Chaos Cult - Ignorant Armies: The Traitor Legiones Astartes made increasingly extensive use of allied Human Warp cults as the wars of the Horus Heresy progressed.In many cases the cultists were found easier to raise and frankly more disposable than conventional Imperial military units, for while they were nowhere near as well-trained or equipped, they were often so utterly devoted to their corrupted transhuman masters they would obey any order and perform any deed, no matter how callous, inhumane or suicidal it was.The Sons of Horus Legion, for example, used Warp cults as occupation units during the Warmaster Horus' later phases of the so-called Dark Compliance, for they brought such oppression to captured worlds that few would dare rise up against them.Cultists made effective hunter-killer squads, adept at tracking down every last vestige of Loyalist activity on Traitor-held worlds and making grisly examples of those they captured.Cult forces also served as brutal overseers of enslaved populations, driving the output of industrialised worlds to many times previous levels to meet ever more strident demands for arms and equipment to fuel the Traitors' advance on Terra.Where the Sons of Horus used cult forces to control dominated worlds, the IIIrd Legion, as it slid into its own moral abyss, used such allied forces as disposable sycophants and slavish worshippers, debased beings who viewed the Emperor's Children as the very apex of creation and for whom no indignity, crime or sacrifice was too great to perform in the hope of favour.Mortal servants of the IIIrd Legion abased themselves before their masters and would offer their lives in return for the briefest acknowledgement of their very existence.With a single word, any Emperor's Children Legionary could order a hundred allied cultists to attempt the most lethal of tasks or suicidal of battlefield missions, orders the cultists would obey unquestioningly with rapturous fervour. The Heretic Astartes themselves regarded the cultists with contempt, barely noting their presence except where dictated by necessity.In several Traitor Legions, the ranks of Humanity that constituted their support echelons -- Legion serfs, void crews, menials and auxiliary troops -- were slowly transformed into cult-like bodies. As the Horus Heresy ground on and the Traitor Legions began to cast off the trappings of their Imperial founding, their servants too were transformed into something else entirely.Many of the Warp cultists came to idolise their transhuman masters as demigods, entire sects springing into being aboard the Traitor fleets. Many were a continuation of the warrior lodges seeded in the Traitor Legions before the Horus Heresy even began, while others were spontaneous expressions of recidivistic superstition entirely beneath the notice of the Traitor Marines themselves. Soon enough, all had called upon and were enthralled to Warp-born entities that cared only to feed upon their bodies and their souls.Not all Traitor Legions, it must be said, had much use or regard for allied Warp cults, seeing them as debased, dangerous and beneath them, at least before the Age of the Scouring when many were forced to turn at last to the dark forces themselves to survive.One noted example of this disregard was in the Iron Warriors Legion who, in a manner entirely in keeping with the nature of their primarch and temperament, used hordes of cultists under their control as expendable levies, utterly scorning their "faith" and viewing them of less use than even enslaved local defence militia, which could at least be counted upon to hold a weapon correctly.Notably, if such cult forces came under Perturabo's control, his standing orders provided for the culling of any potent psyker or Warp-crafter able to raise such Warp entities as might interfere with the Iron Warriors' authority, while thousands of the cult's members were driven across mine fields or on to the enemies' guns; those who reached the walls forming a ramp of the dead and dying over which the Iron Warriors would launch the final escalade assault.Sometimes, cult forces tens of thousands strong were herded towards an enemy city or fortress simply so that Iron Warriors Warsmiths could survey the foe's fortifications and map their fire plans without expending their own forces, both Legion and mortal military auxilia they deemed of greater value.To the Night Lords, it seems that such Warp cults were often no more than trivialities -- pawns in the Warmaster's game and the distrusted lickspittles of the Word Bearers, with whom they were nominally allied but scorned and distrusted. The Night Lords' mortal auxilia and servants had no master but them, even the whispers of the Warp failing to entice them, and no rule but for the fear the Night Lords engendered.This paranoia and obsessive control was even more evident in the machinations of the Alpha Legion, whose own web of agents and armies were labyrinthine and unknowable, and what use they made of Warp cults in this era, and at what remove, cannot now be determined.Of all the Traitor Legions, however, it was the Word Bearers that made the greatest use of allied Warp cult groups, and it was at Calth where they were first openly employed.