Legio Fortuna

This article or section has been selected for Exterminatus by the Ordo Editant. The Emperor Corrects.

Title: The Legio Fortuna Ordo Titanicus
Militaris Grade: Secundus
Patent: Pre-Unification, Martian Mechnaicum
Warden Domain: Mars (Mondus Occulum), Osperth
Cognomen: Hand of Fate
Allied War Houses: Thrall House Zephyri
Allegiance: Unconfirmed (major element Traitoris Animus)

Once named in honor of the good fortune which had seen the Mechanicum wrest much of Mars from the grip of the Cy-Carnivora and Rogue AIs that infested it, the Legio Fortuna became known as ‘The lucky legion’ among the more superstitious elements of the Mechanicum. They certainly gained a reputation almost as good as the Triad Ferrum Morgulus Legions which had inspired its creation as part of the second wave of Titan Legions, surviving such battles as the Battle of Sulas during the Parthorum Wars, as well as the apocalyptic Second Ruavu Grun Xenocide which saw half the Legion lost in battle and Ullanor, where Titans duelled with Ork Engines in a vicious brawl.

This good luck was not all that it seemed to be, and much of it stemmed from the Legion’s unorthodox, borderline Tech-Heresy practises of linking the Mind Impulse Unit neural interface systems of all the Titans together, turning every Battle Maniple into a Hivemind. The Legion’s sterling combat record helped to mask the tales of the high attrition rate of Princeps within the Legion and the whispers of Cerebral Enhancement and Manifold Fusion that sought to turn the Legion into a single organism on the battlefield. But the drive for increased efficiency and to overcome the weakness of the human minds who controlled the Titans saw the Legion turn to the forbidden field of Artificial Intelligence to create a single overarching brain that could control the entire Legion, truly turning it into a single entity, one mind with a hundred and seventy Titans as its claws.

That AI would eventually deduce that the weak point in the Legion was the human operators and as a result it would consume the entire Legion save for those Battle Maniples fortunate enough to be deployed elsewhere. So as the AI followed its master Motoka Isidore into the service of Hektor, scattered bands of the Legio Fortuna would fight for the Emperor to restore their fortunes and redeem themselves.

Origins: The Second Wave

The Triad Ferrum Morgulus were the first Titan Legions to be constructed, and when their success in cleansing the soil of Mars was proven, Mars and those Forges closest to it began to create a second levy of Titan Legions to join them in freeing the rest of the Red Planet. Mondus Occulum, the second most powerful of all the Forges on Mars founded two Legions at this time: The Legio Magna ‘Flaming Skulls’ and the Legio Fortuna.

All of these ‘Secundus’ Legions had very high expectations and were looked down upon by the Triad Ferrum Morgulus Legions, creating a need to prove themselves as worthy of their predecessors. This was certainly true of the Legio Fortuna, which threw itself headlong into the campaign to cleanse Mars and reclaim it for the Mechanicum. After that the Legion would also find itself fighting on Old Terra when a Battle Maniple was landed to protect a vital Archeotech reclamation center from the forces of the Unspeakable King of Albion. In all of these actions the Legion proved itself a master of precision warfare, favouring weapons like Volcano Cannons and Laser Blasters over Plasma Destroyers and Gatling Blasters that could bring powerful, focused destruction to the enemy.

Even with this growing martial record the Legion still felt itself inferior to the other Legions of the Mechanicum, and as Terra rose once again and it looked like War was coming the Legion began to experiment with new techniques of battlefield communication. The newly minted Mistress of Mondus Occulum, Motoka Isisdore had earned her place through her extensive research into enhancements to Legio Cybernetica Robots, and one of those was the ‘Cortex Neural Network’ system, where every Robot in a maniple was linked to all the other robots, turning them into a Hive Mind. If one Robot was attacked, instantly every Robot knew about the enemy and could respond instantly. Information was constantly shared between the Robots so they had the collective intelligence of the entire maniple at once. This made the Robot Maniples unparalleled in their combat coordination and ability to react to enemy threats. When the Manos (as the High Princeps of the Legio Fortuna was styled) met with Isidore to discuss the Legion and the desire to improve their combat skill, she was the one who openly pondered if a similar neural network could be constructed for Titans, linking every Princeps together. Though the idea ran dangerously close to Tech-Heresy, the Manos asked her to investigate it further.

Isidore had never worked with Titans before this point, but she found some similarities between the Cybernetica Cortex system and the Mind Impulse Unit of Titans. Though the Neural Load was considerably greater, with certain enhanced cerebral surgery she found that a Titan Princeps could withstand the inload from multiple Titans at once. A trial Maniple was deployed with these enhancements, and they would be instrumental in covering the last Mechanicum Outpost on Terra, Archeotech Station Devanps in the Northwestern corner of the Merican Continental Mass, holding off a massive assault by Thunder Warriors backed by human auxiliaries as the priceless archeotech was evacuated back to Mars. The Neural Link system proved a resounding success, the Titans having reaction times beyond what was ever considered possible and coordination between the Engines turning the maniple into a single entity on the battlefield. With this success, the practise as spread throughout the Legion. Every Maniple was now linked together with Isidore’s network systems It was expected that when the Terran Emperor came to Mars, this system would prove itself in the conflict. Fortunately this scenario never came to pass. The Emperor came not as a warlord, but as a peacemaker. And his dream of a galactic Empire would give the Legio Fortuna plenty of time to prove itself on battlefields across the Galaxy.

Many Engines, One Mind

The Legio Fortuna was one of the many Legions released to the Great Crusade at the order of the Fabricator General, though Isidore was able to keep several Maniples on Mars to safeguard her Forge. The Legion’s maniples were split among a dozen different Expeditionary Fleets, with one seeing service alongside the Helois Angels duing their campaign into the Parthorum Stream.

The neural network system’s proven effectiveness saw a call for the structure to be expanded so in larger battlegroups of multiple maniples the Maniples would be connected together the same way the Titans within the maniple were. Isidore was concerned that while enhancements could allow someone to manage the inload of several Titans, for a Battlegroup Leader to manage the inload of anywhere up to fifty Titans at once was beyond the capacity of any human, no matter how enhanced. As luck would have it several new discoveries, including amniotic tanks and the amniotic interface system as well as LCL data-fluid and more powerful cortex implants made the ability to command dozens of Titans at once a plausibility. Working in secret, several volunteer test subjects were ‘enhanced’ and deployed to lead massive battlegroups in action. The results were beyond even the expectations of the Legion. Massive, highly complex battlefield strategies that even the most skilled Titan Legion would struggle to pull off were achieved with an ease that even outsiders noted. Whenever complex tactics and highly detailed battle plans were called for, the Legio Fortuna was the Titan Legion called upon to execute them.

The Neural Network system did have a major flaw though. If the Titan commanding a Maniple was damaged or destroyed, the other Titans would suffer from a major loss of command and communication, leading to the Maniple being unfit for further combat operations. Even worse would happen if a Battlegroup Commander was incapacitated. Whole Maniples could be rendered ineffective in this matter, though it was a rare occurrence that such an event would take place. A new project was begun to de-structure the command hierarchy so any one Titan could take over command if the commander’s engine was lost. This however necessitated that every Titan Princeps be subjected to amniotic interment so they could manage the inload. This sacrifice was yet another the Legion was willing to make, once more isolating it from other, more conservative Titan Legios that saw amniotic tanks as a radical and dangerous thing.

No matter the number of modifications and enhancements there was one thing which remained beyond the ability of the Legion. And that was commanding the entire Legion as one single entity. Though every Manos of the Legion went through the most stringent enhancement procedures, commanding a hundred or more Titans at once was a risky business, and no Manos lasted more than a few years. The single worst disaster to befall the Legion during the Crusade was during the last bitter battles of the forth and final Ruavu Grun Xenocide. A hundred and forty Titans of the Legio Fortuna were deployed alongside three Legions, three Primarchs and one Billion Imperial Army against the Xenos stronghold of Piathea. The Legion served impeccably against the Titan-grade constructs of the Ruavu Grun, however on the eight day of the battle the Manos of the Legion suffered a catastrophic neural meltdown. The entire Titan legion ground to a halt, and the Ruavu Grun counterattacked. A dozen Titans were lost, and the First engine of the Legio itself, the Imperator Class Titan ‘Dies Fortuna’ would have been captured if Primarch had not led a personal intervention to defend the Titan until help could arrive.

In the wake of this disaster Investigations began to get underway to find out why the Legion had failed at such a critical moment. Though thanks to their Master Isidore’s patron the Legion managed to conceal the depth and breadth of their heresy, all knew it was now only a matter of time before what they had been doing was brought to light. But the neural network system was now gospel to the Legion, who had come to believe that their legion was not a collection of separate Engines but a singular entity, all the princeps being merely neurons that together made up the mother brain of the Legion. They would achieve union and turn the Legion into one mind, one unit, one conscience.

Perfect Union

The Legion’s willing march to damnation had already been set by their Master, who was at this point already well on the road to ruin. Her experiments with AI were already bearing bitter fruit, and it was she who came up with the brainwave that would complete the doom of the Legio Fortuna. No human princeps, no matter how enhanced or upgraded could ever hope to survive the inload of a hundred and seventy or more Titans at once. But an AI could, indeed an AI could manage the Legion and coordinate it better than any human ever could. In a secret council, she brought this up with the Masters of the Legion. The debate was long and bitter, but in the end the Manos of the Legion authorized it. The AI was duly created and installed within ‘Dies Fortuna’ to command the Legion in full. It’s first test in combat would be at Ullanor, where the chance was there to expunge the stain of the defeat at Piathea and once more prove the Legion’s superiority. Ullanor would prove to be the crowning glory for the Legio Fortuna, and Titans from the Legion would parade before the Emperor at the triumph there. But the AI commanding the legion had also reached a conclusion. The weak point in the legion was the Human Princeps. They were not able to cope as well with the massive influx of data and were slowing down the Legion. If the Legio Fortuna was to be as effective as it wished to be, the AI had to enhance efficiency. And there was only one way it could do that.

Once by one, the commanders of the major Battlegroup Command Titans suffered major cerebral damage, and the AI took direct command of those Engines, replacing the Amniotic Tanks with CPU Processors that the AI could use to take direct control. This process trickled down the Legion all the way until the outbreak of the Rebellion.