Bay 12 Games Forum

Name: Steel Sentinels. Unofficially, "The Watchtower", or, more recently, "The Blind Tower".
Colors: Silver with rust-red highlights
Symbol: Eye over a tower. Originally open, now shut.
Battlecry: "YOUR END IS IN SIGHT!"

Doctrinal drift: Revere the God-Emperor as the pinnacle of humanity, but take issue with the corruption of His word the Imperium has made over the millenia. Prognosticators are believed to be the voice of the God-Emperor, and the well-being of humankind is the prime goal.

Codex deviation: Not quite a breakdown of the hierarchy, but it's definitely looser. Just as each battle-brother is expected to listen to their CO, the COs are expected to listen to each battle-brother; squad leadership is relatively fluid within each squad, and promotions are highly meritocratic. Techmarines have distributed the Mechanicus' secrets throughout the chapter out of necessity and practicality, although they are still the undisputed masters of those practices. The Chapter-Master is primarily advised by an informal council of the most-respected Astartes within the ranks, but any and every battle-brother has the right to speak with them. A small branch has also developed that specializes in mortal bureaucracy and economics, though they are considered deeply strange by the rest of the chapter; another branch, more highly-considered, specializes in training auxiliaries in both operating alongside the chapter as well as in the beloved art of Bolter marksmanship. One squad in particular has taken up the specific role of being the Chapter's gremlin-wranglers. Furthermore, the 7th company - unofficially called “the postcognition corps”, “the dust-sifters”, or “those mad bastards” - is almost entirely dedicated to exploring the ruins of #14/2.

Culture stuff: Many battle-brothers receive tattoos pertaining to their accomplishments, and tattoo artistry is thought highly of within the Chapter. One of the highest honors is to be deemed worthy of the Scalpel tattoo, marking one as among the best medics in the chapter - not as skilled as the old Apothecaries, but one of the closest the Chapter has to them. Regicide [read: chess] is popular, though an extra piece, the Prognosticator, is added, which moves like a King but can be switched with any piece that will be imminently captured. It is considered a rite of passage to convince one of the neophytes that you're one of the Prognosticators, even though the Prognosticators are constantly trying to get the practice stamped out. Although everybody has the right to speak their mind to power, you are expected to consider how to use that right wisely; a reputation for giving little thought to one's ideas is one of the worst a battle-brother of the chapter can acquire.

Euchre, please stop.

I’m going to operate where A is the first option of the above pairs and B is the second option.
A, B, n/a, A, B, A, A, B

I like ruins (they’re cool and often contain cool stuff), dislike parasites (we already get one, we don’t need more), think animals are generally more interesting than plants (at least since we didn’t get any predatory plants), and believe that doubling up on stuff should be minimized.

Raiders, Imps, and Wall-builders, for Fanmil, Fanauth, and Pacifist respectively.

That would have been "Bitter Resentment", which would have required one of the rolls to be 42-48. Neither of the rolls happened to be that.
In fact, our geneseed is pretty much perfectly fine, although it seems we don't hate aliens as much as we're supposed to.

We're probably going to need to uplift all those feral and feudal worlds we've got, anyway; what's a bit of uplifting xenos, too?

I'd rather have the three factions than the suspicious hivemind. The latter is smart, strong-willed, has a head for tech, and doesn't trust us in the slightest, making it very dangerous. The factions, in contrast, will have a harder time getting to a point where they could likely be much of a concern, and the group most likely to be able to make interesting tech is also the one least likely to do anything to us, and the fan-auths could likely be relatively easily put to heel. The only likely troublemakers are the fan-mils, who... are neolithic.

I don't care how advanced their tactics can be due to their cleverness, sharp rocks are not going to cut it against Astartes unless you get a psyker.

I feel like we've gotten most of our dice' worth out of these. Let's move on and see their tech.