Luna Wolves company size

[EPK]

He stated that if he thought people were going to take it as truth, he wouldn't have included it. Plus, the Mechanicus would realise "hang on, these Ultramarine geneseed tithes include traitor (well, they DID go missing, so they have to have done something) geneseed! They're with-holding their own! Send the Inquisition!"

 

I guess if it did happen, they would remove all of the non-ultramarine's geneseeds, mature or not, and dispose of them. The non-ultras would than simply be rearmored (or armor repainted at least) in Ultramarine gear and spread throughout the legion. They obviously would not want to harbor a corrupted geneseed. Any that were not yet full marines may have needed to be culled or lobotomized into servitors.

[The Son of Russ]

Nothing has ever indicated that the Night Lords or Alpha Legion were among the smallest Legions. They've always been listed as the Thousand Sons, Space Wolves and Emperors Children. Secondly, we know the Word Bearers were the second largest, at 100,000, and that the Ultramarines didn't absorb missing Legions.

 

Nothing is there to say they didn't absorb missing legions, infact that is one of the leading theories after the first heretic

[Lord_Caerolion]

Which, if you read the thread, you would have noticed has been debunked by the author himself. Officially, the Ultramarines did not absorb any missing Legions.

[facmanpob]

In the novel Fulgrim, the first wave of loyalists at Isstvan V are described as having 40,000 marines in total. Now we know the Iron Hands left most of their legion behind and only pitched up with about 1000 Morlocks, which leaves around 39,000 Salamanders and Raven Guard. If we assume that most of their legion strength was deployed (say >80%) that puts the pre-Isstvan strength of the Salamanders and Raven Guard at a combined total of about 49,000, say 50,000 to make it a round number, or about 25,000 each.

 

as for the defenders at Isstvan V, they are described as having 30,000 in total, across 4 legions - World Eaters, EC, Death Guard and Sons of Horus, indicating to me that either large portions of the traitor legions were deployed elsewhere after Isstvan III, or the purge got rid of far more marines than has been written.

[snorkle]

In some Isstvaan related HH book, its mentions that Corax came to Isstvaan V with 80'000 marines. Too tired to go look right now which one. But i'm guessing it's the audiobook. I'll check tomorrow.

[torgaddon666]

@Brother Snorkle: Galaxy In Flames.

 

I think the book is wrong, because I read it last night, it says in between the lines I THINK, Corax deployed his full legion at the Massacre, which is 80,000strong, Ferrus deployed his full veterans which comes to say 1000 so we have 81k loyalists accounted for, I have no idea how many Vulcan deployed so I think someone in GW incorrectly added up the figures of first wave loyalists at the dropsite.

 

Feel free to correct me at anytime.

[Midgard]

In the novel Fulgrim, the first wave of loyalists at Isstvan V are described as having 40,000 marines in total. Now we know the Iron Hands left most of their legion behind and only pitched up with about 1000 Morlocks, which leaves around 39,000 Salamanders and Raven Guard. If we assume that most of their legion strength was deployed (say >80%) that puts the pre-Isstvan strength of the Salamanders and Raven Guard at a combined total of about 49,000, say 50,000 to make it a round number, or about 25,000 each.

 

as for the defenders at Isstvan V, they are described as having 30,000 in total, across 4 legions - World Eaters, EC, Death Guard and Sons of Horus, indicating to me that either large portions of the traitor legions were deployed elsewhere after Isstvan III, or the purge got rid of far more marines than has been written.

 

I believe this was relatively early in the Heresy series, when the authors were going off the estimate of about 10,000 marines per Legion. The number was subsequently revised to be much greater, circa 100,000 marines per Legion. As a result, the fluff from "Fulgrim" (written before the "new" figure of 100,000 being average Legion size was decided on) may not agree to the fluff from the novels written and/or published later, when the numbers of marines were revised upwards. The 80,000 Raven Guard figure will then supercede the figure of 40,000 marines from three Legions combined, and presumably we would see something like 150,000+ loyalists with a comparable number of traitors at Istvaan V during the first wave.

[facmanpob]

I'm re-reading them at the moment (up to Legion so far) so I'll keep it in mind as I go through them again to see how the numbers change - you'd think they'd map this sort of thing out at the start of the project so they don't contradict themselves! ;)

 

...although my favourite bit of non-joined up writing is how Saul Tarvitz goes from being a Company Captain in the first few books, to suddenly being First Captain in Flight of the Eisenstein, and then back to a bog-standard Captain again in Fulgrim :P