Lycaean Liberators

**This article, Lycaean Liberators, was written by Entirelyalive. It may be linked to any page without asking for the author's permission.**

## Lycaean Liberators

Lycaean Liberators armorial with chain wrapped around it, in lieu of Chapter iconography.

A Lycaean Liberators Astartes.

## Renegade Chapter

### **Leader**

Megi Aram (Deceased)
Lt. Onesimus (provisional)

### **Battle Cry**

"We are Liberators!"
"For the Primarch! For the Emperor!"

## Pre-Heresy

### **Pre-Heresy Colours**

Raven Guard Colors

The **Lycaean Liberators** were originally a fleet-based Raven Guard Successor Chapter created during an unknown founding. They were declared heretical for their actions against local governmental assets, but they consider themselves to be still loyal, though they are increasingly distressed by the discrepancy between the state of the Imperium and the ideals of their Primarch Corvus Corax.

## Chapter History

Much of the chapter's history was deliberately lost when the Liberators nearly destroyed themselves, as the survivors of the chapter civil war wanted to remember very little of what had come before. Many harmless details such as tales of early chapter heroics and even the date of the founding are no longer known or wondered about. The only two things that are remembered from before the Krayfique intervention. They are successors of the Raven Guard, descendants of the Primarch Corvus Corax, and they were at the founding given a holy relic to safeguard, the Chains of Corax, which had once been worn by the Primarch himself when he was a slave on the world which would later be known as Deliverance. In fact, it was this very event which had given the chapter its name, for before it was called Deliverance, the slave world on which the Primarch was discovered was called Lycaeus, and the chapter was meant to carry the promise and hope of that liberation wherever they went.

### Krayfique Intervention

What happened after the founding is unknown, but the Liberators believe they acted as a fairly standard loyalist chapter during this period. They had a homeworld, though its location has been forgotten, and they undertook campaigns against the enemies of the Imperium, though these, too, have been forgotten. As far as the chapter is concerned, their history begins with the Krayfique Intervention.

The world of Krayfique was home to a moderately sized shipyard, one of the only shipyards in operation on the fringes east of Ultramar sector. The Lycaean Liberators accepted the call to put down a chaos uprising put out by the planetary governor, but when they arrived and began to do the bloody work of the Astartes, they noticed that very little chaos corruption was evident among the populace. For most of the campaign, they assumed that these were merely thralls unwittingly recruited by chaos, pitying them as they slew them.

It wasn't until after the campaign was fully completed that the chapter realized they had been used by the governor to put down what was nothing more than a slave uprising. The shipyards of Krayfique were hellscapes where men were used and disposed of with callous disregard. This sort of thing was well known throughout the Imperium, though the chapter hadn't realized beforehand that Krayfique was such a world. Unspoken discontent filled the chapter, but it was Chief Librarian Moishe Levi who went further.

Since the founding of the chapter, it had been the chief librarian's duty and honor to carry the relic of the chapter, the Chains of Corax, a literal chain given to the chapter at its founding and said to have been the very iron which had once bound the primarch during his period as a slave upon the world later named Deliverance. Over generations in the hands of the chapter's most powerful psykers, the relic had gradually begun to manifest as a psychic focus, and along with this slight growth in power it began to have a pull on the minds of those who carried it. This pull, reminding Moishe Levi of the primarch's own feelings on human slavery, pushed him to speak out before the chapter master at the tyrannical governor's triumph.

As the chapter master ascended the governor's dais to accept a token of reward from the planetary administration, Moishe Levi lept out of his position at the front of the formation and slapped the token out of the governor's hand. Raising his vox emitters to maximum volume, he addressed both the chapter master and his fellow Lycaean Liberators. He spoke for long minutes about the primarch, the Chain, and the value of fighting for an Imperium that devalues humanity. When he finally stopped, the chapter master, who had stood by in silent rage, coldly commanded Moishe to return to formation. The librarian did not even refuse, simply ignoring the order, shouting that the governor must be opposed. The two began to shout over each other, the entire assembly of space marines, mortal dignitaries, and row upon row of PDF stood frozen with shock. The other space marines had never seen senior commanders dispute so publicly, and the mortal had mostly not realized that Astartes were capable of such displays under any circumstances.

The moment of impasse was broken when Moishe Levi took the relic of the chapter in his left hand and spun backwards, using the chain which had once enslaved a primarch as a whip to shred the mortal planetary governor in half. Immediately, the vox of every Lycaean Liberator erupted with two voices. The chapter master ordered that the Librarian be killed. The Librarian simply roared, "Remember, we are the Liberators!" Some of the Astartes lept forward to engage the rebel, but in that same instant far more lept to his defense. Upon the dais, Moishe's force sword met the chapter master's power sword while below their brothers spilled loyal blood, the drive to preserve the chapter splitting it apart under the weight of their conflicting motivations.

Then for a moment, time appeared to slow in Moishe's mind. The roiling emotions of the mass gathering had shaken the warp, and the blood sacrifice upon the relic Chain of Corax placed unused energy just on the other side of the veil. By chance, the ripples of the warp converged into a great tidal wave for the briefest of moments. No one who was not a psyker felt anything aside from a deep unease, but the chapter's senior psyker knew immediately how to harness this sudden influx of power. Sending a thought outwards, out past the fighting astartes towards the parade formation of PDF, he planted in their mind the idea that now was the time to overthrow the planetary government and take charge for themselves. Thousands of las-bursts blew away the elevated dignitary seating before the mortals even realized what they were doing. In short order there was scuffling madness among the mortals just as among the Astartes, but as the librarian battled the chapter master, he realized that among both battles the men battling for liberation outnumbered the men battling for order.

Still, upon that dais it was a close call, and Moishe Levi was only able to cut down his chapter master thanks to a set of fortunate battlefield accidents. Bolters quickly fell silent when the leadership struggle had been resolved, and the mortal battlers slowly concluded that the battle had ended when they saw the astartes growing still. The word quickly went out that the astartes who had just put down a slave rebellion were now freeing the slaves of Krayfique. Geneseed and power armor was collected from the grim battlefield, and a count of the chapter told that half of all Lycaean Liberators had died to the bolters and chainswords of their brothers in those few mad minutes.

Moishe had not planned on any of this happening, the outburst of first feelings and then actions had been as much a surprise to him as anyone, but he had not gained the position of chief librarian by being slow witted. He quickly announced that he was now chapter master of the Lycaean Liberator, put the liberationist elements of the pdf in charge of the planet, and began to chart the future course of the chapter. No longer would they be bound to a homeworld, being fleet based would allow them to initiate a new sort of crusade, and hopefully avoid any stern questions from other parts of the Imperium.

Moishe was able to demand this because Krayfique was a shipyard, one just barely capable of producing an Astartes battle barge, bringing the chapter's total up to two. The construction process took a decade, and required the combined resources of the entire planet working overtime to complete. The Lycaean Liberators informed them that they were privileged to work freely on this forced labor project instead of under the oppressive command of the planetary governor. And indeed, living standards did improve noticeably in the wake of the revolution, for it turned out that the nobility vaporized on the stands that day, and the rest of the nobility hunted down in the following months, had been so profligate and wasteful that eliminating them had allowed each civilian three more sweets rations and four more fresh algae allotments every fortnight.

The youth of Krayfique were culled heavily that generation in a hunt to rebuild the chapter's numbers as quickly as possible. Additionally, tens of thousands were informed that they had been volunteered to join the crew of the battle barge once it had been completed, for after twelve years it was finally ready and the black-clad Liberators were ready to begin their crusade alongside a bumper crop of neophytes.

### The Liberator's Crusade

For two millennia the Lycaean Liberators established and then followed a remarkably effective regimen for liberating oppressive Imperial worlds. While a few chaos strongholds were encountered, the Liberators had the best information about Imperial space, and attacking non-imperial worlds introduced dangerous uncertainties into their plan. Liberating Imperial worlds became so regular, and the chapter got so good at identifying poorly defended but oppressively governed worlds that many merited no further record in the chapter chronicles than a simple note of the name, system, and the word, "Liberated".

Some of the more notable liberations include:

* **Xander's Forge** - On this modestly sized civilized world, the ruler turned out not only to be unusually oppressive, but also a worshipper of the chaos god Tzeentch. During the liberation, the chapter revealed to the general population that the abductions which had been plaguing the planet had in fact been carried out by the governor. The stolen citizens were thrown into a mad, shifting labyrinth filled with traps, and the top planetary nobles would hunt civilians for sport. The government established after liberation was among the Liberator's most successful cases, and conditions improved so much that the world began to drastically overpay its Imperial tithes. This naturally drew the suspicion of the Inquisition, and when it was discovered that the planet hero-worshipped a renegade chapter, the planetary government was torn down and large portions of the populace considered to have been involved were conscripted into penal regiments.
* **Powdreza** - An agriworld far on the eastern fringe, it had once been a pleasant world communally run from a central town, from which all the fields of the world's great continent were managed via servitor linked farm equipment. A great crop plague in mid M37 had ended that however, and all who survived did so by signing themselves into an inescapable debt to a villainous loan shark who then established a dynastic rule over the world. When the Liberators arrived, it took them no more than two days to overthrow the provincial tyrant, and they left shortly after. However, when the astartes left, the people of the world fell into fighting between those who favored the Lycaean imposed government and those who wanted a return of the old commune system. The fighting ended up destroying the controlling systems for the entire agriworld, and the survivors ended up as nomadic barbarians wandering through the fields, eating what still naturally grew in the abandoned fields and battling other clans for reasons long forgotten. After a few centuries, Nurgle worship became common, and the once fertile continent became a fetid rotting swamp.
* **Vicotryx** - On a scorched world very close to the system's star, the only place humans could survive was on the southern pole, protected by massive walls dating back to the dark age of technology. Behind these walls a single massive hive city had existed since the days before the Imperium, located directly above a massive boreshaft where seemingly inexhaustible amounts of a certain rare mineral was mined and exported all around the galactic northeast. Following the hive's liberation, it quickly became apparent that there simply was no good way to provide decent working conditions for the miners, and no one would go unless enslaved and forced into the mines. And so the Lycaean Liberators decided to set charges and demolish the entrance to the mine, then left quite satisfied. Destroying the planet's economy soon caused the hive to starve, and the Liberation government was torn down by a hungry mob. Meanwhile, rare mineral shortages caused four systems to run short on critical war components and were overrun by medium sized orkish WAAAAGH!
* **Onoth Kappa** - One of the more heretical and daring raids the Liberators undertook on their crusade, they waded into a minor forgeworld with a desire to liberate the humans from the oppression of their Mechanicus masters. Fighting was fierce and costly, but nearly all the forge structures were preserved and handed over to the liberation government after a few months of careful campaigning. Though many advanced functions were rendered inoperable with the death of most of the senior techpriests, the main manufactorums remained operational, and the colony was able to flourish in a much different way than it had under Mechanicus administration. Three centuries afterwards, a logistical fleet from Onoth Kappa managed to track down the Liberators, gifting them a wealth of new escort ships, materiel, and recruits which brought the chapter closer to full strength than they had ever been before.

### The Collapse of the Chapter

The chapter struggled throughout the years of the Liberator's Crusade, and in the long run anyone could see that acting as a renegade fleet based chapter was ultimately a doomed enterprise without some stroke of brilliance. In the elevation of a new chapter master, Megi Abram, in the waning years of M40, the chapter thought they had found a reformer who could deliver that stroke of brilliance. Abram had a number of new ideas for preserving the chapter by retargeting towards xenos slavers and away from Imperial overlords, essentially going through the motions of a penitent crusade for a few centuries in the hopes of finding a sector command who could work with them and bring them properly back into the Imperial fold and complete the slaver hunting task from within the appropriate Imperial chain of command.

This, at least, was the plan. It was resisted by some within the chapter, but Abram was able to convince them that re-integration with the Imperium could be done without moral compromise if they approached one of the more benevolent sector governments and worked through them. However, they needed to come off a string of anti-xenos campaigns to demonstrate their sincerity, for despite their many successful liberations of worlds infamous across the segmentum as oppressive, they had somehow gained a reputation as nothing more than degenerate pirates. Despite this ambitious plan, however, it would meet with a string of defeats that would ultimately lead to the death of the chapter master and the nearly complete annihilation of the chapter.

First was the campaign against the world of Gerinal, a world which had fallen to the deceptions of the tau water caste. Though living standards were quite fair by Imperial standards, the chapter knew that the people must surely be chafing under xenos rule. However, right from the outset the superior scanning systems of the tau detected the fleet on approach, and rather than having time to carefully formulate a plan from orbit like they preferred, they were forced to contest far more directly. They took losses from the first landfall onward, but the world was not well defended even by the diminutive standards of the tau. The Liberators established a foothold on the world, then decapitated the tau rulers of the various cities, mining camps, and agri facilities of the world step by step.

Having finally won enough breathing room to begin defending the humans as well, the Liberators copied their usual tactic of capturing enemy armories and throwing the open to the former slaves. However, in this case, the former slaves immediately turned their weapons on the Astartes themselves, having been so maddened and brainwashed by the xenos that they seemed to prefer bondage under alien rule to what the Liberators promised would be the freedom due to every Imperial citizen. This pattern repeated multiple times across the world, and Megi Abram was forced to consult with his commanders on the question of whether it would be worthwhile to take this planet if they had to slaughter the human population to do it. The chapter decided that while it would be a moral victory to wipe the planet clean, the Liberators had already taken extensive losses and would suffer too much long term damage for no material gain. Demoralized, they withdrew from the fighting and abandoned the half destroyed planet.

They did not give up on the crusade, however, despite having been cut down to just over half strength. An unnamed ork world had also been selected as a candidate for liberation, a world where reports indicated that a group of ork freebootaz had been selling human captives from raided worlds and ships for quite some time. It was known that the orks did not simply kill these captives, but kept them under some of the most sadistic conditions imaginable. There would be no trouble with orkish scans like there had been with the tau, and surely no human could take the side of a greenskin during liberation. However, when they arrived in system, the world was absolutely teeming with greenskins, far more than even Raven Guard successors could hope to sneak through, and so they were forced to go in with nothing but orbital scans to guide them.

This was, initially, a smashing success, for orkish society and architecture is simple enough to understand from orbit. Twenty two platoons, all understrength but still packing a punch, landed simultaneously at points around the world, often crushing their targets beneath the drop pods before moving on quickly and shockingly to the next targets. Many orks simply fled in terror at their sudden appearance and shock tactics, though enough were excited by the noise of a fight that each platoon was forced to cut their way through countless miles of green flesh. But when they arrived at the human holding pens, high spirits collapsed as they realized immediately the futility of their plan.

Like most planetary liberations, the attack on the ork world had depended on the slaves joining in the uprising and using their numbers to help hold territory and create strategic lines behind the astartes spearhead. Though the Lycaean Liberators could fend off large numbers of orks, they had by this point in the fighting fallen just below five hundred total battle brothers, and could only physically occupy a limited amount of space upon the nameless ork world. However, the human slaves of the orks were not, like most slaves, kept in condition to do any work. Indeed, very few of them could move even after their bindings were removed. Some had been made to be grotesquely fat, while others were broken and limbless torsos. The orks, it seemed, had little interest in getting slaves to do work for them, they had grots for that. Instead they appeared to capture human captives simply for the joy of dominating and abusing them, sometimes also for eating. There was not a single human in the holding pens who was even worth rescuing, for even if they did manage to get aboard the Liberator fleet, their lives would be wretched and miserable until the day they were granted the Emperor's peace.

No humans would be rescued in this Liberation, and the order to withdraw back into orbit was given quickly. It took a while to shake the orks off, but the full might of the chapter fleet was able to beat them back. As they pulled off towards interstellar space, there was only one question remaining, and it was decided in the affirmative. The chapter expended its entire compliment of orbital bombardment to grant the mercy of death to every human holding pen they had identified during the fighting. Their greatest regret as they made the warp jump was that they had been short on ordinance and missed seven slave camps.

The xenos crusade had been a disaster. The chapter had expended its entire supply of drop pods and orbital bombardments, countless munitions, and was now down to four hundred thirty five battle brothers. Though the idea was still considered a good one, the consensus was that they needed to return to what they were good at, and selected a candidate that had been filed away for quite some time, the world of Baguio in Panay subsector.

Baguio was somewhere between a civilized world and a minor manufactorum, though one run by a pair of ancient merchant dynasties who had long skirted the edge of what the Mechanicus allowed the Imperium to oversee. Working conditions were atrocious by any standard, and the lives of the people were governed down to the minute, with nothing permitted outside the working, eating, sleeping schedule set forth by the ruling council. The Liberators made a point to journey to the worst parts of the Imperium, but Baguio was on the darker end of grim even by their standards.

It wasn't until the initial scouting of the planet, however, with the 1st and 8th companies deployed to establish beachheads and identify priority targets, that the Liberators realized it was also a tithe world for the Earthscorchers chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. And worse, it seemed that five full companies were on world, though concealed in an underground chapter bunker, getting prepared for an upcoming deployment. A Liberator scout literally bumped in to an Earthscorcher while abducting a pair of factory guards, and discussions quickly broke down. Fearing an assault that might wipe out the entire scout company, the Liberators deployed hot before finishing with intel gathering, before even knowing how many Earthscorchers were on the world.

The ensuing campaign lasted three years. The Liberators employed hit and run tactics, striking key facilities quicker than the plodding Earthscorchers could react, and freeing enough laborers to develop a fairly substantial militia force in the wilds outside the cities. The Earthscorchers, however, were able to call in the Panay Subsector Imperial Navy fleet to take control of the skies, destroying a number of irreplaceable ships, including the flagship Shattered Chain. The other Battle barge and a few escorts were able to hide in a planetary ring further out-system, and the remaining Liberators were left alone. When the Liberators were caught by the Earthscorchers, or when they hit a place more heavily garrisoned than expected, they took horrendous losses, for the Earthscorchers were sons of Dorn, and had little interest in permitting anyone to breach a defensive line.

After three years, the Earthscorchers had been badly bruised, but the Lycaean Liberators had been reduced to one hundred and twenty battle brothers. Half the world was a smoking ruin, and three quarters of the mortal population lay dead in those same ruins. Finally the Imperial Navy was forced to move on, and as soon as the sky was clear Megi Abram was able to organize a retreat to the last remaining battle barge, losing ten more men in the bargain, but were able to pull clear and escape into the dark void of space.

For over a year they simply drifted in interstellar space, unsure of where to go or how to rebuild their shattered chapter. The survivors were re-organized into a first and second company, and three of those platoons were at nominal full strength. They made their slow way over to a certain unnamed barren rock, a place only dimly remembered by the chapter as an emergency reserve of supplies, excess from what had been gifted by the grateful Onoth Kappa supply mission. It was for rearming in the most dire of circumstances, and no one doubted that this qualified.

And only days after arriving within their concealed bunker on their uncharted world, there was a knock on the thick iron door. Astartes naming themselves as members of a chapter called Tessub's Maces had arrived seemingly from no where, with the declared intent to discuss philosophy with the demoralized Liberators. The chapter treated with them, and were betrayed, for the Maces turned out to be renegades hunting renegades for unclear reasons. The chapter would have been eliminated in that hail of gunfire, had not the forty one battle brothers of second company stayed aboard the escort ship Powerful Ideals.

Reviewing and considering the senseless massacre, the ranking officer, Lieutenant Onesimus, was compelled to think deeply about what the Maces had said. They had spoken about the Primarch, about Corax and his ideals, in ways that none outside the chapter had ever been known to do. And before attempting to kill the chapter completely, they had seemingly taunted the Liberators with reminders that the Primarch, wherever he was, was last seen in the eye of terror.

Adrift, confused, and uncertain, Onesimus and the remainder of the badly battered Lycaean Liberators plotted a course into the eye of terror, vowing not to return to the Imperium until the Primarch had been found.

## Chapter Organization

The Lycaean Liberators were never a fully codex compliant chapter, even before turning renegade. While the general sense of the chapter organization seemed sensible enough, an early forgotten chapter master decided that the standard decimal system of organization, though highly flexible, had a tendency to spread the combat strength of the chapter out more than that chapter master approved of. And so, the entire chapter was rebuilt from the ground up around 31 man platoons instead of standard ten man squads.

At the top level of organization, the chapter consisted of only eight companies, a necessary reduction to keep the chapter as a whole under the thousand Astartes limit. Each company was made up of 125 men, split into four 31 man platoons, plus a company commander. A command structure of between fifteen to forty specialists exists outside the company structure, a command group consisting of the chapter master, librarius, techmarines, chaplains, and apothecaries. These specialists are not part of any company or platoon, but may be seconded to particular battlegroups when appropriate. This would, at full strength, put the chapter slightly over the thousand man limit. This has, however, never been an issue, for the chapter has never grown above 800 members since becoming fleet based, and increasingly bold actions in recent centuries have diminished the chapter down to nearly nothing in the modern era, with even the platoon structure falling apart given the reduced strength of the chapter in the Indomitus Crusade era.

2nd through 7th companies are the line companies, and the 24 platoons of these companies are all, on paper, composed the same way, four devastators and six assault marines for the sergeant to direct against particular targets, while the twenty tactical marines clear and hold territory. The 31st man is a platoon lieutenant. Though the position of sergeant still exists in the chapter, it mostly just a title for the few most senior battle brothers in the platoon and has no bearing on the command structure unless the lieutenant falls in battle.

8th company is the chapter scout company. This is also divided into four platoons with 30 scouts each, though the scouts are all trained with bolt pistol, sniper rifle, combat shotgun, and combat knife, and each individual scout typically has his loadout rotated with each deployment, or he is given particular weaponry when specific missions require it. The four lieutenants and the 8th company captain are all veterans of the 1st company, and leading the scouts on their crucial missions is considered a high honor among the chapter.

1st company is the veterans. Since becoming a fleet based chapter, heavy equipment has been scarce, and this is mostly felt by the 1st company. Rather than pool the limited number of vehicles and special weapons, these are principally distributed among the veterans of 1st company, and most platoons consist of ten devastators, ten assault marines, and ten veteran tactical marines, with the chapter's relative handful of flamers, meltas, and plasma weapons put in the hands of these four platoons. The Lycaean Liberators own no complete sets of terminator armor, and only once had a dreadnaught, who has since fallen in battle. For the most part, the 1st company fights like the other companies, but with the ability to hit a bit harder and faster thanks to a few transports, a few special weapons, and a good deal of combat experience.

The command group is principally the chapter master surrounded by his librarius. Since Moishe Levi, all chapter masters of the Lycaean Liberators have been drawn from the librarius, for only a psyker can properly interface with the holy relic of the chapter. The apothecaries, chaplains, and increasingly diminished pool of techmarines are respected as well, but they are kept in the command group in order to be seconded out to battlegroups, not to council the chapter master as the librarius is. This is not resented so much as it is occasionally wondered about, but most battle brothers simply accept that this is how things are done since the Krayfique Incident and leave it at that.

## Combat Doctrine

The Lycaean Liberators undertake only one kind of mission. A planet is identified which holds humans in bondage, the entire fleet advances to that planet, and the power structure is dismantled until the former slaves are able to take charge of the world. This mission takes them against the forces of chaos, against xenoss like the Tau and Orks, but most commonly it sees them battling against the Imperium itself, though the chapter views these oppressive governors as the true enemies of the Imperium. Having undertaken this mission on many planets, the Liberators have developed a quite effective strategy for attaining victory at minimal cost to the chapter.

The entire chapter arrives at the planet, but with the Raven Guard ship modifications inherited from their parent chapter, it is rare for the planet below to know that the Liberators have arrived until they choose to announce themselves. Under the veil of secrecy, it is the Battle Barge Shattered Chain that takes the lead. The scouts of 8th company make planetfall first, one hundred and twenty scouts are scattered across the planet on individual missions, while the expert pilots of 1st company manage the pickups and dropoffs. The scouts job is to find slaves and abduct them in ones and twos, extract them somewhere they can be brought back to the Shattered Chain, and then interrogate them. Both the extraction and the interrogation build a picture of the situation on the planet below, allowing the chapter to build up a map of hard targets, back entrances, and the disposition of guards and slaves alike across the planet. These are then prioritized, then mission profiles are drawn up for each of the thirty two platoons.

It isn't uncommon for rumors of missing slaves to begin circulating on the world below as this is going on, but the first the planet knows about the Liberators is when the thirty two strongest defensive structures on the planet are annihilated in a single coordinated lightning blitz. The next target for most of the platoons will be planetary communications. This isn't the first target, because the initial reports bouncing around the planet typically cause more confusion than anything else, but the vox network is cut before order can arise from the confusion. After this, the largest armories are raided and thrown open, and at the same time the largest concentrations of slaves are released and pointed towards said armories.

The slaves know little more than their shocked and terrified former masters, but having seen the Emperor's Angels arriving to set the world right again they typically require little motivation to lash out. They die in droves, but this helps add to the confusion, and that confusion is what keeps the Lycaean Liberators safe. After all, it is better for those slaves to die in the pursuit of freedom than live in bondage, or at least this is what the chapter says to novices distressed by the bloodbath that accompanies most liberation missions.

Within the chaos, military and leadership assets are destroyed in lightning strikes. Though the preparation may have been considerable, the period of conflict can usually be kept to a few weeks on human worlds. On chaos or xenos planets, a bit more attention is paid to herding the freedmen to a central, easily defended location before a broader extermination campaign is undertaken. Whether resistance continues or not, it becomes time at this point to institute a new government among the humans. Liberators who have taken note of exceptional individuals among the slaves submit names to the chapter master, who works with his command group to pick, more or less at random, nominated individuals to fill roles in a council government. Once a list of names is put together, the scout squads abduct the nominees from around the planet and bring them to the Shattered Chain, where they are informed of the new governmental structure, new constitution, and absolute prohibition on slavery that has been instituted for their benefit. Thanks to a few early mishaps, the new government is kept in confinement aboard the flagship until it is deemed safe for the new government to be presented to the grateful people of the planet.

The chapter is far to busy to remain until the planet is fully stable, typically these sorts of revolutions have echoes that last for generations, but once the new government is capable of stamping out dissent without assistance, the Liberators inform the planet that they require additional supplies and recruits to liberate the next planet. The scout platoons are graduated into regular companies, and volunteers are tested for genetic compatibility with Raven Guard geneseed. With the fleet restocked to the best ability of the world to provide, the chapter master presides over a grand ceremony where solemn oaths are administered swearing perpetual loyalty to the Emperor of Mankind and prohibiting slavery for the rest of time. The chapter master then proclaims that particular day to be an annual planetwide holiday, then the entire chapter packs up and leaves, with the fleet breaking orbit only hours after the conclusion of the ceremony.

A period is then spent in the void, repairing, passing volunteers through the aspirant trials, and identifying the next candidate for liberation. For most of two millennia, this pattern was effective and liberated many systems. The chapter never gained as much from each world as they lost to gradual attrition, but it wasn't until the disaster on Baguio that this pattern failed them.

## Chapter Gene-Seed

Being Raven Guard descendants, the chapter's gene seed is unstable, and sometimes it can take dozens of aspirants to prove compatible with a single gene seed. It is considered acceptable to allow a scout to don the power armor with as many as three auxiliary organs deficient or missing. Being renegades and nearly destroyed by the Indomitus Era, they have not been given primaris upgrades.

## Recruitment

Recruitment occurs at the end of each successful planetary liberation. No matter how destructive and bloody the rebellion was, there are always more former slaves desperate to join the Emperor's Angels on their quest through the stars than the Liberators can accommodate. Still, they take as many as they can fit, even sending some of their chapter serfs to remain behind on the world to make room for more. As many young boys as can be taken are brought up, and each is genetically tested for compatibility with the unstable chapter geneseed. A populous world can often provide hundreds or even one or two thousand young boys, but so rare is a genetic match that only a few dozen from these will even be allowed as aspirants.

Aspirant training occurs in the void between missions. There are no bloody aspirant trials like in other chapters, but the training regimens are harsh enough that many of these few dozen will die of sheer overwork before getting to the first of the surgeries. Once the surgeries have begun, the aspirants are elevated to neophytes, and the most intensive portion of the training ends, which is one of the things the chapter requires before it moves on to its next liberation candidate world. Over half of the neophytes die during the surgeries, but the few who make it to the final implantation have gained nearly a decade of tactical and doctrinal education as well as the transhuman power of the Astartes and are initiated into the 8th company as a scout.

## Notable Lycaean Liberators

* Chapter Master Moishe Levi - First chapter master after the internal conflict. Also first Chief Librarian to be chapter master, founding a tradition which would last to the end of the chapter. Carried the Chains of Corax
* Chapter Master Megi Abram - Last full chapter master. Led the chapter into a number of overly costly engagements, culminating in the disaster at Baguio, and ultimately the chapter's deception and betrayal by the Bloody Peripatetics.
* Lieutenant Onesimus - Formally only the lieutenant of 2nd company 1st platoon. However, with the death of chapter master Megi Abram, Onesimus commands the Will of the Raven and the few Liberators who still live.

## Chapter Appearance

### Chapter Colours

The armor of the Lycaean Liberators is solid black, with trim of deep blue. By chapter orders they eschew all decoration. However, since going renegade, the battle brothers have begun securing their piety with increasing numbers of purity seals on their equipment and armor. This practice is most common among the line brothers, those in positions of authority avoid it as it would set a bad example to the men.

### Chapter Badge

Whatever the chapter heraldry used to be has been deliberately forgotten. In place of a chapter symbol, the left pauldron of each Lycaean Liberator is painted solid black, and a single chain is wrapped around the pauldron itself, a reminder for each battle brother that men still remain in chains within the Imperium. The primarch did not suffer slavery, not for himself and not for his world, and the chain will remain on the pauldron until the Imperium of Man develops into an empire that Corax would approve of.

## Chapter Fleet

* ***Shattered Chain* (Battle Barge)** - Chapter flagship. Houses the 1st and 8th companies, and the command group.
* ***Will of the Raven* (Battle Barge)** - The original chapter battle barge. Unusually well armed for an Astartes vessel. Houses 2nd and 3rd companies.
* ***Chain Breaker* (Strike Cruiser)** - Houses 4th Company
* ***Prison Shaker* (Strike Cruiser)**- Houses 5th Company
* ***Pain Taker* (Strike Cruiser)**- Houses 6th Company
* ***Way Maker* (Strike Cruiser)**- Houses 7th Company
* 30 Escorts, including the escort Powerful Ideals, which is as of the Indomitus Crusade era the final surviving ship of the fleet.

## Chapter Relics

The Lycaean Liberators have picked up a few minor pieces of notable wargear in their campaigning, but the main relic of the chapter the the Chains of Corax.

* ***Chains of Corax*** - In appearance, this is no more than a short, though quite heavy, length of iron chain. Though the circumstances of the chapter's founding have been lost, all records agree that this chain was given to the first chapter master from the Raven Guard as an emblem of brotherhood. It is said to have been the literal chains which had once bound the Primarch as a slave in his earliest childhood upon the world that would later be known as Deliverance. Over generations of being a prized possession of successive chief librarians, it has become a psychic focus of modest power.

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