Legio Tempestus

Legio Tempestus is a Titan Legion (a Collegia Titanica engine-house fielding god-engine Titans) raised on Mars during the Age of Strife. It ranks among the Triad Ferrum Morgulus, the three Titan Legions founded there in that lawless era alongside Legio Mortis and Legio Ignatum, and is known by tradition as the Stormlords. Its allegiance lies with the Imperium of Man, though its ranks were split by treachery during the Horus Heresy, when a faction broke away for the Warmaster; the Stormlord name and Collegia lineage are carried by the Legion’s loyalist descent.

In its earliest history the Legion claimed the Tharsis region of Mars, raising fortifications on solidified lava ridges and contesting territory with the neighbouring Legio Mortis, a rivalry that endured for ages. During the Great Crusade its god-engines served across the Imperium, most notably with the 12th Expeditionary Fleet under the Primarch Roboute Guilliman. After decades of campaigning the Legion withdrew for refit to Estaban III and Orestes Colonia, while its master, Princeps Senioris Indias Cavalerio, returned with the most battered engines to Mars; a rift opened between the Mars-based elements under Cavalerio and the off-world elements under Princeps Maximus Karania.

It was during the Epsiloid Binary Cluster Wars that Cavalerio earned the title Stormlord for his mastery of planetary assault, a name soon applied to the whole Legion. When civil war broke out on Mars at the opening of the Horus Heresy, the Mars-based Tempestus rallied to the Magma City under the loyalist adept Koriel Zeth; Cavalerio held to the Emperor, but Karania, ruling the off-world Tempestus from Estaban III, declared for Horus. In the Schism of Mars, Cavalerio led his engines against a Legio Mortis Imperator-class Titan, destroying its escort before being annihilated by the greater engine’s guns, dying unaware that the bulk of the Legion had already gone over to the Warmaster. Karania’s traitor host later marched on the Imperial Palace during the Siege of Terra, even as surviving loyalist Tempestus engines fought in its defence.

A small loyalist remnant, absent from Mars when the traitors seized it, survived to refound Legio Tempestus after the Heresy, clashing at first with Karania’s hunters before the traitor branch turned instead to renewed war with its old rival, Legio Mortis. Reconstituted around Orestes, the loyalist Legio stood as the first defence against Chaos Titans on that forge world during the Sabbat Worlds Crusade in 779.M41. The Legion is marked in heraldry by silver and blue, and its god-engines remain associated in Collegia record with the Stormlord name earned in the Great Crusade.