Mastodontii

"Yesterday is wood; tomorrow ashes. Only today does the fire burn brightly."

Mastodontii
Battle Cry	"For the Homeland! For Ötztal!"
Number	XXIV
Founding	First Founding
Successors of	N/A
Successor Chapters	None
Primarch	Tollund Ötztal
Homeworld	Tisenjoch
Strength	120,000 at the beginning of the Heresy.
Specialty	Armoured Warfare
Allegiance	Chaos Undivided
Colours	Ice and Ivory

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

Summary of Legion XXIV

Numeration: The XXIVth Legion

Primogenator: Tollund Ötztal

Cognomen (Prior): The Steel Wing

Observed Strategic Tendencies: Armoured Warfare, Combined Arms Assaults, Liberation Operations

Noteworthy Domains: The Tisenjoch System (Primary), Tithe Rights to the Nunavitan Cities and Wrangyl on Terra.

Alliegence: Traitoris Perdita

‘The greatest battles are not physical but psychological. Our inner demons telling us to give up when we push ourselves to the limit can never be silenced for good. They must always be answered by the quiet, the steady dignity that simply refuses to give in. Courage. We all suffer. Keep going.’ Ice-Shaman Qitsualik

Few had motives more pure, and yet fell so far as the Mastodontii. Their Primarch, the tragic Tollund Ötztal believed firmly in the cause of the Great Crusade and was willing to shed the blood of his men in their defence. And yet they fell, and became the very monsters they were dedicated to fighting, the very monsters who now prey about the people they once fought the crusade to liberate.

The Mastadontii were like a glacier, a slow moving tidal wave of armour that could sweep away any foe. Hailing from the frigid tundra world of Tisenjoch, where great rolling cities skate across the ice and steppe, the Mastodontii made extensive use of vehicles for rapid deployments and heavy support. Despite their frigid world, they were optimistic by nature, and would keep trying until they persevered, hammering foes into submission with heavy armour. They joined the traitors when their idealism in the Imperium was destroyed, and they saw the Imperium as the rapidly stagnating form it was becoming, with Chaos offering the only solution.

Unit Organization and Structure within the Legion

The Mastodontii Legion was a highly structured though not entirely inflexible military force, with numerous tactical and strategic divisions of power and organisations within its ranks. Before the discovery of their Primarch, the Steel Wing Legion had been rigidly dogmatic in its adherence to the patterns set out for the nascent Legions at the start of the Great Crusade though with as bias towards armoured assaults with close air support, and Tollund Ötztal deliberately went out of his way to ensure that despite the changes he wrought to more closely resemble the systems of his frigid homeworld, the Legion would not change beyond all recognition from what had gone before, building upon what had gone before.

The principal strategic building block of the Mastodontii Legion was the Mingghan, or Brigade. This was a combined arms formation, which in addition to the standard 1,000 line Space Marine Legionaries also incorporated a very substantial amount of standing armour, artillery and logistical support elements, attendant human auxiliary troops, Mechanicum detachments and integrated support structures far beyond that found in other Legions at the same level. This meant that each Mastodontii Mingghan was a powerful offensive force in its own right, capable of independent action. Inside an Mingghan, the component formations were configured and ordered in such a way that each unit's function combined together to form a gestalt whole whose tactical and strategic capabilities, like the components of a machine working together in unison, were capable of actions outweighed by the sum of their parts. In battle each Mingghan was given a specific task or objective which it was expected to fulfil, and succeed it would at any cost, for pride, honour and belief in themselves and their cause would allow no other outcome.

Farther down, the Mingghan broke down into several Tzuun, or Battalions. Each was a heavily mechanised and reinforced unit comprising three to five mechanized line companies of Legionaries and two to three armour cohorts, with supporting detachments. Below this were the Line Companies and Armour Cohorts, comprising roughly 100 Legionaries or 20-40 armoured vehicles, down through sections and individual squads. Tank detachments in the Legion were comprised of four vehicles, slightly above that of the usual three vehicle sections found in other legions to better absorb losses.

Legion Equipment

Of foremost note within the Mastodontii Legion was the range, number and diversity of the armoured vehicle and artillery support assets fielded by them, with only the armoured formations of the Machine Guard coming close. The Steel Wing Legion had always had an armoured bend to them, and with the mechanically minded Ötztal taking over and renaming them, their specialization in armoured warfare reached new heights. Their armoured component was known to include the full breadth of all general patterns and designs of armour operated across the Imperium by the Legiones Astartes, with tactical emphasis placed on heavy units such as the Land Raider and super-heavy war machines such as the Typhon, Stormblade and especially the vehicle most commonly identified with the legion, the Mastodon heavy transport. Additionally, the employment of very large numbers of "lesser" classes such as the Rhino, Basilisk and Predator was also common. In addition, the Mastodontii were known to operate large numbers of more unusual variant tanks and specialised war machines such as the Cerberus Heavy Tank Destroyer, Whirlwind Scorpius, Spynx Recon Carrier and Thunderstrike Assault Gun. Because of their dedication and emphasis on armoured warfare, the Mastodontii had the largest armoured reserve of any of the Legions of the Great Crusade.

Legion Doctrine

The legion put great emphasis on repairing and restoring damaged vehicles, and many of the vehicles in the legion were ones that had been damaged in battle many times only to be restored every time. Those vehicles who had survived many great battles, and who had overcome damage and destruction countless times were greatly honoured by the Legion, and adorned with Mastodon Tusks and pelts to honour the machine spirits of such mighty war machines. Mastodontii commanders took all sorts of esoteric concepts from their homeworld up into the void with them after their sudden and enforced leap in technological progress brought about by contact with the Imperium, and ancient ideals of spirits, honour and balance still counted for a great deal within the Legion. This meant others looked down on them as primitive and shamanistic, barely tamed savages who treated their tanks more like armoured steeds then war machines.

At the outset of the Hektor Heresy, the Mastodontii Legion is commonly estimated to have had an operational strength in excess of 120,000 Astartes, with a huge operating reserve of wargear and supplies and many tens of thousands of armoured vehicles, alongside a diverse fleet of around a hundred capital vessels of various classes. This placed the Mastodontii within the mid-tier of Space Marine Legion strengths, but in general terms, their resources in armour, wargear, war materiel and supply made them a considerably greater military power in practice than their sheer number would suggest.

Tollund Ötztal, Primarch of The Mastodontii Legion

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

Tisenjoch, the Steppe World

Jäakäri, the Legion Auxilia

The Tisenjoch Jäakäri (pronounced yay-kar-ree) are the Legion Auxilia and vanguard of the Mastodontii Tank Legions. Composed of men and women from the rural areas of Tisenjoch as opposed to the mobile sled-city dwellers who make up the bulk of the Legion, they have excellent fieldcraft skills and have the task of clearing mines, marking routes and clearing out enemy anti-tank ahead of the armoured columns from the Legion. As the Legion falls into darkness, so to do the Jäakäri, as blood rituals and totems become ever more common in their ranks.

Post-Heresy

After stabilising what remained of the Imperium; the Lords of Terra turned their eyes to the homeworlds of the Traitor Legions, and a combined force of Silver Cataphracts and Void Angels, under the personal command of Alexandri was given the honour of reclaiming Tisenjoch. One by one the great mobile cities that plied the frozen tundra and great ice-plains were overcome and destroyed.

The defenders, the Tisenjoch Jäakäri and the few Mastodontii still left on world, fought back as best they could. Still heeding the last words of the Chosen of the ṣālman, none dared to question the righteousness of their cause. Their hearts were full of sorrow, for the coming of the enemy meant that the Emperor’s dream had failed, and that they were the last warriors of his memory.

There would be only one result to this war; a triumphant Imperium. The tragedy of this conflict would only come to light when the few surviving Mastodontii were interrogated for the location of their primarch. The defenders believed themselves the final guardians of the Emperor’s dream, the invading force, to them, were the traitors. As the truth was told, many refused to accept that their primarch could have discarded them. Others wept as it struck chords within them, their souls telling them all they needed to know. Those left behind were the ones who Ötztal had been unable to taint, those too noble and pure of spirit.

For their virtues, they had led their people into a massacre. A remembrancer of Alexandri’s fleet penned the words for this most harrowing of events; “Tisenjoch, burnt to ashes, bloodied by war. Though enemies, though foes; only loyal sons of the Emperor died that day.”

Not only was every inhabitant slaughtered in the foolish war, the culture and legacy of the world was also obliterated. In the centuries to come, the planet was transformed into the Tisenjoch of today. The great open steppe became host to towering hives and smoke-belching factories that drove many of the native animals, including the great Mastodons, to extinction. Though spared the horror of Exterminatus, Tisenjoch was instead sentenced to become but a simple, anonymous cog in the Imperial machine. For century after century it has quietly and unremarkably produced its worth in goods and regiments for the wider Imperium, oblivious to the horrors of its dark past.