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Having recently read through 'Massacre' (FW's latest HH book), I came across the updated rules for the Voss Primaris-Lightning. Now, I should establish straight off that I don't game so the rules are of little consequence to me, but I do enjoy the lore and, as my chosen force is the Salamanders 2nd Company, I like to build my army as 'fluff accurate' as I can (With embellishments of my own regarding icons, names and characters - the 2nd Company hasn't ever received a great deal of the spotlight aside from FW's Badab War books). Hence, I want to include lots of FW stuff explained as relics left over from the Great Crusade and HH.

So, upon reading Massacre, I came across three sections of text that intrigued me, these being:

On the subject of the difficulty to pilot:

'These factors however, saw the pattern's issue limited to the elite close support units of the most well-resourced Legions and the Mechanicum itself, and while a 'degraded' - if more easy to operate and maintain - version of the Lightning was rumoured to be under consideration just prior to the outbreak of the Horus Heresy, this reduced pattern paid no part in the conflict'

Found in rules section, Battle Servitor Control:

A Primaris-Lightning may replace their human crew with hard-wired servitor control... (I've omitted the rest of the rule)

Finally a summarised heading:

'A Primaris-Lightning Strike Fighter is a Fast attack choice in a Space Marine Crusade Legion or a Mechanicum Ordo Reductor army.'

So, these pieces of text indicate to my mind, that this variant of Lightning was piloted by an Astartes crew as it was part of a Legions close support units and, as indicated by FW, is an acceptable unit to include in a Legion army list. Furthermore, whilst one rule states it is a 'human crew', I take this to mean 'Human' as in race, not the varied definitions of Space Marines being post-human, super-human etc. Finally, the below image of said fighter shows a figure in the cockpit, but i can't make out whether or not it is a standard human, or an Astartes with a specialised flight suit on.

So, what's your thoughts on this Dakka?

Human I think.

The pilot inside the model looks human to me (Space Marines wear their Power Armour even while piloting stuff). The text and the fules to replace a human with a servitor seem to imply a human pilot too. It wouldn't be much of an upgrade if a servitor were a better pilot than a space marine, I think. The thing is available to Mechanicus armies too so clearly it doesn't require a space marine to pilot it.

...just my thoughts, though.

@TiamatRoar - No, no that does make sense, and indeed my ever thought says that it can't be a Space Marine, but the thing that gets me is that it's issued to Legion close support units. Of course Legions operate alongside Imperial Army forces, but that phrase seems to indicate that the close support unit is part of the Legion - and Legions didn't really have any Humans in them aside from the usual serfs/armourers etc. As far as I know all combat personnel were Astartes. Surely then, so would the operators of these Lightnings? I don't know, I'm still trying to bend my head around the words

He looks human to me. But if you want he could be a chapter serf (And with salamanders having some the best human-astartes relationship it's more likely) and could have received training from the chapter while in their servitude

Space Marine ships and other vehicles are crewed by human serfs, so it makes sense that the Legions' fighters could also have been piloted by serfs.

 Warpig1815 wrote:
@TiamatRoar - No, no that does make sense, and indeed my ever thought says that it can't be a Space Marine, but the thing that gets me is that it's issued to Legion close support units. Of course Legions operate alongside Imperial Army forces, but that phrase seems to indicate that the close support unit is part of the Legion - and Legions didn't really have any Humans in them aside from the usual serfs/armourers etc. As far as I know all combat personnel were Astartes. Surely then, so would the operators of these Lightnings? I don't know, I'm still trying to bend my head around the words

The Legions and their relationships to the Imperial Army were really close, to the point where Astartes essentially outranked (and expected loyalty) from the Imperial Army chain of command.

The Lightnings would be operated by normal humans, who are part of the Imperial Navy and put under the direct command of the Astartes.

Just to turn it on it's head, in False Gods (at least the audiobook) when Loken goes into a dropships cockpit it describes "Flight officers and hard-wired pilots", whilst the modern Storm Raven has a servitor gunner, whilst Titan's are crewed by mere mortal crew rather than (solely) by servitors..

What if AdMech aircrew are like Titan crew - valued mortals - with the Battle-Servitor option being for the Legion crews.