IL XIV - The Dune Serpents

[bluntblade]

Wait, who's Amund Fyens?

[Big Bad Squig]

From your pm to me:

Amund Fyens, XIV Legion Assault Captain

A fifth generation inductee into the Legion, Amund Fyens first distinguished himself at Ohelyuk Tertius against the insectoid Veskad. Steadily climbing the ranks, he held command of the 33rd Company by the time of the Qarith Triumph. He survived the Day of Revelation and the sundering of the Legion, participating in the raid on the Han system which saw Azus rescued from captivity. His fate after that operation, however, is unknown.

Fyens’ armour shows tokens of Shakletian culture, particularly the fur cloak and hood worn over the helm on ceremonial occasions, which endured among Terran companies even after they adopted the Dune Serpent colours. Notably his sword is a standard Terran longblade, rather than the scimitars which would later become emblematic of the XIV under Azus. The Mk II plate, while popular among the early XIV, found little favour with the Primarch, and Terran companies were the only ones to use it in large numbers by the late Crusade period.

[bluntblade]

Ah

[bluntblade]

Yet another thing to load onto Drak's eventual to-do list. I like the idea of him having a decent role.

[Sigismund229]

Wrt Azus' name, I did actually come up with a full "Dulhassan" name for Azus, Azus Bahmat Al'Dul'Hasin ben Alrrabeshr. I imagined it would be what the Dulhasans of the legion called him even if Azus himself disdained the name

 

Also, I wouldn't mind writing a bit on the Dune Serpents librarius if you're busy Squig. I need a bit of lightish writing about another legion to alleviate the burnout I'm somewhat suffering when it comes to the Steel Legion. Plus I never got a chance to expand on Yusuf as much as I wanted to, all that really got mentioned is his name comes from his service in the destroyers.

Edited October 10, 2017 by Sigismund229

[Big Bad Squig]

By all means go ahead Sig; any contributions are always welcome 

[Big Bad Squig]

Updated version of the first bit of the chapter with Blunt's contribution added and a bunch of other snippets added:

 

 

 

The White Plains

 

                The history of the XIV Legion begins in the latter years of the Unification Wars, in the borderlands between Orioc and the remnants of the Pan-Pacific Empire, among other powers. On the salt plains and ice drifts of the Shakletian Wastes, a nomadic culture had evolved to survive in the shadow of far more powerful neighbours. They sheltered in subterranean locales, always ready to flee at a moment’s notice, and they travelled in small, ragtag convoys of vehicles.

                Circumstances dictated their way of war, with an emphasis on guerrilla tactics. Shelters, once abandoned, became traps for overconfident invaders, as did the war machine graveyards that littered the plains. Often the largely featureless salt flats were exploited for their potential to disorient intruders. The most prized trick of all was to direct one incursion against another, knowing that the Shakletians were viewed as quite insignificant threats. At the end of a battle any tech that could be made to function was salvaged, and so the nomads acquired a strange melange of weapons and vehicles.

                However, they never had an opportunity to expand their domain to a significant degree. Narthan Dume and his rivals simply had armies too vast and too powerful to guard any fortress or border against. Moreover, they lacked large numbers of forges, and had no way of matching the gene-brute soldiers used by the barbarian kingdoms. When the Emperor finally toppled the Unspeakable King the Shakletians waited to see what would occur, wary of exposing themselves to attack by an ascendant power. Orioc, indeed, was emboldened, and its cultists of the Eternal Dirge launched a fresh wave of assaults against Dume’s old vassals even as the forces of Unity advanced towards them.

                The first Imperial forces to reach Shakletia made much the same mistakes as their enemies had, and the Thunder Warriors suffered far steeper losses than had been expected. The nascent III Legion arrived to support them, and while they made substantial advances, their casualty rates too came as an unpleasant surprise. To be sure, the III would have achieved total conquest of the region within a few months, but Aitur, their first Legion Master, decided that another course of action was more desirable. Shakletia had little value except as a stepping-stone to Orioc, and the nomads were plainly no friends to the Dirge cultists. Over the objections of the Thunder Warriors, Aitur argued for an attempt at negotiation, even an alliance.

                The Emperor saw the wisdom of Aitur’s counsel, and made His way to the theatre to meet with the nomads. The Shakletian war leader, it transpired, was a young man named John Lawrenz. Orphaned by an Orioc slaving foray, he had grown up with a fierce hatred for the cultists, tempered only by his concern for the people he fought for. Many of the strategies that had stalled the Thunder Warriors were of his devising, and the Emperor recognised the potential for Lawrenz and his men if they could be elevated to the power of the space marines.

                The terms he offered were simple: the Shakletians would serve as outriders to His forces, and the Emperor would destroy the last of the tyrants who had forced this hardship on them for generations. The importance of the latter can hardly be overstated, as the Shakletians’ existence had been moulded by those who sought to rule them even when they defied would-be conquerors. Plenty and comfort were luxuries they had never enjoyed; if the Emperor proved true to His word, their horizons would broaden exponentially.

                The course of the war against the Dirge cultists of Orioc is of course well known, although the Shakletian role in it is less so. They served admirably, as they did with the III Legion against the last of Narthan Dume’s viceroys and vassals. When the Emperor met with Lawrenz again, on the eve of His departure for the final warzones around Arrakis, He made a new offer. The men of Shakletia would form the XIV Legion Astartes, carrying the light of Unity beyond Terra. In return for his people’s right to claim several of Orioc’s frontier settlements, Lawrenz and the Shakletian elders accepted.

Lawrenz and the first captains drew on several martial traditions besides their own heritage. The Shakletian way of war had been born of vulnerability, fighting to survive in the shadow of powers mighty enough to contest the very planet against the forces of Unification. Now the power at their disposal went far beyond their previous bounds, and would only grow after total victory on Terra and the Pact of Mars.

                The defining emphasis on motion remained; the XIV fielded large numbers of jetbikes and were enthusiastic adopters of the Land Speeder when the STC was unearthed. The Land Raider, in contrast, featured less in their arsenal than many other Legions. Combined with intensive use of gunships for their firepower, the XIV employed these in rapid attacks to wear down and fragment their enemies. Assault marines led the majority of infantry actions, closing quickly. Recon squads were expanded and deployed in open battle as often as the tasks for which they were named. Tactical squads remained the backbone of the Legion, but played less of a leading role compared to their cousins, deploying in the wake of initial strikes.

                Lawrenz's innovations aside, the Legion's organisation largely confirmed to the Principia Bellicosa. A tribal culture still existed among the Legion, meaning in its early years it was divided into six semi-autonomous battalions, although in times of need these groups could be united.  The Legion was left to function in this way, both due to the grudges and allegiances that Lawrenz himself still held on to and because destroying the way of life that the recruits to the Legion had known all their lives would inspire nothing but bitterness.

                Even after the reorganisation that came with Dhul'hasa, veterans from these battalions would retain fiercely tight bonds. These would later be credited as one of the main factors in ensuring the Legion’s unity and even survival during the Insurrection. As the space marines turned all their might upon one another, the lore of both Shakletia and Dhul'hasa would be called upon.  

 

Risen

 

                By the time the XIV was ready for its first deployment, the conquest of the Sol System was complete, and the Legions of the Great Crusade had begun to take shape. Their initial campaigns were fought beside the Lightning Bearers and Blood Wolves, against some of the first Ork hordes encountered by the Imperium. What can be gleaned from the fragments suggests that Lawrenz and his warriors served with distinction, finding themselves suited to this kind of warfare.

                Their following campaigns present a Legion growing steadily into its station as a force that could meet most threats on its own. Brooding and taciturn, they were never beloved of the common man as their cousins among the IV and VII were at this time, but they earned the respect of their cousins and the Army battalions who fought alongside them for their courage and tactical nous. The XIV still took no cognomen for themselves, but came to be known informally as the Sightless Fourteenth, owing to the often violent side effects of the process of gene-seed implantation, which induced total blindness in some of the earliest aspirants.  This unfortunate trend in the implantation process was, in fact, one of the reasons for the relatively small numbers of the Sightless Fourteenth, which led to the legion often in its early years being deployed alongside legions with far stronger numbers, such as the sixth or tenth.

                Records of the XIV’s activities at the turn of the Crusade’s first century are sparse, but it appears that they spent several years campaigning against the vile Sykkorat xenos in collaboration with another Legion, whose identity and actions were later redacted wholesale. What sources remain speak of fleets hewn from asteroids and “bone-clad slaughterers”, and the unusually aggressive recruitment drive that ensued implies heavy losses among the XIV. Lawrenz was known to speak of the penultimate battle in that campaign as the most gruelling engagement he had ever fought.

                The only major battle that remains documented today is the celebrated Charge of Tarados, in which Lord Commander Knyval led the armoured elements and gunships of three Chapters and two Army regiments against the alien scourge. Though few knew it, the time was fast approaching when such large, overt actions would be almost unthinkable for the Legion.

 

The Ghost of the Sands

         

                Far on the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy, a desolate, barely inhabitable world named Dhul’hasa was about to rise from obscurity.  Once a hub of technology and scientific research, the Age of Strife broke Dhul’hasa, atmospheric pollution raising the global temperature of the planet so high that most of its surface turned to desert just as all contact with the wider Human Empire was lost.  After this had followed centuries of territorial warfare between clans and factions, until almost all left on the world was dust.  What remained comprised only of scattered settlements, hidden amongst or below the ever-shifting dunes, built from parched wood and scavenged ferrocrete and metal that had in ages passed been used to construct the sprawling, bustling Dhul’hasan hives, all of which had now fallen into utter decrepitude and disrepair, or lay deep beneath the sand. The one constant over this period of change and darkness was the ring of space stations and satellites orbiting Dhul’hasa, all scanning systems trained on the stars in the desperate hope that humanity would return from beyond the cloudless sky.

                Onto this background, the Primarch of the Fourteenth Legion landed, his pod lighting up the night sky.  Whether by radios receiving data from satellites or simply by looking upwards, all the tribes near to the landing site saw descent of the spaceship and rushed to meet it as it rushed towards the ground.  The Primarch’s journey had been long, and so he had already matured partially when he first made planetfall on Dhul’hasa.  Stepping out of the pod, labelled AZU-5, he fled into the night before the amassed clans could investigate his arrival.

                In the aftermath of the skirmish to claim the Primarch’s pod, the Dhul’hasan clans each discovered the wealth of technology that this craft from the heavens had to offer, and wanted more.  So it was that search parties began to be sent out to trace whatever else had been in the empty pod, first only one or two per week, and then increasing in frequency until almost all the resources available to the clanspeople were directed towards this great search.

                The Primarch, who had taken the name Azus, could only remain isolated in the desert for so long.  He attempted to remain hidden, living on the meat of the dune snakes and scattered tubers beneath the sand, but eventually he was forced by storm and hot weather to take shelter in the dilapidated dwellings of wastelanders, and so soon heard of the amassed forces searching for him.  Due to their ever-increasing size, he could not avoid them for long.  And so it was that amongst the first humans that the Primarch Azus encountered attempted to take him prisoner.  However, despite his lack of training, Azus was after all a Primarch, and so tore through his assailants with ease.  After that, he became more careful.  Staying far away from others, hiding and only engaging enemies at range when necessary, Azus was able to survive the assault of the clans for well over six months.

                However, one day, the inevitable happened.  Well versed in the arts of stealth as Azus himself had become, Dhul’hasan warriors surrounded the Primarch at night, and although he killed near to one hundred in the ensuing struggle, he was captured, put in chains, and hauled back to the city of Kaobyrra, the stronghold of the Bahmut Clan and an imposing fortress above ground with a sprawling network of catacombs bored into the planet’s crust by ancient mining technology below ground, as a prisoner. 

There, the captured giant suffered months of research, his superhuman skin reknitting after every dissection, and bones healing after every marrow extraction.  Slowly, the Dhul’hasan scientists’ outdated, malfunctioning medical equipment began to reveal the secrets of the Primarch’s advanced biology.  Soon, the experiments became increasingly violent, all non-vital organs being removed and rudimentary brain scans being conducted in an effort to synthesize a compound nearing gene-seed.  With this, the Bahmut clan planned to engineer a genetically enhanced force with which to retake swathes of territory captured from them by the at the time dominant Shamshir Clan.  However, the Dhul’hasan scientists had vastly underestimated their newfound test subject.

                Eventually, battling through the mind-numbing effects of the concoction of tranquilisers that he was constantly drip-fed, Azus developed a plan.  During a simple medical procedure, the Primarch pulled so hard against the restraints holding his left arm that his hand was torn clean off.  He proceeded to batter the nearest scientists to death with his bloodied stump, freeing himself and staggering out of the operating chamber in which he had been kept a prisoner.  Proceeding to navigate through the catacombs beneath the citadel of Kaobyrra, raiding any armouries he could find and tearing through any resistance he encountered, Azus singlehandedly fought towards the leaders of the Bahmut clan.  After only about an hour, Azus reached them, dispatching the guards who had flocked to the Kaobyrran palaces frantically after the news of Azus’ escape spread, and hanged them from the balconies of the mighty citadel, appearing to the people of Kaobyrra assembled in the marketplace below and proclaiming himself as the new leader of the Bahmut Clan, promising to bring the Clan untold power and to execute any who opposed him.  The majority of the clanspeople submitted to the Primarch immediately in awe and terror, and any who did not were weeded out over the subsequent days.  Azus’ coup was brutally efficient.  The surviving scientists’ final task was to craft the Primarch a new bionic hand to replace the one he had lost, before they, along with any remaining members of the city’s governing body, were executed, leaving none to oppose Azus’ rule.  His power within the city had become absolute within a week of his escape, and over time the citizens of Kaobyrra began to reap the benefits that he had promised them, with the clan earning a vast increase in territory and resources.

                Over the next seven years, Azus waged a bitter war of subjugation over the rest of the planet, accumulating a growing force through smaller conquests before, over the course of a single night, laying siege to the stronghold of the Shamshir clan with the majority of his forces, while he and a select group of warriors infiltrated the settlement and opened the supposedly impenetrable doors from the inside.  Azus’ armies raided the stronghold of its arms and vehicles, before razing it to the ground.  After the fall of the dominant Shamshir clan, the other Dhul’hasan clans fell quickly to Azus of Bahmut, a figure revered and feared in equal measure due to his martial prowess and terrifying presence and morals respectively.  To most Dhul’hasans he was rarely glimpsed, a hidden fiend who ruled with an iron fist.  His elusive nature earned him the title ‘Ghost of the Sands’, a name he grudgingly appreciated.  Eventually, the entirety of Dhul’hasa came under Azus’ rule, and he began to turn his ambitions skywards.

It was then that fleet approaching Dhul’hasa was discovered.

 

Dhul’hasa Under Siege

               

                Satellites began transmitting warnings that ships were approaching Dhul’hasa’s system for the first time since the arrival of Azus Bahmut.  Needless to say that these signals were taken very seriously by the planet’s people, some fearing invasion, some hoping for a joyous reunion with the rest of mankind.  Those hopeful few were to be disappointed.  The fleet was revealed to be xenos in origin as it approached, and it was approaching far too quickly to signify a peaceful first contact with an alien race.  Quietly, within his lair in the depths of the palaces of Kaobyrra, Azus began to plan to repel the incursion.  The few still functioning factories on Dhul’hasa’s scorched surface were put to work manufacturing large quantities of weaponry.  Outriders were sent to inspect the ancient orbital defence platforms scattered across the world and ready them for war, and each of the clans were instructed by Azus to raise armies fit to do battle with the sizeable fleet.  Although Dhul’hasa had begun to construct and salvage vehicles capable of aerial and space travel, it was predicted that the xenos arrivals would have the advantage in ship to ship combat, and so Azus drew up a plan to harass the ships as they arrived with all void-capable craft, buying the refurbished orbital defence batteries time to fire on the invaders ships, forcing them to ground.  Azus had predicted landing sites surrounded with troops ready to spring up and assault the enemy as they disembarked from their ships, traps laid around significant settlements, and the populace armed and trained in basics of combat.  Within a matter of weeks, Azus had readied the planet for war.

                When the fleet arrived, it was nothing like Azus had expected.  The ships careened towards the planet’s surface with little care for their own safety, descending too quickly for the orbital defence batteries to lock on to them.  Ignoring flat, empty areas, the ships crash-landed in a random pattern, belching smoke and crackling with flame.  It quickly became clear that this had not been an invasion, but an escape.

                Azus, sensing a change in the circumstances and fearing whatever power could send such a mighty fleet into retreat, sent a delegation to meet the first ship to land which he himself accompanied, albeit in secret.  While the Dhul’hasans were prepared to negotiate with the refugee xenos, the aliens opened fire as soon as they caught sight of the delegation, slaughtering it to a man.  Azus watched his men die from the shadows, not yet wishing to intervene, and fell back to Kaobyrra.  It seemed a war was to be fought after all.

                The clans were informed, and readied for battle.  Warbands mounted on outdated, barely-serviceable jetbikes were sent to harass the xenos as they disembarked from their ships, striking so quickly that the attackers had barely any time to respond before the Dhul’hasans fled once again.  Struggling to navigate the planet’s monotonous and unyielding terrain, the refugees’ first attempts to make territorial gains were easily repelled.  Quickly, however, the xenos began to breach the first lines of defence Azus had put in place, making targeted pushes for nearby oil refineries.  It became obvious that the objective of the invaders was to claim whatever fuel this planet held and depart as quickly as possible, rather than to take the planet itself.  While it may have been easier to simply stand back and give the xenos the resources they needed, Azus’ rise to power had come via uncompromising strength and bitter justice, and in the act of invading Dhul’hasa, the xenos had slighted Azus personally.  This was something that they would come to regret.

                Using hit-and-run tactics, Azus’ forces baited the xenos to collect in large numbers.  At that point, chemical strikes were launched, utilising one of the most vicious breeds of Dhul’hasan nerve gas that was cultivated in the depths of the Kaobyrran catacombs, decimating the invaders and damaging their morale.  The reprieve for this was violent, with diversionary attacks being launched by the xenos into nearby settlements, while other forces desperately rushed to the refineries.  The Dhul’hasan soldiers moved to defend the oil refineries, ignoring the settlements except to undertake incendiary bombing campaigns against those in which the xenos attackers were most concentrated, with no concern for the lives of the unfortunate human civilians.  The fighting became so bitter that the arrival of a second fleet in the system went completely unnoticed by the Dhul’hasans.

                Aware of and fleeing desperately from their newly arrived pursuers, the xenos launched a final push to break free of the Dhul’hasan defence lines surrounding the largest refinery, located at Kh’azim and escape.  The clans mustered to retaliate as quickly as they could.  Azus himself took to the battlefield, sensing that his men’s morale needed to be boosted.  Seeing an opportunity to destroy the aliens outright, the Dhul’hasans fought with every weapon in their arsenal, no matter how unpleasant, cutting down xenos by the thousands.  Although they fought back with terrified determination, the invaders were finally defeated in the ensuing pitched battle.  The relief of Dhul’hasa’s liberation was palpable.  So when Azus saw across the sea of xenos corpses an amassed fleet of Imperial craft descending through the planet’s atmosphere, it came as a surprise.

                In the ensuing meeting, Azus was introduced to the leader of the xenos’ pursuers, a human commander belonging to the Imperial Army.  His name was Hector Krum, an elderly, battle hardened Terran who had been chasing the xenos fleet after having been ambushed in deep space.  The enemy had finally been forced to make planetfall on Dhul’hasa after their ships suffered colossal damage in a void engagement.  Instantly recognising the visionary despot of Dhul’hasa as a famed Primarch, Krum offered Azus a place amongst the Imperial Great Crusade.  Azus was initially hostile to submitting to a mere human, and as such the Emperor himself arrived in secret in order to get the measure of his newfound son.  After the Emperor revealed his identity, Azus quickly accepted the offer to join the Crusade, both seeing it as an opportunity to take the people of Dhul’hasa to the stars once again and fearing the wrath of the Imperium of Man should he refuse.

 

An Uneasy Reunion

 

              Soon after Azus’ discovery, he was transported along with the few men he counted among inner circle to the relatively nearby world of Choler, above which orbited a vast network of stations and docks, at which a combined force of the 83^rd, 412^th and 1087^th Expeditionary Fleets (all belonging to the Sightless Fourteenth) had recently arrived to refuel and rearm.  The news of a Primarch’s impending arrival came as a surprise, and after scrambled preparations had been made by the stations’ workers and inhabitants, the leader of the Fourteenth’s fleet (the legion master, Jon Lawrenz) was reunited with his Primarch.

              At first, the reunion was not entirely amicable, with Lawrenz being thrown by the dark, unforgiving personality of his Primarch.  Azus, on his part, was determined to make this new legion his own, and had little regard for Lawrenz, whom he was suspicious of due to his potential to act as a barrier to Azus’ ultimate authority, something to which he had become accustomed during his rule of Dhul’hasa.

              However, over time the relationship between the two men grew less tense, in part due to Azus recognising an aspect of himself in the cunning, slightly amoral Terran veteran.  Additionally, the two saw eye to eye around the issues of the legion’s division, with Lawrenz’ method of allowing the Fourteenth to maintain their tribal divisions and splitting the legion among multiple near-autonomous fleets appealing to Azus.  Previously, Azus had served as the orchestrator of only significant action and reform on Dhul’hasa, preferring to command from behind the scenes in other areas with his trusted lieutenants able to act in important governing positions (particularly over each individual clan, whose territories were too scattered and large for any single figure to govern), submitting to Azus’ authority where necessary.  Thus, the most recent system of the Dune Serpents’ organisation evolved, allowing the legion to operate in multiple small semi-autonomous fleets that would be under the overall command of Azus.

              Eventually, the Terran Sightless Fourteenth transitioned to become the Dune Serpents (or Alrrabeshr), a name adopted by Azus as a nod to the fabled king of the Afaehamra snakes native to his homeworld’s deserts, which play a fundamental role in Dhul’hasan culture and medicine.  The legion’s colour scheme was also altered, transitioning from a pure white to dirty yellow and violet, once again colours appearing in Dhul’hasa’s tradition as those worn to denote a Badisin, or tribal leader.  These, despite Azus and Lawrenz’s eventual amicable relationship, would not be the last of the changes made to the Serpents to cement Azus’ power.

              Fundamental changes to the legion’s tactics were also introduced upon Azus’ discovery; namely, the increased emphasis on stealth and infiltration, rather than sole reliance on speed which had defined the early Sightless Fourteenth’s campaigns.  However, the Fourteenth’s emphasis on mobility was not lost upon Azus’ discovery, and in fact was incorporated by Azus more heavily into his legion’s tactics, especially given the proficiency of the Terran legionnaires in hit-and-run engagements.  Due to the multitude of semi-autonomous Dune Serpent fleets often containing either almost all Terran or Dhul’hasan legionnaires , a number of different variants of tactics emerged, meaning that, apart from at points when the legion was united either as a whole or as part of a Hashd, the early Dune Serpents often operated using a number of slightly different approaches to tactics.

Edited October 12, 2017 by Big Bad Squig

[bluntblade]

*mighty citadel

[bluntblade]

Should the blindness bit go into Risen? If it does, I'd add a quote about it. Something like "baleful giants with eyes of glass".

[Big Bad Squig]

It could go in either of the first two bits I think - would it work better in Risen?

Edited October 12, 2017 by Big Bad Squig

[bluntblade]

I think so. Risen is pretty short, after all.

[simison]

[With the Void Eagles needing Skal's approval, I figured I'd step in here for a moment to offer my editing skills.]

 

The White Plains

 

The history of the XIV^th Legion begins in the latter years of the Unification Wars, in the borderlands between Orioc and the remnants of the Pan-Pacific Empire, among other powers. On the salt plains and ice drifts of the Shakletian Wastes, a nomadic culture had evolved to survive in the shadow of far more powerful neighbours. They sheltered in subterranean locales, always ready to flee at a moment’s notice, and they travelled in small, ragtag convoys of vehicles.

 

Circumstances dictated their way of war, with an emphasis on guerrilla tactics. Shelters, once abandoned, became traps for overconfident invaders, as did the war machine graveyards that littered the plains. Often the largely featureless salt flats were exploited for their potential to disorient intruders. The most prized trick of all was to direct one incursion against another, knowing that the Shakletians were viewed as quite insignificant threats. At the end of a battle any tech that could be made to function was salvaged, and so the nomads acquired a strange melange of weapons and vehicles.

 

However, they never had an opportunity to expand their domain to a significant degree. Narthan Dume and his rivals simply had armies too vast and too powerful to guard any fortress or border against. Moreover, they lacked large numbers of forges and had no way of matching the gene-brute soldiers used by the barbarian kingdoms. When the Emperor finally toppled the Unspeakable King, the Shakletians waited to see what would occur, wary of exposing themselves to attack by an ascendant power. Orioc, indeed, was emboldened, and its cultists of the Eternal Dirge launched a fresh wave of assaults against Dume’s old vassals even as the forces of Unity advanced towards them.

 

The first Imperial forces to reach Shakletia made much the same mistakes as their enemies had, and the Thunder Warriors suffered far steeper losses than had been expected. The nascent III^rd Legion arrived to support them, and while they made substantial advances, their casualty rates too came as an unpleasant surprise. To be sure, the III^rd would have achieved total conquest of the region within a few months, but Aitur, their first Legion Master, decided that another course of action was more desirable. Shakletia had little value except as a stepping-stone to Orioc, and the nomads were plainly no friends to the Dirge cultists. Over the objections of the Thunder Warriors, Aitur argued for an attempt at negotiation, even an alliance.

 

[Who's Aitur, and when does Rollon come in?]

[bluntblade]

Whenever Aitur dies, likely sometime in the Sol conquests or even during the wars against Orioc.

[simison]

[Okay, just making sure there are no plot holes.]

 

The Emperor saw the wisdom of Aitur’s counsel, and made His way to the theatre to meet with the nomads. The Shakletian war leader, it transpired, was a young man named John Lawrenz. Orphaned by an Orioc slaving foray, he had grown up with a fierce hatred for the cultists, tempered only by his concern for the people he fought for. Many of the strategies that had stalled the Thunder Warriors were of his devising, and the Emperor recognised the potential for Lawrenz and his men if they could be elevated to the power of the Space Marines.

                

The terms he offered were simple: the Shakletians would serve as outriders to His forces, and the Emperor would destroy the last of the tyrants who had forced this hardship on them for generations. The importance of the latter can hardly be overstated, as the Shakletians’ existence had been moulded by those who sought to rule them even when they defied would-be conquerors. Plenty and comfort were luxuries they had never enjoyed; if the Emperor proved true to His word, their horizons would broaden exponentially.

                

The course of the war against the Dirge cultists of Orioc is of course well known, although the Shakletian role in it is less so. They served admirably, as they did with the III^rd Legion against the last of Narthan Dume’s viceroys and vassals. When the Emperor met with Lawrenz again, on the eve of His departure for the final warzones around Arrakis, He made a new offer. The men of Shakletia would form the XIV^th Legion Astartes, carrying the light of Unity beyond Terra. In return for his people’s right to claim several of Orioc’s frontier settlements, Lawrenz and the Shakletian elders accepted.

 

Lawrenz and the first captains drew on several martial traditions besides their own heritage. The Shakletian way of war had been born of vulnerability, fighting to survive in the shadow of powers mighty enough to contest the very planet against the forces of Unification. Now the power at their disposal went far beyond their previous bounds, and would only grow after total victory on Terra and the Pact of Mars.

 

The defining emphasis on motion remained; the XIV^th fielded large numbers of jetbikes and were enthusiastic adopters of the Land Speeder when the STC was unearthed. The Land Raider, in contrast, featured less in their arsenal than many other Legions. Combined with intensive use of gunships for their firepower, the XIV^th employed these in rapid attacks to wear down and fragment their enemies. Assault marines led the majority of infantry actions, closing quickly. Recon squads were expanded and deployed in open battle as often as the tasks for which they were named. Tactical squads remained the backbone of the Legion, but played less of a leading role compared to their cousins, deploying in the wake of initial strikes.

                

Lawrenz's innovations aside, the Legion's organisation largely confirmed to the Principia Bellicosa. A tribal culture still existed among the Legion, meaning in its early years it was divided into six semi-autonomous battalions, although in times of need these groups could be united. The Legion was left to function in this way, both due to the grudges and allegiances that Lawrenz himself still held on to and because destroying the way of life that the recruits to the Legion had known all their lives would inspire nothing but bitterness.

                

Even after the reorganisation that came with Dhul'hasa, veterans from these battalions would retain fiercely tight bonds. These would later be credited as one of the main factors in ensuring the Legion’s unity and even survival during the Insurrection. As the Space Marines turned all their might upon one another, the lore of both Shakletia and Dhul'hasa would be called upon.  

 

Risen

 

By the time the XIV^th was ready for its first deployment, the conquest of the Sol System was complete, and the Legions of the Great Crusade had begun to take shape. Their initial campaigns were fought beside the Lightning Bearers and Blood Wolves, against some of the first Ork hordes encountered by the Imperium. What can be gleaned from the fragments suggests that Lawrenz and his warriors served with distinction, finding themselves suited to this kind of warfare.

                

Their following campaigns present a Legion growing steadily into its station as a force that could meet most threats on its own. Brooding and taciturn, they were never beloved of the common man as their cousins among the IV^th and VII^th were at this time, but they earned the respect of their cousins and the Army battalions who fought alongside them for their courage and tactical nous. The XIV^th still took no cognomen for themselves, but came to be known informally as the Sightless Fourteenth, owing to the often violent side effects of the process of gene-seed implantation, which induced total blindness in some of the earliest aspirants. This unfortunate trend in the implantation process was, in fact, one of the reasons for the relatively small numbers of the Sightless Fourteenth, which led to the Legion often in its early years being deployed alongside Legions with far stronger numbers, such as the Sixth or Tenth.

                

Records of the XIV’^ths activities at the turn of the Crusade’s first century are sparse, but it appears that they spent several years campaigning against the vile Sykkorat xenos in collaboration with another Legion, whose identity and actions were later redacted wholesale. What sources remain speak of fleets hewn from asteroids and “bone-clad slaughterers”, and the unusually aggressive recruitment drive that ensued implies heavy losses among the XIV^th. Lawrenz was known to speak of the penultimate battle in that campaign as the most gruelling engagement he had ever fought.

                

The only major battle that remains documented today is the celebrated Charge of Tarados, in which Lord Commander Knyval led the armoured elements and gunships of three Chapters and two Army regiments against the alien scourge. Though few knew it, the time was fast approaching when such large, overt actions would be almost unthinkable for the Legion.

 

The Ghost of the Sands

         

Far on the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy, a desolate, barely inhabitable world named Dhul’hasa was about to rise from obscurity. Once a hub of technology and scientific research, the Age of Strife broke Dhul’hasa, atmospheric pollution raising the global temperature of the planet so high that most of its surface turned to desert just as all contact with the wider Human Empire was lost. After this had followed centuries of territorial warfare between clans and factions, until almost all left on the world was dust. What remained comprised only of scattered settlements, hidden amongst or below the ever-shifting dunes, built from parched wood and scavenged ferrocrete and metal that had in ages passed been used to construct the sprawling, bustling Dhul’hasan hives, all of which had now fallen into utter decrepitude and disrepair or lay deep beneath the sand. The one constant over this period of change and darkness was the ring of space stations and satellites orbiting Dhul’hasa, all scanning systems trained on the stars in the desperate hope that humanity would return from beyond the cloudless sky.

               

Onto this background, the Primarch of the Fourteenth Legion landed, his pod lighting up the night sky. Whether by radios receiving data from satellites or simply by looking upwards, all the tribes near to the landing site saw descent of the spaceship and rushed to meet it as it rushed towards the ground. The Primarch’s journey had been long, and so he had already matured partially when he first made planetfall on Dhul’hasa. Stepping out of the pod, labelled AZU-5, he fled into the night before the amassed clans could investigate his arrival.

               

In the aftermath of the skirmish to claim the Primarch’s pod, the Dhul’hasan clans each discovered the wealth of technology that this craft from the heavens had to offer, and wanted more. So it was that search parties began to be sent out to trace whatever else had been in the empty pod, first only one or two per week, and then increasing in frequency until almost all the resources available to the clanspeople were directed towards this great search.

               

The Primarch, who had taken the name Azus, could only remain isolated in the desert for so long. He attempted to remain hidden, living on the meat of the dune snakes and scattered tubers beneath the sand, but eventually he was forced by storm and hot weather to take shelter in the dilapidated dwellings of wastelanders, and so soon heard of the amassed forces searching for him. Due to their ever-increasing size, he could not avoid them for long. And so it was that amongst the first humans that the Primarch Azus encountered attempted to take him prisoner. However, despite his lack of training, Azus was after all a Primarch, and so tore through his assailants with ease. After that, he became more careful. Staying far away from others, hiding and only engaging enemies at range when necessary, Azus was able to survive the assault of the clans for well over six months.

               

However, one day, the inevitable happened. Well versed in the arts of stealth as Azus himself had become, Dhul’hasan warriors surrounded the Primarch at night, and although he killed near to one hundred in the ensuing struggle, he was captured, put in chains, and hauled back to the city of Kaobyrra, the stronghold of the Bahmut Clan and an imposing fortress above ground with a sprawling network of catacombs bored into the planet’s crust by ancient mining technology below ground, as a prisoner.

 

There, the captured giant suffered months of research, his superhuman skin reknitting after every dissection, and bones healing after every marrow extraction. Slowly, the Dhul’hasan scientists’ outdated, malfunctioning medical equipment began to reveal the secrets of the Primarch’s advanced biology. Soon, the experiments became increasingly violent, all non-vital organs being removed and rudimentary brain scans being conducted in an effort to synthesize a compound nearing gene-seed. With this, the Bahmut clan planned to engineer a genetically enhanced force with which to retake swathes of territory captured from them by the at the time dominant Shamshir Clan. However, the Dhul’hasan scientists had vastly underestimated their newfound test subject.

               

Eventually, battling through the mind-numbing effects of the concoction of tranquilisers that he was constantly drip-fed, Azus developed a plan. During a simple medical procedure, the Primarch pulled so hard against the restraints holding his left arm that his hand was torn clean off. He proceeded to batter the nearest scientists to death with his bloodied stump, freeing himself and staggering out of the operating chamber in which he had been kept a prisoner. Proceeding to navigate through the catacombs beneath the citadel of Kaobyrra, raiding any armouries he could find and tearing through any resistance he encountered, Azus singlehandedly fought towards the leaders of the Bahmut clan. Azus reached them, dispatching the guards who had flocked to the Kaobyrran palaces frantically after the news of Azus’ escape spread, and hanged them from the balconies of the mighty citadel, appearing to the people of Kaobyrra assembled in the marketplace below and proclaiming himself as the new leader of the Bahmut Clan, promising to bring the Clan untold power and to execute any who opposed him. The majority of the clanspeople submitted to the Primarch immediately in awe and terror, and any who did not were weeded out over the subsequent days. Azus’ coup was brutally efficient. The surviving scientists’ final task was to craft the Primarch a new bionic hand to replace the one he had lost, before they, along with any remaining members of the city’s governing body, were executed, leaving none to oppose Azus’ rule. His power within the city had become absolute within a week of his escape, and over time the citizens of Kaobyrra began to reap the benefits that he had promised them, with the clan earning a vast increase in territory and resources.

               

Over the next seven years, Azus waged a bitter war of subjugation over the rest of the planet, accumulating a growing force through smaller conquests before, over the course of a single night, laying siege to the stronghold of the Shamshir clan with the majority of his forces, while he and a select group of warriors infiltrated the settlement and opened the supposedly impenetrable doors from the inside. Azus’ armies raided the stronghold of its arms and vehicles, before razing it to the ground. After the fall of the dominant Shamshir clan, the other Dhul’hasan clans fell quickly to Azus of Bahmut, a figure revered and feared in equal measure due to his martial prowess and terrifying presence and morals respectively. To most Dhul’hasans he was rarely glimpsed, a hidden fiend who ruled with an iron fist. His elusive nature earned him the title ‘Ghost of the Sands’, a name he grudgingly appreciated.  Eventually, the entirety of Dhul’hasa came under Azus’ rule, and he began to turn his ambitions skywards.

 

It was then that fleet approaching Dhul’hasa was discovered.

 

Dhul’hasa Under Siege

               

Satellites began transmitting warnings that ships were approaching Dhul’hasa’s system for the first time since the arrival of Azus Bahmut. Needless to say that these signals were taken very seriously by the planet’s people, some fearing invasion, some hoping for a joyous reunion with the rest of mankind. Those hopeful few were to be disappointed.  The fleet was revealed to be xenos in origin as it approached, and it was approaching far too quickly to signify a peaceful first contact with an alien race. Quietly, within his lair in the depths of the palaces of Kaobyrra, Azus planned to repel the incursion. The few still functioning factories on Dhul’hasa’s scorched surface were put to work manufacturing large quantities of weaponry. Outriders were sent to inspect the ancient orbital defence platforms scattered across the world and ready them for war, and each of the clans were instructed by Azus to raise armies fit to do battle with the sizeable fleet. Although Dhul’hasa had begun to construct and salvage vehicles capable of aerial and space travel, it was predicted that the xenos arrivals would have the advantage in ship to ship combat, and so Azus drew up a plan to harass the ships as they arrived with all void-capable craft, buying the refurbished orbital defence batteries time to fire on the invaders ships, forcing them to ground. Azus had predicted landing sites surrounded with troops ready to spring up and assault the enemy as they disembarked from their ships, traps laid around significant settlements, and the populace armed and trained in basics of combat. Within a matter of weeks, Azus had readied the planet for war.

               

When the fleet arrived, it was nothing like Azus had expected. The ships careened towards the planet’s surface with little care for their own safety, descending too quickly for the orbital defence batteries to lock on to them. Ignoring flat, empty areas, the ships crash-landed in a random pattern, belching smoke and crackling with flame. It quickly became clear that this had not been an invasion, but an escape.

               

Azus, sensing a change in the circumstances and fearing whatever power could send such a mighty fleet into retreat, sent a delegation to meet the first ship to land which he himself accompanied, albeit in secret. While the Dhul’hasans were prepared to negotiate with the refugee xenos, the aliens opened fire as soon as they caught sight of the delegation, slaughtering it to a man. Azus watched his men die from the shadows, not yet wishing to intervene, and fell back to Kaobyrra. It seemed a war was to be fought after all.

               

The clans were informed, and readied for battle. Warbands mounted on outdated, barely-serviceable jetbikes were sent to harass the xenos as they disembarked from their ships, striking so quickly that the attackers had barely any time to respond before the Dhul’hasans fled once again. Struggling to navigate the planet’s monotonous and unyielding terrain, the refugees’ first attempts to make territorial gains were easily repelled. Quickly, however, the xenos began to breach the first lines of defence Azus had put in place, making targeted pushes for nearby oil refineries. It became obvious that the objective of the invaders was to claim whatever fuel this planet held and depart as quickly as possible, rather than to take the planet itself. While it may have been easier to simply stand back and give the xenos the resources they needed, Azus’ rise to power had come via uncompromising strength and bitter justice, and in the act of invading Dhul’hasa, the xenos had slighted Azus personally. This was something that they would come to regret.

               

Using hit-and-run tactics, Azus’ forces baited the xenos to collect in large numbers. At that point, chemical strikes were launched, utilising one of the most vicious breeds of Dhul’hasan nerve gas that was cultivated in the depths of the Kaobyrran catacombs, decimating the invaders and damaging their morale. The reprieve for this was violent, with diversionary attacks being launched by the xenos into nearby settlements, while other forces desperately rushed to the refineries. The Dhul’hasan soldiers moved to defend the oil refineries, ignoring the settlements except to undertake incendiary bombing campaigns against those in which the xenos attackers were most concentrated, with no concern for the lives of the unfortunate human civilians. The fighting became so bitter that the arrival of a second fleet in the system went completely unnoticed by the Dhul’hasans.

               

Aware of and fleeing desperately from their newly arrived pursuers, the xenos launched a final push to break free of the Dhul’hasan defence lines surrounding the largest refinery, located at Kh’azim and escape. The clans mustered to retaliate as quickly as they could. Azus himself took to the battlefield, sensing that his men’s morale needed to be boosted.  Seeing an opportunity to destroy the aliens outright, the Dhul’hasans fought with every weapon in their arsenal, no matter how unpleasant, cutting down xenos by the thousands.  Although they fought back with terrified determination, the invaders were finally defeated in the ensuing pitched battle. The relief of Dhul’hasa’s liberation was palpable.  So when Azus saw across the sea of xenos corpses an amassed fleet of Imperial craft descending through the planet’s atmosphere, it came as a surprise.

               

In the ensuing meeting, Azus was introduced to the leader of the xenos’ pursuers, a human commander belonging to the Imperial Army.  His name was Hector Krum, an elderly, battle hardened Terran who had been chasing the xenos fleet after having been ambushed in deep space. The enemy had finally been forced to make planetfall on Dhul’hasa after their ships suffered colossal damage in a void engagement.  nstantly recognising the visionary despot of Dhul’hasa as a famed Primarch, Krum offered Azus a place amongst the Imperial Great Crusade. Azus was initially hostile to submitting to a mere human, and as such the Emperor himself arrived in secret in order to get the measure of his newfound son. After the Emperor revealed his identity, Azus quickly accepted the offer to join the Crusade, both seeing it as an opportunity to take the people of Dhul’hasa to the stars once again and fearing the wrath of the Imperium of Man should he refuse.

 

An Uneasy Reunion

 

Soon after Azus’ discovery, he was transported along with the few men he counted among inner circle to the relatively nearby world of Choler, above which orbited a vast network of stations and docks, at which a combined force of the 83^rd, 412^th and 1087^th Expeditionary Fleets (all belonging to the Sightless Fourteenth) had recently arrived to refuel and rearm. The news of a Primarch’s impending arrival came as a surprise, and after scrambled preparations had been made by the stations’ workers and inhabitants, the leader of the Fourteenth’s fleet, the Legion Master Jon Lawrenz, was reunited with his Primarch.

             

At first, the reunion was not entirely amicable, with Lawrenz being thrown by the dark, unforgiving personality of his Primarch. Azus, on his part, was determined to make this new legion his own, and had little regard for Lawrenz, whom he was suspicious of due to his potential to act as a barrier to Azus’ ultimate authority, something to which he had become accustomed during his rule of Dhul’hasa.

             

However, over time the relationship between the two men eased, in part due to Azus recognising an aspect of himself in the cunning, slightly amoral Terran veteran.  Additionally, the two saw eye to eye around the issues of the Legion’s division, with Lawrenz’ method of allowing the Fourteenth to maintain their tribal divisions and splitting the legion among multiple near-autonomous fleets appealing to Azus.  Previously, Azus had served as the orchestrator of only significant action and reform on Dhul’hasa, preferring to command from behind the scenes in other areas with his trusted lieutenants able to act in important governing positions (particularly over each individual clan, whose territories were too scattered and large for any single figure to govern), submitting to Azus’ authority where necessary. Thus, the most recent system of the Dune Serpents’ organisation evolved, allowing the Legion to operate in multiple small semi-autonomous fleets that would be under the overall command of Azus.

             

Eventually, the Terran Sightless Fourteenth transitioned to become the Dune Serpents, or Alrrabeshr, a name adopted by Azus as a nod to the fabled king of the Afaehamra snakes native to his homeworld’s deserts, which play a fundamental role in Dhul’hasan culture and medicine. The Legion’s colour scheme was also altered, transitioning from a pure grey to dirty yellow and violet, once again colours appearing in Dhul’hasa’s tradition as those worn to denote a Badisin, or tribal leader. These, despite Azus and Lawrenz’s eventual amicable relationship, would not be the last of the changes made to the Serpents to cement Azus’ power.

             

Fundamental changes to the Legion’s tactics were also introduced upon Azus’ discovery; namely, the increased emphasis on stealth and infiltration, rather than sole reliance on speed which had defined the early Sightless Fourteenth’s campaigns. However, the Fourteenth’s emphasis on mobility was not lost upon Azus’ discovery, and in fact was incorporated by Azus more heavily into his Legion’s tactics, especially given the proficiency of the Terran Legionaries in hit-and-run engagements.  Due to the multitude of semi-autonomous Dune Serpent fleets often containing either almost all Terran or Dhul’hasan Legionaries, a number of different variants of tactics emerged, meaning that, apart from at points when the Legion was united either as a whole or as part of a Hashd, the early Dune Serpents often operated using a number of slightly different approaches to tactics.

Edited October 23, 2017 by simison

[simison]

I've finished editing and will pass it onto the PDF crew shortly.

 

A couple of notes for Squig:

• One, we've learned that FW uses 'Legionary' and not 'Legionnaire'. 
• Two, you always capitalize 'Legion' and 'Legionary'.
• No double spaces after sentences

 

Other than that, excellent work! The General History only needs a paragraph or two to bring the Legion up to the DoR.

[bluntblade]

Also Sim has ruled that because Inferno calls the Emperor "He", we will too. We have a lot of editing ahead...

[simison]

Also Sim has ruled that because Inferno calls the Emperor "He", we will too. We have a lot of editing ahead...

 

Not too much editing, I would hope. The Emperor typically only features in introductions and early parts of History chapters. 

[Big Bad Squig]

Had a moment spare today so I've added a final paragraph leading to the Day of Revelation and edited it to bring it in line with FW's wording:

 

The White Plains

 

                The history of the XIV Legion begins in the latter years of the Unification Wars, in the borderlands between Orioc and the remnants of the Pan-Pacific Empire, among other powers. On the salt plains and ice drifts of the Shakletian Wastes, a nomadic culture had evolved to survive in the shadow of far more powerful neighbours. They sheltered in subterranean locales, always ready to flee at a moment’s notice, and they travelled in small, ragtag convoys of vehicles.

                Circumstances dictated their way of war, with an emphasis on guerrilla tactics. Shelters, once abandoned, became traps for overconfident invaders, as did the war machine graveyards that littered the plains. Often the largely featureless salt flats were exploited for their potential to disorient intruders. The most prized trick of all was to direct one incursion against another, knowing that the Shakletians were viewed as quite insignificant threats. At the end of a battle, any tech that could be made to function was salvaged, and so the nomads acquired a strange melange of weapons and vehicles.

                However, they never had an opportunity to expand their domain to a significant degree. Narthan Dume and his rivals simply had armies too vast and too powerful to guard any fortress or border against. Moreover, they lacked large numbers of forges, and had no way of matching the gene-brute soldiers used by the barbarian kingdoms. When the Emperor finally toppled the Unspeakable King the Shakletians waited to see what would occur, wary of exposing themselves to attack by an ascendant power. Orioc, indeed, was emboldened, and its cultists of the Eternal Dirge launched a fresh wave of assaults against Dume’s old vassals even as the forces of Unity advanced towards them.

                The first Imperial forces to reach Shakletia made much the same mistakes as their enemies had, and the Thunder Warriors suffered far steeper losses than had been expected. The nascent III Legion arrived to support them, and while they made substantial advances, their casualty rates too came as an unpleasant surprise. To be sure, the III would have achieved total conquest of the region within a few months, but Aitur, their first Legion Master, decided that another course of action was more desirable. Shakletia had little value except as a stepping-stone to Orioc, and the nomads were plainly no friends to the Dirge cultists. Over the objections of the Thunder Warriors, Aitur argued for an attempt at negotiation, even an alliance.

                The Emperor saw the wisdom of Aitur’s counsel, and made His way to the theatre to meet with the nomads. The Shakletian war leader, it transpired, was a young man named John Lawrenz. Orphaned by an Orioc slaving foray, he had grown up with a fierce hatred for the cultists, tempered only by his concern for the people he fought for. Many of the strategies that had stalled the Thunder Warriors were of his devising, and the Emperor recognised the potential for Lawrenz and his men if they could be elevated to the power of the space marines.

                The terms he offered were simple: the Shakletians would serve as outriders to His forces, and the Emperor would destroy the last of the tyrants who had forced this hardship on them for generations. The importance of the latter can hardly be overstated, as the Shakletians’ existence had been moulded by those who sought to rule them even when they defied would-be conquerors. Plenty and comfort were luxuries they had never enjoyed; if the Emperor proved true to His word, their horizons would broaden exponentially.

                The course of the war against the Dirge cultists of Orioc is of course well known, although the Shakletian role in it is less so. They served admirably, as they did with the III Legion against the last of Narthan Dume’s viceroys and vassals. When the Emperor met with Lawrenz again, on the eve of His departure for the final warzones around Arrakis, He made a new offer. The men of Shakletia would form the XIV Legion Astartes, carrying the light of Unity beyond Terra. In return for his people’s right to claim several of Orioc’s frontier settlements, Lawrenz and the Shakletian elders accepted.

Lawrenz and the first captains drew on several martial traditions besides their own heritage. The Shakletian way of war had been born of vulnerability, fighting to survive in the shadow of powers mighty enough to contest the very planet against the forces of Unification. Now the power at their disposal went far beyond their previous bounds, and would only grow after total victory on Terra and the Pact of Mars.

                The defining emphasis on motion remained; the XIV fielded large numbers of jetbikes and were enthusiastic adopters of the Land Speeder when the STC was unearthed. The Land Raider, in contrast, featured less in their arsenal than many other Legions. Combined with intensive use of gunships for their firepower, the XIV employed these in rapid attacks to wear down and fragment their enemies. Assault marines led the majority of infantry actions, closing quickly. Recon squads were expanded and deployed in open battle as often as the tasks for which they were named. Tactical squads remained the backbone of the Legion, but played less of a leading role compared to their cousins, deploying in the wake of initial strikes.

                Lawrenz's innovations aside, the Legion's organisation largely confirmed to the Principia Bellicosa. A tribal culture still existed among the Legion, meaning in its early years it was divided into six semi-autonomous battalions, although in times of need these groups could be united.  The Legion was left to function in this way, both due to the grudges and allegiances that Lawrenz himself still held on to and because destroying the way of life that the recruits to the Legion had known all their lives would inspire nothing but bitterness.

                Even after the reorganisation that came with Dhul'hasa, veterans from these battalions would retain fiercely tight bonds. These would later be credited as one of the main factors in ensuring the Legion’s unity and even survival during the Insurrection. As the space marines turned all their might upon one another, the lore of both Shakletia and Dhul'hasa would be called upon.  

 

Risen

 

                By the time the XIV was ready for its first deployment, the conquest of the Sol System was complete, and the Legions of the Great Crusade had begun to take shape. Their initial campaigns were fought beside the Lightning Bearers and Blood Wolves, against some of the first Ork hordes encountered by the Imperium. What can be gleaned from the fragments suggests that Lawrenz and his warriors served with distinction, finding themselves suited to this kind of warfare.

                Their following campaigns present a Legion growing steadily into its station as a force that could meet most threats on its own. Brooding and taciturn, they were never beloved of the common man as their cousins among the IV and VII were at this time, but they earned the respect of their cousins and the Army battalions who fought alongside them for their courage and tactical nous. The XIV still took no cognomen for themselves, but came to be known informally as the Sightless Fourteenth, owing to the often violent side effects of the process of gene-seed implantation, which induced total blindness in some of the earliest aspirants.  This unfortunate trend in the implantation process was, in fact, one of the reasons for the relatively small numbers of the Sightless Fourteenth, which led to the Legion often in its early years being deployed alongside Legions with far stronger numbers, such as the sixth or tenth.

                Records of the XIV’s activities at the turn of the Crusade’s first century are sparse, but it appears that they spent several years campaigning against the vile Sykkorat xenos in collaboration with another Legion, whose identity and actions were later redacted wholesale. What sources remain speak of fleets hewn from asteroids and “bone-clad slaughterers”, and the unusually aggressive recruitment drive that ensued implies heavy losses among the XIV. Lawrenz was known to speak of the penultimate battle in that campaign as the most gruelling engagement he had ever fought.

The only major battle that remains documented today is the celebrated Charge of Tarados, in which Lord Commander Knyval led the armoured elements and gunships of three Chapters and two Army regiments against the alien scourge. Though few knew it, the time was fast approaching when such large, overt actions would be almost unthinkable for the Legion.

 

The Ghost of the Sands

         

                Far on the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy, a desolate, barely inhabitable world named Dhul’hasa was about to rise from obscurity.  Once a hub of technology and scientific research, the Age of Strife broke Dhul’hasa, atmospheric pollution raising the global temperature of the planet so high that most of its surface turned to desert just as all contact with the wider Human Empire was lost.  After this had followed centuries of territorial warfare between clans and factions, until almost all left on the world was dust.  What remained comprised only of scattered settlements, hidden amongst or below the ever-shifting dunes, built from parched wood and scavenged ferrocrete and metal that had in ages passed been used to construct the sprawling, bustling Dhul’hasan hives, all of which had now fallen into utter decrepitude and disrepair, or lay deep beneath the sand. The one constant over this period of change and darkness was the ring of space stations and satellites orbiting Dhul’hasa, all scanning systems trained on the stars in the desperate hope that humanity would return from beyond the cloudless sky.

                Onto this background, the Primarch of the Fourteenth Legion landed, his pod lighting up the night sky.  Whether by radios receiving data from satellites or simply by looking upwards, all the tribes near to the landing site saw descent of the spaceship and rushed to meet it as it rushed towards the ground.  The Primarch’s journey had been long, and so he had already matured partially when he first made planetfall on Dhul’hasa.  Stepping out of the pod, labelled AZU-5, he fled into the night before the amassed clans could investigate his arrival.

                In the aftermath of the skirmish to claim the Primarch’s pod, the Dhul’hasan clans each discovered the wealth of technology that this craft from the heavens had to offer, and wanted more.  So it was that search parties began to be sent out to trace whatever else had been in the empty pod, first only one or two per week, and then increasing in frequency until almost all the resources available to the clanspeople were directed towards this great search.

                The Primarch, who had taken the name Azus, could only remain isolated in the desert for so long.  He attempted to remain hidden, living on the meat of the dune snakes and scattered tubers beneath the sand, but eventually he was forced by storm and hot weather to take shelter in the dilapidated dwellings of wastelanders, and so soon heard of the amassed forces searching for him.  Due to their ever-increasing size, he could not avoid them for long.  And so it was that amongst the first humans that the Primarch Azus encountered attempted to take him prisoner.  However, despite his lack of training, Azus was after all a Primarch, and so tore through his assailants with ease.  After that, he became more careful.  Staying far away from others, hiding and only engaging enemies at range when necessary, Azus was able to survive the assault of the clans for well over six months.

                However, one day, the inevitable happened.  Well versed in the arts of stealth as Azus himself had become, Dhul’hasan warriors surrounded the Primarch at night, and although he killed near to one hundred in the ensuing struggle, he was captured, put in chains, and hauled back to the city of Kaobyrra, the stronghold of the Bahmut Clan and an imposing fortress above ground with a sprawling network of catacombs bored into the planet’s crust by ancient mining technology below ground, as a prisoner. 

There, the captured giant suffered months of research, his superhuman skin reknitting after every dissection, and bones healing after every marrow extraction.  Slowly, the Dhul’hasan scientists’ outdated, malfunctioning medical equipment began to reveal the secrets of the Primarch’s advanced biology.  Soon, the experiments became increasingly violent, all non-vital organs being removed and rudimentary brain scans being conducted in an effort to synthesize a compound nearing gene-seed.  With this, the Bahmut clan planned to engineer a genetically enhanced force with which to retake swathes of territory captured from them by the at the time dominant Shamshir Clan.  However, the Dhul’hasan scientists had vastly underestimated their newfound test subject.

                Eventually, battling through the mind-numbing effects of the concoction of tranquilisers that he was constantly drip-fed, Azus developed a plan.  During a simple medical procedure, the Primarch pulled so hard against the restraints holding his left arm that his hand was torn clean off.  He proceeded to batter the nearest scientists to death with his bloodied stump, freeing himself and staggering out of the operating chamber in which he had been kept a prisoner.  Proceeding to navigate through the catacombs beneath the citadel of Kaobyrra, raiding any armouries he could find and tearing through any resistance he encountered, Azus singlehandedly fought towards the leaders of the Bahmut clan.  After only about an hour, Azus reached them, dispatching the guards who had flocked to the Kaobyrran palaces frantically after the news of Azus’ escape spread, and hanged them from the balconies of the might citadel, appearing to the people of Kaobyrra assembled in the marketplace below and proclaiming himself as the new leader of the Bahmut Clan, promising to bring the Clan untold power and to execute any who opposed him.  The majority of the clanspeople submitted to the Primarch immediately in awe and terror, and any who did not were weeded out over the subsequent days.  Azus’ coup was brutally efficient.  The surviving scientists’ final task was to craft the Primarch a new bionic hand to replace the one he had lost, before they, along with any remaining members of the city’s governing body, were executed, leaving none to oppose Azus’ rule.  His power within the city had become absolute within a week of his escape, and over time the citizens of Kaobyrra began to reap the benefits that he had promised them, with the clan earning a vast increase in territory and resources.

                Over the next seven years, Azus waged a bitter war of subjugation over the rest of the planet, accumulating a growing force through smaller conquests before, over the course of a single night, laying siege to the stronghold of the Shamshir clan with the majority of his forces, while he and a select group of warriors infiltrated the settlement and opened the supposedly impenetrable doors from the inside.  Azus’ armies raided the stronghold of its arms and vehicles, before razing it to the ground.  After the fall of the dominant Shamshir clan, the other Dhul’hasan clans fell quickly to Azus of Bahmut, a figure revered and feared in equal measure due to his martial prowess and terrifying presence and morals respectively.  To most Dhul’hasans he was rarely glimpsed, a hidden fiend who ruled with an iron fist.  His elusive nature earned him the title ‘Ghost of the Sands’, a name he grudgingly appreciated.  Eventually, the entirety of Dhul’hasa came under Azus’ rule, and he began to turn his ambitions skywards.

It was then that fleet approaching Dhul’hasa was discovered.

 

Dhul’hasa Under Siege

               

                Satellites began transmitting warnings that ships were approaching Dhul’hasa’s system for the first time since the arrival of Azus Bahmut.  Needless to say that these signals were taken very seriously by the planet’s people, some fearing invasion, some hoping for a joyous reunion with the rest of mankind.  Those hopeful few were to be disappointed.  The fleet was revealed to be xenos in origin as it approached, and it was approaching far too quickly to signify a peaceful first contact with an alien race.  Quietly, within his lair in the depths of the palaces of Kaobyrra, Azus began to plan to repel the incursion.  The few still functioning factories on Dhul’hasa’s scorched surface were put to work manufacturing large quantities of weaponry.  Outriders were sent to inspect the ancient orbital defence platforms scattered across the world and ready them for war, and each of the clans were instructed by Azus to raise armies fit to do battle with the sizeable fleet.  Although Dhul’hasa had begun to construct and salvage vehicles capable of aerial and space travel, it was predicted that the xenos arrivals would have the advantage in ship to ship combat, and so Azus drew up a plan to harass the ships as they arrived with all void-capable craft, buying the refurbished orbital defence batteries time to fire on the invaders ships, forcing them to ground.  Azus had predicted landing sites surrounded with troops ready to spring up and assault the enemy as they disembarked from their ships, traps laid around significant settlements, and the populace armed and trained in basics of combat.  Within a matter of weeks, Azus had readied the planet for war.

                When the fleet arrived, it was nothing like Azus had expected.  The ships careened towards the planet’s surface with little care for their own safety, descending too quickly for the orbital defence batteries to lock on to them.  Ignoring flat, empty areas, the ships crash-landed in a random pattern, belching smoke and crackling with flame.  It quickly became clear that this had not been an invasion, but an escape.

                Azus, sensing a change in the circumstances and fearing whatever power could send such a mighty fleet into retreat, sent a delegation to meet the first ship to land which he himself accompanied, albeit in secret.  While the Dhul’hasans were prepared to negotiate with the refugee xenos, the aliens opened fire as soon as they caught sight of the delegation, slaughtering it to a man.  Azus watched his men die from the shadows, not yet wishing to intervene, and fell back to Kaobyrra.  It seemed a war was to be fought after all.

                The clans were informed, and readied for battle.  Warbands mounted on outdated, barely-serviceable jetbikes were sent to harass the xenos as they disembarked from their ships, striking so quickly that the attackers had barely any time to respond before the Dhul’hasans fled once again.  Struggling to navigate the planet’s monotonous and unyielding terrain, the refugees’ first attempts to make territorial gains were easily repelled.  Quickly, however, the xenos began to breach the first lines of defence Azus had put in place, making targeted pushes for nearby oil refineries.  It became obvious that the objective of the invaders was to claim whatever fuel this planet held and depart as quickly as possible, rather than to take the planet itself.  While it may have been easier to simply stand back and give the xenos the resources they needed, Azus’ rise to power had come via uncompromising strength and bitter justice, and in the act of invading Dhul’hasa, the xenos had slighted Azus personally.  This was something that they would come to regret.

                Using hit-and-run tactics, Azus’ forces baited the xenos to collect in large numbers.  At that point, chemical strikes were launched, utilising one of the most vicious breeds of Dhul’hasan nerve gas that was cultivated in the depths of the Kaobyrran catacombs, decimating the invaders and damaging their morale.  The reprieve for this was violent, with diversionary attacks being launched by the xenos into nearby settlements, while other forces desperately rushed to the refineries.  The Dhul’hasan soldiers moved to defend the oil refineries, ignoring the settlements except to undertake incendiary bombing campaigns against those in which the xenos attackers were most concentrated, with no concern for the lives of the unfortunate human civilians.  The fighting became so bitter that the arrival of a second fleet in the system went completely unnoticed by the Dhul’hasans.

                Aware of and fleeing desperately from their newly arrived pursuers, the xenos launched a final push to break free of the Dhul’hasan defence lines surrounding the largest refinery, located at Kh’azim, and escape.  The clans mustered to retaliate as quickly as they could.  Azus himself took to the battlefield, sensing that his men’s morale needed to be boosted.  Seeing an opportunity to destroy the aliens outright, the Dhul’hasans fought with every weapon in their arsenal, no matter how unpleasant, cutting down xenos by the thousands.  Although they fought back with terrified determination, the invaders were finally defeated in the ensuing pitched battle.  The relief of Dhul’hasa’s liberation was palpable.  So when Azus saw across the sea of xenos corpses an amassed fleet of Imperial craft descending through the planet’s atmosphere, it came as a surprise.

                In the ensuing meeting, Azus was introduced to the leader of the xenos’ pursuers, a human commander belonging to the Imperial Army.  His name was Hector Krum, an elderly, battle hardened Terran who had been chasing the xenos fleet after having been ambushed in deep space.  The enemy had finally been forced to make planetfall on Dhul’hasa after their ships suffered colossal damage in a void engagement.  Instantly recognising the visionary despot of Dhul’hasa as a famed Primarch, Krum offered Azus a place amongst the Imperial Great Crusade.  Azus was initially hostile to submitting to a mere human, and as such the Emperor Himself arrived in secret in order to get the measure of his newfound son.  After the Emperor revealed His identity, Azus quickly accepted the offer to join the Crusade, both seeing it as an opportunity to take the people of Dhul’hasa to the stars once again and fearing the wrath of the Imperium of Man should he refuse.

 

An Uneasy Reunion

 

              Soon after Azus’ discovery, he was transported along with the few men he counted among inner circle to the relatively nearby world of Choler, above which orbited a vast network of stations and docks, at which a combined force of the 83^rd, 412^th and 1087^th Expeditionary Fleets (all belonging to the Sightless Fourteenth) had recently arrived to refuel and rearm.  The news of a Primarch’s impending arrival came as a surprise, and after scrambled preparations had been made by the stations’ workers and inhabitants, the leader of the Fourteenth’s fleet (the Legion master, Jon Lawrenz) was reunited with his Primarch.

              At first, the reunion was not entirely amicable, with Lawrenz being thrown by the dark, unforgiving personality of his Primarch.  Azus, on his part, was determined to make this new Legion his own, and had little regard for Lawrenz, whom he was suspicious of due to his potential to act as a barrier to Azus’ ultimate authority, something to which he had become accustomed during his rule of Dhul’hasa.

              However, over time the relationship between the two men grew less tense, in part due to Azus recognising an aspect of himself in the cunning, slightly amoral Terran veteran.  Additionally, the two saw eye to eye around the issues of the Legion’s division, with Lawrenz’ method of allowing the Fourteenth to maintain their tribal divisions and splitting the Legion among multiple near-autonomous fleets appealing to Azus.  Previously, Azus had served as the orchestrator of only significant action and reform on Dhul’hasa, preferring to command from behind the scenes in other areas with his trusted lieutenants able to act in important governing positions (particularly over each individual clan, whose territories were too scattered and large for any single figure to govern), submitting to Azus’ authority where necessary.  Thus, the most recent system of the Dune Serpents’ organisation evolved, allowing the Legion to operate in multiple small semi-autonomous fleets that would be under the overall command of Azus.

              Eventually, the Terran Sightless Fourteenth transitioned to become the Dune Serpents (or Alrrabeshr), a name adopted by Azus as a nod to the fabled king of the Afaehamra snakes native to his homeworld’s deserts, which play a fundamental role in Dhul’hasan culture and medicine.  The Legion’s colour scheme was also altered, transitioning from a pure white to dirty yellow and violet, once again colours appearing in Dhul’hasa’s tradition as those worn to denote a Badisin, or tribal leader.  These, despite Azus and Lawrenz’s eventual amicable relationship, would not be the last of the changes made to the Serpents to cement Azus’ power.

              Fundamental changes to the Legion’s tactics were also introduced upon Azus’ discovery; namely, the increased emphasis on stealth and infiltration, rather than sole reliance on speed which had defined the early Sightless Fourteenth’s campaigns.  However, the Fourteenth’s emphasis on mobility was not lost upon Azus’ discovery, and in fact was incorporated by Azus more heavily into his Legion’s tactics, especially given the proficiency of the Terran Legionaries in hit-and-run engagements.  Due to the multitude of semi-autonomous Dune Serpent fleets often containing either almost all Terran or Dhul’hasan Legionaries , a number of different variants of tactics emerged, meaning that, apart from at points when the Legion was united either as a whole or as part of a Hashd, the early Dune Serpents often operated using a number of slightly different approaches to tactics.

              This system of division of the Legion into various Hashd meant that, as the Great Crusade progressed, each Hashd developed their own divergences in culture.  The emphasis within the Legion placed on independence, therefore, led to it in essence being comprised of autonomous groups comprised of autonomous groups, a trend that could be seen from the Hashd to a single battle company.  While the ability of Dune Serpents fleets to operate independent of the large part of their Legion was of great benefit during the Crusade, as the Fourteenth were able to deploy their resources to numerous warzones simultaneous, allowing the Serpents to arguably be in more places at any one time than any other Legion, it would also be the Legion’s downfall.  For as the Day of Revelation approached, the Fourteenth were divided, and upon the advent of Insurrection would be caught by surprise, without a way to coordinate and unsure of where their loyalties truly lay.

Edited November 2, 2017 by Big Bad Squig

[simison]

Is it alright if I use the Horde Master of the East as the leader of the Venom Lords (Dune Serpent Insurgo)?

[bluntblade]

Venom Lords... was that meant to be the biggest warband? Cos I did name the commander of that warband. Oughta attempt fluff and rules

[Big Bad Squig]

Yeah, that's alright as long as the Eastern Horde remains in part loyal, with a successor coming in, as that'd be probably the most significant horde in the Insurrection given galactic east is where both Dhul'hasa is located and the majority of the Serpents fighting takes place.  If Azus is otherwise preoccupied or already captured at the point when the Venom Lord leader defects then I might have Jon Lawrence come back into the picture and seize control of the Eastern Horde, supplementing its ranks with Terran Legionaries who he feels can be trusted more (just an idea so far).

 

But yeah, go ahead sim that's fine.

[bluntblade]

Or pulling a Corax and radically reorganising the Legion to suit circumstances.

[simison]

Venom Lords... was that meant to be the biggest warband? Cos I did name the commander of that warband. Oughta attempt fluff and rules

 

You did? I asked you a couple of days ago and you said you had no memory of doing anything about the Serpent Insurgo.

[bluntblade]

Sorry Sim, this week started on Sunday for me. Mahrid Ganzur is the traitor I named who represents those who wanted to wrest the Legion from Azus wholesale, rather than just do their own thing.

[simison]

What can you tell me about Mahrid?