Unlike the Tech-thralls of the Taghmata, the Skitarii are considered elite warriors. Not as durable as the shock troops of the Ordo Reductor, the Thallax, they are instead selected from the best in the forge fanes and offered as tribute to the Fabricator-General. A special surgical procedure known as the flesh-shriving replaces their organic and biological parts with machine, blessed augmetics and armor known as the corpus-Skitarii. Their helmets also upload not just combat data and calculations, but also stream the intelligence, experience and knowledge of past wearers, alowing the current Skitarius to benefit from his predecessor and turning him into a ready made veteran.
The origins of the Skitarii lay during the horrors of Old Night, when the Mechanicum had to defend against the Cy-Carnivora and their mutants and mekwrights. First existing as scavenger guilds, they rallied to fight alongside the Triad Ferrum Morgulus, escorting the great Titans as they battled against the monstrous hunger engines of the Cy-Carnivora. For their contributions to the battle, they were honored above other Martian troops and reorganized into the elites of the Fabricator-General. For this reason alone, they are loyal only to the Fabricator-General of Mars and thus stand outside the Taghmata as a separate organization, with their own martial culture distinct from the Cult Mechanicus. Their allegiance lies with the Fabricator-General alone, and his representatives/heralds/whoever bears his seal, and not to any archmagos or tech-priest.
While the Taghmata are theoretically meant to be mustered as a defense of a forge world, and strictly speaking, aren't supposed to be a standing army, the Skitarii are different in that they're a true existing military of Mars, dispatched on explorator fleets to hunt for relics and Dark Age of Technology archeotech, or locate and reunite forge worlds under the domain of the Red Planet. They are hunters, recovering invaluable machines and ancient relics from the Dark Age of Technology, and bringing them back to the Vaults of Mars (vaults of Tharsis?).
They possess a variety of vehicles, tanks and transports, even if they don't have tech-thralls and automata like the Taghmata. Strictly speaking, these tanks and transports are requisitioned from loyal Tech-priests, and the Skitarii are supposed to return the vehicles after their mission or expedition is over, for Tech-priests jealously hoard their machines and are loathe to loan them. But...you know, Horus Heresy. And besides, many Tech-priests appreciate having Skitarii fight alongside them, especially when their interests align with whatever objective the cybernetic soldiers have been assigned to. And there are many cases of that happening, with Skitarii allying themselves with Tech-priests sworn to either the Warmaster or the Omnissiah.
The Skitarii wield voltlock arquebuses, which are refined volkite weapons with superior range and firepower. Being an elite force, there were only 2 million of them spread across the galaxy, dwarfed by the sheer numbers of the Imperial Army and even the Solar Auxilia, and they also appeared rare when fighting alongside the hundreds of thousands of Legionaries from the Legiones Astartes. Nonetheless, despite their comparatively few numbers, they remain a force to be reckoned with, wielding exotic weaponry and having access to tanks and transports specially reserved for the Mechanicum's elite.
They revere the first Fabricator-General above all. So when Kelbor-Hal ordered the Skitarii to destroy Mars and eliminate all threats to his rule as the Fabricator-General, a significant number of conclaves - about a third of them, according to Loremaster - reinterpreted their directives. The Skitarii serve the Fabricator-General, and the Fabricator-General serves the Mechanicum. However, Kelbor-Hal's orders directly contradicted the directive to serve the Mechanicum - the destruction of Mars and its many forges couldn't be anything other than a contradiction to serve the Mechanicum - and thus, this one-third of the Conclaves interpreted that Kelbor-Hal is no longer the Fabricator-General. They defaulted to his successor, Zagreus Kane, and fought under the banner of their newly perceived Fabricator-General, their loyalty toward the Mechanicum itself, rather than the Fabricator-General. That said, they revered the first Fabricator-General, so the Loyalists assault the Vaults of Tharsis to recover his body - not because his corpse is some ancient weapon, but rather, a symbol of legitimacy, which they sought to bring back to legitimize Kane's authority as the "true" Fabricator-General. They, uh, lost most of their number during the assault. Ouch.
Both sides were known for their brutality, the Skitarii fighting until their robes and vehicles ended up being stained with blood. The Traitors, in particular, were exposed to the same corruptive scrapcode that infected automata and Titans during the Schism, and they began to deform into twisted shapes. You know, Dark Mechanicum stuff. The Loyalists, or the survivors after they recklessly assaulted the Vault of Tharsis, harkened back to their scavenger-guild roots during the Age of Strife days (or Old Night) and launched guerilla strikes and ambushes on the Traitors, and even when Mars was reclaimed during the Scouring, pockets of Skitarii Pilgryms remained, still harrying Traitor convoys and raiding their bases.
That's all I have for now, thanks to both the article and the Loremaster video. When I get my hands on the Tactica Journal, the Steel Hand of Mars, I'll write more!
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