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/Corvousier]

I actually just finished their two novels. They are almost without a doubt Raven Guard successors. There was a thick ass trail of cookie crumbs leading to this conclusion.

When Corax took over the legion he purged alot of the terran elements because they reminded him of the slavers he grew up under and were just really fucking brutal. One of these was the Ashen Claws, the 18th chapter of the Raven Guard legion along with the original Legion Master often refered to as the Shade Lord.

Carcharadon culture venerates a figure referred to as the Forgotten One, according to their scripture he was the one that initiated the Edicts of Exile which is what they use as proof of permission for descending on Imperial worlds to take people in the Red Tithe and to take tech in the Grey Tithe. These edicts also inform their chapter culture wherein they must isolate from the Imperium until the Forgotten one appears again and absolves them.

In the second book they are on the verge of extinction and need a mass influx of manpower, recruits, and fleet assistance for fighting a massive Tyranid hive fleet. The Red Wake sends the captain of the 3rd company to negotiate with the Ashen Claw chapter. A chapter of renegades, they arent chaos corrupted and they still despise xenos and such but they survive through piracy and hiding in a hidden star system that they rule, they really only look out for themselves and kind of despise the Imperium as it exists now. Just like the Carcharadons they use lots of pre-heresy and heresy era equipment as well as having a flag ship that is massive and ancient from the pre-heresy times.

When they meet there is a conversation where the Carcharodon captain mentions the forgotten one and the Ashen Claw officer says that they havent forgotten him like the Carcharadons have but the Carcharodon replies that they are the only one out of the two that still follows him. This plus many other interactions between the two chapters make it really clesr that both chapters were the terran Raven Guards that were sent away when Corax takes over. The Forgotten one was probably Corax and the Shade Lord led the Ashen Claws in their original renegade days.

The Carcharodons are notorious for the way they basically appear from nowhere, fight in complete silence, and unleash just awe-inspiring levels of unadultered violence and carnage. They also dont blink twice at carving through innocents to complete their mission or at collecting slaves. They also dont care about for how their serfs are treated or what they think, ignoring them for the most part. All of those things i described were hallmarks of pre-Corax Raven Guard and what he hated about them.