 It is a sad, if utterly absolute fact, that even those hallowed of humanity, deemed worthy to pilot the god-engines of the titan legions, remain just so, human. Engineers, weapon-seers, modernity, and even princeps, are still mortal, despite the latter stretching that definition. And are so beholden to the passions, insecurities, and flaws of our better and worse natures. Sometimes we overlook the flaws of those whom necessity has deemed valuable, and often we do this for the simple fact that their talents are best applied to the most horrible deeds we are required to commit. And yes, these dispensations even extend to the pilots of the legios, for it is a rare human indeed that can command the bellicose spirit of a battle titan. Tragically, the Horus heresy has demonstrated to us the terrible price of such faith. Know then that this is a record of one such legio, the ferocious and unpredictable tiger eyes, the legio furians. The legio furians is the progeny of the Forge world of Incaladion, whose origins lie deep within the Age of Strife. Despite the horrific warp storms that brought about the ruination of the old human stellar empire, Incaladion was the eventual recipient of a Mechanicum sleeper arc dispatched from Mars during this period, when the Mechanicum was seeking desperately to reunite itself with the human realms of the galaxy at large. While Terra was dissolving into ceaseless war and genocide, Mars was the only polity in the solar system capable and willing of sending vessels out into the great darkness beyond the interstellar void. And while many, many were lost, one such bark found safe harbor in the orbit of Incaladion. Lying at the nexus of several stable warp-roots channels, a rare thing indeed in those dark times, the world was also rich in minerals and possessed a vibrant biosphere, making it perfect for both human colonization in general and the Mechanicum's purposes more specifically. Naturally, and indeed sadly, these factors made it a sought-after prize indeed, as the Mechanicum Voyagers soon found the system to be beset by other altogether more dangerous visitors, drawn by the Camtides to this stellar locale. While records from this period of early colonization are fragmentary at best, data concerning the number of battles fought against the bizarre and vast myriad of Xenos, Mutant and Human Raiders almost eclipses registers and annals of macro-scale construction, terraforming and resource extraction. This was reflected in the culture the Mechanicum of Incaladion was to evolve into, as, separated from Red Mars and Bethet on all fronts by horrors uncountable, they grew into a pugnacious and remorseless collection of polities. Indeed, one says polities in the plural, for though the threat was common, the Incaladine were never united, for centuries of warfare had inculcated a belief that only the strongest and most self-sufficient Forge fans of the world could survive, as aid was certainly not forthcoming from out-system, and rarely even so planet-side. Incessant Xeniform invasions and raiding led to the eventual development of vast but incredibly fortified forges, dominating the richest mineral seams in algae-abundant oceans, while yet more hidden cities were sunk deep into the planet's crust, questing after precious geothermal energy. Owing to the often pressing need for manpower, the Incaladine frequently raided human feral populations on the planet itself and throughout the local system. The beliefs of these slaves, often entirely ignored by the Mechanicum who saw them simply as mining or Forge chattel, slowly, but surely, began to contaminate the cultures of the increasingly isolated vestiges of the Martian machine cult. It was into this world that the Legio-Fiorians was born. During the latter centuries of the Age of Strife, Incaladine was an established Forge world in its own right, and was, nominally at least, under the feudal rule of a Perceptor-General, and, for her, there were no force of arms on the planet more prized than her god-engines. It was common during these dark millennia for titan legions to be prominent in the last forges of Mars, but much rarer for them to be involved in what amounted to essential ceaseless conflict. Most were usually Castellans, or weapons of last resort, to be unleashed in dire circumstances. Not so for the Fiorians. From their birth, they were wielded by the Perceptor-General as one would deploy any other regiment of soldiers, immediately rushed to whatever front line was extant to unleash their fury upon the foe. No cost was spared in ensuring their upkeep and maintenance, and, in the merciful respites between wars, their numbers were expanded as rapidly as humanly possible. For hundreds of years, the Legio-Fiorians fought in Incaladine's vanguard against hordes of Xenos, such as Greenskins, Eldari, Terelians, or even Meteor brought Carnoplasm infestations. Even amongst the fractured polities of the forge, the Legio-Fiorians appeared to bring some measure of unity. Being an icon, it would appear the world could rally behind. The barbarian humans of the nearby world of Humardu even gave them their unofficial name, Tiger Eyes, being a debased transliteration of their name for the animate metal gods who would come to reap the strong for service in the machine cities. The situation, however, was not to last. Not 50 years before the arrival of the Emperor's expeditionary fleets, political order on Incaladine collapsed. The long fractious regimes could stand together no longer, and in the wake of the assassination of the Perceptor General, broke into outright civil war. In the five decades to come, the world descended into a global war. The forges becoming isolated bastions amongst a worldwide battleground, where dozens of factions sought to gain the upper hand, even as Xenos raiders swept in, sensing weakness and easy spoils. Ever more devastating weaponry was unleashed, to the extent that when the first of the Imperial ships arrived in system, Incaladine was a toxic, radiation-soaked hellscape. The Furians, remaining loyal to the old order of the Perceptor General, had been utterly savaged by the conflict, reduced to a fraction of their former number, defending one last forge. The Mechanicum of Mars, whose elements were embedded in those first fleets, were horrified by what they found, but were in no way willing to surrender what they saw as a rich and ultimately salvageable prize. At that point, however, the vast majority of Mars's existing military might was tied in dozens of campaigns throughout the Great Crusade's expanding volume, and so the Mechanicum positioned the then Fourth Legion Astartes, extant in local space, for aid, and to be supplemented by whatever tagmata elements it could spare, along with support from the Titan Legio Mortis. The ensuing compliance operation would last for two standard years, and become the bloodiest action that the Fourth Legion had ever fought in its history up to that point. While the details on this can be found in a previous record on the Fourth Legion itself, it should be noted here that the factions of Incaladine, or at least those that were in line with Mechanicum Dogma, regarded Mars as their liberators, not the Fourth Legion, despite the incredible manpower the latter had expended in the Reconquest. The Mechanicum wasted no time in constituting the Forge World, and the Imperium, not wishing to see such an obvious prize go unexploited, aided them in heralding the rebirth of the Legio Furians, whose operational strength was rapidly reconstituted by the surviving in eager Incaladine. The Legio Furians rapidly set themselves apart from their fellows within the Colesia Titanica, for displaying a fervor, and indeed hunger, for war-making that bordered upon the Fanatical, where as most Titan legions preferred long-range engagements where threats to their engines could be minimized by the sheer operational range of Titan-class weaponry and their incredible augur and sensorium suites. The Tiger Eyes displayed a noted ability to prosecute high-speed, close-quarter engagements, and, indeed, even employing hit-and-run tactics against a superior force as opposed to simply retreating. The mobility demanded by the crews of the Furians pushed their engines to the maximum operating capacity the war machines were capable of, and it was a common tactic amongst the legions' bellicose-princepts to simply drop their voyage shields in order to increase power to their speed, letting quite literally anathema to Colesia Titanica' tactical doctrine. Additionally, the Legio marked itself out from its fellows by permitting the subdivision of its mannipulse and demi-mannipulse from their chain of command for long-term deployments, even to the extent of allowing single engines to be seconded to other imperial forces, horrifying the other Titan legions with wanton disregard for procedure. While this allowed the legio to participate in conflict effectively constantly throughout its operational history, and gave it experience fighting in and against almost every conceivable theatre and foe, it did occasionally bring it into unwanted exposure and scrutiny. Word began to spread amongst the Colesia of the strange and dark pre- and post-battle rituals the Tiger Eyes indulged in, with accounts redolent of totemic, animist veneration mixed with the rites of the machine cult itself. This rebuking of accepted dogma won them no friends amongst the other legios, and, aside from abiding ties to the legio mortis, the Furians made no alliances or inroads with the remainder of the Colesia, the majority of whom saw the upstart Furians as dangerously unpredictable primitives. In the latter years of the great crusade, Divisio Militaris and Logistica Corpus Records placed the legio Furians as a second-tier Titan legion with an approximate strength of 110 to 140 engines, although in light of the aftermath this has been revealed as either a deliberate deception by the legio, or a miscalculation on the part of imperial logisticians. The Furians' true strength lay much closer to 170, obfuscated by ill intent, or simply due to their willingness to second individual engines from their overall command purview. Initially, the legio had been composed almost exclusively of warlord and warhound Titan classes, as the princeps of the Tiger Eyes were said to score in the mid-range reaver marks in favor of the destructive potential of the warlord and sheer speed and viciousness of the warhound. But this was to change during the latter years of the great crusade, when multiple maniples of reaver Titans were added to the legio to make up for its deficits in long-ranged weaponry. This was supported by a unique and idiosyncratic mark, the Reviler Titan, developed locally on Incaladion, which effectively served as a light-to-medium tonnage Titan designed exclusively as an Inferno canon platform, intended to replace the heavier marks of knights from the legio's retainer corps. It is known for certain that the Furians did not possess any Imperator-class Titans, or similar super-heavy analogs, instead adapting at least five of their warlords into the Deathbringer subclass to serve as their heaviest assault units. Their isolation from their fellows, ill-won and stubbornly maintained, made the Tiger Eyes perhaps ideal targets for the secessionists within the Mechanicum and the Collegio Titanica. Certainly, when Horus unveiled his hideous perfidy, legio Furians were right there beside him, engaging in the invasion of Paramar as one of their first acts of the heresy post-Istvan V. It was clear to all, in dreadful hindsight, that the legio had been inducted into the traitor ranks long before the actual outbreak of hostilities. Unleashed and allowed to glut their desire for war against their former comrades in the Legiographonicus, the Furians took to this new means of battle with unrestrained glee. Their tale throughout the latter years of the heresy would be marked by an ever-descending spiral into the deepest pits of depravity and bloodshed, as their rituals, previously hidden, were now plain for all to see. And eagerly did they, and the emerging Dark Mechanicum, explore the very limits of what their new benefactors could bestow. That, however, is a tale for another time. Until then, Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. This video and this channel are made possible through the incredibly kind contributions of my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com forward slash oculus imperia. And if you're looking to keep in touch with the channel, get regular updates, you can follow me on twitter, at buttstuffkaiju, or check us out on discord. A link will be in the description and on the channel page.