“If you consulted the Officio Militaris they’d tell you it was utter madness. Legion reconnaissance squads in Mk.III warplate? And snipers no less! Utter insanity… But I’ll tell you this for nothing, it bloody well does work: You’d not think a legionary could move silently in something built like a bunker and twice as ugly, but they do, those beautiful transhuman bastards, they do. Stuff of nightmares, one of those creeping up behind you on a dark night. Likewise, the Principia Bellicosa, if you can be bothered to read that weighty tome, will tell you that snipers, whether working alone or in teams, should follow a simple protocol: Infiltrate. Eliminate. Relocate. Then you just rinse and repeat. Nice and tidy. You take your shot, and you get the hell out before the enemy rain down vengeance upon you like heathen gods. Not a Dusk Raider in Mk.III warplate though. That stuff’s built for Zone Mortalis: Horrible, gutter fighting in cramped quarters against all the gribbly bastards the galaxy has to offer. So you can bring weight of fire down on them as much as you like, but in Mk.III plate they’ll not budge an inch: Like Summer rain off a Grox’s back! If a sniper’s wedged in, most forces will opt for clearance by CQB, but woe betide the poor beggars that go anywhere near a legionary in Mk.III. Oh, the remembrancers love their pretty pictures of legionaries waving magnificent swords, Charnabel sabres and the like, but a fist of that will absolutely obliterate a man in close quarters just as well. And that’s not the worst of it. They call them sniper rifles, but the monstrosities those bastards carry are more akin a heavy-duty anti-materiel rifle, the type that normally requires at least two Solar Auxilia to carry and operate. You get hit by a round from one of them and you’re just gone. Poof! You get a squad of them settled into a location, and they’ll chew through almost anything. I’ve seen a single reconnaissance squad of Dusk Raiders absolutely annihilate a brigade strength force, and full complement of armoured support, in under an hour, from one position. The only reason they relocate is because they’ve already killed everything in a 3-kilometre radius…”

– Cordane Stiltana, Strategos, Saturnyne Ordo, attached to the 1st Expeditionary Fleet M.30