Pre-Primarch Legion Masters

[Paradill]

So I was stuck in traffic the other day, and as I sat there, my mind wandered naturally to my little toy soldiers and their wonderful back story. I thought about the stories I read on the heresy and was struck by a sudden question I didn't have the answer to: At the creation of each legion, how were the legion masters' chosen?

 

I am under the impression that each legion was recruited, gene-seeded, trained and equipped simultaneously at their founding, with each founding being separate. So the dark angels first, then once they were done, the second legion, then the third etc. etc. With all the marines being roughly of the same age and experience, how would the company captains and legion masters be chosen? Would the Emperor lead the new legion until leader astartes had disinguished themselves on the field of battle or would the new legion be led by an experienced human, elevated to greatness kor phaeron/ luther style?

 

Obviously once the Primarch for each legion is discovered, he assumes control, but the original legion masters are what interests me. What are your thoughts on how this would go? Is there any fluff pointing to a particular way for any particular legion?

 

Thanks in advance

 

Paradill

[Codicier Lucion]

To be honest with you this is something which doesn't seem to be covered that much. Perhaps they somehow excelled themselves during the Unification War or in training somehow? Or perhaps they were sleep taught how to be leaders.

[mitchell93]

I'd say it was leaders who did particularly well in the unification wars.

[Perrin]

Selected during aspirant training I'd guess. Most chapters train aspirants in squads and can pick out the recruits who will be Chaplains/techmarines/apothacarys before they are full space marines, picking a recruit with good leadership skills and tactical thinking would be pretty easy, espeically as the Emp would have Unification War veterans to help.

[jeffersonian000]

One of the main inconsistencies of the new fluff vs the old fluff is how the original Legions were formed and how current Chapters are formed. In the RT days, Space Marines were enhanced adults, which were recruited from prisons, death worlds, underhives, even straight out of the Imperial Guard, as what they wanted were murderers and killers. As fluff was added and the setting started to morph into the one we reference today, Space Marines became enhanced children, taken at a young age from their culture, implanted, brain-wiped/hypno-educated, and put through harsh combat training to become the most efficient of killers. With this shift in fluff, the disconnect between the original background and the current has grown to the point that there needs to be a reconciliation between the two, or a retroactively constructed plug to fill the gap.

 

As such, I'd say that given were it all started, the first Space Marines were trained and lead by a cadre of the best of the Emperor's techno-barbarian army, and that those enhanced soldiers continued on as the officers of each legion until replaced by Space Marines over the decades, leaving each Legion solely staffed by Space Marines. In the Heresy novels, specifically "A Thousand Sons", it was suggested that all 20 Legions were founded at the same time, but were filled at different rates (as pointed out in "Fulgrim" and "Legion"). Garro remembered the time when his Legion gained their first name and colors to honor their victories in the Urls during the Unification War, and that the date he became a Space Marine was the same date many of the ships in the Grand Crusade's fleet were released from the shipyards, ready for the next stage in the Emperor's plans to unify the galaxy. This shows that Space Marines were planned for, structured, and trained before the end of the Unification of Terra, and had a chance to get combat experience before the Grand Crusade kicked off.

 

In addition, we saw that when most of the Primarchs were found, they enhanced their current followers into Space Marines, and began recruiting children from their "Home" world to continue filling out the ranks of their Legions. At this point, each Legion already had a cadre of their own veterans to train new recruits. From this I would think that the original techno-barbarian training cadre had either been left behind on Terra, been reintegrated back into their original units to form the Imperial Guard as we know it, or they stayed on as full-fledged Space Marines and continued as officers/trainers. We see this in the two Dark Angel heresy novels, as wells as in "Horus Raising" and in "The First Heretic".

 

Over the next 10,000 years, I'd say very few if any of them are left and the tradition of enhancing children instead of adults became the norm, but by no means the only way to produce new Space Marines.

 

SJ

[AGPO]

I'd guess initially they'd be led by veterans who've been given the same treatment as Luthor et al. Sergeants and below would probably have been appointed during training from those who showed a promise for command. In larger battles I like to think the Custodes played a role as the Emperor's best creations after the Primarches, with a handful detached to oversee each legion through its early stages.

[Don the Oiler]

I really hope some author decides to pick up the "Terrans vs Homeworlders"-conflict again. I just loved "Call of the Lion" and its implications, sadly "Fallen Angels" completely ignored it.

[Rik84]

so what happened to the proto Astates?

[Pulse]

Probably just died off naturally in battle and because their method of creation was outdated they just ceased to exist.

 

Although by all accounts the proto-Astartes were better made individually than the Space Marines we know from the Great Crusade and the Imperium, but the process to make a Space Marine was quicker, they just dropped the proto-Astartes sciences.

[Midgard]

On proto-Astartes, "The First Heretic" intimates that the process of enhancing adult "normal" humans was not only resulting in less efficient fighters than true Astartes, but also was difficult and expensive. A Primarch could have a small cadre of his most devoted followers "uplifted" in this manner (case in the point, Dark Angels in "Descent of Angels", Kor Phaeron in "The First Heretic"), but it could not have been a mass process, at least based on that. This leads me to believe that this process was almost certainly different from the process used to create proto-Astartes. Therefore, logically speaking, while proto-Astartes (probably far less efficient than their successors) could have entered the Legions' training cadre, I doubt any human officers were placed into the Legion structure.

 

Most likely, the process of creating leadership structure probably started when new recruits were inducted and formed into squads. At this point they are not Legions yet, but probably just a scattering of small-scale formations serving alongside more organized Thunder Warriors and other armies of the Emperor (think precursors of the Geno Five-Two Chiliad soldiers from "Legion"). They would probably be utilized in a small number of missions while building up an early cadre of combat veterans, probably no more than a hundred or two hundred strong. When the Astartes recruitment shifts into higher gear, these veterans would probably be assigned as Sergeants, Captains, Commanders, etc based on their performance and command ability in squad-level missions. In this way, the Emperor would have had a ready-made cadre of veterans to start his Legions - he would start small, with squad-level formations attached to other, non-Astartes units, and such squads would end up producing leadership for the fledgling Legions, soon to provide command structure for the Legions as they are increased in number.

[c-wrex]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only time I have ever heard of a Legion Master in any real capacity is in the HH short story After Desh'ea, and in that story the reference to the Legion Master is a very non-betrayer Khârn reflecting on how nobody knew what to do, because they had just been united very a very pissed off Angron, who had preceded to kill said Legion Master.

 

Whoa, big sentence.

[Pulse]

On proto-Astartes, "The First Heretic" intimates that the process of enhancing adult "normal" humans was not only resulting in less efficient fighters than true Astartes, but also was difficult and expensive. A Primarch could have a small cadre of his most devoted followers "uplifted" in this manner (case in the point, Dark Angels in "Descent of Angels", Kor Phaeron in "The First Heretic"), but it could not have been a mass process, at least based on that. This leads me to believe that this process was almost certainly different from the process used to create proto-Astartes. Therefore, logically speaking, while proto-Astartes (probably far less efficient than their successors) could have entered the Legions' training cadre, I doubt any human officers were placed into the Legion structure.

Do you know what? Your right, for some reason i got it backward. Not sure why i thought what i did. Ignore my earlier comment.

[jeffersonian000]

The only issue with this is that in almost every instance in which we see an "up-lifted" human as an Astartes, that person is in a leadership position. This means that while they were eventually replaced by home-grown Astartes, the original leadership cadre of the Legions were most likely proto-Astartes.

 

SJ

[clanfield]

bulvye and the 13th fit this very well with the entire great company being adult conversions to astartes tales of hereasy also quotes only a few of russ's retinue survived the process

[Iron_Adam]

I wonder if genebread loyalty had something to do with it. Whoever was in charge stepped aside as the primar h took over and put his own people ahead of the rest of the legion