Editing Astral Wardens (section)

=History=
==Founding History and the Beginning of the Great Crusade==
The V<sup>th</sup> Legion, commonly referred to at the time as the Greenboots, was one of the Emperor's twenty Founding Legions. Much like their peers, they were largely Terran-born in the beginning, primarily culled from the low orbitals that clung tenaciously to survival through the horros of Old Night. However in contrast to their largely land-born cousins, they performed poorly prior to the discovery of their [[Primarch]]. This was due to two fundamental causes: A far slower-than-average uptake of the [[geneseed]] and related organs, and a subtle but damning flaw that made most Marines unable to fully absorb hypno-indoctrination once the trans-human process was completed. The V<sup>th</sup> suffered greatly in the early days of the crusade due to these flaws, as they resulted in the Marines keeping much of their pre-Astartes personas and predilections, and thus taking up the Space Marine's skill-set far slower than in comparison to other legions' recruits. 

The then-Legion Master, Raddicus Bronzwyn, was eager to contribute to the Crusade and was unwilling to hold his men back until they had achieved the same level of competence as those of other Legions. As a result, the Greenboots were pushed into combat with little more training than the average Imperial conscript, and had to lean heavily on their implants to carry the burden of warfare. Because of this, the V<sup>th</sup> quickly gained a reputation for poor discipline and black luck, with some of their cousin Legions claiming the battlefields they took to were inevitably haunted by the keening souls of fallen Greenboots. Imperial Command soon settled on the opinion that the loss of one of these trans-humans was akin to losing a handful of conscripts and thus it did not represent as significant a tactical loss as a fully-trained marine from another more-capable legion.

This founding reputation led to the legion being usually regulated to reinforce their more successful cousins in their endeavors. A reserve role that resulted in the legion filling in lines where more successful legions began to flag, this commonly due to campaigns that had bogged down to higher-than-expected levels in intensity of combat. The result of this, and Browzwyn's ever-more-desperate efforts to have his legion prove their worth as Space Marines, was the legion being thrown into combat in piecemeal units as supporting elements and rarely as a coordinated force of its own. With little opportunity to develop at a legion, ostracism by their cousins due to their skill gap and discipline issue, and the constant attrition of the few marines to survive and learn from combat due to their usage as stopgap materiel, the legion rapidly lost morale, resulting in a downward spiral in terms of legion identity and capability levels.

==Reunion with their Gene-Sire==
By the time they met their Primarch, [[Calael Bishop]], the V<sup>th</sup> had become a sullen and beaten-down group, and yet the rapport with their gene-sire was instant. Bishop saw a kinship in this barely-trained mob of military castaways, and was swift to adopt them as though they were recent arrivals on his home-station of Providence. Harking back to the traditions of his adoptive home, one of this first actions was to see to the elevation of the Hellbenders to half-Astartes, and though all among the V<sup>th</sup> could see that these men were not the transhuman demigods that even the greenest marine was, their skill and discipline by comparison was beyond reproach. In the months to come, these men became the unbreakable spearhead that led the V<sup>th</sup> to their first unqualified victories. His methodology proven by the sudden and considerable turnaround in the legion's martial capability, Bishop's demand for the other heroes of Providence's Warden corps to be elevated to half-Astartes status was quickly granted, and the Primarch set them among the stunned, if now hopeful, rabble of the V<sup>th</sup> to teach them the way of the Shield, the Line, and of Brotherhood. 

The organization of the V<sup>th</sup> Legio Astartes soon came to resemble the Wardens of Providence more than their cousin legions structures, but their unorthodox doctrine found success in boarding actions, void combat, and the tight confines of hives, where the solid wall of shields often left the enemy incapable of doing much beyond dying in droves under the tightly-commanded volleys of boarding shotgun shell fire and carefully interlocking swings and stabs of blades. With these successes, the straggling legion finally found purpose in their existence, and a firm brotherhood in their half-brothers of Providence that they had lacked when serving with their cousin legions. In addition, while access to their Primarch's genetic code did not remove their geneseed's issues, it substantially reduced the negative effects, allowing the legion to at least grow incrementally even during campaigns, for the first time since before their founding. While the V<sup>th</sup> would always remain a small legion, slow to grow and slow to recover from catastrophe, their methodology and philosophy ensured was a reliable core for whom such losses were extremely rare, and thus the legion would never again risk the risk of disbandment due to low numbers. The Greenboots were no more- the V<sup>th</sup> Legion had been reborn as the Astral Wardens, heirs to the Breachers' code of Providence.

==The Awakening==

The Casperian Rebellion marked the beginning of the Legion's psychic awakening, as in its quelling they saw the first manifestations of Ghost-Martyrs among fallen Wardens. The strong bonds of fellowship between psychically-gifted members of shield crews resulted in a mind-linking that would come to be known as the Weave, allowing the souls of their dead brothers to briefly remain manifested on the battlefield after death. Following this event, the Legion began its training as psykers in earnest, with much help from the scholarly [[Lambach Kropor]] and his [[Chosen of Hecate]]. As the Astral Wardens' power grew they one by one began manifesting halos of their own, echoing the silvery crown bestowed upon their gene-sire.

As the Crusade progressed, Bishop became eager to emulate some of his more charismatic brothers, who demonstrated that excessive force was not always necessary to bring an intractable world into Imperial compliance and so the Primarch's approach was again to fall back on the history of his adopted home. The Astral Wardens would arrive in a sector and immediately begin carefully scouting in considerable force for a location for a main operating base. Often, this was a orbital station complex, a single hive structure, or in some rarer cases, an errant [[Space Hulk]]. Fortifying this base, but not to the point where its loss would cripple the local Crusade, the legion would return to scouting-in-force, looking for further locations to seize and fortify. Well-escorted supply lines would be established between these 'settlements', and as these expanded in number, would carve up the sector's volume into pockets. Pockets that would then be assaulted from all sides, herding what enemies into a ever-decreasing volume of space, where eventually they could be driven into extinction. Providence's culture of accepting survivors yet being constantly wary of genestealer intrusions manifested in a friendly-if-aloof demeanor with the conquered populations, where those that reciprocated aid given were slowly indoctrinated into the Providence way of life and those that proved to be traitors were mercilessly hounded unto death.

With the development of the Astral Wardens' 'miraculous' powers and increasingly-divine appearances, sub-Crusades often found that populations had split into warring pro- and anti-Warden factions, often purely on the strength of rumor alone and well before a single marine would set foot on those population's home soil. This, at times, could greatly aid or hinder ([[Tzeentch|or in some cases both]]) the Warden campaigns, yet Bishop was careful to instill in the conquered populations the awareness that the godly image of his Wardens was but an illusion, that they were not harbingers of a god, and that the Emperor was not a god as a result, and so kept his legion from any open accusation of violation of the Imperial Truth. An odd result of this effect was that conscription was rarely needed to raise new or replacement troops for the Auxilia unit, volunteers often filling quotas by themselves, even if those recruits had a worrying tendency for heroics and the willingness to die for their fellow squadmates.

==Brotherwar==
Following the Edict of Nikaea, the Astral Wardens had their power armor fitted with inhibitor collars to prevent the use of their psychic abilities. For the first time since the Casperian Rebellion, the once-luminous Legion was without their haloes. Primarch Bishop acquiesced to bear a collar as a show of solidarity with his sons, and the V<sup>th</sup> fell back on the traditional breaching strategies used in their infancy as Wardens. The Legion's losses rose substantially during this time, particularly among the Luminary Corps, and there was much unrest in the ranks over the Edict. Privately, the Primarch too felt betrayed, but  publicly urged his sons to carry on through this hardship, trusting that the Emperor, a psyker in his own right, could not intend for the Edict to last forever.

When the Emperor fell on Ullanor, plans changed. Malcador appointed the [[Warmasters Triumvirate]] to carry on the Great Crusade, assigning Bishop to operate under [[Marduk Engur]]'s direction. Bishop had long felt unease around Marduk, and though the dire psychic haze he felt around the man was no longer readable through the inhibitor collar, Bishop's own gut feeling remained. The V<sup>th</sup> would remain cautious in all operations assigned by the Warmaster. As the years went by, the Wardens slowly and quietly withdrew from Imperial space.

By the time the Brotherwar had properly begun, the Astral Wardens had already removed themselves from the Imperium, retreating to Providence to escape the increasing sanctions placed upon the Psyker legions and the psychically-inclined in general. The growing influence of the increasingly-unstable [[Kinnevail Kincaid]], now calling himself the "Burned Prophet," was doubtless also a factor. Warmaster [[Jon-Frederic Aristide]] is known to have predicted the Astral Wardens' secession, and interdicted the Primarch's withdrawal at an outpost near the Maelstrom in an attempt to prevent it. It seems that despite his intentions, the encounter convinced Aristide of the virtue of secession- he would later go on to be the founder and formal leader of the Union Astartes.

==Post-Brotherwar==

In the fitful birth of the Union Astartes, Providence has found itself the training grounds for the many Psykers needed for each city-state, and the Wardens its vigilant guardians. The Collegium Astra endeavors to teach the warp-sensitive, young and old, to control their gifts, with the use of the relatively stable environment provided by the Blackstone Spire's shadow.

Given the natural redoubt that is the Maelstrom, and the Vth's great animus for the forces in control of the post-Brotherwar Imperium, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Wardens have taken upon themselves to vigorously defend the Union's Imperium-facing borders and to conduct regular raids into Imperial space. These raids most often focus on interfering with the operation of the Inquisition, and particularly with interdiction of the Black Ships, laden as they are with Psykers destined for dark fates.

[[File:Primaris_Astral_Warden.png|200px|thumb|right|A Primaris Astral Warden Crewman]]