Black legion reading list

[Lord Lee]

Hello Fellow Traitors

 

Death to the false emperor and all that

 

So I've done a mega trade with my good friend for all of my Imperial Space Marines for a equal amount of Chaos Space Marines and so I am joining the Black Legion.

 

I would like to know what novels or website you could recommend that will help me truly understand the Black Legion mentality and style of warfare.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Now Traitor Lord Lee

 

P.S. To be honest I will still have a Imperial Guard force with a stormsword and 2 Knight Titans so I haven't completely given up on the Emperor :)

[hummus]

Failadon makes an appearance with bl in soul hunter. There's a of ADB book out soon about the rise of abadon(as an aside do you think abadon is a play on words by gw a/bad/on, with on sounding like un which can be slang for one in British English, with 'a bad un' meaning a bad person)

[Sviar]

I would like to know what novels or website you could recommend that will help me truly understand the Black Legion mentality and style of warfare.

 

 

 

 

E-short Honour Among Fiends. Here is a link to Black Library:

 

http://www.blacklibrary.com/all-products/honour-among-fiends-ebook.html

 

Well B&C are an excellent website. There is a website that only cover Chaos(all CSM):

 

http://s1.zetaboards.com/New_Badab/index/

 

Edit: Spelling errors.

[Yogi]

Failadon makes an appearance with bl in soul hunter. There's a of ADB book out soon about the rise of abadon(as an aside do you think abadon is a play on words by gw a/bad/on, with on sounding like un which can be slang for one in British English, with 'a bad un' meaning a bad person)

 

Its possible its a play on words. But more likely straight lifted from history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abaddonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abaddon

 

As for books if I were you OP I would read Horus Heresy and wait for ADB's book. Maybye take a gander at FW HH Sons of Horus fluff also.

[Iron-Daemon Forge]

Hello Fellow Traitors

Death to the false emperor and all that

So I've done a mega trade with my good friend for all of my Imperial Space Marines for a equal amount of Chaos Space Marines and so I am joining the Black Legion.

I would like to know what novels or website you could recommend that will help me truly understand the Black Legion mentality and style of warfare.

Thanks in advance.

Now Traitor Lord Lee

P.S. To be honest I will still have a Imperial Guard force with a stormsword and 2 Knight Titans so I haven't completely given up on the Emperor

Aaron Dembski Bowden has a new novel due for release in the next few month - Talons of Hours, which will be around the Black legion & how they where made. Sadly can not copy & paste a link on the forum while I'm on the PC (this is the only forum happen), but if you check out ADB blog & there is a topic talking about the novel :D

I am really looking forward to this novel & the art work really cool.

There also the Black Legion supplement from the Games Workshop website which has a lot of great background, talk about how they work, how it all started & talk about the Black Crusade which Abaddon has led. Gaming wise this also allow you Chosen as your troop chose & you get different Chaos artefacts for your Chaos commander :D

There also Pandorx novel by Black Library. It not to focuses on the Black Legion, it more from the Imperial side of things - Guards, Dark Angels & Grey Knights while they battle against the Black Legions led by Abaddon. I found Pandorx to be a good novel, we see the Black Legion master of there fleet, how Abaddon trolling Huron, basicly saying he will never let Huron go onto any of his ships let alone led them, unless he willing to join the Black Legion, swear oaths.

I think some of the background is also cover in the recent release 40k rule book - background book, as well which was from the Apoclypse book release same time as the novel & audio cd.

You should also check out Malisteen topic - Black like my soul, his army log for his Black Legion force which has really great conversion work :D

IP

[Sception]

My main recommendations currently are:

the lexicanum page

The Black Legion Supplement.

If you can find it, the old usWD 267 index astartes article (I think it was 268 in the uk?)

Yeah, that's not a lot, but as cool as they are, and as important to the setting, the Black Legion have not frequently been written well. Their most recent showing, the Pandorax Novel, in particular was just a abysmal. We're talking Shredder from the 80's TMNT cartoon levels of laughably incompetent cartoon villainy. The Pandorax Apocalypse supplement game book is actually pretty decent by comparison - it represents the Black Legion as threatening and competent, causing considerable damage and leaving having acquired their primary target before the Imperium can bring its full weight to bare, but the novel version just turns that entirely on its head.

One of the main problems is that Abaddon is often written as a sort of 'Darth Vader' figure, killing off subordinates who 'fail' him left and right, whether the failure was actually their fault or not. At times, this has even leaked into game rules - Abaddon in BFG provides rerolls to his fleets' ships, but actually fires on them himself if they fail the second roll.

That works for Darth Vader because he works for a galaxy spanning empire with limitless resources, and the subordinates under his command are nameless, faceless, and totally expendible. In the 40k universe, however, that's the Imperium, that isn't the Chaos Legions. The Chaos Legions are the rebellion - hopelessly outmatched in manpower and resources, attacking primarily in daring lightning raids to cause as much damage and sow as much dissent as possible, and then escaping before the lumbering behemoth of their enemy's war machine can bring its full power to bare. Chaos Space Marines are not expendable - warp exposure corrupts gene seed over time, forcing traitor legions to steal loyalist seed or corrupt loyalist marines to recruit. Heresy era marines are even more rare - they aren't making any more of those. When some of the less thoughtful 40k writers have Abaddon throwing chaos marines at imperial lines like star wars storm troopers, showing similar degrees of incompetence, and then have Abaddon murder his own captains for it, it makes the whole faction out to be a joke.

So... yeah. There's a lot of really lousy Black Legion fiction floating around, and right now, not so much for good stuff.

ADB's book is due out this year though, and that should hopefully mark a turning point in how the Legion is portrayed.

E-short Honour Among Fiends. Here is a link to Black Library:

http://www.blacklibrary.com/all-products/honour-among-fiends-ebook.html

I'm not sure how well it really captures the feel of the Legion as a whole. The main character in this story has grown weary of countless centuries of battle, while the Black Legion as a whole is the most dedicated to the Long War. Still a fantastic read, though, which portrays the nature of Chaos Marines, in particular of Heresy veterans still active in the modern setting, extremely well - the ancient hatreds, the mutations. It's a very good short story, and I strongly recommend it in general.

Well B&C are an excellent website. There is a website that only cover Chaos(all CSM):

http://s1.zetaboards.com/New_Badab/index/

New Badab is a ghost town. The most recent post on the entire forum was from March, and several of its subforums haven't seen activity this year. It would be nice to have an active chaos marine focused 40k community forum, and there used to be several (I fondly remember a Black Legion specific forum that that I used to hang out at), but all the ones I know of sort of dried up in the years following the 4e codex's release.

Aaron Dembski Bowden has a new novel due for release in the next few month - Talons of Hours, which will be around the Black legion & how they where made. Sadly can not copy & paste a link on the forum while I'm on the PC (this is the only forum happen), but if you check out ADB blog & there is a topic talking about the novel

I am really looking forward to this novel & the art work really cool.

There also the Black Legion supplement from the Games Workshop website which has a lot of great background, talk about how they work, how it all started & talk about the Black Crusade which Abaddon has led. Gaming wise this also allow you Chosen as your troop chose & you get different Chaos artefacts for your Chaos commander

As mentioned above, I would second these suggestions.

There also Pandorx novel by Black Library. It not to focuses on the Black Legion, it more from the Imperial side of things - Guards, Dark Angels & Grey Knights while they battle against the Black Legions led by Abaddon. I found Pandorx to be a good novel, we see the Black Legion master of there fleet, how Abaddon trolling Huron, basicly saying he will never let Huron go onto any of his ships let alone led them, unless he willing to join the Black Legion, swear oaths.

That's all fine and good... until we see that master of the fleet abandon his oaths to the black and try to join huron because successfully holding back a superior imperial navy fleet for several weeks, almost destroying them before being beaten back by the arrival of unexpected and significantly superior Imperial reinforcements, is apparently the sort of 'failure' that he knows Abaddon would kill him for.

See what I mean about making Abaddon and the Black Legion look like idiots? By any sane measure the Master of Fleet had performed brilliantly, but 'failing' to win impossible battles is enough for Abaddon to murder his best men, and the Legion's discipline is apparently so weak that they break their oaths at the first sign of trouble. How is a Legion that operates that way any threat at all? We have an Abaddon who boastfully tells Huron he isn't allowed on Abaddon's ships unless he swears fealty, and by the end Abaddon's forces need to rely on Huron's aid to escape on his ships with their tails between their legs, having been totally routed by a single space marine chapter plus a handful of grey knights.

And then you have the chaos marines themselves portrayed as incompetent. An entire squad of plague marines taken down in melee by a couple catachans. 'Hordes' of berzerkers throwing themselves at Dark Angel gunlines and being scythed down by bolter fire before they can touch them. Loyalist marines slaughtering dozens of their chaos counterparts with few to no losses in return. These aren't the warrior kings of the dark gods, they're assembly line mooks, card board cut outs for the heroes to knock over like dominoes. Again, it's 40k writers treating chaos marines like Storm Troopers, and Abaddon like Darth Vader, and it just doesn't work.

You should also check out Malisteen topic - Black like my soul, his army log for his Black Legion force which has really great conversion work

Aw, shucks. Thanks. Coming from you, with your incredible Iron Warriors army & thread, that means a lot. Sadly, I don't have too much painted yet, but it's coming along. Link's in my sig.

[Vesper]

There are also a few old novels about the Gothic War. Don't know how much they talk about the Black Legion, but I remember a great description of Abaddon and his Terminator circle walking through the masses of slaves in the Planet Killer that was published in White Dwarf a bajillion eons ago.

[Leif Bearclaw]

There are also a few old novels about the Gothic War. Don't know how much they talk about the Black Legion, but I remember a great description of Abaddon and his Terminator circle walking through the masses of slaves in the Planet Killer that was published in White Dwarf a bajillion eons ago.

If you mean Execution Hour and Shadow Point, the BL only appear in one scence, on the Planet Killer and it's only Abby and his termies. It's basically Abby stating how he's trolling the Imperials with the Planet Killer, picking targets at random  so they won't know what's going on when he hits the Blackstones.

 

They're a good couple of reads though, the Imperial Navy doesn't get much screen time as a matter of course, so it's a nice change.

[Vesper]

That's what I had in mind ! Good catch. And not surprised about the fact that it's not on the Black Legion at all.

[Sception]

Back in the ooolden days of Rogue Trader, the Black Legion was the smallest of the surviving chaos marine forces, operating out of a dust cloud outside of the Eye (which has subsequently been retconned to inside the Eye). They were notable for their use of Apothacaries, having more (proportionally speaking) than the other chaos legions and affording them higher status. You'll note that this is a direct product of an Abaddon who could recognize his weakness in numbers, both against the Imperium and against the other Chaos Legions.

Rogue Trader fluff, if you can find it, can still be read as reflecting the character and nature of the Black Legion shortly after its founding, when it was a tiny force of super elites rebuilding their strength and reputation.

The White Dwarf Index Astartes article described modern Black Legion tactics and organization. The Legion overall is very diverse - Abaddon doesn't care how his various captains organize their commands so long as they get the job done - but there are overall patterns that filter down from Abaddon's own preferences in battle, as other lords within the legion attempt to emulate his successes.

For one, they still use the Speartip Assault for which their forbears the Sons of Horus were known - surgical strikes against enemy command structures using teleporting terminators, drop pods, and landing craft. This is still how the elite core of Sons of Horus vets, Abaddon and his personal retinue included, prefer to operate.

However, as the Black Legion has grown large and engaged in progressively larger and more protracted campaigns against the Imperium, they've also developed methods for larger scale ground incursions, which are typically supplemented by the Speartip tactics mentioned above. These tactics are typically characterized by waves of cultists, feral chaos warriors, and conjured daemons intended to wear down the enemy's mental reserves and ammunition stockpiles, before a sudden large offensive by Legion Astartes, supported by mobile siege artillery. Once they form a breach in enemy fortifications they swiftly spread out overcome the enemy, then take time to refortify the ground they've taken while pressuring the next enemy stronghold with expendible cultists and daemons again.

In this way Black Legion ground forces tend to advance in staggered waves, taking ground then moving forward in stages, rather than the World Eater approach which might see chaos marines attacking continually, making huge initial advances but eventually expending their strength, or the Iron Warriors approach, which might see chaos marines crushing an enemy stronghold, leveling it completely to the ground, then rebuilding it to be far more powerful than it was to begin with - an awesome display of chaos power, and making the land very, very difficult and costly to retake once overpowering Imperial military reserves can be brought to bare, but regardless still resulting in an incursion that has bogged down around a single fortified area rather than pressing on, and that far out-lasts its welcome, as the chaos marines are still there once the Imperial reserves arrive to cut off their escape.

The White Dwarf article (a white dwarf article?  Maybe it was a different one, about defilers specifically?) specifically mentioned Defilers as being commissioned by Abaddon and designed to his personal specifications as a machine capable of supporting both the Astartes advance - as a mobile siege weapon platform - and the subsequent fortification & regrouping stage - in which it can immediately serve as a defensive turret on the battlements while the Legion smiths set to work repairing and overriding the targeting specifications of the fortification's own artillery.


Do you notice something about all of the strategic bits mentioned so far? The respect afforded to Apothecaries in the early Black Legion, the Surgical Strike against the enemy command structure meant to end a campaign before it even starts, the staggered assault & regroup stages of Black Legion ground assaults with waves of feral cultists and summoned daemons to deplete enemy reserves before the traitor astartes' own assaults?

That's right. They're all designed to maximize the impact of Abaddon's Chaos Marine forces while minimizing their losses in return. Because the Black Legion is not the Empire from star wars - again, that's the Imperium. Chaos marines, when written well, are powerful elite shock troops, not expendable fodder. While Abaddon is certainly willing to sacrifice his soldiers where necessary to achieve his goals, they are not easily replaced. Writers must never forget that one of Abaddon's most important goals is to gather a military force large enough to challenge Terra itself, and that will never happen if he is constantly squandering the chaos marine forces at his command. When the Black Legion needs bullet fodder, that's what cultists and daemons are for, especially Daemons - which actually are totally expendable hordes of faceless soldiers, limitless in supply.

When Abaddon and the Black Legion are being written at their best, that's how it works - Abaddon doesn't frivolously waste the lives of his chaos marines because he has so many fighting for him, rather the Black Legion is the largest organized force of Chaos Marines specifically because he takes pains not to waste the resources he has worked so hard for so long to acquire.

[Lord Lee]

Thanks Guys

 

It should be good to see what ADB does in the novel, I have read a few of his other novels and found them to be very good.

 

I have started reading the "Black like my soul" thread.

 

Thanks again

 

Lord Lee

[Clone]

There's a short excerpt from Talon of Horus called Champion of Chaos on the black library site. It's about Abaddon and his inner circle and is pretty good. Then there's a preview of Talon of Horus in Renegades of the Dark Millennium but you cannot download that as an ebook and I'm not sure if you can even order it from BL anymore.

 

Of course the must needed black legion fluff resource is the black legion supplement.

[Iron-Daemon Forge]

There's a short excerpt from Talon of Horus called Champion of Chaos on the black library site. It's about Abaddon and his inner circle and is pretty good. Then there's a preview of Talon of Horus in Renegades of the Dark Millennium but you cannot download that as an ebook and I'm not sure if you can even order it from BL anymore.

 

Of course the must needed black legion fluff resource is the black legion supplement.

 

You can still by Renegades of the Dark Millennium over on the Black Library web site

http://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-40000/renegades-of-the-dark-millennium.html

 

It is great & I've enjoy the short stories, I mainly bought it for Warsmith Honsou short story & the Black Legion story by Aaron.

 

Also here a link to Talon of Horus

https://aarondembskibowden.wordpress.com/tag/the-talon-of-horus/

[Clone]

Renegades was a good book. I loved the story about the Emperors Child champion and it was nice to see the Scythes of the Emperor, though had to double check that they are still a loyalist chapter when I saw them in the contents page.

[Sception]

@Lee:

Sith'ari's 'Gate Aflame' Black Legion plog is definitely worth your time to look though. He's got a ton more painted models than I do, and uses a cleaner, less busy pain scheme that looks very good.

Subtle Discord's 'Legion Rising' blog, which I often forget about because it's over on the painting & modeling subforum (where such things technically belong) instead of here in the chaos subforum, is probably the most impressive Black Legion painting log on the B&C, with some amazing conversion, including scratch built trim on his vehicles - which, holy , he Actually Sells, oh my god - and extremely useful painting tutorials. His color scheme is cool, clean, and menacing, and his edge highlighting is probably the best I've seen.

No, but seriously, Discord sells kits of his vehicle trim, extra armor, and other accessories? HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS?!

EDIT: Unfortunately, it seems all his stuff is out of stock due to some sort of production issue. Hopefully he starts selling again soon, I'd love to pick up some of his kits.

[Clone]

Bejesus those are some nice kits. That is what a chaos vehicle should look like!

 

I fancy getting one of the predators and converting the main turret into a plasma destroyer.

[incinerator950]

Yeah. One of the reasons I never liked Abby was how the more modern fluff paints the BL as Evil Ultramarines with evil mustaches with Abbadon not being able to be trusted from consequently murdering his own officers to abandoning his allies, on a frequent scale.

[Vesper]

There's a short excerpt from Talon of Horus called Champion of Chaos on the black library site. It's about Abaddon and his inner circle and is pretty good. Then there's a preview of Talon of Horus in Renegades of the Dark Millennium but you cannot download that as an ebook and I'm not sure if you can even order it from BL anymore.

 

Of course the must needed black legion fluff resource is the black legion supplement.

 

I don't think it's an exerpt, it's not related to the Talon of Horus, as far as I know.