Land Raider Proteus - History: The Land Raider Proteus is believed to be the very first Land Raider design created by Mankind during the Dark Age of Technology to be used as a main battle tank.The Land Raider Proteus design was lost to humanity during the Age of Strife, yet a single copy of its Standard Template Construct (STC) designs were recovered by the technoarchaeologist Arkhan Land early during the Emperor's Great Crusade on an expedition into the Librarius Omnis on Mars. The newly rediscovered designs were named after Arkhan Land and eventually the Land Raider Proteus could be found in every one of the Space Marine Legions.Mechanicus tech-savants believe that the Land Raider Proteus is a precursor to the standard Land Raider Phobos pattern vehicle now found amongst the armouries of the Adeptus Astartes. Bulkier and faster than the Phobos, ancient and forgotten data-looms describe the Proteus as a forward assault vehicle, commonly fielded in Explorator missions during the dawning days of Mankind's fledgling galactic empire.The Land Raider Proteus would be used throughout the Great Crusade even after complaints emerged concerning the vehicle's carrying capacity, lack of a forward assault ramp, and inability to carry Terminators would lead to the development of the Spartan Assault Tank, and eventually the Land Raider Phobos.Both of these vehicles would go on to replace the Land Raider Proteus almost entirely within Imperial armouries. The Land Raider Phobos design was smaller than the massive Spartan Assault Tank, yet was still able to carry Terminators and also incorporated a forward assault ramp. The Land Raider Phobos maintained most of the advanced technologies used by the Land Raider Proteus.It is likely that the Proteus was the most common mark of Land Raider used by the Imperial Army, the combined main line military of the nascent Imperium that was split into the Astra Militarum and the Imperial Navy in the galaxy-wide reorganisations that took place in the aftermath of the Horus Heresy. Or course, no Land Raiders of any pattern remain in the armouries of the Imperial Guard, the vehicle long since reserved for the near-exclusive use of the Adeptus Astartes.Amongst the most revered of those few Land Raider Proteus still in existence are some that must surely have been utilised in the very earliest phases of the Great Crusade. Many of these war machines were equipped with an array of scanners and cognis-interpreters that are likely to pre-date the Age of the Imperium by countless millennia.Such devices may only be awakened and operated by the most lore-steeped Adepts of the Machine God, for they utilised machine processes and logis protocols otherwise unknown in the late 41st Millennium. Referred to in hushed tones amongst the Tech-priests as Explorator Augury Webs, these devices were once used to coordinate the epic battles fought by the Emperor's Space Marine Legions as they re-united the scattered worlds of humanity.In the late 41st Millennium, the Land Raider Proteus is largely just a memory. As a result, any Chapters that have a functioning Land Raider Proteus treat it as a treasured relic, as this pattern is no longer being constructed, and any that still exist date back to the era of the Great Crusade or the Horus Heresy.