The Legion Deredeo Dreadnought was a heavy fire-support engine, its broad chassis bearing batteries able to engage armour, infantry, and aircraft alike, and the Word Bearers revered the ancients interred within them as living saints of the Legion. To be sealed into a Deredeo was, for a warrior of the XVII, to be granted the grace of eternal service, his zeal preserved past the death of his body so that he might go on scourging the faithless for centuries. Graven with litanies and draped in the icons of Colchis, these war-engines anchored the Legion's siege-lines, their disciplined fire holding the ground while the faithful advanced to storm it. The interred priest-warrior directed his guns with the fervour of the truly devout, treating every kill as an offering and every stand as an act of worship. When his ammunition ran dry, still he would chant, a walking reliquary of belief that death itself had failed to silence.
Order of battle
