Crafting Cave Games

Legion History (Origins)

The Mercurial Legion first emerged by name in the wake of the 8th Black Crusade, launched in 999.M37 as part of Abaddon's bid to gain Tzeentch’s favor.  As with many warbands of the Traitor Legions unleashed during that time, this splinter faction of the shattered Emperor’s Children behaved with apparent independence, conducting a series of lightning strikes against Imperial worlds.  The Legion was given its name by loyalists, on account of the uncanny speed of its attacks and and unpredictable nature of its chosen targets; the Mercurial Legion proved as likely to strike against undefended, apparently insignificant Imperial targets as against loyalist strongholds.

 

The Mercurial Legion has been operating on the fringes of Realspace ever since, falling into silence for centuries on end only to reappear in a different sector of the galaxy with a blazing series of raids.  The Mercurial Legion has no proper homeworld and shows no interest in holding ground, merely taking it and abandoning it just as swiftly.

 

Lacking the gene-seed to supplement its numbers internally, the Legion relies on renegades, heretics, and defections to bolster its ranks.  It is the bitter truth that it has hardly found the galaxy lacking in willing recruits - or unwilling captives.  Few of either, however, live up to the Legion’s impossibly exacting standards.  Those who do thrive; those who do not are whittled away.

Legion Beliefs

The pursuit of perfection has always been the fanatical devotion of the Emperor’s Children, and that toxic mix of excellence and bitter pride is distilled in the veins of every rank-and-file marine of the Mercurial Legion.  As potent as any drug, this relentless and burning pride was the instigator for the Third Legion’s fall, and it rages unabated by the passage of millennia.

 

To this end, only the most noble and lofty in appearance and skills are welcomed into the Mercurial Legion’s ranks.  Though lesser beings are occasionally tolerated for the sake of convenience, they often find themselves swiftly outmatched by their brethren, and cut down by the enemy in combat when they fail to match the high standards of the remainder of the Legion. The marines train endlessly with all weaponry available to the Legion and with special emphasis on close-quarters fighting, making them among the swiftest, most skilled close combatants of their kind.  Duels of honor and for the sheer joy and mastery of the sport of swordplay are not uncommon, though the Legion hierarchy discourages the wanton and wasteful killing of fellow Legionnaires.  Ascendency in rank can only be gained upon the battlefield.

 

Unlike many other marines, traitor and loyalist alike, the Mercurial Legion does not limit itself to excellence on the field of battle.  Theirs are ranks of warrior-poets, of playwrights and painters and sculptors of exceeding skill.  The chorus of their battle-chants is a heart-rending harmony, vicious and beautiful all at once, and the true musicians among them are masters of sublime skill.  When armed with sonic weaponry they send their enemies to their deaths with the sheer exquisite rapture of their song, melody and countermelody every shifting against each other in concordant waves.

The Legionnaires have a special love for things of great beauty, and will often collect objects of art or pieces of verse that they believe truly inspired, and hoard these collections aboard their twin

Daemonships.

 

For this reason, the fleshchange is especially abhorrent to the Legion - and also everpresent, as befits those who flirt constantly with the Ruinous Powers.  The leadership of the Legion has become more and more obsessed with finding a way to end this abominable curse, and the Lord Commander goes so far as to surround himself with the reminders of the fate that awaits all his soldiers should he fail in this goal, frequently taking to the battlefield accompanied by Spawn that were once his battle-brothers.

Legion Combat Doctrine

In keeping with the art of precise, explicit warfare, and exactitude in deployment and execution, the Mercurial Legion takes excruciating care to evaluate every battlefield and potential target before they engage in open combat.  Strengths and weaknesses are assessed, combat composition is checked and triple-checked, and the Lord Commander deploys precisely the strength he judges to be required to accomplish the task.  Because the Legion holds itself in such high regard, its warriors often therefore find themselves outnumbered and otherwise disadvantaged by the enemy - and rely on their strong unit cohesion, incisive leadership, precise planning, and superior weaponsplay to tip the scales.

 

As such, the ranks of the Mercurial Legion consist primarily of chaos space marines, assembled into units called Choirs, usually deployed on a rhino equipped with a havoc launcher.  Each choir champion carries an exquisite blade forged himself or claimed in conquest, not only effective but beautiful in aspect.  Among each choir a single marine is selected to lead the song of his choir, sometimes rousing, sometimes crystalline and harmonious, that is piped into the helmets of his brother marines.  With their focus on the song, the marines have been known to shrug off debilitating injury and stand in the face of withering fire that would drive away lesser men.

 

Aside from these transports the Legion seldom deploys heavy vehicles, though they have been known to unleash helbrutes from the maelstrom of the Warp upon an unsuspecting foe.

Fleet Assets
Cadence - First of the Mercurial Legion’s twin cruisers, Cadence is a Daemonship, staffed by a crew of Possessed marines.  This is Lord Mercury’s flagship.

 

Ostinato - Second of the Legion’s twins and the workhorse of the Mercurial fleet, also a Daemonship, she is most often forward deployed and therefore has sustained the most apparent damage.

 

Elegy - The Mercurial Legion’s most recent acquisition, formerly a cruiser-class Imperial Navy vessel, now a captured slave ship.  This ship was a gift from a traitor Librarian turned Sorcerer, identity unknown, often found in the company of Salazar.

Notable Legionnaires

Lord Mercury: The eponymous Lord Commander of the Legion, and the Fourth of His Name.  Mercury prefers to ride into battle on a raptorlike Steed, relishing the viciousness and maneuverability of the fragile beast over toughness and staying power.  Armed with a lightning claw and power fist both, he tears through enemy infantry and rips power cores out of tanks with equal impunity.  He is occasionally accompanied by marines on bikes, painted green and silver in imitation of their Lord’s mount, but is more frequently accompanied by a trio of Chaos Spawn.  Rumor has it that these three are Mercury’s unfortunate predecessors as Commanders of the Legion.

 

Salazar: Now the Mercurial Legion’s prime sorcerer, Salazar is perhaps the only one of the original Astartes of the IIIrd Legion remaining with the warband.  It is said that like many of the Emperor’s Children, he was recruited from the Terran Aristocracy of Old Europe.  Pre-Heresy, the Emperor's Children were known for rejecting all mutations and imperfections, including those leading to psychic potential.  Salazar was one of few exceptions, a Terran noble Aspirant whose aspect was so similar in mein to Fulgrim's, that even his connection to the Immaterium was insufficient in swaying the EC's recruiters to reject him.

 

Ever known to keep his own counsel, Salazar was suspected to be a loyalist during the Horus Heresy.  He was among the first of the Emperor’s Children sent on the ill-fated mission to Istvaan III to die.  Against all odds, he was among the survivors of the virus bombs, locked as he was in an airtight bunker.  Unlike his surviving loyalist brethren, he did not join in the holdout action against the Traitor Legions.  The precise details of his escape from the Istvaan system are unknown, but it is suspected that he reintegrated himself in the ranks of traitor marines during the assault.  Whether he was already with them at heart, or whether he adopted their heretical doctrines over the course of time afterward, is a subject only for speculation.

 

What is known is that Salazar allowed himself to become subsumed in his new identity among the traitors.  No record of him is found by name until a mention of his participation as Sorcerer in the assault on Terra, though as with many Emperor's Children he turned to the wholesale slaughter and slavery of the populace than engaging in the heart of the combat. Surviving information from that time indicates that he led several personal raids led against the very Aristocracy from whence the EC formerly drew their Aspirants.

 

After the defeat of the Traitor Legions on Terra, Salazar's name disappears again.  Any actions he took during the Slave Wars are lost to history.

 

He reappears again with the emergence of the 8th Black Crusade, at the forefront of one of the few remaining splinter factions of the Emperor’s Children, now calling themselves the Mercurial Legion.  He has appeared in concert with that warband ever since, a shadow always at the right hand of the Lord Commander.

 

True to the spirit of the perfectionist Third Legion, Salazar’s recent actions in the Vendolan system indicate that he is currently hell-bent on discovering a way to reverse the mutagenetic process brought on by contact with the Immaterium.  To this end he has tracked down an exiled band of Thousand Sons, the Sons of the Morning, whose sorcerers were involved in enacting the Rubric of Ahriman, that he might plumb the secrets of that great sorcery and perhaps discover where the Thousand Sons erred.

 

The Sons of the Morning and the Mercurial Legion currently operate in concert in the
Vendolan System.

 

Fierstein -  The Legion’s lone heldrake.  Salazar has been known to affectionately refer to the daemon engine as his 'overgrown familiar'.  Surely he is being facetious - or perhaps the drake is the remnant of a once-sanctioned imperial aircraft Salazar used as his personal transport.

 

The Lightbringer - also called the Bright Prince, the Lord of the Morning, the Morning Sun, and many other names beside, this being is oft-mentioned but seldom seen.  Precisely what it is - or, perhaps more accurately, who it once was - is not entirely clear; loyalist forces unlucky enough to encounter it yet still lucky enough to survive describe it as a great winged creature, crowned with fire.  It is said to be armed with a sword of living light, which scythes through flesh and metal alike.  Enlightened speculation suggests that it is an ascendant Daemon Prince, whose true name remains undiscovered.