The Aethon Heavy Sentinel was a heavier and more robust cousin of the ubiquitous Imperial walker, a piloted war-machine that gave the Solar Auxilia a swift and hard-hitting reconnaissance element able to keep pace with the cohort's armour. Where the lighter sentinels of common regiments were fragile scouts, the Aethon was built to fight, its reinforced frame carrying a heavy weapon and enough armour to survive the return fire its aggression invited. Ranging ahead of the main advance, it flushed out ambushes, hunted enemy light vehicles, and seized the vantage points to rain fire upon the foe. Its enclosed cockpit sealed the pilot against the same void hazards the Auxilia infantry endured, allowing the Aethon to operate where softer machines could not. Nimble across broken ground that would bog down a tank yet far tougher than any scout walker, the Aethon was the probing claw of the cohort, finding the enemy, fixing him in place, and holding him until the heavier engines of war arrived to finish the work.
Order of battle
