The Dawn Stalkers, the Long Guns of the Imperium of Man
In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.
Wars are fought with blood and steel, and the Dawn Stalkers, successors to the Iron Hands and the legacy of Ferrus Manus, have plenty of both to spare, rallying to the cry of “Steel of Body, Steel of Spirit!” and inflicting great terror upon the enemies of the Imperium from over the horizon for thousands of years.
Their precise founding is unknown, but records held by the chapter hold that they derive from the 13th, or Dark Founding. Records held elsewhere have disagreed to no clear conclusion, and as such the origin story of the chapter is contradictory and incomplete. Due to their distant and aloof nature, some have suspected a connection to the Iron Warriors, the Traitor Legion who are the bitter rivals of the Iron Hands, but the Dawn Stalkers vehemently deny this, and actively loathe any attempt to link them with the heretic Fourth Legion, finding the mere idea of such a connection to be completely hateful and totally anathema.
The Dawn Stalkers hail from a lush and mountainous world called Helmoria, which is orbited by two highly resource rich dwarf planets called Deziuq and Geonia, which have been repurposed into mining and forge worlds, allowing Helmoria to continue on largely unspoiled, serving as a glorious example of the pinnacle of what Imperial Civilization can be in the 41st millennium, with the system often likened to the Realm of Ultramar in terms of success and safety. The rich resources of Helmoria’s solar system have allowed the Dawn Stalkers to preside over a large and thriving population, and a civilization in possession of immaculately well designed and cared for machinery providing a standard of living unheard of on many other Imperial worlds. Thanks to their technology and cybernetics, Helmorian citizens enjoy long lifespans, robust physical capabilities, and excellent general health. The Adeptus Mechanicus maintains a strong presence on Helmoria and its moons, and finds itself regarded as good friends and trusted allies by the Dawn Stalkers.
The Dawn Stalkers recruit from Helmoria and its moons as a tithe for their lasting protection, and it is a tithe the people are very willing to pay when the bill comes due – many on Geonia and Deziuq see joining the chapter as a chance to seek better prospects than are normally available to them on their industrial worlds, and the Helmorians are proud to support the Chapter that has stalwartly defended and enabled them for thousands of years. Aspirants find a great deal of suffering ahead of them, however.
“The Trial of Broken Iron” is a brutal gauntlet meant to screen out the unworthy, and retain only those who will not be broken by any circumstances. Aspirants are taken, solo, deep into the cold, rugged, and isolated Hearthkeep Mountains of Helmoria, issued sabotaged equipment, and sent on a mission that demands both survival skills and expert marksmanship to succeed – as well as the ability to fix their broken equipment in the field without the assistance of an armorer or the benefit of readily available spare parts or tooling kits. Even if the Aspirant commits no mistakes, they still may not be able to fully accomplish their mission, but a failure to accomplish their assigned mission is not a failure to proceed in the ranks, as surviving and refusing to break are treated as the paramount task, with aspirants ranked based on how well they fulfilled each criteria. It is estimated that over 60% of recruits fail to survive the Trial of Broken Iron, and of those who survive, only a dozen or so tend to perform at a level that guarantees progression into the chapter proper. These recruits are inducted into the chapter in a closed door ritual conducted personally by the Chapter Master and High Chaplain themselves, as well as whichever other Masters may be available at the time. Those who succeeded to a lesser degree are held in reserve, acting as menial servants and given tertiary combat training until they age out or a spot opens in the Scout Company, at which point they are given preferential consideration due to their invested effort and loyalty, and begin their augmentations.
Like all Iron Hands successors, the Dawn Stalkers believe in the superiority of Steel over Flesh, and are given to heavy cybernetic augmentation and replacement in case of injury. Clad in their silver power armor decorated with blue trim and red and black hazard stripes, and the badge of their Chapter, a mechanical Gear set inside a Sun, the Dawn Stalkers are renowned for their use of pinpoint precision assaults at long range, with their artillery barrages and snipers easily able to swing the momentum of a battle in the Empire’s favor from miles away from the front. Controversially, they make use of a host of Combat Servitors called “The Reforged” that are made from captured and lobotomized enemies as cannon fodder and buffer forces to protect their gun emplacements. The Dawn Stalkers justify this as a form of both punishment and redemption for the enemies of the Imperium, repurposing the enemies of the Emperor into allies, if disposable ones no longer allowed to have a will of their own. However, this practice has attracted the attention of the Inquisition, with some Inquisitors viewing it as a potential heresy.
The 10 Companies of the Dawn Stalkers keep few standing fortresses, and these are not consistently manned by Space Marines, and are usually permanently staffed and maintained by the Helmorian Guard and Militia. Instead, each company is usually based in one of ten Land-Behemoths, massive mobile fortresses that roam on titanic treads across the worlds the Stalkers are deployed to. These Behemoths serve as each company’s headquarters, barracks, armory, forge, and training ground. They are also formidable weapons of war if needed, capable of unleashing devastating salvos of firepower and crushing enemies and structures under their colossal treads. These Behemoths are retrieved by specialized landing craft that carry them to their space fleets in orbit, for swift redeployment to the next world that requires the salvation brought by the Dawn Stalkers’ mighty guns.
The Dawn Stalkers draw great pride from their martial prowess, seeking to become the realized ideal of what they believe a modern soldier of the Emperor should be. To that end, they follow the Codex Astartes closely, but are willing to show flexibility when confronted with a situation the Codex failed to anticipate. In these cases, they strive to hold to the spirit of the text even when they cannot hold to the letter. Despite their dogged loyalty to the Codex, they get along professionally enough with Divergent chapters such as the Space Wolves and Black Templars. This is aided by their aloof and distant nature, and the fact that they do not tend to share roles or places on the battlefield with other Marines makes cooperation easier for them. Like true soldiers, they conduct their duties and roles to the utmost to enable their allies to perform theirs, and they trust that their allies will do the same for them. As long as the other marines remain loyal and true to the mission, the Dawn Stalkers are willing to work with them in good faith and with an enforced professional camaraderie.
Their most notable campaign was in the War of Fallen Angels in M37, a large-scale heresy among several Blood Angels successors, giving rise to a Chaos Warband called “the Vampiric Tide”. When the Blood Angels requested assistance from any nearby Astartes chapters, the Dawn Stalkers were one of several that answered the call, with then-Chapter Master Derant Logan choosing to mobilize the entire Chapter in light of the size of the enemy force, marking an exceptionally rare moment in history where every Brother of the Chapter fought shoulder to shoulder with every other. Alongside the Blood Angels, as well as volunteer companies from the Sons of Anteus and the Aurora Chapter, the Dawn Stalkers provided critical battlefield intelligence and long range artillery and sniper support that brought down key leaders in the heretics organizational structure and pinned down the bulk of the heretic Marines long enough for their allies to overcome the enemy lines in pitched close quarters combat, decimating the Tide’s forces, and forcing what few survived into total retreat. In the aftermath, the Blood Angels were grateful for the assistance, but this gratitude did not materialize into a close relationship or a lasting alliance, but the Dawn Stalkers gave their word that, should the Vampiric Tide ever resurface, the Blood Angels need only call for help once again and the Dawn Stalkers would return to finish the culling they had helped start.
In addition to their ability to work well with other Chapters, regardless of Codex affiliation, the Dawn Stalkers have demonstrated a rapport with the many regiments of the Astra Militarum. Despite their disdain for unaugmented flesh, their large experience of providing fire and air support for the Imperial Guard has given the Dawn Stalkers a unique appreciation for the ordinary men and women who, frequently armed with substandard equipment, still show tremendous courage in the face of impossible odds, a trait that resonates with the memory of each Dawn Stalker’s Trial of Broken Iron. This respect has given rise to an admonishment in their ranks: “Courage is but Steel of a different sort.” to be brandished whenever a marine treats Imperial Guardsmen with disdain.
The Dawn Stalkers maintain a special hatred of Chaos Marines, especially those who were formerly Iron Hands, or even more hated, Iron Warriors. They remain largely ambivalent regarding the Craftworld Eldar, but show the Dark Eldar absolutely no mercy. The Orks are the mortal enemies of the Dawn Stalkers, as they have a recurring tendency to ignore the Stalkers’ long range assaults and charge them directly, smashing through their Reforged hosts and engaging the Dawn Stalkers in melee, where their combat doctrine has them at their most disadvantaged. Oddly, the Dawn Stalkers have a respect for the T’au Empire, respecting them as another technologically advanced and similarly pragmatic society that shares many of their combat doctrines and one that, to date, has not caused them any major problems. This respect has grown over the millennia through several chance incidents where Dawn Stalker Marines and T’au Fire Warriors have had to fight side by side against common foes in the Orks and Tyranids. Respecting the bravery and discipline of the Fire Warriors, the Dawn Stalkers have agreed to an unofficial but mutually understood cease-fire with the T’au, until such a time as they receive express and explicit orders from the Imperium to wage war upon the T’au.
As a Chapter kept under periodic watch by the Inquisition, the Dawn Stalkers only cooperate with it as much as they are required to, asserting their position and holding their ground as much as possible, hiding their cease-fire with the T'au, and quietly reinstating their traditions once the Inquisition’s attention has been drawn away again. As their wisdom teaches, “Steel’s strength is not mere rigidity, but also its ability to bend without breaking… and its ability to bend BACK.”
By comparison, the Dawn Stalkers regard the Ecclesiarchy as utterly delusional, especially ever since they learned that the foundational texts the Ecclesiarchy bases its entire existence and authority upon were penned by Lorgar Aurelian, and they loathe that the Ecclesiarchy uses the words of the First Traitorous Son as gospel, viewing that practice itself as “heretical”, a word the Stalkers do not use lightly due to their dislike of the religion's origins. As such, they refuse to acknowledge the authority of the Ecclesiarchy, and staunchly refuse any attempt by the church to attempt to command them. This comes at tremendous cost to their ability to work with the Sisters of Battle as a cohesive unit, with the Sisters believing the Dawn Stalkers lack faith, while the Dawn Stalkers accuse the Sisters of being blindly obedient slaves with no capacity for introspection or rational thought.
This rift between the Adeptus Sororitas and the Dawn Stalkers came to head at the Siege of Gallanix, where a Tyranid horde tore through the Reforged Host tasked with guarding the gun emplacements of the Dawn Stalkers' Fourth Company and engaged them in close combat. While Dawn Stalkers were being overrun, the Sisters of Battle from the Order of the Bloody Rose who had been tasked with guarding the Marines close flanks abandoned the "Apostate" Marines, leading to the ravaging and routing of the Fourth Company. Losses would have been total had the Gallanix 210th and 176th Rescue Guards not been near enough to intervene, extracting and airlifting the 14 surviving Marines of the original 100 to safety at great personal cost to themselves in the process. The Artillery Positions and equipment were lost, and the battle was only salvaged by an intense orbital bombardment by the Imperial Navy. As a result of this negligence, then-Chapter Master Gravus Selcho issued a scathing correspondence to the Cannonness Superior of the Order of the Bloody Rose, accusing her order of treasonous neglect, and holding her personally responsible for the deaths of 86 Astartes who had counted on the Sisters of Battle to do their job. The Gallanix Betrayal understandably did little to smooth over the fraught relations between the Dawn Stalkers and the Ecclesiarchy, and to this day, the Dawn Stalkers have steadfastly refused to serve in any capacity in any operation involving the Sisters of Battle, regarding them as Religious Lunatics who cannot, and must not, ever be counted on.
The Chapter maintains full Codex Compliance in its structure, and their current Chapter Master, Cassius Palidorious, has served over 600 years in that capacity, and nearly 1000 years of total service. His aged body, old even for a veteran Space Marine, is now far more machine than man, though Palidorious regards this as an improvement that has kept him as spry and capable as he was as a much younger marine in his prime, furthering his belief that Steel is superior to Flesh.
While entirely lacking social graces, the blunt Chapter Master is otherwise widely regarded inside and outside the chapter as a noble, wise, and heroic man. Despite his gruff demeanor, he keeps an unusually “open door policy” for Marines under his command or serving alongside his troops, making sure to keep his wisdom and experience accessible for any brother Marines who may require it, or who wish to make their concerns known. This has endeared him to his soldiers and other chapters, and it is believed by many that he is without a doubt a strong contender for the title of the greatest chapter master in the Dawn Stalkers’ long history. As Chapter Master, Cassius gives no order that he is not prepared to carry out himself if needed, and is a much beloved leader who takes to the field in person whenever possible during a major operation, preferring to lead on the ground alongside his fellow marines, and stories of him rallying his men in person are many, and the stuff of legend.
In battle, he is a walking tank, wearing customized Terminator armor handed down from eight of his previous Chapter Masters, armed with a dual assault cannon on his right arm, and the Faithkeeper, a Cruciform-pattern Storm Shield long ago entrusted to Derant Logan by the Blood Angels as a thanks for the Dawn Stalkers’ assistance during the War of Fallen Angels, and passed to each Chapter Master since. The armor's shoulders sport Servo-Skull operated weapons — a Plasma Cannon on the left, and a repeating medium lascannon on the right. The Servo-skulls operating these weapons handle targeting assistance and fire control, enabling Cassius' to keep his attention on the battle before him. Cassius' addition to this vaunted armor is a hidden pair of retractable thermodynamic blades concealed in the forearms for close range combat, capable of heating up to a level that they carve through even carapace armor like steel through wet tissue paper without losing their integrity.
The Dawn Stalkers are a veteran chapter that seldom takes the starring role in battle, but whose ability to inflict terror and devastation from over the horizon often enables other allies to win the day. While lacking in fame, the Dawn Stalkers bear their role with professionalism, and have left their many allies in the Imperium’s cause with the impression of true soldiers, a truly professional fighting force, doing what they do not for fame or glory, but because what they do is needed. Their conduct has even left an impression on some of the Imperium’s rivals, such as the T’au.
They are unconventional inheritors of the legacy of Ferrus Manus, but deserving of the mantle all the same, and their guns will surely continue to sing a booming steel chorus across the Galaxy for many millennia to come.