Tollund Ötztal

Tollund Ötztal
Title/Honours	The Steel Mastodon
Discovered (world)	Tisenjoch
Discovered (period)	c.842.M30
Legion	Twenty-fourth
Heraldry/Sigil

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.

Youth

Tisenjoch is a world of great open steppes, and cold glaciars, locked in an eternal ice age. The people there live in great mobile towns that follow the herds of Mastodon as they trek back and forth. Life is hard, and the clans were ruled by a caste of tech-priests who maintained their mobile homes. Trade and Warfare between the great mobile towns was common, with battles between them akin to the naval battles of old Terra, with small high-speed ground-carts duelling in the shadow of the mobile towns as they pounded away at one another.

It was into this world that Ötztal was hurled. As luck would have it, he was discovered by a foraging party and taken to the mobile town of Umbaraka. There he swiftly grew to maturity, gaining his first Mastodon Kill at age 10, and making a spear for himself out of its tusks. Then came the day his town was assaulted and taken by a great mobile city, Maiyebord. His family and friends were enslaved, and he too was forced to work in the great machine pits beneath the rolling city, helping to keep it moving.

Ötztal was always an optimistic soul, who saw that there was always a solution, a way out. Even in slavery he refused to ever give up. He could not see the point in the towns fighting. There was plenty of space and food to go around, and he would not take the strong simply taking for the sake of it. He swore to unite all the peoples, and end the wars which plagued his home.

Five times he tried to escape. Four times he was recaptured. The angry city-dwellers had him cuffed, collared, and hung great weights from his limbs, all in an effort to prevent him, but he would never give up. Ever. And finally he escaped, and fled from the rolling city into the steppes.

He found another town, and upon meeting their leaders convinced them to join him. So he set off, uniting rolling town after rolling town into a league of mobile cities, and storming and taking those who refused to join him. Finally he led a mighty assault on Maiyebord, only to find his once-family were already dead. Enraged, he had all the rulers of the city staked out in the steppe and trampled to death by Mastodons.

The Coming of The Emperor

Several years later, the Emperor came to Tisenjoch and Ötztal met with him. The meeting was cool at first, and Ötztal instinctively distrusted this outsider. Eventually he challenged him to a hunt. The one to claim the larger Mastodon would win. Ötztal spent a month tracking he great herds, until he brought down a mighty beast. But upon returning to Neu Umbaraka, he found the Stranger had claimed two, both bigger by far than his. Ötztal was enraged, and tried to attack the stranger, but the stranger easily defeated him, and revealed himself as his true Father, the Emperor. Even then there was acrimony, but finally Ötztal was convinced to leave his world and take command of the XXIV Legion, the Steel Wing, which he renamed the Mastodontii

The Great Crusade

The Legion that now re-joined the Great Crusade gained a dual reputation as both mystic savages, and saviours of humanity. Their archaic customs, their introversion and exceptionalism drew notice. They still willingly deployed their forces to support others all across the Crusade, but now they were a closed book, immersed in their own superstitions, prone to lapsing into inscrutability. They were said to talk to their armoured steeds, to carve runes of warding and witnessing upon them and decorate them with totems and fetishes. They treated their tanks as more than just warmachines, as if they had souls of their own, which brought them into conflict with some sects of the Mechanicum.

The Tisenjochans who soon began to make up a disproportionate number of the Legion became known for treating battle as an art form, for taking great joy in the tasks they had to do, though they never lost a clear-headed concern for practicalities. They were observed to wear their genhancement lightly. A certain kind of self-effacing courtesy seemed to come naturally to them, which made them among the easiest Legions to work with for the Imperial Army, though unlike their previous form as the Steel Wing they remained elusive, closed to outsiders and loath to take orders they saw as foolhardy.

The deeply held superstations of Tisenjoch soon began to dominate among the Legion as well. The belief in fate, the pattern of time, the will of heaven and the spirits of the ice. The Ice-Shamen of Tisenjoch became a powerful force within the Legion, though decried as primitive by the Librarians of other Legions for their refusal to dig too deeply into the Warp.

The Lenard Deeps

"There is a darkness, a callousness in this Legion. They have cold hearts and bitter souls, they use their sons as cannon fodder, drink deep of slaughter but take no nourishment from it. I fear for those who will have to face them in battle in the future."

Ice Shaman Aqavuit after the destruction of Rosean

The Campaign of Astral Woe was one of the first events that began the slow decline of the Mastodontii Legion into darkness. What was supposed to be a chance for two Legions to serve alongside each other in collaborative effort, and thus bond and strengthen each other, nearly led to bloodshed and disaster, and set doubts into the Legion’s mind as to the righteousness of their cause.

Origins: The Souls of the Ice Worlds

Seeing the need to nurture the Silver Cataphracts Legion as its Primarch integrated Himself into the Imperium and became part of the Crusade, the Emperor asked Tollund Ötztal to mentor Alexandri and his Legion, a chance for the Cataphracts to borrow a little gloss from Ötztal’s glory by association and example by serving alongside them in the pacification of the Lenard Deeps. Though Ötztal’s Legion was scattered across the stars and barely a third was with his Fifty-First Expeditionary Fleet, Ötztal willingly agreed to his Father’s request. He had met and got along well with many of his Brothers, and believed likewise with another son of an ice world. He believed that similarity would encourage understanding, but in his case this sentiment would shatter under the weight of reality. For rarely would there be two beings who on the surface so closely resembled each other, and yet were separated by a greater chasm.

Ötztal and Alexandri of Rosskar met several times to plan out the compliance campaign, and it is believed that it was during this time that the first cracks opened. Alexandri’s ruthlessness in his battle plans was at odds with the leniency Ötztal was prepared to show in order to convince human foes to side with them, believing that a true show of strength was in not simply destroying all before them, and in enlisting human allies to aid them in the struggle. Though these concerns were swept aside, they merely started the slippery slope towards disaster.

Discord and Defiance

The initial push was highly successful, in large part due to the support of the Sons of Fire, though Ötztal was privately dismayed at the ruthlessness of the Sons of Fire and the pyres they made of the words they assaulted, as well as the pyromania many in that Legion exhibited. However the initial assault drove two of the larger empires in the Deeps, the Technocracy of Rosean and Grand Principality of Devkar to unite against the Imperial forces. However Ötztal meet with and secured the alliance with a human Confederacy, which he cited as a great triumph, bringing a slew of human worlds into the Imperial Fold.

Rosean was the next target, but it would prove to be a difficult nut to crack. Ötztal however had spoken to Rosean captives taken in the void battles, and believed that a peaceful solution was possible. On his own initiative, he opened a dialogue with the lords of Rosean, and ordered the fleet to refrain from offensive action. However Alexandri ignored this edict and by throwing a moon into the mainly aquatic homeworld of Rosen, destroyed the mighty civilization in an instant. It is known that Ötztal sent an urgent communique to Hektor complaining about Alexandri’s actions and requesting Hektor to speak with the new Primarch, and that Alexandri was furious when he found out, believing that Ötztal was turning the First Primarch against him.

After this event, the Imperial Forces moved on to the territory of the Gaggosh, though relations between the two legions were now strained. With this event the Confederacy immediately switched sides, firing upon the Imperial Fleet with their own ships before withdrawing, leaving the Imperial Forces to fight great bloody clashes to take place on the surface of the Gaggoshi worlds.

As It turned out the Confederacy were long standing allies of the Gaggosh, who they saw as kindred by this point. In yet another move above the chain of command Alexandri had ships of his own legion level the undefended Confederacy planets, destroying a number of habitable worlds in what Ötztal would later term ‘the greatest waste in the history of the Crusade. Though this event ended the war with the Gaggosh, it only deepened tensions on the Imperial Side, and clashes between Imperial Army forces on both sides, most notably between the Rosskan Strelky and Tisenjoch Jäakäri, became more and more frequent.

Legions at their throats

Heaping misfortune upon discord, the Principality turned on the Imperial forces, and even recently compliant worlds including the Rosean sub-states began to bubble with rebellion. With the campaign now stalled with a desperate need for reinforcements that weren’t available, this led to the Primarch of the Silver Cataphracts to declare that the sector was beyond redemption. Every last world would be crushed, repopulated, and all the history of these places was to be buried and gone. Ötztal, horrified, declared that as commander of the campaign he would condone no such action. Words became arguments, which became actions as the two clashed, with Ötztal breaking Alexandri’s jaw and ordering him ejected from the Campaign, his Legion to leave the Lenard Deeps immediately.

Alexandri complied but as his Legion left it fell upon the compliant worlds one by one only to butcher the populace no matter how much they cried for mercy and cleanse them as he had intended. The Mastodontii finally herded the Cataphracts off and the two fleets met over the dead wreckage of Rosean itself, where the two legions would have come to blows were not for the combined delegation of Great-Marshal Alexey, Grand Officer of the Legion Sergei, Spearhead Centurion Nymylan, First Master Kutkh, Overseer of Operations Byk, Captain Nomenir, and Coven Master Galash of the Witchborn. These individuals were able to stay the hand of the Primarchs and prevent their fleets from firing on one another. Kutkh and Nymylan came as they were the closest and most active representatives to the Cataphracts from their Legion, by they did not expect the open and violent threats made by Alexandri's officers, with the exception of Alexey who stayed starkly silent.

Blood and Misunderstanding

Legion rivalries were common, but very rarely did they come close to such bloodshed and horror as in the Campaign of Astral Woe. What came worst for Ötztal was that the Emperor refused to censure or even discipline Alexandri for his actions. Though Hektor was sympathetic, he could do little (For though first among Primarchs, his power then was little compared to his ascension as Warmaster) and Alexandri escaped punishment. Ötztal never forgot the campaign, having one of his Battle Barges named the ‘Rosean’ (Later to be the lead Legion ship of the Rosskan Invasion Force, serving there until the end of the campaign when it was destroyed by Alexandri’s Flagship and lost with all hands) and recruiting Marines from those worlds his forces had spared. It is now believed that the mental and emotional wounds from that campaign let Chaos seep into Ötztal’s soul, and began his path to damnation.

Tollund Ötztal, the Steel Mastodon, Chosen of the ṣālman, Ice-Chief of Tisenjoch, Primarch of the Mastodonti

WS7 BS5 S6 T6 W6 I6 A3 LD10 SV3+/3++

Unit Composition •1 (Unique)

Unit Type •Infantry (Character)

Wargear •The Mammoth’s Hide •Tizheruk •Glaciarax

Special Rules •Primarch •Speaker of the Machine •Sire of the Mastadontii •Very Bulky •Vidutana

Options •May replace Tizheruk with Icebreaker for +25pts

Sire of the Mastadontii

Ötztal is revered by his sons as the warm heart of a Legion born of ice, who spurs his sons on to victory at every turn.

Speaker of the Machine

Ötztal has an affinity for the Machine Spirits of his Legion, and can communicate with them. All models with Power of the Machine Spirit gain IWND, and in addition models with the Battlesmith rule may re-roll when repairing vehicles in a force containing Ötztal.

The Mammoth’s Hide

Adorned with totems of warding and relics of the great hunts he has done, the Mammoth’s Hide is a mighty warsuit fit for the Lord of the Mastadontii. The Mammoth’s Hide confers a 3+/3++ save, and in addition he may re-roll his Deny the Witch Rolls and has the Monster-Hunter special Rule.

Tizheruk

This Ancient Spear, remade from Ötztal’s broken original by the Emperor is a deadly weapon, fast and brutal and perfect for killing great beasts.

Tizheruk (Combat) Range: Melee Strength: 9 Ap: 2 Type: Melee, Two Handed, First Strike, Heartrend Heartrend: Every unsaved would caused by Tizheruk in a challenge or against a Monstrous Creature is multiplied into D3 wounds.

Icebreaker

This Dark Maul, forged with the powers of the Warp Unchained, was given to Tollund by the Primarch Aubrey as mark of brotherly fidelity.

Icebreaker Range: Melee Strength: 10 Ap: 1 Type: Melee, Two Handed, Unwieldy, Armourbane, Sunder

Glaciarax An ancient weapon that projects a stream of liquid nitrogen to freeze solid any foe.

Glaciarax Range: Template Strength: 6 Ap: 3 Type: Assault 1, Sheer Cold

Sheer Cold: for each unsaved wound taken from Glaciarax, the target has to pass a Strength test or be removed from play.

Vidutana: In 3000+ point games, Ötztal can take this special transport for 500 points. Vidutana is a Legion Stormblade with a void shield, a transport capacity of 15, the Command Tank upgrade, and a rear access point. In addition it doesn't take up a Lord of War slot.