When I read the background for the Gathering Storm and the return of the Primarch, I immediately thought of the Fighting Tigers of Veda - as shown in their timeline, they suffered greatly under rigid and harsh command of the Captain of the Ultramarines 2nd Company Lucius Tiberius Britannicus after their Chapter was all-but wiped out during the Shindering of the Templars. (Just as an aside - do you see one reason why I love his work? Wonderfully detailed background!) How would the Tigers react to not only the return of the Ultramarines Primarch, but him assuming command of the Imperium's military? Cut off from the core worlds of Terra and Mars by the Cicatrix Maledictum, would Guilliman's Primaris reinforcements ever come to Veda ... and would they be welcomed if they did?
Kenton and I spoke briefly about this on his Facebook page, but - ultimately - he made the sensible, adult decision to NOT buy any Primaris Marines as he had 1) painted enough tiger stripes to last a lifetime and 2) he had a massive stash of unpainted models already. But I hadn't painted quite so many tiger stripes (and we all have a stash of unpainted models, don't we?) and so I decided I wanted to paint a small force of "Primaris Tigers".
I'd always considered the Tigers to be canon for "my" 40K universe - Raja Khandar Madu is just as much a part of it as Verity, Canoness Shania, Palatine Alicia Sanguinia, Inquisitor Danforth Laertes, the Athanasians and the rest (one of the Athanasians is actually going to be painted as a Tiger) - but I had never expanded the background with anything of my own invention.
Such a thing might seem exceedingly presumptions - it is, after all, not MY background or army. But it can also be seen as an homage to work well-done, in a similar manner to writing "fanfic" for our favorite series (or even creating unique background for our 40K armies). The latter is absolutely my intention - to build on and honor Kenton's work, not to replace it.
So I gave some thought to it and came up with the following background for Rajasath Khandar Madu and the Primaris Tigris. Please note; this is not "40K canonical" (none of my background is, of course) but NEITHER is it "Kenton canonical" (unless he wants to add it or parts thereof in - which would be both perfectly OK and incredibly humbling). This is my personal work, personal interpretation, and is intended as a homage to Kenton's excellent work. All characters, settings, events etc. are the work of Kenton and / or Games Workshop. This work will also probably only make sense to those familiar with the Fighting Tigers' background and history - so be sure to check that out!
EDIT: I had some additional thoughts and ideas, which I have written down here, for the changes that need to be made for the second draft.
With all of that out of the way, let's learn how the Imperium's powers-that-be sought to gain control over the famously-independent Fighting Tigers of Veda . . .
The Indomitus Crusade began at the dawn of the 42nd millennium and swept from the core worlds of Terra and Mars, seeking to liberate the beleaguered planets of the Imperium. Although all the Imperium's armed forces participated, united under the banner of Roboute Guilliman, resurrected Primarch of the Ultramarines and now Lord Commander of the Imperium, it was Archmagos Belisarius Cawl's masterwork, the Primaris Astartes, that were the lynchpin of the strategy.
Guilliman, a statesman as well as a soldier, used the Primaris Marines in a variety of ways. To Chapters who had suffered grievous casualties during the Black Crusade, he sent them as reinforcements to bolster their strength. To armies of the Astra Militarum, Adepta Sororitas or other forces he sent Primaris Councils - the living embodiment of the genius of the Primarchs - tactical advisors. In the Ultima Founding he created completely new Chapters, entirely made of Primaris Astartes.
But there were other ways the Primaris were used, and some of these - despite Guilliman's noble intentions and best efforts - fell foul of the ambition of cold-hearted men close to the heart of Imperial power.
The Fighting Tigers had been founded during the Age of Apostasy in the 36th millennium. Winning the planet of Veda on the eastern side of the Maelstrom from Drukhari pirates, they had adopted local customs and begun to recruit from the planet.
But all was not well; the Tigers claim the High Lords of Terra questioned their loyalty during the Badab War, and ordered them to stay out of the conflict. Whatever the truth of that, it is certainly the case Imperial aid was not forthcoming when Chaos forces ravaged the system, all-but-destroying the Tigers and slaughtering the native Vedics.
This was a dark time for the Tigers; their very existence hung by a thread and there were not permitted to rebuild on their own terms. Suspicion of the native traditions of Veda and political machinations in the Senatorum Imperalis placed Lucius Tiberius Britannicus, Captain of the Second Company of the Ultramarines, in temporary command. He enforced strict adherence to the Codex Astartes and suppressed the beloved traditions and customs of the Tigers. Eventually, Rajas Surya and Vashtar assumed command and - with the assistance of the Space Wolves - began recruiting female Marines and established the practice of purusha; the cloning of aspirants rather than recruiting them from the native population.
These practices harm the relationship between the Tigers and the wider Imperium; although loyal to a fault, the Tigers are distrusted and misunderstood. The rumors of tiger-striped Marines in the company of daemonic apparitions has not helped either. The Ecclesiarchy finds the Tigers' endorsement and encouragement of Vedic superstition (rather than the approved strictures of the Imperial Cult) troubling, and even the eyes of the Inquisition have turned to Veda on occasion - it is rumored both organizations have spies, agitators and sleeper agents embedded on the planet. But the bureaucracy of the Imperium moves slowly and there are always more pressing threats, and so the Tigers had always been tolerated and left unmolested. But that was about to change.
The wheels of the Imperium might spin slowly, but they do so with the inevitability of the stars themselves. Amid the preparations for the Indomitus Crusade a plot was hatched to bring the Tigers to heel. It was an alliance of convenience; Marine officers silently seething at the Tigers' rejection of the Codex, Administratum functionaries seeking compliance rather than independence, Inquisitors convinced of treachery, Ecclesiarchy clergy seeing heresy in the Vedic religion, Tech-priests angry at the Tigers' refusal to tithe geneseed. And it would be the Tigers' unique practice of purusha and suspicions about Khandar Madu growing within the ranks of even her own tanadars that would give them their opportunity.
Beginning her career as a fierce Tiger of Kali, her rise through the ranks was meteoric and it was barely two-centuries before she was appointed Raja of Jatis Mahaduyana. Since Shamshir Talatra's dismissal as Raja of Jatis Ghuyarashtra and replacement by the less-experienced Chandramatie Bahl, she had expanded her authority and reorganized many sections of the Chapter, gathering the finest personnel to her and re-assigning less-skilled Marines. Officially, all of these actions were taken to better run the Chapter until a suitable replacement for Talatra could be found - but rumors they were part of a plan to consolidate all power under her and do away with the two-regent system that had been in place for millennia grew, especially among disaffected tanadars of Jatis Ghuyarashtra who felt their influence was unreasonably curtailed by the upstart redhead.
It was in the midst of this whispered uncertainty the news of the Primarch's return reached the Fighting Tigers. With it came a call to join the Indomitus Crusade under Guilliman and an offer of aid - reinforcements of Primaris Marines for the beleaguered Tigers. There was consternation and debate; once they have begun a tradition, the Tigers do not cast it aside. But now their traditions - of purusha and dharma - conflicted. It was their dharma to serve the Imperium, to be part of the galaxy-wide crusade the new Lord Commander had called. Recorded with bitter grief and impotent rage in the Rigsamayajur, the Tigers' holy verses and history, was the tale of how they had been forbidden to participate in the Badab War. Now the Imperium called them - how could they not answer?
But it was also their dharma to defend Veda; the Cicatrix Maledictum had torn the galaxy in twain and brought war to the whole Imperium, but to the Tigers this was a difference of degree, not kind. On the very edge of the Maelstrom, Veda had always suffered from attacks from raiders, pirates and corsairs. Now these attacks grew in strength and gained cohesion and organization - Traitor Astartes from the Black Legion sent by Abaddon marshaled the rag-tag forces into a true threat to Veda.
And how could the Tigers accept Guilliman's aid when it came in the form of the discarding the sacred tradition of purusha? The Primaris Astartes Guilliman offered were not reincarnations of fallen Tigers - they were new Marines, created on Mars in different ways. Even if made with the geneseed of the White Scars - the Tigers' progenitors - they were not Tigers. And, of course, this was Guilliman - father of the hated Ultramarines. Britannicus had suppressed Vedic traditions, had come close to pressing the Tigers inextricably into the mold of the Codex Astartes. Would not Guilliman be even worse?
Had there still been two Rajas on Veda, rather than one and an awed girl standing in the other's shadow, things might have been different. But, then again, had the hot-headed Shamshir Talatra been there to unilaterally take Jatis Ghuyarashtra to join the Crusade, that would have left Khandar Madu with too-few troops to defend Veda and fulfil her other obligations. The Tigers' near-destruction and the rape of Veda by the Warband Bloodcomet weighed heavily on the Raja, and so - despite the wishes of some of her advisors who felt dharma would be better served by joining the Crusade - she made the decision to remain apart from it, to defend Veda and refuse Guilliman's Primaris reinforcements. Thus both purusha and dharma would be satisfied.
Khandar Madu was drafting her response - a response the conspirators could have guessed and probably written word-for-word - when a lone figure came to the door of the math, the fortress-monastery of the Fighting Tigers, and demanded entrance and audience. She was tall - taller than any Tiger - and dressed in armor of a design none of the Tigers of Tvashtri could recognize. Yet the armor was white striped with black and the steel-eyed face gazing imperiously on the stunned guards was one they all knew; Raja Khandar Madu.
How was this possible? The next incarnation of Khandar Madu had reached the cusp of adolescence years before and slumbered in cryogenic stasis deep within the math - the Tigers of Savitri verified it, even piercing the seal of the cryotube and testing her DNA. The Tigers of Brihaspati could sense none of the Warp-taint that might come from temporal distortion due to travel through the sea of souls - this was not some future-version of their Raja. She willingly submitted to genetic testing and psychic examination; there was only one conclusion but it was a riddle to say it - she was Khandar Madu but who was she?
She demanded to address the whole Chapter. The "other" Khandar Madu refused, but granted her a private audience with her and her most trusted advisers. And the tale the newcomer unfolded was almost beyond belief.
A stasis ampoule containing a cryo-temporally frozen blastocyst had been stolen from the gene-vaults on Veda a decade before. The newcomer casually spoke of theft and deception, and offered no apology or excuse - the importance of the project brushed such conventional morality aside, although the Vedics were aghast at this violation of dharma. That embryo had been her. "A clone of the Raja?" asked Chandramatie Bahl.
"No," said the newcomer with a damnably-familiar smile. "The Raja."
Hidden deep beneath the oxide surface of Mars, in ancient labyrinths of the Mechanicus, Tech-Adepts worked on this most-precious of jewels, geneforging the nascent embryo into a Primaris Astartes. Archaeotech psycho-gnostic tutelary engines had been used to implant not only martial skills and tactical acumen, but also all the knowledge of her previous incarnations, culled from illicitly-obtained personal logs and campaign records.
The result, after a standard Terran decade of hyper-maturation, was a unique Primaris Astartes. Not merely because she was female, nor even that the raw material she had been geneforged from had been cloned rather than born, but because of the mental engrams seared into her mind by the tutelary engines. She was more than a clone, more than even a copy, of Khandar Madu - she also possessed the accumulated knowledge of her previous incarnations, allied with the tactical genius of the Primaris Councils. "So perhaps, Chandramatie," she mused, "it is not correct to say I am the Raja - for I am greater than that." What she did not say, and what she perhaps did not know, is that the tutelary engines had inculcated an unswerving loyalty and devotion to her creators during gestation.
That, of course, was why she demanded what she did. "You will step down," she told her stunned counterpart. "You will once again become a Kshatriya. If you serve the Tigers - and me - loyally and well, I will keep you at that rank. If you fail me, you shall become a simple Tiger of Kali and serve there. I shall become Raja of Mahaduyana - and only Raja of Mahaduyana," she added pointedly, with a glance at Chandramatie. "I will not plot and scheme to undo the tradition our sacred founder Shiva left us. Jatis Ghuyarashtra will have its independence."
The current Raja stood. "I refuse," she said simply. "You are no Raja and no Tiger. You are scarcely an Astartes - you are the product of Ultramarine treachery and the machinations of black-hearted men. I name you harijan, outcast. Get you gone ere I am forced to break tradition and strike you."
The newcomer stood herself, but she smiled as she looked down on the shorter Marine. "I will go, Rajaatje," she said, using the diminutive of the title Raja, "but I go to war alongside Guilliman, with the chosen son of the Brahman, and I do not think I will go alone. Those here have heard my words, and they will take them to the rest of the Chapter. And furthermore they will take this; you would refuse the aid of Guilliman, keep the Tigers isolated from the Imperium in its darkest hour, standing alone because of your own pride and hatred. You cannot find room in your heart for forgiveness, for alliance. I tell you this - Guilliman is not Britannicus and for too-long we have languished and suffered far from the Brahman's love. You call me harijan? I say you have made us all outcast, and would keep us that way rather than surrender the power you have grasped. Farewell, little one."
With that, the Rajasath* - as she soon came to be known by both factions in the Schism of the Tigers - strode from the hall, followed an instant later by some whose loyalty the Raja had thought beyond question. Yet, truly, were they disloyal? The Tigers' practice of purusha meant the Rajasath could not be called an impostor - with the accumulated knowledge and experience of all her previous incarnations, was she not the truest, purest expression of purusha? How could she be leading them contrary to dharma if she joined them to the Indomitus Crusade?
For join the Crusade they did, banding together into a powerful force fully half the Chapter strong and fighting not merely alongside but for Guilliman and his commanders. The Rajasath organized the force more in keeping with dictates of the Codex Astartes, willingly placing her troops under the command of Ultramarines and even referring to ranks, units and tactics by Imperial Gothic names rather than Vedic. She ordered her subordinates to not mention the Schism, instead presenting herself to Guilliman as Raja Khandar Madu of the Fighting Tigers. To her tanadars, she said this was to preserve the Tigers' honor - and she might have even believed it herself, but the real reason was far darker. Guilliman was not privy to the conspirators' plots and machinations, and while he would have publicly scorned the unorthodox Chapter's traditions (but perhaps given them private grudging respect) he certainly would have condemned such infighting as weakening the Imperium and doing the work of Chaos.
Back on Veda, the Raja had let the schismatics leave unmolested - no Tiger had raised claw against another before, and she was not about to start now. She herself was wracked with doubts - had she grasped at power? Were her motives pure or was she corrupted by ambition, by pride? What was to be gained by isolation, by refusal to work closely with others? Had she led the Chapter for the Brahman or for herself? The Schism had divided the Chapter, and not by jatis - some of Ghuyarashtra had remained with her and some of Mahaduyana had joined the Rajasath. The Schism split sabhas and squads, dividing warriors who had fought alongside each other for centuries. And it even divided Khandar Madu in her own mind, leaving her alone at night in her cell, her mind churning with questions and recriminations denying her meditation or sleep.
But she did not have the luxury of mournful introspection for long. The Rajasath's forces had taken significant fleet assets, and so when the reinvigorated forces of Baalzephon Zgorch, the fallen Templar who led the Warband Bloodcomet, now strengthened with Abaddon's Black Legion and other fell troops, burst out of the Maelstrom, there was little the Tigers could do to stop them. The Traitors made planetfall on Veda and the other planets of the Regulus system, and soon the Tigers found themselves under siege. That the Tigers of Brihaspati reported sensing the echo of an astropathic choir within the eddies of the Warp, as if the Traitors had been deliberately drawn to Veda to pin down and destroy the only Tigers not loyal to the conspirators' servant, was not questioned, but neither was it considered important. The Raja did not have time to assign blame - she and her Chapter were fighting for their lives. The force that had followed the Rajasath had not been carefully chosen to leave an effective defensive force on the homeworld, and the Tigers were swiftly pushed back, almost to the walls of their fortresses.
But half-a-segmentum away, the Rajasath was having her own crisis.
To make their creation as perfect, as persuasive to the intensely-loyal and partisan Tigers as possible, the conspiritors had not only used the embryo of Khandar Madu, but also her geneseed. Not the geneseed of the White Scars, nor even merely the Tigers' own geneseed, but Khandar Madu's own geneseed, extracted from her mature progenitor glands decades before and stolen from the vaults on Veda. It had been implanted into their clone using the same process as used for the Primaris Councils, a process designed to give a deeper connection to the genesire, a closer union with the progenitor.
Astartes geneseed is not merely a physical, biological thing. The knowledge to create the Primarchs is lost to all but the Emperor and the Mechanicus never knew it. The Master of Mankind treated with dark powers to gain this forbidden knowledge, and so the geneseed has a strong psychic component, a spiritual cord that binds all Astartes of the same geneline. For most Marines, this is but an unconscious awareness, a connection to the Primarch and a tendency to certain personality traits and patterns of thought. For some, such as the Blood Angels and their Successors, events in their history deepen this psychic connection. But the geneforging process of the Primaris Councils, coupled with the use of mature geneseed carried by a clone-sister, had caused unexpected results. Khandar Madu had borne it within her, it absorbing not only her implants' DNA but also her spirit and will. The Tech-Priests and conspirators had been pleased with the way the Rajasath was a clone of the Raja in more than genetics, but they had never even suspected the real reason why.
But now this closeness worked against them. The independent spirit of the Tigers, of all the incarnations of Khandar Madu, began to re-assert itself. Something itched at her mind, at her soul - she felt confined, even out of armor, as if she were chained and bound . Her subconscious was becoming aware of the hypno-indoctrination to unquestioning loyalty to masters she did not know. But now she began to question; questioning her own decisions, questioning if they even were her decisions. Why had she chosen to remake the Tigers in the image of orthodoxy? She remembered her previous incarnations, how they had fought bravely for the Imperium but on their own terms, with their own traditions, proudly upholding the Vedic way of life. Why had she abandoned that?
Her closest advisers noticed it first; she returned to referring to units and tactics by traditional names, speaking more often in Vedic, withdrawing units from the command of non-Tiger officers. They were puzzled by it - had she not been the one to advocate a closer union with the wider Imperium? Were the promised benefits of this closeness not the reason they had followed her? But they accepted it and were, for the most part, comforted and pleased.
But soon the conspirators noticed it, and they were troubled.
It was an Ultramarines Lieutenant called Britannicus - a scion of the same Macragge noble family as the dictator who had nearly destroyed the Tigers - who came to her. He was one of the plotters, deep in the conspiracy, fanatically devoted to the Codex Astartes and what he thought was the will of his Primarch. He was eager to return the Imperium to not merely the Imperial Truth but what he saw as the most perfect society - the style of government practiced by the Ultramarines within Ultramar. For him, the taming of the Tigers was but the first step in spreading Guilliman's vision across the whole Imperium.
"Why are you doing this?" he demanded. "Why do you embrace heterodox tactics and doctrine, speaking that barbaric pidgin tongue and practicing primitive superstitions? Have you no pride, no sense of who you are? You are a Primaris Astartes, not some mongrel Marine from a backwater planet!"
"I am a Tiger," she growled, narrowing her eyes to steely slits. "That is all the sense of who I am I need."
"You were not created for this!" he roared. "We made you . . ."
"We made me?" she repeated. "You . . . made . . ." Slowly, the pieces fell into place - the embryo's theft which she had never questioned, the orders she had followed which she could not remember receiving, the dreams the Tech-Priests had told her to dismiss, the gnawing feeling of disquiet and imprisonment . . . "You made me," she snarled. "You made me so you could use me, use me to bring the Tigers to heel!"
"Yes!" boasted Britannicus. "You have served your purpose - the Tigers are sundered. Yours have rallied to Lord Guilliman's banner and those who rejected his leadership will soon be crushed on Veda." Suddenly, the truth of the plot was plain to her - she had split the Tigers, taking with her a force united by emotion rather than tactical necessity, leaving Veda woefully undefended. In her eagerness to serve the Imperium, she had discarded her dharma.
"No . . ." she said. "No - not while I draw breath . . ."
Britannicus laughed. "We made you, girl - and we can destroy you just as easily!"
With an enraged roar, she charged him, knocking him backwards and into the wall. She was Primaris, taller and stronger than him, but he was wearing power armor - he had come to her while she was preparing for her rest-cycle and wearing only a simple tunic. Her weapons were across the room and his power sword was girt at his side. With a triumphant grin, he snatched it from its scabbard and swung at her.
Desperately, she ducked the blow and slammed into him again, even her enhanced flesh bruising against the ceramite of his armor. Inside the arc of the weapon, he brought the pommel down on her shoulder, shattering bones. Her return stroke lifted him off his feet as her fist came up under his chin like a krak grenade.
The two titans crashed through the wall of her cell, bursting into the corridors of Guilliman's battle-barge, Macragge's Vengeance. Marines and serfs scattered as they fought, blows denting the bulkheads and tearing the lumo-skulls from the walls. She kicked him backwards, her yell of triumph turning into a scream of pain as his blade bit deep into her side. As she stumbled, head bowed, he loomed over her, sword reversed to piece through the back of her offered neck and execute her like the traitor she was. "And now you die!" he cried. "And with you, the rebellion of the Tigers!"
He lunged but, with convulsive strength and a roar of denial, she twisted and leapt upwards, deliberately transfixing herself through the chest, trapping the sword in her own flesh. She screamed in agony as the blade's disruption field ground her ribs to powder and chewed her organs to offal, but it was Britannicus who stood dumbfounded at her fist clamped around his wrist, holding the sword in place so he could not tear it free and strike again.
And then he choked and gasped as her massive hand clamped like a docking claw around his throat and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. He struggled, but she was so much bigger and stronger than him and when - with a grunt of effort - she lifted him off the ground he had no purchase. His grip slackened, the sword's field dying as his fingers slid off the hilt. He battered at her with his free hand, punching her in the face and chest, but she was unfazed and his blows were growing weaker.
His eyes flickered and rolled back, his head lolling. She grunted in satisfaction and threw him backwards, pulling the sword from her body with an effort. Trembling, she leant on it for support, even her enhanced body threatening to go into shock. One of her Marines ran up to her, offering her support. "Khandar!" he exclaimed.
She shook her head. "No," she gasped. "Not Khandar. Rajasath - that is all I am. We leave the Crusade, we return to Veda - I hope we are not too late."
At her feet, Britannicus coughed and spat. "Traitor!" he croaked.
"Perhaps," she agreed, "but if what you display is loyalty, then I wear my stripes with pride." Around the two of them a circle of both Tigers and Ultramarines had gathered. Britannicus' consciousness was returning and the gleam of cunning was back in his eyes - the situation might have turned ugly, but for the arrival of the Primarch.
"What is the meaning of this commotion?" Guilliman walked through his Astartes like a tiger through the jungle. "You brawl with my men? Explain yourself, Raja!"
The Rajasath inclined her head deferentially. "Honored sahib," she said formally, "I beg pardon - but I have a tale of treachery to tell. This man and his cabal have sought to set Marine against Marine, to destroy a Chapter of loyal Astartes for their own gain. The Tigers stand on the knife-edge of destruction because of him!"
"No!" exclaimed Britannicus, struggling to his feet. "No, my lord!"
"You deny the charge?" asked Guilliman, fixing his Marine with a gaze as cold and blue as the winter sky over Hera's Fortress. The Primarch was a leader of men, a statesman and politician without peer, and it would be impossible for one of his genesons to lie to him. "The Raja speaks falsehood?"
"Yes, my lord!" Britannicus exclaimed. "My lord, we did not do it for our own gain! We did it for you, my lord! The Tigers have ever been a thorn in our side, rebelling against the dictates of the sacred Codex, insolently flaunting their heresy and caring nothing for your dictates! We have an opportunity, my lord! An opportunity to unite the Imperium under your banner, to place we Astartes where we should be - in command, as rulers of humanity. The Wolves are all-but-destroyed, the Angels will fall to the Devourer soon enough. The Tigers must be next. We did it for you, my lord! It was all for your vision! Now strike down this girl and . . ."
With an inarticulate roar, Guilliman backhanded his treasonous Lieutenant across the face with the Hand of Dominion, sending him flying backwards and shattering his skull. "I made this Crusade to serve humanity, not lead it!" he cried. "This is what the Imperium has become - a moribund carcass of fear and superstition driven by ambition and pride!" He strode forward through his stunned Chapter and lifted Britannicus' corpse, driving his fingers into his neck and tearing out his progenitor glands with a disgusting squelch. Very deliberately, he crushed the gobbets of flesh in his fist and dropped them to the floor. "Sic semper proditorum," he declared. He turned to the Rajasath. "He did not work alone." It was not a question.
"No, sahib," she answered.
"Then I will hunt them out," he promised. "Return to your Chapter," he told her. She nodded and offered him the hilt of the power sword. He shook his head. "Keep it, memsahib," he said with a smile. "Let it be a pledge between our Chapters - we have our differences, but . . ." He shrugged.
She nodded and limped back to her cell, bringing with her one of the matched lightning claws the Tech-Adepts of Mars had created for her. "Take this, Lord of Macragge, in the same vein."
He took it reverently. "I shall do so, Raja. Tell me," he asked, "will the Tigers accept my aid?"
"Your . . . aid? I . . ." She faltered. "I do not know," she admitted.
He nodded. "I thought as much. Perhaps they will surprise you, surprise us both. With you will go Magi-Biologis bearing stocks of Primaris geneseed from your progenitor Legion. If the Tigers permit it, they shall have new claws. If they do not, I only ask that the geneseed is held securely until it can be returned. Of course," he added with a grin, "that means you must hold the planet of Veda until the Imperium is at peace again."
"There will only ever be war," she said grimly.
"Exactly," replied Guilliman. He inclined his head. "May the Brahman watch over you until we meet again, Raja."
"The Emperor protects," she agreed.
And so the Rajasath and her Tigers left the Indomitus Crusade, plunging back through the Warp towards Veda in a desperate race against time, hoping they would not be too late. The Marines sought to save their Chapter, but for the Rajasath it was personal - the salvation of Veda would be atonement for her own weakness and failings.
* The term "Rajasath" was used by both factions because of the double meaning of the (Sanskrit) word "sath"; when used as a suffix it means false, unreal or bad - but when used on its own it means "a good man". Thus both sides in the schism found the title appropriate. After she rejected the name Khandar Madu, the name was still appropriate - she saw herself as a false Raja, but many others saw her as a good ruler, a queen without a kingdom upholding her dharma.
OK, so - SUPER long post. No real apologies for that. Some notes and thoughts;
Firstly, in the very midst of writing this Kenton and I spoke on Facebook and he expressed interest in a background that would allow for Primaris Marines in the Tigers. He actually said he would host it on The Jungle! I said he should probably read it first and decide if it fitted in - this is a pretty radical change.
Which is why I am publishing this NOW, even though it is arguably incomplete and in an almost-draft format; I wanted Kenton to have a gander at it and see what he thought. As I said in the beginning; this is MY background (basically "Tiger fanfic") for my 40K universe, and is NOT part of the official Fighting Tigers of Veda background established by Kenton.
My initial idea was to write this and when the boxed set came out convert the Gravis-Armored Captain into the Rajasath - I've ordered all the parts I needed to create her - and then post this background with pictures of model. But, with Kenton seeming eager to see it, I pulled the publication forward. I still intend to make the conversion, of course - and probably make some more Tigris Primaris to fight alongside her. (It is because of the pose of the basic model - holding a very "Ultramarine" sword aloft - that the Rajasath keeps only one lightning claw and gains a power sword. Well, that and the fact I just LOVE the look of that combination!)
A few notes on certain things in the narrative - the Primaris Councils are mentioned; these are an idea I had and will be converting up / writing background for. Essentially, they are groups of Primaris Astartes sent as tactical advisors to non-Astartes armies - they are genetically tweaked and hypno-indoctrinated to more closely express the tactical genius and personality of the Primarchs. It was just an interesting modelling project (a bunch of Primaris in different uniforms) but the idea worked well here.
I have been vague about who went with the Rajasath on Crusade - mostly because they aren't "my" characters, and I don't know them as well as Kenton does. I suppose it doesn't matter if Chandramatie Bahl, Jirbu Ghosh or whoever went with her or not - that would be a matter to be decided when armies are chosen for games.
Because, of course, this background is designed to allow lots of games - Tigers fighting Imperial forces loyal to the conspirators, fighting Chaos on Veda, fighting whoever on the way back through the Warp. The presence of the Primaris geneseed in the fleet returning to Veda and Guilliman's "take it or leave it" instructions gives the opportunity to add Primaris Marines in (either as "upgraded" Tigers or new recruits) or not, even missions to defend the vital geneseed from those who might want to steal to destroy it!
Finally, I wanted to draw on as much of Kenton's work as possible - I tried to tap into as many pieces of the Tigers' history as I could, particularly the takeover by Britannicus. The Ultramarines' practice of repeated recruitments from a single family allowed a sense of history, of vendetta, here. I tried to make Britannicus - while clearly the villain (or, at least, the one villain we see!) - have understandable motives; he is loyal to his idea of what Guilliman wants. Of course, the Primarch himself is more reasonable and heroic, a real leader of men, than Britannicus assumes.
There is a lot still unsaid here - who are the other conspirators? Are they all loyal to each other or, like Britannicus, do they have their own agendas? Were the Warband Bloodcomet summoned to the Regulus system, and by who? Was that real collusion with the powers of Chaos, or merely manipulation by Imperial agents?
And, of course, will the Rajasath make it back to Veda in time?
As I've said many times now; this is my own background and it is incomplete and open to interpretation and changes. I wrote it as a tribute and homage to Kenton's excellent work, and I humbly offer it to him to use, change, adapt, steal ideas from, completely ignore or even decry as totally false and hearsay as he sees fit. His website has given me hours and hours of pleasure and has inspired me in so much of my 40K hobby. I hope I can give a little bit back to him.
Let me know what you think and, please, check out the Fighting Tigers' website.
=][= Danforth Laertes
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