Iron Warriors Grand Company Organisation

[lokkorex]

anybody have any idea how the grand campanies of the iron warriors were organised pre-heresy?

i knew they were about thousand marines each, and they liked to work in threes, but haven't found a clue as to how the companies were organised, how many squads in each company, what type of squads made up the individual campanies and so forth.

[Goreshed]

While the Index Astartes states it was 12 Grand Companies with a thousand men in each I find that to be less up and coming with the current size of the legions as the fluff portrays it.

 

Personally: With the general feel of how its going fluff wise I would think it would break down as such.

 

12 Grand Companies each led by some warsmith and within each Grand Company you would have any number of smaller companies of various sizes due to the fact that the IW were either forced or duty bound to act as a garisson force a lot of the time after they conquered a planet. The exact numbers....I couldn't really point out. They would be under 100k but they aren't the smallest legion (pretty sure that goes to Alpha Legion but I could be wrong) so I would assume somewhere between 75-100k in numbers pre heresy.

 

Hopefully at some point the IW get a better stage to show themselves on so we get more information on the pre-heresy formation of the legion.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Actually, I could see the Iron Warriors being one of the larger legions, even the third largest, just spread out over a far larger area than the other Legions.

[lokkorex]

good point lord_caerolion, we don't really know how many iron warriors there was around in the galaxy.

 

the only thing written in stone i believe was that there were 12 grand companies, but then who knows how many recruits were drawn to fill the grand companies ranks after they started garrisoning worlds?

[aurelian]

That would perfectly make sense.

As i realised, legion organisation isn't that very different throughout the 18 legions. Even the most deviant ones are essentially the same, with just a different terminology used for the units. There are probably slightly varying numbers too, but in fact every legion operates with a stucture consisting of chapters (several hundred legionaires), companies (about a hundred), and squads, as depicted very precisely in The First Heretic, even if they call it Fellowships, Grand Companies, or whatever else.

 

The only problematic thing i encountered so far is that it would mean at any given time there existed exactly 12 warriors called warsmiths. 12 out of 75 000 is not very much, and by the 39th millenium, we have a warsmith to lead every single IW warband. Well, probably during 10 thousand years things might change, but it still doesn't make sense to me.

Furthermore, we have Forrix in Storm of Iron, who is called first captain during the Heresy, which would mean first warsmith, master of the 1st Veteran Grand Company, like Abaddon of the Luna Wolves, and in the novel he is just a captain under an anonym warsmith. Now how exactly did that happen?

 

Oh how i would like to see a novel about the Iron Warriors and Imperial Fists that would start with the Siege of Terra and end with the Iron Cage. Dorn would be the main protagonist, and it would show how the Imperium turned against him, then how Perturabo broke him on Sebastus. Dorn would make the ultimate tragic hero of the Heresy series, just reading the Lexicanum article made me cry a little :D

I would really write it, if i had a hundred lifetimes :D maybe someone else...