Legio Tonarum

The Legio Tonarum is a Titan Legio of ancient and unusual origin, known for its campaigns alongside the Fire Keepers. It serves the Forge World Iomin.

History
Proud and bellicose, the Legio Tonarum were an oddity among the Collegia, yet in a way that served them well in the Great Crusade. Taken from an Explorator fleet which had never established its own Forge World, they took to the unceasing campaigns with a nomad’s eagerness to range across the Galaxy. Serving alongside the Fire Keepers through the latter years of the Great Crusade, they would find themselves dragged into much of the Insurrection’s most brutal fighting.

Much of the Legio’s origins are unknown even to them and the magos whom they served, but what there is demonstrates how unusual they were. They originated with an Ark Mechanicus which sailed into the upper reaches of the Galactic east. A Forge World was duly founded, only to meet with disaster so severe that not even its name survives in the data-cores. Exactly what devastated them in such a way is debated to this day, but in those days the Galaxy had no want of alien hordes and the culprits are most likely lost to posterity.

The Drolassar Cult, as the magos of the Ark came to refer to themselves, cannibalised what they could of the world’s defences and foundries into the Ark and other vessels. Then they fled their broken realm, beginning a nomadic existence. The fact that they maintained this way of life for centuries was taken by many in the broader Mechanicum as a sign that their near-downfall had scarred their collective psyche; a possible indicator of deviance from the Mechanicum’s sacred rationality.

However, when the archives were opened to outsiders, it emerged that the Drolassar had been severely affected by the loss of contact with Mars, and not a single Forge World had survived within reach of them. Their voyage was undertaken with the hope of returning to the Mechanicum’s borders, there to guard it against the horrors in the dark beyond. To this end they began to plunder the worlds they happened across, striking swiftly and withdrawing before reinforcements or a new enemy could threaten them. The Legio Tonarum, rebuilding itself along with the rest of the Drolassar Taghmata, believed in their quest as firmly as any of their forces. Unsurprisingly they were at the forefront of the cult’s wars, overwhelming the armies set against them with sheer force, that the worlds they assailed might be swiftly plundered.

Perhaps fortunately for the Imperium, it was their outriders who found the Drolassar fleet and not the other way around. In 927 M30 a Mechanicum Warp-runner began tracking the path of an aggressive fleet across three systems. It noted signs of Taghmata and especially Titan activity on several of worlds it surveyed, and communicated its findings to nearby expeditionary fleets. In the event it was Niklaas and his Fire Keepers who, deducing the fleet’s likely route through local Warp currents, intercepted the Drolassar at the Pholan Juncture.

The Steel Prince requisitioned elements from the regional garrison fleets, intent on negotiating from a position of strength. In addition, he sent for representatives from the nearest Forge World, who needed little encouragement to join him. Finding Mechanicum vessels among the Imperial fleet, the Drolassar proved amenable to negotiating, and were at length deemed fit for integration into the Mechanicum. They were given rights to the planet Iomin, which soon grew into a redoubtable Forge World. The Legio Tonarum, naturally, was foremost among its guardians, but the majority of the Legio went into active service alongside the Fire Keepers. Their princeps had been awed by Niklaas, this warrior and forge-master whose prowess demonstrated to them the touch of their Omnissiah, and they eagerly pledged themselves to his banner.

Scepticism within the wider Mechanicum was countered with the argument that serving with the XIIth Legion would help to slowly bring Tonarum and their masters into step with Mars. It was certainly noted that the Titans were quick to reorganise their military forces, giving several war maniples over to the Steel Prince and his Chiefs. Scrutinising the data-logs offered up to them, the masters of the XIIth perceived a Legio whose propensity for impetuousness and sheer battle-lust approached that of Gryphonicus and Destructor, best used with caution against human targets. More troublingly, their particular history left them with little regard for baseline humanity, leading to tensions with the Army which rumbled throughout the early years of their service.

It was because of this that the appellation of “War Horses” was given to them by the Fire Keepers, rather than the Army. This stood for their undoubted potency, but also the disdain that mounted warriors so often showed for infantry on more primitive worlds. The War Horses’ reputation would only improve gradually until the Battle of Scunner’s Fall. Here, several Army regiments had been driven into retreat by the abhuman Vorlad and their tracked Titan-analogues. Cumbersome as they were, the largest of these machines rivalled even Warlord Titans with their sheer firepower. Armour columns were scattered by their attacks, and defeat threatened to become a massacre.

When the Fire Keepers arrived, Niklaas wasted no time in deploying all the Titans at his disposal, and the god-machines of Tonarum closed with their counterparts. Flanking the Vorlad columns with a speed almost unheard-of in Titans, they shattered the enemy advance. Then they formed up, barring the enemy from the retreating Army, and advanced into the teeth of their foe with the Fire Keepers beside them.

Such brutal fighting would always carry a steep cost, and of fifty Titans, thirteen lay in varying states of ruin on the blackened earth. Nonetheless, by their sacrifice, millions of lives had been saved and the Vorlad open to invasion by the reinforced Imperials. It was Theoderaf who best summed up the change of sentiment regarding Tonarum: “My brother… has saddled the feral destriers, and now their charges safeguard the spear-carriers as well as crush our foes.”

In the following decades, Tonarum would both anchor the Fire Keepers’ fast-assault armoured echelons (these having traditionally been small compared to their super-heavy and transport armoury) and form a major component in their siege-breaker operations. Many were the walls felled by Tonarum guns, and in hive-scale theatres, a War Horse Titan was often the first invader to pass through a breach. Their peculiarities never quite went away, and their pride remained easily inflamed if more conventional Legios questioned their fealty to the Omnissiah or their martial honour in general. Many of their fellows simply suffered their presence in the Crusade, deterred from outright criticism by Niklaas’ patronage of Tonarum.

Material Strength
Despite the gruelling role to which they had been assigned, Tonarum sat comfortably within the second rank of Titan Legions on the eve of the First Ruin, numbering 126 Titans with a further dozen close to battle-readiness on Iomin. The remainder were split evenly between those who fought with Niklaas and those assigned to garrison duty, both of Iomin itself and key worlds fortified by the Fire Keepers.

It was a well-established fact that Warhound and Reaver Titans faced severe disadvantages when fighting in cities, whose confines made it possible to unleash massed firepower against them. Reluctant to consign proud machines to obscurity and finding Warlords too large for some operations, Tonarum adapted their tactics and their smaller Titans to better function in urban warfare. The most notable result was the Conqueror class, which stood roughly between the Reaver and Warlord in size and power. In siege warfare, these were often used to spearhead an attack on breaches in enemy defences, heavily armoured enough to weather the massed gunfire that could threaten a baseline Reaver or Warhound in the confines of a fortress.

Tonarum maniples overwhelmingly conformed to a well-established pattern, with most Titans fielding a mix of close and long range weaponry. Melta and plasma weapons were especially prized, being especially useful against static defences and enemy war machines alike. Quake cannon were likewise commonplace on the Legion’s Warlord Titans, these often being enough to batter down a gate or wall. The Drolassar armada, having cannibalised many of its terrestrial structures straight into its ships and spent centuries plundering the void, boasted an unusually powerful fleet. Much of this was given over to the defence of Iomin, its colonies and the principal worlds which supplied it. However, a considerable number of Titan-barques also sailed with the Fire Keepers, carrying with them an impressive strength of Mechanicum taghma. These too were unorthodox in their composition. In an echo of their order’s past existence as the pillagers of worlds, they boasted large numbers of fast-attack units such as Ruststalker killclades and Ironstrider units. Over time, these were supplemented by an impressive strength of heavy combat servitors, tanks and automata, the better to protect the Titans of Tonarum.

Allies

 * Fire Keepers

Enemies
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