Celestial Lions: New Fluff and the new C:SM book

So when I decided to play Space Marines I was looking for a cool themed chapter and one that would give me flexibility. After I saw some awesome 3rd party accessory items with a lion theme to them I had to look up Space Marine chapters that had to do with Lions. 

Well I knew about Dark Angels and their Primarch Lion El'Johnson and thought that I could do a Dark Angels successor Chapter. While going though the list of Space Marine Chapters with "Lion" in the name I saw the Celestial Lions. Their chapter colors were Gold and Blue, I could dig that! And they had very little background information but what they did have was compelling to me.

At the time they were from an unknown founding (due to conflicting information between GW websites and Magazines) and unsure what chapter they originated from. That gave me some freedom to use whatever chapter tactics I wanted to! Great Freedom to create!

They also had a dark time in their history! Where the entire Chapter was sent to Armageddon and was cut down to the last 96 Marines and with no Apothecaries left it seemed to seal the fate of the Chapter. But the end was not written for the chapter. They left it open. 

This gave me the option of making my own story where either I could run the chapter without any Apothecaries, as a Current/Post Armageddon chapter, I could run them with their own Apothecaries as a Pre-Armageddon Chapter, or I could run them with Apothecaries painted from another chapter to have them getting help to rebuild as a Post Armageddon chapter.

For the longest time I did not run any Apothecaries. Recently I made up an Apothecary and made him from the Dark Angels, to play off of the whole Lion El'Johnson thing. And I was happy where things were going!

Now for the Exciting Part!

Blood and Fire! The follow-up book to the Black Templars book Helsreach. I will warn you know, I have not read either of these books, but I do plan on doing so sometime in the future. I will discuss what I have found about about the information in the book but I don't know all the details and therefore can not and will not discuss them. But there may be some SPOILERS!

So in Blood and Fire after hearing about the issues the Celestial Lions have run into with the Bad intel and basically the betrayal from the Inquisition the Black Templars come to their aid. This is where we find out that the Celestial Lions are a succesor chapter to the Imperial Fists and therefor cousins of the Black Templars.

Grimaldus a Black Templars Chaplain goes in and helps set the Celestial Lions strait. The Lions were basically ready to die and be at peace with their fallen brothers, but Gimladus was not hip to the idea of his brothers laying down their lives. So he helped them out with reinforcements and went to seek revenge on the Orks that had decimated the chapter. 

At the end of the day Gimaldus forced a Pride Leader Dubaku (A Squad Sergeant who what the ranking officer for the Lions) to take the Oath of the Chapter Master and bestowed upon him a gift, a relic, it was an ancient suite of armor that still had the heraldry of the Imperial Fists on it. 

Now this makes me excited for the new Space Marine codex! I now have a solid fluff to build the rest of my army off of. Sure I made up a Custom Vulkan He'Stan model to run my army with the Salamanders Traits, but I can always use it still.

But the first model I made for the army was Lysander! I gave him a new Lion shoulder pad and Shield to make him fit with the army, but I have always liked the Imperial Fists. They were one of my top 2 choices when I was first looking at Space Marines (the other being Salamanders).

I have also recently been looking into running Pedro Cantor... as I now have several Drop Pods and Sternguard work very well in Drop Pods. So this just adds to the awesomeness that is the fluff.

On top of that, Black Templars seem to be getting rolled into the Space Marine Codex, so I can change my Dark Angels Apothecary into Black Tamplars and it will fit the fluff of the Templars assisting to rebuild the Lions!

Things seem to be coming together well for this army project. I am looking forward to seeing all of the new builds and opportunity that comes with modeling and list building when the new book comes out.

Till Next Time!

Dracus Out!