Legio Mortis - Origins: The name of the Legio Mortis was feared and distrusted by many within the Imperium long before the betrayal and horror of the Horus Heresy was to unfold.Originating in the pre-Imperial Age of Strife the Legio Mortis was, according to the legends of the Martian Lexmechanics, one of the Triad Ferrum Morgulus -- the three originating Titan Legions raised by the besieged Cult Mechanicum during the bloody wars to take back the Red Planet from the degenerate hordes of Cy-carnivora and mutant scavers that had overwhelmed Mars after the fall of the first Human interstellar civilisation at the end of the Age of Technology.The Legio Mortis served in this august body alongside the Legio Ignatum ("Fire Wasps") and the Legio Tempestus ("Storm Lords").As was recorded in the iconography of their seal, the purpose of the Legio Mortis' creation was two-fold: firstly, to stand sentinel at the gates of the fabricator-general's domain as tireless guardians, and second, the annihilation of all life that would threaten the Machine Cult. As such, the Legio Mortis served as both sentry and exterminator.Grim, dour and secretive, the Legio had gained a dark repute during the conquest of Mars as merciless and sinister that would only grow as the centuries passed, and it is now lost in time whether they gained their common name, "Death's Heads," from their iconography, the ritual onyx skull masks and sable robes their princeps wore, or their long practice of arraying the skeletal remains of those they had slain across the armoured pediments of their war machines as trophies.Bound they were by rite and tradition in personal loyalty to the office of the fabricator-general of Mars, and many times were they used both against their enemies in war (for Mars was not truly pacified until the coming of the Emperor), and as a weapon to maintain the fabricator-general's authority among the tech-priests and punish recalcitrant magi and even other Titan Legions when needed.This history garnered them few friends or allies and their long-standing rivalry with their fellow members of the Triad Ferrum Morgulus, most notably the Legio Ignatum, and their contempt for the "upstart" Titan Legions of other Forge Worlds than Mars was well-known.In particular, the Legio Venator could not be trusted to fight alongside them without the threat of civil conflict erupting after the events of the Accatran Compliance during the Great Crusade.Their reputation as an infamously fractious and insular force -- whose allegiance many within the Imperium's military staff believed remained solely to the fabricator-general and to the Emperor not at all -- resulted in the tragic irony of the Legio Mortis ' assignment to the personal flag of the Primarch Horus Lupercal of the Luna Wolves Legion for the purpose of guaranteeing and deepening the Titan Legion's loyalty to the Imperium.Notwithstanding smaller battlegroups assigned to the Legio Mortis forge-fortress on Mars and to the blockade of the Uhn Holdfast, the bulk of the Titan Legion's active strength was assigned as the Titan backbone of the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet under Horus.With that charismatic and deadly primarch they fought in over one hundred campaigns in the later decades of the Great Crusade, and the ashes of countless worlds and the bones of scores of different alien races adorned their god-engines.During these years of blood and battle a new loyalty was indeed forged for the Legio Mortis, but it was not to the distant Emperor of Mankind but rather to Horus, and they became pledged to his standard above all, and followed him willingly into treachery.Infrequently, those forces of the Legio Mortis that remained upon the Red Planet rather than accompanying Horus were known to depart at the behest of the fabricator-general, unleashed upon rebellious elements of the expanding Mechanicum or technological bastions that resisted the transfer of control to Mars. In this role, supported by the Pact of Morbidia, the Legio Mortis earned its reputation as callous and grim, the heavy tread of its god-engines crushing civilisations beneath them for the temerity of questioning a path not dictated by the fabricator-general.Of all the Titan Legions that served within the Imperium, few save the Legio Mortis claimed the dubious honour of eradicating a Titan Legion in its entirety, at least until the bitter days of the Horus Heresy. In this did the Death's Heads revel, for it was upon the field of battle, as god-engine duelled god-engine, that the Titan Legion proved its self-assigned role as greatest amongst the Collegia Titanica.