Among all the weapons the Emperor unleashed upon the galaxy, none inspired such awe and such terror as the god-engines of the Collegia Titanica. Towering higher than the spires of a hive city and armed with weapons that could level them, the Titans were walking cathedrals of destruction, each one a war-machine so mighty that a single engine could decide the fate of a battle and a maniple of them the fate of a world. They were the ultimate expression of the Mechanicum's ancient art, sacred god-machines venerated as living avatars of the Machine-God's wrath, and the ground itself trembled at their coming.
The Titans were mustered into the Titan Legions, the Legios of the Collegia Titanica, each an order of immense antiquity with its own forge-holdings, traditions, and heraldry reaching back to the wars that had reunited Mars itself. At the heart of every engine stood its Princeps, the commander who did not merely drive his Titan but merged with it, his mind bound to the machine-spirit through the sacred Mind Impulse Unit until man and engine became a single, terrible whole. To walk in a Titan was to feel a god's power course through mortal flesh, and to risk being consumed by it.
Orders of the Omnissiah[edit]
Each Legio was a world unto itself, a sprawling martial order of Princeps, moderati, tech-priests, and the vast retinues of menials and Mechanicum adepts who tended the engines between wars. The god-machines themselves ranged from the swift Warhounds that hunted at the fringes of battle to the colossal Warlords and Warmasters that anchored a battle-line, each class a distinct order of being with its own rituals and honours. A Legio at full strength could field dozens of engines, and when such a host marched to war it did so as a procession of the divine, its Titans wreathed in incense and hymnal, their god-spirits woken to wrath.
The Princeps and the Machine[edit]
To become a Princeps was to accept a communion that few could survive with mind intact. Through the Mind Impulse Unit the Princeps felt his engine as his own body, its weapons as his limbs, its plasma heart as his own pulse, and the greatest among them bonded so deeply with their machines that the two could scarcely be told apart. But the communion exacted a price. The machine-spirits of the oldest Titans were proud and savage things, and a weak or careless Princeps might be overwhelmed by his engine's ancient rage, subsumed into the god-machine he had presumed to master.
Titandeath[edit]
When Horus rebelled, the Collegia Titanica shattered along the same fault-lines as the Mechanicum that bore it, and Legio turned upon Legio in wars of annihilation. God-engines that had stood together for millennia now duelled amid the ruin of worlds, and the earth was cratered by the fury of their weapons. In the great slaughter of Beta-Garmon, remembered ever after as the Titandeath, the Titan Legions bled one another white in a battle of god-machines unmatched in all the long war, deciding the road to Terra in fire and fallen steel.
Units
Cerastus Knight BannerLords of War · WalkerA lance of swift Cerastus Knights that races alongside the Titans to run down what the god-engines drive before them.
Nightgaunt TitanLords of War · TitanA shrouded engine of the shadowed Legios, striking from concealment before the enemy even knows a god-machine walks among them.
Ordinatus MinorisLords of War · VehicleA Mechanicum super-siege engine attached to the Titan maniples, its singular weapon built to end fortresses and god-engines alike.
Psi-TitanLords of War · TitanA dread engine of the Ordo Sinister, its Princeps bound to a shackled psyker-core to unleash the fury of the warp.
Questoris Knight BannerTroops · KnightA formation of allied Knights that marches with a Titan Legion, screening the god-engines and hunting the foes that slip beneath their guns.
Reaver Battle TitanLord of War · TitanThe versatile mainstay of many a Titan Legion, a medium god-engine balancing firepower, resilience, and mobility for almost any role.
Warbringer Nemesis TitanLord of War · TitanA specialised god-engine built around a carapace artillery piece, delivering long-range annihilation that cracks fortresses and fells distant Titans.
Warbringer Nemesis TitanLords of War · TitanA battle Titan built around a colossal quake cannon, delivering apocalyptic long-range bombardment upon the foe.
Warhound Scout TitanLord of War · TitanThe smallest and swiftest god-engine, a lithe hunter that ranges ahead of the battle-line to run down the enemy's flanks.
Warhound Titan PackLords of War · TitanA hunting pack of swift Scout Titans that lope ahead of the maniple to harry, flush, and pull down greater engines.
Warlord Battle TitanLord of War · TitanThe towering king of the god-engines, a walking cathedral of destruction around which a Titan Legion's battle-line is anchored.
Warmaster Heavy Battle TitanLord of War · TitanA colossus that towers even over the Warlord, a striding siege-engine that brings overwhelming heavy weaponry against the most fortified of targets.
Characters
Hael CorvathThe Anvil of Beta-GarmonThe senior Princeps of the loyalist Fire Wasps, bonded to an ancient Warlord, whose engine anchored the loyalist line through the Titandeath.
Lysanda VaurThe Swift DeathA traitor huntress of the Death Stalkers whose reckless brilliance in a Warhound felled engines many times her own size.
Vharn KadexThe Bone TyrantA feared traitor Princeps of the Death's Heads whose bond with his bone-white Warlord curdled into something dark, remorseless, and cruel.
Subfactions
Legio IgnatumThe Fire Wasps, an ancient and honoured loyalist Titan Legion of Mars whose devotion to the Emperor never wavered through the long night of the Heresy.
Legio MortisThe Death's Heads, among the first and greatest of the Titan Legions to turn traitor, their bone-white engines carrying annihilation to every field.
Legio VulpaThe Death Stalkers, a traitor Titan Legion infamous even among rebels for a savage, predatory aggression that flung their god-engines recklessly upon the foe.
Discussion
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