The Volg Auxilia

The Volg Auxilia are the elite mortal troops of Warsmith Grond's Grand Company. During the Crusade, his expeditionary fleet had lacked the support of the Adeptus Titanicus or the Taghmata, but in their place was an entire regiment of the Solar Auxilia. What they lacked in sheer apocalyptic might, they made up for with numbers, discipline, and training. Each Auxilia trooper was better armoured and better armed than even the veteran troops of any other regiment of the Imperial Army. They had access to weapons that even at the time were arcane and beyond the reach of all but the Astartes, were drilled to the highest standards, and armoured in reinforced void suits of plasteel and ceramite. When the Iron Warriors took a world, the Volg were the first into the fray, even while the dust was settling from orbital bombardments, and cut tactical openings and dealt with the masses while the Astartes did their bloody work. In their turn, the Iron Warriors treated the Auxilia with the respect owed to them, and left the grinding work of garrison duty and forlorn hope assaults to lesser, expendable mortals.

When the Iron Warriors declared for Horus, the Volg Auxilia pledged their allegiance to Warsmith Grond, and served in void actions against the mortal troops of the tenth legion as their masters shattered their Astartes brethren on Isstvan V. Following the Massacre, Grond's fleet, including the Volg Auxilia, made for the warp and straight to Terra. Though warp travel in these days was less fraught, great disturbances in the Immaterium scattered the fleet through both time and space. When the fleet emerged, ten thousand years had passed, and the fleet was on the far side of a huge warp storm that cut them off from their goal. Further, it became clear that while the Astartes had taken only light losses, many of the Volg had been driven mad, or else mutated or never emerged from the sea of souls. Barely a third of the mortals had survived, and much of their arcane weapons of war had been lost. Cut off from his legion and adrift in a strange galaxy, Grond undertook to rebuild his forces and re-establish the Auxilia. Though a shadow of their former selves, the Volg would be a potent force in the Long War to come.