Editing Astral Wardens (section)

==The Awakening==

The Casperian Rebellion marked the beginning of the Legion's psychic awakening, as in its quelling they saw the first manifestations of Ghost-Martyrs among fallen Wardens. The strong bonds of fellowship between psychically-gifted members of shield crews resulted in a mind-linking that would come to be known as the Weave, allowing the souls of their dead brothers to briefly remain manifested on the battlefield after death. Following this event, the Legion began its training as psykers in earnest, with much help from the scholarly [[Lambach Kropor]] and his [[Chosen of Hecate]]. As the Astral Wardens' power grew they one by one began manifesting halos of their own, echoing the silvery crown bestowed upon their gene-sire.

As the Crusade progressed, Bishop became eager to emulate some of his more charismatic brothers, who demonstrated that excessive force was not always necessary to bring an intractable world into Imperial compliance and so the Primarch's approach was again to fall back on the history of his adopted home. The Astral Wardens would arrive in a sector and immediately begin carefully scouting in considerable force for a location for a main operating base. Often, this was a orbital station complex, a single hive structure, or in some rarer cases, an errant [[Space Hulk]]. Fortifying this base, but not to the point where its loss would cripple the local Crusade, the legion would return to scouting-in-force, looking for further locations to seize and fortify. Well-escorted supply lines would be established between these 'settlements', and as these expanded in number, would carve up the sector's volume into pockets. Pockets that would then be assaulted from all sides, herding what enemies into a ever-decreasing volume of space, where eventually they could be driven into extinction. Providence's culture of accepting survivors yet being constantly wary of genestealer intrusions manifested in a friendly-if-aloof demeanor with the conquered populations, where those that reciprocated aid given were slowly indoctrinated into the Providence way of life and those that proved to be traitors were mercilessly hounded unto death.

With the development of the Astral Wardens' 'miraculous' powers and increasingly-divine appearances, sub-Crusades often found that populations had split into warring pro- and anti-Warden factions, often purely on the strength of rumor alone and well before a single marine would set foot on those population's home soil. This, at times, could greatly aid or hinder ([[Tzeentch|or in some cases both]]) the Warden campaigns, yet Bishop was careful to instill in the conquered populations the awareness that the godly image of his Wardens was but an illusion, that they were not harbingers of a god, and that the Emperor was not a god as a result, and so kept his legion from any open accusation of violation of the Imperial Truth. An odd result of this effect was that conscription was rarely needed to raise new or replacement troops for the Auxilia unit, volunteers often filling quotas by themselves, even if those recruits had a worrying tendency for heroics and the willingness to die for their fellow squadmates.