Relictors Organization

Despite some of their more controversial weapons choices, I think the Relictors are pretty much a Codex chapter.  Sources say at least part of their gene-seed comes from Ultramarines stock.  As such, I’ll probably be playing them as an Ultramarines successor chapter in sixth edition, and I think their organization reflects that overall.

That being said, there’s also some switches and changes, and it makes sense to me that the Relictors should be a little...off.  They’re really close to being a mainstream chapter, but there are a few places where they just don’t line up.  So I thought I’d jot down a few notes and thoughts about where I think they’d be different and how those differences might reflect—stylistically—in my actual army and army lists.

The biggest difference between the Relictors and a regular Space Marine chapter is the Conclave.  According to the various fluff, the Conclave is a sort of “inner circle” of the Relictors.  A close analogue would be the Mournival, Horus’s group of commanders and captains before the Heresy (no irony there).  The Conclave is made up of the high-ranking officers and veterans who actually use Chaos artifacts.  The idea is that the rank-and-file don’t know where the chapter’s powerful relics come from, and those marines are kept far away until they’ve proven themselves physically/mentally/spiritually strong enough to use them without risk of corruption

  

So, with that in mind, let’s consider basic chapter structure.  Veterans are generally “above” regular Marines and Scouts, and Captains and command squads are above them.  There also seems to be a hierarchy among companies—that the First Company commander is considered a bit higher up the chain than the Sixth Company commander, for example.  This gave me a good sense of which members of the Relictors are a bit more mainstream and which are probably members of the Conclave (with all that implies).

For modeling purposes, I decided that the Chapter Master and the first five company captains probably made up the Conclave.  Their assorted honor guards and command squads were probably included as well.  And it wouldn’t be that unusual to see some lesser Chaos weapons scattered throughout the First Company, too.  This was where future Captains and command squads would most likely come from, after all.

This also meant a bit of shuffling and tweaks when it came to titles and duties.  If I accept a ranking of the different Captains, for example, it doesn’t make sense that the Master of Relics would be the Ninth Company commander.  Not within the Relictors, anyway.  So I restructured the titles like so.

            First Company—Master of Secrets

            Second Company—Master of the Vault*

            Third Company—Master of the Arsenal

            Fourth Company—Master of the Fleet

            Fifth Company—Master of Relics

            Sixth Company—Master of the Rites *

            Seventh Company—Master of the Hunt *

            Eighth Company—Lord Executioner *

            Ninth Company—Master of the Marches *

            Tenth Company – Master of Recruits

The asterisks mark positions that are, shall we politely say, currently open.  Since the Inquisition’s censure of—and completely unwarranted attack on—the Relictors, the chapter has been notably under-strength.  While I have full faith that their name will be cleared in the near future (if the world of the game ever gets there...), for now they’ll remain low in numbers and with few recruits or Scouts.  So, as much fun as it would be to build a full chapter, I think I’ll be building toward this idea.

I also decided to swap the company colors for the first and fifth companies, making the First Company black/ebonite and the fifth company white/silver.  I liked the idea that Relictors would get a bit darker as they advanced toward the Conclave.  Combined with my decision to leave everyone helmeted, it gave the Chapter a dark edge... which was kind of perfect.  This also carried over to veterans and veteran sergeants, of course.