Lions Rampant
The Lions Rampant once stood as stalwart defenders of mankind. Credited with brilliant leadership and numerous victories, their former glories are now forever stained by infamy. During the Hektor Heresy they cast their lot in with the traitors to the Imperium and are now among the greatest examples of the excesses of Chaos. Now they ride in an eternal quest to satisfy their dark master, the god of Chaos, Slaanesh.
The History of the Lions Rampant
Before the discovering of Cromwald, the Lions Rampant were an understrength legion known as the Highland Raiders. They were tasked with subjugating worlds that refused overtures of peace, and in such a role were often set against well prepared foes. They lacked for glorious campaigns in their formative years, especially in the wake of legions more specialized, organized, or simply more brutal in their ways. It was not until the discovery of the lost primarch that they would be catapulted to the role of a vaunted vanguard, earning their name and place in the Great Crusade.
Cromwald Walgrun, Primarch of the Lions Rampant
Appearance
Cromwald has all the bearing of an aristocrat; he carries himself with confidence and poise as befitting his upbringing. This, partnered with his modestly rounded features, tightly cropped charcoal hair and neatly trimmed mustache would see him fitted well with the nobility of the Imperium. Though given the typical imposing presence of a primarch, his middle aged, almost fatherly features are disarmingly pleasant to look upon, though his deep set brown eyes are those of an ever watchful hawk. Even when his great cheeks are drawn in an amiable expression there can be no mistaking that he is ever constantly judging those in his company.
Youth
The young primarch was discovered on the world of Sommesgard. Here he was discovered by an officer in the service to the Monarchy of Prathia. The captain was guiding a routine patrol as part of the summertime wargames exercised by the 131st grenadiers, and stumbled upon a child lost and abandoned in the woods. He responded by returning to headquarters with the child, and in the absence of any family, he would then adopt the boy a few months later. Dubbing him Cromwald, the captain would raise the primarch in accordance to the traditions and customs of the privileged upper class the Monarchy's officers were drawn from.
As a primarch, the child would grow swiftly. Captain Walgrun, despite being taken aback by his sons accelerated growth, raised the boy in the ways of etiquette, tradition, and ambition. He taught the child all he could about the privileges and responsibilities of the gentry. Before long the student had exceeded the teacher, and so it was with pride that Cromwald was entered into the academy to follow his adoptive father's footsteps as a soldier and leader of men.
The Military Academy of Her Lady of Grace was a prestigious institution that held a reputation for providing the finest officers in the Prathian army. Here Cromwald excelled in virtually every field; his superhuman intellect began to blossom into a sharp mind for strategy and a quick wit for diplomacy. He quickly proved a match for his instructors in the arts of personal combat and debate, and it was not long before his fieldcraft and generalship had excelled beyond all expectations. He graduated a lieutenant, but would not linger at such a lowly rank for long.
The wars that wracked Sommesgard were ceaseless as nations battled for the limited resources of the depleted planet. These provided the perfect backdrop for the grand march to unification. It began with a modest handful of routs against the rival nation of Calibrey. These routs turned into prolonged campaigns, and when the Prathian flag stood ascendant over their longtime rivals, Cromwald's rise to the rank of Field Marshal was all but assured. He had given the Prathian king the tool he needed to break the stalemate of the third great war of the continent of Maskovin, and soon the boots of Prathian troops would be heard across the whole of the mainland.
As a general, Cromwald had proven himself to the king of Prathia. His capable oratory had convinced his peers and liege that conquest could change the face of Sommesgard for the better. The monarchy would march as an empire, he proclaimed, and he would claim the honor of leading her armies. The king's blessing given, he rallied the armored might of his forces and chose carefully his first targets.
Conquest of Berau
At the forefront of the young general's list of targets was the techno-barbarians occupying the ruins of the golden age city of Berau. They had long possessed an insular culture protected by advanced weapons. Their lasguns, armor and tanks outclassed the more primitive armaments of the rest of the world, though their numbers had always been too few to wage aggressive wars upon all but their closest neighbors.
Recognizing the necessity of technological superiority in his aspirations, Cromwald quickly mobilized his forces to invade. Ships bearing whole divisions of men and materiel were deployed, and from the eastern shores they marched into position for his carefully laid plans. He had studied his foe extensively, and when his boots graced the sands of the shoreline it was with an ultimatum for his foes: surrender, or face destruction in piecemeal.
Arrogant in their technological supremacy, the technocrats rejected his offer with scorn. Their envoy had scarcely returned to their masters with word when the first shells began to fall from the naval batteries. Under cover of sustained bombardment, Cromwald's armor had begun to move.
The campaign was a long one, by comparison to his future conquests. His armored divisions had dispersed across the countryside, using the terrain to mask their presence and prey upon the enemy in a series of lightning raids. When the enemy gathered their forces to strike, a whirlwind bombardment from hidden batteries would ravage their position. When the enemy troops raced to return fire, the self propelled guns would relocate. Efforts by the technocrats to chase were met with infantry raids upon their rear and armored support from the fore. One by one, the enemy's divisions began to fall. Never could he strike at the Prathians in force, for they used their mobility and coordination to harry the overstretched technocrats. With a front spread wide, the superior numbers of the more primitive army began to tell. It would not be until the battle for the city that the advance would falter. Here the technocrats would make a desperate stand, using all the arcane weapons at their disposal to thwart Cromwald.
((More to come at a later time))
Invasion From the Stars
In the wake of global unification, astronomers identified a sizable anomaly in the night sky. Ships from somewhere beyond the stars had begun to settle into orbit. Pandemonium set in amidst the people, who had long forgotten the days when mankind had walked the stars. No one knew what the strangers wanted, but Cromwald counciled preparation for the worst.
When the strangers landed, it was the field marshal that was to greet them from the turret of a braddigan heavy tank. He was wary of the red-robed envoys, who had chosen Berau as their landing site. His response arrived to see an armed force attempting to lay claim to the city. As he had with all of his previous conquests, he rode out to speak to their leader, man to man. The stranger, declaring himself a magos of the Adeptus Mechanicus, stated under no uncertain terms that he would take the city and claim a holy treasure that lay within. Cromwald, displeased at the arrogance of his counterpart, delivered his famed ultimatum of sovereignty. He proclaimed that his world would not yield to force, be it by their own or by the machinations from beyond. The magos would barter peacefully for the treasure of Berau, or he would face annihilation. The magos scoffed at the bold words of the barbarian before him. His insult would be the last thing to leave his lips; the combined firepower of Cromwald's guns obliterated the envoy and his honor guard from the face of the planet. So began the hardest fought war of his career.
The mechanicus fought like the technocrats before them had. They held strange and terrifying engines of war, and held the advantage of the high ground. Cromwald could do nothing to prevent the bombardment from the heavens that preceded the coming invasion. Populations were laid to waste by the opening days of the war, and concentrations of military strength were annihilated with no means of fighting back. It was a tense time, but the skilled oratory of the field marshal and his council steeled the people's resolve. The bombardment could not last forever; the enemy would need to land troops to claim their price. Neither could they fire upon Berau, lest they destroy that which they held in such high value. It was there he mustered his strongest troops, and prepared for the storm.
Dark days followed for the soldiers of Sommesgard. The mechanicus had landed in force with their secutors, myrmidons and tech-thralls. Tanks of unparalleled power stalked the ruins in the wake of bombardment by precision weapons. Deadliest of all the threats faced were the titans; a modest handful had made planetfall. For all of his prodigious skill, Cromwald's men were outclassed. Every victory secured came at terrible cost.
Only by riding out to meet the enemy personally would the invasion be broken. Outside the gates of the Berau slums he led an armored counter-assault to the mechanicus march. His presence was a threat the enemy could not ignore; killing him would sever the head of the fierce resistance they had met. In fixating on the enemy command, the mechanicus played into Cromwald's gambit. Though his tank was disabled, he escaped its destruction at the hands of a stalking titan with only the loss of his arm. His sacrifice was carefully calculated; behind their backs the mechanicus had been outfoxed. Vanquisher rounds, built by Berau technology, hammered into the titan from the rear and overwhelmed its void shields with their combined firepower. The god-machine fell before repeated hammerblows as troopers raced across the wastelands to reinforce the besieged city.
Victory had come at a terrible price. Even with his masterful strategy, Cromwald's forces had suffered extreme casualties. Each Mechanicus soldier to fall had taken five men with him; each tank to be destroyed had scrapped ten of its foes. Only grit and weight of numbers had allowed the defenders of Sommesgard to win the day, though many sons had perished.