The Skitarii are the martial arm of the Cult Mechanicus, and it is the Skitarii Marshal who bends their disciplined ranks to the purpose of his masters. Each Marshal has risen through countless campaigns, his body progressively remade with augmetics and combat wetware until he embodies the union of cold reason and controlled ferocity that defines the forge legions. Where the Tech-Priests decree a war, it is the Marshal who conducts it upon the ground.
Command among the Skitarii is a matter of data as much as leadership. The Marshal receives the doctrina imperatives, sacred combat algorithms encoded upon canticle wafers, and disseminates them to his cohort through the neural links that bind every Skitarius to the whole. At his command the legion may be driven to advance with murderous precision or to stand and pour forth a storm of galvanic and radioactive fire, its soldiers' reflexes and aim honed beyond mortal limit by the imperatives crackling through their augmented minds.
In person the Marshal is a formidable duellist, striding to the fore of his troops with archeotech weapons and the unshakeable poise of a machine that knows neither doubt nor fear. He leads from the front not out of bravado but calculation, for his presence sharpens the resolve and coordination of every warrior around him. To break a Skitarii advance, an enemy must first silence its Marshal, and that is a feat few living things achieve.
Order of battle
