Dark Creed

[Dràyhèn]

So far I haven't found out what's the approx. size of the XVII Legion,

but I really got shocked when the Battle-Barges/Strike Cruisers of those three Dark Apostles' were all destroyed without ceremony (Surely it was ceremonial, but for one soul only...I can imagine Marduk envisaging some fitting tune in his head and sipping a glass of something delicious while watching the scene unfold...). So, I couldn't help but think that isn't that a quite damnably high number of souls they lost? Considering that besides their fleets, even Marduk's own suffered heavy casualties during the taking of the Boros Prime. Later on another +200 - those that Kol Badar executed for heresy on Infidus Diabolus. And if we take into account what Erebus said too - about it being just one of the games they usually have with his 'brother' (who trys to topple him, bloodily) - doesn't that sound like an enormously ridiculous, outright waste of manpower? All for what? For a little petty game !

 

So, my question is, do they really have such an endless supply of resources to waste like that? Or does that feud run much deeper than what we're shown? Because, for a petty game that seemed like stupidity in extreme.

 

Of course that could've been Erebus just masking the true nature of the situation from Marduk. And the threat of murdering Marduk if he even dared voice his brother's name for a second time... that could've been also just a trick to keep Marduk from lashing out and dragging the Legion into a massive civil war, I guess.

 

Still, it left me puzzled. Doesn't that hamper the Legion's strenght quite badly? No matter what the reason behind all that.

 

[minigun762]

 

The thought crossed my mind as well. While the loss of Battle Brothers would have been quite a blow, I feel that the loss of the various capital ships would have been the bigger concern. Even with a forge world under their control, Battleships and the like aren't easy to replace.

 

My thinking at the end was that the Word Bearers might be purging themselves in preperation for something bigger in the near future, possible involving taking a more commanding role of the various black crusades since they expressed some anger/judgement on the success of the Black Legion and Abaddon.

 

[Gree]

Yeah, the Word Bearers lost thousands of Astartes and ships in what seemed like a routine power game. I don't care what purging justification one can come up with, losing that many Astartes should be a major blow to any legion. Astartes are not easy to replace at all, especially with the veterans. Then when one takes into account the Capital ships lost in the effort......

 

At this point I'm wondering about Erebus's competence.

[Dràyhèn]

At this point I'm wondering about Erebus's competence.

I doubt both's. Most of the blame falls to Kor Phaeron's shoulders though (IMO), as we're told it was he who had organised the Third Purging. Erebus merely wanted to thwart it to remain in power.

[Allerka]

Yeah, that was a huge death toll the Word Bearers took (which had me, as a Loyalist, cackling with glee, of course :o ). It's not the first time we've seen Chaos Marines lose so many so quickly: Dead Sky, Black Sun had three whole Great Companies of Iron Warriors wiped out in a single battle (though admittedly, two of them didn't see it coming and wouldn't have been lost if Ventris wasn't there). Plus when the hosts were gathered at the start, they said that force was, what, a fifth of the Legion? It's also mentioned the Word Bearers have thus far lost seventeen Hosts to the Boros Gate, and we know that the Hosts can apparently range anywhere from one to five thousand or more Marines. And it's mentioned the Black Legion has lost "twice that number trying to take the Cadian Gate," so anywhere from 34 to 170 thousand more casualties for them.

 

Tying in with what I was saying in the other thread about how much of the Traitor Legions are left, it's casualty numbers like these that leave me convinced they're far weaker than they were during the Horus Heresy in terms of manpower. Seems like these games of power Erebus and Kor Phaeron are playing are going to wind up being a pyrrhic victory for whoever ends up on top.

[minigun762]

It's also mentioned the Word Bearers have thus far lost seventeen Hosts to the Boros Gate, and we know that the Hosts can apparently range anywhere from one to five thousand or more Marines. And it's mentioned the Black Legion has lost "twice that number trying to take the Cadian Gate," so anywhere from 34 to 170 thousand more casualties for them

 

The background says that the Hosts range in power greatly. Anything from Company to Chapter size or beyond that. To be honest, I think Company size hosts are more of the norm, which would put that 17 lost Hosts at around 1700 Marines total, though to be fair its hard to get an exact count.

 

On the loyalist side, the White Consuls did lose 1/2 of their Chatper (right?), at least 1 Battle Barge and a few Strike Cruisers and escorts and the orbital platform, plus the non-Astartes forces who numbered in the millions if I remember correctly.

[Allerka]

I dunno. All five hosts in the novel were at least 1,000 Marines big. I doubt the Word Bearers would throw just a hundred Marines at the Gate if they know that has no chance of taking it. The first time, maybe, but after that they'd likely try again with a greater investment of resources (several thousand instead of several hundred).

 

And yeah, the White Consuls took a lot of losses, as did the local Imperial Guard units. But, of course, the Imperium has nearly unlimited resources in that regard (the Guard is, anyway. Obviously the White Consuls would take longer to recoup).

[minigun762]

I dunno. All five hosts in the novel were at least 1,000 Marines big. I doubt the Word Bearers would throw just a hundred Marines at the Gate if they know that has no chance of taking it.

 

I got the impression that the Hosts from the novel were significantly larger then normal, due to the relative power and importance of their respective Dark Apostles.

 

Of course I think I'm coming across as nitpicky. :D

We can all agree that they took one hell of a blow to their size and capabilities for what seems like very little real gain.

[Allerka]

Definitely. I'd believe some hosts could only be Company size, but I imagine the average size is closer to Chapter strength or higher, since the Legions were apparently so hooooge during the Heresy, and seem to still be.

[Legatus]

According to their Index Astartes, Chapter sized Hosts are a rarity.

 

"Each Host varries enormously in size, ranging from the equivalent of a Space Marine Battle Company to a rare few that almost equal a Chapter in size."

 

So it is not even a few that are Chapter sized, they are only almost Chapter sized. So I would estimate that the average Host would be about 300-400 warriors strong. (The average between 100 and 1000 would be 550, but the "almost 1000" are said to be rare.)

[Zeller]

It was like reading about the times when the Imperium had such fantastical technologies before the darkness and then learning that the Imperium lost all of that tech and potential for progress when Horus did his thing. Such loss. The marines I'm not particularly worried for because they can be harvested from Imperial worlds and chaos guard regiments. The armor, weapons, and ships is what bothers me. It's like being punched in the face while being offered a pina colada.

[Gree]

The marines I'm not particularly worried for because they can be harvested from Imperial worlds and chaos guard regiments.

 

It's not that simple, the Word Bearers lost thousands upond thousands of Astartes. Even for the Legions of the old that would have been a severe blow. Nobody replaces those kind of losses as quickly or easily as you seem to imply.

[Allerka]

The Consuls at the end said it would take decades to fully rebuild the Chapter. And we know the Ultramarines took severe losses in the First Tyrannic War and even they took almost a century to rebuild (give or take). A Legion losing thousands with no chance of recovering any of the gene-seed...yeah...

[Zeller]

I'm not implying it's quick. I'm suggesting that it's a whole lot easier getting new marines than it is getting new suits of armor.

[Gree]

I'm not implying it's quick. I'm suggesting that it's a whole lot easier getting new marines than it is getting new suits of armor.

 

Getting new armor is probably easier then getting new Marines. After all Chaos has it's oww traitor forge worlds and can plunder power armor from dead Astartes and slap it on a new recruit.

 

However that new recruit is going to take much longer to make than to get some armor.

[Rain]

Well the whole concept of the legions surviving 10,000 (+/- given EoT time distortion) years of constant war requires a bit of fridge logic so I think any discussion of the form of "well if they lose X% in one battle, they will be depleted within Y years unless they can recruit Z blah blah blah" is a bit silly. That said, Chaos is odd, and at least in some cases Chaos marines seem to just come back from the dead for no apparent reason. This actually happens fairly often, Lucius, Khârn, Grulgor, and even a Black Legion captain from a really good short story called Honor Among Fiends have all been resurrected by Chaos.

 

Granted these are all champions and not just rank and file troops, but who knows, maybe the WB can pray those back too. That said, this kind of thing does annoy me about some BL novels, mostly because it destroys the internal consistency of how Astartes are described, these books tend to contain one squad rampaging through hundreds of foes and then "boom 500 marines die" which I guess is meant to be epic, but just comes off as jilting and inconsistent. Oh and don't even get me started on Dead Sky Black Sun, that travesty has been purged from my mind.

[Khestra the Unbeheld]

If we infer from the scene in The First Heretic that time in the Warp is vastly slowed in comparison to time outside the Warp (7 months in sixty seconds, in this case, and that's probably variable to either extreme), and if we presume that the Traitor Legions are capable of recruitment in the same sense that Loyalist Chapters recruit and still possess the full means of geneseed implantation and creation of Marines, and if we further presume that they've managed to maintain enough of their science to replicate/clone geneseed for implantation without the need to yank out progenoid glands from all their surviving members or steal geneseed from Loyalist Chapters, then it's potentially possible that all the losses of Dark Creed could be recouped by the Word Bearers in a matter of a few months' time, instead of the decade's worth of time it takes to mature, train, and equip a Marine on the outside. It would certainly lend explanation to how Abaddon can stage Black Crusade after Black Crusade and suffer staggering losses while continuing to remain such a potent threat.

[Rain]

Which would make some sense, except that all we know seems to contradict this as Chaos implantation procedures seem to be far less efficient than Imperial ones. Fabius is as far as I know the most ubiquitous "recruiter" of the faction and his procedures have a 1 in 1000 success rate, and that's after initial attrition through whatever trials the legions place the pre-implant kids through and before whatever trials they impose on their newly created marines. It takes a huge amount of subjects to make any appreciable amount of Chaos Astartes. Oh and that's without the consideration of geneseed, which I imagine most Chaos warbands don't have stockpiles of, and though the Word Bearers legion is somewhat unified and may have some, it probably isn't too much meaning a marine lost without his geneseed recovered is a grievous blow.

[Khestra the Unbeheld]

Which would make some sense, except that all we know seems to contradict this as Chaos implantation procedures seem to be far less efficient than Imperial ones. Fabius is as far as I know the most ubiquitous "recruiter" of the faction and his procedures have a 1 in 1000 success rate, and that's after initial attrition through whatever trials the legions place the pre-implant kids through and before whatever trials they impose on their newly created marines. It takes a huge amount of subjects to make any appreciable amount of Chaos Astartes. Oh and that's without the consideration of geneseed, which I imagine most Chaos warbands don't have stockpiles of, and though the Word Bearers legion is somewhat unified and may have some, it probably isn't too much meaning a marine lost without his geneseed recovered is a grievous blow.

 

Fabius is also pathologically prone to experimentation, which is why his success rate is so low. He couldn't leave well enough alone, and we're given no indication of the recruitment methods or what resources are available to Legions or warbands that don't use him. The Traitor Legions also seem to have complete sets of organs, unlike the Loyalists, so "less efficient" doesn't actually seem to be the reality at all. The point is that while the Loyalists seem to treat lost geneseed as "grievous blows", Chaos doesn't appear to place as much emphasis or importance on recovering them, to the extent that seeing a Chaos Apothecary is a thing few and far between. I doubt this is because they simply ran out; more like the necessity for them is simply much less.

[Rain]

Which is just your conjecture, and if they really had so much geneseed I don't see why Abaddon would put such high value on the Hydra Cordatus campaign (he essentially granted the IW complete autonomy during the 13th Black Crusade as long as they shared some of the geneseed they got there, which they didn't but it's a long story). Also, while Fabius is not the only one that knows how to make marines, the other methods seem to be even worse, like the Demon womb thing Honsou used, though again, there just isn't much concrete info on this. Oh and their lack of emphasis on apothecaries could have to do with A.) Chaos warriors seeing it as a "dishonorable" position and nobody wanting it B.) It never even occurring to the crazier warbands C.) Design decision to separate them from loyalists which has nothing to do with in-universe sense D.) Lack of facilities/expertise to actually use found geneseed to make marines E.) GW just don't mention it, like how they don't mention where marines get their food on long campaigns, or other such logistical stuff.

[Khestra the Unbeheld]

Which is just your conjecture, and if they really had so much geneseed I don't see why Abaddon would put such high value on the Hydra Cordatus campaign (he essentially granted the IW complete autonomy during the 13th Black Crusade as long as they shared some of the geneseed they got there, which they didn't but it's a long story). Also, while Fabius is not the only one that knows how to make marines, the other methods seem to be even worse, like the Demon womb thing Honsou used, though again, there just isn't much concrete info on this. Oh and their lack of emphasis on apothecaries could have to do with A.) Chaos warriors seeing it as a "dishonorable" position and nobody wanting it B.) It never even occurring to the crazier warbands C.) Design decision to separate them from loyalists which has nothing to do with in-universe sense D.) Lack of facilities/expertise to actually use found geneseed to make marines E.) GW just don't mention it, like how they don't mention where marines get their food on long campaigns, or other such logistical stuff.

 

The Iron Warriors were going to do what they wanted to anyway, Abaddon didn't have a choice in the matter. That they asked him for "permission" to undertake the Hydra Cordatus campaign was a gesture of goodwill, nothing more, and Abaddon is savvy enough to know when not to argue but rather negotiate. Honsou's daemon womb thing smacks more of someone trying for personal autonomy than it does being a common feature, though it does stand as an example of how desperate things could get when you lose the support of your greater Legion, and recall that the other Warsmiths considered Honsou to be not worth their time to allow to prosper beyond what he already had. You're right, though, we've been given very little concrete information on how the Traitor Legions make up for their losses, but when you consider that the only Legions that have been "destroyed" are the ones that dissolved themselves into the warbands and Cults, then it's not a far cry of logic to consider that their personnel recouping methods are, in fact, working.

[Gree]

Oh and their lack of emphasis on apothecaries could have to do with A.) Chaos warriors seeing it as a "dishonorable" position and nobody wanting it B.) It never even occurring to the crazier warbands C.) Design decision to separate them from loyalists which has nothing to do with in-universe sense D.) Lack of facilities/expertise to actually use found geneseed to make marines E.) GW just don't mention it, like how they don't mention where marines get their food on long campaigns, or other such logistical stuff.

 

I would say Chaos Legions have Apothecaries, but they are now more of a flesh-smith/mad scientist role now.

[TheDarkApostle]

Which would make some sense, except that all we know seems to contradict this as Chaos implantation procedures seem to be far less efficient than Imperial ones. Fabius is as far as I know the most ubiquitous "recruiter" of the faction and his procedures have a 1 in 1000 success rate, and that's after initial attrition through whatever trials the legions place the pre-implant kids through and before whatever trials they impose on their newly created marines. It takes a huge amount of subjects to make any appreciable amount of Chaos Astartes. Oh and that's without the consideration of geneseed, which I imagine most Chaos warbands don't have stockpiles of, and though the Word Bearers legion is somewhat unified and may have some, it probably isn't too much meaning a marine lost without his geneseed recovered is a grievous blow.

Correction.

 

1 in 1000 is Loyalist rates.

 

1 in 100.000 is more like Bile.

 

But unlike the Loyalist who have maybe a few thousand to work on Bile have millions at his disposal so even if the successive rates are less, he gets the job done faster, and in the end he does create more since he has much more people to use.

 

TDA

[minigun762]

I would say Chaos Legions have Apothecaries, but they are now more of a flesh-smith/mad scientist role now.

 

I would say some went that way but others probably stayed about the same.

 

A key element of the traitor legions is the idea of the long war and you can't really have a long war unless you are actively planning for the long term. For me, this means that at a minimum the Undivided legions and probably elements of the Cult legions all practice the same basic things that are required to keep a unit of Astartes functional.

 

With a few noteable exceptions, I would assume that traitor legions would work similar to loyalist chapters in how they keep themselves going. The exact details might be different but the same roles (geneseed, armorers, warp navigation etc) are all still there.

[Rain]

First off, no, Abaddon did not just "allow" the IW to do what they did, he specifically sent them there, in return allowing them not to marshal under his command at the beginning of the 13th Black Crusade because they IW don't like playing with others. This was various WD articles in 2002-3 and even culminated in a battle between the IW and BL when the IW decided that they'd had enough of Abe's tomfoolery.

 

As for the apothecary question, fact is that we just don't know, it's never been printed as far as I know. Beyond very vague hints like the article on Bile, some scant BL info and the small blurb in codex 3.5 about the BL champion recruiting the sole survivor of a feral tribe to become a "warrior of the gods" we just don't know much at all about how they keep their numbers up. Another thing worth mentioning is that the World Eaters have at least in one case captured a loyalist astartes and used psycho-surgery to convert him into a berzerker, but again, such methods seem awfully inefficient and just prima facie it seems very unlikely that Chaos recruits anywhere near the rate that loyalists do. Oh and wasn't Talos an apothecary? And now he just stabs people? That was why I guessed that maybe post-fall many apothecaries just decided that stabbing people was more fun and gave it up, but hey, who knows.