Legio Auris

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The **Legio Auris** are a powerful Titan Legio sworn to the service of the Three Fires, and steadfast allies of the Iron Bears.

## History

The Legio Auris was born far from Mars, and by the time that their erstwhile masters found them, they were much changed. For they had fallen to conquest, and answered to another authority as well as the Omnissiah. No alien subsersive or mortal despot was their overlord, however; Auris had been absorbed into the Three Fires, and hailed Daer'dd Niimkiikaa as their master. For this they became a bone of contention above all others between Huron and Mars, but their might and fervour was never in doubt. Bearing symbols of both the Mechanicum and their tribal empire, they marched beside the Iron Bears even as the new VIth Legion raised their blades in the Emperor’s service.

The Forge colony - never given the designation of Forge World as long as Kelbor Hal held sway - Oamura was the hardest-fought conquest in Daer’dd’s campaign to unify the Three Fires, and by the time it rose again as a vassal planet, it was markedly changed. This was quite apparent in the Titan Legion that called it home.

In the Tricendia Wars, the Titans of Auris inflicted one of the first serious setbacks that Daer’dd’s mighty armour columns suffered, and immediately the young Primarch came to appreciate the value of these mighty engines. He already had the Knight Houses of Blinstrubas and August at his back, but these walkers far surpassed the Knights in size and power. Able but unwilling to destroy them, he ordered a series of aerial assaults which, at considerable cost, took key refineries and reactors on the planet. While the Taghmata Oamura were deployed to to retake these objectives, their inherent value meant that Auris were unable to deploy against them with anything more powerful than Reaver Titans.

Those machines did indeed savage the Tricendian army, but without their Warlords to back them up they were vulnerable, and Daer'dd had them disabled by Knights, tanks and heavy weapons specialists. The masters of Oamura now understood the danger and deployed the rest of their Titans wholesale, desiring the invaders' defeat at all costs. However, the loss of their skirmisher Titans had robbed them of a key component in their war machine, making them much easier to outmanoeuvre. Daer’dd undertook a series of lightning offensives against the Skitarii and automata, scattering them and ultimately hounding the Titans into a large but steep-sided valley.

Into this he unleashed a great horde of vehicles, intending not to destroy the Titans but to seize them. As tanks engaged the escorting army, columns of transports forced their way through the ranks, racing for the feet of the Warlords. Equipped with jump packs - crudely powerful and designed for a few mighty leaps - Daer’dd and his warriors boarded the Titans and fought their way to the command bridges, capturing the crews and slaying any Secutarii that attempted to stop them. It was a murderous battle, the Huronians well-armed but still mere mortals, and only Daer’dd’s presence made the Titans' capture possible.

With this breathtaking defeat, the Magos were forced to negotiate. Quite what they expected is unknown, but it is recorded that Daer’dd provoked awe in many who should have been long disdainful of mere flesh. Daer’dd declared his esteem for their world and armies, admitting that he coveted such power, before going on to describe what Oamaru’s people might achieve at his side. This was why he had sacrificed so many lives to spare Auris, and why the planet would receive such vast tithes and privileges as he offered. The Magos and Princeps accepted, and Oamaru began to change, enmeshing into the fabric of the Three Fires. Whether military tactics or political strategy were uppermost in Daer’dd’s thoughts when he had House August fight alongside Auris, it cemented an enduring bond between the two, and Auris became a key weapon in his arsenal. It has been conjectured that their growth was slowed to prevent them from becoming ambitious and troublesome, but this can equally be put down to the limitations of a rapidly growing stellar empire. The material wealth of the nascent Three Fires domain fed the growth of the Legion, and soon their first Imperator, *Gladium Auris,* joined the ranks of the god-machines in Daer'dd's service. Whatever the truth, Auris stood at just under a hundred engines when the Halcyon Wardens came to the borders of the Three Fires.

It was during the presentation of the Legio to the Emperor that Auris gained their common name. Daer’dd promised his father that in the struggle to restore unity and reason to the species, the Titans would be as the ice giants of myth who cast down false gods from their thrones. Auris found little favour in the eyes of the Martian Mechanicum, despite the treaties that recognised Daer’dd’s overlordship, and little trade or assistance was forthcoming from the Red World. The bulk of the materiel for Auris’ growth came instead from within the Three Fires and along more circuitous routes, with certain Forge Worlds keen to foster ties but wary of Martian retribution. Oaths and compacts of mutual service bound Auris to Tribe Niimkiikaa above all others, the tribe supplying warriors to fight beside the Secutarii, serfs to aid in the upkeep of the Titans and even the personnel who crewed them. So while Auris found themselves deployed across the Legion’s fleets, they were principally concentrated among those of the First Grand Wartribe. This ensured their place on many arduous battlefields, but also meant they fought beside the Primarch himself and the VIth Legion’s best-equipped warriors.

Over a century and a half of crusading, Auris had grown, much like the Bears, by virtue of being remarkably hard to kill. They fought with absolute loyalty to the Legion, and thus when the call to march on Kataii came, Auris dispatched a great number of Titans, never guessing at what awaited them. The awful fate suffered by so many of these brave warriors and proud engines is dealt with elsewhere, so suffice to say that Auris was savagely reduced, robbed of roughly half its war machines and scattered with the Iron Bears fleet.

The survivors were wracked with a fury worsened by their own impotence in the battle, unable to wield their immense power aboard ships. Emerging from the*Dragon of Autumn*’s torturous voyage into the Sol System, the Demi-Legio Honorum Ursa stationed aboard found an enemy they could finally engage on their own terms. With only a few thousand Iron Bears present, both Honorum Ursa and the surviving warriors they accompanied were attached to Irvin Ruel’s task force, which had henceforth been reliant on the garrison forces of the Legios Tempestus and Ignatum. Their arrival was most welcome, the Deathbolts having already fallen to the treacherous Death Stalkers. Auris’ hard-earned skill in supporting Legion actions swiftly proved its worth yet again as they fought for the fate of a world that had shunned them for so long.

## **Material Strength**

Largely made up of Reaver and Warlord Titans at the outset, Auris’ composition would continue to favour heavy battle Titans, with Mirage and Warlord patterns making up the majority of their engines by the time of the Qarith Triumph. Daer’dd prized them above all as a force for clean conquest, recognising that other powers must field similarly monstrous weapons and well aware of the threat they posed to vehicle formations. With roughly a hundred Titans at his command, he deployed them in demi-Legio forces first to conquer and then to stand guard over Huron as he solidified its defences.

In due time, this arrangement would continue as Auris accompanied Daer’dd in his early forays into the warzones of the Great Crusade. Fighting as part of an integrated army of infantry, armour, aircraft and walkers, flexibility became a key facet of their tactical doctrine and leadership. Their anti-personnel weaponry was relatively scarce, Daer’dd preferring to surround them with capable support forces and instead equip the Titans for combat against machines and monsters of their own stature. To this end (any suggestions?) dominated their arsenals, although the more bellicose crews cultivated some renown for their skill in close combat.

The Ice Giants’ Auxilia were notable both for their power and unusual composition. Neglect by the Mechanicum mainstream served only to encourage a further mingling between the Three Fires sects and the culture that surrounded them. Therefore, while Auris boasted three Cybernetica cohorts at the Insurrection’s outbreak, the Skitarii in its service had dwindled to just two battalions’ worth of soldiers. Instead the Titans were increasingly abetted by mortal troops, comparable to Solar Auxilia. As a result of the oath-bonds that united Auris with the Iron Bears, each Demi-Legio was accompanied by a designated company of Iron Bears and Daughters of Daer’dd. Their support vehicles were also noted for their general conformity to standard STC patterns - as well as some developed within the Three Fires - rather than the esoteric machines that so often accompanied Titans to war.

**War Maniple Honorum Ursa**
Demi-Legio Honorum Ursa was spared destruction aboard the *Dragon of Autumn*, and needed little attention before they were ready to take to the surface of Mars. It is a testament to the strength of the compacts between Titan Legion and Legiones Astartes that the authority of Lord Chief Nibaasiniiwi kept the Titans from plunging into quixotic battle. Instead, wrestling with their pent-up fury, Honorum Ursa took the field with their oathed allies and the Halcyon Wardens.