 Pragmatism is a trait altogether lauded in this Imperium of Hours, although if one may editorialise from the outset it has taken on a rather ill flavour. Too often is the concept wielded to excuse actions quite negligent. It is pragmatic to abandon troop carriers to the enemy, for instance, if more proven or valuable troops can use the deaths of their comrades as a means to escape. Pragmatism so oft tied with necessity has become one of the Imperium's best defences against atrocity. Would that it were otherwise, but to my mind, the subjects of this record in particular remain after centuries, a truer embodiment of the phrase, renowned for their independence and self-reliance. Pragmatism to these warriors means the dispensing of needless restrictions should it mean the successful completion of the objective. Far from being feckless disregarders of loss of life, they are instead perfectly willing to cut through unfortunately baroque traditions that may ensnare others, all for the sake of their missions. Know then that this is a record of the Scions of the Ravens, the inheritors of legacies clandestine, the Raptors chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. To say the 19th Legion Ravenguard, suffered during the years of the Horus Heresy, is an understatement almost worthy of summary execution. A civil war that tore the Imperium asunder spared no arm of the imperial military, but it would be remiss of one to not acknowledge that many suffered far more than others. The Ravenguard, the 19th Legion Astartes, were one of the three legions committed to the first wave of the invasion of Istvan V, a task force that, along with four other legions following them, was intended to bring the Renegade Warmaster Horus Lupercal to battle and defeat. Needless to say, this objective was not accomplished, as the four legions following the Ravenguard, Ironhands, and Salamanders into Planetfall, revealed their true traitorous allegiances, turning their guns upon the stunned Loyalists. Figures vary wildly, but it is estimated that the Ravenguard lost some 75,000 Astartes in the Dropsite Massacre alone, escaping the planet with a mere 5,000 or so of its members. The tales of their conduct throughout the long years of the Age of Darkness are redolent of fated tragedies and grim necessities. The Legion was forced into thousands of splintered campaigns of harassment, sabotage, and infiltration, harrowing numerically superior traitor hosts, using every iota of their famed stealth capabilities to avoid retribution at the hands of the Warmaster's chaotic hordes. As with all legions, the Ravenguard had, at any one time or another, a number of initiates undergoing their Astartes ascension surgeries and neophyte training regimes. For the 19th Legion, these initiate companies were based exclusively on their homeworld of deliverance, the former prison moon orbiting the industrialized world of Kievar. Spared from frontline combat duty, these initiates were also spared from the calamitous events of their Primark's drive to expand his Legion's numbers rapidly, through the use of ancient and terrible genetic engineering techniques. Subsequent to the Horus Heresy, Primark Rebut Gulliman of the Ultramarines, in his role as Lord Commander of the Imperium, began a series of sweeping reforms to silo the various branches of the Imperial military off from each other. Intended to ensure that no one commander could ever call upon a force strong enough to threaten Imperial security alone, the central aspect of the reforms were the breaking of the Legion as Astartes into separate chapters of the newly formed Adeptus Astartes. From the 19th Legion, sorely wounded as they were from the slaughters of the Age of Darkness, were drawn three chapters, amongst them the Raptors. It is widely accepted by scholarship, both from within one's own Logos Historic Avertia and from without, amongst the agents of the Ordo Astartes and other parties interested in the affairs of the Space Marines, that the Raptors were granted the vast majority of the initiate companies, who had essentially sat out the worst depredations of the heresy. This has long been postulated as a root cause for the market divergence in culture and combat doctrine between the Raptors and their progenitors, deviations that are both significant and immediate. As with many of the second founding chapters, their service was initially fleet-based. The campaigns of the scouring placed many demands on the rebuilding Imperium, not least amongst them the need of worlds that were stable and secure enough to supply the reborn Empire with manpower and materials. Against the myriad forces of the arch enemy were the Raptors set, and for three centuries following their first muster, they comported themselves admirably, winning for the Imperium whole systems across the long reaches of the galaxy. In recognition of this, the chapter was eventually granted a life, a planet within the volume surrounding the Eye of Terror, into which the Raptors and hundreds of other Imperial armies had harried and driven the traitor hosts. That we currently have no record of this world's name should give Acolyte some idea as to what would occur next. At some point, believed to be either the fourth Black Crusade in M34 or the fifth in M36, the original fiefdom of the Raptors was utterly lost, destroyed by the hosts of the Warmaster of Chaos, Abaddon the Dispoiler. It would mark the first in what was a series of calamities that befell the chapter across the millennia. Many records from M37 claim the Raptors were now lost in their entirety, having suffered grievous combat losses since the death of their homeworld and vanishing from the Imperium altogether. Once considered wholly destroyed, these records were later countermandered by those entered into the archives of the Kiberiad Wars, with the Raptors apparently resurfaced from the merc of Galactic Tumult to once again fight alongside the banners of the Emperor. While not befallen with the ill luck of, say, the Lamentors, the post-scouring millennia were clearly times of significant instability for the Raptors. The Imperium could simply not count upon their intervention nor even the fact of their basic existence. Their earliest accolades and honours were lost with their first homeworld. This includes not only the trophies and relics taken during their actions in the scouring, but also any and all chronicles and records of combat actions that were not stored or archived by other Imperial organizations or aboard the chapter's fleet. Heritage and lineage is an important factor both in the culture and the operation of a chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. It informs everything from combat doctrine to the recruitment of initiates. To lose their inheritance and legacy almost certainly had a profound effect upon the Raptors. It is possible that the long millennia of their disappearance is a direct result of it. Scholars have speculated that the years may have been a simple infrastructural necessity. Rebuilding from such devastation as they had endured would take long, long years of labour. The Kiberiad Wars did not take place until M39. There is thus a potential two millennia discrepancy for the Raptors to remain unaccounted for. While the rebuilding explanation holds stock, there are many others. A sheer chronological drift of competing Imperial calendar systems have attracted a period of warp instability, or simply becoming trapped in a campaign against a particularly staunch foe. Regardless, the reemergence of the Raptors saw them involve themselves in many of the galaxy's most bitter conflicts in a very short period of time. The Sancta Angelis campaign came to define the modern iteration of the Thought Last Chapter, where, in a remote corner of Segmentum Pacificus, a single Raptor strike force engaged the orcs of Waa Iron Gal for three entire decades, cut off in a stellar locale with the Xenos thanks to regional warp storms. Naturally, the conflict was from its beginning one that placed the Astartes in dire numerical inferiority, but in this form of warfare, the Raptors were particularly adept. Their progenitors had been masters of the hit-and-run, and from this lineage the Raptors drew deeply, conducting a protracted campaign of guerrilla warfare from the outset. Being almost entirely cut off from the rest of the Imperium, the chapter resorted to methodologies that many would have considered beneath them. They frequently scavenged from orcoid camps for supplies and salvage to field repair their war gear and equipment, for example. Acts considered deeply heretical not only by the Adeptus Mechanicus, but many Astartes tech marines. They additionally exploited existing rivalries between various orc fractions within the Waa, conducting sabotage and assassination operations deliberately designed to appear the fault of a clan's rivals, withdrawing to watch the ensuing internecine conflicts unfold. Years and years of such strikes bled the orcs of both motivation and what little patience they possessed, until the leadership of their war bosses collapsed and the entire sector fell into a massive green-skinned civil war. This is of course just but one example of the Raptors' conduct within the infamous Badab war. Acolytes must wait for a further entry into that archival stack. The Raptors retained such a high degree of secrecy for so long that the name of their new homeworld was subject to much imperial debate, verously known as Prime Numina Badwater or Ra. The one aspect records of their fife were correct upon was its regional volume, located within the Sutter's spiral Nebula of segmentum solar. Raptors currently occupy the world of Tarangast, its name finally and firmly established in imperial records in now the era Indometus. A temperate planet, Tarangast is notable for a wide range of biomes that comprise its many small continents and archipelago chains. Alpine forests, tropical jungles, arid deserts and vast grasslands are all present upon the world, and the range of climates coupled with the planet's safe isolation within the gravitic anomalies of the spiral nebula have led to the proliferation of a spectacular array of wildlife. Highly evolved to compensate for fluctuating temperatures and atmospheric conditions so often caused by localized distortions within the nearby void. This has equally led to the development of a highly resilient and resourceful human population, forever in competition with the more aggressive fauna of the world. In short, the planet is as ideal and a starty's fife as possible. Not only are the local imperial population genetically stable and culturally adaptive, the various biomes provide as broad a spectrum of training grounds as possible on a single world. Aspirants to the chapter are selected only after grueling trials of survival within these climes, eventually taken aboard the raptor's primary battle barge in orbit, the Asipiter. The chapter holds no fortress monastery upon the world's surface. Their flagship serves that self-same role. This is, to the raptor's credit, likely a learned tradition. After the loss of their original homeworld, the chapter appears ultimately unwilling to hold any ground that cannot be evacuated, if need be. There is, however, no strict policy of recruitment that the chapter possesses that stipulates the use of taran gas as its sole ground. The raptors draw potential neophytes from as many worlds as they deem necessary, both from within the local stellar regions and from worlds across the Imperium where they have conducted combat operations. This policy has ensured the avoidance of the same ritualism that define chapters who use a single planet as their recruitment bed. The influx of aspirants from across the Imperium and its myriad cultures ensures a diversity of opinion and skills, all of which are put through the tests and trials that taran gas provides. Recruits are encouraged by their stardies drill masters to share their experiences and perspectives. It is a hallmark of the raptors that they value independence of thought, and the specialized knowledge a man from half the galaxy away could possibly provide to their chapter. This acknowledgement of the skills of baseline humans from the get-go extends to those individuals that prove worthy of the trials, a cultural facet of the chapter brought about by the degradation in gene seed of their original progenitor legion, the ravengard. Due to the higher than average care needed in surgical enhancements, psycho indoctrination and mimetic conditioning that is required to bring an astardies of the 19th legion lineage to maturity, raptors neophytes that graduate to the 10th company as scouts are deployed both far more frequently and in far greater numbers than in other chapters of the adeptus astardies. This is both due to simple manpower requirements, but likewise reflects the raptor's own beliefs that learning is both best utilized and best continued in the field. Veteran sergeants from the chapter will often elect to spend the entirety of their service careers with the 10th company, so valuable is this practice, and so precious are the scouts. It is the chapter's expectation that, save for these veterans, the 10th company is to remain in the field for significant periods of time without any support from fully ascended battle brothers. The combat doctrine that the raptors have possessed since their reemergence has been entirely informed by their battlefield combat experience, hybridized somewhat with the doctrine of their progenitors in the Ravenguard. As with their parent chapter, the raptors do not consider the codex astardies as inviolable gospel, but whereas the Ravenguard cleave far closer to the tenets of that great work, the raptors prefer to view it as a robust collection of proven battlefield stratagems and organizational tenets. Strike forces are typically far smaller in disposition than those mandated by the codex, for example, and contain within them significant flexibility in unit structure. A history marked by significant combat losses has made the raptors very wary of committing significant manpower to any particular campaign or even individual engagement unless overwhelming superiority of victory is assured. Likewise, it has also removed from the chapter's culture many notions of honor and glory that are so present in other astardies formations. The raptors in many ways bear more resemblance to the strike teams of the Tempest Scions. Victory is what matters, as does one's professionalism in achieving it. Notions of personal renown are unheard of within the chapter. Commendations exist, of course, as do promotions based upon merit, but a raptor astardies exists for the purpose of achieving objectives and ensuring his battlebrothers are equipped to achieve theirs. They care not for the prestige or fame that this may accrue. This has additionally led to a market preference in the chapter for marksmanship. The raptors are far more willing to engage a foe at range with precision firepower than attempt to close the distance and engage in the chaos of the melee. Similar to their parent chapter, the raptors employ a far higher than average number of transport vehicles, both armored and tracked and anti-gravitic. Ever the pragmatists, they have readily adopted the newest technology currently made available to the adeptus astardies in the era Indometus by the Majos Bellisarius Kohl and his ilk. This extends far beyond the influx of Primaris space marines, which the chapter readily accepted. These marines utilize an unprecedented number of Phobos pattern Mark X power armor. Many raptor strike forces are comprised entirely of Inceptor, Reaver, and Infiltrator squads, born upon the battlefield by Impulsor Transports. The sheer mobility offered by these new waves of wargear and vehicles have been a huge boon to the raptor's combat capabilities, vastly enhancing their already formidable abilities in precision strikes against targets with overwhelming force. It has additionally increased the capability for independent operation so prized by the chapter. Its captains and lieutenants are expected by their seniors and peers to be capable of conducting self-sufficient operations for incredibly extended periods of time, forcing the creation of unorthodox and ad hoc tactics to correspond to emergent situations. While not always the case, select tactical solutions will often work their way into broader chapter doctrine. The utilisation of warzone specific camouflage is one example. While a historical practice, it has increased since the chapter's reemergence. The raptors frequently eschew the sanctity of even their fairly plain power armor, changing its schemes to adapt to any specific operation. This has caused not insignificant strife between them and other, prouder chapters, who see the use of camouflage schemes as not only cowardly and dishonourable to an individual astartes' capabilities, but a disgrace to the holy patterns of a chapter's panoply. The raptors care not. They possess several formats of approved camouflage patterns, and will happily develop new forms tailored to individual warzones should the need arise. During combat operations in the era Indomitus, the raptors have never once operated as a single chapter. It is an anathema to their combat doctrine to co-olate so much manpower in one place, and even the advent of the 13th Black Crusade and the emergence of the Dispoiler's Bale fleets have done nothing to change this. At least three Indomitus battle groups currently count raptors astartes amongst their number, but the chapter remains as steadfastly independent as ever, preferring to engage targets of opportunity under its own purview. It is perhaps a testament to their efficiency and skill in this area that the Primarch, Robert Gulliman, has apparently given them all leave to do so. The chapter's location in the northern drifts of segmentum solar placed them ideally for such operations. Indeed, theirs was one of the first that responded to the summons of muster as dispatched by Gulliman at the dawn of the current era. The standing chapter master of the raptors, Lies Isodon, was requested by the Primarch reborn personally to provide strike teams to Crusade fleet's Primus, Secundus, and Tertius, the first three such battle groups that were launched. The teams served with distinction as forward reconnaissance in force elements, utilizing millennia of combat experience in guerrilla warfare against the numerically superior arch enemy forces, as well as opportunistic Xenos raids. A strike force under Lieutenant Saranis, for example, operating out of battle group Orpheus of Fleet Primus, interdicted against Eildari Corsair bands attempting to exploit gaps in imperial lines for their own wretched ends, conducting a superlative boarding action against to the Corsair flagship itself. In Fleet Secundus, the raptor's elements initially encountered internal strife owing to the presence of a significant contingent of Black Templars within the fleet. As unlike as possible in chapter culture and combat doctrine, the two nevertheless, to the fires of war, came to develop an understanding partnership, with the raptor's cannily handling subversion, sabotage, and assassination actions ahead of a main grand assault led by the Black Templars and the battle sisters of the Adapta Sororitas. Elsewhere, the chapter's penchant for covert operations resulted in several superlative victories, such as the elimination of fully seven traitorous night pilots of House Mandrakor on Darivar by a team of less than a dozen raptors and starties. Bearing all the hallmarks of their progenitors, but having developed a tradition of self-reliance, adaptability, pragmatism, and independence, one has little doubt the raptors will remain a key element in the unfolding Indomitas Crusade of a Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.