Legio Astorum

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Colour Scheme Legion Info Symbol
Legio-Astorum-Warlord.jpg
 Name: Legio Astorum
AstorumSymbolHH.jpg
Alternative name: Warp Runners[14a]
Affiliation: Imperium[14a]
Founded: Pre-Great Crusade[14a]
Forge World: Lucius[14a]
Colours: Deep blue with yellow/gold[14b][14c]
Strength: ~162 Titans (start of Horus Heresy)[14a]

The Legio Astorum (also known as the Warp Runners) is a Titan Legion based on the Forgeworld Lucius in the Segmentum Obscurus.[8] They are known to have been active since at least the Great Crusade and fought on the Loyalist side during the Horus Heresy.[14a]

Overview

The Legio Astorum are the only Legio with god-machines that can be teleported straight into battle. This is a point of pride of Lucians and the matter of envy of other Legio.[8]

Legio Astorum Titans in combat[20]

Where many Titan Legions are content to commit to a slow and steady advance, safe in the knowledge no foe can stand against them, the Legio Astorum sets its own tempo upon the battlefield. Through careful locomotor modification combined with extensive training amongst its Princeps, the Titans of Legio Astorum are pushed beyond all advised limits, the innate stubbornness of its Princeps seeing the protesting Machine Spirit as another challenge to overcome, albeit a challenge to be treated with all due reverence. It is upon the cusp of self-destruction that Legio Astorum thrives, its Titans granted a swiftness that few other Legios can match. In this manner has Legio Astorum earned itself a fearsome, and often mythological, status amongst both the ranks of the Great Crusade and the worlds the Titan Legion has aided in conquest.[14a]

Legio Astorum has a caste system and its members' ranks are displayed through the printed-circuit pattern tattoos, they wear on one of their face's cheeks. Its Princeps hail from Noble Houses and they undergo training, from childhood to adolescence, at the Clone Academy located in Lucius' Overcity. When they take command of an Imperial Titan, the family emblem of the Princeps' Noble House is painted, but not etched onto their war machine. By tradition, the etching is only done by Lucius' Adeptus Mechanicus, if the Princeps has proven themselves and has survived long enough to warrant doing so. When a Princeps dies, their Moderati crews mourn the loss by wearing black armbands.[16a]

When a Legio Astorum Titan has finished being built, a ceremony is conducted by a massed congregation of Lucius' Adeptus Mechanicus to rouse its Machine Spirit. As they chant the Prima Incubatoria, a senior Tech-Priest sprinkles the Titan with sanctified oils and an honoured apprentice swings a censer filled with purifying herbs to ward off evil influences. A Grox is then sacrificed to the Titan, due to the animal's strength and ferocity, which provides the war machine with its first taste of blood. Once the ceremony is completed, the Titan's Machine Spirit has been fully roused and it is ready to serve the Legio Astorum.[16c]

In order to awaken a slumbering Titan, Legio Astorum's Princeps state the Litany of Awakening, as they activate it. Their Moderati crews, meanwhile, repeat the words of the Gunner's Chant, as they begin interfacing with the awakening Titan's weaponry.[16b]

History

The Great Crusade

When Mars and Lucius reconnected, the Legio Astorum was moved for the forefront of the Great Crusade, where the Legion's preference for swift spearhead assaults saw it become a valued part of many Expeditionary Fleets. Unlike many other Legion's on the Great Crusade, the Legio Astorum had no qualms towards forming dozens of smaller battlegroups, retaining only a single demi-Legio of 50 Titans on Lucius at all times. On Crusade, the Legion thrived alongside those commanders that favored the free-thinking. As such, they became firm allies of Jaghatai Khan and Magnus the Red.[14a]

During the middle years of the Great Crusade, forces of the Legio Astorum fought on Kamenka Troika alongside with forces from the Thousand Sons Legiones Astartes and the PanPac Eugenians of the Imperial Army against a huge force of Orks. This task was issued by the Emperor himself, and proved a difficult one for all involved. The campaign took two years to complete and caused significant Imperial casualties, including almost an entire Fellowship of the Thousand Sons and the entirety of the Legio Astorum detatchment.[1a]

In the aftermath of the campaign, the Thousand Sons decided to honour the Legio Astorum by recovering the wreck of the last Astorum Titan to fall, Canis Vertex, repairing and transporting her to Prospero to mount upon the pyramid of the Pyrae Cult. Canis Vertex would walk once more around a century later, during the Burning of Prospero.[1b]

The Horus Heresy

Warp Runners Reaver and Warhound (by Forge World)

The Legion is known to have fought in various engagements during the Horus Heresy, including the famed Battle of Tallarn[14c] as well as the Harrowing of Lastrati[26], Scouring of the Ollanz Cluster[9b] and Battle of Beta-Garmon.[9a][14b]

They are also recorded as having destroyed a combined battleforce of Emperor's Children traitor marines and Titans of the rebel Tiger Eyes Legio at some point during the Heresy.[2]

As the conflict's Cataclysm of Iron raged, however, several of Astorum's Titans joined the Protectorate of Unsubdued Steel. This Blackshield Legio had no loyalty to either the Imperium or Warmaster Horus and went on to build its own empire.[15]

At least parts of the Legion fought alongside the White Scars' Unyielding Mountain Armoured Company at unspecified time during Horus Heresy.[24]

13th Black Crusade

During the 13th Black Crusade the Warp Runners supplied forces in the defence of Cadia. They fought alongside the Howling Griffons and the Drookian Fen Guard on Amistel Majoris against Plague Marines of the Death Guard. The fighting devolved into brutal trench warfare.[3]

On the factory world Demios Primary the Legio Astorum are known to have combated elements of the Black Legion and the Extinction Angels.[17]

Other campaigns and battles

Heraldry

The Legio Astorum's titans are primarily deep blue, with yellow and gold decoration.[14b][14c] Each titan's armour is also marked with painstakingly calculated astrocartography, including solar maps and warp routes.[14d] In addition some of their titans are decorated with flames.[14b]

The Legio's symbol is the black sun of Lucius, representing the artificial sun at the heart of the hollow world as well as its isolation during the Age of Strife.[11b][14d]

Assets

Titans

Imperator Class

Warlord Class

Reaver Class

Warhound Class

Unknown Class

Personnel

Princeps

Moderati

Images

See also

Sources

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