World Building 7 · 4:18am Jan 28th, 2014
The Legions of Equestria: Part 6
The Iron Stallions
Excommunicate Traitoris
Current Commander: Unknown
The province that the Iron Stallions hailed from is unknown, but due to their favor of machines it is believed that they had ties with the Iron Hooves during the early years of Celestia's Reign and possibly came from the Las Haygas region. The Iron Stallions were known for two things: their stoicism, and their mastery of siege craft matched only by their rivals, the Siege Breakers. The Iron Stallions and the Siege Breakers would often try to out compete each other both in building fortifications and destroying enemy fortifications, their rivalry reaching a point where Celestia made sure that both Legions were deployed in different theatres to avoid competitions derailing her campaigns.
When the Lunar Heresy began, and upon hearing of the Siege Breaker's fall to Chaos, the Iron Stallions eagerly awaited Celestia's orders, every Legionnaire prepared to march out and destroy their rivals once and for all. However, no such orders came; Celestia feared the blood thirst of the Iron Stallions, and so made sure that the Legion was as far away from the main fighting as possible. Joining a task force of Everfree Sentinels, the Iron Stallions were lead on a wild goose chase by elements of the Order of the Sacred Star, something that the Legion was not incredibly enthusiastic about.
The Iron Stallions received a further blow to their faith in Celestia when the Siege Breakers were acquitted from their actions during the Lunar Heresy (after a lengthy trial that resulted in their already understrength Legion losing one tenth of its forces). The Iron Stallions felt that the Siege Breakers should suffer more for what they had done, but Celestia refused to punish those that were innocent and had felt that the Legion had suffered enough.
The Iron Stallions decided to take matters into their own hooves.
The Marechester Heresy, as it is called, began when the Iron Stallions tracked down and lay siege to the Siege Breaker's fortress in the Marechester River Valley, striking soon after the Siege Breakers had returned from destroying the Night Warriors. It is believed that several bands of Shadowbolts joined the Iron Stallions and sewed the seeds of Chaos among their ranks, but this has never been confirmed. The siege lasted for three months, with horrific casualties on both sides, and ended with the arrival of two clans of Iron Hooves led by Clan Blackshield. The Iron Stallions were forced to retreat, and were scattered around the world by the Iron Hooves. They were declared Excommunicate Traitoris soon after.
To this day, the remnants of the Iron Stallions continue to harass Equestria's assets, pledging themselves to Chaos after becoming disillusioned with Celestia. The Iron Stallions mostly take a background role to the other Traitor Legions, providing them with weapons and other technology to assist the Traitors in their battle against Equestria. When they do march to war, the Iron Stallions still retain their mastery of sieges, their most notorious act being nearly burning the city of Neighples to the ground before being driven off by the Black Templars of Roam. The Iron Stallions have also vowed to destroy the Siege Breakers and the Iron Hooves, and the battles between the factions are incredibly vicious.
The Everfree Sentinels
Current Commander: Starlight Shimmer, Great Mage of the Red
The Everfree Sentinels are an enigmatic Legion, believed to have a base deep inside the Everfree Forest. Comprised mostly of unicorns, the Everfree Sentinels busy themselves with the study of magic and the arcane arts, their knowledge unmatched by all except the Princesses themselves (although, some of their detractors, especially the Arctic Wolves, believe that they spend too much time studying magic and not enough time actively using it). In battle, a single Archmage of the Red (Everfree Sentinel company commander) can call down massive firestorms and rend holes in reality capable of swallowing the mightiest of warriors, and due to their immense power the Everfree Sentinels rarely deploy in force, usually sending out only a Battle Company at a time when the need arises.
The Everfree Sentinels draw their traditions from their founder, Archanus the Red Mage. Believed to be a direct descendent of Starswirl the Bearded, Archanus was renown not only for his strength (he was a giant among ponies), but for his wisdom of the old world before Discord's arrival and his psychic might (matched only by Celestia's first personal student, Mimic Sparkle, and possibly her descendent Twilight Sparkle). It was said that Archanus could move the entire Legion with a single teleport spell, and the Legion claims that it was with his assistance that the Shadowbolts failed to open a portal to the Warp and resurrect Nightmare Moon. After his death, every ranking Legionnaire has held the honorific of "the Red", with the Legion Commander holding the title of Great Mage. Off the battlefield, Archanus made many contributions to the field of magical study and Equestrian history; he assisted in compiling the biographies of Starswirl the Bearded and the six founders of Equestria, and his theses on magic theory are still highly regarded to this day.
During the Lunar Heresy, the Everfree Sentinels played multiple parts. Archanus himself led an expedition to defend the Tartarus Gates from the forces of Nightmare, and several other groups assisted the Iron Stallions in their hunt for the Order of the Sacred Star. Post Heresy, the Everfree Sentinels did not expand much, staying as close to the original size of one thousand ponies as possible.
The Everfree Sentinels also have a longstanding rivalry with the Arctic Wolves. No one is certain how or why this rivalry started, for each side has its own story: the Everfree Sentinels claim that Great Wolf Icewind insulted Archanus' power and martial skill and displayed a total disregard to the mage's hospitality, while the Arctic Wolves say that Archanus' obsession with little details irked Lord Icewind, who did not want the mage meddling in the affairs of his Legion. The rivalry is fueled by the Wolves' superstitions regarding magic and the Sentinels belief that the Wolves are backwards savages, but both are professional enough to not get into major conflicts with one another.
Two more Legions today. Fun fact, Twilight actually has more potential than both Mimic and Archanus, due to two of their descendants hooking up at some point in history.
So you've got a pegasus themed legion and a unicorn-centric one. Are there any that are predominantly earth ponies?
1767279 The Plainsrunners; I'll get to them in a later post
Huh, with the sentinels, are their non-unicorn members often those with a high innate magical potential for their species? or more towards descendants of members reaching old age?
1767398 Non unicorn members of the Sentinels (if any- they're not the most sociable of Legions so it's unknown if they have any non-unicorns in their ranks) would have a higher than average amount of innate magic
Do the Sentinels suffer from flesh changes?
1768249 Only if they go a little overboard in their mad science
1768253 That is the best type of science!
Any relation to the Princesses wayward ex-student?
1774285 possibly
The Iron Stallions seem to highlight the fact that the more things change, the more they stay the same. I rather liked that.
The Everfree Sentinels, however, left me with a response that can be simplified to a single word. Wut.
I was operating under the belief that they were a later founding. I was confused by how they were described to have done things during the heresy, so I looked back at GEoP. I found them mentioned, but for the life of me, I don't remember them doing anything in the actual story or having any characters of their own.
Then there's Archanus. I can see him being strong both physically and magically since he's in charge of a legion, and his knowledge and wisdom would have to be rather incredible to command a legion of magical eggheads that occasionally go to war, and his accomplishments in magical theory and the biographies he's written only serve to solidify this fact. However, between a third and half of of the legion's entree is just about Arcanus, and he's taller than Celestia. Unless Celestia had a cake fueled growth spurt between when Luna was banished and her return, Celestia was more than twice the height of ponies when the legions were founded. Archanus' size would have to be ridiculous compared to his parents if Celestia had to look up at him to speak with him.
Finally, there's the fact that you've stationed a legion of magical specialists in the Everfree Forest and they haven't detected Deer. What's that? The Deer don't live in the Everfree? That's nice, but there's this castle where the Elements of Harmony were stored, and the legion would have to be full of morons to not have put an absurd amount of detection wards around them to make sure nothing unbecoming happened to them. Wards that a certain Deer was sure to trip. If the Deer do live in the forest, then they really have no excuse.
1791971 They live in a forest, not the Everfree forest. And do you think a deer is going to be troubled by the wards of a few slightly more powerful than normal unicorns if they've been able to hide from Princess Celestia Herself?
Admittedly, I was trying to make Archanus as close to Magnus the Red as possible, so I did go a bit overboard in the details (although Magnus was a giant compared to normal Space Marines; some artwork shows he's at least two to three feet taller than Space Marines in Terminator armor, making him at least 11' tall ). And I probably should have expanded upon the Legions with their own stories rather than just focusing on a selected few, but I tried that in my first draft of the Lunar Heresy and it didn't work out as well as I thought.
Also, I was running out of ideas since I don't know a lot about the Thousand Sons pre-Heresy, so I threw in some mention of their commander to fill out the space so the Everfree Sentinels did not look too sparse
1792018
You raise a number of good points. I will begin with
MagnusArchanus. Yes, the individual you based him on was massive. However, Magnus was one of twenty genetically engineered super-soldiers that were designed from the ground up to be forces of nature. Archanus was instead born to a pair of ponies via the usual methods that parents go about when having offspring. Making Archanus the size that Luna was during the episode Luna Eclipsed would have made him a lot larger than other ponies but kept him within the range of what could be possible.I know this is fiction and I should be suspending my disbelief, but that really shattered my suspension.
As for not knowing much about the pre-heresy Thousand Sons, might I suggest the Lexicanum Wiki? I know that wikis are not the most reliable of sources, but you aren't exactly pulling exact details from the 40K universe.
On the topic of the legion being non-memorable in the story, I have to agree that there was not much screen time available to showcase the legions, and that the story would have dragged on if every legion got a chapter in the limelight. Still, you could have made references to them by commenting on what campaigns they were in, having the
Space WolvesArctic Wolves trash talk them while they were fighting Sombra - i.e., 'We're the bad ass vikings of the north, and anyone else, especially those pansy spellslingers from the Everfree Sentinels, would have fallen by now -, or even sent Celestia a note during the heresy that said 'sorry, we can't come out to play in the rebellion because we're busy keeping the gates of Tartarus closed, brb.'The Deer still raise questions about the legions competence. I can see the Deer hiding from Celestia with minimal effort - she has a country to run, and she can't go haring off after every disturbance in the warp that she feels like Luna did in Contact. Celestia is tethered to a pesky government that is dependent on her, and she has more pressing problems like the ruinous powers. That being said, the Everfree Sentinels are described in this world building section as not only 'more powerful than average' unicorns but also the best magical R&D group as well. However, they are legionaries first and foremost which means that their first priority is going to be protecting Equestria from threats. So while being able to teleport the entire legion somewhere and having the ability to rain fire down from the heavens to slaughter your enemies are both nifty things, they are rather useless if you don't know where the enemy is. Being able to detect and track are rather important abilities to have, and the Sentinels most likely use their magic for this task. The fact that the legion is stationed in or near the Everfree Forest gives them a diverse population of creatures to identify and deal with. Furthermore, since they do research, they would most likely send out teams to get more accurate descriptions when anomalous readings crop up.
1792207 You also bring up valid points. If I had the time, I'd go back to God Empress and tweak a few things so it doesn't appear that I completely forgot about all the legions, but for now I'll make a few adjustments to the blog post here