Chaos Titan

Chaos Titans launch an assault upon the walls of the Imperial Palace during the Siege of Terra.

A Chaos Titan is usually similar in form and tactical function to its Imperial Titan counterparts, but its long exposure to the warping influence of Chaos has transformed many of them into amalgamations of machine and Daemon. In some cases, the crew has merged with their machine, making it impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Other crews have given themselves and their weapons over solely to the service of one of the four great Ruinous Powers of Chaos, and have been transformed to represent that god's portfolio.

During the Horus Heresy, half of the ancient Mechanicum, including several hundred Titan Legions, turned to the worship of Chaos, taking their mighty god-engines with them and thus forming part of the Dark Mechanicum. Many other Titan Legions have fallen into such corruption in the millennia since the end of the Heresy as well.

Notable Chaos Titan Classes

A Ravager-class Chaos Titan deployed during the Siege of Vraks.

Slaanesh Chaos Titans

Like their Imperial counterparts, Chaos Scout Titans dedicated to the Pleasure God Slaanesh possess incredible speed, which allows them to start attacking the enemy while the rest of the army is still charging into range. As they skirt around the foe, the Slaanesh Scout Titans flicker with power, tapping raw energy from the Immaterium to maintain their essence within the physical realm.

Inside the hardened carapace of each of these fell God-engines is the spirit of a bound daemon, guiding it with sheer force of will, firing its weapons as one might raise a finger. Like their smaller Renegade Knight counterparts, Slaanesh Titans do not utilise Ion Shields. Instead, they are surrounded by a glittering wall of energy created by the Warp-interface within them which anchors the daemonic spirit inside to the material realm.

This shifting, swirling aura is called the Glamour of Slaanesh and makes a Slaanesh Titan very hard to target accurately. In effect, it works like an Aeldari Holo-field, and is yet another emulation of that xenos race's own Titans. Like the Holo-field, the Glamour of Slaanesh proves useless against barrages and other attacks spread over a wide area, as such weapons do not rely on pinpoint accuracy. Additionally, since the Glamour of Slaanesh is an interface with the Immaterium, it also provides a measure of protection against attacks drawing upon the Warp, such as Vortex Missiles or psychic powers.

Detailed below are two known variants of Chaos Titans dedicated to Slaanesh:

A Subjugator Scout Titan

• Subjugator Scout Titan - When the hordes of Slaanesh attack, it is the Subjugator Scout Titans which race ahead of the army. Similar to an Imperial Warhound-class Titan, the role of these swift war machines is to suppress enemy fire and allow the Slaaneshi forces to attack with minimal resistance. The Subjugator carries a strange array of weaponry, the most potent of which are the Psi-Pulse generators. These are studded with gems and enclose a honeycomb of membranes which resonate to the power of the Warp. The Subjugator uses its own link to the Warp to channel raw psychic power through the generators, creating a Psi-Pulse capable of punching through the thickest armour. Loping along the flanks of the battlefield, the Subjugator uses its Psi-Pulse to pick off enemy artillery before it can fire. The Subjugator also has two vicious Hellslicer Battle Claws, which it uses to rip armour to shreds and punch through the tough shells of enemy Titans.

A Questor Scout Titan

• Questor Scout Titan - The Questor Scout Titan is similar to its Subjugator counterpart, only with slightly thicker armour, but its powerful legs can still drive it forward at a considerable pace. Graceful arms spread from the Questor 's carapace, each tipped with a rapid-firing cannon called a Tormentor Cannon. As well as the Tormentor Cannon, the Questor also carries two powerful Lascannons, one mounted in the head and the other slung between the legs.

Without warning the Scout Titans of Slaanesh attack, the air crackling with power and echoing to their hideous hunting cries. Protected by the coruscating Glamour of Slaanesh, these deadly war machines race into the fray with long, graceful strides. In the brief and bloody conflict that inevitably ensues, their daemonic weapons unleash a hail of death and destruction which throws the enemy into confusion.

Then, as suddenly as they appear, the god-engines of Slaanesh are gone, only to attack again from another point on the battlefield. Almost impossible to pin down, these deadly engines of war have broken many foes of the Lord of Pleasure with their hit-and-run tactics.

Feral-class Scout Titan

Chaos Feral-class Scout Titan

Feral-class Titans are twisted versions of the standard Imperial Warhound-class Scout Titan and are used for the same tactical purposes by the forces of Chaos. To their eternal shame, the Collegia Titanica bears the stain of disloyalty to the Emperor like so many other branches of the Imperial armed forces. Like the Legiones Astartes, many of the Titan Legions also sided with Horus against the Emperor during the dark days of the Horus Heresy, and eventually fled to the dark refuge known as the Eye of Terror when their master was defeated.

Within the forces of Chaos, the dreaded Chaos Warhound-class Titans, reclassified as Feral-class Titans by the Imperium, have seen millennia of service in the Traitor Titan Legions' pursuit of the Long War against the Imperium of Man, becoming utterly corrupted by the daemonic powers of the Warp and the fickle favour granted to these vile war machines by the Ruinous Powers.

Many of these corrupted god-engines easily date back to long before the Horus Heresy and have had their Machine Spirits wholly corrupted and possessed by the Warp-touched powers of Chaos. The Titan's Machine Spirit and its damned crew become possessed by Daemons and are doomed to serve the will of the Chaos Gods in battle for all eternity.

Ravager-class Battle Titan

A Ravager-class Titan of the Legio Vulcanum

Ravager-class Battle Titans are the Chaos versions of the Imperial Reaver-class Titan. Within the forces of Chaos, the Reaver-class Titans are ancient and irreplaceable relics left over from the days of the Horus Heresy. To differentiate these corrupted Reavers from their Imperial counterparts, the Imperium has redesignated these war engines Ravager-class Battle Titans, though this name is rarely used.

They are the remnants of those Traitor Titan Legions who sided with the traitorous Warmaster Horus during those dark times and whose blasphemous names still echo with dread thousands of Terran years later. The majority of these monstrous god-engines have seen millennia of service with the Chaos forces and have long since become utterly corrupted by the touch of the Ruinous Powers and the Warp. Others are salvaged Imperial god-engines taken from the battlefield as spoils of war, much to the eternal shame of their former masters.

These captured Battle Titans have been subjected to bloody rituals in order to consecrate them to the service of the Chaos Gods. Over time, Chaos Reaver Battle Titans become an amalgam of Daemon and machine, their once living crews fused to the controls and their souls subsumed into the Titan's tainted Machine Spirit, the god-engine itself now a single being dedicated to destruction and butchery, reborn to spend an eternity of battle in servitude to Chaos.

Revered and tended to by the Warp-tainted Hereteks of the Dark Mechanicum, lesser servants of the damned view these towering engines of destruction as incarnate gods of fire and death. Many of the lesser beings who serve Chaos make obeisance to them, offering sacrifices of captives and even their own lives to slake these towering monsters' thirst for blood.

Chaos Warlord-class Battle Titans

A Chaos-corrupted Warlord-class Titan

Amongst the forces of Chaos, Warlord-class Battle Titans are ancient and irreplaceable relics left over from the days of the Horus Heresy. They are the remnants of those Traitor Titan Legions who sided with Horus at that time.

The majority of these monstrous war engines have seen millennia of service with Chaos forces and have long since become utterly corrupted by the Chaos Gods and the malign influence of the Warp. To differentiate these corrupted Warlords from their Imperial counterparts, the Imperium has designated these war machines with different class names that have been happily adopted by these Titans' Renegade crews.

The Chaos Warlord-class Titan has 4 different variants depending on which Chaos God the Titan is aligned with. Even though there are different versions of the Chaos-altered Warlord-class Titan, the most commonly seen variant operating with the forces of Chaos is the Banelord Titan.

Banelord-class Titan

The Banelord-class Titan is dedicated to the Blood God Khorne and has been modified with a long tail that ends in a large cannon of various types, while another such cannon protrudes from the Titan's daemonic mouth. The Banelord also has access to three special weapons: a Havoc Missile Rack, a Hellstrike Cannon and a Doomfist. This is the most common class of Chaos Warlord Titan.

Plaguelord-class Titan

The Plaguelord-class Titan is dedicated to the Plague God Nurgle.

Painlord-class Titan

The Painlord-class Titan is dedicated to the Pleasure God Slaanesh.

Warplord-class Titan

The Warplord-class Titan is dedicated to the Lord of Change Tzeentch.

Chaos Emperor Titans

The infamous Imperator-class Titan Dies Irae of the Legio Mortis during the Horus Heresy.

Imperator-class and Warmonger-class Emperor Titans are the greatest war engines ever created by the Imperium of Man. Those few Emperor Titans to fall into the hands of the Traitor Legions during the Horus Heresy that still exist today are rarely deployed on the battlefield and only when the forces of Chaos have decided that they are willing to pay any cost to secure a victory.

Most Chaos Emperor Titans have been possessed by Greater Daemons which have transformed these great war engines into towering leviathans of Warp-corrupted steel and adamantium, a true incarnation of the power of Chaos in the material realm.

Notable Chaos Emperor Titans

• Abominatus - Abominatus, the Despoiler of Worlds, was a special class of Chaos Imperator-class Titan that was fused with a Greater Daemon of Khorne.
• Augmenautus Rex - The Chaos Imperator-class Titan Augmenautus Rex fought against the Legio Invicta and the Legio Tempestus forces defending the Forge World of Orestes in 779.M41. It vaporised the Legio Tempestus Warlord-class Titan Orestes Magnificat with a single shot. The Princeps of the Legio Invicta Warlord-class Titan Sicarian Faero, Vancent Kung, linked his MIU (Mind Impulse Unit) with those of Titans from three battlegroups to take down the Augmenautus Rex with an assault coordinated by a single mind. Such a measure, although forbidden, was required as the Imperator-class Titan's Void Shields were so potent that they would have withstood a more dispersed assault. It is said that after the Augmenautus Rex had fallen disabled, it took another ten solar minutes of sustained fire to destroy it.
• Bubonis - Bubonis, the Daemonic Plague Titan of Nurgle, was a special class of Chaos Imperator-class Titan that was fused with a Greater Daemon of the Plague God.
• Caligula - The Caligula is a Chaos Imperator-class Emperor Titan that is similarly aligned with the Blood God Khorne and host to one of his Greater Daemons.
• Dies Irae - The most infamous of these monster war machines was the Imperator-class Emperor Titan Dies Irae (literally "Day of Wrath" in High Gothic) which stormed the battlements of the Imperial Palace during the Battle of Terra and had originally been assigned to the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet, the WarmasterHorus' own fleet, throughout the Great Crusade. It was eventually destroyed 10,000 standard years later in the 41st Millennium, during an Iron Warriors campaign against the Imperial world of Hydra Cordatus, where the Dies Irae engaged in battle with an entire demi-legion of twelve Imperial Titans, destroying almost all of them before finally being stopped by the Warlord-class Titan Honoris Causa.
• Skylok - Skylok, the Winged Titan of Tzeentch, was a unique Chaos Imperator-class Titan, which was created through its fusion with a Greater Daemon of the Lord of Change.

See Also

• Dark Mechanicum
• Titans
• Titan Weapons
• Titan Legions (List)
• Collegia Titanica
• Traitor Titan Legions
• Imperial Knight

Sources

• Adeptus Titanicus (1st Edition)
• Citadel Journal 9, "Legions of Chaos: Bubonis, Daemonic Plague Titan of Nurgle" by James Funnell, pp. 4-11
• Citadel Journal 10, "Skylok, Winged Titan of Tzeentch", pp. 31-37
• Citadel Journal 13, "Abominatus, Despoiler of Worlds Chaos Titan", pp. 41-44
• Citadel Journal 27, "Dok Butcha's Klinik: Bitz N' Tipz - Conversions: Chaos Banelord Titan of Khorne", pp. 91-96
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• Codex Titanicus (1st Edition)
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• Imperial Armour Volume Six - The Siege of Vraks - Part Two, pp. 11, 13, 23, 26-27, 34-35, 42-43, 48, 78-79, 83-84, 163, 182
• Imperial Armour Volume Seven - The Siege of Vraks - Part Three, pp. 51, 88, 161
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• Horus Rising (Novel) by Dan Abnett
• False Gods by Graham McNeill
• Galaxy In Flames (Novel) by Ben Counter
• Fulgrim (Novel) by Graham McNeill
• Mechanicum (Novel) by Graham McNeill
• Age of Darkness (Anthology), "The Iron Within" by Rob Sanders
• Storm of Iron (Novel) by Graham McNeill
• Titanicus (Novel) by Dan Abnett