Legio Praesagius - Great Crusade: The Legio Praesagius first earned renown and glory at Tentrion, a prosperous foothold for the forces of the Great Crusade which linked the cradle of the Imperium with the worlds of the galactic core.Valuable for its prodigious manufactoria and its many ancient and long-forgotten remnants of Mankind's earliest golden days amongst the stars, Tentrion's Human populace refused to yield their hegemony to the rule of the Emperor.Reports prepared by the most lauded of tacticians stated that the expected war against Tentrion would cost the Great Crusade millions of lives, exhaust its burgeoning resources and momentum and ravage the worlds of Tentrion beyond hope of repair. Were it not for the actions of the Legio Praesagius, the Great Crusade may have floundered in its first moments.When dispatched, the Terran War Council expected the Legio to inspire fear by bellowing fiery destruction upon the great cities of Tentrion. Instead, the Legio's commanding grand master, Bohemond, and the other Titans of his maniple took to the field alone, far from the populous cities, and there laid a challenge of single combat at the feet of the mightiest war machines of Tentrion.After five solar days of arduous duelling with the mighty guncrawlers of Tentrion, the Legio Praesagius stood victorious, proving its prowess and the Imperium's noble intent in a statement of supremacy which awed the denizens of Tentrion peacefully into the fold of Imperial Compliance.The Emperor Himself honoured the Legio Praesagius after this incredible feat. For their courage and skill in turning an unfathomably costly siege into a grand and swift victory, He named them "the truest messengers of His grand intent," a cognomen they proudly adopted forevermore as the True Messengers.Tentrion was but the first of a long roll of prestigious honours won by the Legio Praesagius. Other hard-fought battles followed as the True Messengers found themselves assigned to the vanguard of a number of expeditionary fleets, often fighting alongside the XVIIth and XIIIth Legiones Astartes (Word Bearers and Ultramarines, respectively).In many campaigns they found themselves summoned to battles others had dubbed impossible, called upon to champion the armies of the Great Crusade and to bolster flagging morale. Amidst the howling dust wastes of Akeron Cards and the towering cities of Benthur, they fought with stoic pride and utter devotion to the cause of the fledgling Imperium, and paid a high price in blood and the precious Battle Titans that were the soul of the Titan Legion to achieve victory.On other worlds, where true victory required that the target, be it a single city or an entire world, be captured with a minimum of destruction, the renowned skill of the True Messengers' moderati and the discipline of its princeps ensured time and again that the Imperium secured vital factory worlds nearly intact, a crucial objective were its far-flung fleets to remain supplied with the munitions of war they required.Renowned for the fervour with which the Titan Legion accepted the doctrine of the Imperial Truth, and indeed for many of those who fought in the Great Crusade alongside it, the Titans of the Legio Praesagius, bedecked in all the secular finery of the Emperor's grand vision, remained its most enduring symbol.The True Messengers became well-known throughout the Great Crusade, becoming the envy of many of their brother Legios. These rivals cursed them as cowards unable to face the realities of war; they accused the True Messengers of taking little risk and making few sacrifices for the Imperium, instead winning victories with showmanship and trickery to earn unjust accolades. Indeed, it could be said of the Legio Praesagius that they haughtily would not engage a foe if they could not do so without causing collateral damage, and would simply withdraw from the field if massed infantry were utilised by the enemy.While their detractors would decry such actions as timidity, the Titan Legion's own battle reports show that they honourably refused to be the cause of massed, casual slaughter. The True Messengers did not deliver merely the burned and broken corpses of worlds into the burgeoning Imperium, but functional realms, ready to contribute to the great empire they now served.In this they were considered by many superior to others of their like, who knew only the utter destruction of those they came to conquer. Sworn into the Emperor's service as avatars of His justice and of the ancient Mechanicum's commitment to the Great Crusade, the Legio Praesagius has ever borne a far greater burden than any other Titan Orders of the Collegia Titanica.Where others of its kin served simply as engines of destruction, killers of cities and burners of worlds, the Legio Praesagius held itself to higher standards. Simple destruction was but one facet, and to many within the Titan Legion the least desirable one: their task was not to destroy Humanity, but to unite it beneath one empire.To this end, the warriors of the Legio Praesagius sought by their actions, conduct and presence to champion the future of the Imperium. In war they fought as honourable warriors, following a code which forbade the indiscriminate deployment of ordnance in populated areas and encouraged a tradition of duelling with enemy Titan-class war engines, and long-range precision engagements. In peace they personified the technological achievement and pageantry of the newborn Imperium that was being forged among the stars, serving as a rallying point for those who pledged themselves to the future envisioned by the Emperor.Venerable and ancient Legios with much political influence, such as the Legio Mortis and Legio Suturvora, came to hate proud Praesagius in time, for though they were larger and equally successful, they were not vaunted gloriously but rather haunted by rumour of unnecessary massacre and marred by a dark hunger for bloody atrocity.The petitioning and auspices of the princeps of these jealous Legios saw the Legio Praesagius pitched time and again into awful conflicts every bit as mired in terror and brutality as any that the Collegia Titanica encountered. Through the political auspices of both the Legio Mortis and Legio Suturvora, and the magi on Mars and beyond who championed their cause, the Legio Praesagius found themselves increasingly pitched into the forefront of the most brutal conflicts of the Great Crusade with little support.While the True Messengers emerged victorious again and again, the toll on them was terrible. Though they were undaunted and emerged victorious from these awful wars, attrition wore away at the strength of the noble Legio, until they were no longer of sufficient strength to remain at the tip of the spear of the Great Crusade.By the dawning of the 31st Millennium the True Messengers had been crippled by the continuing pace of their deployment, reduced to a third of their original strength by casualties and with many of their surviving Titans unable to take to the field due to damage. Though the reputation of the Titan Legion remained intact, it could ill-afford to remain at the tip of the spear of troops and machines that was the Great Crusade.Hope was not lost, however, for in recognition of the Legio Praesagius' noble bearing and history of service with distinction, Roboute Guilliman, primarch of the Ultramarines, invited the Legio to take up a new home within his realm of Ultramar on the Forge World of Gantz, an honour which the Legio accepted with solemn dignity.However, the Legio Praesagius did not tarry long upon their warden world, staying only long enough to regroup and re-supply before demi-Legio forces were dispatched to the many border worlds of Ultramar. Ever the crusaders, the Legio Praesagius were entrusted with the scouring of the shadows at the edges of Ultramar, such that many more worlds could come under its banner and be equally prosperous given time.