Another hobby project in the works. My own Blood Angels' successor chapter, the Sons of St. Arnold. Time for a history lesson (according to a combination of our good internet-friend Wikipedia, and the fine folks at Saint Arnold's brewery in Houston Texas):
Saint Arnold, in the Roman-Catholic Church, is the patron saint of hop-pickers and Belgian brewers (why only Belgians, I dunno, but as Belgian ales are my favorite, I'm not too concerned). This guy is excellent to base a chapter around as he was a career soldier who retied to an abbey where he became abbot, and then later after rising to bishop, founded another abbey where he became a brewer of beer. He encouraged local peasants to drink beer instead of water because it was healthier. At the time, the beer actually was healthier than the water because during prep for brewing the water was boiled, killing many of the pathogens in the water.
So with the Sons of Saint Arnold, what we have here is, a chapter of warrior-monks who brew and consume beer. To 40k it up, all we have to do is make Saint Arnold an imperial saint, a brewer from the agri-world Bel'Gia who provided the populace with the ability to make their drinking water safe to imbibe during the Age of Strife by brewing it into beer. The chapter was a 'Start-up' chapter. An experiment by the Adeptus Mechanicus in creating new chapters without a primarch from the geneseed tithed by the chapters for purity-checking and archival purposes. The chapter was named in honor of the Saint whose agri-world the would-be marines, or Bel'Gians, were recruited from. Little did they know the chapter name would prove quite apt as red thirst of the blood angels was transferred through the geneseed used. However, due to a mutation in the oolitic kidney caused either by mistake from the AdMech while growing the organs, a flaw inherent in the geneseed itself or, as the AdMech claims, a result of local Bel'Gian food and beverage on the processing functions of the oolitic kidney, the Sons of St. Arnold or SoSA Marines crave processed, brewed hops and grains: Beer!
I love the Sanguinary priests of the Blood Angels and their ability to give Feel no Pain and Furious charge to those around them. I love that the Blood Angels are so gung-ho about assault squads and dreadnoughts (especially the blood taloned ones) as my favorite part of the game is the assault phase. I just never could grow comfortable enough with the emo space vampires to allow myself to consider playing them. And I hate red. Can't stand it as a color. So this gives me a way to use the very cool, very appealing rules set of the blood angels without having to use them at all.
For an added twist, I'm thinking about making Bel'Gia a high gravity world and converting up my entire army from Fantasy dwarves or Dwarfs as GW calls them. Hey, that's how they originally explained the squats, and what better way to reintroduce squats to my gaming circle than as short, angry, beer-drinking marines.
