Dark Angels Fallen

[Nabterayl]

... You did? Every legion has spawned traitors in the millennia since the Heresy. Why should anybody think that the Inquisition will care more about the Dark Angels' old traitors than its new traitors?

[zenjah]

... You did? Every legion has spawned traitors in the millennia since the Heresy. Why should anybody think that the Inquisition will care more about the Dark Angels' old traitors than its new traitors?

I feel like I'm getting trolled here... but...

No, I didn't. I said that keeping the Fallen a secret for 10,000 years is a crime on its own.

[bfmusashi]

Actually the DA do act more insufferably prickish than most other Marine chapters. Certainly more so than Sallyminders and Ultramorons. There's some more prickish out there, like Minotaurs and Black Templars, but DA are the worst of the first founding when it comes to relations with the Imperium at large.

No one ever remembers the Iron Hands and their incredible pouting. Seriously, 10 thousand years and still sulking in their rooms. It's like they're the chapter whose parents are getting divorced or alienated from dad. So brooding.

[Nabterayl]

I feel like I'm getting trolled here... but...

No, I didn't.

Sorry, was working off my phone and I got you confused with Zeshin, who said:

The Dark Angels are an anomaly in that some of them turned against their Primarch and the Emperor. This means that the inquisition, were they to find out, would probably see the geneseed of the DA as tainted and would be likely to order exterminatus on them.

I can buy that the Dark Angels would see it that way, though it seems unlikely to me. There have, presumably, been tens if not hundreds of thousands of Ultramarines descendants who have turned renegade, and nobody's calling their geneseed tainted. But regardless, it was Zeshin who made the suggestion that the idea is out there, not you.

Comes to that, what's our authority for the idea that the Inquisition wouldn't just say, "You had an unknown number of legionnaires turn traitor ten thousand years ago, there's an unknown number of them still at large, you didn't tell anybody, and we care ... why?"

I mean, we don't think that other chapters report their renegades to the Inquisition on a regular basis, do we?

[inquisitormack]

The story of Ophidium Gulf Crusade will also shed some light on how far the Dark Angels are willing to go in order to protect their secret.

[uglytater]

I love these threads.

Another thing about the DA is that the newbies aren't told about the Fallen. Page 11 in the dex on the bottom of the first column talks about how the Inner Circle keeps newbies ignorant of past events, and that until a Newbie joins the 1st company (Deathwing) he wouldn't learn the histories. Now it seems to me that means any DA that's in a tact squad doesn't know about the Fallen. I don't know if even the Ravenwing would know about them. All Company Masters are former Deathwing so they would know the history. Librarians and Interrogator Chaplains are also in the know, while tech marines will never know because of their loyalty to the Mechanicus of Mars.

[Psychosplodge]

I thought the primary task of the Ravenwing was hunting the fallen?

[Zeshin]

I don't have my codex (or novels, etc.) handy. Can you provide a cite for that? I don't think I've heard before that there's some notion running around that old traitors taint your geneseed more than new traitors. I can buy that such an obviously stupid notion might have currency, but I'd love to know where in our sources it's found.

It's not old traitors versus new traitors. Traitors in general bring the purity of the geneseed into question. This is a general theme in many of the BL novels which I know are considered less than canon but the idea that a space marine could turn against the emperor would engender fear and unrest in the populace of the 41st millennium and would therefore need to be stamped out by the inquisition.

Edit: missed half a page, added quote for clarity.

Edit the second: And I suppose it's more that they had traitors and lied, killed and kept secret their actions. The cover up is as much heresy as the original fall. They're damned if the do and damned if they don't at this point.

[uglytater]

I thought the primary task of the Ravenwing was hunting the fallen?

The codex states that the Ravenwing are at the front of the hunt for the Fallen, but it doesn't say they know why. Sammael, Master of the Ravenwing is a senior member of the Inner Circle, so he is certainly in the know, but I'm not sure about the individual members of the squad.

[Varinus]

Yes the Dark Angels are going out of their way to protect their secret. The Ophidian Gulf Crusade is notable but we must add the fact that they are massing Successor Chapters on the Rock who unquestioningly follow the commands of Azrael (tacit re-legionisation;- which is bound to annoy the Inquisition and the Ultramarines) On top of that they reallly offended Ursarker Creed and the Cadian High Command during the 13th Black Crusade.

On the question of why it matters to the Dark Angels my take is that they take great pride in being "The First." It s what makes them special and puts them above the "glories" of the Ultramarines and the Imperial Fists. The continued existence of the Fallen is a constant reminder that they fell short of the glories of their rival Legions, and whilst any Fallen exists the stain of traitor remains. Keeping it from 80% of the Dark Angels does make them self important dicks but at least their form of dickery differs from that of say the Ultramarines "we're the Marines everybody else wishes they could be" or the Space Wolves "we will go out of our way to be different just because . . " or the sulking Iron Hands.

They cannot admit it to outsiders as it would be to admit treason (and probably have either the GKs or the Space Wolves come calling) they don't think the Fallen will because both sides will wish to keep it in house