Post-Crusade Endgame & the Legions

[Kais Klip]

Stemming from my remarks in the Edict of Nikea thread, what is everyone's opinion on the legions' purpose once the Crusade is over?

 

Would you purge them all from history, Primarchs & Astartes all, or usurp the mortal administrators and place the Primarchs and their sons as the new gods of mankind?

 

Surely Curze or Russ could have no place in the civility of an established Imperium? Would you really want to return a book late to Magnus?

 

We're assuming Horus was never wounded on Davin, and thus never turned (would another legion be compromised by chaos anyway?). If that proves tricky with all the what-ifs, then who's purpose would be what in the two respective Empires assuming Horus won Terra and Guilliman founded his?

[Karthak]

Since I subscribe to the "The Emperor is actually a good man whose ultimate goal is the survival and prosperity of the human species" camp, I'm inclined to side with Roboute on this matter. From Know No Fear:

 

Some of his brothers are content to be the instruments of crusade they have become. Some of them don’t even pause to consider that is what they are. Angron, Russ, Ferrus, Perturabo… They are just weapons, and have no ambition beyond being weapons. They know their place, like Russ, and are content to keep to it, or they have no idea that any other role might be possible or desirable, like Angron. Guilliman believes that none of them were made to be just weapons. No war is meant to last forever. The Emperor, his father, has not raised disposable sons. Why would he have gifted them with such talents if they were destined to become redundant when the war is done?

 

It feels like a desk job. It feels like labour for a bureaucrat or an administrator. It feels as if the primarch is teaching him another valuable lesson about the responsibilities of transhumanity. Learn to take pride in the work of governance as well as war. To be a ruler as well as a leader. Remus Ventanus understands this. When the war is done, as it must eventually be done, when there are no more enemies to end and no more worlds to conquer, what will the transhumans who have built the Imperium do then? Retire? Pine away and die? Become an embarrassment? A gore-headed reminder of older, more visceral days when humans needed superhumans to forge an empire for them? War is acceptable when it is a necessary instrument of survival. When it is no longer needed, the very fact that it was ever a necessary instrument at all becomes unpalatable.

 

‘It is the great irony of the Legiones Astartes,’ Guilliman had told his captains and masters, just a week ago. ‘Engineered to kill to achieve a victory of peace that they can then be no part of.’ ‘A conceptual failure?’ Gage had asked. ‘A necessary burden,’ Sydance suggested. ‘I build your temple, knowing that I will not worship in it.’ Guilliman had shaken his head to both. ‘My father does not make mistakes of that magnitude,’ he had said. ‘Space Marines excel at warfare because they were designed to excel at everything. Each of you will become a leader, a ruler, the master of your world and, because there is no more fighting to be done, you will bend your transhuman talents to governance and culture.’

[Joeyray]

To me the Emperor is embodiment of Hobbes and Machiavelli. Ultimate power will always reside at the top in an absolute brutal fashion, there may be a new high "imperial culture" that unites everyone under one eagle banner but at the same time there are forces available  to the top to crush the dissidents and secessionists. So while the more civic Primarchs and legions rebuild, govern and and control there will always be a need for the war-mongers in case of sudden rebellion, insurrection and invasion. 

[Don the Oiler]

I'll just repeat it here:

When the Crusade is over, eventually there'll come the 'nids. And the Necron. And the occasional local governor thinking he could run things his way. The Emperor would not have been so naive and dissolve his most reliable fighting force (entirely) and hand out tea and crackers.

Maybe he'd have shrunk the legions down (like, say, to 1,000 chapters numbering 1,000 Marines each?), and a little reconditioning might have been necessary too, but he wouldn't have relied on the Army/Guard to keep his Imperium together and defend it.

[Kais Klip]

He scrapped the Thunder Warriors knowing there were more battles to fight post-terra. Granted, the Thunder Warriors were made to conquer terra and not the galaxy. How do we know the Astartes wont be scrapped in favour of Thunderwarriors 3.0, as you suggest?

 

I just know the galaxy wouldn't be enough for Him :D

 

I'm just going on precedent here, because I doub't even the Primarchs would live to the 41st millennium:

 

So we have Vulkan, the Big E's "phoenix that would ever rise out of the fire". Why not insure the other primarchs as well then, if they are to be the permanent protectors of mankind?

[Joeyray]

He scrapped the Thunder Warriors knowing there were more battles to fight post-terra. Granted, the Thunder Warriors were made to conquer terra and not the galaxy. How do we know the Astartes wont be scrapped in favour of Thunderwarriors 3.0, as you suggest?

 

 

I believe that Thunder Warriors are a bad example, Astartes are believed to be "refined" and higher than Thunder Warriors so they may well be kept at hand over their predecessors. Though i would love to see more TW's coming out in the fluff as it expands. 

[Kais Klip]

Custodes feel more refined to me, and with the resources of the galaxy it wouldn't be that inefficient to mass-produce them to the standard of Astartes. You wouldn't need so many either, now that you have instantaneous deployment of them through the webway.

 

The Astartes just seem inherently unstable emotionaly, and for every Guilliman we have a Dorn, how can we say one is correct over the other with any certainty?

 

I'd be gearing to see Horus and Magnus tag-team the Hive Mind as any other, but for me the established discrepancies don't point towards the Emperor on planning to keep them around, short of Vulkan for a little extra while.

[Don the Oiler]

The novels and Betrayer seem to suggest that a Thunder Warrior, while harder to control, would always hand a Space Marine his ass in hand-to-hand combat.

So for some reasons, fighting prowess is a tradeoff for reliability. If you "water down" the recipe even further, what would you get? I might be overstretching things here, but to me it seems the Thunder Warriors were designed as a short-term solution to quickly conquer Terra and be able to start the Great Crusade proper. The Astartes were probably designed already with the "Endgame" in mind, because, let's face it, how would he get rid of them if he wished? The Thunder Warriors could have been overwhelmed by sheer numbers if push had come to shove, but where do you dispose of millions of Space Marines?

[Kais Klip]

The novels and Betrayer seem to suggest that a Thunder Warrior, while harder to control, would always hand a Space Marine his ass in hand-to-hand combat.

So for some reasons, fighting prowess is a tradeoff for reliability. If you "water down" the recipe even further, what would you get? I might be overstretching things here, but to me it seems the Thunder Warriors were designed as a short-term solution to quickly conquer Terra and be able to start the Great Crusade proper. The Astartes were probably designed already with the "Endgame" in mind, because, let's face it, how would he get rid of them if he wished? The Thunder Warriors could have been overwhelmed by sheer numbers if push had come to shove, but where do you dispose of millions of Space Marines?

By a whole galaxy's worth of humans. His Glorious Imperial Army just trampled the 'nid scout force :D

 

I understand why the TW were replaced for the Astartes though, its a matter of economics for me with the latter being just more efficient for what they cost to produce. I don't see the same level of restrictions being placed once the galaxy is mankind's.

[Kol Saresk]

Where was there a Thunder Warrior in Betrayer? :huh:

[Joeyray]

in a perfect imperium it would be just Custodes, in a Orwellian nightmare just TW, but in the "real world" cough cough then Astartes are the right solution to me. Not too refined and perfected but still not just maniacs with Power Armour and big guns. 
Restrictions may be a part if order is wanted to be maintained. In most situations Astartes do not raze human worlds without good reason  where as TW's i see as coming in and nuking anyone back to primordial sludge without hesitation. 

[Kol Saresk]

I don't know, Custodes seem too....... Inflexible. Shoot, they don't even fight together, they just fight in the same place. A force like that could be easily divided.

[Don the Oiler]

Sorry, i meant HH Betrayal of course. The Warhounds story where they were assaulting a prison colony led by a handful of renegade Thunder Warriors.

The mop-up crew was describing an abbatoir, with the occasional TW corpse lying around surrounded by a couple of dead Warhounds.

[Joeyray]

I don't know, Custodes seem too....... Inflexible. Shoot, they don't even fight together, they just fight in the same place. A force like that could be easily divided.

True Kol, I aint a fan of Custodes for that. Too much time reading Moltke and Clauswitz on large unit/army deployment has led me to through my lot in with a larger wholly organised force over a group of "individuals" 

[Kol Saresk]

Sorry, i meant HH Betrayal of course. The Warhounds story where they were assaulting a prison colony led by a handful of renegade Thunder Warriors.

The mop-up crew was describing an abbatoir, with the occasional TW corpse lying around surrounded by a couple of dead Warhounds.

yeah, fighting alongside three million mortals could wear down even the Astartes.

 

Personally, the Custodes seem iffy as an endgame. Individually they might seem superior, but they seem to fail as groups. And even individually, there is no guarantee on a definite victory. Just look at *shudder shudder* The Outcast Dead.

 

Personally, I think the original plan was to create the Astartes. Cheap, easily massed produced and easy to train as a group where one is dangerous, ten will be a hundred times more deadly. And then, garrison them. Have a standing fleet in orbit, and anywhere from one hundred to one thousand Astartes in stasis on the planet below with a standing force that constantly recruited from the population every now and then. A self-perpetuating force. The Webway would make it easy for reinforcements(if they became necessary) and supplies to be moved on and off-world. A force like that, as long as it had been trained in the same combat doctrines each generation, could be woken up an should theoretically operate as a single force.

 

The problem then arises when you get the Scattering. Some Legions couldn't act as garrison forces. Sure, they could be placed in stasis, but they'd go bonkers after so many Awakenings.

 

Personally, I don't think there was any grand plan. Sure, the Emperor was thinking eight steps ahead the whole time, but I don't think he had the Endgame fully fleshed out.

[Perrin]

Like someone has already said, the Emperor is going to need a few more tricks up his sleeve if he was ever planning to betray the Primarchs or the Legions. He could probably have made a couple of the more unstable ones look like they needed to be gotten rid of, "For the Imperium", so lets say the other Primarchs all obey when it becomes time to take out Angron and Curze. Magnus next maybe, he doesn't seem too popular and he was bound to break the Edict eventually, even without having to warn the big E about Horus.

Now the list gets harder. Perturabo next maybe? He isn't unhinged like the others but he's a bit of an outcast among his brothers and slaughtered his entire homeworld even without any chaos temptation, bit of a liability. That's 4 taken care of, now for the other 14... but now the others start to get suspicious.

 

It kind of reminds me of that poem;

 

First they came for the World Eaters,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a World Eater.

Then they came for the Night Lords,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Night Lord.

Then they came for the Thousand Sons,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Thousand Son.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

 

There is no way the Imperial Army could ever hope to take on the full might of the Legions. Titan Legios could be a problem, but there are bound to be a few with more loyalty to specific Legions than the Emperor, and we've seen marines take down Titans before.

 

I don't think the Emperor would have planned to kill the Primarchs and their Legions. Obviously some would have gone bad without the Heresy, namely Curze and Angron, so they might have to be censured, but the others are fine. The Iron Warriors seem like one of the most brutal Legions, but have shown they could become architects in a peaceful universe, as could the Fists. Guilliman had trained his sons to be administrators, governors, rulers etc. Vulkan and his sons could have just become farmers or blacksmiths, there are a boatload of jobs in the Imperium. They could be drill instructors/squad leaders for the Imperial Army, Captains of ships in the Navy.

 

There's also the need for them still. The Webway would have to have been cleansed of Chaos and xenos, especially as some parts were damaged and had allowed the warp to leak in, that would take a lot of man-power. Then there's the Eldar, Dark Eldar and Orks to destroy. Then there's the problems facing 40k, Necrons waking up and Tyranids coming to eat everything, plus the Tau and Chaos cultists. Who knows, maybe the Emperor even had some grand scheme to conquer other galaxies.

[Veteran Sergeant]

I don't know, Custodes seem too....... Inflexible. Shoot, they don't even fight together, they just fight in the same place. A force like that could be easily divided.

That's just training and cultural mindset, not a physiological limitation.

 

If you take Custodes and raise them like Space Marines, you'll just get Custodesmarines.

[Wade Garrett]

I don't think you realize just how large the Imperial Army is compared to the Legions. They can literally lose a hundred men for every dead Astartes and still have millions to spare.

 

Not to mention the Tech Guard.

[Don the Oiler]

The Emperor already had to pull a dirty trick to get rid of the Thunder Warriors. He "outlawed" them (whatever that means) but at the same time didn't overly tarnish their memory and had them gloriously sacrifice themselves for the Greater Good Unification.

Imagine how hard it would be to vilify the Legions and consolidate humanity against them, especially after he made sure every Primarch had a flock of remembrancers that made a copper engraving of every fart that ever left a legionary.

The only chance i see is restructuring the Legions, or feeding them to a powerful enemy in senseless slaughter. An enemy you would then stand against without your greates war asset.

I also don't think mentally destabilized Primarchs would have been an issue if things had gone the way they were supposed to and they'd been raised by the Emperor on Terra, further decreasing the chance of Legions going renegade.

[b1soul]

 

He scrapped the Thunder Warriors knowing there were more battles to fight post-terra. Granted, the Thunder Warriors were made to conquer terra and not the galaxy. How do we know the Astartes wont be scrapped in favour of Thunderwarriors 3.0, as you suggest?

 

 

I believe that Thunder Warriors are a bad example, Astartes are believed to be "refined" and higher than Thunder Warriors so they may well be kept at hand over their predecessors. Though i would love to see more TW's coming out in the fluff as it expands. 

 

The thunder warriors were not a highly disciplined fighting force capable of restraint, diplomacy, and more subtle methods of warfare. They were enough to conquer Terra's techno-barbarian warlords. They would likely falter in protracted campaigns against sophisticated xenos and non-Imperial humans. 

 

The Thunder Warriors fought much like the World Eaters under Angron...and we know that the Emperor was not pleased with Angron and his berserkers

[Perrin]

I don't think you realize just how large the Imperial Army is compared to the Legions. They can literally lose a hundred men for every dead Astartes and still have millions to spare.

 

Not to mention the Tech Guard.

 

Tech Guard are Admech, the Admech might decide that the don't fully trust the Emperor, especially as he's decided to off his own sons.

 

The quantity doesn't really matter so much when the difference in quality is so large. Taking the Ultramarines, the largest Legion, 100 Army per marine is 25,000,000, not counting Guilliman who physically counts as who-knows-how-many marines in terms of killing power, but also his leadership which would inspire his sons to ever greater feats of heroism and slaughter, plus logistics.

 

It is also a lot easier to transport say, 1000 marines, than the number of Imperial Army that would be needed to match them in battle.

 

It would also depend on which Legion was fighting the Army. Iron Warriors would destroy them through continuous bombardment and siege warfare unless the Imperial Army happened to have siege weapons and artillery with them. The World Eaters vs Imperial Army on a plain battle? As soon as the WE got in amongst the ranks it would be a slaughter. The Legions are just too flexible for the Army to deal with.

 

Also noting that the Legions were very much the front-line troops throughout the Great Crusade, with the Imperial Army taking on a supporting/garrison role, the Imperial Army would contain a lot less veterans and experienced troops than the Imperial Guard does. Which is the whole point of 40k, post-Heresy everything is designed to be able to kill everything else and be killed by everything else. GC era was different.

 

Obviously a single battle is the same as the X v Y debates, either could win on the day, but in a war Legions v Imperial Army, no way would the IA win.

[Wade Garrett]

No, we have plenty of examples of the Imperial Army fighting side by side or even ahead of the Astartes. I refer you to "Prospero Burns", "The First Heretic", and "Legion".

 

Also, if you're going to claim the Legions were too flexible for the Army the IV and the XII are horrible examples to use.

 

Both of them were specialist formations who floundered anytime a problem required a solution besides digging trenches or CHAAARGE!

[Phoebus]

A few points:

 

The novels, especially The Outcast Dead, and the Forgeworld Heresy books depict the Thunder Warriors as an unstable, stop-gap design.  Yes, they appear to have been a specimen that was physically superior to the Legiones Astartes.  That came at a price, though:  psychological instability and - apparently - a shortened lifespan.  One should take the time to ask why the Emperor would deliberately make his next mass-produced super soldier physically weaker.  The answer is that he probably didn't.  Call it plot-driven or whatever, but there seems to have been a balance that needed to be struck between superhuman physical prowess and mental stability.

 

The same sort of plot-driven balance prevents the Custodes from being mass-produced.  This reinforces the idea that the Legiones Astartes were the "happy medium" between the numerically plentiful Thunder Warriors  and the numerically few Custodes.  You get great numbers, sanity (for the most part!), admirable mental prowess, and superhuman prowess that, per "Blood Games" is close enough to that of the Custodes where one can't always bet on the Emperor's bodyguards winning.

 

Would the Legiones Astartes ever be replaced?  No.  The series has hinted enough already that the Space Marines were never designed to be just warriors.  It's qualified in at least one novel that the Space Marine's mind is remarkable, and that if the wars were to ever end they would make formidable administrators, governors, and law-enforcers.  That's not conjecture: "modern-day" Ultramar stands as proof of this fact.  It's the culture of the Adeptus Astartes that keeps all of them from matching the Ultramarines' social accomplishments, not (with the exception of some Legion-baselines) an inherent drawback or flaw (as with the Thunder Warriors).

[Demus Ragnok]

 

 

I don't think you realize just how large the Imperial Army is compared to the Legions. They can literally lose a hundred men for every dead Astartes and still have millions to spare.

 

Not to mention the Tech Guard.

Tech Guard are Admech, the Admech might decide that the don't fully trust the Emperor, especially as he's decided to off his own sons.

 

The quantity doesn't really matter so much when the difference in quality is so large. Taking the Ultramarines, the largest Legion, 100 Army per marine is 25,000,000, not counting Guilliman who physically counts as who-knows-how-many marines in terms of killing power, but also his leadership which would inspire his sons to ever greater feats of heroism and slaughter, plus logistics.

 

It is also a lot easier to transport say, 1000 marines, than the number of Imperial Army that would be needed to match them in battle.

 

It would also depend on which Legion was fighting the Army. Iron Warriors would destroy them through continuous bombardment and siege warfare unless the Imperial Army happened to have siege weapons and artillery with them. The World Eaters vs Imperial Army on a plain battle? As soon as the WE got in amongst the ranks it would be a slaughter. The Legions are just too flexible for the Army to deal with.

 

Also noting that the Legions were very much the front-line troops throughout the Great Crusade, with the Imperial Army taking on a supporting/garrison role, the Imperial Army would contain a lot less veterans and experienced troops than the Imperial Guard does. Which is the whole point of 40k, post-Heresy everything is designed to be able to kill everything else and be killed by everything else. GC era was different.

 

Obviously a single battle is the same as the X v Y debates, either could win on the day, but in a war Legions v Imperial Army, no way would the IA win.

Bold for my emphasis. There was something like 4000 Expeditionary Fleets during the Crusade. I don't think the Legions had a presence in all of them. Legion is a good look at an Expedition without a Legion detachment.

[Chaplain ChonkE]

Phoebus, you are right on but it is not just mental stability but genetic and biological stability. As you said, for whatever reason the Thunder Warriors had a much shorter shelf-life than the Astartes whether by design or a side-effect of the great power the Thunder Warriors held. They were a stop gap and while physically superior in strength, they could not prosecute campaigns in space outside of the Solar System due to that shortened life-span. The Lightning Bearer states this to Ghota in Outcast Dead when Ghota derides the Astartes design basically saying Astartes are superior and for good reason; Space Marines were able to prosecute the Crusade to the farthest reaches of the galaxy due to their lifespan, biological stability and the ability to recruit/reproduce reliably. These were qualities the Thunder Warriors lacked (Custodes too). The Space Marines are mass-producable because they are able to germinate viable geneseed and increase their own recruitment. Geneseed.

 

How does the Emperor control the Astartes legions post-Crusade? Through the geneseed of course. The devastation or denial of geneseed caches would eventually starve the Legions after a "Total galactic conquest/Mission Accomplished" scenario. If all geneseed was destroyed or poisoned there would be no Legions. Even the Chaos legions of 40k use/pirate/pilfer the geneseed of loyalist chapters and chaos rival caches/corpses getting "fresh" geneseed. There is a supply to be had and if all of it was removed such as with the 'xenos' virus in Betrayal/IA or just straight Big-E saying to the genewrights "No more." Fin.

 

I do not believe the Emperor would ever get rid of the Legions though but (God I hate myself for having to say this) I think He would arrange things along the lines of the Imperium that Roboute Guilliman penned up in the Codex Astartes and the outline for the Imperium of Mankind. He would spread the Legions and their power thin across the stars to keep the peace and regulate the boundaries, worlds, laws and TAXES of the Imperium. Limiting access to regular Imperial army/navy assets would create independence allowing the Marines their mandate to enforce Big E's will and to not be beholden to petty Governors and System Lords while also creating distrust and a system of checks and balances between the myriad forces of the Imperium. It would be like a less war-filled verion of the 40k reality and a really neat green-energy mass transit system.

 

It is stated many times in the books that the unaugmented human forces of the Great Crusade were the heavy lifters and front-line troops in all aspects of the conquest. Titans, Space Marines, War Robots, AdMech Superweapons are problem solvers for these types of front-line forces. Have a fortress that cannot be taken? An advanced technological/biological species of xenos beyond the capabilities of regular humans? Warp creatures (shhhhh)? A battle of tremendous size and scope that needs specialist weapons, vehicles and infantry? Need that Primarch/Chapter Master to clean things up tactically (edit: or drop a space station/starship on something)? Legion and Prospero Burns have good examples of Astartes Legions taking over prosecutions for regular forces stalemated in battle. Prospero Burns even has Hawser mentioning how the greatcoated men of the Imperium seemed tiny on the field but were the core of galactic conquest. Space Marines were made to do those jobs no one else could do in places most mortals would fear trending in, let alone doing battle in. *Insert TSKNF statement* They are not the heavy lifters despite having the capabilities to do so.

 

As to whether the Big E would let certain legions go and certain legions stay... Aieee! Would you really let Angron and Conrad hang around!??! Chill at a diplomatic function? Maybe send them on deep extra-galactic crusade as mentioned earlier. Quite a few others too now that I think about it. Khan would probably just up and leave to find a fight. Russ would get bored and go somewhere dangerous. Alpharius would be two-necks deep in intelligence gathering/spying. Manus would be designing the next big gun. Corax would be writing in some dungeon locked away somewhere. Vulkan would run an intergalactic gym franchise and win several bodybuilding contests. Fulgrim would be trying to out-logistic Guilliman (and vice versa). Lion would be trying to sneakily out-logistic Guilliman and Fulgrim. Dorn would still be shadowing the Big E. Lorgar would be sent off to preach the "Word" with Angron in extra-galactic space. Sanguinius would succumb to the Black Rage due to war withdrawls and have to be put down. Perturabo would build his bridges, parks and buildings finally satisfied with his work and dissatisfied with his builders (ruh-roh). Magnus would travel or teleport away in search of esoteric knowledge. Mortarion would have to be sent away with Curze to make sure Conrad didnt create some intergalactic criminal empire (and to get creepy guy and crazy guy out of the vicinity). Horus would just continue to be awesome. Classic Vinewood right there.

 

If Horus and Guilliman had two empires (especially if Horus was evil and Guilliman was... Guilliman) they would get all Highlander on it and it would be Greeks vs Troy. If they were good it would be like Western and Eastern Roman Empires.