Dreamwalkers

Dreamwalkers armorial with Legion iconography.

Dreamwalkers Legion appearance.

### Observed Strategic Tendencies

Psychological Warfare, Command Chain Disruption, Shock and Awe Tactics, Hallucinogenics

### Allegiance

Traitors
(*Traitoris Perdita*)

### Warcry

(To be added)

"*Don't you know us? You have taken our form on a hundred worlds, proclaiming yourselves gods and devils while content in the knowledge that your words were falsehoods. Unless...they're not. After all, there is nothing that cannot be arranged. Nothing that is impossible within the dreamscapes of the æther...*"
— Attr. Unknown
The Dreamwalkers were always a somewhat insular Legion, a nature enforced first by the hardships they endured and later by their Primarch’s philosophy of manipulation. They were a symbol of the hypocrisies and contradictions of the Imperial Truth and unswerving faith in the rational that bordered upon fanatical on one hand and a callous willingness to manipulate the faith of those they deemed inferior on the other. Ultimately this be their doom, tearing the Legion apart even as the seeds of fell cults permitted under their willing ignorance blossomed amongst the domains of the absent Emperor.

## Legion History

### The Tireless

Unlike many Legions, the early recruitment composition of the XVIIth was associated more with certain cultural traits than any single geographical locality. Indeed, many did not have any set locality, being from societies that partook in ceaseless migrations across the scarred wastelands of Terra, outrunning any foe that proved too challenging. For these scattered communities life was a matter of mobility, to continue even as your sight blurred and fire burned through your limbs.

Even when taking the vast dust-bowls of Terra into account, such communities seldom numbered heavily enough to support intensive recruitment. As such other contingents were drawn from city-states and enclaves with their own peculiarities, the most prominent being the transcendentalists of the western Himilazian peaks and the sentinel-city of Kyntos. Because of the dispersed nature of this recruitment, and the difficulties in establishing an efficient command structure between so many disparate groupings, the XVIIth was not deployed until relatively late in the Unification Wars. At first all seemed well, and the Legion functioned within separate parameters. It was only when its overseers began to push the Legion towards its intended specialities that issues arose.

When dispatched to finalise the extermination of Istachi insurgents and their flenser-hounds, the Legion was given the order to give the enemy no chance to regroup, to give the region no peace until they were destroyed, to scour the land ceaselessly without rest. Separating into seeker clades drawn from the dust-runner recruits while their sedentary kin waited in reserve, the Legion committed to their task with determination. As expected, the Legionaries were able to persist even after their resilient kin in other Legions would have been forced to withdraw or take rest, taking the command ‘ceaslessly’ as literal. It was on the third week that things began to go amiss. Some squads reported that they had been fired upon by fellow Legionaries, others rambled and raved about strange creatures and a landscape that twisted beneath their feet.

While the reserve cadres were still attempting to determine the cause of this breakdown in the chain of command, aid seemed to arrive from an unexpected quarter. A detachment of the IInd Legion, redirected via Stormbirds to their location, arrived.

Exactly what occurred afterwards is uncertain, and it is known only that both Legions sustained some minor casualties before the IInd withdrew and left the XVIIth reserves to pick up the pieces. It is suspected that perhaps this incident was the cause of the levels of distrust between the two Legions that would later be observed over the course of the great Crusade, only waning in its later years. Regardless, it is clear that this was the first widespread incident of the hallucinations that would plague the Legion. Despite numerous concerns over the matter, the ‘Sleepless Legion’ as they were becoming known were soon after thrown into another conflict. This time they would not be so fortunate.

Out of necessity, the Legionaries of the XVIIth would be thrown against the hordes of the Midnight Host that had come boiling out from beneath the Kyrsvik region in an attempt to stall them whilst greater and better tested resources were brought to bear. Again, these running battles and holding maneuvers would initially see the Legion in good stead, able to constantly frustrate and harass their enemy without pause. Then once again the command structure began to disintegrate. This was no scattered and broken enemy, and in short order the formations of the XVIIth began to disintegrate, all cohesion lost as they were isolated and dragged down by their foes. Many of the armies being mustered for the counter-assault were consequently committed prematurely, causing casualties far in excess of what had been predicted. As for the Sleepless Legionaries themselves, some were found having stood their ground alone and had built fortresses of corpses around themselves, firing on anyone and anything that came close. Others had vanished into the wastes, hiding and hunting with no discernible rationale. Here and there command had been reestablished, the more stable in temperament shepherding along the more addled. Even so it took months after the battle for the Legion to be reassembled, and months further for it to be reinforced and re-equipped in order to account for its losses.

Following this disastrous affair, the Legion was for a time only ever committed in small and separate detachments, and typically with great supervision. Strenuous psychological evaluations weeded out those most likely to succumb from command positions, and in time the Legion seemed to be developing its own idiosyncratic measures to cope with its plight. Issues still arose whenever these attachments were deployed side by side, for it seemed that whatever means adopted by one would not guarantee successful integration with the other. Still, certain administrative records describe their progress as promising, even as others suggested that a more permanent solution might be required. Ultimately the Legion’s moment of truth would come.

Though the armies of the Midnight Hosts had been broken, their own realms had never been taken. Sealed off from the surface perhaps, but beneath the skin of Terra they still lingered like a poison waiting to burst to the surface once more. It was at the hands of these creatures that the Sleepless Legion had suffered its greatest loss, and in their destruction would be their opportunity for redemption. Many pressed for a more reputed, at least in the arts of destruction, Legion to be given the task. Some even hinted that it was a means to be rid of the Legion and its unreliabilities.

For the first time since the Kyrsvik conflict, the full Legion was assembled before the gates to the underworld. After a week of discussion amongst the various leaders of the Legion, each detachment filed off into the depths.

When elements of the XXXth Legion were later dispatched to assess the ongoing situation, they found that the Halls of the Midnight Host had been broken. Though this subterranean realm had by no means been fully pacified or broken, its leaders had been hunted down and slain, its stockpiles and roost-caverns razed. The XVIIth Legion had separated into the sections that would later be known as lodges, defined by those campaigns that each group had independently fought. Maintaining command contact only through those individuals deemed fully stable, they had launched a multi-pronged assault intended to exploit this necesstital organisation. Some drove straight towards the hearts of the enemy's realm, others for the head. Yet more slunk into the underdepths and secret ways to flush out and intercept any survivors that might attempt to flee and cower in the dark. Most important were those sections that seized and garrisoned vital junctures, acting as a points of contact between the different sections as well as holding any individual Legionaries that might be deemed compromised.

This victory would be one of the last in the Unification Wars, and would lay the template for the Legion’s operations throughout the early years of the Great Crusade. The fate of every Legionary that partook in this campaign is not certain, and there have been rumours of maddened figures that still lurk in what was once the Midnight Realm, stumbling in their battered armour through forgotten passageways, recoiling from things no other can see.

### Post-Discovery

Following the reunification with their long lost Primarch, Kuranos Hasthtir, upon the world of Y'hetill, the 'Lord of Ochre' took the reigns of his legion and began to mold them into his own image. Hashtir found something to admire in their unwillingness to tolerate misdirection or subtlety, as it made them largely careless of superstition. He was also leased that they had learned how to override, ignore or suppress their hallucinations as a result of their gene-seed defect. However, from his own experience he knew that an understanding of superstition could be necessary in understanding and manipulating those too weak to live without it, for which some patience would be required. Though he praised the terrans for being the ‘True Face’ of the Universe (and in private was thankful that there was not an abundance of superstition or ritual for him to eliminate), he also began to use Y'hetillian recruits for cultural reconnaissance, negotiation and for the psychological warfare which his Legion was displaying a burgeoning talent for. Often the Terrans were withheld until the final strike, or for situations where tactics proved fruitless, at least until they had been trained enough to cross-specialise. Even then they were seldom as patient as their native counterparts.

As mentioned before, several cities on the Primarch's homeworld abandoned due to warp phenomena are reoccupied under his rule. Slowly they begin to taint those living within them, including Legion inductees. This is not the sole cause of the Legion’s fall, but it provides a way in, with certain elements using ever increased quantities of suspicious hallucinogens and increased rituals and psyker use in order to target the enemy, often breaking their grip on reality entirely. In addition their catalapsean nodes begin to produce visions of increased vividity and portent, though these are dismissed as minor gene seed issues. Unlike their brothers, such individuals do not participate in the ‘True Face’.

As their Primarch begins to send them on information gathering missions that expose them to the warp, the taint begins to spread itself further within the Legion. Artifacts retrieved for study are presumed to have a symbolic significance only, and slowly spread their taint further. Despite this, the Legions experience with their gene seed hallucinations allows the Legion to function effectively in denial of their taint as it builds up to a threshold. While an increased number of visions may be noticed, the Apothecarion's belief that there is a scientific explanations means that the true cause is not identified until far too late.

Eventually this comes to a climax with much of the legion on their homeworld, visions having ramped up so much that they no longer have any chance of telling what’s real or what's not, unaware that reality is breaking around them. Much of the population is being driven insane or is slaughtered as warp phenomena overtakes the planet. The last remnants of the True Face are so convinced that all that they see is false that they stand there as they are butchered by those who have fully accepted the chaos and are able to manifest within it.

After the end of the rebellion, they may manifest whenever thin reality and rampant faith are combined, taking the images of faith, wearing them and consuming them. Their armies may strike out from these places in an unpredictable fashion. A portion Legion were not present at the time of the cataclysm, but may be able to summon their brothers and/or break reality themselves to lesser degrees. Ascended members of the Legion can still die, their essence expended as they ultimately may not properly exist, so such outlier bands are the only way they gain new recruits. There are also travellers, individuals who have become one with unreality to the degree that reality cannot restrain them. They wander across the stars by themselves, travelling from one place to another via unknown means, reading cults and sometimes manifesting the unreality of their planet and their Legion upon an unfortunate world.

Many of the Terrans were semi-permanently assigned to the 'True Face' aspect of the Legion, the mode of warfare reserved for those foes against which the Dreamwalker's standard tactics are ineffective (AIs, certain xenos etc). Deploying the 'True Face' is seen as a mark of respect to those they face, though it often also means a conflict where utter destruction is required. The rest of the time the Legion focuses on a variety of methods to exploit local superstitions and symbology, either subverting them or breaking them so that not only is the morale of the foe broken, they are rendered pliable for integration of the Imperium. In this Kuranos points towards the Emperor's treatment of the Mechanicum and the Selenar gene-cults (he respects his father as the ultimate rationalist) as justification for actions that might seem counter to the Imperial Truth, even if he doesn't believe in them himself. To this end the Legion becomes particularly well known for it's use of hallucinogenics, use of its limited psyker pool and other methods to make their appearance seem more fitting for whatever mythological element they are imitating.

If the world had refused compliance and the Dreamwalkers gained data on their fears regarding the tunnels and the screaming, they would use Termites and Mole Ordinati to burrow beneath the cities, planting vox-casters emitting shrieking, attacking from below and firing hallucinogens to further the effect. upon encountering the AI, they would immediately shift to the 'True Face' engaging in more conventional tactics of destruction.

### Potential

The Primarch’s ascendance occurs on the eve of the rebellion, but only affects anyone on his homeworld.home system, with the bulk of the legion beyond it. With no idea of what the anomalies surrounding their homeworld mean, the rest of the Legion isolate the world and keep the absence of the Primarch on it a secret, and attempt to fight as loyalists in the civil war. However the taint which they have been able to deny for so long is manifesting in ever greater strength. It’s legionaries begin to suffer the most vivid hallucinations they have had yet, and things surrounding them always seem… not quite right. At the same time they are being confronted with evidence of daemons and the chaos gods. Initially dismissing this as another foul iteration of religion being used to unify an enemy, they begin to attempt to manipulate some their enemies beliefs against them, the exposure accelerating the taint. Evidence that such beliefs go beyond mere superstition mounts, undermining their core beliefs. Worse, there are rumours and visions indicating that their Primarch has somehow bypassed the blockades of their home system, appearing on worlds where the Legion battles and gathering his errant sons, killing them if they refuse.

Imperial high command and the other Legions are unaware of this, the Legion’s ability to dismiss their hallucinations allowing them to present a functional facade. At some point a breaking point is reached. Worlds go silent, report that the Dreamwalkers have somehow vanished, been slaughtered. Then there are the reports that are screams and insane gibberings, speaking of impossibilities. Abruptly, the loyalists realised that an entire Legion has somehow collapsed, leaving many of their fronts open.

Additional possibility- The collapse does not happen all at once, and a detachment of Custodians and Sisters of Silence are sent to investigate one of the last remaining communicable detachments. When they arrive they find the remainder paranoid and fearful, despite being deep within Imperial territory, and constantly ready for assault. Some welcome the custodians’ aid, others warn them to flee. Then, the Primarch arrives and all hell breaks loose.

## Legion Homeworld

### Y'hetill

A world with fairly varied terrain, including oceans, deserts, jungles and subterranean caverns. Several of its major cities have been abandoned due to warp phenomena, partially initiated by a natural weakness in the planets barrier to the warp and partially by ancient rituals conducted in the early years of the Age of Strife. These, prior to the coming of the Primarch, where considered cursed and haunted places that could drive the mind insane, and were widely avoided.

After the Primarch's condemnation of all superstitions, these cities were gradually reoccupied. It was noted that there was an above average ratio of incidents related to mental trauma in these cities, but that was put down to residual superstition. The fact that these cities were reoccupied and would eventually thrive was considered a clear sign of Kuranos' success and the validity of his views, and they would become among the greatest of Y'hetill's cities. Unknown to Hashtir's rationalists, the warp pressed thin still has a toll on the occupants minds, slowly tainting the new inhabitants as they did the old. There are even whispers that in such places lie ancient and arcane devices that are in fact passages to a mirror world of Y'hetill, though the rationalists believe this to be yet another element of an unfounded mythology.

Above the planet is a single but large moon. In previous years this was the operative base of the 'Moon Beasts', a xenos race that was slowly using mind-slaved emissaries to trade with the world below, secretly and slowly establishing influence to some unknown end. Where direct intervention is necessary, tales speak of the '*devils of the night*' and '*daemons of the outer spheres*'. A few even believe them to be benign creatures, openly engaging them in trade. It is possible that they seek the world because they believe it will give them access to something beyond it. Kuranos sees their bases on the planet destroyed, and bombards the moon with fission warheads. It is only with the Imperium's arrival that he can muster the space craft to embark the necessary force to ensure that the task is finished and the emissaries destroyed entirely, after which the moon is claimed as an outpost of the Legion.

### Notable Cities

* **Melenek:** Initially rationalist outpost, the most technologically advanced city and one which looks down upon the superstitions of the surrounding lands. Hashtir considers the city his home and the planets capital, and it remains the scientific hub.

* **Khul-Neresh:** A slaver city, one where the influence of the 'Moon Beasts' was particularly strong. Much of the city was heavily damaged in the war to drive the Moon Beats/emissaries from the world, and little effort has been made to reclaim it.

* **Siltak:** A subterranean city with which all contact was lost a few years prior to the Primarch's arrival. After contact was lost there were rumours of fell things crawling out from the depths of its halls. Once a stout ally of Melenek, the Moon Beats/Emissaries were responsible for seizing control of it and butchering the inhabitants. Hashtir reclaims the city in his campaign, proving that the demons that destroyed the city for its impudence were none other than the Moon Beats attempting to eliminate the threat. It remains a Legion stronghold.

* **Hy-Sollest:** A major temple city, at which Hashtir was officially anointed as a divine being to his faithful follows. Later, enraged at their perceived foolishness and and deception, returns and effectively levels the city.

## Notable Campaigns

Early on the victories of the Dreamwalkers both in battle and as a Legion were those of resilience in the face of the adversity that their ‘gift’ subjected them to. Their determination to never stop, never cease moving and always push the enemy cost the Legion in lives but also rewarded them with a solid if lustreless reputation. Later, in what was once thought to be the ‘Golden Age’ of the Legion in the aftermath of their reunification with their Primarch, their tactics became ever more complex and specialised. Battles became as elaborate and theatrical displays as much as acts of war, winning the Legion greater renown and fewer casualties than in previous eras. At the same time the nature of their tactics was to draw suspicion and criticism from others, even as their Primarch’s philosophies caused them to distance themselves from those they deemed flawed. A Legion that had once survived through sleepless endurance now waged war with ornate masks and hollow masks, every victory a symbol in which they did not believe.

The March in the Deeps

“If the members of this ‘Imperium’ wish so dearly to become acquainted with the sins of the past, let them see it for themselves.”

Few conflicts embody the tireless and often surprisingly effective endeavours  of the early Dreamwalkers as their march through the necropolises of Jaskara, long abandoned by civilised beings.
**Jaskara must have once been a prosperous world, for its surviving enclaves were built atop of thousand of years worth of derelict cities, manufactorums and necropolises that spanned the entire planet and running miles in depth. These underlevels had long ago been sealed of, the monstrosities and nightmares of the Age of Strife whispered of by the overworlders who sought to keep them at bay. The surface was encrusted by borderline ramshackle structures identifiably more recent in construction that the edifices below, in which the survivors of a once thriving civilisation took refuge and began to build anew upon the detritus of their forbearers. Negotiations had at first gone well, but with Explorators and Imperial Iterators eager to access the forbidden levels and a Company of the Dreamwalkers were called in in order to maintain a smooth transition.**

The 18th Company, then within the Seventeenth known by varying terms such as the ‘Bloodied of Gharast’, the ‘Survivors of Belseid’ or the ‘Tempest Born’, had been assigned to oversee the peaceful transition, doubtlessly serving as a display of the Imperium’s strength and promise of its protection. In character with their conduct to date, the grateful natives cleared out and prepared a facility for the Astartes to garrison. Unknown to the Imperial emissaries, or at the very least overlooked as unimportant, this area had been built over a section of the megastructure that was weakened, had collapsed or simply had never been built. Collectively this and the many other fissures that often lay just below the surface were known simply as ‘The Abyss’. The truth was that the local government had been suspicious of the Imperium from the start. The folly of their unwholesome fascination with the ruins beneath, as well of the presence of the transhumans within the Mechanicum and Astartes that seemingly bore kinship to abominations unleashed and barely kept at bay within the lower levels, only reinforced this and gradually suspicious resentment culminated in outright hostility.

The first announcement of this was not an official declaration or challenge, nor the noise of gunfire. Instead it was the detonation of high yield munitions placed in structural weak points beneath the Dreamwalker garrison region. The remainder of the Imperial delegation looked on aghast while the Jaskarans cheered as with a grinding screech audible for miles around the equivalent to a small city sunky below the surface, leaving a gaping chasm in its place and sending 500 of the Emperor’s Space Marines plummeting with it to their presumed deaths.

In this both the Jaskarans and the Imperium itself underestimate the Dreamwalkers. Records for what followed are sparse and unclear, often assumptions drawn from the reference terminology used within the ‘circle’ formed from the event. Though Remembrancers later conducted interviews within the circle, the Legionaries were often unwilling to divulge specifics. The outbreak of the Great Calamity, though destructive in so many ways, did offer a rare opportunity in that many Dreamwalkers were interrogated or otherwise had information extracted from them, among which were members of the 18th.

Within twenty-four hours of their violent descent, the Dreamwalker survivors had already fended off three attacks by roving bands of sub-human and stranger scavengers, terminated numerous individual predators before making an assessment of their resources and setting off on their perilous odyssey back to the light.

Knowing that they would be strained for resources, and that even now a war raged far above them, the Legionaries swore never to rest until they had broken the Jaskarans for their crime. The near impossibility of their task was hardly remarked upon at the time. As far as can be told, they kept to their word in a quite literal manner typical to the Legion at that period. They did not rest as they fought through cities that were half-subterranean oceans, leaving the corpses of gene-spliced hybrids rotting in the depths. Nor as they marched through compressed rad-wastes and gravitic shock zones whilst fending of exo-gholems and pyrograunts. Within the enclosed catacombs of forgotten monarchs they fell upon the camps of the ravager hosts and made red ruin of the cannibal hordes. When their weapons and armour began to fail them they dared venture into the realm of the Rust-king to battle over scrap-salvage and purged the experimental abomations within the StarCage laboratums to drag forth esoteric remnants of foolhardy research. Rarest of all in the records we possess are the mentions of the ‘elder enclaves’ and the ‘sleepers’ left in their care.

By the end of their journey the Legionaries had been reduced to a quarter of their original size. Most were injured in body and clouded in mind, the cost of the sleepless march being the gradual erosion between reality and imagination. The command structure had rearranged itself not around seniority but soundness of perception, and heavy reliance was placed upon the pair of battered Noctolax automata that ran ahead of them without concern for mortal soul. Still, the Dreamwalkers now drove before them a tide of rabid terrors that fled their approach, each tearing through the next obstacle in turn. The last obstacle proved to be the Jaskaran rearguard, swarmed by their nightmares before the Legionaries cut through and put paid to the wrong done to them two months earlier.

With armour torn and patched over a hundred times with spare parts from fallen comrades and long dead colonists and the strange manner of barely controlled delirium the survivors evidenced, it seemed to the Jaskarans and Imperial Army forces alike that the Dreamwalkers had been resurrected imbued with the spirit of the under-labyrinths. Indeed, the event would leave a permanent mark upon the character of the company, renamed as the Survivors of the Sunken City in the months that they spent recovering from their ordeals upon the surface. Even after their departure the Company would frequently return to cull recruits from unspecified sources, and artefacts from the Sleepless March became treasured relics among the company. So tightly tied t this world was the 18th that as the Imperium was torn asunder they would return here to fight and die in the underworld that they had claimed as their own.

Exemplary 2

As Kuranos began to emphasise the use of psychological warfare against ‘unworthy’ enemies, the Dreamwalkers swiftly began to display an aptitude for improvisation to match a series of common underlying themes that were replicated across dozens of humanity’s lost world, deploying in the images of such as required. Thunder-gods, harbingers of death, demons and angels are examples of this. However it was only when given the opportunity to plan in advance and adapt their tactics to specific cultural idiosyncrasies that the full depth of their manipulations were given view.

As part of the peaceful compliance of the human planet of Vygol, a fringe world that had long served as a stopping port, the Magistrates that held power there gave the Dreamwalkers’ 32nd Expeditionary Fleet all the data they had gleaned from their infrequent visitations from the nearby hold outs of lost humanity. They warned that though they were a maudlin people, they were also  heavily militarised and were unlikely to surrender without significant losses. Though the strategic data provided was limited, Kuranos instead focused on a very particular set of details. The source of his interest was a spatial anomaly that had plagued those worlds, and despite no apparent threat was the source of widespread fear among the superstitious void-farers. This ‘shroud of fell things’ was either heavily monitored or avoided entirely, and the fear that it might produce some undescribed threat seemed to be the cause of much of the nearby militarisation. Observing this, the Primarch of the Dreamwalkers set his plans in motion.

Over the course of several months these outlanders would receive a number ships, both the travel-scarred wanderers and scrap-barges with which they were long acquainted, but also vessels which claimed to be refugees of this Imperium , some new expansionist regime which threatened the outlander’s territories. As the outlander’s began to ready themselves for coming war, it evaded their notice that at least some of these arrivals were not what they seemed. Scores of humans, sometimes entire crews, were in fact auxilia associated with the XVIIth Legion. They were not under any orders to gather intelligence or attempt sabotage, nothing that might risk their discovery. Though the command crews were typically selected from those mortals that came closest to the Primarch’s own values, well schooled in the intents of their mission, often these did not stay long. Instead they discharged hundreds of feral-worlders taken by the Legion from nearby systems, pawns who fully believed the lies they were to spread, before departing for the void once more. Amidst this influx of refugees and salvage was another deadlier cargo, a handful of the most elite members of the Dreamwalkers ‘Poltergheist’ reconnaissance cadre.

Steadily, week by week, reports began to rise amidst the outlander orbitals and void stations of strange occurrences. Raving madmen and prophets. Strange hallucinations. Entire cults springing forth. Each had a singular connection - whether it was obvious or not, each referenced the Shroud, and the coming of ancient evils. The first tremors of superstition-infused fear were rippling across the Outlander holdings, but this was not enough to unseat order or reason entirely, not with the threat of the Imperium on their doorstep. Not at first.

Then ships began to disappear. Salvage scows, commerce barges, reconnaissance craft. Many seemed to vanish entirely. Others were found adrift in varying states. Some appeared untouched apart from the total disappearance of any crew. Others were drenched in blood. Some bore records that seemed to indicate the inhabitants had turned upon one another in states of delirium. Again there was a connection. Messages whispered with a dying breath, sensor logs absent of anything but a single stellar image. Course charts that showed each ship had drawn to one singular location in space. Yet again it was the Shroud that was the connection.

When something from within one of these retrieved derelicts tore its way free and wreaked havoc throughout the Aeginact habitat before expiring in a blaze of empyric light, the various councils and warlords finally pulled together a fleet drawn from vessels intended to stand against the Imperium that would be sent to investigate the region of space around the Shroud. This was deemed to be a fleet large enough to defend itself should it encounter trouble, but not so large that it detracted from their defenses elsewhere. Drawing close to the Shroud, the ships slowed as crewmembers eyed the anomaly warily. The fleet inched closer to the coruscating clouds, kilometre by kilometre. Elsewhere, hundreds of eyes watched their vox-transmitted auger feeds with rising anticipation. Thousands of ears were listening when cries of panic broke out amongst the fleet. From beneath the anomaly’s surface vast shapes were moving. Majestic leviathans that dwarfed any ship the Outlanders possessed rose from the clouds, space around them flickering and twisting to distort their violently luminescent shapes. As thousands of ears wear listening and thousands of eyes watching, the vox-links went dead.

The result was panic. Riots broke out across the Outlander systems. Ships and armies garrisoned against an attack from the Imperium were withdrawn without cohesion or communication, flung back and forth as station’s attempted to suppress their civil strife, defend themselves against an unidentified enemy or were sent again towards the Shroud in the fraught hopes they would encounter an enemy that could be destroyed. Some ships simply abandoned the region entirely. When the 32nd Expeditionary Fleet entered Outlander space, making no attempt to hide their approach, the resistance they encountered was scattered and weak. The fear of whatever lurked in the Shroud far overrode any of a more mundane invasion, and some habitats even welcomed the Imperium as allies that might be able to keep the coming darkness at bay. As Legionaries of the Dreamwalkers restored order, gunning down haphazard attempts at fending them off, the quiet retrieval of the Banshee cadres went unnoticed.

With the partial records of the Dreamwalkers at our disposal, we can assemble a far more complete picture of what happened than the Outlanders ever will. The disappearing ships were the work of XVIIth Legion destroyers and hunter-killers, stalking their carefully selected prey before launching boarding craft to neutralise the crew and do with their prize as they deemed fit for their objectives. Those that displayed any risk of escape or transmitting before the Dreamwalkers intended them too were destroyed outright. The origins of the creature

That devastated the Aeginact habitat is harder to pin down as there are no records of it within the campaign logs. This is perhaps not surprising, given the somewhat prohibited procedures that would be required to create such a thing. However, it is known that a number of Charonite Ogryns were requisitioned from the 1706th Solar Auxilia regiment and were never returned. It is also known that the Lodge of Skinless Flesh, one of the Lodges that had previously operated alongside elements of the Sons of Solstice for an extended period, was present amongst the 32nd Expeditionary Fleet at the time.

As for the distinctive entities responsible for the destruction of the reconnaissance fleet, they can be no other than the Gloriana flagship The Eternal Lie, accompanied by such Grand Cruisers as The Weeping Mask, Dreaming Anaethema and Azenath Sceptre Noctis. Though they may not have been recorded as participating in any conclusive battle within the Outlander region, the effectiveness of their role was made clear as the Dreamwalkers seized the reigns of a civilisation broken by its own beliefs.

Vs Gravestalkers (pre-corruption)

.A Gravestalkers vs Dreamwalkers campaign on a heavily populated world/worlds might be interesting at some point.

.There were passages in return of the king where whenever the knights of Dol Amroth rode by, the defender's spirits would be lifted only to plummet after they departed. There could be something like that where the dreamwalkers can inspire near-fanaticism when they are present, but as soon they leave the Grave Stalkers can tear the resistance apart and local resistance collapses, with the Stalkers making a deliberate acts of targeting isolated Dreamwalkers and mortal converts. This could also buffer the local lodge from the Legion's corruption, and give rise to the post-war lodge that relies on captive pariahs to stave of their father's influence.

Vs Lightning Bearers (post corruption)

.Taking on the forms of monsters from the era of the Thunder King.

.”We should have put you down when we had the chance” from a terran verteran of the unification wars.

.”These bastards have the gall to wear lightning as their cloaks. Tear it from them. Show them what the storm really is.”

.”Do you feel it? The lightning flowing through your veins? HE knew, he knew. He took it, consumed it, became it. Such power. All this potential sitting just beneath the clouds of your planet and you never used it. Took lightning as your name, yet you never knew what it was like to be it.”

Battle of Gwinkrong (pre-corruption)

.Due to one of the worst hallucination affected lodges having been cooperating with the Sons of Solstice on certain projects, Kuranos begins to blame Azothastra and his Legion for the malady affecting the Dreamwalkers. Believing that Azothastra is still hiding on the Legions homeworld,

.Kuranos misleads the magi of Tindalos into helping him breach Gwinkrong’s security teleporting himself and a vanguard of Veil Render and heavy support terminators into the center of Gwinkrong while the Dreamwalkers fleet moves into mass assault positions.

.The teleportation spearhead led by Kuranos onto Gwinkwrong consisted in two thirds of veterans drawn from the Veil Render elite. The remainder consisted of terminator clad veterans equipped for fire support roles, mostly clad in Saturnine pattern armour from dedicated 'True Face' companies favoured by the Primarch. Intercepted vox-comms from this portion of the task-force provide the only firm details we have from the spear-head assault, and of them none are recorded as having returned in any state to validate what they screamed of in the heat of battle.

.Unknown to Kuranos, the use of the Veilrender terminators and the collateral damage caused disrupts the warding in place around the warp-rift at Gwinkrong's heart. Kuranos is exposed the the warp rift, shaking his convictions and causing him to order a mass withdrawal, just as the Dreamwalker fleet has fought its way past the garrison fleet and is in the midst of launching an orbital assault.

.A substantial number of Kuranos’ trusted ‘true face’ operatives were killed in the battle.

Also - almost immediately before the fall of the Dreamwalkers, Kuranos' attention is called to 'monsters' rampaging through one of the (tainted) re-colonised cities on Ye'hetill. When he arrives to put them down, he discovers that they are warped versions of members of the vanguard that went missing during the battle of Gwinkrong.

## Legion Organisation & Structure

### Legion Command Hierarchy

Lodges: Though the Legion used the Carta Bellicosa as a baseline structure, they also integrated and reinforced this with 'lodges' (different name pending). This originated as  pre-Primarch structure that allowed a company or chapter to use their shared experiences to communicate, coordinate and verify circumstances even as they suffered from hallucination. A 'lodge' could therefore span multiple different strata, from the shared heritage between waste-walkers or vigil-holders - to any group that shares a memorable battle or engagement. This could even extend to such things such as poetry or games. Using details, symbols and phrases from their shared experience, a group could use these to confirm that they are communicating with real versions of one another, and that there is veracity in what they report. This approach would eventually penalise any attempts at mass recruitment to form new formations, new recruits instead being gradually integrated into existing structures and taking pains to learn what had been set before them.  Though Kuranos would establish the Hypsoian Order to to manage and treat hallucinatory incidents, as well as regulate and disentangle the psychology of these pre-existing formations, he saw the value and stability given by such structures. therefore he allowed them to remain, on the condition that the Hypsioans ensure that every Legionary was made aware of the origins and relevance of such practices, lest they fall into superstition. He did however demand that the Hypsioans themselves, as well as any member of his command cadre, be fully seperated from such structures. The ability to function without them was much valued by the Primarch, seen as proof of ones mental ability. In such a manner were many Terrans, unable or unwilling to me beyond such practices, disqualified from the uppermost echelons of the Dreamwalkers.

In addition to the webs of symbol and communication within each group, there was a far more unified set of practices, first being rooted in the Legion's founding battles on Terra and later in the practices of Y'hetill, to allow coordination between such groups. Though moderately effective, this still fell far short of the unity achieved within a lodge, and the combination on a squad or company level of different lodges was a far more difficult manner. Even though it was exceptionally rare for a lodge to be in the grips of hallucination in their entirety, the enforcement of the lodge system meant that different lodges were reticent to interact with one another. Such cooperation was often dependent on the overlap between lodges, so that the members of one company that shared heritage with members of another company could relay their messages in the verified form to those individuals, who would then verify the message to the rest of their company through the practices built up by the company's shared experiences. However the larger the Dreamwalker detachment, the more lodges through which the message or intent would have to be relayed. Kuranos' founding of the Hypsoians improved manners somewhat, for in being separate from the lodge they were best placed to coordinate between them. The one thing that seemed to unify different lodges without exception was the Primarch himself, whose presence and commands seemed to cut through whatever form of delirium a Dreamwalker might experience. it was thus natural that the largest and most cohesive battles the Legion fought during the Great Crusade were always with Kuranos at their head.

Psykers within the Dreamwalkers:The Psykers of the Dreamwalkers are a complex matter. On the one hand they are of vital importance to facilitating the Legion's way of war. Though they number no more than an average Legion, if such a thing truly exists, they are used constantly. Telepaths are perhaps seen as the most useful 'Dreamwalkers' in the most literal sense possible. They can steal myths and superstitions directly from the minds of a target, then magnify them and return them tenfold. Though the uses of telepaths are the most flexible, other disciplines have their places in the Dreamwalker's theatric displays.

On the other hand, this only magnifies their risks. Any psyker is constantly at the centre of abnormal phenomena that could be confused with hallucination, or trigger it. Should a psyker fall into a loop of reacting to their own visions and unleashing greater phenomena, it risks having a ripple effect on the surrounding Legionaries. The strain their duties place upon them do little to alleviate this.

For this reason, one of the key duties of the Hypsoian Order is the pre and post battle monitoring and treatment of psykers, assigning treatments and stability levels. It is these stability levels, the degree of restraint that a psyker is capable of displating, that determines ahere a psyker is assigned to battle. The most restrained, those capable of weilding their abilities with the utmost precision, are deployed amongst the reconnaissance elements responsible for detecting and inflaming useful superstitions. The less controlled are sent in amongst shock elements, sowing havoc amongst the enemy. Those who would be assigned solely to recovery were only unleashed in the most dire circumstances, or in the presence of the Primarch.

Chief Librarian Mygor Sathlus may be considered such a case, for though his power and skill were unsurpassed in the Legion, he struggled to communicate with outsiders or in a tongue other than his native one, capable of falling into reveries where found himself forced to remain inert lest instinctively reacted to his hallucinations. For this reason he was most commonly seen in Kuranos's presence, whose proximity seemed to alleviate such symptons, thus becoming a member of the unofficial 'Sleepless Guard".

It should also be noted that psykers are commonly assigned a squad for the duration of their surface, so that they may form a 'lodge' that enables them to remain grounded and that if necessary can suppress them. Though these squads - sometimes specifically trained and sometimes drawn from those brothers already close to the psyker - would be permanently assigned to a psyker and vice versa - the unit as a whole could be re-equipped and redeployed at the behest of their superiors.

Early in the wars, such squads would bear heraldry marking as such, though this soon proved to mark them as a target of assasinatiom to those familliar to the Legion's ways. Later this would become but another aspect of the Legion's displays, concealing or inflating the true number of psykers present in a detachment as according to the markings displayed. This in turn served to undermine coherency around such units, especially between different Dreamwalker detachments.

Both the XVIIth’s psykers and its so called Hypsoian Order represent largely unique structures amongst the Legiones Astartes, and it is where these two groups overlap that the title of Dreamwalkers truly comes to the fore.

As has been touched upon elsewhere, the status of a psyker among the Dreamwalkers is largely dependant on their ability to control their powers as opposed to their raw strength. However the Legion had often found special use for telepaths, favouring them and thus burdening them with more onerous duties than others. Many, officially or otherwise find themselves associated with the Kaeidaein order and are assigned to Haruspex Reconnaissance squads. Here, in the vanguard of Dreamwalker Compliance Actions, they are tasked with subtly reaching into a targets mind. Whose mind it is is essentially important, as long as they have a detailed understanding of the local culture and superstitions. If possible the psyker may plant suggestions within the target’s subconscious.

Visions, portents, omens, whispering thoughts at the back of their minds. More important is the information gleaned, for it is around this and detail acquired by more mundane means that the compliance operation will be designed around. This was a technique in evidence even before Kuranos took Stewardship of his Legion, the Dreamwalkers own hallucinations giving them ample expertise to navigate the dreams of others, and sometimes lead to tensions with the Devourers of Irithion, whose own macabre methods of information gathering were seen as crude and morbid by the XVIIth.

The most hardened of these telepaths, only a handful, may find themselves inducted into the Hypsoian Order directly. Their task is to delve into the minds of those Dreamwalkers afflicted by hallucinations, aiding in the prognosis and even doing their best to salve the sufferer’s nightmares. If their standard recon operations are ghostly, subtle affairs, whispering into a mortals subconscious, then delving into the thoughts of an afflicted Dreamwalker is more like being battered by a vicious storm, half remembered monsters hurling themselves at you in an attempt to destroy you as you attempt to catch glimpses of a lighthouses between the looming waves. The most skilled of all are capable of constructing a dream within a dream, providing themselves with a staging point over which they can have some control and where they can interrogate those fragments of the subjects mind that still holds to reason.

By the time of the Dreamwalkers fall, almost none of these talented individuals were left. Stretched thin and over-taxed by their attempts to salve the rising insanity within the Legion, they had long since gone mad themselves or faded into history.

### Legion Specific Units

* **The True Face:** Elements of the Legion that do not engage in standard illusory tactics at all, engaging those foes that are unaffected by them. This is regarded as an honest and pure way to wage war as it should be done, where there is no weakness of the mind. By en large no one is a permanent member of the True Face, adopting it in specific circumstances. Some Terrans are an exception, preferring to remain within the 'True Face' on a permanent basis. Likewise, tainted members begin to avoid acting as a component on it, beginning to refer to it as 'The Mask'.

* Hypsoian Order**:** Placeholder.

* Kaeidaein Order: Members of the Legion dedicated to cultural analysis and reconnaissance, disproving superstitions, mythologies and sacred texts. Heavily involved with the naguard and infiltration units meant to bring back cultural and scientific research as well as laying the groundwork for a Dreamwalkers campaign.

### Specialist Formations

* **Gheist Reconnaisaince Unit:** The scouts tasked with early insertion and mimicking supernatural phenomena. Options to have a psyker, hallucinogens. Impose leadership/fear related penalties on the opposing army.

* **Veil Render Terminators:** The Veil Renders were an elite core of Terminators within the Dreamwalkers Legion versed in the art of exploiting teleportation attacks for their shock value, even adopting the reckless tactic of leaving brief warp scars in their wake that threatened to drive those that viewed their arrival insane or otherwise compromise their fighting ability. Among the Legion it was the Veil Renders that were most prone to adopting the visages of a culture's Gods, Demons and monsters, the combination of a pre-selected attire and the weakened reality that heralded their deployment augmenting this affect. While the Legions reconnaissance force and psykers might spend months seeding cults, laying prophesies and marking omens, it was the Veil Renders who brought those prophecies to fruition, bringing destruction promised weeks ago and seeded in the minds of their targets. To their foe they might seem godly avatars, swathed in divine power and gilded armour. They might seem savage beasts that take a mocking form of humanity with nightmarish features and savage claws, rending apart those that fall before them. Many refuse the use of conventional ranged weapons, instead opting for melee arms that carry a far older and more ingrained meaning.

* Noctoloax 'Night Runner' Automata**:** The original Night-runners were a bastardised derivative of the ancient Crusader template used by the K'sechi nomads of pre-Unification Terra, one of the many groups from which the stock of the XVIIth Legion was drawn. These tireless constructs were capable of keeping up with the nomadic convoy's constant pace, and of still being able to engage a foe at a moments notice. Though costly for the nomads to maintain, the ability to scout ahead, respond to aggression at moments notice and if necessary to be expendable in the face of breaking through a blockade or delaying pursuers made them vital to the nomad's existence. When the K'sechi ran into the only foe they could not avoid or break through, the nascent Imperium, many of those taken from the tribe and inducted into the Legion would remember the faith placed in these constructs, and demanded their reproduction. Though originally just one idiosyncrasy in a Legion drawn from different peoples, the design soon proved a boon to the proto-Dreamwalker's requirements. Once hard-coded not to respond to any of it's mentor Legionaries as a threat -thus reducing the risks of friendly fire triggered by a hallucinating Legionary's panick- the automata would prove capable of sustaining itself in the Legionaries' extended engagement, and even in pressing the attack home. The attached pict-feeds could prove more reliable than a fellow Legionary's reports under duress, and they showed no doubt when confronted by a surprise enemy. As lodges began to form, each one would modify their automata in their own fashion. Night-runner's could even be integrated into a lodge's symbology. Thus legionaries would better be able to identify them in extremis, and they could be used to correlate and confirm a Legionaries observations of their surroundings.

Ultimately, these structures would lead to the Night-runner's decline. The Martian priesthood would produce a modernised variant for the Legion's use. In this they named the pattern Noctolax, though many of the Legion used the prior name.  In exchange for access to the design itself ensured that it was fit for war across the stars. Ultimately, the increase in cohesion and formation stability within the Dreamwalkers rendered the automata's original roles redundant, gradually seeing them sacrificed as expendable shock weapons, relegated to reserve stocks, or altered ever more bizarrely in the Legion's quest to manipulate the emotions of the enemy. For a time the Legion's decline during the First Inter-Legionary war would reverse that trend among some lodges  as they attempted to stymie their degradation, before the bulk of the Legion passed beyond such material objects and concerns entirely.

## Legion Wargear

* **Hallucinogen Munitions:**
* **Subsonic Disorientors:**

## Legion Combat Doctrine

### Offensive Doctrine

Scouting, prolonged reconnaissance and negotiations are encouraged for the opportunity to engage in cultural research upon the superstitions of who they’re fighting. If possible, disguising insertion ships as comets or meteors is favourable, as these often serve as portents or omens in many cultures.

When it does move to assault, it does not attempt to obscure its nature entirely. If there are prophecies that refer to warning signs of an apocalypse, they will attempt to make it appear as if these are really happening. Their scouts may masquerade as phantom or fell emissaries, chemicals may turn rivers red or rain ash from the sky. Psykers may be used to drive rulers insane or give people dire visions. Seismic bombardments may be used to trigger earthquakes. The legion will adopt its tactics to mimic those that the natives fear, often aided by mass bombardments of hallucinogens that further distort their opponents views of reality.
Where entities are encountered that appear mythical or unreal in nature, the Legion will attempt to analyse them, determining what they are via empirical methods until they understand them well enough to destroy them.

In a case where such tactics are useless (Abominable Intelligence, Rangdan, xenos beyond understanding etc), the Legion shows its 'True Face'. Such foes are respected for their lack of superstition and weakness, and the legion deploys whatever weapons it can in the simple acts of honest destruction. This has lead to an assumption that there is an elite core within the Legion known as '*The True Face*', when in reality that is simply the guise the Legion adopts against such foe.

If a civilisation refused compliance, scouts could have inserted vox-casters in the upper tunnels that mimicked the screaming from their myths, throwing them into panic and disarray. The Legion could then either offer to protect the natives via human proxy, or else use Termites and Akataeus to breach the tunnels themselves and strike out from there, clad in grey and with hallucinogens to further the panic. Upon encountering the AI entity their tactics would immediately shift, with Dreadnoughts, breachers and terminators being airlifted or teleported in to hold the enemy while its nature can be assessed, before a final brutal push to destroy it.

### Defensive Doctrine

When on the defense, the Legion may well be immediately on the back foot as they lack the preparation to get to grips with their enemy’s psychology. They are also uninclined to use hallucinogenics outside of controlled circumstances, as identifying them as hallucinogens can substantially dampen their effect upon the enemy army as a whole. The immediate response is to try and stall and hold until research can be undertaken (auxillaries and automata are particularly useful in such circumstances) and slowly establish their psychological attacks separately from their main defense. Often this hinges around an attempt to portray the defended planet itself as cursed, luring the enemy into abandoned cities, desolate mountain ranges or dense forests and launching sporadic but demoralising attacks. Again there will be a focus on targeting hostile command elements, giving them visions and fraying their sanity or slaying them in particularly symbolic fashions. In short, they will attempt to portray the enemy campaign as ‘cursed’. These tend to lack the effectiveness of a fully planned offensive campaign, and if their methods are discovered the hostile homeworld may be prepared for such tactics when retribution arrives.

## Legion Beliefs

Even in their early years the Dreamwalkers were a Legion of sceptics, accustomed to witnessing bizarrities in the knowledge that they were nothing more than illusions conjured up by their subconsciousness. Despite this the insular nature of the Lodges and their reliance upon shared rituals to ground their members in reality upon extended operations gave rise to a number of deviant beliefs. One of the most notable of these was the Tulzan sect, predominant across at least three lodges, that orientated their rituals around a number of 'blazing beacons' that drew their minds back to cognisicence. It was the Emperor Himslef and the Astronomicon which they reagrded as their beacons, and despite achieving a far lower rate of mental breakdown than other lodges, their practices found little ground with their Primarch. In a series of punishing True Face camapigns fought alongside Hasthtir himself, each lodge was brutally mauled in combat and then disbanded. They followed him to their deaths willingly, for their Primarch was himself seen as such a beacon, and from a handful of the survivors of these lodges were the first of the Sleepless Guard formed.

Another noticeable deviation, one that initially fared better than their counterparts, was those present within what was officially recorded as the 72nd company, effectively stranded for three years in the Twilight Marches. Here they found dozens of enemies and anomlies whose strangness in reality matched anything conjuned from their imaginings, and later cautioned as much to other lodges. The Lodge of the Twighlight Marches would find themselves essentially on permanent station there, for though Kuranos wished them isolated from the Legion at large he also acknowledged the anomalous phenomena within the region, giving the Lodge permission to keep watch there while also dispatching 200 members of the Hypsoian Order to undertake a more detached analysis. Their isolation would shield them from the earliest spasms from civil war, but when Hasthtir came to the region seeking answers about the malady affecting his Legion he sought to eliminate a potential vecctor of contamination, forcing the Lodge's survivors to flee to hidden fastnesses they had uncovered over the centuries.

The beliefs of the Eyeless Passage were extinct long before Kuranos' discovery, for they believed that within their hallucinations they could discern the passages of time that would lead to victory. Shunned by other lodges and even drawing notice from outside the Legion, they achieved a great victory against the Shel'zarr Aeldari before being all but wiped out during the disasterous Lambda-Phi 76 campaign and having their remainder excecuted by an especially assembled Opsequiari conclave.

## Legion Gene-Seed

In addition the Legion has a mutation to their Catalepsean node that allows them to persist for even longer than most Astartes without sleep, making them suitable for prolonged battles. The downside is that the mental affects are even more pronounced, with vivid hallucinations and apparitions. Though this comes close to paralysing the Legion's actions in its first engagements, they soon learn methods to cope with and to ignore the side effects of this.

## Notable Dreamwalkers

Kuranos Hasthtir, Primarch of the XVIIth, Lord of Ochre

Mygor Sathlus, Master of the Aetherwielders (Chief Librarian Equivalent), member of the Sleepless Guard

Leysson, psyker, member of the Sleepless Guard

Baudas, psyker, member of the Sleepless Guard

Isellos, member of the Sleepless Guard

Kaytak, member of the Sleepless Guard

Asalik, Equerry to the Primarch, Foremost of the Hypsoian Order

Byerek, member of the Hypsoian Order

Herrio Kaestaiynes, Praetor of the Poisoned Light and and Vizier of the Court of Morpheus.

Dargoth Thul, Voice of the Aetherwielders

Illysk Phrensen, Aetherwielder, The Dream Touched

Ivisson Korrphemos, 2nd Veil Renders Assault Cadre- Fell during the Great Crusade

Mortisson A'karta, Veil Render

Pheykon Siriamar, Veil Render

Keros Somnaseille, Veil Render

Haradesh Ghorm- Praevian

Syk Khet- Demoted Praetor

Samnos Iytellon, Primasantas of the Glory Unrevealed

Ves'hiko Dhurranesh, the Patchwork Man, Banshee Recon Squad sergeant

[REDACTED]- Former Rememberancer

Movak Synerrik, Terminator Veteran- Fell during the Great Crusade

## Legion Fleet

Gloriana Class- The Eternal Lie (credit Calius).

Charon Class Battleship-Shattered Visage

-Edge of Consciousness

-The Broadablin

-Swimmer in the Mist

-Beneath the Lake

-The Last Ball

-Thought Hound

-Azure Bird

-Eternal Masque

-The Screaming Silence

Grand Cruiser-The Weeping Mask

-Knife of Nothingness

-The Mirror Cracked

-Acolyte of Falsehoods

-Gift of Malice

-Curse of Infinity

Grand Cruiser-Dreaming Anathema

-Unseen Interloper

-The Coming Dread

-Shape of Fear

-Unquiet Memory

-Voice of the Void

-Waking Shadow

-Periphery of Twilight

-Monsters from the Id

-Inquisition of Self

-Fang of Thoughts

-Phobos

-Paradoxical Truths

-Whisperer in Darkness

-Eyes Within

-Ghastly Vision

-Terror's Unkown

-The Unwaking Nightmare

-Oneiron's Stride

-Breaker of Altars

Grand Cruiser-Azenath Sceptre Noctis

-Occam's Mindrazor

-Shape of Nightmare to Come

-Impending Dread

-Allodynian Instinct

-Shapeless Enemy

-Resurgent Suspicion

## Legion Relics

* ***The Pale Visage*** - An archaeotech helm with...

## Relations

### Allies

Ordo Recutcot Covenants

Those covenants of the Ordo Reductor that campaigned alongside the Dreamwalkers for an extended amount of time often had access to that Legions extensive supplies of hallucinogenic munitions, in some cases even being responsible in part for their devising. During the years of the great Schism these fell magi would combine and amplify these stocks into ever more potent weapons, responsible for such calamities as the Vyronen Atrocity and the Latisian psy-plague. One Magos Reductor in particular however, sought to instead use his knowledge and talents to manipulate his own troops. Using cocktails of hallucinogens, even sometimes adding psy-active agents in direct contravention of practiced doctrine, he drowned the minds of his Ursurax and Thallax in dreams and nightmares. Though this came at the cost of the tactical decision making which the Thallax were often favoured for, these insane creations proved horrific weapons to inflict upon an opponent, especially with some of the later modifications introduced by the Magos.

One that saw service briefly before the Warmaster’s assassination was derivative of the Ursurax pattern. Enslaved by the exhilaration their broken minds felt in flight, or driven by terror to throw themselves against what they considered to be savage monsters, they hurled themselves from the skies like demons, tearing into whatever opposed them. With the chst mounted volkite incinerators having been replaced by prototypal sonic weaponry, these attacks were often accompanied by deafening shrieks that sent foes reeling. The shock value of these units was much valued by the Dreamwalkers.

A much later and far more temperamental device focused on amplifying the djinn-sight of Thallaxi. Forgoing armament entirely, this tortured being was constantly bombarded by its sightless vision, even able to see the souls of its enemies through the warp, able to taste their fear and hatred and hope equally. Initially used as a makeshift way to determine the morale of an enemy, they more often than not became ways to amplify certain technologies or entities as the war went on.

Other Auxillaries

Auxillary forces attached to the Dreamwalkers tend to be of two natures. The first tend to be a set of expendable troops, attached as much for psychological study as for military purposes. In addition to being able to study the melting pot of different beliefs from scores of worlds as they clash with each other and the reality of spaceborne life, they also prove simple for the Dreamwalkers to manipulate, being easily urged to a near-fanaticism should the Legion require it.  Those enlisted for shipboard or menial duty are trained to complete simple and repetitive tasks, often being introduced to them in an almost ritualistic fashion. On the battlefield they are too easily convinced that they fight against heathens and monsters and at the behest of beings that are near Gods. The downside of this is that they struggle to interact with other more typical Auxillia forces. The Dreamwalker’s treatment of such allies would become criticised over the course of the Great Crusade, especially as their tactics in cases began to become more excessive and risked rendering entire regiments that fought alongside them unusable.

These were overseen and supplemented by a core of mortals whose views and mentality approached the Legion’s own. Most commonly they were drawn from Oureous’ rationalist enclaves, ever burgeoning since Kuranos had risen to power, but could also recruited from wherever the Primarch deemed the local population met his own exacting standards. Always schooled in the exact information that the Dreamwalkers have about the foe and the Legion’s battleplans, in the field of battle these cadres are also equipped with sensory and environmentally protective gear that shielded them from the worse side effects of the masters’ method of war. The Solar Auxilia pattern gear was often, though not universally adapted to this end. Without the reliance upon psychological reinforcement, this corps of forces provided the Dreamwalker auxilia a reliable backbone unlikely to break under either the enemy’s influences or the byproducts of the XVIIth Legion’s tactics.

Though the Legion maintained numerous ties to the Mechanicum, usually under the partially false pretenses of shared conviction, there is also a rumoured council of ‘apostate’ tech-priests integrated into the Legion’s inner council and the rationalist enclaves on Oureuos. Though raised in the Mechanicum’s traditions, such individuals would scorn worship of the Omnissiah and seek the reasoning behind so many of the Mechanicum’s rituals. Of course, the existence of such is purely theoretical. It would take Kuranos a great deal of effort to locate and persuade such individuals to join him, and no more than a handful of them could exist. Should their existence be proven, it would likely cause the Legion some amount of strife with Mars.

It is also here appropriate to mention the Legio Sagaventis and House Operani. Though neither are sworn to the Dreamwalkers exclusively, they do have a degree of limited ties. Legio Sagaventis was freshly founded when its maniples were deployed against the (Vermalkyr?). The Dreamwalker contingent present had initiated communications with the newborn Legio months before they reached the battlezone, taking time to negotiate the labyrinthine web of politics and pride that surrounds any Legio. With requests, masked offerings of advice, and the sealing of a few minor but mutually beneficial compacts - the Dreamwalkers were able to persuade the Legio Princeps to reconfigure some of their tactics and equipment for the duration of the campaign, designed to best exploit the awing presence of the God-Machines and the effects of this upon the mortal foe. Firepower was concentrated in manners that seemed tactically sub-optimal so as to better cause a mass-psychological impact. Warlord Titans put themselves at great risk engaging at least one Vremalkyr in melee, tearing it down at great cost to themselves but displaying their might to onlookers. Their war-sirens were harmonised, so that their charges were accompanied by what was described as the music of war-gods. Rather than abandoning such practices, the Legio maintained them even after the war had concluded. Long thereafter their detractors would claim that they had developed an overweening arrogance, intoxicated on the results of their displays. The Dreamwalkers, on the other hand, would come to call upon the Legio on other occasions where it was felt their talents might be suited.

House Operani

House Operani (or the Houses Operani might be more accurate, as the world possessed several houses, each its own heritage)  however owes something of a debt to the Dreamwalkers and the wider Imperium. For centuries they had watched over their world, fending off invasions as they had come until one arrived that was not so easily opposed. A set of asteroid strikes seemed initially a coincidence, and perhaps it was. One keep was destroyed by close proximity to an impact site, but most were sturdily built and void-shielded, surviving the impacts aftermath. Other cities and bastions were destroyed, abandoned, overrun. Such a disaster, while significant, was recoverable and in time the world began to rebuild itself. Unknown to them, the impacts had brought with them a far more insidious threat.

Infection fields, as they were later known, began to form around the impact sites. Plants and fauna, even people, were slowly twisted by the presence of some form of contaminant. New forms began to emerge, built to further spread the infection. Even a handful of Knight Houses in proximity to the infection fields were corrupted. When this was discovered, the untainted Houses unified and rode forth. Corrupted bloodlines were put to the sword, their armours scoured and redistributed. Armiger retainer parties swept outlying settlements, purging without hesitation where Sacristan-administered testing uncovered contamination. Houses set out in strength to purge the infection fields themselves, leaving nothing but ash behind them. By the next year the infection fields had regrown. The response was rad-bombardment, which seemed to at least deprive the infection of biomass to corrupt but did not seem to eradicate it entirely.

The stringent measures would remain in place and even be built upon. The Knight Scions were never seen outside of environmentally sealed armour outside of their own keeps again, and the world’s single spaceport was torn down in order to ensure a planetary quarantine. Such would still be the case when the Dreamwalkers arrived years later, immediately met by demands to turn back or be fired upon. Once they had determined the cause of the quarantine, the Dreamwalkers were put in mind of the creatures they had defeated upon XXX. Their own Hypsoian Cadre, calling upon Mechanicum Genetors and even the expertise of other Legions, devoted extensive resources and time to developing a bioweapon that could eradicate the infection permanently. Upon deployment, the weapon appeared successful, and in return the Houses swore loyalty to the Imperium.

Despite this, most of the measures remained unchanged. Of the natives, only members of the Houses were permitted to leave the planet, and they were still never seen in the flesh. Precious few outsiders were allowed to land either. Despite such practices that verged on paranoia, the Houses accounted for themselves well during the Great Crusade. Towards its end they would deploy the bulk of their strength alongside the Dreamwlkers, seemingly contradicting the fact that intercepted communications indicated a quickening decay in relations between the two

### By the Dreamwalkers

*"Do you know what I think our mistake was? We became too reliant upon our Primarch. The way he spoke, the methods he used, the effect his presence alone had. They all lifted the fog of illusion from us, limited the spread of madness. Yet it was a system designed under ideal circumstances, born from theory. What we had before was a system born from experience. Ramshackle and inefficient yes, but robust and tested. The old Legion clawed it's way together into cohesion without aid, thousands of disparate souls adrift in their own minds binding together to wage war. The old instincts atrophied even as Kuranos' rationality reforged the Legion into a keener blade. Now he is gone, and we speak not of where and to what fate. His rationality unravelled beneath him, as does the Legion. Now i fear we will see worse fates than befell us even in the Legions earliest days."'**Feel free to add your own***

## Notes

The inspiration for the dreamwalkers includes the Deep Madness and Dawn of Madness games, Lovecraft's Dreamlands, Ambrose Bierce's Carcosa/Robert Chamber's Yellow King and their subsequent integration into Lovecraftian lore.

The idea is that at the end point you end up with a force that can warp reality to it's whim, because ultimately there is no true reality. Working backwards from that, for the purposes of this thread I'll briefly summarise condensed portions of the ideas noted down for their history and character, as well as their Primarch.

## Gallery

 Consuls
 Unique Elements
 Wargear
 Vehicles
 Domains