Varyags

"This, 'Codex Astartes', quite bothersome in our path to pillage is it not? A vile collective of walls to the free spirit that every Marine bears, stowed deep behind cages of ceramite doctrines; I shan't let the will of a deceased deity to dictate my manner of living, nor shall I let the boresome talk of an Imperial rid me of my ear with its dullsome dribble. But, if you show coin, I show wear."

- Former Space Wolf Astartes, Bolli Löderfson, A Notable and Rather Infamous Varangian

The Varyags are a collective of Renegade Adeptus Astartes of variable origin under the banner of a singular name. Despite claiming a variety of desires, all dependent on the Space Marine at hand and present, they are all on the same goal of rather barbaric actions to sustain their activities across the galaxy, most notable things such as the pillaging of Imperial Words when in the direst of circumstances. Despite being rather obscure in the contents of their creation, they have been estimated to have been formed in the 34th Millennium, establishing quite a presence in the grander scheme of the galactic battlefield among other contemporaries.

The Varyags are often employed by radical Inquisitors who are capable of paying the hefty fee for their services and clients of noble-blood who are on occasion capable of gifting gratuitous amounts for their labor. Numerous and frequent are tense encounters between brothers of their originating gene-seed, but dependent of the patron at hand, often, are only glares filled with hatred exchanged among them. Due to the feeage involved in their recruitment, many of their numbers are restrained to rather low percentages, but typically roundabout two-to-three hundred heads in their ranks.

Marines No More
With the failure to uphold the standards of the average Astartes, a sect of Space Wolves-former, manufactured with the aid of the children of the Gorgon a collective of Space Marines post the rebels hearing of the vicious assault on the Craftworld of Lugganath by the Emperor's Children, fearing their safety should they have walked alone. The then sons of Leman Russ left the relations between their brothers, sour, with opposing ideals ultimately resulting in their abandonment of the Chapter; in almost identical fashion is the rationale for the departure of the descendants of the late Ferrus Manus, seeking refuge among own of their own kind,while granting a manner of security from the horrors bloodthirsty or foolhardy enough to prey on an Adeptus Astartes.

After some matter of decades of the renunciation of their Chapters, with minute numbers of Space Wolves and Iron Hands intermingled with other rather shady Astartes of misty birth among the now mercenaries; the group of stranded rouges initially found themselves without a goal in the reaches of a strife-ridden galaxy. Much of their early periods in the late 34th to early 35th Millennium were spent scavenging the rich entrails of Space Hulks with what little, if at all, terminator suits they held in hopes of finding obscure and even fantastical artifacts, though proving rather dangerous, it ultimately helped to fund their activities with the selling of them. But such behavior came to an end with the idea of mercenary work to act as another variant of income by the wit of a now deceased and unnamed Astartes, then member of the Raven Guard.

Soon they set on a rather remote and arid planetoid of the outskirts of a desolate system in the Segmentum Tempestus; donning name after centuries of merely being pale shadows of their former lives as children of the Imperium, the now Varyags set shop and spread word of their presence in the black markets of the galaxy, catching eyes and ears of multiple future investors with morphed tales of their escapades as space hulk raiders and low-lifes. Through deception and immense contortion of truth, the varangians found themselves doused in numerous requests for their armaments to be placed at the whim of rather ominous clients, but the load of demands soon grew short once most caught a look at the rather hefty price of their employment. But despite this fee, it did not prevent more wealthy patrons to place them under their wing, seeing the Varyags enacting seven lengthy tasks spanning multiple millennia at times.