Just found this last night, and I was utterly blown away. "Astartes" is a five-part CG animated fan film, totaling out around 12 minutes of footage, and it's better than just about any similar fan work I've ever seen from any fandom. The crazy part is, it was supposedly all done by one guy over the course of around 2 years. It covers a boarding action by a squad of Space Marines in mid-M39, against holdouts of a failed human rebellion, and the quality is just off the charts.

Here is the creator's Youtube channel.

Here is an edit where someone else strung all five separate parts together into one video.

Spoiler

According to the more lore-savvy video reviewers, the bizarre orb-thingies are vessels for the alien Yu'Vath species. The Yu'Vath are thought to be extinct by the 41st Millennium, and were masters of warp-based tech. These crazy-ass xenos routinely slaved fucking daemons to their computers, because they figured it was easier to make and control than actual AI would be. The technical term for that way of thinking is "fucknuts", but somehow they based their whole civilization around this daemon-tech, but never succumbed to the corruption of Chaos (they may even be immune to Chaos).

All known Yu'Vath enclaves were (for reasons that should be obvious to anyone familiar with the universe) destroyed by the Imperium with even more genocidal enthusiasm than usual.

The dialogue from part five can be hard to make out, so here's a transcript I found:

Orb 1 : 'Who is here?' 'I failed brother'
Orb 2 :'We have all failed'
Orb 1 :'The Astartes defy our touch'
Orb 2 : 'You must return' 'Break your seal'
Orb 1 : 'That's impossible, we'll never survive that'
Orb 2: 'You must. Take the others.'
The Inquisitor then shouted to the soldiers : 'RECALL THEM IMMEDIATELY!'

Supposedly, there are more stories on the way, though this one just finished and took quite a while to produce, so don't hold your breath. The creator has a Patreon account linked from his videos if anyone else is interested in supporting future videos from this guy.

As an aside, "Death of Hope" is another new fan-made project that's really well-done. This one is made by two brothers, and is set in Ultramar during Lorgar's Shadow Crusade (early-mid Horus Heresy). WARNING: "Death of Hope" contains some pretty graphic depictions of life aboard a Chaos Marine warship (which is crewed by a mix of Word Bearers, World Eaters, and Night Lords, so some gruesomeness comes with the territory), and anyone with a weak stomach for body-horror should probably pass on this one.

 

Totally agree on the awesomeness of Astartes. As far as I know, there's nothing else like it in the Wh40k community.

The orbs actually are some sort of homebrew creation of the Astartes creator.

Death of hope is pretty awesome too. Personally I prefer Astartes though.

Edit: Here is a link to info on the creator's Retributor Marines.

 

Yeah, I agree that Astartes is better, but DoH still has one of the best depictions of Chaos I've seen.

That's weird. There's a lot of stuff that seems to point to the Yu'Vath, including old artwork that seems to show orbs more-or-less identical to those in the video snaring people with tendrils of energy, or just zapping them with the power of the Warp.

But, if he says it's a homebrew, I suppose all those similarities could be coincidental. *shrug*

Thanks for the link, btw. Pretty cool homebrew Chapter.