Editing Legio Maleficarum

The Imperium faces many foes in its eternal war: xenos, perfidious rebels, heretics that spread corruption and discontent. But greatest among Mankind's enemies are undoubtedly the magics of Chaos and the Immaterium. Its presence serves only to infect and corrupt, and its tendrils seep deep into the souls of those who embrace it. It births from the nothingness of the Warp countless monsters, subhuman daemons that thirst for blood of innocents and desire destruction above all else. The legions of Chaos come like a storm, sweeping across worlds in a hurricane that destroys cities and armies. To fight it with tanks and lasguns is futile, as daemons are beings of a different existence, and their very presence curses the minds of lesser men with fear and infidelity. But among the great hosts of the Imperium there are warriors who possess the tools to remove the blight of the Warp; Among them are the Sisters of Battle, the Ordo Malleus who devote their resources to fighting the forces of ruin, the Grey Knights who stand above all the Adeptus Astartes. But there is one force among these who bring the might of the God-machines to bear against false deities: the dread psi-titans of Legio Maleficarum, the Hammer of the Witches.

=Hammer of the Witches=
In the centuries preceding Hektor's betrayal the Emperor had devoted humanity to a crusade of unprecedented scale, in an effort to change Mankind into a singular people of reason and deprive the Chaos Gods of the anarchy they so desired. The Imperium of Man mercilessly stamped out falsehoods and superstition, destroying millennia-old religions without so much as a whisper as to why the Emperor would take such lengths. He even hid the existence of Chaos, the Imperium's truest and greatest enemy, from his most trusted Primarchs. Even with their ignorance - or perhaps because of it - the Primarchs fell to the ruinous powers one by one, until Hektor began his great rebellion against the Emperor and showed the galaxy the might of Chaos. 

The traitors unleashed upon the Imperium the nightmares of the Warp. Legions of daemons spilled into real space, spreading Chaos and confusion among the worlds. As the Emperor's vision fell apart, Malcador the Sigillite pursued the future of the Imperium. He began many organizations to safeguard the Imperium against Chaos, including what would become Legio Maleficarum. He sought Kalkas Tygian, the stalwart Fabricator-General of the Mechanicum, and pleaded with him to assist in the creation of a powerful new weapon. The two collaborated, and mixed their respective institutions' darkest secrets in Malcador's cauldron. The Sigillite provided countless volumes' worth of information on Chaos, and instructions for advanced sigils and rites; the Fabricator-General gave the secrets of titan construction, the most sacred ritual of all the Mechanicum. A dedicated team of the greatest techpriests and adepts worked to fuse magic with metal, and designed the first psi-titans that would form the fighting arm of Legio Maleficarum. 

The adepts were loathe that the construction of the first titan would take centuries to build, and the legion would not be ready for battle for a thousand years; this Malcador knew, and approved the project nonetheless. To house the legion Malcador selected a location so remote and obscured that nobody could stumble upon it by accident for a million years: the largest moon of the lost world Tyche, a ninth planet hidden in the Oort Cloud of the Sol System. Techpriests and servitors erected the gantries and shrines in a crater on that moon, named Malleus Obscurus, and by the end of the Great Scouring began construction on the first psi-titan. It would not be until mid-M32 when the legion was up to strength, but that time had been well-spent, as the end-product exceeded any other force in the Imperium in its ability to fight the daemonic hordes of Chaos.

==The Moon of Tyche==
Far beyond the light of Sol, in the Oort Cloud, there is a lonesome world of ice and blackness. Around the gas supergiant Tyche orbits Malleus Obscurus, the secret bastion of the Adeptus Mechanicus's most illusive legion, so remote that only a few privileged souls, such as those in the High Lords of Terra and the upper echelons of the Machine Cult, even know such a place exists. It is a large but barren moon, with only one fortress-factory upon its pocked face, sitting in a massive crater left by an ancient impact. The Hekate Arsenal is as empty as the world is sits on: No commoners walk the streets or inhabit crowded hab-blocks, for only the extraordinary are allowed on Malleus Obscurus.

==Birth of a Psi-Titan==
Servitors and techpriests work the gantries and manufactorums in silence; skitarii and privileged adepts of the Imperium patrol the Arsenal and man the massive anti-orbital defenses. So strangely well-defended is such a remote world, even though the legion of Malleus Obscurus numbers less than twenty machines. Such technology and craftsmanship go into the psi-titans that it takes thrice the time of normal god-machines. Decades are spent blessing just one titan, etching holy scriptures into its massive armour plates and purifying each part down to the nut with a dozen different rituals. Cables are carefully threaded up and down the massive frame from components to the cockpit, tying the entire machine together. After years of construction, sanctification, and purification, a single divine weapon of the Omnissiah is /mostly/ complete. But even though it seems whole it lacks one vital component: the crew.

Every year a veteran princeps of Legio Maleficarum visit the Scholastica Psykana to inspect the newest graduates for viability as crewmen, before even the space marines get their pick. Judging by their stability, willingness to submit, and psychic grade, they choose the legion's new proteges. All other things equal, the students chosen are the most powerful among their peers; a Delta-level psyker is typically sufficient, but only a Beta-level psyker may become a princeps, as the will of the titan may only be matched by a psyker of such power. Candidates are taken to Tyche where they are trained in the ways of the Machine Cult and given a full education in the craft of crewmanship. The intense program is difficult and failure rate is high, but there are no dropouts: by the end of their first year candidates know too much to leave, and they must remain in training until they either meet the standard or die from old age. Such extreme standards exceed even the most elite titan formations in the Collegia Titanica, and are accompanied with lessons from the Adeptus Ministorum and the Inquisition on fighting daemons and the horrors of the warp. The end product takes nearly as much effort as a psi-titan, but it is necessary for the completion of the most powerful psychic weapon system. 

==The Few and the Proud==
A psi-titan is not only the Machine God given form, but also the Emperor's psychic might made manifest. It is a fusion of invincible steel and psychic power; the immovable object and the irresistible force. A single psi-titan wields the combined power of its psychic crew to power warp weapons that render entire throngs of daemons immaterial in the blink of an eye. With their force weapons, the psi-titans can meet any greater daemon in close combat, and with each step they purify the earth of the Warp's taint. As the titan burns the world clean of corruption, they also unleash storms of magic from their massive foci, calling down lightning bolts and imperishable infernos on the hordes of Chaos.

However, such power is rare in the Imperium, and Legio Maleficarum is to titans what Grey Knights are to space marines. There may have been a point, sometime in late M37, when the legion number twenty-three titans, but in the forty-first millennium there are only thirteen. With such few machines, it is easy for the workers of the Hekate Arsenal to remember all their names, as well as all their deeds throughout the centuries. 

{|align=center border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0"
|colspan=8 align=center style=background:#FFFFF align=center|'''Psi-Titans of Legio Maleficarum'''
|-
|style=background:#FFFFF align=center|'''Name'''
|style=background:#FFFFF align=center|'''Completed'''
|style=background:#FFFFF align=center|'''Summary'''
|-
|''King of Witches''
|486.M31
|The oldest of the Titans, the ''King of Witches'' is the only surviving psi-titan of the first generation. It is the same machine that felled the Daemon Prince Septicus in M32.
|-
|''Shepherd of Fire''
|752.M32
|The ''Shepherd of Fire'' is a very particular titan, a notorious pyromaniac to the adepts of the Hekate Arsenal for demanding a fiery and headstrong princeps to match its burning machine spirit.
|-
|''Imperator Eternal''
| 000.M33
|''Imperator Eternal'' is not counted among the thirteen active psi-titans, as it is a stubborn machine. Not since its princeps died in M35 has ''Imperator Eternal'' accepted even the most powerful and willful psykers as its new princeps, and so is left to gather dust in its gantry.
|}