Design YOUR OWN Custom Space Marine Chapter! A Complete Northern Guided RANT! 

My custom chapter is, in a nutshell, bleeding hearts dark angels. They're a dark angels successor with an Arthurian knight aesthetic. The Shields of Valor chapter specializes in extractions, exfiltrations, distractions, and rescues. They arrive with fanfare, draw the attention of all on the battlefield, and ensure their allies on the field get the chance to regroup, recover, and rally. The chapter has a bloated apothecarium as a necessity of their near suicidal battle tactics, which they also leaverage to provide aid to allies immediately following a battle.

A good resource to use for homebrew space marine lore is the "How to make a Homebrew Space Marine chapter (Lore) Guide" by the Homebrew wiki. It heavily uses the lore segments from the Custom Chapter chapter of the Rites of Battle supplement for the Deathwatch RPG. As well as some other lore bits to overall help with making it fit into the lore of Warhammer.

LIKES FOR THE LIKE GOD; COMMENTS FOR THE COMMENT THRONE.

My custom chapter is a Dark Angel successor chapter, that went into exile after the betrayal on Caliban. Believing the glory of the imperium, and the glory of being sons of the First legion, is an ill gained glory. They're loyalists, but being in exile has led many of the other Space Marine/Dark Angel chapters to Believe them fallen. This chapter spent their exile fighting threats in the outer rim systems of the Imperium, and became a pivotal force in vanguarding imperial worlds when the Imperial nihilis formed after the fall of Cadia. They trim their black-green armor with gold, and have named their chapter "The Order of Ill-Gotten Gold." Based on their belief of having ill-gained glory. They have since been "risen" by the Lion, but continue to patrol the outer rim territories, currently fighting with a branch tendril of Tyranids (my own custom Hive fleet) in the Ghoul stars.

"This is our comander" The Lion squinting. "That's angron with a topknot.

Oddly enough, I don't feel the need to make a custom one. The new Primaris Marine chapter of the Space Wolves, the Wolfspear, is literally what I was trying to make. A stealthy, fleet based chapter of the Wolf King.

I'm working on developing a marine chapter that focuses on mechanized cavalry warfare. I have a background that doesn't necessarily fit the greater 40k and and space marine lore. But I feel it's fun. And this rant is helping me out a lot.

My chapter is called the Crimson Chimera chapter. Chapter was formed by three separate unforgiven chapters that were decimated by a long going crusade, the adeptus administorum deamed it too costly to bring all three chapters back to full force, as a alternative their forces were combined and reorganized under one chapter. The Ram Guard act as the bulwark, defending ground and prioritizing missions objectives, as well as overwhelming firepower. The Serpent Guard act as a Vanguard and prioritize fast hit and run tatics. And The Lion Guard, the spearhead for decapitating strikes and brutalizing the enemy. Each of these has a figure acting as the head of their respective dettachment, the head of the Ram Guard is Chapter Master Barachielus with the two others (Strike Captain Salamelus and Chaplain Interigator Vaelor) acting as his most trusted counsel. The chapter specializes in cohesive and coordinated operations. The three heads of the Chimera need to be focused and work together otherwise their specializations end up being their downfall (ex the serpent guard charge in without the fire support of the ramguard and ended up being blown away by enemy artillery).

I need to finish mine up. I was planning to do it from the perspective of a dreadnought remembering back to when he joined the chapter.

The minotaurs are guilty of the culture thing, but also they are so shrouded in mystery that little is to be appreciated about them other than that it feels like it disallows me from using spartan influences at all

Really good observations re how the culture should be a feature of the chapter and not the other way around 👍

I'm thinking about making a hombrew chapter called "Red Skulls" or "Hellspawn" idk if I want fire, rage, or savagery as their shtick, and I love the Salamanders and I thought Hellspawn could be a successor that's only used in very intense situations because the don't give a shit about casualties, or the Red Skulls being successors of Blood Angels...idk yet

Off topic, but my homebrew isn't a Space Marine Chapter, but a Minoris Order, of Adeptus Sororitas, with a close operational connection to the actual SM Nemesis chapter.

8:10 Black Templars are a fleet based chapter. Fleet of the Eternal Crusade anyone.

The FireHawks are the Salamanders Dark mirror

My custom chapter is called the Ghost Legion. Even though there are super few of them. Maybe a handful of killteams. They’re all about surprise and assassination. They’re colored grey/black/gold. They’re adorned with chains and skulls/trophies. I’m thinking they’re a mix of dark angels/raven guard. Still working on Lore 😬 so this video was very helpful!

Great video! Good point on not writing like a wiki. My chapter is the Tiger Claws.... 1 of the 9 companies that was lost in the warp. My fluff starts there! Great ideas here

I just.. like these colours and this scheme type.. don’t even have a name for them or a badge.. nearly always wear helmets and don’t like flight stands.. 🤷

Great video, lot of awesome advice. For most of my stuff i have a true lore and percieved lore. The former being my private version and the latter being what I post public.

My homebrew Chapter are the Blood Giants. A White Scars successor that goes even harder on bikes. Instead of Mongolian based its closer to Arthurian Knights fused with a biker gang. Everyone in the Blood Giants is trained in bike warfare and they almost never fight on foot. Primarily Chaos hunters, the Blood Giants excel at high speed combat, running down Chaos Warbands with cavalry tactics or herding them towards heavy armour and artillery. Character wise, Blood Giants are extremely protective of Imperial citizens, especially those of their homeworld. How protective you ask? Well, rumours abound that the Chapter Master, Caddius Venn, was so enraged at a slight against the local Guard regiments that he challenged a Custodian to back up his words in a sparring match, and fought him to a stalemate. There are also rumours of the occasional Inquisitorial meddling being met with "terrible accidents", though of course these are all just rumours... What is known about Lord Venn is his impressive record in numerous engagements, preferring to ride out with his Chapter himself. He is hard to miss with his custom bike using high speed tank treads instead of wheels, or his Chain Greatsword styled as a Claymore. Whether they are pursuing Chaos bikers across open fields or Akira-sliding into a throng of squishy infantry Caddius Venn puts his wargear to frightening use in battle, cementing his right to command. The Blood Giants' contention with high Imperial powers has taken a toll however, as they have limited access to Forge Worlds. Plasma weaponry is almost nonexistant among them for example, meaning a reliance on Meltas among their Sergeants for armor cracking. To help counter this soft blacklisting they are encouraged to maintain their own mounts, each bike, tank or weapon tuned slightly differently to match the quirks of its rider. Their numbers have been struggling too as they are disallowed to recruit outside of their homeworld of Seldrin, though this has been held at bay by a populace willing to serve in return for the Blood Giants' fierce protectiveness producing willing recruits. Blood Giants are a Chapter that choose the hard road. Not so defiant as to be not worth the trouble, but enough that someone cocky enough to threaten them may leave with a bloodied nose, if they leave at all. The roar of their engines is a howl of approaching doom for anyone in their sights, and doom will come to them faster and more brutally than they know.

The Exile spoke ill about my bois in Red! Unsubbed immediately (🙃)

I have been developing my chapters lore and back story. Thanks to you and your the members of this channels motivation. I'm not a great writer but it is a fun exercise and my group of friends are all doing the same so we can pull stories from our games that help build our different lore. Thanks for doing what you do Mr. Exile

Wanted to throw my personal chapter here at 13:00 because I made a chapter then decided it's parent. I call them the Voltaic Leviathans and they are defenders of an under water forge world station and they get recruits by requisition through the Vilka Fenrika and request lone wolfs(lone survivors of wiped squads) who resent the image of the wolf.

Going to be honest, and this is going to be some heavy criticism. That "clone of Angron" thing is really bad and goes against some of your own advice about not shoehorning stuff in. A primarch, even a clone (and a perfect clone wouldn't be smaller), is still a primarch. Even if he's unaware of his nature (somehow) and is smaller, he'd still be the size of a custodian at least and would absolutely demolish anyone in hand to hand combat. Them being able to destroy anyone and everything in fleet warfare is too OP. Have them be very good at it and renowned across a segmentum or even the Imperium as masters of void warfare. However, being able to beat back a force that outnumbers them 5:1 when they're in ships, that use the same weapons and have the same hullpoints... is Matt Ward Ultramarines level of OP. Things like that are not well written. The World Eaters specialize in close combat, does that mean they are unbeatable in melee? No. They are just extremely good at it. I'm going to be honest here, the way you talk about your custom chapter sounds like the guy at the table with main character syndrome talking about his character.

I don't really care about my space Marines. But God do I have lore about my custom Knight House.

The history and lore part is what im struggling with the most with my serious homebrew chapter. They are a loyalist codex compliant successor called the Bombardiers. They are shock troopers and combat engineers, specializing in siege and demolition. But my for fun chapter the Buccaneers is so easy to write for.

I believe the "Marines" part of space marines is more of the US Marine Corpse that fights as an Elite force that fight in small specialized units. I have the complete apposite take on the culture and play style part though i love going 100% into culture and gameplay. I find the more generic space Marine chapters to be extremely boring. I love that the blood angels are just vampires, space wolves are just vikings, black templars are just crusader knights, raven guard are just the emo stealth dudes, salamanders are just fire dudes, white scares are just Mongols and mounted combat. They all take one things and crank it up as high as possible. It was not to long ago when I was working on my blood angel successor chapter when everything clicked for me and it became my own chapter. At first I wanted vampires to the extreme and for them to in between the knights of blood and the flesh tears when it came to there vampireness and heavly focused on the Death Company but something was always bothering me and I was questioning my self on what I was doing like why not just use flesh tears and color them different or start working on making it my unique army. Luckily the devastation of baal happened and it come in handy and everything clicked and I even made the name change of the chapter apart of the lore. Now they do not even resemble Blood Angels aside from the red thirst, black rage, vampires, death company and they're own version of the sanguinary guard. The original chapter almost got entirely whipped during the devastation of baal, leaving fragments behind and alot of infighting and civil war, the last ones left reformed into a new chapter and they slowly regained there numbers with primaris and also returning to their old ways of recruitment. Honestly my blood angel successor chapter has taken more Ls then most lol. I kind of liked making them very tragic and very little victories especially after the devastation of baal. The war broke them and now they are just a shadow of there former self.

I prefer Dark Souls style lore. Open ended mysteries with lots of room for interpretation are best. When i write about the marines of the Novi Angeli its only in bits and pieces. They are a chapter of silent Dark Souls protagonist, in space. It wouldnt make sense for them to have deep backgrounds, and thats what i love about my chapter.

Haha, I'd like to do the,,, space sqiggs a successor to the space wolves but instead of wolves its sqiggs... The look of the neck beards and the reeeeeeees I'll hear, it will be hilarious,, they're a comparison to the orks and they're love of a fight and the space wolves love of a fight

Hey North, how can I send a custom space marine chapter lore to you?

20:44 my Dark Seraphs are a chapter made to track, find and vanish demons. But unlike the Grey Knights the chapter master answer only directly to the Lion. They are not believers of the emperor's church. They just cleaning Imperium Nihilus from demons. They go to a plagued planet. Exterminate all demons and then give the position of the planet to the Lion on the rock so they can go there to add it to the loyal planets. Is that somehow wrong? Thanks for the vid

always looking forward to the new one

My custom chapter are decendants from imperial fists, because i chose black templar insignia as its the easiest to reproduce, a metalic black armour with a dark purple 2nd colour for insignia and trims. Not sure what to call them, sticking with Emperors Knights, unless i can come up with or someone suggests a better name, any suggestion on name and backstory would be greatly appreiciated

We do love our rants from North 🎉

Just base it on the football team you follow.

Is it bad form to write battle lore for your homebrew chapter that isn't based on their actual performance on the tabletop? So game results may need a little narrative tweaking, but after the point of establishing your chapter's defining history and flavour and the background that's necessary to go into bringing them fully formed to the tabletop, it seems to me everything from that point ought to be determined by the outcomes you get as the player, then the skill is to shape the lore following the prompt of the game, the story beats, the results. Just making up the battle history of your chapter seems like stolen valour. Maybe it's a principal to keep them grounded and avoid mary sue-isms. What do you think?

I was going to make a homebrew renegade chapter full of different chapters both legion and successor who all were either declared renegade, betrayed, or simply disagreeing with the imperium. Mostly because I was very indecisive to a frustrating level but I was not to sure because I thought it would sound like a fanfiction and make no sense so any lore on that would help😅

Glad to hear the good news brother. This is a great video it's a needed bit of knowledge for the new people coming in waves right now, I will personally add it to a core playlist I tell people to checkout to join 40k. I hope you can do more well produced unique info videos stuff like this took me hundreds of hours to pick up in tiny pieces randomly in very confusing and boring ways.

North have you thought of doing a “lore doctor” segment? People can submit concepts and you help them build their chapter? Just a thought, thank you for all you do.

I would highly recommend checking out the homebrew wiki. It helps the decision paralysis immensly to see whats already been done. I was originally going to make yet another iron hands tank chapter till a saw it had been explored fully, which lead me to do tank salamanders instead, and opened up alot of potential avenues for exploring what that kind of chapter could be like.

I’m curios how would you rate your Void Talons vs the Carcharodons?

I think a nice principle for this, for making lore that on reflection you think holds up, is that specialness and problems should kind of correlate for the chapter. You can have a very by the book, codex compliant, nothing too crazy chapter that basically has its job and gets on with it, no problem. But the more special and unique you make them, the more I think it should dovetail with problems. Accusations of being a Mary Sue case don't come from being unique, they come from being unique in a way that makes something just better with no drawbacks. You actually see this much more broadly with the Blood Angels successors vs those of other chapters. Yes they're cool vampires, they have all this unique iconography and their own units and the more elaborate, high midevil/renaissance aesthetic, but to the degree they're different from Ultramarines its mostly a problem. The Red Thirst and Black Rage are problems that cause conflict. They're not super special and unique AND in everyone's good graces with no additional problems or conflict. If your Chapter is so special maybe they're really under suspicion by the Inquisition and on thin ice with wider powers in the Imperium.

The last one is the one that I came across on my own and led me to the Iron Butchers, a Loyalist Chapter that fought in the War of the False Prophets

Glad your family stuff has resolved, hope it's worked our well for you and the kid

I would like some tips on writing chaos daemon lore. It's my only army (I've only been in big hammer for about 8 months now) and I do not know where to start or even books to read to get inspiration.

My question is, whats the best way to find some of these obscure space marine chapters? If i want to make a chapter with a focus on plasma weapons how do i narrow my search to chapters that have mentioned plasma weapons?

Good tips North, nice video and all... but I am waiting so long for your reading of my idea and giving some tips and your view on it, that I don't even remember what was written in there. I understand there were some things that happened in your life, that prevented you to get to it sooner, but at this point I feel demotivated to even try to rewrite it.. I've written it a haste, trying to get to the release schedule as soon as possible, right after the first video was released.. I believe I sent it on 31st of January. Since then I painted a few more units (a chapplain on bike, a vindicator tank and continuing work on the Knight) and bought another Shrike I'm gonna paint in the -contact chapter- colours, as there is a storyline for that, but he would weild a (redacted - you can imagine a typical weapon of the -contact chapter-, as I don't wanna put spoilers in here) But even when story expands over time, I can't really restart this whole process from zero and wait another 2 - 3 - 4 months before I hear my story out, especially when now I have much less free time than before due to a new corporate IT security job am starting soon plus some Ai video side projects.. I love to listen to your videas, but I'm sad my story didn't find the listeners and your review for over 7 weeks now as I believe I did write it in an interesting way with interesting plot.. thanks for the videos man, they are great.. just, sorry I feel this way, I know it's your channel, your pace, you don't owe us nothing, but, it still feels like a letdown waiting each week for another, well, maybe next time.. cheers

I just started rewriting my lore.

12:36 how dare you call me out like this north, lmao

I think it is called decision paralysis.

I think Star Trek did that with the Borg.

Find a story, theme or archetype you like and expand on it. Not rocket science?

I have my own rather thinly developed chapter. Working name is the Maiden's Chosen. They're a Sons of Medusa successor chapter, and you can join regardless of your gene seed as long as you share the vision of "the Maiden". They believe it's the manifestation of the Omnissiah, it's true form (of course it isn't) and they have taken on female identities and call eachother sister to form themselves in the Maiden's image. They are devout worshippers of machines and specialize in siege warfare and the use of Gravis armor and energy weapons. The reality is that the Maiden is a Chaos entity formed by the Men of Iron's corruption, but it's not powerful enough to corrupt and control the Maiden's Chosen... yet. Chapter Master's name is Demira Steelheart. Haven't developed her lore much yet, but she's effectively replaced the majority of her body with machinery, and is the person that was first contacted by the Maiden and is the one able to commune with it. Her and her Maiden's Chosen are only considered tolerable because they are useful, and their beliefs are not problematic enough to be considered heretical. The chapter is a ticking time bomb though.

I have a tongue in cheek chapter. Mine are called the Ultra Patriots, their armor is red, white and blue with gold trim and their chapter master is Donaldmen Trumpicus. I’ve made these to troll the blue haired masses in game stores 😂.