Skitarii

In the name of the Quest for Knowledge, I shall now take your head off.

The Skitarii (singular Skitarius, also known as Tech-Guard) are the private army of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Under the Treaty of Mars, Forge Worlds are not required to give manpower over to the Imperial Guard under the Imperial Tithe, so they are allowed to raise, train, and equip their own Planetary Defense Forces. Standing somewhere between the Guard and the Space Marines in terms of ability, the Skitarii have access to absolutely everything the Adeptus Mechanicus can create. The only things they don't use are the Land Raider (which is due to a decree by the Emperor reserving it for the Adeptus Astartes during the Great Crusade) and Dreadnoughts (though in theory they could, they just prefer carving up your brain and making you a servitor instead). Like the Guard, there is little standardization among Skitarii units. For example, they can't quite seem to agree if the greater unit is called a cohort or a brigade. Additionally, Skitarii will vary from simple gun-servitors under a few commanders to gene-enhanced augmented humans with major equipment.

Their brain is altered to maintain their loyalty and obedience. Some are just psycho-surgically or biochemically altered, while others are full-on lobotomised. On the plus side if they have a working brain left, it has have high levels of multitasking: a Tech-Guard officer will proficiently dual-chainsword-duel with you, while happily chatting with his fellow Skitarii on the vox in binary, catch up on his unread messages, recompile the kernel of his cybernetics in head and troll all the boards of future-#chan in the same time. Speaking about differences, Skitarii from different forgeworlds wouldn't look the same. Some would prefer classy "red-robe-with-hood" style, others would wear Imperial Guard-like uniform, and some could be purely funcionalistic with no clothes beside armour - just name the style, and somewhere in the galaxy there is a forge world with similarity dressed Skitarii. One of the most popular styles is to wear fabulous fur coats, fang talismans and grizzly trophies, commonly associated with Death Worlders and Space Wolves. These are intended to terrify opponents.

They are generally the first line of defense on Forge Worlds and other Mechanicus installations. However, they also serve as marines (in the traditional sense) for Explorator ships, and act as dedicated infantry and vehicle support for Titan Legions when they get deployed.

Also, a new army has just been created for them. They play like a weird hybrid of tau, necron, and guardsma... ahem.. ASTRA MILITARUM and seem to be the 40k equivalent of the Skaven, except that they're awesome medievalpunk knights. And they have some bee-yoo-tiful models (for reasonable prices!), enough so to make Sisters players jealous.

See Also

• Skitarii tactics
• This sums up the Skitarii (be sure to kitbash your squad alpha so he gets an abbs mounted heavy weapon!)