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{{Infobox Spess Mahreen Chapter
{{Infobox Spess Mahreen Chapter
|Name = Lions Rampant
|Name = Lions Rampant
|Heraldry =  
|Heraldry = [[File:Lions_Rampant_Colors.jpg|200px]]
|Battle Cry = For valor, strike swift!
|Battle Cry = For valour, strike swift!
|Number = IX
|Number = IX
|Founding = First Founding
|Founding = First Founding
Line 8: Line 8:
|Successor Chapters =  
|Successor Chapters =  
|Chapter Master =  
|Chapter Master =  
|Primarch = Cromwald Walgrun
|Primarch = [[Cromwald Walgrun]]
|Homeworld = Sommesgard
|Homeworld = Sommesgard
|Specialty =  
|Specialty =  
|Strength =  
|Strength = 130,000 at start of Heresy
|Allegiance = Chaos
|Allegiance = Slaaneshi
|Colours = Red, Steel grey and White
|Colours = Red, Purple and Gold
}}
}}


'''This page details people, events, and organisations from [[The /tg/ Heresy]], a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe.'''
{{/tg/-Heresy-Head}}


The Lions Rampant once stood as stalwart defenders of mankind. Credited with brilliant leadership and numerous victories, their former glories are now forever stained by infamy. During the Hektor Heresy they cast their lot in with the traitors to the Imperium and are now among the greatest examples of the excesses of Chaos. Now they ride in an eternal quest to satisfy their dark master, the god of Chaos, Slaanesh.
The Lions Rampant, designated Legion IX by Terran records, strive to wage war at a frantic pace. Bold, daring maneuvers are the hallmark of a legion that races to battle by speeder, tank and bike to outflank, envelope and destroy their foes. At this they excelled and earned their place among the Emperor's finest during the Great Crusade. By the cruelty of fate their love for the bravado of the charge devolved into a lust for speed and the adrenaline soaked thrill of closing to violence with the enemy. The Heresy claimed the Lions Rampant for Chaos; they cast aside oaths of loyalty and pledged their souls to Slaanesh.


=The History of the Lions Rampant=
=History of the Lions Rampant=


Before the discovering of Cromwald, the Lions Rampant were an understrength legion known as the Highland Raiders. They were tasked with subjugating worlds that refused overtures of peace, and as a result were often set against well prepared foes. They lacked for glorious campaigns in their formative years, especially in the wake of legions more specialized, organized, or simply more brutal in their ways. It was not until the discovery of the lost primarch that they would be catapulted to the role of a vaunted vanguard, earning their name and place in the Great Crusade.
==The Highland Raiders==
Founded in the waning years of the Terran Unification Wars, the IXth were drawn from the conquered peoples of Albyon and Franc, who made excellent stock for the nascent legions. They were drawn together and clad in livery of deep blue and slate grey. Dubbed the Highland Raiders, these marines formed the backbone of several expeditions into the galactic south and west.
The Raiders prosecuted their wars with a solemn stoicism that bordered on self destructive. Their manner of war was to march into the enemy supported by heavy armor to grind the foe down in a relentless advance. Their masters, while brilliant strategists, were callous and casually spent the lives of their men in pursuit of victory. This manner of war was brutal and bloody, yielding results at the cost of lives and glory.
For the first half of the Great Crusade the IXth fought in this fashion, marking brutal victories over renegade regimes such as the charnal lords of Voughry VI, or the alien domain of the Skrrt-ka. Other legions were granted great honors for their conquests, but the Raiders remained relatively unlauded for their dour suppression of the Emperor's foes. Their victories were neither decisive, nor glorious, and over the course of the crusade they became looked down upon by their brethren of other legions. With the primarch of the IXth absent after all others had been discovered, the Raiders sullenly accepted their fate as the lost children of the crusade.


==Cromwald Walgrun, Primarch of the Lions Rampant==
==Remaking the IXth==
In the year 914.M30 the last of the primarchs was discovered on the world of Sommesgard. At this time the bulk of the Highland Raiders were engaged in the waning days of the reclamation of sub-sector Orridak from the technocratic league that held out against the Emperor's rule. They were not to be reunited with their primarch until five years later, after the fires of the brutal campaign had burned out. When the legion was gathered to join their genetic forbear, the meeting initial was joyless and cynical. Cromwald, the Lion of Sommesgard, was immediately seen as a parallel to the legion: a mutilated primarch for a mauled and discarded legion.
The dismal outlook was not easily shaken. It took every ounce of Cromwald's skill as an orator to sway the jaded hearts of his marines. His firebrand speech before the assembled legion slowly stirred a faint hope for the future, and despite the council of the eldest, most jaded astartes among their number the newly christened Lions warmed to the reformations Cromwald proposed.
The next five years saw Legion IX removed from the crusade as the core structure of the legion was remolded. Drills and wargames waged across the training world of Garripor, pitting legionnaires against one another, and against the harsh extremes of the Garriporic poles. The best and the brightest were marked by Cromwald for extensive training into the newly minted officer corps. Training under the primarch himself, they would become the masters of the legion's new order of battle, reshaped into a form reminiscent of the army structure of Sommesgard. As a final act of rebirth, Cromwald ordered a grand conscription of young boys, all children of the military forces on Sommesgard. They were an infusion of new blood into the legion and served as a final measure to distance the Lions from their ignoble past. With them came an influx of their homeworld's culture, which would change the character of the Lions at a fundamental level given time.


===Appearance===
==The Fall==
The fall of the Lions Rampant is tied heavily to the downfall of their primarch. Cromwald's sickness claimed him, drove him to madness and brought him into the embrace of chaos. After the administrations of Aubrey the Grey, he returned to his legion changed and gathered the masters of the apothecarion to his flagship, the Indomitable Sovereign. The words exchanged in the meeting were never revealed outside the private chambers of the primarch; only four of the six chief apothecaries left the audience with their master alive after taking oaths of secrecy.
Their work began as they reached their parent divisions. Quietly laboratories were turned to blasphemous new research into the fields of biology and genetic manipulation. Their ultimate objective became the gene-seed of the legion and its workings. They toiled in secret to unlock its mysteries, and began to tamper with the manifest soul of the legion. The primarch's sickness began to spread as the fruits of their research were spread first to new recruits, then later to the veterans of the legion. Every legionnaire that came to the medicae for healing was infected by the black numbness that crippled Cromwald. With the aid of the Zealot's best experts in medicine the plague spread across the whole legion like wildfire, matched only by the spread of the "cure" brought by the faithful. Corruption ate at the heart of the Lions as more and more desperate marines turned to chaos to heal their affliction.


Cromwald has all the bearing of an aristocrat; he carries himself with confidence and poise as befitting his upbringing and is rarely seen in any state less than perfectly groomed. His charcoal shaded hair is short and neat, as is his well trimmed and maintained mustache. These are framed by prominent cheekbones and a well rounded, ruddy facial structure that lends him a noble, fatherly air. Despite his impressive presence as a primarch, he stands as disarmingly pleasant to look upon. Only his deep set brown eyes suggest anything other than a polite, erudite father figure. They are ever watchful, and have been likened to that of a hawk. No matter how amiable his expression or polite his demeanor, there can be no mistaking that Cromwald is constantly weighing the measure of those in his company.
===The Culling===
Not every marine succumbed to the rot that festered at the legion's heart. The second division was largely inoculated against the blight by the clash against the greenskin menace of the Orlak Drift. Master Apothecary Sippeman died facing the Ork tides, leaving the proliferation of his dark research to stagnate. His apprentices continued their work, but progress was slowed by the clash against the alien hordes. The 2nd would be the most conflicted of the divisions in the face of the coming heresy, though they were not alone. Throughout the legion veteran marines unknowingly resisted the lure of chaos by evading the ministrations of their physicians. As heirs to the old stubbornness of the pre-primarch raiders, the holdouts persisted up until the coming heresy.
With time running out before the outbreak of war, Cromwald and his faithful could not wait for the sickness to claim the legion fully. To cleanse his ranks of the loyalists he orchestrated a silent campaign of assassination. Elements of his divisions he could not sway were given the most hazardous assignments to whittle away their strength. As the strength of the loyalists within his ranks diminished, the faithful began quietly murdering their brethren when they were vulnerable. In most cases these killings remained discreet, though across the 2nd and 4th divisions firefights broke out as secrecy gave way to hasty violence. The traitors were able to silence the loyalists and prevent word escaping to the Emperor, but the purges bled much of their strength for the initial stages of the heresy.


===Youth===
==Eve of Damnation==


The young primarch was discovered on the distant world of Sommesgard. His discovery as a child was credited to Captain Edgar Walgrun of the Royal Army of Prathia. This captain was guiding a routine patrol as part of the summertime wargames exercised by the 131st grenadiers, and stumbled upon a boy lost and abandoned in the woods. He responded by returning to headquarters with the child, and in the absence of any family, he then adopted the boy a few months later. Dubbing him Cromwald, the captain would raise the primarch in accordance to the traditions and customs of the privileged upper class the Monarchy's officers were drawn from, including an instilling of the virtues of martial prowess, duty and noblesse oblige.
On the eve of the Heresy, the IXth legion stood at almost 130,000 strong. Quietly they had been building their strength to lend to Hektor's ambitions. To his banner they brought several fleets of swift and brutal warships, large formations of highly skilled rapid assault troops, and a respectable array of auxiliary forces upon which the Lion could draw. Among these stood an army of the mechanized Cramalthian Dragoons, and the swift knights of House Borgias. These troops had fought alongside the Lions across several campaigns, and had long proven themselves skilled allies in the high-speed warfare Cromwald's children pursued. These forces and more rallied around the five great divisions of the IXth to await their orders.
The betrayals at Istvaan and Ostium marked the beginning of the long march. Crom had already briefed the marshals commanding his forces; each was intimately familiar with their targets and forces. First came the Keldim sector, marked as the start of a long and bloody harvest of imperial space. Across it and other sectors rapid campaigns were waged to feed the warmaster's rebellion. Shipyards and armories offered a surplus of captured weapons, and subjugated populations were conscripted, pressed to labor, or sacrificed to the dark gods. The first months of the long march saw Hektor's forces gifted a rallying point. At Keldim his troops could resupply and prepare for future conquests.
Cromwald could not linger to savor his victory. The warmaster's grand campaign required decisive action, lest the Emperor's defenders rally to match their foe force for force. Mustering his legion he plunged headlong into a protracted campaign to pave the road to Terra. At his side stood Merrill, the bloody primarch of the Iron Rangers. With their combined forces they plowed forward in a twin-pronged assault into the flat-footed loyalists. Those who did not surrender or convert were ruthlessly slaughtered. For the first year of the war it seemed as if they were to march unopposed.  


As a primarch, the child grew swiftly. Captain Walgrun, despite being taken aback by his sons accelerated growth, raised the boy in the ways of etiquette, tradition, and ambition. He taught the child all he could about the privileges and responsibilities of the gentry, rewarding the young man with gifts and benefits befitting his station. Cromwald wanted for nothing, and before long the student had exceeded the teacher. It was then with great pride that Cromwald was entered into the academy to follow his adoptive father's footsteps as a soldier and leader of men.
===The Warpath===


The Military Academy of Her Lady of Grace was a prestigious institution that held a reputation for providing the finest officers in the Prathian army. Here Cromwald's upbringing was tested at every turn. As a soldier, he was expected to have a stout heart, a strong body, and unflinching courage. As an officer, he was required to have a sharp mind, a gentleman's wit, and absolute loyalty. As a gentleman, it was demanded that he be more still. To survive the politics of his social peers, he faced a complicated web of tradition and fashion. The noble sons of Prathia were a den of wolves set to prey upon any perceived weakness to advance their standing. Only by being a sportsman, a critic, a scholar and more could an aspiring young cadet achieve greatness. Cromwald rose to the challenge, proving himself to be a peerless athlete and cunning orator. He flitted through the social circles of the academy expertly and demonstrated time and time again that he was destined to succeed. Graduation from the academy brought tremendous pride to his house, and he celebrated with three full days of polite, measured indulgence. The rank he bore was christened with fine liquors, pleasurable company, and the smokey haze of narcotic smoke. When the revelry ended, it was time to report to the front for duty.
It was not until the Silver Cataphracts rose to meet the aggression head on that the wave of steel and madness was checked. At Troupo III Alexandri's finest clashed with the Lions Rampant in what would be remembered as one of the largest armored battles of the heresy. The brilliant maneuvers of the Lions 5th division were matched by the stubborn tenacity of the Cataphracts as they battled for the fuel-rich sands of the scorched planet. In the end the world was reduced to a barren wasteland; Alexandri's strategy of denial robbed the Lions of the infrastructure needed to harvest the material wealth of the system. This became the template for a long and bitter clash of legions. The Cataphracts waged a calculated withdrawal to bleed and slow the traitor advance. They defended what could be evacuated to their massing of troops on Terra, and fought to demolish what could not. Meanwhile the Lions pushed to capture war assets for their allies, using Merrill's hunters to decapitate enemy resistance while the swift riders pushed to outpace the loyalist soldiers. The campaign would leave its scars on all legions involved; warbands drawn from the Lions' gene-seed would celebrate the destruction of a Silver Cataphract successor for millennia to come.


The wars that wracked Sommesgard were ceaseless as nations battled for the limited resources of the depleted planet. Fractured continents hosted bitter rivalries and tangled alliances; these formed a violent barrier to the unification Cromwald's career would bring. He began with a modest handful of battles against the rival nation of Calibrey, each marked by celebration in the wake of triumph. These minor gains turned into prolonged campaigns of conquest. Cromwald's abilites saw him promoted swiftly, giving him larger forces and greater challenges. He met them with dutiful acceptance of his duty, and when the Prathian flag stood ascendant over their longtime rivals Cromwald's rise to the rank of Field Marshal was all but assured. He had given the Prathian king the tool he needed to break the stalemate of the third great war of the continent of Maskovin. Soon the boots of Prathian troops would be heard across the whole of the mainland, none louder or closer to the front than that of the newly minted field marshal himself.
==Clash of Gods==


Victory over Calibrey was likened by the educated men of its time as the breaking of a floodgate. Prathia and her allies tore into their enemies with a renewed vigor, shattering a stagnant front with precision and coordination. Victory unified Maskovin under a single banner, creating a new superpower for Sommesgard. Victory had seen Cromwald lauded before his peers and placed as master of the kings armies. With a driving firebrand speech he proclaimed to the world his lofty goals. With the kings blessing, he would command an empire at war; his soldiers would herald the dawning of a new age. The unification was to be christened by the blood and toil of millions. Their banner would fly on foreign shores.
==The Turning Tide==


====Conquest of Berau====
===Flight===
With so many fresh legionaries mustering at Terra, there could be no option but to escape the inevitable scouring of the galaxy. Most of his brethren fled north, to the Eye of Terror. Cromwald's pride would not allow him to be so easily trapped and caged by the loyalist march. He commanded his legion to flee east, into the far reaches of Ultima Segmentum. They would split, giving the loyalist hounds more rabbits to chase than they could catch. Much of his legion would be lost, but the Lions would not be exterminated or confined so long as the war could continue.
Each division struck its path to the eastern fringe, trusting in their swift vessels to ferry them to safety. That which could not keep up was left behind to fight and stall the loyalists for as long as possible. Hundreds of thousands of auxilia troops found themselves abandoned by their masters and left to be slaughtered by the vengeful legionaries of the loyalist scouring. The titans that accompanied the IXth were similarly cast aside; there simply was no means of maintaining such powerful and complex machines during the flight. Many of the Legio Martyax (the Man-Eaters) were destroyed as they fled to the maelstrom for safety, leaving a grudge against the Lions that would last for thousands of years to come.
Despite casting off the slower Mechanicum and auxilia battlegroups, the Lions did not escape unbloodied. In a bitter stand at Hundis the entirety of the 4th division was surrounded and isolated by a joint strike force of both Silver Cataphracts and Void Angels. The Lions fought tooth and nail, but could not stand against the combined might of their former brethren. Hundis was reduced to a cinder once the last of the Lions' fleet had been destroyed, leaving a barren rock surrounded by burnt out husks. Other battles were waged in smaller scale as battalions were hounded by the vengeful Imperials. Alexandri himself commanded the destruction of the infamous Lionhearts, and in doing so avenged the Cataphracts' defeat at the agri-world of Sepnoy Terius some fifteen years before.
In all, the Lions lost roughly half of the legion. When they finally reached the relative safety of the galactic rim to regroup Cromwald held command over a single reinforced division, stripped of much of its supporting forces.


At the forefront of the young general's list of targets was the techno-barbarians occupying the ruins of the golden age city of Berau. They had long possessed an insular culture protected by advanced weapons. Their lasguns, armor and tanks outclassed the more primitive armaments of the rest of the world, though their numbers had always been too few to wage aggressive wars upon all but their closest neighbors.
==Frontier, Conquest==
With the Scouring ended, the Lions begin to move. Acting as a twisted parody of their efforts in the Great Crusade, they begin to raid the fringe systems of the outermost sectors of Imperial space. Originally treated as a minor threat, it is not until they begin to conquer systems aggressively that their low priority begins to scale up. In the meantime, they subjugate worlds in the name of Slaanesh, and Cromwald ascends to daemonhood for the debasement of whole populations billions strong.  


Recognizing the necessity of technological superiority in his aspirations, Cromwald quickly mobilized his forces to invade. Ships bearing whole divisions of men and materiel were deployed, and from the eastern shores they marched into position for his carefully laid plans. He had studied his foe extensively, and when his boots graced the sands of the shoreline it was with an ultimatum for his foes: surrender, or face destruction in piecemeal.
==Downfall==
A crusade is put together to push back the tide of darkness sweeping along the outer edge of Imperial space, backed by numerous chapters of Astartes and regiments of Imperial Guard. In the end the conquest was too ambitious; the Lions are defeated, scattered and their primarch banished to the warp. As a legion the Lions are no more; they scatter and break up into warbands, many finding refuge in the immaterium. It is a blow they never fully recover from, even on the great black crusades.


Arrogant in their technological supremacy, the technocrats rejected his offer with scorn. Their envoy had scarcely returned to their masters with word when the first shells began to fall from the naval batteries. Under cover of sustained bombardment, Cromwald's armor had begun to move.
=Organization of the IXth Legion=


The campaign was a long one, by comparison to his future conquests. His armored divisions had dispersed across the countryside, using the terrain to mask their presence and prey upon the enemy in a series of lightning raids. When the enemy gathered their forces to strike, a whirlwind bombardment from hidden batteries would ravage their position. When the enemy troops raced to return fire, the self propelled guns would relocate. Efforts by the technocrats to chase were met with infantry raids upon their rear and armored support from the fore. One by one, the enemy's divisions began to fall. Never could he strike at the Prathians in force, for they used their mobility and coordination to harry the overstretched technocrats. With a front spread wide, the superior numbers of the more primitive army began to tell. It would not be until the battle for the city that the advance would falter. Here the technocrats would make a desperate stand, using all the arcane weapons at their disposal to thwart Cromwald.
==Order of Battle==
At its inception the IXth legion operated under the standard Terran pattern of organization. Organization across all ranks reflected the battle doctrine that had evolved from the unification wars, and formed the practical basis for the numerous expeditions spearheaded by the dour Highland Raiders. Though unremarkable, this manner in maintaining the legion was successful in keeping tally of losses and incorporating chapters into the Emperor's long crusade.


((Haven't gotten to this yet, but what follows is the victory over Berau, followed by the dual celebrations for officers and enlisted men. Cromwald is lauded and enjoyed himself among officers, but makes an appearance for the enlisted troops to party hard for a while. The widows of the defeated are given invites to the enlisted party, as a plot to get the men to breed and make ties between the two nations.))
The discovery of Cromwald brought change to this longstanding tradition within the ranks. Raised and trained in the arts of war as exercised on Sommesgard, the Lion saw it necessary to restructure the legion  in the image of his homeworld. He combined elements of Terran military structure with force allocation learned in the unity wars, and from this emerged the quintet of primary divisions that would form the backbone of the legion's strength. More notable than the dynamic shift in the legion's militant assets was the wholesale embrace of civilian elements as part of the IXth's order of battle. The iterator and remembrancer corps held a presence among every legion, but the Lions did not merely tolerate or accept them. These capable historians, scholars and diplomats were wholly embraced by the Lions and regularly were inducted into the organizational structure of the legion at multiple levels of command. While never given battlefield control of astartes, their words and advice were given weight similar to that of astartes specialists by the officers in the field.


===Invasion From the Stars===
In the wake of Cromwald's reforms, the legion stood as five distinct, separate entities. These divisions stood at a nominal strength of twenty-five thousand marines, all commanded by a Field Marshal. Under this umbrella fall a quintet of brigades, over which stands a Brigadier. For each division the first brigade is a dedicated heavy armor formation, where the majority of the legion's heavy and superheavy assets are gathered. Remaining brigades are predominantly infantry, though the particular allocation of materiel differs between divisions. Comprising each brigade are multiple battalions of roughly one thousand marines, commanded by a Major. These battalions are formed from companies of one hundred under a collection of captains, which are then further broken into sections and then into individual squads of nine marines and a sergeant.
After the conquest of Berau, the march continued to grind forward. Every nation, no matter size, wealth or power, were given first the opportunity to meet the Field Marshal at the negotiation table. Universally the offer of peace was extended; every nation could negotiate its place in the coming regime to retain its strength and custom. The first handful of nations so approached rebuffed the idea of peaceful assimilation. To them Cromwald issued the ultimatum: join peacefully, or be crushed and brought into the fold by force of arms. It was not an idle threat. After the subjugation of Vestifal, Korsk and Hemmsgrad, other nations began to heed the warnings of the Prathian military. Diplomats negotiated peace for dozens of lesser powers, adding their strengths to the juggernaut that was rolling across the planet. Those that resisted were either crushed in piecemeal, or banded together to fight back. Only a coalition spanning a whole continent provided any pause for the treads of unification, yet with a measure of cunning and the might of his armies, the Field Marshal secured his beachhead and struck where the alliances were most fragile. The disparate powers arrayed against him fell into infighting in the face of defeat, and secured their downfall. At long last, after a full decade of ceaseless warfare, Sommesgard stood as a single world, united in purpose. Measures to maintain population and develop new and wondrous advances of science were swiftly instated to capitalize on the newly forged peace. The people were poised to try and recapture their golden age, but for a fearful discovery.


In the wake of global unification, astronomers identified a sizable anomaly in the night sky. Ships from somewhere beyond the stars had begun to settle into orbit. Pandemonium set in amidst the people, who had long forgotten the days when mankind had walked the stars. No one knew what the strangers wanted, but Cromwald counciled preparation for the worst.
The clear organization developed in the wake of Cromwald's discovery affords a doctrine of gathered strength, and relies on each division being its own autonomous whole. To this end, each of the five possess fleet and logistical elements to engage in protracted crusades wholly removed from allied astartes support, and hold dedicated auxilia and retainer forces tied to the Field Marshal's command. These top generals are the highest authority among the legion bar one: the command battalion serving as the primarch's personal retainers. This organizational entity exists outside of the divisional structure of the legion, and cycles between the five primary divisions as the needs of the crusade mandate. As the primarch arrives command is ceded from the Field Marshal for the duration of time Cromwald deems necessary, during which he acts as supreme command for all forces under the Lions' control. Once the period if need has passed, the Field Marshal is restored to sovereignty over his division, and the primarch moves on.


When the strangers landed, it was the field marshal that was to greet them from the turret of a braddigan heavy tank. He was wary of the red-robed envoys, who had chosen Berau as their landing site. His response arrived to see an armed force attempting to lay claim to the city. As he had with all of his previous conquests, he rode out to speak to their leader, man to man. The stranger, declaring himself a magos of the Adeptus Mechanicus, stated under no uncertain terms that he would take the city and claim a holy treasure that lay within. Cromwald, displeased at the arrogance of his counterpart, delivered his famed ultimatum of sovereignty. He proclaimed that his world would not yield to force, be it by their own or by the machinations from beyond. The magos would barter peacefully for the treasure of Berau, or he would face annihilation. The magos scoffed at the bold words of the barbarian before him. His insult would be the last thing to leave his lips; the combined firepower of Cromwald's guns obliterated the envoy and his honor guard from the face of the planet. So began the hardest fought war of his career.
A final segregation from the core divisional strength of the legion is the sixth recruitment division. While nominally commanded by a Field Marshal and held at similar strength to the main combat divisions, the reality is that the majority of the sixth's strength lay in recruits and trainees still undergoing implantation. The number of full blooded astartes on the rolls varies wildly as training companies are fully inducted into the legion and await reassignment, but the average tends towards a core of one thousand veterans, with another thousand legionaries either freshly graduated or recently rotated away from combat duty.


The mechanicus fought like the technocrats before them had. They held strange and terrifying engines of war, and held the advantage of the high ground. Cromwald could do nothing to prevent the bombardment from the heavens that preceded the coming invasion. Populations were laid to waste by the opening days of the war, and concentrations of military strength were annihilated with no means of fighting back. It was a tense time, but the skilled oratory of the field marshal and his council steeled the people's resolve. The bombardment could not last forever; the enemy would need to land troops to claim their price. Neither could they fire upon Berau, lest they destroy that which they held in such high value. It was there he mustered his strongest troops, and prepared for the storm.
==Specialist Units==
* Goshawk Squads
The utility afforded by jump packs extends far beyond the common use in assault formations. As part of the Lion's arsenal, jump packs are afforded to specialist teams attached to the command structure with the important task of providing forward observation of the enemy and communication of their intentions. These Goshawk squads are daredevils, bold marines hand chosen for their insane courage and supreme skill in operating in isolation from friendly lines. They are outfitted with sophisticated auspex equipment and powerful extended range vox units. With this wargear they intrude into enemy territory and set up forward observation posts in defiance of the enemies guns, then relay coordinates for the legion's firepower to crush the foe.


Dark days followed for the soldiers of Sommesgard. The mechanicus had landed in force with their secutors, myrmidons and tech-thralls. Tanks of unparalleled power stalked the ruins in the wake of bombardment by precision weapons. Deadliest of all the threats faced were the titans; a modest handful had made planetfall. For all of his prodigious skill, Cromwald's men were outclassed. Every victory secured came at terrible cost.
* Warden Counter-Assault Squads
Lions' doctrine affords hand to hand combat as an essential skill of every marine, but advises against charging into the enemy's guns. Instead, a doctrine of marines equipped for and tasked with counter-assault was developed. These formations are equipped with combat shields and power blades in addition to their standard kit, and form a reserve that deploy where the enemy has gathered strength for a charge. Should the foe brave the storm of bolter fire laid down by the tactical squads, the Wardens surge forward to check the enemy's momentum and shatter their cohesion in close quarters.


Only by riding out to meet the enemy personally would the invasion be broken. Outside the gates of the Berau slums he led an armored counter-assault to the mechanicus march. His presence was a threat the enemy could not ignore; killing him would sever the head of the fierce resistance they had met. In fixating on the enemy command, the mechanicus played into Cromwald's gambit. Though his tank was obliterated, he escaped its destruction at the hands of a stalking titan with only the loss of his arm. His sacrifice was carefully calculated; behind their backs the mechanicus had been outfoxed. Vanquisher rounds and heavy artillery hammered into the titan when it stepped into range and overwhelmed its void shields with their combined firepower. The god-machine turned to face the new threat as carefully prepared armor roared onto the battlefield from hidden dugout positions. Terrifyingly powerful weapons raked the field of battle, pulverizing the ambushing armor and shattering the assault. Tank commanders often lived only long enough to fire but a single round before being snuffed out like candles. Yet they pressed on, taking hideous casualties to rain ordnance on their colossal foe. Through sheer volume of fire the titan succumbed; artillery shells tore into armor and vanquisher shells pierced vital systems to bring it down. But for the loss of a single titan, the Mechanicus had bled the defenders of a full company of tanks. Under the shadow of the dead god-machine, infantry raced to reinforce the besieged city and rescue the maimed field marshal.
* Predator "Lancer" Formations
Armored doctrine of the Lions was largely pioneered by the Lionhearts, who formed the first Lancer formation. Consisting of three tanks of varying patterns, the Lancer is a spearhead used to outpace and slay the largest enemy vehicles and beasts. Two vehicles, typically autocannon equipped predators or vindicator siege tanks form the jaws of the unit, while a third vanquisher pattern predator forms the spearhead. Upon identifying the target, the vanquisher engages at range, hobbling the enemy with precise fire to the treads or legs. With the enemy crippled, the jaws spring shut, pounding the crippled prey with merciless heavy ordnance.


Victory came at a terrible price. Even with his masterful strategy, Cromwald's forces had suffered extreme casualties. Each Mechanicus soldier to fall had taken five men with him; each tank to be destroyed had scrapped ten of its foes. Only grit and weight of numbers had allowed the defenders of Sommesgard to win the day, though many sons had perished.
==Fleet Assets==


===The Coming of the Emperor===
==Notable Allies/Auxilia==
* The Cramalthian Dragoons (Imperial Army)
The bold men of Cramal rose to prominence in service to the Lion. Borne to an industrialized world burdened with a swelling population and natural resources better suited to the foundries than the bellies of their children, these men adopted an autocratic regime to closely ration the wealth of their world while scientists raced to pioneer a road to their verdant world of Bounty. They were discovered at the turning point in their history, when the initial invasion landed to claim Bounty from her inhabitants in a tide of steel and flame.
The Lions' arrival ended the blooding of the Cramalthian army prematurely, yet in doing so made an offer far greater than the oligarchs could have imagined. Impressed by the armored might of the relatively backwater world, Geoffrey the Lionheart offered them the resources of the burgeoning Imperium to feed their people, and the technical expertise to produce ever greater engines of war. His terms demanded only the loyal service of the fighting men of Cramal on the long crusade to come. The oligarchs saw the opportunity to alleviate the strains of overpopulation, and agreed to the pact. Regiments were raised and equipped with new weapons and vehicles to take their banner to the stars.
At war, the Cramalthian Dragoons adhere to a doctrine of ironclad cavalry, using their tanks and personnel carriers in lieu of flesh and blood horses. They are a swift force reliant on overwhelming firepower to smash the enemy under their treads. This complements the more nimble Lions, who often outpace their allies with their rapid deployments and unparalleled mobility.
* House Borgias (Imperial Knights)
Fast movers, almost uniformly outfitted to keep pace with their peers in the Lions


Defeat was a bitter taste to the Mechanicus. Two titans had fallen to the planetary defenders, causing great anguish among their keepers. Already they plotted retribution for their losses, and turned their efforts to calling for aid. Preparations for a renewed offensive were made with a reliance on aid far more powerful than the Mechanicus' own forces. Across the void the astropathic summons rang out, and from the crusading fleets of the Imperium came an answer: the astartes would come.
* Legio Martyax, the Man Eaters (Titan Legion)
In the wake of the battle for Berau, few among the Lions Rampant would have expected Cromwald to turn to the titans of the Mechanicum for aid. It was by their hand his arm had been lost on the fields of his homeworld. Despite the Emperor's reconciliation of both parties, the cynical veterans of the legion were bitter towards the priests of Mars. They were guilty of leaving them with a broken primarch, to match their broken and ignoble legion. In the wake of the reformation it then came as a shock when Cromwald approached the high princeps of the very legion responsible for his injury with terms of alliance. He knew well the power of the titans of Mars, and wished to join them to the strength of his astartes. It took time to negotiate the terms of authority, but the titans agreed to be the primarch's answer to the most stubborn and entrenched of foes.
Legio Martyax marches to war in livery of deep, bloody red edged in lustrous silver. Their titans are predatory things, equipped with laud hailers to allow the snarling roars of the vicious machine spirits to terrify the enemy. With each engine of war given a deaths' head visage, they are truly unsettling to face in battle; on longer campaigns foes would learn to fear the sign of the gaping blue maw, knowing it heralded monsters hungry for carnage.


The fearful peace on Sommesgard lasted less than a year before the promise of war returned. All the while, astronomers watched the skies, wary of the fleet that lingered in orbit over their neighboring world of Mairen. While the lords of Sommesgard hailed the heroic dead and reveled in the glories of victory, the generals and soldiers began to entrench themselves, preparing for a second invasion. Their scientists were struggling to find a means to thwart an onslaught from space, but they hadn't enough time before the klaxons sounded. The fleet orbiting Mairen had begun to swell in size as massive vessels joined the flotilla. Battleships bearing the double headed eagle rallied to the Mechanicus fleet, then broke orbit at full burn for Sommesgard. As one the planet's population sought shelter from the inevitable firestorm that would follow, but there simply were not enough shelters to protect the people from orbital bombardment. The entrenched troops knew that of those who survived the war to come, many would be widowed by the opening hours of battle. Morale plummeted despite the rallying cry from the great speakers of their day.
==Elite Formations==
* The Lionhearts
The first brigade, third division have borne the title of their first and greatest lord marshal in the wake of the victory over the hulking Tsulkik xenos. When faced with the terrifying alien juggernauts, the lord marshal gathered his armored assets to meet the lumbering enemy armor on the field of battle. It was here that the first "Lancer" formation of vanquisher equipped predator and vindicator tanks was fielded. With mobility on their side, they harried the xeno war machines at extreme range, driving the enemy forces into disarray. What followed was a bold assault to finish the disorganized xeno armor, with the marshal's land raider "Indomitable" forming a mailed fist that hammered through the enemy guns. Lauded for their victory, the armored might of the 3rd division have since proven time and again that their courage will not be broken.
Since the initial christening, the Lionhearts have refined the armored doctrine further. The Lancer formation now forms the backbone of their strength, with other patterns of tank supporting the vanquishers when enemy armor is engaged. Always the Lionhearts pursue aggressive, direct tactics; their penchant for focused aggression and dauntless courage continues under the command of marshal Basil Heart, who leads in the wake of his mentor.


Yet the inferno did not come. A single shuttle broke from the steel leviathan that led the flotilla and made the long descent to the surface. It landed at the Berau fields, the site where the defenders broke the invasion and grasped victory. From the belly of the small craft emerged a brilliant golden figure, resplendent in radiant light. He was a giant among men, flanked by terrifying iron warriors in slate grey armor. He strode onto the victory fields and marched into the waiting guns of Sommesgard's finest, showing neither fear nor aggression. His voice thunders aloud for all to hear, proclaiming the desire to meet with the commander who had so masterfully claimed victory on these very plains. With this general the golden figure wished to parlay.
=Culture of the IXth=


Cromwald was taken aback by the offer. Even his great stature was dwarfed by the giant before him, and the inner radiance hummed with a silent power beyond anything his world had ever reckoned with. That such a formidable individual would choose words over conquest was at once intimidating and thrilling. Even had his station not demanded he accept, Cromwald would have offered the golden warlord his hospitality in hopes of learning more about his strange, compelling presence. He invited the stranger into his headquarters, where they would speak at great length for hours beyond the reach of mortal ears.
==The Primarch's Influence==


What words were shared behind those closed doors have never been known to any but the Emperor and his newly rediscovered son. They remained at the table for two full days and nights, discussing in exacting detail a great many things. When they emerged, it was to a world holding its collective breath. All ears turned towards the field marshal, and a great cry of joyous exultation rang across the whole of the planet at the proclamation of peace.
==Core Worlds==


Upon returning to his flagship, the Emperor made a series of bold proclamations that would shape the future of the people of Sommesgard. The planet itself was declared the sovereign right of the IX legion and its rediscovered primarch. Cromwald was to be her protector, to uphold the integrity and custom of the planet and to pay fealty to the greater Imperium. From the youth of Sommesgard he would draw fresh recruits to his legion, and from her foundries he would forge his weapons of war. Aiding in this were the iterators to sway the hearts and minds of the people, and the Mechanicus to uplift their industry to capacity.
==Recruitment==
In the early days of the crusade, the Highland Raiders were drawn from the conquered warriors of northern Albyon and stretches of Franc. The men chosen to become astartes were selected on account of their hardiness and indomitable spirit. As part of the recruitment rites, applicants were subjected to numerous tests of will and fortitude by their people. These culminated in a sojourn across the wintry wastes of the Albyon highlands to the transports responsible for claiming the tithe of men. Only those who could brave the bitter cold and savage fauna to reach their new masters would become the Emperor's warriors.


The Emperor turned to the Mechanicus next, for it was their explorator fleet that had cost his missing son an arm. The masters of Mars recognized the cost the blind ambition of their envoy had claimed, and he was personally censured and tasked with laboring to recover the STC from Berau in cooperation with the indigenous peoples. Then, as a public sign of apology for the folly of their agent, the tech-priests brought their finest artisans to forge a bionic arm to replace the one lost to the titan's guns. Crafted from adamantium and ceramite, it was every bit as powerful, as grand and as masterful as the primarch who would bear it. Cromwald accepted this as a token of peace, and claimed the matter to be settled.
The newly augmented marines then faced the crucible of war with only a basic indoctrination period. Training and discipline were instilled rapidly over a scant handful of years before feeding the men into the furnace of battle. This made for a high rate of attrition to the Raider's forces, but also forged a core body of seasoned warriors from those who endured, and reinforced the culture of unbreakable will and grim resolve.


==The Great Crusade==
With the coming of Cromwald, this practice changed dramatically. During the restructuring of the legion he shifted recruitment from the wastes of Terra to the now flourishing world of Sommesgard, and instated new methods of drawing troops from their human stock. At first, a decree was issued that his marines would be recruited from the children the planetary defense corps officer ranks. This led to an influx of young men of pedigree, all of whom had been indoctrinated from early childhood to a military mindset. This worked for a time, but the needs of the crusade would mandate before the decade was out that a broader base of manpower was needed. To that end, an edict was passed that all young men of viable age born to the military arm of the Lions' homeworld would be registered for conscription. Academies were raised to train the youth of the world to meet the needs of the legion; they offered education in tactics, sciences, humanities and the arts. These schools became some of the most prestigious institutions across the face of the Sommesgard, and acceptance into one was a high honor. With such a reputation as these universities garnered many became exclusive due to high cost of entry and tuition, which ensured few without wealth and influence could join the illustrious roll as students. These children were groomed to one day become leaders among Lions, serving to guide their brothers drawn from lesser classes by means of draft lotteries and mass conscription.
===A Primarch Restored===


Cromwald's legion had long fought ingloriously and forgotten among their brethren. The restoration of their primarch was the first step of many to change this fate; he set about redefining the nature of the IX legion immediately. He addressed the whole of his legion, massed on the fields of Berau in formation and watching from orbit above. To these men he delivered a firebrand speech of his heritage, of the victories he had achieved, and of the birthright that they carried in their gene-seed and their souls. No longer would they be known as mere raiders, preying on the enemies of man as carrion birds in the wake of their betters. They would become as lions, roaring their name unto the blackness of space and striding forth with pride to claim their place among the stars. All would hear the lion's roar and would submit, or they would face the kings of war on the field of battle. It was thus that the Lions Rampant were remade on the fields that had been so bitterly contested for so very long.
On the day of conscription, every prospective recruit faces his first taste of life among the Emperor's vanguard. The young men are grouped together and subjected to a week of constant trial, pitting them against their peers. Each group must complete several objectives, scattered across a broad stretch of land cultivated to be difficult to navigate, all while knowing that those who fail lose their chance to become space marines. Dubbed the Crucible, it weeds out those who lack the spirit to become more than men, and is judged by a panel of captains in command of the recruiting companies. They choose candidates to fill out fresh platoons to replace those already graduated to one of the crusading fleets using not the success of the mission as their measure, but of the performance of the men as they face a task meant to be nearly impossible. Those who falter, despair or break in the face of insurmountable odds are seldom given a chance to be any more than a legion serf or servitor. Meanwhile, those who exhibit fortitude of will, cunning, and an indomitable spirit are taken to the vast training grounds surrounding the legion fortress to begin their implantation and training.


The process of remaking his legion was not so simple as speeches and bluster. Cromwald himself was faced with change; the Emperor had embraced his son, but he had found him wanting. For all his brilliance as a general and leader, the Lion was a man of many vices. Chemicals, drugs, perversions...these things ate at the moral fiber of the primarch. No longer could he merely partake discreetly and brush aside any inkling of scandal. He would be faced with a very real change in his ways, to mirror the dramatic reversal of his legions methods of war. The first year of his stewardship of legion IX was marked with prolonged transition and extensive training. The advances of the legion in the crusade had all but halted as the command infrastructure was rebuilt from the ground up. Officers were trained by the primarch personally in strategy and diplomacy, and in turn their new lessons were taken to the lower ranks. It wasn't until five long years of constant drilling, wargaming, and reorganization that Cromwald deemed his lions fit for the hunt.
==The Great Divisions==


Upon returning to the campaign, the newly christened Lions Rampant were an untested force. Carefully they chose their initial targets, picking worlds that would offer a suitable test of the new drill and doctrine. Initial successes against rogue human elements on a handful of lesser worlds saw them grow bold; those that did not accept terms of parlay had been invaded in brilliant campaigns that systematically overwhelmed the defenders. Skeptics within the legion were finding their fears baseless in the wake of the smooth operation of the newly minted command structure.
==Gods Among Men: Notable Figures==
* Basil Heart, Field Marshal and commander of the 3rd division
Heart stood apart from his peers of Terran stock as being singularly aggressive and proud, with a far less stoic demeanor. A champion tactician, Basil swiftly earned the watchful eye of his superiors for inspired battlefield command first on the tactical level, then after a time on the strategic level as well. His sharp mind and pioneering grasp of armored warfare saw him elevated to the rank of equerry to Geoffrey Calsth of the Sacred Band, whose command over much of the legion's armored might made him a kindred spirit and mentor to the young Raider. Calsth, dubbed the Lionheart, was a fearless tanker and lord of war; he took young Basil Heart and molded him into an equally fearsome master of arms. Long after the coming of the primarch and the restructuring of the legion into the five divisions, it was widely known that on Calsth's passing the 3rd would fall to his protege.
With the fall of the legion Basil would become one of Cromwald's most capable champions. His was the first division to wholly embrace the lust for high speed warfare that formed from the primarch's sickness, and blended it with the love for the thunder of heavy tracked vehicles. His pride in such things became his downfall, as he took great pains to ensure that his Lionhearts were the greatest unit in the legion, and the most loyal to their primarch. When Cromwald bid him step into the darkness he leaped headlong into damnation to stand by his lord's side.


The true test of the legion's strategic worth would come on the blighted world of Yupsis, where the indigenous human population were enslaved by a technologically advanced xeno race. Paired with a detachment of the Mastondontii, the Lions made planetfall with mind to liberate the planet. On the great plains the armored fist of the Mastodontii clashed with strange alien armor. Though a company of vanquisher equipped predators from the Lions joined their brethren, the legion's full strength was committed elsewhere. Relying on the might of the steel wall blasting across the plains to draw attention, a series of rapid strikes to the enemy rear lines were executed to assess and hinder enemy strength. Pressed with a second assault from the rear, the aliens redeployed and shifted tactics to a more defensive posture. They halted the armored push into their front, but could not prevent themselves from being outflanked. The Lions were always one step ahead, turning the xeno counter push into an overstretched initiative. The aliens were swiftly losing ground, and when their doomed effort to reclaim lost gains struck it was shattered between the Lions precise deployment and the immovable anvil of Mastodontii steel. This first battle set the tempo of the war, as it was repeated time and again. The combination of the Mastodontii's strength and the Lions tenacity liberated city after city, which only added more fuel to the fires. The planet rose up in rebellion against the alien masters, and they were put to the sword to the very last. After the battle, before the fires had burnt out Cromwald invited the officers involved in the campaign to a celebratory toast. Here he praised Tollund before the whole assemblage, proclaiming a respect for the superb marshaling of their armored forces.
=A Legion Fallen and Fragmented=


===Brotherhood Among Primarchs===
The already divided organization of the Lions Rampant did little to prevent the splintering of the legion. Before his banishment to the warp, Cromwald maintained supreme control as the chosen of Slaanesh. Upon losing their leader, however, the Lions fragmented under lesser warlords. Their armies and warbands began to build their own infamy across the centuries.


As the crusade ground onward, Cromwald had the chance to meet most of his brothers both professionally and personally. To him, his fellow primarchs were a class of soul that mirrored his own. Each was a leader of men and a master of whole worlds. Though some were crass, distasteful or "downright ungentlemanly", he was cordial especially to his brothers to which he had taken a disliking towards. It was his way to show hospitality and courtesy even in the face of one's rivals and enemies, and so it was with the likes of Nathanog, Gaspard Lumey, and several others among his kin.
==The Hollow Legion==


While his haughty demeanor has alienated some of his fellow primarchs, others accepted him for the gentleman he was. To those who could abide his nature he was a fast friend, welcoming whenever the vicissitudes of fate would allow a pause in conquest to engage in more pleasant matters of recreation and sport. Often he would enjoy fencing with the likes of Roman Albrecht, who he found to be a kindred spirit, or indulging in debate over a regicide board with Uriel Starikov. They became his two closest compatriots. With them, it was as it had been living as an aristocrat of Prathia; his craving for socialization with peers of his standing matched well with their demeanors.


It was in this way that Cromwald formed a rapport among the men that would define his career. Advice from Uriel helped shape the command and intelligence infrastructure of the Lions Rampant, allowing the Primarch to better see the strategic scope of the battlefield. Roman's honorable Retainers Creed was an exotic taste of virtue that helped to sculpt the ties of loyalty the Lions held to their officers and primarch. Hektor himself helped develop Cromwald's understanding of the advancements in warfare that exceeded by centuries the tactics and engines of destruction that had been the cutting edge of the Prathian Royal Army. To his detractors, the Lions Rampant were the amalgamation of his brothers' legions; never defined by their own virtues but instead aping others. Despite this he persisted, and with the support of his kin Cromwald began to forge his own name among the stars.
==The Lions Claws==
 
Formed around an armored brigade that split from the legion, they are a horde of vehicle mounted marines that delight in the thunder of treads and the roar of big guns. Praising Slaanesh from their iron steeds, they raid for slaves and victims to satisfy their need for violence, flesh and souls. Their master reportedly feeds his Vanquisher pattern Predator tank the blood and souls of his victims to bring the daemon within to compliance. Where the tank rides, it is accompanied by the tortured screams and ecstatic howls of those condemned to the daemon's clutches.
===The Fall===
In the waning years of the Great Crusade, an affliction had begun to settle into the primarch of the Lions Rampant. It had begun in almost imperceptible degrees; a twitch here, a passing sense of pins and needles there. His liquor no longer carried the same pleasing bite to it, and his duels with Roman and Uriel had lost the thrill that came from heated swordplay. Initially he had ignored such things to fatigue or a passing anomaly in his otherwise healthy superhuman physique. But as the years turned to decades, the tingling lasted longer. The indulgences of his station left him wanting; his now innocent vices no longer satisfied. It was disconcerting to the Lion, who had lived all his days a life of polite indulgence to mirror his industrious war machine.
 
At first he merely turned to stronger drink to toast his victories, and pressed himself harder in his bouts of swordplay. For a time this sufficed, but he would only be sated but for so long. Within a year his choicest selections were losing their strength. Even the strongest cask strength vintage lacked bite; he would draw glass after glass in the celebrations of his champions only to find the taste to be tepid and bland. Toasts became binges as he hungered for what he knew to be eluding his senses, and he threw himself into his sport to recapture the thrill it had once brought to compete with masters. None questioned this; it seemed from the outside to be a simple case of overindulgence leading to burnout. His council within the legion advised he wait, allow his palate to recover and his mind to clear. In time he would again know the pleasures of a well earned libation.
 
Cromwald claimed to believe his most trusted men, though doubt gnawed at his mind. He had kept it silent from his brethren, but it was not simply his palate that was failing him. His limbs were growing sluggish and unresponsive. He masked it well, but the trained eyes of Uriel could see the failing coordination of his brother. He inquired to the Lion's health, though Cromwald insisted politely that it was nothing of concern. His excuses would grow feeble, however; no matter how poor the vintage, Uriel knew well that it would take more than rich living to shake the health of a primarch. His expressions of concern incensed Cromwald, whose pride would not hear of being any lesser a man than his peers. Uriel ceased to press the issue, though it meant the friendly games they enjoyed had taken a chilled air about them from that day forward.
 
Desperate to find something to bring life to his remaining flesh, Cromwald began to reluctantly turn to elements of his past. Drinks were laced with narcotics to give them a pleasing edge to revitalize his digits and expand his mind. In the wake of victory he commissioned specialists to soothe his weary frame and knead feeling into his flesh. Delicate hands worked his augmetic flesh, playing his skin and muscle with a skill no servitor could match. The sensual ministrations of his servants reminded his limbs of their lost vitality for a time. But beyond any skillful young thrall or potent concoction, one thing could truly flood his body with life and give him peace from his silent decline. In the roar of battle Cromwald found solace. With increasing regularity he would abandon his central command to spearhead the battle personally. While it came at some cost to his understanding of the grander scale of battle, his skill with strategy saw his legion through almost as well from the hatch of a vanquisher tank as it did from the armored bunker of his headquarters. It was a thrill to relive his conquest of Sommesgard, to be surrounded by the thunder of cannon and the roar of boltgun fire. Through the smoke and destruction of a hundred battles he thrived, though in the quiet hours aboard his flagship he slowly fell into despair for want of a new enemy to engage.
 
====The Battle of Lignis IV====
 
Lignis IV was the turning point. A world almost wholly given to great sweeping masses of land, its ragged plains of tatter-grasses and jagged mesas of granite held a bastion of technologically talented xenos dwelling in the ashes of ancient human cities. They fought on strange steel walkers bearing exotic energy weapons, and commanded legions of abhuman thralls bound by chains of steel and psychic might. The Lions Rampant came to the world with promises of vengeance for the degeneration of a once-proud world. Their planetfall and deployment across the steppes of the northern tectonic shelf was unopposed, and their forces mustered swiftly. The whole legion, over 100,000 marines strong, stood poised to make war with the hexapedal Grishnach.
 
From his forward command, Cromwald assessed the reports from his extensive forward reconnaissance elements. He knew the creatures numbers and the limits of their weapons from previous battles on the outlying worlds of the Lignis system. He had seen their sorcery and knew well the variables it had brought to the campaign, and deployed his forces to counter the strengths the aliens possessed. His tanks would outmaneuver their ponderous walkers, and with his superior reach he would wage a rolling battle with mounted infantry and heavy armor alike. The campaign was estimated to last two weeks.
 
Within the first days of the war for Lignis the campaign was shaping well. The enemy had been assessed, their assets, strengths, and abilities had been examined and accounted for. Cromwald had issued his orders of battle to his seniormost officers, who in turn saw to their own theaters of war. The machine of destruction had been given life, now he rode to see it consume the enemy in fire and steel. After the gains made by his infantry in claiming the highlands overlooking the field of battle, the Lion marshaled his assets to capitalize on his advantage. He shattered the alien resistance and drove them before him, leaving devastation in his wake.
 
Five days remained until his estimated victory. The enemy was fighting a desperate bid to hold the line, and Cromwald had outmaneuvered them at each turn.
 
Reports then began to filter in. Alien warmachines were counterattacking from the highlands. His marines were suffering casualties, as they were faced with foes that had seemed to materialize from the mountains themselves. Armored detachments across the whole theater of war were taking losses from well coordinated strikes from platoons of well armed xeno thralls. The enemy had rallied, reinforced, and redeployed with disturbing speed. Cromwald was forced to abandon his spearhead assault to break the alien line to cover the retreat from the highlands, where he was forced into personal combat when his tank was disabled. Losses were high across the legion, and the Lion found that unless he returned to his headquarters, the sheer volume of data from the sudden reversal would be impossible to coordinate, despite the efforts of his captains and their robust circles of command.
 
((More about the assault on his HQ and the breakout action to come. In a nutshell he and his legion will survive because of a last ditch, desperate race on jump packs to blast through a tightening noose. It will mark the first time the legion actively uses mass high-speed assault units, and also give Cromwald both a taste for the rush it brings and firsthand encounters with chaos, even if he doesn't recognize it for what it is just yet))
 
====Aftermath====
 
The near destruction of the heart of his legion had rattled Cromwald, but it had also given him a taste of what he sorely craved. His heart had raced as he felt the wind whispering in his ears during the breakneck rush into the enemy guns. It had been more than any number of guns or tanks could do to give life to his numbness, and he embraced it wholly. The shift became marked within his legion as his tactics evolved to take advantage of this new rush. Cadres of rapid assault teams were assembled in each company to escort their primarch. No excuse was made for the change in his demeanor; it became well known among the men that he fought alongside only the most bold and brazen of squads when the fighting began. His strategies became more aggressive to ensure the need for such measures, and with each battle he threw himself into the fray with almost reckless abandon. Between these frantic bouts of carnage, he withdrew from his legion. The numbness had almost completely consumed him. His serfs were beaten should their arts fail to stir his flesh, and his earthly delights were spurned for their endless failures. Despair gripped the Lion, whose pride forbid he admit weakness and seek the aid of his brothers. Madness began to settle in as the void taunted him. His indulgent life was nothing more than ashes as he found himself locked in a prison of meat and bone. Only his adamantium arm retained its senses, and he obsessed over it. Behind closed doors, he walked slowly into darkness. Lacking their leader, his legion would soon follow.
 
Ever since the return of their primarch, the Lions Rampant had looked to Cromwald for guidance and leadership. He had been open with his men, making his presence a constant among the ranks of his officers and often directly overseeing the training and progress of his men. With the onset of madness and the seclusion of the primarch, once again the legion was without a master. Promises of his presence on the field spurred many to strive for his blessing in hopes of rejoining their master, but the lapse of his rigid discipline saw a weakening in the ranks. Officers, now accustomed to the revelries and indulgences of their leader began to indulge among their own circles, emulating the primarch they so honored. The men themselves began to train themselves to meet their masters desires; he only appeared to wage war, and only rode with the most bold and daring of assaults. Competition between companies for such an honor became commonplace, as each outfitted themselves more and more with speeders, bikes and jump packs to be the tip of the spear and first to rip into the enemy. The squad that hosted their primarch in battle became exalted by their peers for their modifications to their wargear and the fearless fervor with which they rode into the enemy. The grand strategy of the crusades had begun to collapse in favor of a brilliant yet terrifying application of speed and firepower.
 
The fateful hour came a scant four years before the outbreak of the heresy. For years now the Lion had dwelled behind sealed doors, emerging only for the rush of battle. In the darkness of his chambers he raged at his fate, cursed the apothecaries for failing him and scorned the galaxy for denying him. His careful self control failed, and in the dark recesses of his mind he heard the whispers of madness gnawing at his soul. All mundane means of restoring his flesh had failed him. His apothecaries had found his nerves shredded and burnt, and the techmarines had found a fault introduced by his bionic arm from maintenance long past responsible. By now it was too late; even a Primarch could only heal but so much. No substance, no skilled hands, no rush or thrill could rouse his senses save for the barest of glimmers from the most extreme of actions. To do more would ravage his body further still, damning him more than he already was.
 
Cursing his steel fist yet refusing to part with the only window of feeling to the outside world left, he made a drastic decision. He sought out Aubrey, primarch of the Eternal Zealots. He had always held a respect for Aubrey's skill as a medicae. Naive though his brother was, he was an honorable individual. Swallowing his pride, he would confide in Aubrey alone of his condition and how it vexed him so. The Life Giver listened intently to his brother's plight, asking questions when clarification was needed on symptoms or timeframes. Ultimately his examination found that mere mundane medicine would never suffice from such a catastrophic failure of Cromwald's nervous system. However, there were other means at Aubrey's disposal that may in time restore the Lion's strength. An application of ritual and psychic power could manifest healing where science and medicine could not. The Emperor had forbidden such things at Nikaea, but father's word had never truly stood in the way of his roguish son's vices. Cromwald accepted Aubrey's aid, and found himself at the heart of an arcane incantation woven by Aubrey and his closest acolytes. The warp awoke within Cromwald in the wake of the ritual, and in his mind he began to hear whispers in the guise of his subconscious thoughts. He felt renewed, for a time; his limbs were not fully healed, but they could touch and feel once again. Such a revolutionary change in his condition was all the Lion would need to convince him that Aubrey's powers would be his salvation. It was thus that the Lion would embrace the warp, being slowly drawn into the clutches of Chaos by the "healing" of his brother's craft. As he worked to fill Cromwald with the powers of the warp, Aubrey would tutor him on the ways of chaos. Their common debates of ideology had taken on a twisted new importance in shedding the Lion's loyalties, preparing him for the glories promised by the whispers that revitalized his flesh and uplifted his spirit. There was a name to the voice, given only after a year of warpcraft and indoctrination. Cromwald's soul had been given unto the dark god Slaanesh.
 
==The Heresy==
 
 
==Post-Heresy==
 
=Pre-Heresy Legion Disposition and Tactics=
 
The Lions fall took a finely tuned, highly disciplined machine and set it to run amok in the galaxy. Before the embrace of chaos forever tainted the legion, it gained a reputation as a highly strategic engine of war. They engaged their foes with an eye for delivering their strength to the correct place at the correct time to leverage the maximum effect on the enemy. Their forethought and strategic cunning led to numerous victories over numerically or technologically superior foes. To do so, they formed tactics and doctrine that encompassed a wide variety of methods of deployment, leading to a degree of mechanization that gave their marines an extensive reach from land, sea and air.
 
Pre-Heresy, the Lions were built to engage in large scale, set-piece battles. Like pieces upon a regicide board, each unit had a role to fulfill and was expected to engage the enemy in accordance to the grand strategy relative to that role. The specifics of tactic in the field is often left to the commanders in the field; they are handed the task at hand, and are expected to accomplish their goals. To coordinate this complex strategic-level interaction of the full legion, Cromwald faced the issue of developing a strong infrastructure of intelligence and communications to maintain order and orchestrate his campaigns.
 
==Legion Organization==
 
The Lions Rampant form a legion that seldom fights as one. Instead, the legion is split into six divisions, each numbering over 20,000 marines apiece. These divisions are autonomous; each forms the heart of a crusade fleet with its own array of capital ships, logistical support, and administrative backing to prosecute protracted campaigns with little outside influence from the rest of the legion. These divisions are commanded from above by a dedicated headquarters battalion formed by the Primarch, his hand-picked advisors and his elite guard. This command group attaches itself to a division for a period of time (usually the length of a campaign), then moves on to the next in line. In this fashion each division gains the guidance of its Primarch during particularly difficult battles, while others facing less dangerous times are given the leeway to operate to their own means and needs.
 
Each division is further broken up into a quintet of brigades, which nominally number between 4-5 thousand marines. The first brigade is a dedicated heavy armor brigade, while the rest are predominantly infantry. Each brigade is then broken into multiple battalions of roughly a thousand marines, which are in turn broken into companies of one hundred, then sections of thirty, down to the base squads of ten men.
 
Aside from the segregation of armor in the legion organization, the Lions vary from their peers in the manner of their rapid response troops. Very few squads are outfitted for melee combat, and fewer still are equipped in the manner of other legions assault marines. Instead focus is placed on high mobility for reconnaissance elements, and a doctrine of avoiding melee where feasible unless a tactical advantage is secured by taking the enemy in hand to hand.
 
Additionally, it is of great note that on each level of command there are multiple attachments to the unit headquarters that help expand upon its abilities. Signals companies, medical units, librarian detachments and reconnaissance companies are often held separate from the standard organizational table, and regularly report directly to brigade or division command rather than following conventional hierarchy.
 
===Specialist Ranks===
 
==Legion Equipment==
 
==Tactics and Order of Battle==
 
=Notable Figures and Warbands=
 
==Notable Figures==
 
===The Sacred Band===
 
Squad IX of the sacred band was chosen from the newly developed Highland Raiders, whose human stock had been drawn from the wastes of what had once been the western stretches of old Europe. They were a hardy group whose powers of endurance and stalwart hearts had made them excellent candidates to become Astartes. From this legion the ten marines chosen to join Hektor in his subjugation of the broad Merican wastes were not the strongest, the most skilled, or the greatest champions. Those men chosen to ride with the warmaster possessed a far greater quality: intellect and leadership. They were the best examples of scholarship and integrity, of cunning and of charisma necessary to spur their marines to ever greater feats of military excellence. When the legion reached for the stars at the onset of the Great Crusade, it would be under the command of the survivors of the band and wielding their tactics across the stars.
 
Eight of the ten survived to take the reigns of their legion. Of those eight, only six lived to see their primarch restored. Four of these six were given mastery over a division of the legion. The remaining pair would serve alongside the primarch as advisers and specialists whose talents and understanding would prove utterly invaluable.
 
1) Geoffrey Calisth - The Lionheart, a warrior whose aggressive tactics would help shape the core of the Lions armored might. Mentor to Basil Heart, who would succeed him. Died in battle as master of the 3rd division, leading the brigade that shared his title.
 
2) Callidan Taylor - Shrewd, cunning, and gifted in deception and subterfuge. His contributions would be marginalized in his later years as too underhanded and indirect. Slain in battle shortly before the discovery of their primarch.
 
3) Frederick of Lomstead - A simple, down to earth individual whose plain manner hides a very keen intellect. A good anchor for his peers, he was often the broker of peace between astartes for his level head. Joined Cromwald's command company upon discovering the primarch.
 
4) Isaac Venetus - A tactician and capable fighter, he was renowned for his stubbornness and eye for positioning and deployment. A good shot with heavy weapons, he would go on to lead the 2nd division.
 
5) Ricard Leminway - An expert marksman with a cheerful demeanor, he never ceased to show pride at being chosen as one of the legions best and brightest. His jovial ways helped morale, as no horror of war ever seemed to phase him. Died on the crusade before Cromwald was found.
 
6) Russel Brennenburg - A heavyset, somber man who bore the names of slain brothers and battles branded upon his skin. He would never forget a defeat, and would avenge his fallen brothers as a grim reaper upon his enemies. Slain in the final days of Unification.
 
7) Carloff Everts - Faced with the wisdom and knowledge of the Warmaster, he demonstrated an insatiable craving for more. He threw himself at theory and was always keen to adapt his academic understanding of tactics to practical ends. Mastered the 6th division.
 
8) Vincent Klienes - Psychically gifted and in possession of an iron will, he was a noble soul who fought brilliantly no matter the danger. He would be the first and greatest of the legion's librarians, who proved a dauntless explorer of the powers he wielded and the source of their might.
 
9) The Bear - Drawn from an annexed barbarian tribe and uplifted to the Imperial Truth, Bear was a surprisingly intelligent man. Built like his namesake and possessing a fearsome nature, he would become a legend among his brothers as a champion, and master of the 4th division.
 
10) Gabriel Belimond - A moody, dark man whose even temper restrained a slowly smoldering rage within. Died during unification.
 
===Victor Chesly of the Crusader Host===
 
===Johnathan Fullmer, Master of Armor, 1st Division===
 
===Basil Heart, Commander of the 3rd Division===
 
=Writefaggotry=
 
==The Trial of General Betroval==
 
--/Pict feed begins. Seated, center of a great hall a single man (identified General Griffon Betroval, age 98), stripped to only trousers and shackles./--


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Latest revision as of 12:09, 21 June 2023

Lions Rampant
Battle Cry For valour, strike swift!
Number IX
Founding First Founding
Successors of N/A
Primarch Cromwald Walgrun
Homeworld Sommesgard
Strength 130,000 at start of Heresy
Allegiance Slaaneshi
Colours Red, Purple and Gold

This page details people, events, and organisations from the /tg/ Heresy, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe. See the /tg/ Heresy Timeline and Galaxy pages for more information on the Alternate Universe.

The Lions Rampant, designated Legion IX by Terran records, strive to wage war at a frantic pace. Bold, daring maneuvers are the hallmark of a legion that races to battle by speeder, tank and bike to outflank, envelope and destroy their foes. At this they excelled and earned their place among the Emperor's finest during the Great Crusade. By the cruelty of fate their love for the bravado of the charge devolved into a lust for speed and the adrenaline soaked thrill of closing to violence with the enemy. The Heresy claimed the Lions Rampant for Chaos; they cast aside oaths of loyalty and pledged their souls to Slaanesh.

History of the Lions Rampant[edit]

The Highland Raiders[edit]

Founded in the waning years of the Terran Unification Wars, the IXth were drawn from the conquered peoples of Albyon and Franc, who made excellent stock for the nascent legions. They were drawn together and clad in livery of deep blue and slate grey. Dubbed the Highland Raiders, these marines formed the backbone of several expeditions into the galactic south and west. The Raiders prosecuted their wars with a solemn stoicism that bordered on self destructive. Their manner of war was to march into the enemy supported by heavy armor to grind the foe down in a relentless advance. Their masters, while brilliant strategists, were callous and casually spent the lives of their men in pursuit of victory. This manner of war was brutal and bloody, yielding results at the cost of lives and glory. For the first half of the Great Crusade the IXth fought in this fashion, marking brutal victories over renegade regimes such as the charnal lords of Voughry VI, or the alien domain of the Skrrt-ka. Other legions were granted great honors for their conquests, but the Raiders remained relatively unlauded for their dour suppression of the Emperor's foes. Their victories were neither decisive, nor glorious, and over the course of the crusade they became looked down upon by their brethren of other legions. With the primarch of the IXth absent after all others had been discovered, the Raiders sullenly accepted their fate as the lost children of the crusade.

Remaking the IXth[edit]

In the year 914.M30 the last of the primarchs was discovered on the world of Sommesgard. At this time the bulk of the Highland Raiders were engaged in the waning days of the reclamation of sub-sector Orridak from the technocratic league that held out against the Emperor's rule. They were not to be reunited with their primarch until five years later, after the fires of the brutal campaign had burned out. When the legion was gathered to join their genetic forbear, the meeting initial was joyless and cynical. Cromwald, the Lion of Sommesgard, was immediately seen as a parallel to the legion: a mutilated primarch for a mauled and discarded legion. The dismal outlook was not easily shaken. It took every ounce of Cromwald's skill as an orator to sway the jaded hearts of his marines. His firebrand speech before the assembled legion slowly stirred a faint hope for the future, and despite the council of the eldest, most jaded astartes among their number the newly christened Lions warmed to the reformations Cromwald proposed. The next five years saw Legion IX removed from the crusade as the core structure of the legion was remolded. Drills and wargames waged across the training world of Garripor, pitting legionnaires against one another, and against the harsh extremes of the Garriporic poles. The best and the brightest were marked by Cromwald for extensive training into the newly minted officer corps. Training under the primarch himself, they would become the masters of the legion's new order of battle, reshaped into a form reminiscent of the army structure of Sommesgard. As a final act of rebirth, Cromwald ordered a grand conscription of young boys, all children of the military forces on Sommesgard. They were an infusion of new blood into the legion and served as a final measure to distance the Lions from their ignoble past. With them came an influx of their homeworld's culture, which would change the character of the Lions at a fundamental level given time.

The Fall[edit]

The fall of the Lions Rampant is tied heavily to the downfall of their primarch. Cromwald's sickness claimed him, drove him to madness and brought him into the embrace of chaos. After the administrations of Aubrey the Grey, he returned to his legion changed and gathered the masters of the apothecarion to his flagship, the Indomitable Sovereign. The words exchanged in the meeting were never revealed outside the private chambers of the primarch; only four of the six chief apothecaries left the audience with their master alive after taking oaths of secrecy. Their work began as they reached their parent divisions. Quietly laboratories were turned to blasphemous new research into the fields of biology and genetic manipulation. Their ultimate objective became the gene-seed of the legion and its workings. They toiled in secret to unlock its mysteries, and began to tamper with the manifest soul of the legion. The primarch's sickness began to spread as the fruits of their research were spread first to new recruits, then later to the veterans of the legion. Every legionnaire that came to the medicae for healing was infected by the black numbness that crippled Cromwald. With the aid of the Zealot's best experts in medicine the plague spread across the whole legion like wildfire, matched only by the spread of the "cure" brought by the faithful. Corruption ate at the heart of the Lions as more and more desperate marines turned to chaos to heal their affliction.

The Culling[edit]

Not every marine succumbed to the rot that festered at the legion's heart. The second division was largely inoculated against the blight by the clash against the greenskin menace of the Orlak Drift. Master Apothecary Sippeman died facing the Ork tides, leaving the proliferation of his dark research to stagnate. His apprentices continued their work, but progress was slowed by the clash against the alien hordes. The 2nd would be the most conflicted of the divisions in the face of the coming heresy, though they were not alone. Throughout the legion veteran marines unknowingly resisted the lure of chaos by evading the ministrations of their physicians. As heirs to the old stubbornness of the pre-primarch raiders, the holdouts persisted up until the coming heresy. With time running out before the outbreak of war, Cromwald and his faithful could not wait for the sickness to claim the legion fully. To cleanse his ranks of the loyalists he orchestrated a silent campaign of assassination. Elements of his divisions he could not sway were given the most hazardous assignments to whittle away their strength. As the strength of the loyalists within his ranks diminished, the faithful began quietly murdering their brethren when they were vulnerable. In most cases these killings remained discreet, though across the 2nd and 4th divisions firefights broke out as secrecy gave way to hasty violence. The traitors were able to silence the loyalists and prevent word escaping to the Emperor, but the purges bled much of their strength for the initial stages of the heresy.

Eve of Damnation[edit]

On the eve of the Heresy, the IXth legion stood at almost 130,000 strong. Quietly they had been building their strength to lend to Hektor's ambitions. To his banner they brought several fleets of swift and brutal warships, large formations of highly skilled rapid assault troops, and a respectable array of auxiliary forces upon which the Lion could draw. Among these stood an army of the mechanized Cramalthian Dragoons, and the swift knights of House Borgias. These troops had fought alongside the Lions across several campaigns, and had long proven themselves skilled allies in the high-speed warfare Cromwald's children pursued. These forces and more rallied around the five great divisions of the IXth to await their orders. The betrayals at Istvaan and Ostium marked the beginning of the long march. Crom had already briefed the marshals commanding his forces; each was intimately familiar with their targets and forces. First came the Keldim sector, marked as the start of a long and bloody harvest of imperial space. Across it and other sectors rapid campaigns were waged to feed the warmaster's rebellion. Shipyards and armories offered a surplus of captured weapons, and subjugated populations were conscripted, pressed to labor, or sacrificed to the dark gods. The first months of the long march saw Hektor's forces gifted a rallying point. At Keldim his troops could resupply and prepare for future conquests. Cromwald could not linger to savor his victory. The warmaster's grand campaign required decisive action, lest the Emperor's defenders rally to match their foe force for force. Mustering his legion he plunged headlong into a protracted campaign to pave the road to Terra. At his side stood Merrill, the bloody primarch of the Iron Rangers. With their combined forces they plowed forward in a twin-pronged assault into the flat-footed loyalists. Those who did not surrender or convert were ruthlessly slaughtered. For the first year of the war it seemed as if they were to march unopposed.

The Warpath[edit]

It was not until the Silver Cataphracts rose to meet the aggression head on that the wave of steel and madness was checked. At Troupo III Alexandri's finest clashed with the Lions Rampant in what would be remembered as one of the largest armored battles of the heresy. The brilliant maneuvers of the Lions 5th division were matched by the stubborn tenacity of the Cataphracts as they battled for the fuel-rich sands of the scorched planet. In the end the world was reduced to a barren wasteland; Alexandri's strategy of denial robbed the Lions of the infrastructure needed to harvest the material wealth of the system. This became the template for a long and bitter clash of legions. The Cataphracts waged a calculated withdrawal to bleed and slow the traitor advance. They defended what could be evacuated to their massing of troops on Terra, and fought to demolish what could not. Meanwhile the Lions pushed to capture war assets for their allies, using Merrill's hunters to decapitate enemy resistance while the swift riders pushed to outpace the loyalist soldiers. The campaign would leave its scars on all legions involved; warbands drawn from the Lions' gene-seed would celebrate the destruction of a Silver Cataphract successor for millennia to come.

Clash of Gods[edit]

The Turning Tide[edit]

Flight[edit]

With so many fresh legionaries mustering at Terra, there could be no option but to escape the inevitable scouring of the galaxy. Most of his brethren fled north, to the Eye of Terror. Cromwald's pride would not allow him to be so easily trapped and caged by the loyalist march. He commanded his legion to flee east, into the far reaches of Ultima Segmentum. They would split, giving the loyalist hounds more rabbits to chase than they could catch. Much of his legion would be lost, but the Lions would not be exterminated or confined so long as the war could continue. Each division struck its path to the eastern fringe, trusting in their swift vessels to ferry them to safety. That which could not keep up was left behind to fight and stall the loyalists for as long as possible. Hundreds of thousands of auxilia troops found themselves abandoned by their masters and left to be slaughtered by the vengeful legionaries of the loyalist scouring. The titans that accompanied the IXth were similarly cast aside; there simply was no means of maintaining such powerful and complex machines during the flight. Many of the Legio Martyax (the Man-Eaters) were destroyed as they fled to the maelstrom for safety, leaving a grudge against the Lions that would last for thousands of years to come. Despite casting off the slower Mechanicum and auxilia battlegroups, the Lions did not escape unbloodied. In a bitter stand at Hundis the entirety of the 4th division was surrounded and isolated by a joint strike force of both Silver Cataphracts and Void Angels. The Lions fought tooth and nail, but could not stand against the combined might of their former brethren. Hundis was reduced to a cinder once the last of the Lions' fleet had been destroyed, leaving a barren rock surrounded by burnt out husks. Other battles were waged in smaller scale as battalions were hounded by the vengeful Imperials. Alexandri himself commanded the destruction of the infamous Lionhearts, and in doing so avenged the Cataphracts' defeat at the agri-world of Sepnoy Terius some fifteen years before. In all, the Lions lost roughly half of the legion. When they finally reached the relative safety of the galactic rim to regroup Cromwald held command over a single reinforced division, stripped of much of its supporting forces.

Frontier, Conquest[edit]

With the Scouring ended, the Lions begin to move. Acting as a twisted parody of their efforts in the Great Crusade, they begin to raid the fringe systems of the outermost sectors of Imperial space. Originally treated as a minor threat, it is not until they begin to conquer systems aggressively that their low priority begins to scale up. In the meantime, they subjugate worlds in the name of Slaanesh, and Cromwald ascends to daemonhood for the debasement of whole populations billions strong.

Downfall[edit]

A crusade is put together to push back the tide of darkness sweeping along the outer edge of Imperial space, backed by numerous chapters of Astartes and regiments of Imperial Guard. In the end the conquest was too ambitious; the Lions are defeated, scattered and their primarch banished to the warp. As a legion the Lions are no more; they scatter and break up into warbands, many finding refuge in the immaterium. It is a blow they never fully recover from, even on the great black crusades.

Organization of the IXth Legion[edit]

Order of Battle[edit]

At its inception the IXth legion operated under the standard Terran pattern of organization. Organization across all ranks reflected the battle doctrine that had evolved from the unification wars, and formed the practical basis for the numerous expeditions spearheaded by the dour Highland Raiders. Though unremarkable, this manner in maintaining the legion was successful in keeping tally of losses and incorporating chapters into the Emperor's long crusade.

The discovery of Cromwald brought change to this longstanding tradition within the ranks. Raised and trained in the arts of war as exercised on Sommesgard, the Lion saw it necessary to restructure the legion in the image of his homeworld. He combined elements of Terran military structure with force allocation learned in the unity wars, and from this emerged the quintet of primary divisions that would form the backbone of the legion's strength. More notable than the dynamic shift in the legion's militant assets was the wholesale embrace of civilian elements as part of the IXth's order of battle. The iterator and remembrancer corps held a presence among every legion, but the Lions did not merely tolerate or accept them. These capable historians, scholars and diplomats were wholly embraced by the Lions and regularly were inducted into the organizational structure of the legion at multiple levels of command. While never given battlefield control of astartes, their words and advice were given weight similar to that of astartes specialists by the officers in the field.

In the wake of Cromwald's reforms, the legion stood as five distinct, separate entities. These divisions stood at a nominal strength of twenty-five thousand marines, all commanded by a Field Marshal. Under this umbrella fall a quintet of brigades, over which stands a Brigadier. For each division the first brigade is a dedicated heavy armor formation, where the majority of the legion's heavy and superheavy assets are gathered. Remaining brigades are predominantly infantry, though the particular allocation of materiel differs between divisions. Comprising each brigade are multiple battalions of roughly one thousand marines, commanded by a Major. These battalions are formed from companies of one hundred under a collection of captains, which are then further broken into sections and then into individual squads of nine marines and a sergeant.

The clear organization developed in the wake of Cromwald's discovery affords a doctrine of gathered strength, and relies on each division being its own autonomous whole. To this end, each of the five possess fleet and logistical elements to engage in protracted crusades wholly removed from allied astartes support, and hold dedicated auxilia and retainer forces tied to the Field Marshal's command. These top generals are the highest authority among the legion bar one: the command battalion serving as the primarch's personal retainers. This organizational entity exists outside of the divisional structure of the legion, and cycles between the five primary divisions as the needs of the crusade mandate. As the primarch arrives command is ceded from the Field Marshal for the duration of time Cromwald deems necessary, during which he acts as supreme command for all forces under the Lions' control. Once the period if need has passed, the Field Marshal is restored to sovereignty over his division, and the primarch moves on.

A final segregation from the core divisional strength of the legion is the sixth recruitment division. While nominally commanded by a Field Marshal and held at similar strength to the main combat divisions, the reality is that the majority of the sixth's strength lay in recruits and trainees still undergoing implantation. The number of full blooded astartes on the rolls varies wildly as training companies are fully inducted into the legion and await reassignment, but the average tends towards a core of one thousand veterans, with another thousand legionaries either freshly graduated or recently rotated away from combat duty.

Specialist Units[edit]

  • Goshawk Squads

The utility afforded by jump packs extends far beyond the common use in assault formations. As part of the Lion's arsenal, jump packs are afforded to specialist teams attached to the command structure with the important task of providing forward observation of the enemy and communication of their intentions. These Goshawk squads are daredevils, bold marines hand chosen for their insane courage and supreme skill in operating in isolation from friendly lines. They are outfitted with sophisticated auspex equipment and powerful extended range vox units. With this wargear they intrude into enemy territory and set up forward observation posts in defiance of the enemies guns, then relay coordinates for the legion's firepower to crush the foe.

  • Warden Counter-Assault Squads

Lions' doctrine affords hand to hand combat as an essential skill of every marine, but advises against charging into the enemy's guns. Instead, a doctrine of marines equipped for and tasked with counter-assault was developed. These formations are equipped with combat shields and power blades in addition to their standard kit, and form a reserve that deploy where the enemy has gathered strength for a charge. Should the foe brave the storm of bolter fire laid down by the tactical squads, the Wardens surge forward to check the enemy's momentum and shatter their cohesion in close quarters.

  • Predator "Lancer" Formations

Armored doctrine of the Lions was largely pioneered by the Lionhearts, who formed the first Lancer formation. Consisting of three tanks of varying patterns, the Lancer is a spearhead used to outpace and slay the largest enemy vehicles and beasts. Two vehicles, typically autocannon equipped predators or vindicator siege tanks form the jaws of the unit, while a third vanquisher pattern predator forms the spearhead. Upon identifying the target, the vanquisher engages at range, hobbling the enemy with precise fire to the treads or legs. With the enemy crippled, the jaws spring shut, pounding the crippled prey with merciless heavy ordnance.

Fleet Assets[edit]

Notable Allies/Auxilia[edit]

  • The Cramalthian Dragoons (Imperial Army)

The bold men of Cramal rose to prominence in service to the Lion. Borne to an industrialized world burdened with a swelling population and natural resources better suited to the foundries than the bellies of their children, these men adopted an autocratic regime to closely ration the wealth of their world while scientists raced to pioneer a road to their verdant world of Bounty. They were discovered at the turning point in their history, when the initial invasion landed to claim Bounty from her inhabitants in a tide of steel and flame. The Lions' arrival ended the blooding of the Cramalthian army prematurely, yet in doing so made an offer far greater than the oligarchs could have imagined. Impressed by the armored might of the relatively backwater world, Geoffrey the Lionheart offered them the resources of the burgeoning Imperium to feed their people, and the technical expertise to produce ever greater engines of war. His terms demanded only the loyal service of the fighting men of Cramal on the long crusade to come. The oligarchs saw the opportunity to alleviate the strains of overpopulation, and agreed to the pact. Regiments were raised and equipped with new weapons and vehicles to take their banner to the stars. At war, the Cramalthian Dragoons adhere to a doctrine of ironclad cavalry, using their tanks and personnel carriers in lieu of flesh and blood horses. They are a swift force reliant on overwhelming firepower to smash the enemy under their treads. This complements the more nimble Lions, who often outpace their allies with their rapid deployments and unparalleled mobility.

  • House Borgias (Imperial Knights)

Fast movers, almost uniformly outfitted to keep pace with their peers in the Lions

  • Legio Martyax, the Man Eaters (Titan Legion)

In the wake of the battle for Berau, few among the Lions Rampant would have expected Cromwald to turn to the titans of the Mechanicum for aid. It was by their hand his arm had been lost on the fields of his homeworld. Despite the Emperor's reconciliation of both parties, the cynical veterans of the legion were bitter towards the priests of Mars. They were guilty of leaving them with a broken primarch, to match their broken and ignoble legion. In the wake of the reformation it then came as a shock when Cromwald approached the high princeps of the very legion responsible for his injury with terms of alliance. He knew well the power of the titans of Mars, and wished to join them to the strength of his astartes. It took time to negotiate the terms of authority, but the titans agreed to be the primarch's answer to the most stubborn and entrenched of foes. Legio Martyax marches to war in livery of deep, bloody red edged in lustrous silver. Their titans are predatory things, equipped with laud hailers to allow the snarling roars of the vicious machine spirits to terrify the enemy. With each engine of war given a deaths' head visage, they are truly unsettling to face in battle; on longer campaigns foes would learn to fear the sign of the gaping blue maw, knowing it heralded monsters hungry for carnage.

Elite Formations[edit]

  • The Lionhearts

The first brigade, third division have borne the title of their first and greatest lord marshal in the wake of the victory over the hulking Tsulkik xenos. When faced with the terrifying alien juggernauts, the lord marshal gathered his armored assets to meet the lumbering enemy armor on the field of battle. It was here that the first "Lancer" formation of vanquisher equipped predator and vindicator tanks was fielded. With mobility on their side, they harried the xeno war machines at extreme range, driving the enemy forces into disarray. What followed was a bold assault to finish the disorganized xeno armor, with the marshal's land raider "Indomitable" forming a mailed fist that hammered through the enemy guns. Lauded for their victory, the armored might of the 3rd division have since proven time and again that their courage will not be broken. Since the initial christening, the Lionhearts have refined the armored doctrine further. The Lancer formation now forms the backbone of their strength, with other patterns of tank supporting the vanquishers when enemy armor is engaged. Always the Lionhearts pursue aggressive, direct tactics; their penchant for focused aggression and dauntless courage continues under the command of marshal Basil Heart, who leads in the wake of his mentor.

Culture of the IXth[edit]

The Primarch's Influence[edit]

Core Worlds[edit]

Recruitment[edit]

In the early days of the crusade, the Highland Raiders were drawn from the conquered warriors of northern Albyon and stretches of Franc. The men chosen to become astartes were selected on account of their hardiness and indomitable spirit. As part of the recruitment rites, applicants were subjected to numerous tests of will and fortitude by their people. These culminated in a sojourn across the wintry wastes of the Albyon highlands to the transports responsible for claiming the tithe of men. Only those who could brave the bitter cold and savage fauna to reach their new masters would become the Emperor's warriors.

The newly augmented marines then faced the crucible of war with only a basic indoctrination period. Training and discipline were instilled rapidly over a scant handful of years before feeding the men into the furnace of battle. This made for a high rate of attrition to the Raider's forces, but also forged a core body of seasoned warriors from those who endured, and reinforced the culture of unbreakable will and grim resolve.

With the coming of Cromwald, this practice changed dramatically. During the restructuring of the legion he shifted recruitment from the wastes of Terra to the now flourishing world of Sommesgard, and instated new methods of drawing troops from their human stock. At first, a decree was issued that his marines would be recruited from the children the planetary defense corps officer ranks. This led to an influx of young men of pedigree, all of whom had been indoctrinated from early childhood to a military mindset. This worked for a time, but the needs of the crusade would mandate before the decade was out that a broader base of manpower was needed. To that end, an edict was passed that all young men of viable age born to the military arm of the Lions' homeworld would be registered for conscription. Academies were raised to train the youth of the world to meet the needs of the legion; they offered education in tactics, sciences, humanities and the arts. These schools became some of the most prestigious institutions across the face of the Sommesgard, and acceptance into one was a high honor. With such a reputation as these universities garnered many became exclusive due to high cost of entry and tuition, which ensured few without wealth and influence could join the illustrious roll as students. These children were groomed to one day become leaders among Lions, serving to guide their brothers drawn from lesser classes by means of draft lotteries and mass conscription.

On the day of conscription, every prospective recruit faces his first taste of life among the Emperor's vanguard. The young men are grouped together and subjected to a week of constant trial, pitting them against their peers. Each group must complete several objectives, scattered across a broad stretch of land cultivated to be difficult to navigate, all while knowing that those who fail lose their chance to become space marines. Dubbed the Crucible, it weeds out those who lack the spirit to become more than men, and is judged by a panel of captains in command of the recruiting companies. They choose candidates to fill out fresh platoons to replace those already graduated to one of the crusading fleets using not the success of the mission as their measure, but of the performance of the men as they face a task meant to be nearly impossible. Those who falter, despair or break in the face of insurmountable odds are seldom given a chance to be any more than a legion serf or servitor. Meanwhile, those who exhibit fortitude of will, cunning, and an indomitable spirit are taken to the vast training grounds surrounding the legion fortress to begin their implantation and training.

The Great Divisions[edit]

Gods Among Men: Notable Figures[edit]

  • Basil Heart, Field Marshal and commander of the 3rd division

Heart stood apart from his peers of Terran stock as being singularly aggressive and proud, with a far less stoic demeanor. A champion tactician, Basil swiftly earned the watchful eye of his superiors for inspired battlefield command first on the tactical level, then after a time on the strategic level as well. His sharp mind and pioneering grasp of armored warfare saw him elevated to the rank of equerry to Geoffrey Calsth of the Sacred Band, whose command over much of the legion's armored might made him a kindred spirit and mentor to the young Raider. Calsth, dubbed the Lionheart, was a fearless tanker and lord of war; he took young Basil Heart and molded him into an equally fearsome master of arms. Long after the coming of the primarch and the restructuring of the legion into the five divisions, it was widely known that on Calsth's passing the 3rd would fall to his protege. With the fall of the legion Basil would become one of Cromwald's most capable champions. His was the first division to wholly embrace the lust for high speed warfare that formed from the primarch's sickness, and blended it with the love for the thunder of heavy tracked vehicles. His pride in such things became his downfall, as he took great pains to ensure that his Lionhearts were the greatest unit in the legion, and the most loyal to their primarch. When Cromwald bid him step into the darkness he leaped headlong into damnation to stand by his lord's side.

A Legion Fallen and Fragmented[edit]

The already divided organization of the Lions Rampant did little to prevent the splintering of the legion. Before his banishment to the warp, Cromwald maintained supreme control as the chosen of Slaanesh. Upon losing their leader, however, the Lions fragmented under lesser warlords. Their armies and warbands began to build their own infamy across the centuries.

The Hollow Legion[edit]

The Lions Claws[edit]

Formed around an armored brigade that split from the legion, they are a horde of vehicle mounted marines that delight in the thunder of treads and the roar of big guns. Praising Slaanesh from their iron steeds, they raid for slaves and victims to satisfy their need for violence, flesh and souls. Their master reportedly feeds his Vanquisher pattern Predator tank the blood and souls of his victims to bring the daemon within to compliance. Where the tank rides, it is accompanied by the tortured screams and ecstatic howls of those condemned to the daemon's clutches.

The Space Marine Legions of the /tg/ Heresy
Loyalist: The Entombed - Eyes of the Emperor - Scale Bearers - Silver Cataphracts
Steel Marshals - Stone Men - Thunder Kings - Void Angels - War Scribes
Traitor: Black Augurs - The Justiciars - Eternal Zealots - Heralds of Hektor
Iron Rangers - Life Bringers - Lions Rampant - Mastodontii - Sons of Fire
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