 Throughout the darkest days of the Horus Heresy, treachery lurked in every shadow, around every corner. It was, sadly, perilously easy for one to find oneself in a dire situation where those previously believed to be allies plunged their daggers into one's exposed back. The Age of Darkness was one of dire uncertainty for those loyal to the throne of Terra, where betrayers were never far from being revealed. Often to the doom of those unsuspecting loyalists they turned their guns upon. Some underwent this trial by fire and failed, either in heroic but bitter defeat or hated capitulation. But others passed through it, battered, bloodied, but unbowed before the forces that sought to destroy or turn them. Loyalty such as this unwavering fierce and true has been widely praised in historical writings for the period, has been widely praised in historical writings from the period, and while your humble servant hopes generally to refrain from the overt, sicko fancy, or needless propagandization that contained good historical work, it would be entirely remiss of me not to give praise where praise is absolutely due, such as is entirely the case with the subjects of this chronicle. Few amongst the titan legios were put through the trial by fire such as they, and fewer still emerged as triumphantly from those dark years as true paragons of loyalty and justice. Know then that this is a record of the truest sons of the collegia titanicus, the triumphant war griffons, the legio grifonicus, the forgeworld of grifon 4, famed through the history of the imperium, remaining extant until a mere two centuries ago, was one of the oldest in existence, with origins stretching back further than all imperium or mechanicum records. Estimated to have been founded as an industrial colony during the mythic age of technology in humanity's ancient past, it grew to become a major human hub world, before the onset of the cataclysmic age of strife, when it and the vast swathes of mankind's stellar empire were sundered from each other by warped storms of unprecedented ferocity. The legend of griffon 4 persisted, however, amongst the data coils of the original forgeworld, Mars. When the mechanicum and its machine cult had achieved dominance over the red planet during the age of strife, the newly founded basilicon astra began, at the behest of the fabricator general, to send expeditions outwards from the sol system, into the roiling chaos of the warp-torn galaxy, to reunite the mechanicum with its lost centers of the old human empire. The vast majority of these flotillas were lost to the warp forever, their fates unknown, their names remembered only in ancient martian basilicon astra archives. The expedition to griffon 4, however, defied the odds, defied the storms, and defied precedent itself, to arrive at its intended destination. How exactly the disciples of the machine god came to rule the planets is either lost, or buried in the deepest of sequestered mechanicum archives. One can assume, however, given the arrival of the fleet at the time it did, and the armament at their disposal, that it was a means of conquest rather than simple colonization. What is known is that griffon 4 prospered, indeed more so than any other mechanicum colony of the age, expanding outwards from the griffon system itself, to encompass eight other star systems in its local volume, forming a realm that would become known as the griffon octad. Such was the pocket empire's success in establishing itself, that it even managed to maintain contact with Mars, albeit infrequently, and of a fragmented fashion. Knowledge was traded back and forth, allowing Mars to outfit early crusade armies with griffon pattern war machines, and for griffon to swell the numbers of its own pride, the legiographonicus. As was common in the days of early basilicon astra expeditions, titans were drawn from the original triad ferrum morgulum legios, being tempastus, ignatus, and mortis, as well as the scion legios of these three, stripped of heraldry and committed to colonization efforts. While most of these god engines were lost with the fleets they were assigned to, those that made planet fall on griffon 4 formed the core of the nascent legiographonicus, the legio that, thanks to the success of the parent forge and the resources offered to it by the octad, was the most established and numerous of the non-marsion legios in the early years of the great crusade, and griffon's compliance to the armies of the imperium was delivered completely bloodlessly, and indeed with great adulation that the world had finally been reunited with greater humanity. The war griffons, equipped and organized along the lines of their Martian peers, were immediately committed to the front lines of the crusade, and rapidly gained an exemplary reputation for both their conduct in general, and their abilities in fighting in close coordination with other ground forces in particular. Having spent the latter centuries of the age of strife fighting alongside the mortal armies of the griffon octad, the legio had honed this experience to form the core elements of their tactical doctrine, making them highly prized amongst the expeditionary commanders of the imperium, as some other titan legios, especially the numerically extensive and politically powerful legio mortis, had dark reputations for being indiscriminate with their firing solutions, where allied troops were concerned. Generally speaking, griffonicus was loath to subdivide its material strength, preferring to fight as a heavy engine support contingent wherever possible. Given this preference, and the legios' pervasive reputation for close infantry combined arms operations, demand for their support in the largest campaigns and invasions of the crusade grew rapidly. As they did not wish to split their strength, imperial commanders would often assign them to campaigns that required the use of dozens of titan class war machines, bludding the legio on a dozen fronts, often with astonishing success. Their conduct during the rangdan xenocides of the 860s of M30 earned them commendations from the 1st legion dark angels, 7th legion imperial fists, and 14th legion death guard. With the former in particular owing in a special debt of gratitude for multiple actions, with the presence of the legios titans helped at least mitigate the staggering loss of life the dark angels endured during those conflicts. Perhaps owing to the aforementioned deployment preferences, a fierce crusading martial culture developed in the war griffons, one noted by other legios in the collegia titanica as being more akin to the comportment of a night household than the servants of the god machines of mars. The engines of griffonicus possessed perhaps the most intricate heraldry of any legio during the crusade era, the armor plating of the titans resplendent with battle honors, campaign marks, kill counts, and other heraldic symbology, again more usually seen upon the hulls of imperium and mechanicus night suits. While disciplined to an admirable degree, especially compared to other legios such as the legio furians or surtovora, fierce rivalries developed amongst the princeps and moderati of the legio, which in order to prevent this spilling over and negatively impacting battlefield coordination, the war griffons developed an intricate system of honor bouts and jewels to help resolve and mitigate. While this did serve to diffuse the often legendarily tense rivalries between engine crews or different maniples, it was not a perfect system, and there exist many reports of griffonicus titans clearly attempting to outdo each other upon the field of battle, in many cases, refusing to be the last to retreat, even in the face of overwhelming enemy strength. That being said, the bellicose nature this engendered rarely came at the expense of the actual objective, and in many cases served only to elevate the war griffons in the eyes of the mortal troops of the imperial auxilia, for whom the engines of the legio striding forth bedecked in banners and honors, blaring their war horns of the foe, appeared as avatars of the righteousness of the great crusade and the truest manifest destiny of our species. During the very height of the crusade era, griffonicus was designated by the officio militaris and collegio titanica as a primus grade titan legion, placing it firmly amongst the most powerful military bodies not only of the collegia but of the imperium itself. Griffonicus' material strength was thus on par with the legio crucius, warmonkers, and legio magna, flaming skulls, and surpassed only in size by the legio mortis, the bloody right hand of the fabricator general of the mecanicum himself. The war griffons' total operational strength was placed at 176 titans. Roughly 50% of this was comprised of reaver mark engines, and the remainder being split between warlord mainline battle titans and warhound scout titans, with a notably high number of the powerful nemesis and imperator class super titans. The legio also possessed a sizable auxilia, given the political clout Griffon IV wielded as one of the imperium's most powerful forge worlds, and was able to field four battalions of skittarii regiments, as well as six cohorts of battle robots drawn from the legio cybernetica. Notable in both cases for favoring robust and easily maintained STC pattern weaponry, and equipment over the more esoteric weaponry employed by other mecanicum tagmata, in keeping with the traditions of military service within the griffon octad. Griffonicus' fleet elements were also quite sizable, with the titan barks operating under its own banners, as opposed to that of the parent forge, as was the case with other legios. These factors, namely its incredibly robust auxiliary and fleet, were crucial in granting the legio a level of independence almost unknown to others of the Caligia, dependent as they were on, say, infantry regiments, or Astartes legion forces for ground operational support, or mecanicum the silicon vessels for transport between war zones. While the legio Griffonicus was more adept than many of its peers in operating in tandem with other elements of the crusade, it was also perfectly capable of conducting compliance or extermination operations entirely on its own. It would also, in part, lead to the legio's splintering. As the crusade fronts expanded ever outwards into the galaxy, demand for Griffonicus' aid and service only increased. The splintering began as an effort for the mecanicum to adequately defend some of the most vital of recaptured or founded forge worlds under its control, petitioning multiple titan legios for engines to defend these worlds. The war griffons' legendary loyalty to the human cause would eventually override their desire to fight as a full legio, leading to them volunteering maniples and demi-maniples of titans to serve as mighty castellans to the mecanicum. This had the added effect of extending Griffonicus' operational range, as they had previously relied on supplies of materials, engines, and armaments from the griffon octad alone, and could now count a vast, if scattered, array of semi-feudal domains as their own. This new independence came at the cost of unity, however, and the legio drifted rapidly from its previously inviolate sledgehammer concentration into an array of formations more common for detachments of the collegia titanica. It has been speculated that this, as with many things during this period, was in fact a scheme orchestrated by the warmaster Horace Lupercal to dilute the strength of the legion prior to his rebellion. Certainly, legiographonicus represented one of, if not the, most substantial threat to the warmaster from within the collegia titanica, as their borderline fanatical loyalty to both the emperor himself and the cause of the great crusade made it impossible for the tendrils of either Horace or his mechanical allies to make any inroads prior to the rebellion. As such, it is entirely plausible that, with the traitor's pervasive control of the highest reaches of the mechanical hierarchy, that Horace was able to lean upon his allies on the red planet to ensure the subdivision of Griffonicus was handled in such a way as to diffuse the threat they represented to his own force once the dread day would come. But that, as with the tales of heroism and devastation that would come to typify the legios conduct during the great heresy, is a record for another day. Until such a time, Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra.