Legio Yharma

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The **Legio Yharma** are a Titan Legion with a baleful reputation for wanton violence. Created at the behest of Camulos, master of the Legio Mortis, they were conceived as allies for the Berserkers of Uran and duly took their place as such. In the Insurrection they would rank among the most dreaded of all Icarion's armies.

### **History**

Wreathed in suspicion from the earliest days of their service, the Legio Yharma were one in temperament with the Astartes they fought beside. Raised from the mighty but infamous Legio Mortis, they represented an attempt to expand that Legion’s might and influence. Princeps Camulos, master of the Death’s Heads, had watched with disquiet as his hated rivals of Tempestus rose in favour due to their favour with Alexandros. Worse was the growth of Telesto and Gojira, upstarts who were not even of Mars.

Camulos resolved to found new Legions in the image of Mortis. In this he had the support of the Fabricator-General, who feared similar troubles for Mars itself. With Kelbor-Hal’s aid, the successors would swiftly be established in Mechanicum territories throughout the Imperium, shoring up the power and prestige of the Legio Mortis. When Raktra Akarro was found, Camulos saw opportunity where others were appalled by the changed VIIth Legion.

After a series of personal meetings with Raktra, Camulos raised a new Legio from his own, giving them to the Berserkers' allied Forge World of Gulaka. The Legio Yharma they were named, and rapidly they found a place in the Berserkers’ order of battle. From the first, they showed a viciousness equal to their forebears, burning entire hive-stacks during the conquest of Inwit and its domains. As if this was not enough, they cemented their notoriety a few years later at Ystrad, especially in the eyes of the Excertus. During this campaign, the commanders of the Mazkan Third had protested Raktra’s tactics, threatening to withdraw from the campaign. The response of the Yharma Titans present was to turn their weapons upon the Army, killing thousands in less than a minute.

Ever after, the Legio was known not as the “Scions in Umbra” as before, but the “Whip Hands”, a role they played with relish as penal regiments became the Berserkers’ main source of mortal troops. As Raktra fashioned the VII into the Legion he desired, so did Yharma take on their own character. Most notably, large numbers of their Titans were modified to bear Destroyer armaments, allowing the Berserkers to deploy these dreaded weapons on a scale unseen elsewhere.

Within a decade of joining his fleets, they had been granted the world of Gulaka on which to establish a Forge World, duly colonised with Kelbor-Hal’s assistance. Thus was the Whip Hands’ growth effectively guaranteed, and when the abhorrent Rangdan again emerged to wreak havoc and destruction, the Imperium would be forced to admit the utility of such a force. Indeed while Yharma suffered in the Xenocides, they also profited from it to a degree. Just as the Berserkers took in ravaged armies inured to the xenos horrors, so too were salvaged Titans and the remnants of broken maniples absorbed into the ranks of Yharma.

Yet this made few commanders, if any, happier to share a battlefield with them. Quite aside from the culls in which the Legio participated, it was whispered that the Titans they salvaged were often unstable, their machine spirits given to fury and outright malice. Close links with the Ordo Reductor coloured the Whip Hands’ interpretation of the Omnissian creed, coming to venerate the Destroyer God above all other aspects of their deity. The Mortis-derived customs of using enemy remains to decorate a Titan were very much in evidence, and the leaders of Yharma were every bit as disdainful of their perceived lessers.

The strange piety which developed in Yharma extended to their treatment of fallen machines. While some of the Collegia preferred to mourn and abandon a sufficiently destroyed Titan, Yharma saw it as their sacred duty to restore and “elevate” their husks. They would even claim those of other Legions if they were not openly resisted. Given the dogged support of Mortis, few would dare to stop them, although such prestigious and powerful forces as Praesagius, Atarus and Pallidus Mor proved able to defy them. The rest loathed the Whip Hands, coining a new, private moniker for the “Bloody Jackals”.

While many had been fervently grateful that the Warmaster had limited their activities, once Yharma slipped the Imperial leash their depredations were visited on dozens of worlds. At first Icarion attempted to use them sparingly, but as he began his first march on Terra they were set loose with increasing regularity. A combination of scorched-earth tactics and raw spite saw them inflict even more damage during their retreat, as Icarion’s offensive unravelled.

As Ixiptatlan moved to realise his goal of corrupting the Insurrectionists, he found Yharma eminently susceptible. Even with the Berserkers’ resistance, the divergent creed that infused the Whip Hands ensured that they were easily led down the bloody path that Ixiptatlan intended for them. With such malign influence, they would bring carnage to Mycenae which far exceeded any of their prior deeds.

### **Material Strength**

Such heritage and favour guaranteed Yharma a strong base from which to grow. Consequently they stood at approximately 120 god-machines, a Legio of the second rank, when the Insurrection broke out. Half of these were Warlords of the Mars and Lucius patterns, or variants on these. The rest were largely mid-sized Titans, with scout and skirmisher walkers present in only small numbers. Raktra saw little use for the Warhound and its kin, and the ethos of Yharma likewise favoured more powerful machines such as the Reaver and Warlord.

Sustaining few losses in the early Insurrection, the turning tide of the First Solar War would see Yharma severely reduced.

Sixteen Nemesis Titans, three Imperators and two Warmongers provided the Legio’s most potent strategic reserve, assigned in varying numbers to the Berserkers’ most powerful Hordes. The majority fought with the Blackening Scourge and Angel Rippers, those who stood highest in the esteem of the Ashen King. The former detachment were foremost in infamy, all armed with the same dread weapons wielded by their VIIth Legion comrades.

It has been noted that of the close-combat Titans fielded by Yharma, many were scavenged from the battlefield. Others seem to have been converted, even from Nemesis and Goth-pattern Titans. Those magos who cared to offer an opinion suggested that their machine spirits had grown unstable, to the point that equipping them with long-range weapons might prove an excessive risk to their own allies.

In terms of support, Yharma’s heritage and favour ensured that they wanted for little. Besides their supply base on Gulaka, a veritable army of magos and forge-thralls were brought into the Berserkers’ fleets, and these were often given the first pick of prisoners and failed Legion aspirants. These became combat servitors, bolstering a force that counted five Cybernetica cohorts and three Skitarii regiments, all with substantial armoured units. Furthermore they employed House Lorthryk as skirmishers and support units.