Each Legion's Purpose

[Olis]

Perturabo as the siege specialist.

 

Dorn as the architect/fortress builder.

 

These two in particular have overlapping purposes - you could easily get away with swapping the two around on that list and few would be any the wiser. Both did those things and both contributed to a heated rivalry because of it. To figure out which of the two had what particular purpose, you need to look deeper into who did what. 

 

The Imperial Fists were adept at void warfare. The Iron Warriors had itself garrisoned piecemeal throughout the entire galaxy. The Fists preferred shield-bearing units (Phalanx Warders, Templar Brethren, regular Breachers), while the Iron Warriors, for example, were the birthplace of the heavy weapon Havocs (known then as Iron Havocs). Both were methodical, but in different ways - the Seventh were stubborn and loathed giving ground, they were often tasked with taking on enemy breakthroughs and shoring up defences. The Fourth, however, were mathematical in their precision. They were the ones that took ground by numbers, not passion. They calculated trajectories, casualty figures and erected fortifications with equal skill. Whereas, as Marshal Rohr said, the Fists were the Emperor's shield, the Iron Warriors were his sledgehammer.

 

Both were good at sieges. Both built fortifications. But the emphasis on defence lay with the Imperial Fists, and attack with the Iron Warriors. Yes, both legions had units and tactics that defied the overall synergy of their brothers but when we talk about the purpose of each legion, we don't look at the outliers for this information. Those outliers provide greater depth. The Fists could be less interesting without the void warfare aspect. Where would the Iron Warriors be without the bitterness and resentment for being given monotonous tasks like garrisoning?

[Black_out]

*snip*

I'm out of likes for the day but be rest assured you will receive one for this post.

 

The point you make is exceptional though. None of these roles is cut and dry and especially in the case of IF and IW with so many interchangeable attributes.

 

That's why I love this topic!

Edited October 29, 2015 by Black_out

[Nomus Sardauk]

Well to a point. I would argue that anyone calling Angron the Emperor's diplomat is pretty wrong.

Angron: When I got to them, we got into aggressive negotiations.

 

Horus: "Aggressive negotiations?" What's that?

 

Angron: Ah, well, negotiations with a Chainaxe.

[Corswain]

I'd actually wager that the First, and even the Lion, are supposed to be the Emperor's will and last defense.

Now here me out, because I don't mean it in a special snowflake way, or to hold it above anyone else. I understand that Dorn is the Emperor's literal last line of defense, but the First is willing to hang everything on the line for Big E. In UE, the Lion is willing to trade the entire imperium and all its holdings just to keep the Emperor safe and in control. The Imperium may burn, but it also may be rebuilt with the Emperor in control. This is where Bobby G and Lion dissent the most because Bobby G wants to keep the Imperium, but the Lion wants to keep the Emperor.

The First Legion has also served since the inception of the astartes legion project and done things likely kept between only them and the Emperor, binding them to him. This is also why I think we will see the Lion/1st and Russ/Vlyka become the dynamic duo at the end of the heresy because they would damn every binding just to keep the Emperor alive and ruling.

We also have a story (cant remember which at the moment) where the Lion believes that running to defend the Emperor is less important than protecting the actual Empire. Too many authors writing the same character differently.

I see your point and I agree to a certain extent. Individual interpretation, i guess.

Edited October 29, 2015 by Corswain

[Calas Typhon]

 

 

*snip*

I'm out of likes for the day but be rest assured you will receive one for this post.

 

The point you make is exceptional though. None of these roles is cut and dry and especially in the case of IF and IW with so many interchangeable attributes.

 

That's why I love this topic!

 

Well, none of them are cut and dry apart from perhaps Ferrus Manus I would say as it is quite clear he was not exactly shaped from the homeworld he was born on as Angel Exterminatus is to suggest in Theogonies two. Ferrus showed the traits in that piece of work from the breaking of the capsule, which by the way I would argue is the best piece to date Black Library have brought out relating to the Primarchs.

 

I think Ferrus Manus knew his role all along, which was manufactured and set by the Emperor. Which sets him aside from the other brothers, because lets be straight, he had to have something  to attribute to him before he earned his Phonecian Crewcut!

Edited October 29, 2015 by Cthonia

[Marshal Rohr]

My List

 

Loyalist:

Dark Angels - Emperor's Knights and Regents of the West

White Scars - Emperor's Warhawks

Space Wolves - Emperor's Guardians

Imperial Fists - Emperor's Shield and Regents of Terra

Blood Angels - Emperor's Angels

Iron Hands - Emperor's Hammer

Ultramarines - Emperor's Host Regents of the East

Raven Guard - Emperor's Huntsmen

Salamanders - Emperor's Fists

 

Traitor:

Emperor's Children - Emperor's Nobles

Iron Warriors - Emperor's Storm Troopers

Night Lords - Emperor's Arbiters

World Eaters - Emperor's Executioners

Death Guard - Emperor's Immortals

Thousand Sons - Emperor's Diplomats

Sons of Horus - Emperor's Spear

Word Bearers - Emperor's Exterminators

Alpha Legion - Emperor's SOF

Edited October 29, 2015 by Marshal Rohr

[depthcharge12]

 

I'd actually wager that the First, and even the Lion, are supposed to be the Emperor's will and last defense.

Now here me out, because I don't mean it in a special snowflake way, or to hold it above anyone else. I understand that Dorn is the Emperor's literal last line of defense, but the First is willing to hang everything on the line for Big E. In UE, the Lion is willing to trade the entire imperium and all its holdings just to keep the Emperor safe and in control. The Imperium may burn, but it also may be rebuilt with the Emperor in control. This is where Bobby G and Lion dissent the most because Bobby G wants to keep the Imperium, but the Lion wants to keep the Emperor.

The First Legion has also served since the inception of the astartes legion project and done things likely kept between only them and the Emperor, binding them to him. This is also why I think we will see the Lion/1st and Russ/Vlyka become the dynamic duo at the end of the heresy because they would damn every binding just to keep the Emperor alive and ruling.

We also have a story (cant remember which at the moment) where the Lion believes that running to defend the Emperor is less important than protecting the actual Empire. Too many authors writing the same character differently.

I see your point and I agree to a certain extent. Individual interpretation, i guess.

Lol I preferred to go with Dan Abnett's and the old lore interpretation. It usually stands the face of time and criticism of the community :P

 

Rn, I'm banking on Bligh as I can't put much faith in Gav Thorpe and his ghost writing mechanical hamster.

[GhostMalone]

My answer to every question when it comes to a "role"

 

First kill all xenos

Then kill trouble makers

Then kill anything that moves

[Olis]

My answer to every question when it comes to a "role"

 

First kill all xenos

Then kill trouble makers

Then kill anything that moves

 

I wouldn't want to be cuckoo clock near a space marine on his down time, then... 

[GhostMalone]

It's more appropriate then he's a blacksmith or a gladiator there child soldiers

[TennisBall]

I like the interpretation that pairs the legions because the traitors and non-traitors have a lot of parallels.

Ultramarines - Word Bearers

Imperial Fists - Iron Warriors

Raven Guard - Night Lords

Iron Hands - Death Guard

Blood Angels - Emperor's Children

Dark Angels - Sons of Horus

[Remus Ventanus.]

I think lorgar and guillimans role are very similar. They are culture builders. Culture preservers. They just do it in different ways

[Kriegriss]

I agree with the Lorgar/Gilliman parallel the difference being one is secular and one is not

[Trevak Dal]

Too many conflicting examples. One book says yes, another no. Maybe its all the lies of the Chaos Gods.

From memory Magnus was meant to be imprisoned on the golden throne.

I do think FW are giving the Legions some pretty defined roles, the suitability of their Primarchs to those roles is questionable.

 

Ultimately, it all happened so long ago in the cannon that it is irrelevant.  It's like Star Wars the Old Republic, or stuff about the Forerunners and Ancient humans in Halo-it's interesting and all...but irrelevant.

 

Something I don't understand:

 

Why would you waste a tactical asset like astartes on garrisoning anything?  Send in regular humans to play around in the dirt and "Hurry up and wait" and spend the elite, special forces guys as...well elite special forces guys.

 

"Eeegh, but that world is too dangerous for normal humans and has some mystery maguffin that is vital blah blah blah" then blow it the :cuss up and deny any potential enemy from using whatever assets are so super vital from that planet.

Edited October 29, 2015 by Trevak Dal

[GhostMalone]

https://flic.kr/p/zr48qz Edited October 29, 2015 by Kurama

[Corswain]

First and foremost, they are all generals and I think that this was their primary purpose.

Secondary purpose and Im including their legions because I dont think you can have one without the other:

The Lion - general, large scale, big theatre warfare. The big picture military man.

Fulgrim - Cultural ambassador, patron of the arts. Whats an Empire without culture.

Perturabo - Seige Breaker, builder, architect

The Khan - frontiersman, pushing imperial boundaries, explorer

Russ - the executioner, the sin eater, the guy who does what needs to be done

Dorn - defender, police force

Curze - the hand of justice

Sanguinius - the figurehead

Ferus Manus - the science wizard, reclaim dark age tech and push forward

Angron - xenos hunter/purger

Guilliman - the politician, head of state, administrator

Mortarion - stumped on this one, freak people out i guess

Magnus - the beacon, strapped into the Golden Throne

Horus - military figurehead, the tip of the spear, the leader on the front lines

Lorgar - demagogue

Vulkan - Imperial conscience, judge

Corax - Spy, CIAesque

Alpharius - intelligence, Internal affairs, who watches the watchmen?

 

Note: my thoughts and interpretation. Not intended to upset/insult anyone. Pretty much all of these guys are meant to be brilliant at everything they do so are all interchangeable really.

Edited October 29, 2015 by Corswain

[Skalpynock]

I think that, to get a better picture of what the Emperor intended for the Primarchs and their legions, we should look at the legions before their sires were returned. The homeorlds shaped the primarchs as much as their gene-code. One of the most obvious examples of this would be the IV^th. The Corpse Grinders were no siege masters. They were generalists who upheld the Principia Bellicosa unquestioningly, sticking to the same strategy until either the enemy or their own troops were defeated. Likewise of the Dusk Raiders (though they were shaped by the stock from which they were founded, inducing more confusion in regards of what He originally wanted to do with them). The Iconoclasts are probably one of the most straightfoward.

And that's not even talking of the Trefoil.

[Arac]

I think this is a nice discussion. But in all seriousness: It is pointless. The fluff for 30k was created for the sole purpose to be a Background for 40k. It first wasn't really deep. And when it was fleshed out over the years so many "mistakes" were made. I don't think they had a unified plan to define if the Legion had a Special purpose or the primarch had a Special purpose or both. So when BL stocked up on so many different authors there was no Guideline. There was no compliance officer Holding the strings together. The single author was of course just interested in making his book work. Why would the author care about the big Picture? So in the end there are too many "happy accidents" here for me. Some examples.

 

XVII: Were the iconoclasts during unification. So the purpose was to destroy cultures that were contradictory to the imperial truth. Lorgar on the other Hand landed on a planet that is living in a proto-chaos culture, worshipping the chaos Pantheon without knowing it. And when the old Legion is reunited with their primarch everything Comes along real smooth. Of course. How lucky. 

 

VIII: They were murders before and after Curze. The Legion because they recruited criminals for it. Curse because he grew up on a megahive planet full of criminals and was forced to become batman. How lucky.

 

XV: High psycher percentage before and after Magnus. How lucky.

 

 

I hope you get where I am going. This is not to ridicule this discussion. Or to rant about the BL. It is just my Point of view. Just my explaination why we will never get a unified theory about "purpose of legions / primarchs"

[Ratboy1664]

There are a few instances of where legion and Primarch roles are alluded to.

 

The Night Lords were the Emperors fear. On numerous occasions it is mentioned that entire insurrections folded at the mere mention of the Night Lords being dispatched to sort out the mess. I have always thought of the Night Lords as being like the SS (not Gestapo) in WW2, feared as much for their atrocities behind the front line as their lethality on it, the terrifying face of an Emperors wrath.

 

The Imperial Fists are clearly the Emperors shield.

 

And I think the case for the Space Wolves being the Emperors executioners is pretty strong too.

 

As for the rest, whilst they all had different methods/strengths I don't feel that they had any specific role handed them by the Emperor.

[Calas Typhon]

I think this is a nice discussion. But in all seriousness: It is pointless. The fluff for 30k was created for the sole purpose to be a Background for 40k. It first wasn't really deep. And when it was fleshed out over the years so many "mistakes" were made. I don't think they had a unified plan to define if the Legion had a Special purpose or the primarch had a Special purpose or both. So when BL stocked up on so many different authors there was no Guideline. There was no compliance officer Holding the strings together. The single author was of course just interested in making his book work. Why would the author care about the big Picture? So in the end there are too many "happy accidents" here for me. Some examples.

 

XVII: Were the iconoclasts during unification. So the purpose was to destroy cultures that were contradictory to the imperial truth. Lorgar on the other Hand landed on a planet that is living in a proto-chaos culture, worshipping the chaos Pantheon without knowing it. And when the old Legion is reunited with their primarch everything Comes along real smooth. Of course. How lucky. 

 

VIII: They were murders before and after Curze. The Legion because they recruited criminals for it. Curse because he grew up on a megahive planet full of criminals and was forced to become batman. How lucky.

 

XV: High psycher percentage before and after Magnus. How lucky.

 

 

I hope you get where I am going. This is not to ridicule this discussion. Or to rant about the BL. It is just my Point of view. Just my explaination why we will never get a unified theory about "purpose of legions / primarchs"

 

The Iconoclasts were simply heralds more than destroyers of culture, only once a people decided to turn away from the Imperial Truth or Attack the Chaplains, would the XVII destroy and burn everything and force Imperial Truth. As for Lorgar, he was clearly a follower of the Emperor ever since he landed, after all he did remove the religion already in place, remember that giant Jihad of sorts?

 

They continued to be heralds, however to venerate the Emperor rather than Promote the Imperial Truth. It is fairly set that although they changed their focus, they were still Heralds.

 

As for the 1K sonsIt was not really lucky, the Emperor used the Primarchs as a template for the Legions in creation, so by nature it is not surprising The 1K sons were heavy Psyker based, or another example being the Iron Warriors were so determined in their duties, and so similar to their Primarch.

 

All in all, I am sure it is not coincidence, happy accident or lucky that the Legions were so similar to their Primarchs.

Edited October 29, 2015 by Cthonia

[Olis]

So in the end there are too many "happy accidents" here for me. Some examples.

 

There's no "happy accidents" if the whole thing is overseen by the same hand that created them all. The Emperor engineered both the Primarch and the Astartes projects, effectively heading both with the aid of Terra's best and brightest (and possibly maddest, if the old tropes are close to being right). He used data from the Primarch project to make the Astartes project and chose where they got their recruits from. Primarch DNA was even used as a base for each legion, providing the basis for each's psyche and physiology. How exactly you can sit, tut and roll your eyes with the information blatantly saying this is all no coincidence is beyond me.   

Edited October 29, 2015 by Olis

[Legatus]

There is a marked difference between how the older sources (including the Index Astartes articles) described the development of the Legion specialisations compared to how it is described in the Forgeworld Horus Heresy books. In the older material, the Primarchs were given command over a Legion created from their genetic material, and they were then shaping the Legion and it's doctrines and traits according to how they had grown up and developed. The Alpha Legion was specifically described as being heavily restructured and retrained according to the tactical precepts of Alpharius. The Night Lords were turned into ruthless sadists due to an influx of criminal new elements from Nostramo. Guilliman structured his Legion according to what he had learned growing up on Macragge, and he was notably interested to observe the approaches of others and evaluate them for himself.

 

But then Forgeworld took a stab at the Horus Heresy era and the descriptions of the Legions. Suddenly the Alpha Legion had been a super secret special ops type army all along, even before Alpharius took over. The Night Lords were made up largely of criminal/questionable elements right from the beginning, even without the influence of a warp-touched Primarch and criminal stock from Nostramo. The Ultramarines were already testing out the doctrines of the other Legions and were trying to minimise casualties and collateral damage even before a statesmanly educated Primarch took over.

 

In the older material, most of the peculiar traits were the result of the Primarch's homeworld's culture or his upbringing, which he then introduced to the Legion once he took over. In the Forgeworld material, somehow all of those tendencies were already present and "built into" the Legion from the very beginning.

[Corswain]

I think the change was happening before FW but they really cemented it. For the best in my opinion.

[GreyCrow]

The Emperor did intend a role for each Primarch, or else why would he have made them so different for one another ? ;) Whether that role is what they ended up doing due to being raised away from the Emperor's Primarch College is a different thing altogether.

 

He genetically engineered them, and I'm sure he wouldn't have infused Russ with the Canis Helix without a specific reason. Same goes for Magnus and his special psychic powers. I don't know whether Sanguinius' Wings are the result of a Chaos mutation, but they're damn reminiscent of the Imperial Eagle as a symbol :p

 

They do all share the same enhanced senses, analytical superiority and built in knowledge and culture. But they all have their specialties and these are probably originating from the genetic manipulations of the Big E.

Example : If Guilliman had landed on Deliverance/Lycaeus, I'm not sure he would have led the Rebellion in the same way as Corax did. Heck, he might not even have led a Rebellion but might have ascended to a dominant position within the prison's leadership trying to change things from inside the system.

[Arac]

Ok maybe I didn't quite make my Point very clear before. Maybe I didn't use good examples. What I just wanted to say is because there was never an unified Intention behind the "purpose fluff", you won't ever know which one it was:

 

- Emperor had a purpose A for the Legion which is conform with purpose A for the primarch = match

- Emperor had a purpose A for the Legion, but (because of his home planet etc.) the Primarch took role B later on = difference

 

We have examples for both: matches and differences. Sometimes there is solid fluff for the match/difference. Sometimes there are contradictions.
I don't blame them for it because I know back in the 80s and early 90s the 30k fluff was just Background for 40k. And more often than not they wanted a chapter/Legion to fulfill a battlefield role and retconned the Background of the Legion/primarch to back the battlefield role up, while sometimes creating contradictions.

Edited October 29, 2015 by Arac