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Salamanders and the Heresy


Leethal

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You know, looking at all the Heresy stuff. One thing just struck me. Where the bloody hell were the Salamanders?

 

The other Legions I know where and what they were doing...but I have no clue about the Salamanders.

 

Where they just too busy burning things to get involved?

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I think that the sallies tried to destroy the Traitor Legions at Istvaan V together with the Raven Guard and another Loyalist Legion, but they were ambushed by their so-called reinforcements.

They got beaten up quite the bit and had to retreat. You can read all this in one of the HH-books though...

Istvaan effectively destroyed the fighting potential of both the Salamanders and Ravenguard, and I believe it was some time before either legion (or Chapters as they would become) would fully recover. The IA Ravenguard speaks of the forbidden zygote experiments carried out by the legions apothecaries to try and accelerate the creation of marines, and to try and regain some of their lost strength.

 

Even though the Iron Hands and Ferrus Mannus lead the attack, Fulgrim states that it was only his veteran companies and fastest ships that were present at Istvaan, leaving the rest of the legion behind so that they could take on the traitors in shorter order. However, not much mention is made of their actions immediately after the massacre, presumably with both their primarch and first captain killed they may have floundered somewhat.

No I meant after that. During the Seige of Terra.

 

We all know they got their buts handed to them at Isttavan.

 

I imagine they went home - Vulkan plus the handful of survivers - to Nocturne (Not sure how many, in fact does anyone know how many survived?) The Legion was on the brink of eradication, and all they could do was to get home and try and stitch up the Legion as best as they could. Why did the Primarchs not head straight to Terra? Either due to being too tied up trying to save their Legion or that the journey would have been impossible.

I just had a read of the respective IA articles (although I'm thinking there is every chance these will get retconned)

 

Salamanders - Nothing is mentioned in their IA article, other than that they were the smallest of the founding legions, and this along with the catastrophe they suffered at Istvaan meant that they were not split into smaller chapters as were the other loyalist legions, and there have not been many if any subsequent foundings using their gene-seed.

Raven Guard - "The loyalists were shattered and barely a handful were able to escape Horus's trap and warn the Emperor of this wholesale betrayal.... His legion shattered, Corax returned to deliverance with orders to rebuild it as quickly as possible."

Fulgrim has a band of Raven Guard with "a black-armoured captain leading the breakout" taking the wounded Corax to safety, but as far as I know, thats the only other info outside of the Index Astartes on the Dropsite Massacre.

 

Some Iron Hands are described as linking up with the Salamanders in order to get out, so the Sallies technically help preserve the Iron Hands.

Codex: Chaos Space Marines (4th ed.) says on p13:

 

"Only five Space Marines, bearing the gene-seed of their butchered brethren, escaped the slaughter to carry the disastrous news back to the Emperor"

 

That's a direct cut-and-paste of the same segment in the 2nd ed. Codex: Chaos.

 

Interesting the next couple of paragraphs (in the 4th ed Codex) state that the Iron Hands veterans were killed to a man.

What I think is funny is the fact that 5 marines managed to escape military might of all of the traitor legions present, they managed to make it back to their fleet... which was somehow not destroyed and then escape. I am not saying that the whole idea is nonsense, just the numbers of marines that escaped is a little hard to believe, in my opinion so few marines would not have survived so the number would need to be considerably more. The only valid reason that I can think of that can explain their survival is that the traitor commanders let them escape to carry the news of the masscre to the loyalists....

The Iron Hands lost their 10 Veteran Companies, the 'Morlocks', which were the only Iron Hands present with Ferrus Manus (the rest of the Legion was on other theatres of war and thus unable to respond). They were at the vanguard of the attack and they remained close to their primarch, who charged forward without support to kill Fulgrim (who was visible to lure Ferrus Manus into the trap). When Fulgrim killed him and the other 4 Legions betrayed them, the Morlocks remained behind and died to a man to stall the Death Guard, Emperor's Children, World Eaters and Sons of Horus who attacked from their base now, while the Raven Guard and Salamanders tried to break out off the trap.

 

The low number of survivors could be explained by the fact that many other brothers died to get them to safety, or maybe their ships were shot down while they fled.

Five marine survivors seems a little low - especially given that two Primarchs made it out of the trap, too. A few theoretical answers of my own below...

 

"5 Marines" could be the number that fled to Terra. Other survivors stayed with their (injured) Primarchs and returned to their homeworlds with them.

 

Imagine this sequence of events:

 

1) The Seven Legions arrive in-system. 3 Legions make immediate Drop Pod assault; the remaining 4 begin to land via Thunderhawks at a secured area shortly thereafter.

 

2) The 3 Legions begin to fall back, having done considerable damage and feeling pretty good about things.

 

3) On the surface and in space, the 4 Traitor legions reveal their loyalties and attack.

* On the surface, Ferrus Manus is killed, and the Loyalists suffer horrific losses.

* In orbit, the Loyalist fleet flees; with no Marines aboard, they would be easy prey for boarding actions, and they cannot afford to fall into the hands of the enemy.

 

4) The Loyalists suffer virtual annihilation.

* 5 Marines manage to secure a small warp-capable ship and evacuate to Terra. Before departing, they manage to communicate with Vulkan and/or Corax and inform them of their actions.

* Corax, wounded, is secured through enemy lines by a small contingent of Ravenguard, who manage to outrun their pursuers and then hide. Vulkan and a few surviving Salamanders find a hole and hunker down.

 

5) With resistance obliterated, Horus is victorious. Rather than waste time searching tens of thousands of corpses for two individuals, he immediately evacuates his forces to the fleet and departs for Terra. His plan relies on speed - every moment wasted at Istvaan is another moment that Loyalist marines have to get themselves to Terra ahead of him.

 

6) With the Traitors gone, the Loyalist fleet returns. Vulkan and Corax contact them and, with their survivors, are at last evacuated. They both expect a Crusade-type war from Horus - after all, they've been fighting one for nearly 200 years, and it is the style of warfare they expect. A strike for the head, so early in the game, seems illogical. So they agree to rebuild their forces and rejoin the war before it is over.

 

That's generally how I've understood the battle to run. Thus, in answer to the original post, Vulkan isn't even made aware of the Siege of Terra until he is already in the middle of training fresh Marines on Prometheus. By the time he can mobilize a force worth mentioning, the Siege is over, and the Imperium has entered a new era.

Ferrus only took his veterens with him, and they with him, were wiped out to a man.

 

The Salamanders and ravengaurd, I imagine did not all land in the city by drop-pod, some must have taken thunderhawk, this is the only way to explain some of the marines escaping.

 

As for the 'brought word back to the emperor' thing, I assume it is meant as in, warned the imperium, not spoke to the actuall emperor himself first...

 

The sallies and ravnegaurd as said, practically both had their fighting force KILLED by the events in Istavaan, they were tho of the smallest legions at the time - and they were the two legions with the most marines on the planet, probably 60% upwards of the strength of both legions were on the planet, and when that was decimated, they were left PITIFULLY underpower, and to throw the marines back into an engagement against the traitors (let us not forgot, the traitor legions were in between them, and the rest of the loyal legions + imperium) would have spelled the end of both legions for good, so they set about attempting to regain their former strength.

 

Corax, sensing the need for speed, attempted to have his apothacarions carry out genetic experiments on the remaining gene-seed of the chapter to dramatically increase the speed at which they could produce new marines, this had MONSTEROUS side-effects, great, hulking half-human type creatures took the the battlefield in the ravengaurd regala.

 

Corax, ashamed and distraught by what he had done to his legion, had all the 'marines' euthanised, to put them out of their misery dissapeared, his last words 'nevermore'...

Wasn't there some old story where a Ravenguard unit of I have no idea how many there were. But they were fleeing, headed towards Terra, and then they got stuck in a warp storm, and popped out, a hundred years after the Heresy ended. Might have been canon....but I can't remember everything nor anything these days.

 

The Loyalist fleet returning back to the dropsite to pick up survivors makes sense, afterall Horus's plan depended on speed, otherwise he'd be facing roughly 6 and 3/4's of the Loyalist Legions if he didn't zoom zoom to Terra.

The details are explained in the Horus Heresy book "Fulgrim"

 

It's decribes small pockets of Raven Guard and Salamanders fighting through the encirclement to reach a few operational Stormbirds and Thunderhawks to escape.

 

Most of the forces came down in Drop pods, but some came down in Assault Ships

 

I do not believe any of the Iron Hands made it out, but as this was only there veteran (10) companies

As we left it, Dorn has sent Sigismund and the IF fleet to Isstvan to get Horus, while Dorn takes the Phalanx (and Garro & Co.) to Luna. It makes sense that the IF fleet could pick up any survivors, as its unlikely that Dorn, Sanguinius, The Khan and the Emperor and going to be sitting around on Terra during the Siege going "Hey, whatever happened to those guys we sent to get Horus?" :unsure:

I have never understood why corax had to play with his legions gene seed before the HH books. A fully grown man could be made into a marine in a matter of days. Heck even the first book mentions the full male population of cythonia being turned into marines. IIrc that would make the Luna wolfs strength at that time ten million strong.

 

O.T the only mention of the sallies during the hearsay is the drop site massacre and the meeting of the emperor and vulkan.

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