Mantis Warriors

"The winds of the desert care not whose bones they scour clean." - Endymion Cluster proverb

The Mantis Warriors, originally known as the Mantis Legion, are a Loyalist Space Marine Chapter founded as part of the 8th Founding in 598.M35, created to help relieve the White Scars in monitoring and countering the many threats harboured by the Maelstrom Warp Storm in the Ultima Segmentum. They eventually were accorded to be part of a group of three Space Marine Chapters known as the Maelstrom Warders that also included the Astral Clawsand the Lamenters. The Mantis Warriors held guardianship over the stellar region of the Maelstrom Zone known as the Endymion Cluster. When Chapter Master Lufgt Huron of the Astral Claws declared that the Badab Sector had seceded from the Imperium in response to demands by the High Lords of Terra that seemed to be unjust intrusions upon the traditional autonomy of the Adeptus Astartes, the Mantis Warriors joined with the Astral Claws and the other Maelstrom Warders Chapters to defend what they saw as their rightful perogatives and their Emperor-given duty to protect the peoples of their Maelstrom Zone region as best they could. The Mantis Warriors, like the other Maelstrom Warders Chapters, did not know that Lufgt Huron, in his hubris, had fallen to the desires for power and the temptations of Chaos, and when the civil war known as the Badab War concluded, the Mantis Warriors sought and received the Emperor's forgiveness after the Inquisition determined that there was no Chaotic taint upon them. It was determined that the Mantis Warriors' actions had been driven by an honest mistake and the deceits of the man now known only as Huron Blackheart, Traitor to the Emperor and servant of the Ruinous Powers. The Chapter was stripped of its guardianship of the Endymion Cluster, which was handed over to the Carcharodons Chapter (may also be the Space Sharks), while the Mantis Warriors were charged with undertaking a Penitent Crusade for 100 standard years during which they could recruit no Neophytes to make up their losses. However, following the Chapter's participation in the defence of the strategically important world of Herodian IV from a Tyranid splinter Hive Fleet in the late 41st Millennium, the Inquisition ruled that the Chapter had paid its penance to the Emperor and could begin to recruit once more to replace its great losses.

Chapter History
Long renowned across the Segmentum Ultima for their cunning, the Mantis Warriors Chapter are certainly one of the most unsung defenders of the Imperium of Man. To those few who have heard of them outside of the Eastern Fringes of the galaxy, the Mantis Warriors are renowned for their skill at guerrilla warfare, and the devastating ambushes and sudden, large-scale assaults they are capable of unleashing upon their foes. Like many Chapters who are tasked with standing as the sentinels over far-flung frontiers, or to carry out vigils in those darker backwaters of the galaxy where the darkest threats lie in wait, the Mantis Warriors long stood alone, their autonomy seldom challenged and no other allies to come to their aid. This persistent solitude was to change in the year 587.M41, when by an edict of the High Lords of Terra, the Mantis Warriors and their charges within the Endymion Cluster were incorporated within the newly formed alliance of Space Marine Chapters known as the Maelstrom Warders. With this change in status came, for the first time, an alliance of long-standing with two powerful and very different Chapters in culture and outlook, the Astral Claws and the Lamenters. Unfortunately this was an alliance that would ultimately prove to be the foundation of the Mantis Warriors’ undoing.

As with many Astartes Chapters of obscure origin, much of the details pertaining to the Chapter's history and the early disposition of the Mantis Warriors have been lost to the official Imperial record. Such teachings and lore the Mantis Warriors themselves retain on the matter have become so intertwined with myth and dense allegory as to be almost useless in diving certain facts. The earliest extant record in Imperial archives likely to pertain to the Mantis Warriors can be found in the Libris Gloriana – a 777-volume treatise on the state of Imperial power commissioned for the ascension of High Lord Gogol after the Nova Terra Interregnum in 093.M36. The large accumulation of knowledge in the Libris Gloriana is that rarest of commodities--a comprehensive Imperial historical chronicle. But it is one that has been repeatedly suppressed and censored by Imperial authorities, and many doubt its veracity, fearing too many "revisions" have been made. Further difficulties in the text are raised by the particularly obscure dialect of High Gothic in which the treatise is written, which had been popular at the Terran court of the High Lords of that time. It mentions in bombastic terms a Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes, a “…warrior legion of the Manos of the 8th Founding (which would place its origins in the mid-34th Millennium) of “…the line of the great Khan, by his sons the Marauders.” The text goes on to praise their successes in combating the Traitors of the Eye of Terror, as well as crushing xenos threats, and speaks of them as operating far from home. The ancient text failed to name these Astartes' Chapter homeworld or state the star system in which it was to be found.

That this elder Chapter spoken of in the Libris Gloriana and the Mantis Warriors of the Badab War are one and the same seems likely as the Chapter’s own historical legends allude to a great calamity in their past against which they undertook a Crusade lasting many centuries. Most tellingly, the Mantis Warriors’ gene-seed does bear the genetic tags of the White Scars bloodline (the Marauders Chapter being a Second Founding White Scars Successor). This last piece of evidence is particularly compelling as owing to certain endemic biogenetic difficulties in its cultivation by the Adeptus Mechanicus, the White Scars’ gene-seed has historically been one of the rarest employed in the creation of Space Marine Chapters, with less than a tenth of currently operating Adeptus Astartes units owing their origins to the scions of Jaghatai Khan.

The first truly accurate historical records for the Mantis Warriors are only available from the year 455.M38 when the Magos Invilgia of the Mechanicus noted that they had received a gene-seed tithe from the Mantis Warriors. This evidence establishes the Chapter as already being based within the Endymion Cluster, while noting that the collection was long overdue owing to the hostile local conditions in that region (a remark that indicates that the Mechanicus had already conducted prior, more successful, tithes, though the records have been lost to posterity). This evidence, combined with several other clues such as the Chapter's presence in the myths of the indigenous peoples of the worlds of Lastratti and Hu, indicates that the Mantis Warriors were present in the Endymion Cluster as its guardians for at least the last 1000 standard years. The difficulty of determining the Mantis Warriors' history and origins should come as no surprise for a Chapter that seemed to value solitude and autonomy as much as these Astartes do. The Mantis Warriors' character was always a fundamentally aloof one, uninterested in what was happening in the wider Imperium save for when it intersected with their own affairs or the affairs of the regions of the Imperial frontier that were under their protection. In fact, in the days before they were ordered to become a part of the Maelstrom Warders by the High Lords of Terra, their only real contact with another Imperial organisation was with the secretive Deathwatch Chapter of the Inquisition's Ordo Xenos, to whom the Mantis Warriors provided many Astartes over the years and who had similar interests in containing and eliminating the myriad xenos threats in the Maelstrom Zone and the Golgothan Wastes.

Badab War
During the Badab War, the Mantis Warriors sided with their fellow Maelstrom Warders, the Renegade Astral Claws and the Lamenters, as well as the Executioners Chapter which owed a boon to the Astral Claws, who each answered Lufgt Huron's call to defend what they viewed as the traditional autonomy and political perogatives of the Adeptus Astartes from encroachment by the Administratum and the deeply distrusted Inquisition by seceding from the Imperium. The first recorded involvement by Loyalist Space Marines in the conflict against the Mantis Warriors came in 904.M41, after the Fire Hawks' starship Red Harbinger was attacked and captured by the Mantis Warriors. In 907.M41, as Badab was being besieged by the Loyalists, two Chapters were drafted to also investigate the worlds occupied by the Mantis Warriors and the Executioners. In 912.M41 the rebellion was defeated and the Astral Claws were nearly destroyed. The Mantis Warriors, who recognised that they had been duped by the Chaos-corrupted Lufgt Huron into aiding his rebellion against the Imperium and that they were not defending the traditional autonomy of the Adeptus Astartes as they had believed, were granted the Emperor's forgiveness for their part in the conflict, and sent on a 100-year-long Penitence Crusade. The Mantis Warriors' surviving Chapter Master, Khoisan Neotera, was stripped of his honour and armour, and imprisoned in the Imperial prison known as the Penitentiacon in isolation for the rest of his life. As part of this Penitent Crusade, the Mantis Warriors' guardianship of the Endymion Cluster was forfeited to the Carcharodons Chapter (possibly the same Chapter as the Space Sharks), who had taken part in the conflict on the Loyalist side and launched the final assault on the Mantis Warriors stronghold of Tranquility II. This meant that for the duration of the Crusade the Mantis Warriors were forbidden to recruit new Neophytes, and at the end of the 41st Millennium, they found themselves critically short of personnel due to heavy attrition. However, recent events on Herodian IV have allowed the Mantis Warriors to reclaim the Emperor's blessing and begin to recruit Neophytes once more. Yet, such redemption may come too late and whether the Chapter will survive or not over remains a real issue for the Mantis Warriors, who may yet find the name of their Chapter added to those in the Imperial Palace's Hallway of Heroes who have been destroyed while defending the Emperor's Realm.

Badab War Aftermath
Before the rebellion, the Mantis Warriors had an above-average induction rate into the Inquisition's Deathwatch, but since their disgrace only a handful of Mantis Warriors have been accepted. They are no longer banned from recruiting Neophytes by the Inquisition because of their actions in aiding the Deathwatch against the splinter Tyranid Hive Fleet incursion on the strategically-located world of Herodian IV, although the Chapter's size is still dangerously low as a result of the steep losses they incurred during that campaign. Many Mantis Warriors believe that their Chapter is cursed and many outside the Chapter still regard them as Traitors despite their official pardon. They have been described as "a Chapter on the edge of the law, teetering on the brink of oblivion and approaching the borders of extinction, fighting desperately to regain its place amongst the chosen. They were not outlaws or renegades, but they had no home in the Imperium of Man."

Notable Campaigns

 * Hunt for Kharfra the Antipath (330.M39) - The Cardinal Kharfra, who had been corrupted by Chaos and founded a secret Chaos Cult within the Adeptus Ministorum, was discovered when his attempt to assassinate the Ecclesiarch Nyber Vasille failed, leading to a decades-long flight from Imperial justice for Karfra the Antipath and his cultists even as they unleashed a wave of destruction across the Segmentum Solar as they went. It was the Mantis Warriors who would eventually run the blasphemous priest to ground. Using intelligence taken from Maelstrom pirates by their Librarians, the Mantis Warriors learned that the Antipath had taken up refuge among the Chaos Renegades of the Golgothan Wastes. Over the course of a 5-year-long man-hunt, the Mantis Warrior discovered Kharfra's stronghold in the pre-Imperial ruins on the Death World of Parasis. The Mantis Warriors infiltrated the hideous fungal rainforests that surrounded the stronghold and defeated a force of mutants and heretics five times their own size before capturing Kharfra himself, now a benighted Chaos mutant, in the sewers below the stronghold. The Antipath was turned over to the Inquisition's watch-hold on the world of Valsingam for judgment. For this action, the Mantis Warriors gained the great gratitude of the Ecclesiarchy.
 * Campaign Against the Dark Eldar Slave Lords (901.M40) - In the centuries directly before the High Lords of Terra ordered the creation of the Maelstrom Warders alliance to defend the region, attacks from the Chaotic renegades and xenos of the Maelstrom Zone reached their highest levels in 2000 standard years. Faced with such overwhelming numbers, the Mantis Warriors were forced to fight with both creative tactics and great intelligence, luring foes into ambushes where they could and always seeking to fight only when they possessed the advantage. While this worked with great acuity against Orks and Chaotic raiders, the Dark Eldar pirates known to the worlds they raided as the Slave Lords proved another matter. Vicious and sadistic beyond the imaginations of men, the Dark Eldar were beings of shadow and mist, far too mobile and elusive to be easily trapped even by the Mantis Warriors' penchant for guile. The Dark Eldar loved to prey on undefended worlds, carrying off thousands of weeping, frightened people to a fate worse than death in their Dark City of Commorragh within the labyrinthine extradimensional corridors of the Eldar Webway. The Slave Lords' favoured prey were undefended Imperial merchant convoys and isolated planetary outposts. After the deaths of 60 Mantis Warriors Astartes during a failed attempt to defend the Feudal World of Tranquility II's primary shrine-city from a Dark Eldar strike, the Chapter decided to devote all of its resources to the destruction of the Slave Lords. With the aid of their Librarians, famed for their skills in intrigue and misdirection, the Mantis Warriors hatched a costly plan to defeat the Slave Lords. They let word go out into the region that they would defend the desert world of Tranquility II with all the resources at their disposal and they posted extra Chapter Fleet vessels in the system and gathered most of the world's small population of a bout a million people into a single encampment defended by 2 Space Marine forces, one highly visible and the other concealed beneath the world's desert sands. When news reached the Mantis Warriors of Dark Eldar diversionary attacks upon the void mining colonie sof Sigard, the Chapter ordered its fleet to leave the Tranquility System for Sigard, leaving the world seemingly undefended. When the Dark Eldar predictably attacked Tranquility believing that the Mantis Warriors had taken their bait, the Space Marines made the hard choice to wait until the Dark Eldar were fully committed to the raid, killing or capturing hundreds of innocents before the Mantis Warriors sprang their trap. The hidden Mantis Warriors rose up from the desert sands to confront the foe at the same time that two Cobra-class Destroyers of the Chapter Fleet, buried months before, shook off their own blankets of sand and fired their torpedoes at point blank range at the Dark Eldar ships and skimmers above. The torpedoes' fusion warheads badly damaged the Slave Lords' lightly armoured vessels, which immediately fled the world, leaving their comrades on the ground to be slaughtered by the enraged Space Marines and the desert tribes of Tranquility. But the Mantis Warriors Chapter Fleet returned from Warpspace as the Dark Eldar vessels reached the outer system, having never left for Sigard and they destroyed what remained of the Slave Lords' fleet, forever ending this Darl Eldar Kabal's threat to the people of the Endymion Cluster.
 * Badab War (901-912.M41) - At the start of the Badab War, the Mantis Warriors were slightly below full strength because of the raids they had launched against the xenos on the outer edges of the Maelstrom and the resulting damage their 4th Company had taken in battle aganst the Genestealers of Verkruz. The Chapter possessed about 800 Battle-Brothers, 60-80 Scout Marines, their corps of Servitors and Chapter bondsmen, as well as 1 Battle-Barge, 3 Strike Cruisers, 2 Vanguard Cruisers, 6 armed transports and at least 19 Escorts and Attack Craft. The Mantis Warriors reason for entering the Badab War was simple: they valued their alliance with the other Maelstrom Warders highly and an attack on one of their number, even by the Imperium itself as an attack on themselves. They had the dubious honour of becoming the first of the Secessionist forces to fire on their fellow Astartes when they attacked and captured the Fire Hawks Chapter's starship Red Harbinger in 904.M41 when it crossed into their territory and refused demands to be boarded. As the conflict progressed, the Mantis Warriors were involved with the Secessionist war effort on every level, fighting guerilla campaigns against the numerically greater Loyalist forces and often employing hit-and-run tactics. The greatest of these ambushes was the one at Bellerophon's Fall which shattered the Marines Errant Chapter. However, as the war continued, the Mantis Warriors' strength was severely depleted fighting the Loyalists during the Tranquility Campaign to defend the Tranquility System and the desert world of Tranquility II in the Endymion Cluster and when the Loyalists unleashed a retaliatory firebombing upon the world of Sacristan. In the wake of the Badab War, the Mantis Warriors were sentenced to undertake a 100-year-long Penitent Crusade against the Emperor's foes during which they could not recruit Neophytes to make good their losses. There is some evidence to suggest that the Chapter had grown to have misgivings about the course of the war and the true goals and allegiances of Lufgt Huron and the Astral Claws by 908.M41, but too much blood had been spilled by that time for the Chapter's pride to allow anything but a violent conclusion to be found to the conflict, an end that came when the Loyalists, spearheaded by the savage Carcharodons Chapter (who may also be the Space Sharks) directly assaulted Tranquility II and finally crushed the Mantis Warriors' resistance. Yet the Secessionist Chapter gave as good as it got and 300 Battle-Brothers managed to survive the conflict to face the Emperor's justice.
 * Battle of Herodian IV (999.M41) - The Mantis Warriors answered a distress call from the world of Herodian IV when it came under attack from a Tyranid splinter Hive Fleet. They managed to evacuate 270,000 people off-world but the 2nd Company was badly mauled defending an Adeptus Mechanicus station on the world prior to the arrival of a Deathwatch Kill-team and an Inquisitorial fleet, drawn to the world because of its strategic location along a Warp route deemed critical to support Imperial efforts to defend against a Chaotic attack from the Eye of Terror. Following the successful defence of the Herodian System from the Tyranids the Inquisition determined that the Mantis Warriors' actions had restored the Emperor's blessing to them and they were allowed to begin to recruit Neophytes to replace their losses once more.
 * Centius Campaign - The Mantis Warriors' Veteran 1st Company was deployed for this campaign.

Chapter Organisation
The Chapter's deployment and organisation conforms closely to the tenets of the Codex Astartes adhering to the prescribed numbers of Companies, command, and other various sections of Chapter structure. In practice however, due to the Chapter's history of isolation from the rest of the Imperium and lack of resources, the Mantis Warriors have had to fight under-strength, particularly in terms of the use of heavy vehicles. The almost continuous slow attrition of their forces has made it necessary to operate their forces with less than a full complement of battle-brothers. This has led the Mantis Warriors over time to concentrate their resources and limited capacity on wargear which they can best support. This suites their style of warfare of hit and run tactics. At the point in their history when they were at their lowest ebb they were able to field a considerable fleet of Thunderhawk gunships and other attack craft to ensure their mobility in battle.

The Mantis Warriors have formed a specialized fighting unit within the Chapter, named the "Praying Mantidae," a cadre of warriors tasked with tracking down the Renegade Astral Claws that led the Mantis Warriors astray. These elite units are given additional training compared to "normal" Astartes. They are recognizable by the snake-like tattoos covering their body, extending high up their necks. Mantis Warriors Battle-Brothers who are veterans of the Tranquility Campaign are formed into Sniper Squads known as "Tranquility Sniper Squads". These Space Marines are known widely across the Imperium for their use of the Sniper Rifle and their yellow and black tiger-striped armour.

Chapter Combat Doctrine
The Mantis Warriors native traits are further honed and enhanced when they become full Battle-Brothers through decades of battle experience in the field and the ferocity inherent in their progenitors' gene-seed. Unlike their forebears, their savage hearts are tempered by a streak of dark mysticism. The Mantis Warriors focused power is like that of a sudden hurricane that comes and goes without warning, leaving devastation in its wake.

Chapter Beliefs
In character with their basic aloofness and desire for autonomy, the Battle-Brothers of the Mantis Warriors have an uncommon streak of individualism and self-reliance, for each one is born a survivor, a killer from the shadows, and the inheritor of a warrior lineage that descends from one of the Endymion Cluster's savage death world tribes or warring feudal states.

Each Mantis Warrior maintains their own wargear with a singular reverence, to a higher degree than most other Space Marine Chapter. Individual weapons and suits of Power Armour are handed down from generation to generation. Every custodian will in turn add their own embellishments to such an extent, that each weapon and suit of power armour becomes a treasured and storied relic in its own right. This level of individualism is further evidenced by a high degree of customisation in insignia, kill markings and other form of personal adornment. This includes phophetic sigils and warding prayers engraved onto their armour or written on purity seals.

Mantis Warriors Genetic Flaw
The gene-seed of the Mantis Warriors has a flaw or mutation - the Mantis Warriors' physiology does not function properly with the Preomnor gene-seed implant. As such, when a Mantis Warrior sets himself into a certain frame of mind, the Prenomor gland secretes a potent neuro-toxin that permanently changes the Astartes' physiology; the frame of mind in question is one of the deepest penance and piety for the Emperor. This neuro-toxin alters the Space Marine's sense of space and time, increasing his neurological reaction rate to that only achieved in near-precognitive states by most psykers; it also increases his already superhuman strength to a great extent. To a mortal it would seem that the Astartes is simply stepping aside before anything happens. Unfortunately, this marvelous gift comes at a price - the physiological change is irreversible and the Astartes' sight becomes tunnelized to the point of no longer being able to notice anything in his field of view that is not a target or a foe. The Mantis Warriors call this state of mind the "Battle-haze". Each Mantis Warriors' company has a unit of Battle-Brothers who have given their all to the Emperor and in acts of such faith have entered the "Battle-haze". These units are called "Mantis Religiosa." The Battle-Brother who discovered this genetic flaw was called Maetrus, a Captain, who after organizing the "Praying Mantidae" subsequently fell into the "Battle-haze" whilst battling a company of Astral Claws.

Physical Appearance
All the Space Marines in this Chapter appear to have green eyes and long black hair, undoubtedly a phenotypic response to the Chapter's White Scars-derived gene-seed. The "Praying Mantidae" are recognizable by the snake-like tattoos that cover their body, extending high up on their necks.

inNotable Mantis Warriors

 * Khoisan Neotera - Former Chapter Master of the Mantis Warriors during the Badab War who replaced Yarvan Sartaq after 906.M41 until the end of the conflict; he was permanently imprisoned by the Inquisition for his role in the Chapter's rebellion.
 * Yarvan Sartaq - Chapter Master of the Mantis Warriors at the start of the Badab War who was slain during the Loyalist attack on Grief in 906.M41.
 * Ahazra Redth, The Dust Prophet - Chief Librarian of the Chapter and one of the greatest Librarians in the Chapter's history, as well as the de facto Chapter Master of the Mantis Warriors during the final days of the Badab War. He is believed to have been killed during the Chapter's defence of Tranquility II from the final Loyalist assault, though his body was never found.
 * Audin - Captain of the 2nd Company
 * Maetrus - Captain
 * Shaidan - Librarian
 * Aegir - Chaplain


 * Deathwatch Members - A few members of the Mantis Warriors who have "unofficially" joined the Deathwatch through their heroic deaths in battle on Herodian IV along side a Deathwatch Kill-team:
 * Shaidan - Librarian
 * Ruinus - Sergeant (Devastator Squad)
 * Soron - Sergeant (Assault Squad)
 * Kruidan - Sergeant (Assault Squad)

Chapter Fleet

 * Endless Redemption - Battle Barge
 * Penitent Quest - Strike Cruiser
 * Sword of Contrition - Strike Cruiser

Chapter Colours
The Chapter colour scheme was originally green and yellow, but has changed to shining green with gold edging. Mantis Warriors Sniper Units are known to have used yellow armour with black markings similar to three claw marks during the Tranquility Campaign of the Badab War.

Chapter Badge
The Chapter badge has been recorded to be both a flaming mantis claw in the past and a mantis head at present.

Gallery
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