Cadian Shock Troops

The Cadian Shock Troops are Astra Militarum regiments raised on the fortress world of Cadia, on the edge of the Eye of Terror. Sited within the Cadian Gate, the sole stable passage into the Segmentum Obscurus from the Eye, Cadia stood as the Imperium’s foremost bastion against the forces of Chaos for some ten thousand standard years, and its people were a fully militarised society raised from birth for war. Cadian regiments are counted among the most disciplined and adaptable infantry the Astra Militarum fields, and their equipment, organisation, and methods of war have been widely copied by other Imperial Guard regiments.

Cadian children are trained in the use of the lasgun almost as soon as they can walk, and on reaching adolescence every able Cadian is inducted into the Youth Army, organised into Whiteshield platoons and drilled under harsh conditions. Many go on to serve in the Interior Guard, Cadia’s planetary defence force, while those who show leadership are drawn into the officer corps and trained on active fronts rather than in academies. This grounding gives Cadian regiments an unusually high proportion of veterans and a reputation for steadiness in prolonged, attritional warfare, from trench defence to armoured assault. Standard equipment includes the M36 Kantrael-pattern lasgun, Cadian-pattern grenade launchers, and armour drawn heavily from the Leman Russ family, supported by Chimera transports.

Cadia’s long vigil ended when Abaddon the Despoiler brought the Thirteenth Black Crusade against the Cadian Gate; the world was destroyed and the surrounding sector torn by the opening of the Great Rift. Cadian Shock Troop regiments and Interior Guard formations that survived the fall, together with kinsmen already stationed across the galaxy, did not disband. Whole generations of Cadians have since been born, raised, and trained aboard fleets in transit between war zones, sustaining the regiments’ traditions without a homeworld to return to.

Surviving Cadian forces remain heavily committed to the fighting around the remnants of the Cadian Gate and the Nachmund Gauntlet, and are recorded as harbouring a particular enmity for the Black Legion. The rallying cry ‘Cadia stands’, first raised during the world’s final battles, is now used throughout the regiments to affirm that Cadia endures as long as a single Cadian continues to fight. Losses have forced Cadian high command to draw recruits from other shattered Guard regiments and from the populations of worlds on which they are deployed, with such newcomers known within the ranks as Transplants; Cadian forces in this period are associated with Lord Castellan Ursula Creed.