 Is it not the most satisfying thing in all creation? To rise above the expectations of those whose scorn you possess? To prove one's detractors wrong is quite the purest of victories, or in doing so is delivered the simplest and sweetest vindication of one's worth, both to those who would behold it and to oneself as well. Too often can we underestimate the value of an individual or a group based on preconceived notions formed from the ether of their circumstance of birth or creation, or the location of said or myriad of other pointless biases and prejudices. Too quick can we be to judge harshly and rashly when we know little about those upon whom we pronounce judgment. One's actions should speak for one's character, yet all too quick are we as humans to never let that happen, and when we do, too quick are we again to invalidate or dismiss simply because the stark reality of one's own wrongness is upsetting to one's pride. Such is the sad truth with the subjects of this record, those for whom the circumstances of their origin would form an iron collar under which they would labour for so many of their days to bear the weight of scorn undeserved simply because of situations they had no control over. But for all this, the subjects of this record yet persisted and rose above the ill-wishers to become paragons of loyalty and fidelity. Know then that this is a record of the lost orphans of Phaethon, the Firebrands, the God Engines of the Ligio Ataris. The Ligio Ataris, Titanica's colloquial Firebrands, are an oft overlooked but deeply fascinating formation within the then Collegia Titanica. Distrusted by their engine brethren, they would rise above such a pal of ill-repute to prove their loyalty to the Emperor one thousandfold. Much of these suspicions arise from the circumstances of their origins, which for a Titan Ligio are far from typical to almost being unique. At the dawn of the Great Crusade, one of the primary objectives of the early expeditionary fleets had ever been the recapture of previously known human domains. The Age of Strife had not been kind to knowledge or stellar cartography, but enough remained to ensure that crusade forces knew of plenty of human worlds and systems that may yet possess populations sorely in need of reprieve from the horrors of old night. The Mechanicum of Mars, too, looked to the stars, as for centuries they had been the only solar power sending any ships out into the blackest depths of the void, attempting to contact the long-lost forge worlds of the ancient Martian regime. The Basilicon Astra, the Mechanicum's own fleet, was now supplemented by the Armada Imperialis, and by political entreaties included in the Treaty of Olympus that bound the twin empires of Terra and Mars together, both were dedicated to seeking those forges which Mars knew were still extant. These reunions were often quite celebratory, with the traditions of the Red Planet having been preserved through the millennia by devoted descendants of either the original Martian settlers or the star-tossed early Mechanicum expeditions that had survived the perilous pre-astronomical journeys. In others, the integration was, well, more fractious. One cannot survive in the depths of a lonely galaxy for the entirety of old night without emerging with scars, and to some, emissaries of the distant Mechanicum brought demands of fealty unearned, so used were they to the independence they had won by the blood of their people and the strength of their arms. Such was the case with the mighty forge world of Phaeton. Phaeton, located in the comparatively local volume of segmentum solar, was a key target for reunification for the Mechanicum, as it had survived and indeed thrived during the Age of Strife to emerge as one of the early crusade eras most productive and industrious forges. The masters of Phaeton knew this well, and the asset they would be, to the Imperium and Mechanicum both. And thus it was, after a long, fraught, and difficult period of negotiation, Phaeton entered the Byzantine feudal hierarchy of the Mechanicum with far more independence than either the Holy Synod or the Fabricator General would have liked. This initially cold history did not paw, far from it. Phaeton, prosperous already, and now with the products of its forges in almost impossibly high demand thanks to the material concerns of the early expeditionary fleets, had emerged onto the galactic stage as second only to Mars itself in terms of power and productivity. The status the Fabricator General was known to secretly rail against. Wary distance turned into outright rivalry, which was beginning to border on open conflict. Mars bent all its subtle power towards the discrediting of its most prominent political opponent, and through a combination of religious Doctrina, subterfuge, blackmail, and outright lying, spread throughout the early Imperium the notions that Phaeton was amassing a military power far beyond the remit of its tagmata and titan legio, including the darkest rumors spreading suggestions of sedition or even a coup against the Synod of Mars. The corrosive effects this took upon the Forge's reputation were slow, but built to unignorable levels, forcing the hand of the revered Comptroller of Phaeton Prime. Realizing his domain could not stand against the will and might of Mars, he capitulated openly, declaring that he would surrender to the will of the Omniceia a full third of the god engines, macro-tlades, and human stock Phaeton possessed. The fabricator general quickly and just as publicly agreed, praising the noble efforts the revered Comptroller was making towards human unity, and applauding him for the humility he displayed to the will of the machine god. But as the fabricator general would soon discover to his utmost rage, he had been outflanked. Rather than submit his war assets to Mechanicum control directly, the revered Comptroller had in secret formed a fleet of vast exploratory arcs, each with a subdivided contingent of the original one-third of Phaeton's forces. To these, and again in front of as large a galactic audience as possible, the revered Comptroller bade them carry the word and will of the machine god forth into the void to claim new worlds and new systems for Mars and all her children. Fate had been averted, and Phaeton humbled, but not without secretly thumbing their nose at Mars. The fabricator general, knowing he could not apportion the outward travelling forces for himself without suffering a massive political blow, acquiesced to rage at this slight in private. The arcs forging ever-outwards into the void did so with an enmity for what Mars had done to their masters, and carried this all the way to the edge of known space. There, far beyond the Imperium's borders, the Phaetonite Covenant emerged from the warp in the vicinity of the white super-giant star Aterath. To found the Forge world of the Tar Median and one of the many rogue planets this stellar monstrosity had caught in its gravity well. With the zeal of those scorned, the magi of the world industrialized their new domain with almost stunning rapidity, and with the god-engines taken from the old Ligio Osedax of their long-departed home formed a new Ligio to be the Foundling Forge's sword, the Ligio Ataris. Despite the pedigree of their Ligio lineage, the cockatrices of the Ligio Osedax, Ataris carried with them the pal of Outcast Suspicion, the dog to the Mechanicum of Atar Median, and were actively distrusted and scorned by other Titan forces, with especially close ties to the Fabricator General. To add to this, they were, by crusade reckoning, one of the youngest Ligios in existence, with not in the way of battle honors to their name, save for those Ataris engines had won while they were still part of the Ligio Osedax. This combination of youth and outsider status melded with the preconceptions of the oldest and most bellicose of orders, the Ligio Mortis in particular, to whom Ataris was nothing more than a footnote in the grand history of the Caligio Titanica, one which would likely be stricken once they were forced to actually participate in the Great Crusade. Ataris, therefore, were always a Ligio with everything to prove, but it was a situation they responded to immediately, and with a devotion to the human endeavor that bordered on zeal. Shunned by the rest of the Caligia, they saw themselves as bequeathed to the crusade as a whole, owing their loyalty to Imperium and species far above Mechanicum. Their princeps and engine crews quickly developed a reputation for impetuousness and belligerence, and were often considered prideful of their skillet arms and the victories they had won. It would appear that this was read in one of two ways, and entirely dependent on what one's previous conceptions of the Ligio were. To those they counted as friends and allies, the impetuousity was an eagerness to annihilate the foe, the immodesty a well-earned confidence in the honor roll of such a young Ligio. To Ataris' detractors, the characteristics were seen as toxic detachment from reality, a Ligio of engine crews with ideas far above their station, and boasts their capabilities could not match. It would seem that Ataris would be forever cursed with having to catch up to the rest of the Caligia. As the decades went on, their bellicosity, combined with the sigil of a flaming sword, gave rise to their unofficial Ligio Cognomen, the Firebrands. For the final third of the Great Crusade, wherein the bulk of the Ligio's combat accolades were earned, the Firebrands rarely ever fought en masse. As was common among Secunda's great Titan Ligios, they operated primarily as formations of Demi Ligios, with small numbers of Titans being seconded to whatever expeditionary fleets required engine-level support, but never remaining with these fleets for long. This was partially how Demi Ligios were intended to function, but was primarily down to the sheer belligerence of the Ataris' princeps, who desired always to throw themselves into the most crucial of campaigns they could, where they felt their engines were most needed. It was one of the small measures of self-satisfaction the Firebrands could draw upon, that, for so young Ligio, they had participated during those final crusade decades in more war zones than Ligio twice their size, never resting upon their laurels or growing comfortable tagging along in the wake of only one expeditionary fleet. As was common amongst Secunda's great Ligios, the bulk of Ataris' approximately 130 god engines were made up of the mid-range Reaver-class Titans, supplemented by a higher-than-average amount of Night Gaunt and Carnivore classes to flesh out this midline capability. Warlord classes were rarer, but the Firebrands could still mount respectable numbers of this class, and even possessed a single Nemesis-class Titan, Immaculata Athartus, lead engine of the Ligio and commanded by its princeps maximus Everard Mazarin. Commonly, at least one Demi-Ligio would be stationed at Atar Median for refit and repairs and to serve the military interests of the forge as needed, but as soon as any work was completed, their Titan barks would be making full wake to the nearest war zone they were needed in. The strategy was one that worked, as the Firebrands raked in an admirable series of distinctions and accolades for exemplary service, catapulting themselves to the top of the Caligia-Titanica honor rolls for Secunda's great Ligios. Their service records even won over the minds of some of their detractors, who were forced to admit, if sometimes begrudgingly, that the Ligio had outdone itself, and that they were wrong to suspect them of wrongdoing or disloyalty. Atarus was even granted the honor of participating in the Ullinor campaign, where war-maniple Gladius Inferno held off green-skinned gargant-class engines, alongside their brethren progenitors from the Ligio Osedax, with Atarus Titans coming to the valiant aid of the Osedax Engine's Nightingale's call, vengeance of Terra and fable of Albion. In doing so, renewing the deep bonds that the twin legions of Phaeton shared. The most notable, and indeed infamous, engagement the Firebrands were party to, was the lament of the Shadim-Deeps. The catatlysmic campaign of compliance had turned lethal due to the arrival in the local volume of an arid Eildari world, an Arxata, of Kraftworld Moraioi, while the pregation of the Kraftworld itself was eventually led by the 9th Legion Astartes, the Blood Angels, and the Psi Titans of the Ordo Sinister. The war for the planet itself demanded the presence of no less than four Titan detachments, drawn from the Ligio's Mortis, Furians, Osedax, and Atarus. Horus Lupercal, Primarch of the 16th Legion Luna Wolves, and by this point, Warmaster of the Imperium, still held overall command, even as his brother Sanguinius led the campaign against the Assyriani Worldship. The Eildari of Moraioi were uniquely fanatical, and indeed deranged amongst their degenerate kind, with remembrancers of the time remarking that they appeared to be undergoing a type of guestelt racial trauma for the horrors their hideous species had inflicted upon the galaxy. This would have made them a dangerous foe in the best of times, and the Kraftworld also possessed a far higher-than-average amount of engine-class war machines, hence the need for so much of an expanded, imperial Titan presence. Atarus was bathed by the Warmaster to launch probing attacks on the Eildari Webway gates from whence the engines were ushering forth, with the aim of drawing more of them to the field. The plan was, if anything, too successful, and the engines of Atarus soon found themselves heavily pressed by the Ash and Crimson stalker machines of the Eildari. The firebrands, who had been promised the support of the Death's heads of the legio mortis, held the line with a fierce determination and pride that their legion had become renowned for, even as their flank, protected by the legio furians, utterly crumbled. However, mortis never came to Atarus' aid. A full demi legio was surrounded, and ultimately annihilated, with only a soul Atarus warhound Titan surviving to make it back to imperial lines. It emerged in the aftermath of this grievous loss that the firebrands had been deliberately used as bait for the Eildari engines, intended to draw them out of the Kraftworld and allow the Lunawolves and Blood Angels to engage the Xenos on their world ship. While Atarus would never know of the Ordosinister's involvement, or the combat against the Eildari witch titans, the deliberate deception on the part of the Warmaster became forever etched into the legio psyche, and barbed comments from mortis' princeps about how their legio would have carried the day without reinforcements, saw the two legios almost coming to blows. Even the furians, whose engines had capitulated upon the flank, scorned Atarus, adding poisonous insults to wicked injury. The firebrands would, however, receive optimal chance to inflict revenge upon their foes, as the dread events of the Horus heresy would show. For all their atypical origin, for all the suspicion and derision they received in their years of service, the firebrands would serve with absolute and utmost distinction during the terrible years of the Age of Darkness. Their commitment to the Emperor never wavering, and their princeps delighting in every opportunity to blood the traitors who had once mocked them so. Alas, that is, however, a story for another time. Until then, Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. This video and this channel were made possible thanks to the very kind donations and support from my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com. If you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos, you can contact me or follow me on Twitter at OculusImperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.