Solar Auxilia

Of all the mortal soldiery raised to conquer the stars in the Emperor's name, none stood higher than the Solar Auxilia. Where the mass levies of the Imperialis Auxilia were drawn from a thousand worlds and thrown into war in their teeming millions, the Solar Auxilia were something rarer and colder: a professional army of void-hardened veterans who fought not beside the Legiones Astartes as afterthought or garrison, but as their chosen mortal spearhead. They were the human face of the Great Crusade's might, and where they marched, the compliance of a world was seldom long in doubt.

Recruited in great part from the moons and orbital reaches of the Solar System and the long-settled void, the Auxilia were bred to the darkness between stars and the pitiless discipline of shipboard life. Encased in environment-sealed plate, drilled until obedience became instinct, and equipped with wargear finer than any common regiment could dream of, they endured conditions that would break lesser troops and pressed on where others faltered. Their doctrine prized the unbroken line, the disciplined volley, and the slow, grinding advance that no terror could turn aside.

The Cohorts

The Solar Auxilia organised themselves into cohorts, self-contained armies of foot, armour, and artillery that could campaign for years without relief. Each cohort was a closed brotherhood with its own traditions, honours, and grievances, commanded by a Lord Marshal and served by Tribunes, Prefects, and the grizzled veterans of the Veletaris. A single cohort might muster tens of thousands of soldiers alongside squadrons of tanks and files of abhuman auxiliaries, a force capable of taking and holding a world outright, and the greatest cohorts carried battle honours reaching back to the earliest days of Unity.

Wargear and the Void War

What truly set the Solar Auxilia apart was the quality of their arms. Their signature volkite weaponry, cast off by the Legions as archaic, remained in Auxilia hands a fearsome tool of war, reducing massed foes to drifting ash. Their armoured cohorts fielded Dracosan transports, Leman Russ squadrons, and the ponderous Malcador, while their infantry fought in sealed plate proof against vacuum, toxin, and the killing cold. Above all they were masters of the void war, trained to storm boarding actions and airless installations where softer troops could not survive a single breath.

The Heresy Divided

When Horus turned against the Emperor, the Solar Auxilia were sundered as surely as the Legions they served. Cohorts that had fought side by side for a century found themselves on opposing lines, and the discipline that made them so formidable now served rebel and loyalist alike. At Calth, at Paramar, and across a hundred lesser fields, Auxilia butchered Auxilia with the same cold professionalism they had once turned upon the enemies of Mankind, and the finest mortal army the Imperium had ever raised bled itself white in the war for its own soul.