Character Description Compendium: The Saturnine Gambit

[MolotovKraken]

With the members of the Third legion and their allies spread through out swathes of books it can at times be quite a task to hunt down the descriptions of them, be it for art, conversions/kitbashes, lore discussions or any number of things. As such my hope with this thread is to make things a bit easier for fellow fans of the legion looking for such details.

This thread shall cover the third legions participation in the Saturnine Gambit during the Siege of Terra.




Fulgrim-One of the warriors behind Eidolon stepped forward, from between Phodion and Mylossar. With each step, his plate and gear, cloak and shield, peeled off him, disintegrating into embers that sizzled into the canyon wind. The legionary was naked for a moment, then, as he continued to walk, his unblemished skin became polished like opaline shell. He began to grow, becoming taller, leaner, a towering figure of athletic perfection. A soft, pearlescent radiance guttered beneath his nacreous skin, like candles fluttering inside a box of the thinnest ivory, and then his flesh was reclothed in ornate armour of the most extraordinary lustre and complexity. The beautiful, painful fury of Fulgrim’s eyes bore down on Abaddon. He brushed a loose strand of long, snow-white hair away from his face.

One dropped directly in the centre of the wide wall deck. It was larger than the rest, clad in a panoply of artificer armour, wrought in heliotrope and amaranthine, etched in gold. It landed in a crouch, its right hand clutching a slender, two-handed, single-edged blade. Fulgrim rose slowly to his feet. His long white hair unwound, and ribboned out behind him in the night wind, like a pennant of shining satin.

Fulgrim wrenched backwards. Sigismund kept swinging, his powerblade scoring and cracking Fulgrim’s beautiful armour. The Phoenician shrieked, more in indignation than pain. The shriek was attuned across strange pitches, and it shivered the stones of the wall. Dorn broke his guard again with another lunge, carving a chunk of plate from Fulgrim’s flank. He struck again, a low slice that Fulgrim parried, then a high back-cut that tore through Fulgrim’s gorget, and scattered broken rings of golden mail. Blood was streaming from his wounds, rolling down his gashed armour. Some had got in his hair. He tossed his sword from hand to hand, then seized the grip with both, and hacked down at Dorn. Dorn blocked with a raised shield, turned out, and raked his blade deep across Fulgrim’s chest. Dorn followed in, and the greatsword tore Fulgrim’s cheek open. The Phoenician stabbed frantically, splitting armour, and lacerating Dorn’s side. Dorn struck out, and severed Fulgrim’s left wrist so the hand was left hanging by a shred of flesh. Dorn drove the entire length of his blade through Fulgrim’s belly. They stood for a moment as though embracing, the length of Dorn’s sword spearing out from Fulgrim’s spine, steam rising from the blade. Fulgrim rested his bloody cheek on Dorn’s shoulder, and sighed. Dorn ripped the sword out, and stepped clear. Teeth were visible through the slash in his cheek.

He stared at Dorn. His wounds closed, the skin re-knitting without a scar. His dangling hand re-fused. His armour fixed itself and regained its lustre. His blood dried up, and blew away as dust. He sheathed his blade. His form began to grow, stretching its dimensions with an unearthly inner light. His legs fused like flowing wax, and he became, from the waist down, a gigantic serpent. The thick loops of his snaking lower body coiled out across the stonework, scales gleaming like mother-of-pearl. He rose up, his lammia-form towering over the Praetorian. There were scales around his eyes and cheek, and his tongue was forked.

Emperor's Children- Emperor’s Children were emerging on the wall top, purple, gold, pink, black, screaming their death hymns, and blasting their weapons. Sonic booms rolled across Oanis like thundercracks. Pockets of darkness popped open along the fighting platform, and figures dropped out of fissures that sound had warped and torn. The champion elite of the III. Warriors too beautiful and ornamented to behold. They fell out of the warp fissures, which crumpled and closed behind them like the petals of black roses, then vanished like smoke, leaving only lingering snatches of choral plainsong behind them. The figures fell, graceful, and landed on the wall on their feet, at a pace no quicker than a fast walk. The Emperor’s Children were rumoured to have more than a hundred thousand legionaries in their ranks. The Phoenician looked around. Across the broad top of the Saturnine Wall, his children were massacring the wallguard garrison. Still more of his children were arriving through the void breach, via drop pods, or scaling the bulwarks from wall-base deployments.

Dorn turned slowly. They had formed a ring around him. Eidolon, Von Kaida, Lecus Phodion, Jarkon Darol, Quine Mylossar, Nuno DeDonna and fifty other gleaming warriors of the Emperor’s Children elite guard. Dorn had slain sixteen of the killers. They were on him two or three at a time, raking and jabbing. The Praetorian and the Templar slotted back to back, covering each other’s guard, turning together to drive away the circle of killers. They deflected cuts and thrusts, snapped golden spears and endured the keening, concussing screams. They smashed the gaudy, lethal champions of the III down, one by one: By then, Dorn had felled another nine with his greatsword. Their bodies lay around him like the ransacked contents of a jewel box. The wallguard, a mix of Imperial Fists and Auxilia troops led by members of the kill teams Devotion and Helios, had cleared the lower galleries, and driven the Emperor’s Children out of the wall, either into the night or into the arms of death. Below, the ravaged host of the III Legion, perhaps in answer to some petulant summons from their fleeing lord, began to withdraw. They left some eighteen thousand of their dead behind.

Lord Commander Eidolon-He stroked his fingers down the ludicrously decorated pauldron of Eidolon’s plate. His smile did not diminish. His teeth were perfect, like fine ivory. His face was not. It was like a painted parody of human features, fixed like a carnival mask. Frilled sacs breathed either side of his throat. But it was Lord Commander Eidolon, as he strode towards them, teeth glittering, his throat sacs heaving and puffing like the goitre frills of some foul marsh amphibian. Eidolon, fastidiously flicking some invisible mote of dust off his coral-pink warplate, Eidolon’s face split in a smile that even the features of a legionary should not have been able to accommodate. It stretched to his ears, revealing thousands of polished teeth. They tested him. Eidolon was the worst by far.

The howling lord commander fractured Dorn’s warplate with his polyphonic screams. His blade pierced the Praetorian twice. Eidolon had the strength of a primarch. When Eidolon surged in again, Sigismund charged him out of the circle, knocking men aside. The two fought like furies along the edge of the wall, both possessed, but only one a daemon. When Eidolon, gleeful, lammed his sword through Sigismund’s collarbone, Sigismund snarled, seized the bare blade impaling him, and used his bodyweight to tear it out of Eidolon’s grip. Eidolon looked appalled as Sigismund came on, the sword wedged through his shoulder. He scrambled backwards. The Templar’s chained blade ripped Eidolon’s pink plate open. Blood like quicksilver, like liquid chrome, sprayed out and dappled Sigismund’s armour. Eidolon screamed. Sigismund kicked him over the ledge. The lord commander’s flailing body plunged away, eleven hundred metres down into the burning darkness below the Saturnine Wall.

Eidolons retinue-Eidolon’s retinue trailed him, wretched and gaudy in their enhanced and augmented battleplate. Their faces, and in some cases their forms, had grown wildly misshapen. Their adopted colour schemes hurt the eyes. They were the cream of the Phoenician’s men, the Emperor’s Children, grotesquely and excessively ornate. Haughty bastards. He glanced at his escort guard, lavish warriors in full panoply, and smiled, as if at some private joke. They were gaudy warriors, parodies, but killers all.

 

[MolotovKraken]

Von Kalda, Equerry to Eidolon-Von Kaida, with his wide-eyed child’s face and ivory armour, equerry to Eidolon. They smashed the gaudy, lethal champions of the III down, one by one: Von Kaida, who bellowed an adult’s death scream from his child’s face;

Lecus Phodion, Vexillarius-the vexillarius, who now insisted his rank was ‘orchestrator’ or something; They smashed the gaudy, lethal champions of the III down, one by one: Lecus Phodion, the vexillarius, who was sent cartwheeling away in a welter of blood.

Quine Mylossar- Quine Mylossar, once a fine sword and a good tactician, now chromed like a trophy, with hideously long sabre blades extended from his vambraces, and peacock feathers behind his head; Dorn’s shield, already shredded, was hooked away by one of Quine Mylossar’s chrome sabres. Mylossar’s blade reach was extreme. Dorn knew he had to kill him fast, so he could concentrate on the others. Mylossar’s head came spinning off in a shower of peacock feathers. The squirts of blood from his severed neck shot metres into the air.

Nuno Dedonna-Nuno DeDonna, a noted master of assault doctrines, sheathed in plate that seemed both black and purple, yet neither. Nuno DeDonna, famed for his cunning, tried to slip in behind Dorn as the Praetorian fought off two others. Maximus Thane broke DeDonna’s back with his hammer, then mashed his head into the wall top for good measure.

Jarkon Darol-the Templar yelled a war cry, but it had no words. It was just a howl of defiance. He despatched the champion Jarkon Darol with two hacking blows.

Symmonus -They smashed the gaudy, lethal champions of the III down, one by one: Von Kalda, who bellowed an adult’s death scream from his child’s face, Illarus, who crawled on all fours for several seconds, searching for his severed head; Symmomus, whose body split apart as Dorn caught him.

Zeneb Zenar- They smashed the gaudy, lethal champions of the III down, one by one: Von Kalda, who bellowed an adult’s death scream from his child’s face; Illarus, who crawled on all fours for several seconds, searching for his severed head; Symmomus, whose body split apart as Dorn caught him; Zeneb Zenar, who fell to his knees, and tried to hold his sheared body together with both arms.

Janvar Kell-Sigismund said nothing, turning from Mylossar’s toppling form to smash his blade into Janvar Kell. As Kell collapsed, the Templar yelled a war cry, but it had no words.

Illarus-They smashed the gaudy, lethal champions of the III down, one by one: Von Kaida, who bellowed an adult’s death scream from his child’s face; Illarus, who crawled on all fours for several seconds, searching for his severed head;

Sonic Donjon siege engine- ‘Acoustic event registered at two hundred and sixty-two decibels,’ The Donjon-class siege engine was an uncommon machine. Made by the Forge of Mars in the early years of the Great Crusade, its pattern had seen service in many theatres, though it had never been produced in significant numbers due to its bulk, cost of production, and cumbersome vulnerability on the field of war. Better doctrines, exploiting the fluid versatilities of the Legiones Astartes and the rapid aggression of the Titan engines, had consigned the Donjon to support and rear-line operations that it had not originally been designed to perform. The Donjon engine was a quadruped, striding on a brace of the same motivator systems that propelled Warlord-class machines. The four massive legs supported a huge, flat-top carrier deck, a platform large enough for a squadron of aircraft or a full motorised company. The platform’s rim bristled with heavy gun ports, and through-deck elevators were equipped with bulk machinery that could lift extending siege towers and scaling bridges to the highest battlements. But the Donjon was slow, painfully hard to manoeuvre, and its void systems were over-extended because of its mass, and prone to gapping.

First Captain Abaddon had procured three of the immense, rare beasts from the adepts of the Dark Mechanicum, and he had given them to the Phoenician Lord of the Emperor’s Children. The three behemoths trudged towards the Saturnine Wall, relentlessly advancing over the ragged, lifeless plain. At their heels came streams of armoured support: troop carriers, motorised mortars, wall-breaker gun carriages and assault belfry lifters. Range locked, the advancing giants began to fire. Plasma destructor mounts and inferno guns along the platform rims started to retch and spit searing pulses and beams of annihilation. Mega-bolters shrilled as they unleashed blizzards of explosive ordnance. Launch racks dispensed streams of darting anti-void missiles. Bulk lasblasters pumped in their arrestor frames as they kicked out giant spears of light.

The face of the Saturnine Wall around Oanis Tower lit up, as the storm of incoming fire kissed the shields. Vast backflash blinked as the voids struggled to absorb the bombardment. The Phoenician had made some changes to the siege engines he had been loaned. His sound-wrights, inspired by acoustic nightmares whispered to them by the Neverborn, had masked the approach of the bulk engines in sonic fields that had turned the air opaque, and wrapped the Donjons in manufactured night from thirty kilometres out. The profligate gossips of Slaanesh had blurted secrets of noise-death to the disciples of the Kakophoni in their dreams, and psycho-sonic weapons had been fashioned and tuned, blasting their insanities from the foredecks of the siege engines, through gaping chromed vents, and broadcasting them on every frequency from infra to ultra. Already, they were generating a screaming aura ahead of the advance, a pattern of warped sound that made the air ring as though a giant tuning fork had been struck, and then the lingering note twisted into a distressing, atonal pitch that made blood shiver and tissue quake. The screaming aura had been named the Sonance. It had already blown out Oanis’ audio systems. It was shredding the vox. It was beginning to vibrate the wall’s aegis envelope like a crystal glass set singing by a fingertip. Laudatory vents, their sweeping gold mouths wide open like the blooms of pitcher plants, sang siren-calls of discord and despair. Amplifiers swelled dark, sub-vocal groans of bereavement and misery on infrasonic waves.

The roar of the carnodon contains frequencies of less than twenty hertz, below the threshold of human hearing, but the effects are still felt. The consequence is paralysing terror, pinning the prey. The prattling tattle-tales of the Slaaneshi feverdreams had gibbered this secret to the Kakophoni too, and the Emperor’s Children had made fluted auramite horns, which sounded a dirge that provoked cold-sweat, inescapable dread. They were less than a kilometre out. launch units mounted on the platforms’ decks began to fire, pitching drop pods into the air. Some were deflected by the shredding voids Others were incinerated by the firmer sections of the shields. But many arced down onto the wall top, cratering the rockcrete as they impacted, claw legs dragging and gouging. Some struck the face of the wall, and fell, but then clung on, their landing claws becoming bristled hooks and grotesque arachnid legs. They began to climb the sheer wall like mites, or haul themselves into the open maws of mid-tier gun-boxes. Many plunged to the foot of the Saturnine Wall. They rolled on the broken waste of the foreland, righted themselves, then sprouted then Neverbred legs, and began to scuttle back up the wall like huntsman spiders.

The Sonance had shut down. The guns of the Saturnine Wall, still firing, had begun to disintegrate the vulnerable Donjons, destroying all the beautiful instruments they carried. The siege engines were collapsing in vast fire clouds that lit up the face of the wall like sunrise. It was a shame, but the carriers and the instruments had finished their performance anyway.