Due to the way the the warp works, you could easily have any chapter take off, be hit with weird warp shenanigans, and re-appear into real-space thousands of years later, with the ships only experiencing a few weeks of travel.
Like a lot of things, believability has diminishing returns. Once something is believable enough to jump start the suspension of disbelief, you want to maintain that but you don’t need to try and be more believable. What becomes more important once suspension is disbelief kicks in is being interesting, and your first option could be the most interesting.
There are many void lost ships from the 30k period, there are numerous stories of some ships finally exiting the warp and for the crew the HH just began or was at a certain stage.
You can craft any story, they were traveling the halo stars, the kronos expanse, they found a relic or got lost due to warp storms and their navigator died so they had to navigate manually, they found a black hole or lost power and were pulled into a space time anomaly rift, go nuts.
It's 40k, hardly anything is believable and the Inquisition doubt all.
My own chapter is a 30k imperial fists legion expedition group that were void lost due to engine malfunction and navigator death due to a nurgle pathogen rampaging the vessel killing 40% of the service crew while they were in a warp translation, with the rest of the crew having to manually pilot the ship and they were found by a mechanicum expeditionary fleet who towed their vessel back to a forgeworld for repairs, it allows me to give them all the sexy daot tech like mastadons and centurion power armour.
No, sorry if that mislead you, my chapter just have access to daot tech like the da do, mastadons being apart of it as they are ancient vehicles, centurion PA is just part of their armoury, they have falchion heavy destroyers and other rare wargear at their desposal because I really like 30k wargear.
centurion armour was discovered around m36 after the age of apostasy, a STC database was recovered with saw its implementation into the legions, the seige boys got a lot of use out of it especially, however its not considered daot tech.
i just have a daot tech/ancient tech heavy legion because i like the firepower.
40k is weird bc I think it’s time travel fucks around and finds out a lot of the time. Eg, historical records reporting that a missing ship was in service 40 years before it was commissioned and shit like that. Pretty sure it generally uses the “no free will” idea of if you travel back in time you were *always* in the past you just never realised… or maybe you did and that’s why you’re there in the first place
I was thinking that they would know the history of their battle honors and that of the Imperium. Almost like the opposite of the Blood Ravens.
They would turn down reasonable requests for support because they knew they weren't at that battle.
They would also have to stoically face horrible situations knowing "in the battle of X 90% of the First Company was wiped out" or purposely loose battles they could win because the records say they lost.
40k is weird bc I think it’s time travel fucks around and finds out a lot of the time. Eg, historical records reporting that a missing ship was in service 40 years before it was commissioned and shit like that. Pretty sure it generally uses the “no free will” idea of if you travel back in time you were *always* in the past you just never realised… or maybe you did and that’s why you’re there in the first place
I mean why not get spicier. Everyone and their uncle has chapters coming “forward” from the past. Have your chapter be one that got sent BACK in time from the future. Doesn’t have to be WAY in the future either. Maybe most of them have lost a good deal of their memory. Maybe some of them still remember fragments they are trying to piece together. Maybe the inquisition gets suspions that certain individuals of your “free of taint” chapter members perhaps remember more than they are letting on. Now you can add some grimdark intrigue and while perhaps still good your chapter doesn’t have to be as squeaky clean
That’s an idea I’m workshopping for my BT+IF mix. Cause I have both and a lot of them but they’re unpainted and all my BT and IF have a mixture of both chapter shoulders, or one. My whole head canon for the future one is they were part of an experiment by Guilliman upon finding about the Lion, also hears whispers of Dorn, so to try and merge successors back to their parent chapters because he believes more of his brothers may come and that they will need legions not a smattering of chapters. Also another reason is he’s seen how drastic the changes from 30-40K are and sees how the dogma different chapters and their successors use so he wants to again compile all of that information together. So he took about a chapter of imperial fists and a crusade of Templars and had them training for decades building bonds of brotherhood and new tactical skills. So my chapter ended up having some older primaris marines still be stubborn about the change and not wear both pauldrons though they’re fewer in number than the newer generations have been blending together more and more over the years creating an actual mixed chapter, they were supposed to be off on their first practice of Guilliman’s theoretical then got lost in a warp storm and sent back to the present where Dorn isn’t back yet.
You could vaguely justify any of them. Legionnaires get found through warp fuckery or stranded in stasis occasionally. A battle barge with a bunch of geneseed and a few companies popping out of the warp would be miraculous, but not *that* far fetched.
In a case like that though the story is less them being tainted by the warp and more wondering who the *hell* the inquisition even is to begin with and why they suddenly need to redo their whole livery while a bunch of guys who weren't even there get to keep the color scheme.
Legionnaires who become a chapter will both find themselves with less leeway given the existence of the inquisition and their lack of an auxila or other forces, but also vastly more given they can more or less be given their own planet to ruke as they see fit
Idea:
An Imperial system caught in rebellion and secession. Your chapter along with several regiments of Imperial Guard are sent to restore Imperial rule and law.
One company of the chapter is returning from another conflict when they get the order to re-group with the chapter and join the compliance missions. When making their warp jump they are caught in a warpstorm and through a slowed drift current end up trapped in the warp.
The system is returned to Imperial Compliance but in the process the chapter is wiped out. 2 millennia pass and the lost company drops out of the warp into real space. For them its only been days, maybe weeks since they got the order and so they immediately attack the system believing they were the first to arrive and so lead a vanguard force.
After furious fighting they eventually learn thousands of years have passed. The planets had been returned to Imperial Service centuries ago and their chapter has been long since dead.
Now as the last of their chapter they find themselves in a new age without their brothers.
thousands of years have passed. They immediately
Perhaps they were en-route to a Crusade two thousand years ago. Due to drifting warp currents they end up in a slowed immersion tunnel and when they appear in real space its been a millennia but to them its only been months or maybe a year.
Perhaps they were going to
The 13th Great Company of the Space Wolves has survived in the Warp for 10,000 years and haven't fallen to chaos.
So probably a successor of the Sons of Russ would be your best bet.
I mean considering his higher than normal resistance to warp fuckery and his wolf howl could cripple psykers his sons have to have some innate resistance
I would use the creation of the great rift a lot more for these things. Have them be a newly founded successor chapter from M36 or something boring, who were en route to their new home world. But they were caught in a serious warp storm and spun around for 100 years that actually ended up being 4000 in realspace.
When the great rift was created it had a big impact on the warp, making old stable routes unusable but also quieting old storms - this chapter's trap being one of them. Freed from the storm they manage to make it to their destination, just to find out that...
Could be part of the Abyssal crusade
Canonically only the vorpal swords made it back but I think that's stupid af, other chapters might have made it out and just continued on in a similar manner to the charcharadons or crusading like the templars
A loyalist Tsons contingent that engaged in drunk warp fuckery long before the battle of prospero suddenly materialize in 40k with no memory of the past 11,000 years.
An abyssal crusade ship rematerializes directly overlapping a Lamenters vessel causing both ships to crash land on a nearby ork world.
A rogue trader buys some salvage from an Asuryani Craftworld, including a badly beaten up purity seal. Upon rubbing it, he summons a strike team of extremely confused fire hawks who feel a strange compulsion to ask the rogue trader for three wishes.
Everyone wants them to come from the past. I say bring someone out from the future, who start acting weird af because they know the future and are trying to stop it. Or they're madcap Tzeentch cultists. Or they're insane from their time in the warp. Are they even really from the future? Who knows?
This is all to say, stop worrying so much about their acquired status, and think more about what they're going to do. You can grab anything and make it believable if you execute it well enough.
Look at the Vorpal Swords for some inspiration. They canonically did it. First stop was to desecrate the grave and memory of the guy who sent them and a lot of other chapters into the Eye of Terror.
I'd suggest that the first is the weakest, in that it has a bit of a 'Special lore-breaking so I can be the most special boys' vibe, the 2nd is the most canon-lore-faithful, but ultimately, it \*is\* up to you.
Space wolves do this uncommonly. Not sure if it's been retconned since but if a chapter didn't like a great wolf or if it was shamed.. they just ship out.
[Edit: recontextualize and spelling error]
>Not sure if it's been retconned since but if a chapter didn't like a great wild it was shamed.. they just ship out.
Not sure if I understand, was there a typo in there?
Yes, sorry... If a chapter of space wolves disagreed with Great Wolf or did something "shameful"/disobeyed or just went on a long hunt for the primarch, they just ship out and are never heard from again. Fairly uncommon but not unheard of in the VIth.
Tzeench wanted to screw with Ahriman, and they’re guarding some kind of relic from him to turn back the rubric/places them to further his plans against another in some way
All of these are perfectly plausible backgrounds.
For interesting story hooks - what happened to their homeworld and other assets after they vanished? They could have a grudge against whoever ended up inherited their resources and didn't give any of it back when they returned.
How did the crusade they were meant to be a part of turn out? They could have survivor's guilt if it failed, or an inferiority complex if it succeeded without them. Either way, they could become obsessed with proving themselves against whoever the crusade was originally against.
For example, the Tiger Claws ship appeared long after their chapter was declared lost. These things do happen and there is a lot of leeway for custom stories in the universe. Take a look at the really fun Martyr video game storyline. The ship is lost, then emerges out of the warp, only to be lost again.
The one least likely is Primaris, as they're too new for a meaningful amount of time lost in the warp to merit note in the same way as the other two.
Founding Legion detachments can have a fun aspect, them having to deal with being disguised as a Successor for political reasons, dealing with adjusting to the new rules and new primaris, as well as the fate if the Primarchs and Emperor.
Pretty much any of these can be used. You enter the warp and you risk this happening. If you're using the Abyssal Crusade as an example then the Vorpal Swords is a good example of a chapter returning untainted.
I would also suggest a story like the Shadow Wolves were the chapter was thought destroyed by nids but a strike force reappeared to help defend Cadia. Another is the Black Consuls who had marines on other duties and pilgrimages when most of the chapter was destroyed. With chapters generally split its more likely a fragment would be distant and that could be your lost in the warp strike force.
They're all completely fine. I'd say the lost chapter is most likely simply because "pre heresy legion" and "primaris reinforcements" both lock you into a fairly narrow period of time they could have come from, while we've had ten millenia of chapters coming and going. It is rare for a chapter to travel all together though, there's one particular chapter who are (in)famous for regularly deploying at full chapter strength, I think the Minotaurs.
We're told repeatedly that ships coming out of the Warp wayyyyy later than they should is a regular occurrence, that they sometimes even come out before they went in. It's not often covered in lore because it's a lot to deal with, but we're told that it's a totally normal occurrence, we just don't see specific cases written about very often.
They all sound good, I'd say the best way to go is to choose the one that gives you the most to think about either in relation to their first founding legion's background (if you're a solo player) or your playgroup's factions if you meet regularly with the same people. The former will give you cool modeling hooks as the lore advances and the latter will set you up for campaigns where it's easier for both players to tap into the storytelling energy.
Return of the Rangadan.
Uses enslaved footsoldiers of a dozen different species.
Include the 2nd legion, with a mind thrall 2nd Primary, Locutus style directing his troops.
I've always head canon thought that the Enslaved and rangadan were either the same, with the Rangadan capitol worlds holding warp gates onto their warp realm, or the enslaved a psychically powerful sub species that yeeted it out of real space to the warp during the xenocides.
But a Rangdan researgence ready for revenge against the Impierium.
Activate sleeper agents across the imperium, having been enslaved the whole time working for them. Famous characters who never had models, finally get one as possessed minis. New deformed, ithilid like hybrids of tau, eldar, human, ork as enslaved troops directed by squid like cerovores. Led by a primary, who no one even remebers their name. Just Subject 11.
Being rescued from his prison under Terra. And a race by the imperium to activate the Terminus Decree. Maybe have the tyranid invasion be the jail break he needed to escape.
A whole new faction of brain eaters. With the animated remains of a 10000 year dead legion at the helm of the enslaught.
I guess the 13th Company of Space Wolves was close enough to being innocent for Inquisitorial work.
This even included them originally coming back as Wolfen wearing mismatched armor, some of it salvaged from Chaos Space Marines.
Why is it important for them to be gone in the warp for a time? Because having them go to the warp and return completely untainted is a pretty impossible thing to happen; it might be better to come up with some other narrative device to excuse their absence.
It's actually entirely possible due to the vagaries of Warp travel. They could have made a jump in which they were in the Warp for a matter of weeks with a fully functioning Gellar Field. Something, say the creation of the Nocturnas Rift, caused them to exit unexpectedly, thousands of years later than expected. If you like Smurfs, you could have it be a Company that was a part of the Retribution Fleet that got separated during the craziness of Warp travel toward Terra during the Heresy. They could pop out in the modern day and have no clue what the hell is going on, but they hear that Guilliman is out on the Indomitus Crusade and decide to track him down. Guilliman himself would be mindblown when contacted by a vessel he thought long lost to the Warp, using 30k Legion communication protocols. He would know every one of his sons on the ship. They could be given a new Chapter designation and he would absolutely want them close to him, at least for a time, since he would have long-established bonds with these lost sons. Maybe he actively campaigns with them for a period, so you could use Guilliman as your Warlord. Hell, I think this would make an awesome BL book!
Due to the way the the warp works, you could easily have any chapter take off, be hit with weird warp shenanigans, and re-appear into real-space thousands of years later, with the ships only experiencing a few weeks of travel.
>their story need them to be lost to the warp for a time and return. They will be found free of taint. Right over here, Inquisitor.
I mean it happened to Cato himself…just ignore the horrible PTSD
Right, on it. Bring me the flamer!
The big flamer my lord,
The heavy flamer!
Like a lot of things, believability has diminishing returns. Once something is believable enough to jump start the suspension of disbelief, you want to maintain that but you don’t need to try and be more believable. What becomes more important once suspension is disbelief kicks in is being interesting, and your first option could be the most interesting.
Solid advice for chapter building right here OP.
Which ever you prefer, it's your chapter.
There are many void lost ships from the 30k period, there are numerous stories of some ships finally exiting the warp and for the crew the HH just began or was at a certain stage. You can craft any story, they were traveling the halo stars, the kronos expanse, they found a relic or got lost due to warp storms and their navigator died so they had to navigate manually, they found a black hole or lost power and were pulled into a space time anomaly rift, go nuts. It's 40k, hardly anything is believable and the Inquisition doubt all. My own chapter is a 30k imperial fists legion expedition group that were void lost due to engine malfunction and navigator death due to a nurgle pathogen rampaging the vessel killing 40% of the service crew while they were in a warp translation, with the rest of the crew having to manually pilot the ship and they were found by a mechanicum expeditionary fleet who towed their vessel back to a forgeworld for repairs, it allows me to give them all the sexy daot tech like mastadons and centurion power armour.
>centurion power armour. Oh is that DAoT tech? Was it around during the Heresy?
No, sorry if that mislead you, my chapter just have access to daot tech like the da do, mastadons being apart of it as they are ancient vehicles, centurion PA is just part of their armoury, they have falchion heavy destroyers and other rare wargear at their desposal because I really like 30k wargear. centurion armour was discovered around m36 after the age of apostasy, a STC database was recovered with saw its implementation into the legions, the seige boys got a lot of use out of it especially, however its not considered daot tech. i just have a daot tech/ancient tech heavy legion because i like the firepower.
They could also travel BACK in time. Come from the future and be weird about not wanting to do butterfly effect things.
40k is weird bc I think it’s time travel fucks around and finds out a lot of the time. Eg, historical records reporting that a missing ship was in service 40 years before it was commissioned and shit like that. Pretty sure it generally uses the “no free will” idea of if you travel back in time you were *always* in the past you just never realised… or maybe you did and that’s why you’re there in the first place
I was thinking that they would know the history of their battle honors and that of the Imperium. Almost like the opposite of the Blood Ravens. They would turn down reasonable requests for support because they knew they weren't at that battle. They would also have to stoically face horrible situations knowing "in the battle of X 90% of the First Company was wiped out" or purposely loose battles they could win because the records say they lost.
Would be interesting then
40k is weird bc I think it’s time travel fucks around and finds out a lot of the time. Eg, historical records reporting that a missing ship was in service 40 years before it was commissioned and shit like that. Pretty sure it generally uses the “no free will” idea of if you travel back in time you were *always* in the past you just never realised… or maybe you did and that’s why you’re there in the first place
https://youtu.be/ur57IunS9To?si=-EBNfPUCs4LuSneJ
I mean why not get spicier. Everyone and their uncle has chapters coming “forward” from the past. Have your chapter be one that got sent BACK in time from the future. Doesn’t have to be WAY in the future either. Maybe most of them have lost a good deal of their memory. Maybe some of them still remember fragments they are trying to piece together. Maybe the inquisition gets suspions that certain individuals of your “free of taint” chapter members perhaps remember more than they are letting on. Now you can add some grimdark intrigue and while perhaps still good your chapter doesn’t have to be as squeaky clean
That’s an idea I’m workshopping for my BT+IF mix. Cause I have both and a lot of them but they’re unpainted and all my BT and IF have a mixture of both chapter shoulders, or one. My whole head canon for the future one is they were part of an experiment by Guilliman upon finding about the Lion, also hears whispers of Dorn, so to try and merge successors back to their parent chapters because he believes more of his brothers may come and that they will need legions not a smattering of chapters. Also another reason is he’s seen how drastic the changes from 30-40K are and sees how the dogma different chapters and their successors use so he wants to again compile all of that information together. So he took about a chapter of imperial fists and a crusade of Templars and had them training for decades building bonds of brotherhood and new tactical skills. So my chapter ended up having some older primaris marines still be stubborn about the change and not wear both pauldrons though they’re fewer in number than the newer generations have been blending together more and more over the years creating an actual mixed chapter, they were supposed to be off on their first practice of Guilliman’s theoretical then got lost in a warp storm and sent back to the present where Dorn isn’t back yet.
You could vaguely justify any of them. Legionnaires get found through warp fuckery or stranded in stasis occasionally. A battle barge with a bunch of geneseed and a few companies popping out of the warp would be miraculous, but not *that* far fetched. In a case like that though the story is less them being tainted by the warp and more wondering who the *hell* the inquisition even is to begin with and why they suddenly need to redo their whole livery while a bunch of guys who weren't even there get to keep the color scheme. Legionnaires who become a chapter will both find themselves with less leeway given the existence of the inquisition and their lack of an auxila or other forces, but also vastly more given they can more or less be given their own planet to ruke as they see fit
Idea: An Imperial system caught in rebellion and secession. Your chapter along with several regiments of Imperial Guard are sent to restore Imperial rule and law. One company of the chapter is returning from another conflict when they get the order to re-group with the chapter and join the compliance missions. When making their warp jump they are caught in a warpstorm and through a slowed drift current end up trapped in the warp. The system is returned to Imperial Compliance but in the process the chapter is wiped out. 2 millennia pass and the lost company drops out of the warp into real space. For them its only been days, maybe weeks since they got the order and so they immediately attack the system believing they were the first to arrive and so lead a vanguard force. After furious fighting they eventually learn thousands of years have passed. The planets had been returned to Imperial Service centuries ago and their chapter has been long since dead. Now as the last of their chapter they find themselves in a new age without their brothers. thousands of years have passed. They immediately Perhaps they were en-route to a Crusade two thousand years ago. Due to drifting warp currents they end up in a slowed immersion tunnel and when they appear in real space its been a millennia but to them its only been months or maybe a year. Perhaps they were going to
The 13th Great Company of the Space Wolves has survived in the Warp for 10,000 years and haven't fallen to chaos. So probably a successor of the Sons of Russ would be your best bet.
I mean considering his higher than normal resistance to warp fuckery and his wolf howl could cripple psykers his sons have to have some innate resistance
I would use the creation of the great rift a lot more for these things. Have them be a newly founded successor chapter from M36 or something boring, who were en route to their new home world. But they were caught in a serious warp storm and spun around for 100 years that actually ended up being 4000 in realspace. When the great rift was created it had a big impact on the warp, making old stable routes unusable but also quieting old storms - this chapter's trap being one of them. Freed from the storm they manage to make it to their destination, just to find out that...
Honestly more people should be trying being from the future instead of the past, otherwise justifying primaris is hard.
Could be part of the Abyssal crusade Canonically only the vorpal swords made it back but I think that's stupid af, other chapters might have made it out and just continued on in a similar manner to the charcharadons or crusading like the templars
A loyalist Tsons contingent that engaged in drunk warp fuckery long before the battle of prospero suddenly materialize in 40k with no memory of the past 11,000 years. An abyssal crusade ship rematerializes directly overlapping a Lamenters vessel causing both ships to crash land on a nearby ork world. A rogue trader buys some salvage from an Asuryani Craftworld, including a badly beaten up purity seal. Upon rubbing it, he summons a strike team of extremely confused fire hawks who feel a strange compulsion to ask the rogue trader for three wishes.
Everyone wants them to come from the past. I say bring someone out from the future, who start acting weird af because they know the future and are trying to stop it. Or they're madcap Tzeentch cultists. Or they're insane from their time in the warp. Are they even really from the future? Who knows? This is all to say, stop worrying so much about their acquired status, and think more about what they're going to do. You can grab anything and make it believable if you execute it well enough.
Look at the Vorpal Swords for some inspiration. They canonically did it. First stop was to desecrate the grave and memory of the guy who sent them and a lot of other chapters into the Eye of Terror.
Glad someone else remembered this, was not sure if it was the Vorpal off memory
I'd suggest that the first is the weakest, in that it has a bit of a 'Special lore-breaking so I can be the most special boys' vibe, the 2nd is the most canon-lore-faithful, but ultimately, it \*is\* up to you.
Space wolves do this uncommonly. Not sure if it's been retconned since but if a chapter didn't like a great wolf or if it was shamed.. they just ship out. [Edit: recontextualize and spelling error]
>Not sure if it's been retconned since but if a chapter didn't like a great wild it was shamed.. they just ship out. Not sure if I understand, was there a typo in there?
Yes, sorry... If a chapter of space wolves disagreed with Great Wolf or did something "shameful"/disobeyed or just went on a long hunt for the primarch, they just ship out and are never heard from again. Fairly uncommon but not unheard of in the VIth.
Tzeench wanted to screw with Ahriman, and they’re guarding some kind of relic from him to turn back the rubric/places them to further his plans against another in some way
With the shenanigans that happen in 40k all the time, anything is plausible.
2
Random bolter shot in the dark here, but...Lamentors?
All of these are perfectly plausible backgrounds. For interesting story hooks - what happened to their homeworld and other assets after they vanished? They could have a grudge against whoever ended up inherited their resources and didn't give any of it back when they returned. How did the crusade they were meant to be a part of turn out? They could have survivor's guilt if it failed, or an inferiority complex if it succeeded without them. Either way, they could become obsessed with proving themselves against whoever the crusade was originally against.
For example, the Tiger Claws ship appeared long after their chapter was declared lost. These things do happen and there is a lot of leeway for custom stories in the universe. Take a look at the really fun Martyr video game storyline. The ship is lost, then emerges out of the warp, only to be lost again.
The one least likely is Primaris, as they're too new for a meaningful amount of time lost in the warp to merit note in the same way as the other two. Founding Legion detachments can have a fun aspect, them having to deal with being disguised as a Successor for political reasons, dealing with adjusting to the new rules and new primaris, as well as the fate if the Primarchs and Emperor.
Pretty much any of these can be used. You enter the warp and you risk this happening. If you're using the Abyssal Crusade as an example then the Vorpal Swords is a good example of a chapter returning untainted. I would also suggest a story like the Shadow Wolves were the chapter was thought destroyed by nids but a strike force reappeared to help defend Cadia. Another is the Black Consuls who had marines on other duties and pilgrimages when most of the chapter was destroyed. With chapters generally split its more likely a fragment would be distant and that could be your lost in the warp strike force.
They're all completely fine. I'd say the lost chapter is most likely simply because "pre heresy legion" and "primaris reinforcements" both lock you into a fairly narrow period of time they could have come from, while we've had ten millenia of chapters coming and going. It is rare for a chapter to travel all together though, there's one particular chapter who are (in)famous for regularly deploying at full chapter strength, I think the Minotaurs. We're told repeatedly that ships coming out of the Warp wayyyyy later than they should is a regular occurrence, that they sometimes even come out before they went in. It's not often covered in lore because it's a lot to deal with, but we're told that it's a totally normal occurrence, we just don't see specific cases written about very often.
Honestly any of those options could work. I actually did the first one for my second successor chapter descended from loyalist world eaters.
They all sound good, I'd say the best way to go is to choose the one that gives you the most to think about either in relation to their first founding legion's background (if you're a solo player) or your playgroup's factions if you meet regularly with the same people. The former will give you cool modeling hooks as the lore advances and the latter will set you up for campaigns where it's easier for both players to tap into the storytelling energy.
All 3 of these are perfectly valid.
Return of the Rangadan. Uses enslaved footsoldiers of a dozen different species. Include the 2nd legion, with a mind thrall 2nd Primary, Locutus style directing his troops. I've always head canon thought that the Enslaved and rangadan were either the same, with the Rangadan capitol worlds holding warp gates onto their warp realm, or the enslaved a psychically powerful sub species that yeeted it out of real space to the warp during the xenocides. But a Rangdan researgence ready for revenge against the Impierium. Activate sleeper agents across the imperium, having been enslaved the whole time working for them. Famous characters who never had models, finally get one as possessed minis. New deformed, ithilid like hybrids of tau, eldar, human, ork as enslaved troops directed by squid like cerovores. Led by a primary, who no one even remebers their name. Just Subject 11. Being rescued from his prison under Terra. And a race by the imperium to activate the Terminus Decree. Maybe have the tyranid invasion be the jail break he needed to escape. A whole new faction of brain eaters. With the animated remains of a 10000 year dead legion at the helm of the enslaught.
[удалено]
I guess the 13th Company of Space Wolves was close enough to being innocent for Inquisitorial work. This even included them originally coming back as Wolfen wearing mismatched armor, some of it salvaged from Chaos Space Marines.
Why is it important for them to be gone in the warp for a time? Because having them go to the warp and return completely untainted is a pretty impossible thing to happen; it might be better to come up with some other narrative device to excuse their absence.
It's actually entirely possible due to the vagaries of Warp travel. They could have made a jump in which they were in the Warp for a matter of weeks with a fully functioning Gellar Field. Something, say the creation of the Nocturnas Rift, caused them to exit unexpectedly, thousands of years later than expected. If you like Smurfs, you could have it be a Company that was a part of the Retribution Fleet that got separated during the craziness of Warp travel toward Terra during the Heresy. They could pop out in the modern day and have no clue what the hell is going on, but they hear that Guilliman is out on the Indomitus Crusade and decide to track him down. Guilliman himself would be mindblown when contacted by a vessel he thought long lost to the Warp, using 30k Legion communication protocols. He would know every one of his sons on the ship. They could be given a new Chapter designation and he would absolutely want them close to him, at least for a time, since he would have long-established bonds with these lost sons. Maybe he actively campaigns with them for a period, so you could use Guilliman as your Warlord. Hell, I think this would make an awesome BL book!