Armageddon Steel Legion

The Armageddon Steel Legion is a mechanised infantry formation of the Astra Militarum (the Imperium’s Imperial Guard) raised on the hive world of Armageddon. Its regiments are distinguished from most Imperial Guard formations by their reliance on the Chimera armoured personnel carrier, which Armageddon’s manufactoria produce in vast numbers, allowing an unusually high proportion of the world’s regiments to be organised as mechanised infantry rather than foot troops. Guardsmen of the Legion are recognisable by their mustard-yellow greatcoats, gloves, bowl helmets and rebreather masks, the latter worn as protection against the toxic ash and industrial pollution that pervades Armageddon’s atmosphere outside its hive cities.

Recruits are drawn from the massed populations of Armageddon’s hives, where survival amid endemic gang warfare produces soldiers already accustomed to violence; entire gangs are recorded as having been conscripted into the Legion together, requiring little additional training beyond discipline and obedience to orders. Regiments are typically organised into companies combining infantry, mechanised infantry, armour and artillery, with Leman Russ battle tanks, Basilisk and Manticore artillery, and super-heavy vehicles such as the Baneblade attached in support. Standard-issue infantry weapons include the Voss-pattern lasgun. Steel Legion doctrine favours mechanised convoys that drive through enemy lines before dismounting to clear remaining resistance, with armoured formations held in reserve to reinforce threatened sectors.

The Legion’s history is bound to the recurring wars for its homeworld: its regiments fought in the First War for Armageddon and the Second War for Armageddon, and were mobilised in unmatched numbers for the Third War for Armageddon against the ork Warlord Ghazghkull Thraka, when more Steel Legion regiments were raised in a single year than from almost any comparable world in the Segmentum Solar. Commissar Yarrick, closely associated with Armageddon’s defence during the Second and Third Wars, is remembered as a figure of particular significance to the Legion’s identity. Steel Legion regiments have also been recorded in the Fourth War for Armageddon and in deployments beyond the Armageddon system, where their sustained experience fighting the orks has made them valued reinforcements against xenos threats elsewhere in the Imperium.

Despite the continual demands of defending their own world, Steel Legion regiments remain present in Imperial campaigns across the wider galaxy, their reputation resting on the scale of Armageddon’s manufacturing output and the hardened character of a population for whom warfare is a near-constant condition of life.