Sigismund's Lost Legions

[Sigismund229]

I've had various ideas for Lost Legions. However, only one has really been developped past an idea, the Crimson Lions. Here's where I'm going to put my other ideas and slowly develop them or put any new ideas I have.

 

 

The Damned

Primarch: Mephisto "the Ashenborn"

Homeworld: Infernus

Number: II

 

When they first left Terra, the II^nd legion were known to all as the Fireborn. However, they would eventually be given a new, perhaps more fitting, name by the primarch Mortarion: the Damned. While not conscious psykers, the II^nd legion share a subconscious psychic link with each other unsurpassed in scale by any other legion. The effect of this vast subconscious on the battlefield has often been likened to the orks in that the sheer belief of the Damned proved a powerful force on the battlefield. However, the way in which this subconscious manifested itself on the battlefield led many, including their brother legions, to be wary of them: when in battle, the II^nd literally caught fire. The resulting flames spilt out of every crack in the legionaries' armour like hellfire emerging from deep within the earth. However, as their legion grew in size, the Damned's abilities began to grow too powerful and they began to lose what little control they had had over them, beginning to effect their allies. Whereas the Damned themselves appeared immune to the hellfire that consumed them, the same could not be said of their allies who died screaming in agony, legionary and human alike, as the fires consumed them. Finally, the Emperor decided that enough was enough and despatched the Vlka Fenryka to exterminate the II^nd and destroy their homeworld of Infernus, the world's barren surface standing as mute testament to the dangers of the warp.

 

The Black Guard

Primarch: Dievas Niekas

Homeworld: Romuva

Number: II

 

Death clung to the II^nd like a cloud from the minute of their founding. Grim, uncompromising and above all disciplined they were a legion created for a single purpose: annihilation. While the VI^th were destroyers of legions, the II^nd were destroyers of worlds and unlike the infamous World Eaters possessed of the iron discipline to halt their massacres when ordered. It was in this brutal legion that the Destroyer squads found their origins and indeed the II^nd made heavy use of rad and phosphex weaponry. This brutal philosophy of war carried over into all aspects of the II^nd and in all likelihood stemmed from the pariah gene that their gene-seed gave some of their number. A boon against pyschic enemies, it was also in this gene that the seeds of their demise lay for the effort of controlling these abilities drained the life from each and every one of the II^nd sooner or later. In their attempts to find a way of stabilising their gene-seed, the Black Guard went too far, extracting the gene-seed of other legions and bringing the Emperor's sanction upon themselves.

 

The Wanderers

Primarch: Atheas

Homeworld: None

Number: XI

 

The Vlka Fenryka and World Eaters were built to destroy the Emperor's enemies, the White Scars and Alpha Legion to find them, the Iron Warriors and Imperial Fists to dig them out of their fortresses. The Wanderers were built to hunt them. While the White Scars could be likened to a wolf, ranging free, only brought back by food, the Wanderers are hunting dogs, implaccable once they have a scent but lacking the Scars' desire for freedom. Where the Vlka Fenryka were built to battle the enemy within, the Wanderers were to hunt down and butcher the enemy without before he became an enemy. It was because of this that the XI^th were given their two most distinctive characteristics: their aptitude for foresight and their desire to understand their foes. Every succesful hunter must be able ,to some degree, to predict his prey's movements. Where many do so through instinct, the Emperor gave the Wanderers the ability to gaze into the tangled threads of the future to do so. By the same token, every hunter needs to understand his prey. Like the Thousand Sons thirst for knowledge, the Wanderers had a thirst to understand those they killed and so, surprisingly, each legionary became a scholar as well as a warrior and their vessels became libraries as well as ships of war, with treatises written on subjects ranging from Keylekid battle cant to Orkish migration patterns and even treatises upon the tactics, flaws and weaknesses of their brother legions. However, they would take their duties too far. They would attack the Word Bearers, seeing their fanatical faith as the seeds of a danger to the Imperium that was yet invisible. For this, the Wanderers would be sanctioned, all traces of their existance erased.

[Sigismund229]

If we are truly to herald in a new age of a united humanity, we must BE all of humanity, not just the inhabitants of the worlds on which me and my brothers landed

-Atheas "the Faceless", primarch of the XI^th legion

 

The Nomadic XI^th

 

Of all the Emperor's legions, the Wanderers were the only one to be truly nomadic. Unlike Jaghatai Khan, Atheas chose not to take the world upon which he had landed as his legion's base of operations, instead stating that their base of operations would be in the saddle. For the entirety of the Great Crusade, he stayed true to his words. The XI^th never settled in one place for long, lingering only long enough to pick up the scent of new prey before setting off again. As a result, they had one of the greatest ranges of action of any legion, having served on every front of the Great Crusade at some stage.

 

This, of course, begs the question of how they replenished their numbers and equipment. The answer to this is quite simple: they recruited and resupplied from the worlds that they conquered. After every compliance, they would induct any recruits from the world's human population who stood even a slight chance of surviving implantation. By the same token, during compliance they would plunder the world of any resources it possessed that they had use for, leading to strained relationships with the wider Imperium and outright hostility from the Mechanicum.

 

As might be expected, this led to a legion whose numbers and methods of war fluctuated greatly. Sometimes the entire legion would ride wooping into battle on jetbikes, guns blazing and others they would be reduced to charging in on foot using simple clubs. By the same token, records of the legion's size range from just 19,000 strong following the Rangdan Xenocide to 88,000 immediately before their attack on the Word Bearers.