How many does the fallen number

[ZONKEY]

Hi,

 

Just wanted to ask a question that has probably been asked many times, but how many of the dark angel legion followed Luther down the path of the traitor, as lot of people keep repeating to me that half my legion are traitor and i find that a bit hard to believe that the dark angels would leave half there legion to protect caliban and then follow luther.

 

[Grotsmasha]

Luther was leading Legion recruitment on Caliban, turning all of Caliban and new recruits against the Lion and Legion. The 1/2 refers to those that were left after the destruction of Caliban, although no one knows the true number, it's guestimated between 2000-10000 by most.

 

Cheers,

Jono

[Dumah]

Luther was leading Legion recruitment on Caliban, turning all of Caliban and new recruits against the Lion and Legion. The 1/2 refers to those that were left after the destruction of Caliban, although no one knows the true number, it's guestimated between 2000-10000 by most.

 

Cheers,

Jono

 

I'm guessing the number is closer to the high end of your estimate, given how the Unforgiven secretly operate in unified purpose - a secret legion, if you will - to take their Fallen brothers to task. Of course, they could just be operating under the overkill principle.

[ZONKEY]

Thats slightly worrying that a lot  of the lions loyal soldiers could be so easily manipulated to the way of warp, and why did he leave such a high number of troops on his homeworld when they could of been out claiming worlds in the name of the ermperor  

[Olis]

Well, in terms of the current incarnation of the Horus Heresy, ten thousand legionnaires (although nothing to sniff at)  isn't exactly a large number of astartes. It's roughly middle-of-the-road (maybe top end of it), when it comes to making war for the Imperium. Entire Legion hosts (hell, multiple hosts on occasion) have made war during individual campaigns. As for the Lion's motivations, well, he's somewhat of an enigma. Although nominally loyal to the throne, he's had a cloud of doubt over him since the series started, regardless of the Thramas Crusade.

[Cactus]

Hi,

 

Just wanted to ask a question that has probably been asked many times, but how many of the dark angel legion followed Luther down the path of the traitor, as lot of people keep repeating to me that half my legion are traitor and i find that a bit hard to believe that the dark angels would leave half there legion to protect caliban and then follow luther.

 

I've just checked my 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 6th edition books and none of them state "half the legion" or give any indication how many Dark Angels were stationed on Caliban. Ask these people for their sources.

[Aradiel]

indeed, gw never, ever stated "half the legion". allways "part of the legion".

originaly luther was left in caliban when the lion followed the emperor into the crusade. current retcon states that the lion sent luther and a number of marines back to caliban. the idea of having half a legion scratching their backsides at home while a crusade of galactic conquest goes on is ridiculous.

the number of fallen was swollen by several waves of recruits that never left caliban, and got corrupted by luther in time.

so basicly the majority of the fallen at the time of the big battle were a bunch of wet behind the ears rookies

[Dumah]

Thats slightly worrying that a lot  of the lions loyal soldiers could be so easily manipulated to the way of warp, and why did he leave such a high number of troops on his homeworld when they could of been out claiming worlds in the name of the ermperor  

 

Who said anything about it being done " so easily"? We haven't reached the point yet where we actually read about their fall, just the planting of the seeds of doubt (a force that not a single sentient being is immune to). And in all honesty, I like to pretend that Descent of Angels - and to a slightly lesser extent, Fallen Angels - never happened...

[march10k]

Half of the legion is woefully wrong.  That would imply that half of the legion was on Caliban at the time and that Luther corrupted all of them, neither of which is accurate.  Anyway, the proper question is "how many remain?"  ...and even the DA don't have an accurate number.

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

The answer is we don't know

[Phoebus]

Here are my (edited) thoughts from a previous thread on the same topic:

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/261749-the-fallen-how-many/?p=3186489

 

'Fallen Angels' starts in the 147th year of the Great Crusade. Zahariel passes his logistical report on to the Lion on the 200th year. He provides the number of Astartes produced in this latest training cycle (4,212), and the fact that they've had a 20% increase each cycle. He also states that there have been 19 training cycles thus far. All those recruits (except for the last batch) would have gone to the Lion.

 

The current training cycle Zahariel refers to lasts roughly 2 years, and is considered optimal. Thus, by the end of the Horus Heresy (which lasted 7 years), Luther would have completed 3.5 training cycles. Let's say he was able to finish that the fourth one before the Lion returned. Assuming that there was no further improvement (they already had a 98% certification rate), Luther would have had roughly 21,060 Space Marines trained to serve him by the end of the Heresy. Adding to that number the training Chapters (which originally numbered "more than five hundred" Space Marines, but needed to be increased three times) that were already loyal to him, that brings Luther's total force size to a little less than 22,000 Space Marines by the end of the Heresy.

 

This number would be mitigated by the amount of time it took the Dark Angels to get back to Caliban (bearing in mind that the Scouring was going on during this time). If it took them two years, for instance, that's another four thousand or so recruits to bolster Luther's ranks.

 

At any rate, after discovering he had been betrayed, the Lion launched a surgical strike against Luther's stronghold. At the same time, his fleet bombarded Caliban until "many monasteries were reduced to miles-wide craters ..." (Codex: Dark Angels). The older "Angels of Death" Codex states that the Dark Angels "easily" defeated Caliban's planetary defenses. We can't really know how many Fallen survived the onslaught to be scattered throughout space and time by Chaos. I assume the orbital bombardment killed a great deal of them, though. Given this, and the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Loyalist Dark Angels, I seriously doubt the Fallen even resembled a cohesive force by the time the Lion and Luther fought their duel.

 

Given the fact that the orbiting fleet could just turn the fortress monasteries to paste, my guess is that less than a tenth of the Fallen (so, anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000, with the aforementioned caveat) survived the onslaught of the Dark Angels.

 

Obviously, all of the above assumes that whoever writes the novel detailing the destruction of Caliban also gives a damn about what Mike Lee wrote in 'Fallen Angels'. There's every chance we'll see fluff change again, though, making all this nothing more than outdated conjecture!

 

At any rate, nothing about the fluff implies that a large number of Fallen survived. They're not a major group in 40k. Dark Angels fluff focuses on the Fallen, but they don't appear that often. Both the old and the new Codices state that the Dark Angels can go for years without hearing even rumors about the Fallen.

 

Cheers,

P.

[march10k]

There are a few clues to how much the Inner Circle knows, though.  In discussing the fallen librarian in Ravenwing, they mention a known number of fallen librarians, as well as how many have been suitably dealt with.  Still, even among astartes, psychers are exceptional.  I would assume that for generic fallen battle brothers, they have lists of who is unaccounted for, knowing that many of them died with Caliban, and knowing that they'll never truly know for sure that all of those who suffered a, um, temporal anomaly, have been captured or killed.  For that matter, perhaps some of the librarians included in the number quoted in Ravenwing are dead, unbeknownst to the Unforgiven.

[The Shadow Guard]

We also need to take in to consideration that all chaos marines do not come from the 30th millennium.... spacemarine in the 41st millennium are also induced and enslaved by the fell powers... affecting whole chapters such as the Astral Claws.

 

Even the unforgiven cannot be immune to these depradations and the ranks of the "Fallen" is likely to eb swelled even by current day members of the unforgiven though it is likely they are few and far in between!

 

SG

[facmanpob]

Even the unforgiven cannot be immune to these depradations and the ranks of the "Fallen" is likely to eb swelled even by current day members of the unforgiven though it is likely they are few and far in between!

SG

Heresy!

@Phoebus - that's a very good use of the data in Fallen Angels to work out potential recruit levels on Caliban by the end of the heresy. One extra piece of the puzzle is that at the time of the events of FA, which was set in between Istvaan III and V, Luther stopped the deployment of 5 Chapters of new Marines, so that's an extra 5,000 Dark Angels to add to the total.

[Phoebus]

There are a few clues to how much the Inner Circle knows, though. In discussing the fallen librarian in Ravenwing, they mention a known number of fallen librarians, as well as how many have been suitably dealt with. Still, even among astartes, psychers are exceptional. I would assume that for generic fallen battle brothers, they have lists of who is unaccounted for, knowing that many of them died with Caliban, and knowing that they'll never truly know for sure that all of those who suffered a, um, temporal anomaly, have been captured or killed. For that matter, perhaps some of the librarians included in the number quoted in Ravenwing are dead, unbeknownst to the Unforgiven.

The only problem is, how would they have lists of Space Marines recruited on a planet with which they had no communication, whose master had turned traitor and thus had no reason to pass such information to the Legion?

We also need to take in to consideration that all chaos marines do not come from the 30th millennium.... spacemarine in the 41st millennium are also induced and enslaved by the fell powers... affecting whole chapters such as the Astral Claws.

Even the unforgiven cannot be immune to these depradations and the ranks of the "Fallen" is likely to eb swelled even by current day members of the unforgiven though it is likely they are few and far in between!

SG

It would appear that post-Caliban traitors are not categorized as Fallen by the Inner Circle. The key distinction, at least according to 'Pandorax', is the means by which the Fallen turned away from the Lion: to the modern Inner Circle, the Fallen were forced into their choice. Their master, Luther, led them down the path of damnation, while telling them that it was the right thing to do. Since the Inner Circle feel that they are loyal to both the Lion and the Golden Throne, they don't believe that any member of the Unforgiven (that is, one who joined them after the Heresy) can claim they were led astray, or that they turned because they were ignorantly carrying out the will of their master. In Azrael's eyes, the Fallen who betrayed the Lion and the Legion during the Heresy did so because of Luther. Regardless of their motivation, Luther was the catalyst and without him Azrael believes none of them would have fallen. Because they were pushed to that fate, the Inner Circle believes that the Fallen "still have the chance to rise again in death, to denounce their dark masters and recognise the folly of treachery." Traitors among the Unforgiven like Corpulax, who turned after the Heresy, are not granted the honour (Azrael's words, said with a straight face) of being counted among the Fallen.

I honestly think that's a very powerful statement. While it doesn't excuse the secrecy, lies, and other vile deeds the Dark Angels have committed in the name of the Hunt, I feel it casts their convictions in a whole new light.

Even the unforgiven cannot be immune to these depradations and the ranks of the "Fallen" is likely to eb swelled even by current day members of the unforgiven though it is likely they are few and far in between!

SG

Heresy!

@Phoebus - that's a very good use of the data in Fallen Angels to work out potential recruit levels on Caliban by the end of the heresy. One extra piece of the puzzle is that at the time of the events of FA, which was set in between Istvaan III and V, Luther stopped the deployment of 5 Chapters of new Marines, so that's an extra 5,000 Dark Angels to add to the total.

I could be wrong, but I interpreted those five Chapters as being one and the same with the 4.212 Space Marines Zahariel refers to at the very beginning of the novel. I believe it's their departure that is cancelled due to the burgeoning revolt on Caliban (that is, during 'Fallen Angels').

[march10k]

 

The only problem is, how would they have lists of Space Marines recruited on a planet with which they had no communication, whose master had turned traitor and thus had no reason to pass such information to the Legion? 

 

~shrug~  They recovered a database?  They ripped it from the minds of captured fallen?  I'm not suggesting that they were handed a list by the Castellan of Caliban, and just took it on faith that it was accurate.  The point is that they have some sort of by-name roster of un-accounted-for brothers.  The difficulty is that they can't really know who among them is still alive, let alone when.

[Cactus]

Our librarians' powers of divination tell us all we need to know.

[Tanhausen]

 but how many of the dark angel legion followed Luther down the path of the traitor,

 

Depends who's asking:

 

1. A DA Brother: stick to your drills, honour your instructors and remember your vows. Any further questioning will get you closer and closer to Cell 42.

 

2. A non-DA: its a shame you spend your time over fiction when the Emperor's work demands your best effort...maybe we should have a talk with your chapter master or even someone in the Ordo Hereticus just in case someone isn't pulling their weight...

[facmanpob]

I could be wrong, but I interpreted those five Chapters as being one and the same with the 4.212 Space Marines Zahariel refers to at the very beginning of the novel. I believe it's their departure that is cancelled due to the burgeoning revolt on Caliban (that is, during 'Fallen Angels').

Ah, OK, I didn't think you'd incorporated them into your calculations, that's all

The only problem is, how would they have lists of Space Marines recruited on a planet with which they had no communication, whose master had turned traitor and thus had no reason to pass such information to the Legion?

~shrug~ They recovered a database? They ripped it from the minds of captured fallen? I'm not suggesting that they were handed a list by the Castellan of Caliban, and just took it on faith that it was accurate. The point is that they have some sort of by-name roster of un-accounted-for brothers. The difficulty is that they can't really know who among them is still alive, let alone when.

Well, the Dark Angels did become tenants in Luther's old house, so there's bound to have been some stuff left lying around..... like maybe a library full of all the books hoarded by the Knights of Lupus?

[Phoebus]

I guess I always took it on faith - due to the abandoned state of the Tower of Angels - that no such information had been recovered.  It makes sense, though, I guess.  I mean, the Dark Angels did recover that list of 136 commanders (per 'Angels of Darkness'), right?

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

While we might not currently use the old Tower, I have no doubts that we have been in there several times

[Cactus]

While we might not currently use the old Tower, I have no doubts that we have been in there several times

 

l agree. You don't declare your primarch missing without looking in the cupboards and under the bed first.

[Zincite]

You don't declare your primarch missing without looking in the cupboards and under the bed first.

'Gee, guys, nobody's dusted under here for ages.'

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

 

You don't declare your primarch missing without looking in the cupboards and under the bed first.

'Gee, guys, nobody's dusted under here for ages.'

Another task Astelan failed to complete!

[facmanpob]

The 40K version of Downton Abbey would be much better.....