It is the Tidecasters who conjure the phantasmal sea that allows aelf and aquatic beast to move and breathe as if they were in their own natural environment.
To the oppressed masses of a Genestealer Cult, the Kelermorph is a figure of folk legend, a revolutionary hero battling the uncaring cruelty of authoritarian rule. To the enemy he is a figure of dread, a hated anarch who seeks to tear down the foundations of civilisation.
A champion amongst the mutant aberrants of the cult, the Abominant is a misshapen wrecking ball of muscle and chitin that wields a heavy bludgeoning instrument as if it weighs no more than a switch of willow.
Nexoses act as each Genestealer Cult’s central nervous system.
Stoic and inhumanly patient, the Locus can go from sombre stillness to a blur of motion in an eye-blink. This sudden eruption of violence is as startling as it is deadly.
Sanctuses are the favoured blades of their Patriarch, assassins whose task it is to eliminate any who oppose the cultists’ ascension to glory.
Their control of the hybrids around them is total. As a prophet of their Patriarch, the word of a Magus is law, and their telepathic abilities are more than powerful enough to enforce it.
The Clamavus is an information assassin supreme, seeding audio-viruses into the planetary vox network and dismantling communications. It is their role to create an aura of fear and confusion that their kin can exploit.
A master of gene-manipulation and bio-alchemy, the Biophagus is responsible for industrialising the process of indoctrination and infection.
There is no engine of the oppressors that a Reductus Saboteur cannot lay low, and there are few materials they cannot fashion into an explosive given a little time to tinker. Flitting through the shadows, they lace the battlefield with booby traps and deploy powerful explosives that make short work of enemy armour.
The Soviets were visionaries in the development of airborne troops and tactics, first forming a brigade-sized airborne unit after successful trials in December 1932. More units followed and by June 1941 five Airborne Corps existed in the Soviet order of battle, undoubtedly the strongest airborne force in the world. However in the desperate fighting of the early campaign these formations were pressed into service as regular infantry and virtually consumed.
‘Popular regimentation’ or the ‘people’s militia’ (Narodnoe Opolcheniye or Opolchenie) is a Russian tradition dating back to the 16th century and a powerful part of the national heritage. In times of emergency, a militia was selected from volunteers to serve alongside the regular army and defend their homes.