“The eyes of the Primus are upon you! Do not fail her!”

The study of the Andromeda Initiative’s numerous enemies within the Heleus Cluster has been an ongoing process, and the earliest APEX sorties saw Nexus Intelligence frantically attempting to analyze what the Initiative’s commandos were facing in the field. Though kett sniper units had been sporadically documented on battlefields across Heleus since the first outbreak of hostilities, it was not until after the Battle of Meridian and the Primus’ ascension to overall command over the kett forces in the cluster that the Priors became a distinctive and routinely observed adversary.

A variation on the Destined squad leaders, Priors trade their Hesh shotguns for Lanat sniper rifles, while still retaining the energy shielding and cloaking mists of their more common brethren. Though decent snipers, this is but a secondary focus. Their true role in the kett order of battle more resembles the political commissars of Earth’s Soviet Russia: maintaining unit discipline, enforcing the authority of the Primus upon lesser kett, and punishing those deemed to be treasonous, incompetent or “not true kett”. What was originally assumed to be a rash of friendly-fire incidents brought about by a breakdown of discipline in the wake of the Battle of Meridian has now been revealed as a pattern of long-range summary executions of faltering kett troops by the Priors. Their presence has had the effect of making the kett even more fanatical in combat, if such a thing were possible, and units accompanied by Priors have repeatedly demonstrated a suicidal dedication to carrying out the will of their superiors, even going so far as to launch human-wave attacks against fortified positions without faltering. As such, Priors should be considered a priority target for all APEX operators, though their cloaking abilities and tendency offer long-range suppressive fire from the rear of kett formations makes this easier in theory than in practice.