Hey Bigjul, big guy!

Yes, you've misinterpreted the Lion versus Wolf duel - it is NOT about winning; it is about HONOUR.  Win or lose is irrelevant; what matters is maintaining the Chapter's honour, brother.

For example, how will the assembled ranks of Lions and Wolves react if your victory-or-death spacewolf cheats in order to win?  Will his brother wolves cheer his glorious victory?  Will the Lions ever forget??  And what if a Lion cheats:  will such a dishonourable champion continue to rise through the Dark Angel rank circles?  Will the wolves sit by and watch their brother suffer defeat at the hands of a cheat??

You can well imagine.  This is not an all-out berzerk fest of imperial fist inferiority-complex-mania.  This is about honour.  Remember, after the original primarch fight, the Lion and the Wolf fought alongside eachother as brothers and, indeed, friends.  The chapters are NOT enemies; rivals, yes, with diametrically opposing martial philosophies; but hardly could any other two chapters respect each other more.

So, onto topic, what our group did was an unarmoured fist fight, as per the original battle, as suggested here by others.  Another option i'm keen to try is an armoured knife fight (as demonstrated in artwork in one of the sourcebooks:  Dark Angel and Space Wolf back to back with sneers on their faces and knives drawn - awesomesauce!)  Such a knife fight would NOT be to the death; but it'd be one f#!k of a good fight.

I like the idea of an armored knife fight. It takes a lot of work to actually kill another astartes with those knives, even as big as they are. The fight stops on a yield, or on an incapacitation via zero wounds. Critical damage may happen, but thats what apothecaries are for. I think a duel between a Wolf and a Lion should leave scars. How better to honor the tradition than to bear the scars of such a bond.

Indeed!  My only concern is how long the freakin' battle might take……..

What about keeping on gauntlets, forearm plates, and all armour from the waist down? "Shirts off" as it were. So no helmet, no chestplate, no backpack, no shoulderpads etc.

Give them Armour 4 or so instead of armour 8/10. Might quicken things up a bit. Enjoy the impacts as they deliver power-armoured kicks into unarmoured midriffs, and punch bare faces with gauntlets on, while blocking knife attacks with an open palm and  knee strikes.

Sorry i've been quite nervopus by the time I write the last message.

Yes SM train with possibility of non-lethality.

But we are not talking about training but a ritual duel remembering the time the emperor and his sons walk the stars.

Few of the primarch was kind and gentle, and even between them they were fighting truly. Even the emperor and his sons has put their life in line when challenging each other. Vulkan would be dead if the emperor had not help him during their contest. Have you read about Angrom and his sons, how many die in his hands before he admitted them as his legion? Does Space Wolves play non lethal game? Is there any son of Caliban who will denied his adversary a good fight? Sons of Dorn fight to death for a sword of their father. The Iron snake fight with the sea and the monster inside and some of them die there…. If life was so precious the scout will never be send in battle before they are made Battle Brother, imagine the time and effort put in the making of a scout, is it worth waist it behind ennemy line? Yes because only the brave and the good warrior stay alive. And them the heroic spirit legacy of a chapter pass from generation to generation.

We are talking of a death oriented civilisation, blood is life, blood is honor, blood is a reason and a goal.

In a such warrior culture it is my point of view that none of them will fight under 150%.

Death is what awaited for SM and none of them denied it, and die fighting is the best of way to die.

You can make your 40K world more happy and kind, but don't forget that this is a place where billions of people get sterilized and deported, world destroy all life wipe out because they might be corrupt and be a danger to the rest of the Imperium.

Sure death will not be the aim of the ritual fighter but as warrior they are they know that every fight could be the last. It is this kind of psychological popint of view that made the SM such a force. Death is only the normal ending of life, nothing to fear, nothing more to think that make it the most glorious possible.

In the end do as you like of course, I'm just an other stupid single minded GM with a dark look upon the stars of the Warhammer 40K. And as GM or player in the last 20 years i've never been afaraid to kill or to die as fictionnal character.

Well, that's the problem:  you aren't a spacewolf or a dark angel; clearly, if you were, you'd never, ever be allowed to engage in the duel, cause you'd frell it up in your desperate win-or-die attitude, which is completely beside the point of the honour duel.  (And i'm not trying to be personal, here:  i'm simply responding to yer post's last line…i'm sure in real life we'd get along fine together; just trying to hammer out a few dints, as it were - i, too, am a stupid single-minded gm)  Now, to be clear, I am not, in any way or form, stating that the warriors engaged in the duel will fight less hard than they are capable of - indeed, they will be fighting all the harder, as they will have to take pains to ensure that their actions are all completely honourable during the duel.  Fighting all-out is easy, easy peasy.  Fighting with restraint?  That's something else entirely… hell, one can easily view the dark angel/space wolf duel as the two chapters sharing and teaching eachother their fighting styles, in order to bring some restraint to the wolf's heart and some good, pure GEAAAH!! to the angels…(a valuable lesson to the respective brotherhoods on the eve of battle…)

And, really, who wants to be responsible for slaying a fellow servant of the Emperor on the eve of one bloody awful battle (as it must be if it involves both the wolf and the lion)?

I am not upset by your post and comment and yes i guess we could be quite friend in the real world…lol

Maybe I let my son of Angrom personnality take over from time to time… or maybe I let speack the son of maccrage not so often.

Don't remember really…

You've made your point, and as I understand it you see it like a virtous challenge between knights.

Yes it could be and will be for you and will surely be really nice.

May the Lion and the Wolf live forever and their pride shine trough the galaxy.

Huzzah!  Good on you, sir!

Now, to be sure, there are indeed chapters out there who are real supreme dickheads, and who wouldn't hesitate to do whatever it takes to accomplish the mission at hand, and would have absolutely no problem slaughtering their allies if it meant success….my point is that, between these two chapters, such is not the case.  I mean, part of the reason they have the ritual duel is to prevent themselves from getting all up in each others' faces and causing some sh!t.  (And, of course, if a lion/wolf conflict serves a desired plot point, then, too, trouble could brew; but that would be an exceptional circumstance, to my mind, not an everyday occurrence.  I seem to recall Ragnar having predominantly good experiences with the Dark Angels he encountered - hell, he even helped against the Fallen, if I recall correctly; that's bloody damned exceptional, no?)

I know not of an instance where another chapter helped against the fallen and were not subsequently cleansed by the Dark Angels afterward. The 1st and 2nd companies of the Dark Angels do not leave witnesses when the fallen are concerned. I don't know that it didn't happen either, but I would be very surprised if there was a canonical source implied such an event.

The wolves arze also the only chapter to know about the grey knight since the first battle of armagedon, but they have pay a heavy price for the knowledge.

Space Wolves are one off the most popular chapter and lots of events had been put in their background, and then are far more "knowledgeable" than the other Space Marine chapter.

It is unfair, but more canon than more.

The Dark Angels don't even suffer the Inquisition to know of the fallen. They have destroyed entire Inquisition void ships in order to keep their past a secret. They also have the closest relationships to their successor chapters, which are all also bent on keeping this secret.

I've always wondered if they might be overestimating the importance of the secret being kept, but because of their numbers, I doubt any force in the Imperium could prevent them from keeping it at this point.

They're only overestimating it's importance in light of the "new" fluff being thrown out about the Horus Heresy.

When Codex: Angels of Death was released in the 90s (the first time the Dark Angels got their own book, even if it was split with Blood Angels) then there was no mention, none, of any Legion "partially" going traitor. 100% of the World Eaters, Death Guard, Iron Warriors etc turned traitor. There was no concept of Marines like Loken or Garro - individuals from traitor legions who were still loyal. The idea was that either the entire legion turned, or none of them did.

That sounds really simplistic until you remember that the entire point of the Space Marines is that they are basically genetic clones (albeit watered down) of their Primarch, so "flawed" Primarchs who fell to Chaos would produce equally flawed Marines, and "pure" Primarchs would produce equally pure offspring. Combine that with all the brainwashing that Marines undergo, and it wasn't unreasonable to assume that an entire legion would fall with no individuals dissenting.

Therefore, at the time it was written, it was a *huge* thing that the Dark Angels lost almost half their legion to Chaos. As in, completely unheard of. Things like the Sons of Horus wiping out an entire company worth of "undesirable elements" hadn't even been conceived.

It'll be interesting to see how their fluff gets developed with their new codex - we'll get a lot more detail about the specifics that we've never seen before, I'm sure.

Switching back to the topic at hand…

How 'Friendly' the two chapters are is up to you, however since this is just a solitary one meeting a group of space wolves, its quite likely they wouldn't perform the ritual at all.

But since you want them to, assumably a first blood should be sufficient. Primitive weapons and no armor, or Chain weapons and armor. May want to restrain bonus damage from a rolled 10, no righteous wrap, zealous anger, or mild aggravation. The fight could end when one person goes down to Heavily wounded (Since we have no reason to think this is a fight to the death). You could include other cut offs if you want. The combatants WOULD likely strike at full power, with all talents. The GOAL may not be death, but given what we do know about marines (How grave matters of honor are, how resiliant they are, how silly they can get about tradition…:P) it isn't hard to imagen them fighting with their full abilities. Not likely to use Psychic powers though, as neither Primarch had access to those.

As for the ritual itself, especially since it seems the wolves would be conducting most of it, a grand retelling of the tale of the first fight they are set to honor sounds right. The fight itself would likely have a generously sized ring, and the fight itself may start with a short prayer, and possibly be followed by drink and cheers if you want them to be amiable.

As a side note, if the character manages to defeat the Space Wolves Champion (Who may be an actual chapter champion, or simply the best fighter present) one would expect that would put him on good terms with them, at least in the short term (Possibly receiving bonuses to social checks, a gift, ect. What ever you feel is appropriate.)

As a side note, "Assumably" is evidently not a recognized word according to this board. Neither is "Primarch."

 Narratively the Space Wolf/Dark Angels conflicts gives you an awesome platform to foster an odd couple bromance of epic proportions. :D

gradea said:

Leman Russ used a shout/growl/roar thing that had widespread psychic effects.