Drop Site Massacre and Invasion of Calth

[Hobo Willie]

Yeah, it doesn't say that a hundred thousand Astartes voices were raised. And most certainly guardsmen participated in all the battles after Istvaan.

[Vodunius]

I didn't mean to say that the 100,000 voices were all marines (although its placement between "Marines rushed" "Bolters rattled" certainly suggests it could well be), it was more to illustrate the magnitude of the battle. The 1 man in 10 surviving however was most definately referring to Astartes as the paragraphs I omitted (as from prior experience I know the mods regard quoting the whole of Trasks quote as an IP violation) make a big song and dance about it being Marine vs Marine.

[Slick Jimmy]

Yeah, I can see that, but 1 in 10 was probably not the norm during the entire HH. Otherwise no second founding chapters would have been necessary. Or every loyalist chapter would have had 10. Good refrence on the rouge trader days though, that was a little before I picked up the hobby. Although I still have a stack of second edition codicies.

[Vodunius]

Yeah, I can see that, but 1 in 10 was probably not the norm during the entire HH. Otherwise no second founding chapters would have been necessary. Or every loyalist chapter would have had 10.

 

Unless the legions numbered 100k marines each - which was the point I was making. 100k per legion doesn't fit with the modern dumbed down Horus Heresy, but does fit with its original depiction as a brutal decade long conflict that bled the Astartes dry, I strongly suspect the reason Alan Merritt tried to bump the figure up to 100k was to try and bring back the brutality of the original heresy.

[Hobo Willie]

You don't need hundreds of thousands of deaths for it to be brutal. History is filled with tons of brutal conflicts that only involved a few thousand per side. But don't forget the 'little' guys. There's going to be the Imperial Army elements dying right with them in their hundreds of thousands. I think the IA stated billions and billions die in the conflict all told.

[Simonius]

Just catching up on things after my Easter break. I've just read Tales of Heresy and in the Dark Angels story a chapter commander notes that the legion has increased in size by over 20,000 marines in the few years since the Lion was found on Caliban. Whilst the timeline is not exact on how long before the Heresy breaks out that this takes place, we can assume that the DA, at least, were substantially over the 20K mark.

 

Speculation - given that the DA were the First Legion, it is likely that they were the largest in numbers of Terran marines (pre any Primarch being found, as these speed up marine production). But accordingly to the author of the next DA Heresy novel, The Lion was found quite late on, one of the last primarchs to be united with their legion. I would speculate further that the new 20K probably doubled the size of the legion, so the DA would be about 40K pre-Heresy and around 7-8K post Heresy.

 

What that says for the numbers in the other legions I'm not sure, I'm also not sure that any of the participants at the Istvaan dropsite had the entire strength of their legion present, as the known traitors had just substantially cut their numbers by culling the loyalists among them at Istvaan III. The Salamanders and Raven Guard were, I understand, two of the smaller legions pre-heresy anyway and the IH only had their veteran companies there. So the quoted numbers from GiF don't, IMHO, represent sensibly the true size of the legions.

 

Again IMHO, the pre-heresy legions numbered from about 7K for the Sallies (the smallest), through 40K for the DA (Primarch recently found), to 60-80K (i.e 60-80 Grand Companies or Chapters) as an"average", to possibly 250K for the Ultramarines (who are a special case due to the way Guilliman went about his business).

[Loken of the 10th]

That really doesn't seem right.

 

1) Fulgrim states there were only tens of thousands of Astartes battling each other on Istvaan V, when 6 full Legions were present, plus the Veteran Companies from the Iron Hands. This was prior to the other four landing and the Massacres beginning. If each Legion was ~100,000, then that would be 600,000+ battling and hundreds of thousands would have been the phrase.

 

2) In one of the first three books of the Horus Heresy series, it is stated that the Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus have less than 30 Companies (I can't remember the exact number, I'm thinking 23, but I'll just use 30 for an example). Which means the Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus, if those were all Great Companies, would have less than 30,000 marines. The Salamanders only ever had 7 Companies (one for each settlement on Nocturne), as well. Meaning that they had ~7,000 Marines if those were Great Companies prior to the Heresy. Nowhere is it written that the Salamanders and the Sons of Horus were understrength Legions.

 

3) As stated, the Dark Angels had half of their force on Caliban during the Heresy. It's hard enough to swallow if this is 5,000 marines let alone 50,000 marines just sitting there doing nothing but getting all paranoid and Chaosy.

 

4) If the average Legion was around ~100,000 marines, then ~100,000 Night Lords survived the Heresy. They didn't participate in the Heresy other than on Istvaan V where it can be assumed they took little to no casualties. If ~100,000 Night Lords survived the Heresy while only 23,000 Ultramarines (23 2nd Founding Chapters), does that make any sense as to how the Imperium survived?

 

If the Artbooks say 100,000 and 250,000, I think those have to be typos. My understanding has always been that the Legions were ~10,000 strong with deviations.

 

 

I found this posted by one of our brothers here:

According to Space Marine 1st edition a force of almost 7,000 Salamanders was annihilated by the Death Guard on Treab's World during the Heresy (this is the main reason I like the HH:Artbooks increasing legion size to 100,000 marines minimum - it allows for the Salamanders to have been 90% wiped out on Istvan and still have enough left over for a few valiant minor actions like Treab's World)

 

Now if what you said about it only being 10,000 Marines in a chapter and the Salamanders being a small chapter, possibly the smallest with ~90% of there chapter being killed where would they have gotten the extra 7,000 marines? And the Smurfs werent the only chapter to have a second found Crimson Fists, Black Templars, Angels Encarmine Marauders, Praetors of Orpheus, Wolf Brothers et al. and they wouldnt deploy full legions for war for at Istavaan for 2 reasons, 1.) They were riding themselves from Loyalists so that could eliminate up to companies worth of men. 2.) They didnt have to deploy all of there Marines to take out a few thousand survivors wen there was 6 Legions eash only had to send at most 1 company from several chapters to overwhelm them because the traitors had the Titans and vehicles while the loyalsts had nothing.

 

On a small side note I belive the Luna Wolves had the 25th captain Lev Boshen Listed as the last Captain and I wouldnt doubt the Wolves having upwards of 200,000 mairnes

[lee265]

The problem with numbering legions is there is no book on them like there is for the latter chapters. The Primarchs organized the legions not "some grand book" so unless you can find very definite sources its just endlessly debatable like a lot of other :P Marine fluff. Personally 100,000.

[malika666]

I'm more fond of the numbers being in the tens of thousands. Basically the numbers that Simonius was suggesting. This way you could have the small Legions only numbering a couple of thousands and the large Ultramarines.