TheTrans Posted April 28, 2015 Share Posted April 28, 2015 Hey All, Got a Reaver on the way and am pretty set on rocking the boat and painting it in a fall-pattern camouflage set up. I know the general consensus is a titan is too big to hide, which is certainly true when you get to the larger ones, but with the Reavers and Warhounds I reckon it would be plausible. Anyway here is the beginning of my fluff for Legio Venator (picked because they fought with the Astral Claws, and the lack of info available on them). Legio Venator The Legio Venator is a Loyalist Titan Legion of the Collegia Titanica, one of the military arms of the Adeptus Mechanicus. There is very little information in Imperial records about this obscure Titan Legion, though it is suspected to have been founded before the Age of the Imperium, during the Age of Strife. The Legio Venator is said to maintain a hidden fortress on the dead moon of Lycosidae, located at the heart of the Lathe System in the Calixis Sector. The Legio Venator is in the service of the Lathe Worlds' branch of the Mechanicus, and is always ready to aid the Tech-priests of those three worlds when circumstances demand. By Legio standards Venator has a rather small engine count compared to other legios of its age. Not only that but it relies more heavily upon the lighter class of titans, most notably its Reavers and Warhounds. It does have access to a very limited pool of Warlords, but these are generally kept in reserve for reinforcing any Reaver-Drifts or Warhound-Packs that come into heavy enemy contact. Due to Venator’s reliance on lighter class titan’s their doctrines have evolved to suit. This has caused issues when Venator has walked with other legios, some Grandmasters going so far as to call their tactics “under handed” or even “heretical” in nature. Venator has always rebuffed these claims that by simple, sound logic, these tactics and doctrines are needed to achieve victory with minimal losses to the legio. One of the biggest doctrinal changes that Venator has adopted is the use of ambush tactics while favouring close quarter engine combat as opposed to the frontal “Shock and Awe” assaults and long range duelling favoured by most other legios. The reasoning behind the use of close quarter fighting is the fact that a Reaver is more evenly matched to a Warlord when engaging in close combat. At close range void shields play little part in the engagement, while also denying the warlord its superior ranged fire power. This has allowed Venator to make up for its lack of battle titans in built up or forested or mountainous areas. The use of these ambush tactics have obviously led to the changes in Titan appearance and load out. Unlike most other Legios, Venator will camouflage their Reavers and Warhounds to better aid them in lying in wait. While the camouflage aids in staying hidden to the naked eye, titans still put out massive emissions in both heat and noise, thus while Titans where lying in wait they would need to be functioning on the lowest possible power output to avoid detection, but at the same time, be able to come up to full power when called for, this led to the development of the Lathe-pattern genetorium. The Lathe-pattern genetorium is much the same as most other titan’s plasma reactors but with the subtle differences to the routing of energy as well as the use of massive drycell batteries contained within the titan’s greaves. When most Titans lurch out of this ‘dormant’ state, power will be immediately directed to its void shields, then toward motive power and it’s armaments, with Venator based engines, power routing is almost the reverse of this, first motive, then armaments and eventually voids. The reason for this is due to the nature of the action the titan will be engaging in will be up close as quickly as possible, thus making the voids quite redundant. One of the large downsides of this ‘ambush’ state that many of Venator’s titans maintain, is limited auspex pinging and scanning, and their reliance on passive auspex readings. This led to another innovation for Venator. Each designated ambush engine is accompanied by a small support echelon to aid it in its full ability. The echelon is generally made up of 3 distinct parts; Close Signal Cohort, Entrapment Echelon and the Inveigle Lance. The Inveigle Lance is used essentially as bait for an enemy titan, these usually consist of ‘disposable’ units, such as tech-menials, specially designed bait-servitors, that generally give off a large heat and noise signature, or in dire circumstances, other Imperial troops under the command of the Legio. These will essentially lead an enemy titan into a pre-prepared ambush site. The Close Signal Cohort (CSC) uses archaic means to communicate with the ambush-dormant titan, whether this is by a series of quickly flashed lights in binary or the use feet-based local vox communications, the CSC Prefect is relied upon to give the word for the titan to run up to battle stations. Within Veneator the CSC Prefect rank almost as high as the legio’s Princeps. Entrapment Echelon: To be advised. To allow these ambush to take place the legio makes full use of camouflaging their smaller titans, especially the upper carapaces. Some think this would cause the machine spirits of these titan’s to rebel in disgust, but over the many millennia the machine spirits have learnt to relish a change of paint, as that means a walk will soon be upon them. Feel free to blast it, or give out some pointers, I'd be more than happy to hear what you have to say!! Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/306787-legio-venator-the-fluff-behind-a-camouflaged-titan/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.