Solar Auxilia

Cohort Doctrine: Ultima Pattern Cohort

This doctrine represents a new breed of Solar Auxilia, a reassessment of the ancient pattern to suit the changing form of the Imperium and one forged in the early military experiments of Roboute Guilliman as he built the grand armies of Ultramar. This new doctrine focused on the deployment of far larger and more unwieldy infantry formations, eschewing the smaller elite cadres of the original Saturnyne and Jovian units to embrace the massed firepower of the more common Imperial Army cohorts. These new, larger cohorts would see regular deployment during the Horus Heresy, using the thunderous volley fire of their lasrifles to smash those that would oppose their masters.

Cohort Doctrine: Solar Pattern Cohort

Based on the operational doctrines of the Saturnyne Rams, the Solar pattern is a doctrine created in the earliest days of the Great Crusade that would see the foundation of the Solar Auxilia’s traditions. In the waning years of the 30^th Millennium, it was less strictly followed, with those cohorts that followed its strictures to the letter seen as overly traditional and hidebound by their peers. Cohorts organised in this doctrine excel at void-based boarding actions and the use of void craft to affect entry to any war zone. Most also focus on training and maintaining a core of hardened veterans, seeking to gain even a fraction of the Saturnyne Rams’ fame through this emulation of their creed.

Cohort Doctrine: Reconnaissance Pattern Cohort

Many cohorts, especially those who espoused swift assaults, maintained large stocks of sentinel walkers. These had the mobility to range ahead of their supporting infantry, reporting back on enemy positions or engaging isolated foes in hit-and-run attacks. In the dark days of the Horus Heresy, only marshals commanding the largest cohorts had the resources to risk committing their full strength of these valuable war machines to battle simultaneously, but their deployment was frequently effective.

Cohort Doctrine: Mechanised Pattern Cohort

Some cohorts of the Solar Auxilia placed a greater emphasis on armoured support, whether due to a vagary of their founding world or the needs of the Great Crusade fleet to which they were attached. Such cohorts were a less common sight than the more traditional infantry heavy cohorts, adapting tercio tactics developed for infantry to the tanks that filled their ranks, but had often proved decisive in battles where the Legiones Astartes were unable to take to the field. During the dark years of the Horus Heresy, such formations would see widespread deployment against other Imperial armies - especially where the Solar Auxilia was forced to commit troops to face the Legiones Astartes in battle, for even the legendary Space Marines must pause in the face of such firepower.

Cohort Doctrine: Siege Pattern Cohort

Many cohorts of the Solar Auxilia are renowned for their siege engineers and artillery specialists. Such cohorts field more heavy cannon than is normal within the ranks of the Solar Auxilia. This preponderance of artillery limits their strategic manoeuvrability and utility in void-bound actions, but makes them masters of open field engagement and siege operations.

Cohort Doctrine: Iron Pattern Cohort

Some cohorts have long been used to fighting alongside the war hosts of the Mechanicum. Over the course of the Great Crusade, as casualties began to take a toll, these cohorts would recruit from the Forge Worlds they had fought alongside, replacing fragile infantry with iron automata and unfeeling cyborgs. Given the brutal efficiency of such constructs, the Divisio Militaris has done little to discourage such traditions, though these ‘Iron’ cohorts would often find themselves assigned to the most gruelling and deadly war zones.

A people which had spent numberless years fighting monstrosities dredged from the depths of Old Night, the populace of Caliban proved a valuable source of fighting troops upon the world’s discovery by the Imperium. As well as recruits for the I^st Legion itself, several cohorts of Solar Auxilia were mustered to directly serve the Dark Angels over the course of the Great Crusade, named the ‘Calibanite Jaegers’ for their experience hunting the great beasts of their home world. Though not inducted into the innermost mysteries of the Hexagrammaton, these ‘Jaegers’ shared the taciturn and insular character of their Legionary masters, fighting alongside the Dark Angels with an almost eerie synchronicity and unity of purpose.

The history of the Archite Palatines is intrinsically linked with that of the III^rd Legion, their origins lying at the very dawn of the Great Crusade and their memberships both drawn from the noble houses of Europa. Though the first Archite Palatine cohorts served with several Space Marine Legions in the decades after their founding, the cultural ties they shared with the III^rd Legion saw them stand closer to the Emperor’s Children than any other. After Fulgrim’s rediscovery, the Phoenician immediately recognised this bond and declared the Archite Palatines wards of the Emperor’s Children within a year of joining his Legion, lauding their worth but tying them eternally to dwell in the III^rd Legion’s shadow.

Though established only a few brief years before the outbreak of the Horus Heresy, the grim serf-auxilia known as the Selucid Thorakites would participate in some of the civil war’s most gruelling conflicts in service of their IV^th Legion masters. In 004. M31, Perturaho had returned to his home world intent on destruction, for Olympia was in the grip of rebellion. The Iron Warriors unleashed ruin upon the planet and enslaved the entire star system in the aftermath, raising several cohorts of Legiones Auxilia from Olympia’s shackled populace and placing as their officers and overseers those Olympians who had participated in the world’s devastation. These Selucid Thorakites were thrown into the forefront of the Legion’s campaigns across the remaining years of the Great Crusade, in what now appears to be a period of tempering or winnowing for the Legiones Auxilia as the Iron Warriors prepared for Horus’ unfolding war.

While the Chogorian Legionaries of the White Scars owe their heritage to the nomadic tribes of so-called ‘Mundus Planus’, the fortified cities and other static settlements of Chogoris - once having formed an immense empire that stretched across much of the world - were never tithed of their young for the V^th Legion’s intake. Instead, the heavy infantry and armoured cavalry which once served as the standing army of this now-fallen empire formed the foundation of several Legiones Auxilia cohorts pledged to the White Scars’ service. In the initial years following the establishment of these cohorts, the cultural friction and recent history of conquest between the White Scars and their ‘Chogorian Limitanei’ Auxilia (as these cohorts were known by the Imperial Court) resulted in a tense alliance as the two fought side by side. Within a single decade, however, a begrudging respect and camaraderie had developed between the two, and by the Great Crusade’s end, the Chogorian Limitanei were one of the few forces that the famously insular V^th Legion would fight alongside without issue.

Upon the cruel world of Fenris, none can survive without a warrior’s skill, and while the greatest among the planet’s population would ascend to join the VI^th Legion, those who fell short of the Space Wolves’ gruelling trials or simply proved incompatible with the Legion’s gene-seed provided an ample stable of recruits for the Legion’s Auxilia. These were the Fenrisian Kaerls, fearsome soldiers whose shared warrior-culture made them perfectly matched to their Legionary counterparts. While Fenris’ hellish climate and geology ensured the world’s human populace was never sizeable - limiting the Fenrisian Kaerls to only a handful of cohorts at their apex - the Kaerls were valued much more highly by their patron Legion than many Legiones Auxilia, and so were spared some of the more perilous duties than their counterparts bonded to certain other Legions.

Unusual among the Primarchs, when Rogal Dorn was reunited with the Emperor, he delivered not only his home world into the Imperial fold, but an entire star cluster of worlds united under his rule. Conquered in years past by the stoic people of Inwit, the worlds of the Inwit Protectorate were something of a wellspring of recruits for the armies of the Imperium, quickly harnessed by Dorn to augment the military force of his Legion. The Inwit Phalangites - as the cohorts raised from this domain would come to be known - garrisoned both the planetside fortresses of the VII^th Legion and its sizeable fleet of void-faring warships, and were numerous enough to regularly be deployed apart from their Legion patrons, forging an envious roll of honours in the annals of the Great Crusade.

Prohibited from inducting existing Solar Auxilia cohorts as Legiones Auxilia by the Imperial Court some three decades prior to the betrayal at Isstvan V, the Night Lords’ gradual deterioration as the Great Crusade drew to a close would see them turn to the benighted worlds of the Nostramo Sector and beyond to furnish their Legion with auxiliary hosts. At first, the Night Haunter enforced rigorous testing programmes for the early intakes into these ‘Nostraman Damnatii’ cohorts, massed war games and training regimens ensuring these Legiones Auxilia were the peer of any other Legion’s. By the time of the Horus Heresy, however, the creeping rot which had spread through those left to preside over the Nostramo Sector had seen these trials rendered into nightmarish blood sports, populating the ranks of the Damnatii with cruel and bloodthirsty killers.

Without the transformative power of the Blood Angels’ gene-seed, the rad-scoured people of Baal proved ill-suited to service among the armies of the Imperium, with the IX^th Legion’s farther-flung domains instead serving as the primary recruitment bases for the Blood Angels’ Legiones Auxilia. The bloodthirsty warrior-cultures ofSaiph proved as valuable a source of Auxiliaries as they were for Legionaries, though the IX^th Legion were required to enact punishing training regimens to enforce the levels of discipline and cohesion expected of a Solar Auxilia cohort. Once brought to combat readiness, however, these ‘Saiphan Elevatii’ cohorts were an invaluable counterpart to the Blood Angels Legion at war, their lack of concern for propriety also helping to shield some of the IX^th Legion’s less palatable practices from the wider Imperium.

Infamously callous towards the ‘lesser’ hosts of the Imperial Army, the Iron Hands Legion spent most of the Great Crusade eschewing the prospect of bonded Auxilia, establishing the ‘Medusan Chainshroud’ cohorts only in the final decades of the Great Crusade as the Expeditionary fleets pushed further and further from the core outposts of the Imperium. Requiring secondary forces to fulfil those battlefield roles ill-suited to the Legiones Astartes at the very frontiers of the galaxy, the Iron Hands selected several Solar Auxilia cohorts deployed to shared theatres by simple quantitative assessment of their war record, ‘awarding’ these cohorts with induction into the Legion’s Auxilia with immediate effect. Rotated back to the Medusan Reach, these ‘Chainshroud’ cohorts underwent massive rearmament programs as well as total, involuntary cerebral augmentation to render them into a force utterly subservient to the X^th Legion, while forbidden from setting foot on Medusa itself.

Lacking a singular home world, the World Eaters were an itinerant Legion, drawing recruits both from established tributary domains as well as any conquered society with a serviceable human population. In the same manner did the XII^th Legion furnish their fleets with Auxilia, establishing several cohorts of bonded troops sourced from dozens of worlds, named ‘Nagrakal’ after the hybrid tongue of the Legion itself, and ensuring the only shared culture that would bind the Legiones Auxilia together would be the bloody culture of the Legion itself. For the XII^th Legion especially, such a body of loyal, disciplined troops would prove essential as the effects of the ‘butcher’s nails’ seemed to amplify over time, the Nagrakal Thraexii seeing to more mundane tactical concerns as the World Eaters sated their need for violence.

Among the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar were countless military hosts outside of the XIII^th Legion itself, seeing to the defence of the domain from without as well as enforcement of internal order. Collectively, these were known in High Gothic as the ‘Ultramar Accensi’, and the most vaunted among their ranks were the Ultramarines’ bonded Legiones Auxilia, of which the ‘High Guard’ cohorts were the most numerous. Stationed in void-defence garrisons above the key worlds of Ultramar as well as aboard the warships of Battlefleet Ultramar, individual High Guard cohorts would also rotate out to accompany the Expeditionary fleets of the XIII^th Legion on-crusade, though their greatest challenge would come during the bloody years of the Shadow Crusade.

Where for some Legions the kinship of a shared home world forged great bonds between Legionaries and Auxilia, for the Death Guard and their Barbaran Ambaxtoi wards, a cold and spiteful distance endured the long years of the Great Crusade. When Mortarion had led his campaign against the xenos overlords of Barbaras before the coming of the Emperor, there were some among the world’s human populace that stood with their oppressors, whether from fear of the alien tyrants or envy of Mortarion’s gifts. Upon the planet’s incorporation into the Imperium, these communities would ever be marked as traitors and collaborators, and upon them the lord of the Death Guard would impose his tithe: they would form the first cohorts of the Barbaran Ambaxtoi, eternally sworn to toil in service of the Death Guard, but never trusted to provide recruits for the Legion itself.

Raised some decades after the integration of Prospero into the Imperium, the home world of the Thousand Sons was garrisoned by several well-trained cohorts of Legiones Auxilia, barracked primarily within Tizca but also among settlements and fortifications scattered throughout Prospero’s wilderness. Configured in several different patterns to better serve the specific needs of the XV^th Legion, these ‘Spireguard’ cohorts were careful to remain aloof from all but the Thousand Sons upon Crusade, for the preponderance of psychic ability among Prosperine natives often proved disquieting to the other hosts of the Imperium. The greater strength of the Prosperine Spireguard would be lost with the Burning of Prospero, but several cohorts and sub-cohort sized detachments had been deployed across the galaxy at the time of Tizca’s destruction, sharing in the Thousand Sons’ wrath at the annihilation of their home.

The fierce warriors of the Cthonian Headhunters cohorts drew much from the brutal customs of old Cthonia, famous for their fearsome charges and infamous for the cruel trophies and bloody insignia they bore in battle. Raised en masse in the years before the Warmaster’s treachery was revealed, the Headhunters had a fanatical adulation of the Sons of Horus and served as the backbone of many lesser Traitor fleets during the Horus Heresy, first among the XVI^th Legion’s Hort Lupercali’ auxiliary armies and vital in their consistent reliability as the Warmaster’s allies grew increasingly erratic.

Much larger than Terra, Colchis stood among Legion home worlds such as Nostramo and Cthonia for its sizeable population, with the fanatical devotion these masses held towards Lorgarand his Legion casting them as perfect candidates for the formation of new Legiones Auxilia cohorts. Unlike the hordes of woefully equipped zealots that would later follow the Word Bearers into battle, these ‘Colchisian Torquatii’ maintained the exacting standards of discipline mandated by the Solar Auxilia template, helping to dissuade prying eyes as the XVII^th Legion fell further into fanaticism. By the time of the Horus Heresy, the Word Bearers had - in secret - swayed the regions neighbouring Colchis to their religious cause, forming new cohorts of Torquatii from among these fresh converts, whose reverence at being named honorary Colchisians forever bound them to the XVII^th Legion’s service.

Preferring to leave the people of Nocturne to their crafts, drawing only recruits for his Legion but leaving their sparse populace unburdened by mass conscription into Legiones Auxilia, Vulkan instead turned to the XVIII^th Legion’s other fiefs to provide the Salamanders with bonded troops. The populace of Proximal proved both more numerous and warlike than their Nocturnean peers, readily proffering warriors to the formation of so-called ‘Proximan Sacramentii’ cohorts. Tough and superstitious in equal measure, the forced imposition of the Promethean Cult into Proximal’s culture served to temper the spiritual tendencies of the Sacramentii, or at least render them into a form less unnerving to those outside the XVIII^th Legion.

Hailing from Therion, the ‘Velite’ cohorts of that world have a long history of fighting alongside the XIX^th Legion, their first cohort - the 630^th - gaining induction into the Raven Guard Legiones Auxilia after almost a decade fighting alongside Corvus Corax’s 27^th Expeditionary Fleet. For the remaining fifty years of the Great Crusade, each new cohort raised on Therion would automatically be offered the opportunity to serve alongside the XIX^th Legion, and it is testament to the bond forged between the two bodies that not a single Legate Marshal refused.

The term ‘Sparatoi Vindicta’ is one used to refer to a broad spread of hosts at least ostensibly patterned after the Solar Auxilia and associated with the XX^th Legion, though as befits such an enigmatic Legion, their exact origins and disposition are still unclear. As well as bonded hosts displaying iconography clearly derived from the Alpha Legion’s own, this classification has also retroactively been assigned to several supposedly extant Solar Auxilia forces listed in the annals of the Great Crusade whose order of battle and tactics seem singularly unaligned with their claimed identity - the latter including infiltration, assassination and sabotage.

Ranged Weapons

Archaeotech Pistol

Despite the renaissance of human power in the galaxy that the Great Crusade has created, there remains much of Mankind’s ancient might and arts that are lost to myth and legend, save for a few relics that have survived the stifling darkness of Old Night. One of the more common types of these relics found are sidearms of surpassing fi repower and elegance. Be they bespoke slug throwers utilising micro-atomic munitions or searing kill-rays that draw power from a planet’s ambient magnetosphere, such priceless artefacts of war find their way into the hands of the Emperor’s chosen agents.

Artillery Cannon

Often operating on the same principles as bolt or auto weaponry, these weapons are considered of a separate kind simply due to the excessive calibre and often prodigious size of the weapons themselves - used as they were to lay bare the fortresses of those that stood against the Emperor. Intended to engage targets at extreme ranges and to subdue enemies whose armour or innate toughness made them proof against lesser weapons, these cannons rely on either huge explosive payloads or advanced armour piercing technologies to achieve a destructive capacity that few other weapons can match.

Auto Weapons

An ancient form of firearm that propels a solid slug by means of a chemical explosion, both ancient ‘bullets’ and more advanced armour-piercing sabot rounds. Such weapons are most often used as anti-armour weapons, delivering volleys of large armour- piercing shells to defeat plating that is proof against the mass-reactive fire of the more advanced bolter weaponry. This category of weaponry also plays host to more advanced weapons, such as the first generations of assault cannon and magnetic charge accelerator cannon.

Bolt Weapons

A branch of weaponry rare outside of the ranks of the Legiones Astartes, bolt weapons are based on a robust Terran design, refined from the weapons used during the Emperor’s battles to conquer Old Earth. These brutally efficient weapons fire a caseless, self-propelled and mass-reactive munition, more akin to a miniature rocket than a simple bullet and easily capable of eviscerating most foes.

Flame Weapons

Among the most ancient of weapons employed within the ranks of the armies of the Imperium, flame has always been a potent weapon against creatures that lurk in darkness. Many of the Emperor’s warriors consider the cleansing power of flame a key part of their arsenal, arid indeed, the ability of these weapons to rout the enemy from fortified positions has proven pivotal in any number of battles.

Las Weapons

In the Imperium, the term ‘las’ is applied to a wide variety of weapons, from crude particle weapons, such as the ubiquitous laspistol, to more complex and deadly weapons such as the neutron laser beam cannon. The defining features that link these disparate weapons are their nature as energy weapons, rather than projectile weapons, and their reliance on rechargeable power packs or portable generators instead of conventional magazines.

Melta Weapons

Capable of focusing microwave beams to such a fierce heat that even the sturdiest of armour runs like water, melta weapons are among the most fearsome anti-tank weapons available to the warriors of the Emperor. The origins of this technology are unknown, for it was in common use among the armies of Terra, Mars and Jupiter long before the Emperor unified Sol.

Missile Weapons

From advanced guided missiles to crude explosive rockets, the armies of the Emperor make use of a variety of rocket-propelled munitions. Most common is the humble missile launcher, a man-portable weapon used to supplement the firepower of Imperial infantry squads, but a number of vehicle mounted launchers serve as both artillery and anti-aircraft weapons. Though such weapons are crude by comparison to many of the wonders wielded by the magi of Mars, they still serve as vital tools for the prosecution of the Great Crusade.

Needle Weapons

Needle weapons fire a rapid burst of metal slivers, each carved from the ammunition block within the weapon’s housing and coated with a cocktail of potent nerve agents before firing. Even a minor laceration from such a projectile can lead to an agonising death and cause chaos among the target’s allies. However, these weapons lack any real ability to penetrate heavy armour and are far less effective when employed against well-equipped military forces.

Plasma Weapons

Unleashing projectiles of super-heated plasma capable of melting armour and flesh with equal ease, plasma weapons are understood only by the secretive Tech-Priests of Mars. Kept contained by temperamental, magnetically sealed flasks, the plasma that feeds these weapons is as dangerous to the wielder as to the foe, and deadly leaks or even explosions are far from unknown. Yet, such is the destructive power of these weapons that even the risk of such detonations does not outweigh their value.

Volkite Weapons

‘Volkite’ is an arcane Martian term for a variety of powerful ray weapons whose origins date back to the Age of Strife. Possessed of considerable killing power surpassing most armaments of their size, volkites were difficult to manufacture, even for the most able of the Mechanicum’s forges, and the demands of the Great Crusade swiftly overwhelmed supply of them. Once relatively common, they had fallen largely from favour by the time of the Horus Heresy, and had been superseded by the far more flexible and utilitarian Terran bolter. Those few that remained in service were the purview of only a few specialised units at the outbreak of the conflict.

Exotic and Miscellaneous Weapons

The armies of the Imperium also employ a number of other weapons that do not fall into any easy category. These are listed here.

Melee Weapons

Charnabal Weapons

With their origins tracing back to the ancient duelling societies, assassin cults and bloody vendettas of the Terran Courts during the Age of Strife, these elegant and deadly weapons rely on speed and dexterity rather than brute force for their lethality. The master weaponsmiths of Terra are each said to have their own rituals of forging, impressing a distinct pattern on each bespoke weapon as legible as a signature to those with the wit to read them.

Paragon Weapons

Weapons forged of consummate artistry or irreplaceable relics of the ancient might of the Dark Age of Technology, paragon blades are few in number and take many forms. The most common paragon blades are two-handed power weapons of extraordinary balance and durability, although even more rarely unique chain weapons wrought from the teeth of terrifying xenos-beasts and certain night-black sickle swords found on remote death worlds on the edges of the Halo Stars have been known to hold similar phenomenal killing power. Regardless of their form, paragon blades are valued beyond price by the Imperium’s warriors.

Power Weapons

These melee weapons are sheathed in disruption fields that allow them to cleave armour as though it were paper and annihilate flesh or bone with ease. They are both difficult to master, for a single mis-stroke can lead to catastrophe in a close-packed melee, and expensive to manufacture and maintain.

Exotic and Miscellaneous Weapons

The armies of the Imperium also employ a number of other weapons that do not fall into any easy category. These are listed here.