Editing Nobledark Imperium Imperial Forces (section)

==== Armageddon Outriders ====

[[File:Rock_rider.png|300px|thumb|left|Common 'uniform' of a biker scout for the Outriders.]]

Everybody knows the Steel Legion. Reflections of their world in microcosm. Steel and fire and ash; unstoppable waves of armor, Basilisk barrages like monsoon rains, choking clouds of lung-burning gas. Less well-known is the fact that there are two parts to the Steel Legion. The first and largest are the heavy mechanized infantry they are famous for. The second is the Outriders. 

The Outriders are all crazy. The infantry regiments of the Steel Legion recruit from inside the hives — the factory and forge workers — but the Outriders recruit from outside the hives, and there are only two ways to make a living out there. 

The first is prospecting and wildcat mining, delving deep into ancient and much-abused Ork-built structures with jury-rigged and second-hand equipment in search of veins of valuable materials. Everything from gold electrical circuits to adamantine armor plate. Most valuable of all is components of the old teleporter system. The Mechanicus has decided it wants planetary teleporters more than it hates Ork 'technology', and pays staggering sums for the smallest scraps. This description alone should tell you everything you need to know about how difficult and dangerous the job is. 

The second is Ork hunting. The Administratum and PDF will pay good thrones for Ork skulls. Two for a squig, five for a grot, and starting at forty for an Ork, more for larger or special types like Weirdboys and Brainboys. Reimbursement is included for promethium spent burning the bodies, and the PDF doesn't check too hard to make sure you're not claiming driving-around promethium as Ork-burning expense. 

Outrider legends tell of Billy-Joe Hammerlord, who drove through an entire warband on his bike to take the head of a Warboss and earned enough to retire. The story grows wilder and more fantastic every retelling, thus by now the old stories claim the warband stretched from one horizon to the other, the Warboss carving paths through the rubble for his army to march through just by dragging his axe along the ground behind him, and Billy-Joe himself earned enough to buy himself a fleet, became a Rogue Trader, and went on adventures with Prince Yriel.

Officially, all the Orks on Armageddon are Feral. Most places, Feral means stone axes and weird squigs. But this is Armageddon. The world still remembers in her bones when she strode among the stars and slapped aside Battlefleet Solar like so many childrens' toys. A lot of the Orks are just waving around scrap-metal axes. On the other hand, depending on what armories they've broken into, they might be tossing around vortex bombs. 

The point is that Outriders are all crazy. In some ways they sort of resemble Orks themselves. They move around in a wide assortment of walkers, fat-tire buggies, and motorbikes, made of scrap metal and spare parts. Most of these vehicles may have started life on an assembly line in a Mechanicus factory, but after generations of repairs and modifications nothing of the original vehicle can be found. Most of them are old - a good vehicle is a heirloom, passed down from father to son, with each generation adding a bit more to it. They stick spikes on the vehicles and stick Ork skulls on the spikes, and judge each other by how skull-laden their bosspoles are. When an Ork warband and an Outrider clan are fighting, it sometimes gets hard to tell which is which. 

Outriders prefer las-weapons over slug, so there is that.

A common rite of passage among the Outriders is for the father to cripple an Ork with shots to its limbs, then for son finish it off with a knife. This marks the transition from childhood into adolescence. True manhood is often not considered to begin until the son repeats the ritual as the father. It is important not just to kill Orks, but to ensure that Ork-killing will continue into the far future. 

The point is that Outriders are all crazy, but they are Ork-killing crazy so they make excellent candidates for the Imperial Guard. Sometimes entire clans get recruited into their own regiments. Sometimes restless young men come in on their own to the recruiting office and get incorporated into the regular Steel Legions as scouts and cavalry. Most of the time they insist on bringing their own vehicles, and most of the time the Munitorum lets them, though they insist that the Outriders repair their vehicles with standard issue parts. Since most of the time their vehicles are kitbashes of Sentinels and Chimeras, this is usually not too difficult. 

For all their skill and lunatic courage, the Outriders are not famous for the good and simple reason that there just aren't as many of them as the normal Steel Legions. Armageddon outside the hive walls does not support high population densities. Thus, they just fade into the background as 'specialized auxiliaries' of the Steel Legion. But those who have met them have given rise to a proverb: “Armageddon has many faces, and all of them are lethal."