Faustine Cohort

Once reckoned among the proudest of the Solar Auxilia, the Faustine Cohort earned a darker immortality in the Age of Darkness as one of the mortal formations that turned against the Emperor. The cohort had won its renown in the coreward compliances, its soldiers famed for a stubbornness that verged on the fanatical and a devotion to their commanders that ran deeper than any oath to distant Terra. It was that very devotion that damned them, for when the lords they served declared for Horus, the Faustine followed without breaking stride, their discipline turning seamlessly from the Emperor's service to the Warmaster's. They fought the loyalist Auxilia with a peculiar bitterness, as though determined to prove that their treason was strength rather than fall, and their cold professionalism made them a scourge upon worlds that resisted the rebellion. In their tarnished heraldry, the steel-blue of the loyal cohorts gave way to a sullen, guilty gold, a mark of the honours they had forsaken. To the loyalist Auxilia, no enemy was more hateful than the Faustine, for they wore the same plate, spoke the same drill-cant, and knew every strength and weakness of the men they had once called brothers.