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[wilph]

 
 

++ Legion XII - The Argent Scions ++

 

 

Legion Number: XII

Legion Size: 190 000

Legion Modus Operandi: Use of Las weaponry, deployment of ‘golem’ automata, adherence to standard imperial tactics. Post soul-shearing start of a culture of limb/body replacement. The ‘anti mechanicum’ legion
 
Primarch Name: Aysen Craw
 
Homeworld: Silvarion Sul
 

Creator Summary

 
The Scions to me were/are a mishmash of a lot of surface level aesthetics: clockwork creations so intricate as to appear living, the blurring of the line between living being and artificial creation and as in all of my AU projects a healthy dose of far future scifi knights. 
Aysen Craw is designed to be a primarch out of time, someone born too early or too late, first found but not designed for the brutal conquest of the galaxy, whimsical creator of great works of art and terrible weapons in equal measure.
He ends the Great Crusade one of the best suited for the golden age that is promised but is reduced over the wars that follow to both a far more potent weapon of war and a lesser man.
The Scions themselves mirror their progenitor in many ways, creators and artisans, not with direct goals but for the sheer pleasure and act of it. As part of their role as the foil to the mechanicum, Craw would build and develop technology unique to his homeworld, constructs that would be part automata, part psychic tool and thus immune to much of the cybertheurgy of the mechnicum.
This 'sulite' based technology would slowly pervade the Scions and their closest auxiliaries over the course of the Great Crusade and the start of the action will see them both augmented in many ways and aesthetically very ornate and non uniform. 
The plan is for Craw to be reduced to the brink of death after refusing to submit himself to judgement after spurning Kozja, and whilst his physical form lives on he begins to enact his will through a Golem war-form of his own design.
 
I'll leave my rambling here for the moment and continue to update as i go.
 

Concept sheets and art

 

 

to me the best descriptor of the aesthetic is mediterranean basin, vague as that might be, though i picture them ethnically as Persian/Iranian/Egyptian

 

 

 

The Crusade version of Craw here was drawn when Craw was conceived as female, but the overall aesthetic is similar. To the right, two examples of automata are displayed.

 

 

Whilst i currently lack a definite early crusade name for them, I imagine i'll go for something simple and obvious like 'the Medusans' 

this is meant to depict a veteran post 'tempest galleries'

 

 

 

Craw's Bodyguard late crusade, note the beginning of divergence from the human norm with the third artificial arm. Also pictured is one of the Golems

 

 

 

 

A centurion level Scion, Golems are a mixture of inbuilt personality commands and actions embeded psychicly in Sulite, then also have the capacity to come under direct control of their Scion creators

 

 

 

A MK1 armour equipped Scion, the colour palette of the Scions is intended to be layers of copper, gold, broze and silver, the layers of ornamentation and modification building slowly until they start to look almost like organic statues rather than humans in armour.

 

 

 

A mid crusade concept, a standard line marine, possibly sergeant or veteran member. As compared to the higher ups, golems used by line members are cruder both due to the marine's personal skill at managing them and the resources they have acess to.

 

All art is done by myself

[wilph]

 

today's practice, i usually heavily alter my marine's form and shape from standard power armour marks but thought id practice and do a Scion in fresh MkIV; and whilst i spoke previously on liking the armour aged and worked on, super polished is starting to gain on me.

[wilph]

Ananke

 

 

Ananke Automata/Golem, Scion Forgelord and the Sigil of Ananke

 

 

Ananke was a minor forgeworld found close to Silvarion Sul, it's population reduced to operating a fraction of the world's existing infrastructure and forges as their number diminished over the long night. It was Craw and the Scions that would deliver Ananke from its isolation and the predation of the Xenos that now inhabited the abandoned space staions and asteroid belts, and it was to Craw that Ananke swore allegiance. Thus when Craw was sent from the Emperor's side, it was Ananke that was chosen as the forge that would spin the weapons and golems of war for the 12th.

By the end of the Great Crusade, Ananke was a shameful blot on Mars' roster, but grudgingly tolerated thanks to both Craw's protection and Imperial pressure; the world would become a hotbed of fringe practices, driven on by Craw's patronage and access to sulite based technology and whilst not offficially recognised by mars, it would be Ananke's name on many sub-patterns and fresh designs seen in the Scions' armoury.

[wilph]

Ships of the Scions

 

 

 

Charon class

 

    The Charon-class is a battleship sized vessel designed in concert by Leonfrik of the Anvil Bearers and Craw. It's most noteworthy design feature being the 10 bays along its undersized that would initially be intended to carry hunter-killer vessels: frigate sized vessels that traded warp capability for extra firepower; but as the class was brought into service the bays were used in the transport of various other tactical options. Some commanders would transport armoured supply vessels and dropships for rapid relief and deployment; others automated dumbfire torpedo pods, crude loadouts that were little more than vast repositories for ordinance; others still would carry mines or defence stations and rarer cases vast orbitally deployable redoubts that could be cast from low orbit like some crude hammer and within moments be a serviceable fortification that would span kilometres and shelter thousands.

    The Charon's secondary armament varied: all would be equipped with long range lances, and lack many of the batteries available on ships of a similar tonnage; where Craw and Leonfrik differed however was on the space allocated to hangar bays and the facilities for fighter craft, the Anvil's so often replacing them for increased point defence and thicker armour.

    Deep in the Charon's hull could be found simple manufactories and forges, the facilities required for the maintenance and retrofit of fleet vessels and the production of common weapons and ammunition, indeed when it had emptied its bays, a Charon could accommodate the bulk of a cruiser sized craft for large scale repair. Deeper still, vast command and control capabilities allowed the Charon to act as co-ordinator and force multiplier for both fleet and ground operations.

 

 

 

The Pythos - Flagship of Aysen Craw

 

The Pythos was initially constructed at the Jupiter Shipyards before final outfitting was moved to the yards at Ananke and overseen directly by Craw.

Vast and uncomprimising, the Pythos would evolve over the course of her service playing host to many of Craw's inventions and creations, until when the 31st millenium dawned she could be found bedecked in statues and artistry, her guns barely recognizable as being of standard pattern, her armour guilded and engraved and a vast spine added across her lower span. This spine would be a single continuous chamber from front to back and hold within it wonder after wonder spread throughout artificial gardens and bio-engineered creations, the inhabitants of the spine all artificial golems who's complex personalities were dreamt into being by Aysen himself.

Edited by wilph, 02 December 2020 - 12:27 PM.

[wilph]

Scion Dreadnoughts

 

 

 

Ozymandias, first of the Angharad, veteran of the tempest galleries, Aephani of the Argent Scions

 

Early in the Great crusade, after departing the emperor's side, Craw would send a detachment of Scions to investigate rumours of a fell machine world in the south of the segmentum tempestus. The force, consisting of the newly inaugurated 5th Brotherhood would make all speed, racing the mechanicum who themselves hoped to be first to make contact or at least lay claim to any ruins.
Whispers and half truths guided their path, spured on by the trail of once mighty and advanced machines that implied the existence of a creator.
On Gamma-405-1 the remains of an atmospheric processor at the heart of a pleasure city bore a horned sigil
In the asteroid belt of Insolus 6 smoothly ribbed tunnels led to dormant mining constructs of intricate design, the horned sigil stamped on every one.
Rumour and glimpse after tale and folklore would see the 5th translate out of warp space in a system narrowed down as the final destination, all arrows pointing there and imagination crafting a bejewelled eldorado of technology amongst the crew and shipsmen.
 Instead the wreckage of long dead stations and orbitals would give way to the broken wreck of a planet: split and sundered, its parts heaped together in a complex orbital dance as if some god had broken it by accident and hastily pushed it into a rough form. Most artificial constructions were lacerated and burnt by war or stray debris, blue grey metal morphed and welded by what was estimated to be millenia of brutal celestial interplay. 
The only reward for their odyssey would be the wreck of a elongated warship, the vessel itself broken beyond repair and destined to float in a wide irregular orbit, its position an indicator perhaps of an attempt to flee, or perhaps a final push to bring reinforcements. Within the Scions would find two-score suits, perhaps knight armour or automata, perhaps exoarmour or orbital shielding from the broken world behind.
These suits returned to Aysen Craw would form the basis of Angharad-pattern dreadnoughts, individual works of art, one completed and outfitted only when its armaments were forged or found and a suitable pilot named for it. Of the suits found, only a dozen have been completed, and as to whether Craw lacks the knowledge or pieces to complete the rest it is not known. As with many of Craw's personal projects, the artifice behind each varies in both the subtlest and most obvious ways, those suits that Aysen gifted to other legions, for recognition of deed or suitability of warfare, would baffle and fascinate in equal measure, each a work of art that stood alone in series, no two base suits the same and no two adaptations exact.
 
 

 

Honoured Themistopholes

[wilph]

Some Scion Art Practice

 

 

 

 

[wilph]

Spacer to mark new incarnation with new roles

The Chiron Gulf

 

 

 

 

 

What Craw had started prior to her discovery, and emboldened by her reunification with the worlds and forces of the Imperium, she continued with passionate fervour in the following years.
Worlds and stellar bodies in the Chiron Gulf, long kept from, or out of the reach of, the Silvites, were set upon in a lightning fast campaign of expansion and compliance: asteroid fields and distant moons purged of the monstrosities that lay within them; paths charted to planets long rumoured and long lost, some bearing only the bones of now dead cities, others home to the last enclaves of humanity, wide eyed and distrusting. On worlds found dead and barren, cities and redoubts were constructed, the Silvite people, long restricted to Silvarion Sul, flowed out into the galaxy in the wake of the IInd turning their own brand of creative pioneering to the benefit of both themselves and the Imperium at large. With the humans remnants Craw and her people hoped to find common cause, the hereditary stories of both Silvarion Sul and these wizened holdouts speaking of a shared past in the Gulf, and so with time, and more patience than perhaps a more distant relative might have been shown, the peoples of the Gulf were slowly reunited and welcomed into the arms of both the Silvites and the nascent Imperium at large.
These worlds were often given to the care of one of Silvarion Sul’s great cities, their people numerous enough to take on such a task, and the varied nature of technology such that most challenges could be overcome by one or the other: On the ocean-world of Rumion VI, the engineers of Arghest Sul built sweeping hab-domes and great agri-farms to feed a population of billions across the planet and further afield, all sank below the surface, the world seemingly unmarked save for the towering legion stronghold wrapped around the principal space elevator, its landing pads spreading out like some great gilded lily across the water; on Lade Y90, the city-builders of Fylal conquered the primordial surface in the same manner as they had their volcanic home, and by mid 800’s m30 lumbering mechancum haulers descended and circled the planet, before departing to nearby forgefanes dotted through the Gulf. 
Stranger still were the abhuman societies that had sprung up in the crucible formed by the Gulf: the foreshortened Karlyk, who, for millennia had carved out a prosperous if introverted existence in the stellar flotsam and jetsam along the Gorynych Precipice to the galactic north. The Karlyk, similar in form to other abhumans that had been exposed to the particular pressures, possessed a elegant if simplistic style of technology that belied their diminutive stature, their ships and void suits often clean and devoid of panel lines, each crafted with the utmost care and attention to space so that they may better navigate the winding stellar corridors and passages of their home. Like the homeworld from which their forefathers set of thousands of years prior, the Karlyk were a race of problem solvers, though rampant creativity was firmly suppressed by necessity, and their society was one of semi-nomadic tribes often formed of no more than a few thousand individuals; plying their way through the Precipice before burrowing into a resource rich home for years if not generations before moving on. At the time of their discovery, the Karlyk clans numbered in the many thousands, held together by thin lines of family and common purpose, though only a score were big enough to have truly put up resistance to the Imperial advance; instead however Craw gave them the time with which to gather, and aboard the largest of their clan-ships she offered them a place with their long lost cousins. The Karlyk could, if they so desired, continue their nomadic existence as long as they paid her and her Father’s Imperium fealty, or they could instead be given worlds to settle, a place in the gulf and the wider resurgence of humanity. So with the help of their new allies, the Karlyk people were settled on those worlds deemed unsuitable for human habitation but ideal for their changed physiology, and by the second decade, great shipyards built in tortuous stellar mazes gave birth to a steady stream of fresh vessels in the Karlyk style and intended for the wider gulf. 
By the time the crusade had moved on into distant lands, the Gulf counted roughly four-dozen note-worthy and/or inhabited systems, with nearly four times as many resource extraction or research outposts, the majority of which fell under the rule of the Craw and her capital world of Silvarion Sul, though some were reserved for wider Imperial use, such as the bastion world and astropathic relay at Embermane; or instead allowed limited independence under the Karlyk Clans. Most worlds would never be turned towards the brutal task of further conquest, instead becoming a burgeoning breadbasket for the surrounding sectors and ever-expanding imperium beyond, and where suitable, nascent centres of learning and recording were constructed; as was the case with the mountain world of Creon or the sky-borne pergula of Aneria.
 

the most noteworthy of the Gulf’s Worlds could be roughly broken down as follows.
 
The Crown

 

Silvarion Sul - Legion Homeworld and sub-sector capital 
Hegronia - Garden World
Aglait - Legion Fortress and Fleet Berths
Aitune - Pergula Movimentum
Greom - Legion Training World
Hulvides - Imperial Depot
Zion U1 - Ananke outpost

 

The Venderix Reach

 

Ananke - Forgeworld oath-bound to Craw

Pheraeon - hive world
Plauy Plium - Imperial Logistics station
Gryke L887 - Mechanicum testing facility and Shipyards
Laspela VIII - Legion Bastion World

 

The Groynych Precipice

 

Propyr Sul - Legion Fortress World, Headquarters on the Silvite Guard, Principal Docks for Battlefleet Chiron
Gognoria - Clan-capital of the Karlyk Federation
Kankeron - Shipyards 
Lade Y90 - Legion Border Fortress
Embermane - Astropathic relay and Imperial Bastion

Edited by wilph, 05 December 2021 - 11:30 AM.

[wilph]

The Major Cities of Silvarion Sul

 

Whilst not all life was metropolitan in nature, the people of Silvarion Sul could be roughly grouped under the banner of one of nine major city states, though many more minor ones existed and even in the major states sub-groups could be clearly picked out. These cities and their divergences could be roughly tracked onto the II themselves, with many astartes bringing the specialisation of their home with them to the legion, forming unofficial brotherhoods, brotherhoods used by the canny commander to better maximise the effectiveness of the legion.

 

Arghest Sul: the Sunken City - nestled between the sea and twin mountain ranges, Arghest Sul is a complex and convoluted tangle of artificial aqueducts and canals interlaced with dwellings and expansive docks and harbours. From the air it is a struggle to tell where the land ends and the water begins, such is the extent to which the city has sprawled out onto the sea; indeed the city not only occupies the surface of the ocean but also its depths: great glass and bronze habitats sunk deep beneath the waves, arteries filled with light and life coursing through rock and water, the people within travelling freely from the highest peak to the coldest depths.

The Astartes of Arghest Sul are known for their capability in void craft, their ships braving the atmosphere for the longest, or flying the fastest, and when not dispatched on combat duties they lie in dry dock as their crew meticulously works on the next batch of changes

 

Ealin Sul: The Child of the Mountain - Ealin Sul lies in the heart of the largest continent, the valleys slowly dwindling on your approach as the mountains converge to the highest point. From snow capped and wind swept slopes, great arcs of copper and silvered steel emerge, on some landing platforms, on others sheltered and shielded hot houses of breathtaking artistry; as you climb further, the cragged mountain is pierced by gently fluted towers and organic blisters of glass. What was once Lah Ealin, the highest peak on the planet, is now replaced and subsumed by glittering observatories and starlit dwellings. The roots of Lah Ealin are equally plundered, halls and corridors of epic scale reaching for hundreds of miles in every direction, light fed to them from the surface through great wells and mirrors. 

The Astartes of Ealin Sul are known for their fascination with armour, smooth expanses of ceramite giving way to intricate and interlocking scales and panels, until joints seem to disappear and all but the creator can understand the ins and outs of their suit.

 

Zuktor Sul: The North Wind - Based in the northernmost reaches of the planet, where valley and mountain have given away to flat and never ending tundra, Zuktor Sul is an ever growing network of circular pits dug and linked with causeways: these pits, sometimes home to millions of inhabitants, provide shelter in a land where none naturally exists, and the growth of the city is always first marked by the excavation of a new one. Where travel through the causeways is impossible, great sailed skimmers are used instead, some mounted on delicate skids or spindly wheeled legs, others hovering on grav plates or held aloft by the intricate webs of sails and rigging.

The Astartes of Zuktor Sul are most enraptured by speed, many permanent fixtures in jetbike or outrider squadrons; and oft requested for search and destroy missions.

 

Donrar Sul: The Hidden People - Donrar Sul sprawls in the subtlest of ways at first glance: the glint of glass or copper alloy through the canopy, the discernable patterns marked and fuzzy in the placement of trees and clearings. In fact what appears to be a great expanse of forest and rolling hills along the equator of the planet are the bio cities of Donrar Sul: the forest invited to grow over and in the city itself; dappled light falling through canopies into artificial crevasse and hidden window. Whether the people of Donrar Sul started life this way as an act of camouflage or out of consideration for that natural world in which they live is unknown; but the people of the city distinguish themselves from their cousins in other states: calm and cautious where others are boisterous and industrious; fascinated with the natural rather than the artificial.

The Astartes of Donrar Sul are the least likely to modify their natural state unless injured to the point of it becoming a necessity; they find joy in that which observes, and that combined with their propensity for peaceful contemplation sees them fill the legion's recon companies.

 

Ilhalin Sul: The Cloud Dwellers - the greatest of Silvarion Sul’s living cities, Ilhalin Sul charts a gentle course across the planet, rarely crossing directly over other states though passing close enough that the air is filled for days with Sky-Cutters and other trade craft. The people of Ilhalin Sul are a spontaneous bunch, given to a wanderlust and whimsy that helps the leviathan control its population. Despite all this, the tecno-evolution that governs much of Silvarion Sul is at its most advanced on Ilhalin Sul, the City a marvel of human engineering, every inch bedecked in technological wonders, and the works of its people intricate and specialised to a tortuous degree.

The Astartes of Ilhalin Sul are the most dispersed amongst the legion: some taking to the air like their place of origin, others invested in the wonders of the legion’s armoury, whilst others volunteer for duty in the most minor and speculative explorator fleets, travelling with rogue traders and xenoarcheologists in search of an intangible challenge.

 

Unarith Sul: The Star Shepherds - growing around a space elevator of ancient origin, Unarith Sul did not give birth to a Living City like so many of its peers; instead the city gradually spread out and reached up, districts rising along the length of the great pillar until at both ends and betwixt the people of Unarith Sul led their lives. One of the few places on Silvarion Sul that built void craft of any notoriety before the coming of the Emperor, Unarith Sul would become one of the preeminent hubs on the planet by the closing of the 30th millennium: its orbital presence growing to accommodate the fleet berths of the Legion alongside barracks and supply yards for the regiments arriving and departing.

The Astartes of Unarith Sul are fascinated by the bending of light, whether in the monstrous form of an orbital lance battery or the delicate machinery of a digital laser. It is from Unarith Sul many of the legion’s heavy support squads or tanks hunters come; the las weapons they deploy tuned to the finest degree and wielded with expert precision. 

 

Fylal Sul: The Brazen Blooded - Another equatorial city, Fylal Sul lies on one of the planet's tectonic convergence points, the city powered exclusively by geothermal rods buried deep in the crust. The people of Fylal Sul are hardy and taciturn, used to earthquakes and the potential for volcanic eruption, they instead build strong and true, the city awash with devices designed to both preserve and channel the tumultuous energy beneath them, the heat directed instead to great forges where hammer handed golem toil endlessly.

The Astartes of Fylal Sul are entranced by the transfer and discharge of energy, whether it's the smooth running of their power armour’s fusion pack or the tectonic discharge of a thunder hammer.

 

Isvenor Sul: The Antlered Watchers - A Living City whose path is short and circuitous, the people of Isvenor Sul never having wished to journey across the planet like many of their fellow Living Cities, preferring the company of their Golems. As a result they've always been the most isolated of Silvarion Sul’s city states, even after Imperial Unification the city’s path did not alter. Instead they now orbit one of Craw’s development facilities, the vast installation manned and guarded by Isvenor Sul and the location’s relative isolation perfect for many of the Half Born’s experiments.

The Astartes of Isvenor Sul are fewer in number, but their expertise in human-type golems sees them play a disproportionate role in the Sminos, and the trust given to the City by Craw leads them to a fanatical loyalty well suited to the Sifyria.

 

Vordamon Sul: The Void Borne - A city that stretches back and forth across a series of canyons and chasms carved into the planet’s southern continent. Each district a gossamer web stretched over the void, buildings rising and falling from its surface. The people of Vordamon Sul are strange and expansive, the holdings of the city stretching across the entirety of the southern continent, and the city itself ranging for hundreds of miles; and the technology they delved into bizarre and esoteric. It is Vordamon Sul that the Imperial Truth has most struggled to take root, something in the nature of their dwelling pushing against the rise to logic and reason, and the redundancy of the old spirits. As a result the city plays host to many of the greatest of the Weaver Covens, the artificiers of the city seeming to eschew all the solid and tageable forms of crafting present in other areas of Silvarion Sul.

The Astartes of Vordamon Sul are as strange as the city they come from, though many are drawn from the outlying settlements, and they form a large bulk of the legion. Whilst they have no clear area of expertise, they are renowned as second opinions, often opening up paths not previously considered. It is in Vordamon Sul that Craw built her Liminal Forge, and it is where she retreated when the Great Crusade soured.

[wilph]

[wilph]

An updated look at the Angharad-pattern Dreadnought

 

 

 

plan is for the Angharad pattern to take on a more considered role involving Craw and semi-psy-reactive tech as supposed to just being a series of one offs crafted from salvaged dark age tech

[wilph]

 

Craw and the two new primarchs for ABT