watchers in the dark

[DJinni]

Originally Posted by omegoku

The Dark Angels are scum who held back during the heresy to see who would win, fought amongst themselves, and would gladly destroy a planet if it meant their secrets were not revealed.

well there's an informed opinion

[omegoku]

Originally Posted by DJinni

well there's an informed opinion

Sure is, read Angels of Darkness, and Codex Dark Angels for a start!

[DJinni]

Originally Posted by omegoku

Sure is, read Angels of Darkness, and Codex Dark Angels for a start!

already did, and as previously hinted at, you either didn't or just don't remember it correctly so lets start with that.
the dark angels are the current chapter. they are the loyal marines, the fallen angels are the ones who have scattered and betrayed their brothers, without going into further detail I'll just leave it at that.
read it so you can better understand.

[omegoku]

Ah but that is where you are wrong.
Thae Fallen are the marines that, outraged by the fact the Lion did not help the Emperor straight away, attacked them as traitors when they returned.
The Lion, unwilling to allow anyone to know this shameful secret, attacked the True Loyal Marines on Caliban.
As Caliban was torn asunder by orbital barrage, the screams of the thousands of inhabitants dying ripped open a warp portal which sucked the marines still on Caliban into the Warp.

These marines who had traveled the warp could not be trusted to kep the secrets of what happened on that day, regardless of what side they had fought on.
All of them were declared Fallen Angels, and their capture became the primary focus of the Dark Angels Legion, as well as its original 3 successor Legions (the Unforgiven)

While travelling through the warp, some Fallen turned to Chaos, others carved empires for themselves as renegades or lived in a hundred different ways throughout time and space. Many were probably destroyed in the warp or are lost forever.

The Dark Angels are well known for leaving allies to die as they suddenly take off without explanation (because they heard some rumour of a fallen angel nearby) and are known to have attacked and killed a group of Black Templars and their battle barge because they had spoken to a fallen Angel.

They may not be Chaos Marines, and they may claim to be loyal to the Emperor, but they put their own interests first.

[Sabe]

Djinni: I'm well aware of pretty much all DA backround...and I was joking about the watchers.

omegoku: Lots of chapters have quite intentionally broken from imperial doctrines for their own interests. The BT's that you mentioned are rumored to have over 8k members, practically legion strength. Sure we can all argue that they're all Pious and crap but really that a big gun to be waving around and all it takes is one naughty Chapter master.

The BA have been clearly and irrevocably tainted by chaos...a fact that they go to great lengths to cover up. They have come into conflict with other chapters about it as well and have been known to cause strange disappearances among innocent planetary populations when on campaign.

The noble Grey Knights have been used as a genocide force on hundreds of imperial planets because some inquisitor felt like their might be lingering chaos taints in the populace.

And virtually every chapter has refused aid(on likely numerous occasions) to one imperial commander or another because they felt like it was not in their chapters best interest. Undoubtedly some of them had good reasons, others did not.

Truth is we can focus on all the naughty aspects of any chapter and hence make them out to be useless, mean, disloyal or somehow lesser than someone else's chapter. Or we can focus on the great feats that a chapter has accomplished throughout its career and forget all the side crap and call them all hero's.

The DA have their faults and downfalls and nasty secrets and sure, they haven't always been the best allies to imperial commanders. But then again so have a lot of chapters. And they also have one of the top 10 most prestigious battle records in the entire imperium and are even today, 10k years after the heresy, called on to fight for the imperium on many occasions. My guess is the ill will they've generated can't be hurting their standing too much then.