The Legion Land Raider Proteus served the XVIII Legion as both battering ram and reliquary, an elder pattern of assault transport prized on Nocturne for the sheer weight of armour that girded its hull. Where swifter Legions raced the Proteus across open ground, the Salamanders trusted it to bear their Firedrakes and forge-tested veterans into the hottest heart of a siege and carry them out again alive. Its explorator augury and machine spirit were tended by the Legion's artificers with the same devotion they lavished upon a master-forged blade, and many a Proteus bore drake-scale votive plates hammered over its sponsons by the warriors it shielded. Slow, patient, and near unbreakable, it embodied the Promethean conviction that a warrior's first duty is to keep his brothers from harm, a truth the Salamanders proved anew in the fires of Isstvan V and every grinding war that followed.
Order of battle
