark Apostle T'sobdia: Leader of the Desolate Heralds

Brannik the Sleek: Lead Apothecary and Master of Gene-Seed production.

Warband Fleet
Primary fleet consists of surviving vessels from the 99th Expeditionary Fleet, now referred to as the Consort Navy.

Astartes maintain 1 Battle Barge and 2 Strike Cruisers.

Various Rogue Trader and other civilian vessels.

Warband Colours
Primary, Crimson. Secondary, Black and Bronze

Warband Badge
Sigil of the Fallen House DeTortor, former Royal Family of Gerringaurd

Warband Relations
Word Bearers, Thousand Sons, Dark Mechanicus

Allies
Inquisition, Ultramarines and their Successors

Notable Quotes
"The Tithe, the Tithe. That's all this ever was about. The Emperor's Bloody Tithe. They hold to His lies and call it Honor but all the Emperor wanted was for others pay for his quest to remake reality in Tithes of blood."