LEGIO GLACIUS
Deep in the fringes of lost space lies a dead star, its name forgotten long ago by the Imperium. It still retains its gravitational pull and keeps a number of planets in it cold lightless grasp. They orbit, stuck in an eternal ice age, waiting for a sun to warm them which will never come.
In the days before the Heresy this was known as the Rintz system and its star was alive and mighty. It was shortly colonized by representatives of Mars and upon discovering a wealth of materials on the system’s fourth planet, a Forge World was established. Due to its location, and the allegiance of it’s Explorator fleet discoverers, it was to be an additional forge to supply the great machines of Legio Mortis.
The forge was built and was active for a millennium, never reaching the heights of its sister forges, but still aiding the efforts of the Legio. Eventually expansion across and into the planet’s surface revealed artifacts of another culture, seemingly xenos in origin. The Mechanicus of the time greedily increased their digging, eager to discover what secrets lay deep in the planet’s crust. They found gears of unknown metals and strange crystalline lights that seemed to be connected to something larger.
Their final discovery and fate is unknown. War broke out across the Imperium and somewhere in the miscommunications of heresy, the defection of the Legio, the betrayal of the Dark Mechanicus and the loss of records purged by the inquisition afterwards, the existence of the Rintz system was lost to the Imperium. The Dark Mechanicus supporting Legio Mortis sent fleets to claim and protect the treasures of this forge, but only found empty space and a missing star where the system had once been. There were no final communications or any debris or indication of where an entire star and its planetoids has vanished to.
Millennia later, a group of Dark Mechanicus and their skitarii armies lucked into an amazing find. They had partnered centuries before with members of a World Eaters warband, exchanging tech and maintenance of the XII’s war machines for bits of information and archeotech that the warriors of Khorne located across their endless campaigns of carnage. While perusing and cataloguing the navigational data from the fleet’s databanks, a domina designated 4-Sveitgar found picts and readings of a dead star system, not marked on their charts. Curiously, the planetary alignments and masses matched records archived deep in her datamines, records archived before the heresy. On this wild bit of coincidental info, the Mechanicus fleet set out. retracing the steps to a set of coordinates the World Eaters had only passed through by random chance while in the search of skulls for their patron deity.
The fleet arrived at the location and began to explore the area with great interest. The star was extinguished, and lifeless planets still circled it, encased in millennia of ice. Domina 4-Sveitgar, compared the data from the archives and let out a series of excited bursts of binary. Landfall was made on the fourth planet, and servitors were dispatched to take readings. The entire planet was covered with massive glaciers, the size of cities. The ice was so old and ancient that it appeared as layers of the deepest blues when the lights of the landing party shone on them. Nothing substantial was found for months of exploration but it was obvious that layers of ice would have to be broken through to see if indeed there were treasures to be found that matched the near-myths from the historical archives. The ice was hardened by thousands of years of lack of solar energy and hard as steel. It was near impossible to make any progress into its depths. Many servitors and great machines were sacrificed to the dig, their mechanisms worn out by toiling at the impossibly hard ice. One day brought the thrill of discovery as the ice was thinned enough at one of the dig sites, to reveal the upper levels of a forge factory. Most importantly, as more resources and labor was poured onto that particular site, the icons of Legio Mortis were discovered. 4-Sveitgar was as pleased as her binary cerebral circuits would allow her to be, her discovery sure to elevate her in the dark priesthood.
The discovery of the Forge World confirmed, the Dark Mechanicus strategized on methods of further uncovering the treasures below the ice. It was obvious that a standard dig would be insufficient to fully mine the planet. They also realized that the forges would be difficult to re-ignite due to the system’s lack of energy. It was with no small amount of thought and regret that the tech priests turned to a resource they did not fully trust or understand, sorcery. Reaching out to an envoy of a particularly resourceful cult from the Planet of Sorcerers, the Mechanicus made a pact with the Thousand Sons’ mages of the Bleeding Eye warband. The tech priests would offer the same services as they provided the World Eaters, as well as fire support with whatever they found in the ice in exchange for the Bleeding Eye to enact rituals to provide magical sunlight to warm the planet enough for excavations to be possible.
This new alliance quickly brought conflict between the Bleeding Eye and the Mechanicus’ other allies, the World Eaters. Both legions of traitors saw the newly discovered Forge World as a resource that they both had great stake in and rights to its spoils yet their standing grudges and ideological differences fostered much hate between the two.. It was only the sheer power of the relics that the Mechanicus unearthed in the following millennia that caused a most uneasy truce to form between the two, for the caution of losing access to technology that might assist them with their revenge upon the Imperium of Man.
In the years since, the Mechanicus have unearthed great factories and war machines of the Forge World. Greatest among these are ancient forgotten Titans, once belonging to Legio Mortis. Lost before the Legio became fully dedicated to the god of plague, the god-engines still maintained their original markings. The priests of technology have rechristened the machines in a new image to represent a new age for the forges. Thus Legio Glacius has been born. The presence of the Chaos Space Marines fiercely guarding the Forge World has been strong, and their conflicts and expeditions with the forces of the Mechanicus beside them have brought visitors from warp, and already daemons have infested some of the great machines.
Currently, the Legio’s forces still excavate the planet, they have found a number of Knight, scout, and battle Titans amongst the ice. Each discovery is a ritualistic event as a god-engine is brought back into service. The planet is now brightened by an unnatural hue of magical sunlight, casting a blueish tint on everything that causes headaches to those not looking through filtered visors. It is still a mystery of how the Forge World ended up in its current astronomical location, but all that matters to Glacius and the Traitor Space Marine Legions is the power that can be taken from the ice. Even with the sorcery of the Bleeding Eye, the planet is still unnaturally cold, the rituals just keeping it warm enough to make the ice manageable. Unbeknownst to its inhabitants though, is that in the coming centuries, they will reach a level of depth to uncover the artifacts that led to the doom of its original Mechanicus inhabitants.
***In truth, the planet contains a machine of ancient xenos technology, harnessing the power for travel of awe-inspiring potential. It was activated foolishly by the Mechanicus of old, not understanding how it worked. The machine moved the entire solar system across the galaxy, a feat of immense power. The cost however was high. The machine drew upon the greatest energy source available to it to fuel its jump, the system’s very star. The star was drained of all its energy, leaving only a lifeless husk and enacting an ice age so extreme as to kill all of the system’s inhabitants and bury their machinery.***
Legio Glacius is a small Titan Legion. They have unearthed a handful of Titans, though they hope to find more. They have changed their colors to represent their Forge World. Newly forged and uncovered machines are painted a solid blue, representing the oldest deepest ice and things which are still “unthawed” or untested. After first service in live battle, the machines are repainted to show the blue giving way to white, showing the “thawing” of the machines reaching their potential. Only when a pilot, a princeps, or Knight has shown years of flawless service, can they be bestowed the honour of pure white armour, showing they are the Unfrozen and can be depended on for any service to the Legio. This is no small matter, and the machines granted this honor can so far be counted on one hand.
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