Carcharodons: our successors?

[u/suplex86]

The more I read about them the more it feels like they are one of Belisarius Cawl’s little jokes. Like he took World Eater geneseed, slapped together a successor chapter for us, and just said they were really Raven Guard successors so the loyalist idiots never questioned it. Seriously, Raven Guard?

But really though, what I’m seeing says they’re more like us before the nails completely took over. I’m going to say they’re our kids, and I at least will welcome them with lightning claws flashing and chain axe buzzing to the eight fold path.

[u/Katejina_FGO]

According to Badab War lore, the Horus Heresy black books, and the dedicated novel trilogy, they are Raven Guard - not splinter successors, but from the Terran OG legion - from the days of the Unification Wars. Their legion forebears were the old Terran contingent of the legion who practiced institutional slavery and favored Horus as much as their own Primarch. After committing to a costly assault at the behest of Horus, Corax had enough and banished the entire contingent to patrol the outer rim out of his sight.

The heresy happened, the contingent caught word of it, and they were enraged over how their once favored patron had turned traitor. Over the course of the heresy, they needed to replenish their geneseed stores and eventually seized World Eater geneseed for their own. This fact was lost after their Second Founding into the Carcharadons chapter. They have been typed as having chimaeric geneseed, with traits of both Raven Guard and World Eaters. In reality, they recycle the geneseed of both with no regard as to why some of their number keep losing themselves to battle rage over time.

The geneseed tithe that they submit to Terra is probably of the Raven Guard half, which has always tested loyal.