Known Companies during the Horus Heresy?

[Grim Dog Studios]

Hi all, 

 

Trying to write some fluff for my company but can't settle on what company it should be. Is there a list anywhere that states what companies have already appeared in the fluff just so I know to rule those out for my own? Had a bit of a search but couldn't find anything unfortunately! 

 

Cheers, James

[Legatus]

I assume you meant "Chapter", not "Company"?

 

The classic known 2nd Founding Chapters (i.e. that had originally been part of the Ultramarines Legion but were then split off) are the Eagle Warriors, Silver Eagles, Doom Eagles, Novamarines, Patriarchs of Ulixis, White Consuls, Black Consuls, Libators, Inceptors, Praetors of Orpheus, Genesis and Aurora.

 

I think the Genesis and Aurora Chapter have already been hinted at in the BL series and the FW background description of the Legion.

[Grim Dog Studios]

Sorry if I wasn't very clear! I meant the Companies that have already been written about in the Horus Heresy and their captains etc. Such as the 4th company being lead by Remus Ventanus, and Teus Sullus leading the 39th company.

I'd just like to know what companies have been done in the fluff, so I can choose a company that hasn't had anything designated to it yet in the fluff so I can make it my own. If that makes sense?

[Legatus]

Ah, sorry, I didn't realize it was about a 30K army.

 

According to HH5: 'Tempest' page 39 the Chapters 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22 and 23 were present at Calth when the Word Bearers attacked. That leaves the 7th, 10th, 19th, 24th and 25th Chapter being occipied elsewhere. In 'Tempest' the Ultramarines suffered horrendous casualties at Calth, which means that any company of the Chapters that were present was potentially wiped out entirely.

 

The 4th, 17th, 18th, and 23rd Chapter are described as being specialised in armoured warfare.

 

The 20th and 21st Chapter are described as specialised in void warfare.

 

The 22nd Chapter includes a larger number of destroyers.

 

 

I think in 'The Primarchs - Guilliman' it mentions one or two Destroyer Companies by number, something in the 200s area, so it might be some Companies from the aforementioned 22nd Chapter.

[Marshal Rohr]

Legatus, do you have the old Epic Space Marine white dwarf army list? I got it this summer and the background is kind of cool for explaining the heresy revisions in Tempest.

[Legatus]

I don't think I do. Which issue of White Dwarf did it come in?

[Marshal Rohr]

Lemme find it for you when I get home tonight. 120's I believe. It's all thoroughly outdated, but it's just cool for history and reference.

[Lords of Preyspire]

I have been keeping an eye out for anything to do with the 210th - 219th companies that make up the 21st chapter 'The Hawks'. I don't think there is anything apart from snippets from Tempest.

 

It is implied that the Hawks are connected (even if it's just spiritually) to the Hawk Lords in 40k. So that's where it started really. Using the snippets that I was already using for my 40k hawk lords and moving it over to influence my heresy army.

 

I guess if you know what your chosen company becomes (I say loosely) then it could be a starting point.

[Legatus]

Technically the 211th to 220th Company would make up the 22nd Chapter, while the 21st Chapter would be the Companies 201 through 210, but the same mistake is made throughout 'Tempest' and is repeated in 'The Primarchs - Guilliman', even though it is done correctly at other instances in 'Tempest'.

 

The 1st Chapter would be the Companies 1 through 10, the 2nd Chapter would be 11 through 20, the 10th Chapter would be 91 through 100, the 20th Chapter 191 through 200, etc.

 

This is done correctly in 'Tempest' on page 236, where Captain Ventanus is identified as belonging to the 4th Company of the 1st Chapter.

 

However, on page 88 'Tempest' presents a Marine from the 112th Company of the 11th Chapter (it should be the 12th) and on page 89 a Marine from the 97th Company of the 9th Chapter (it should be the 10th). It is the same as saying that 1992 was in the 19th century.

 

But on the other hand on page 95 there is a Marine from the "2nd Destroyer Company" from 22nd Chapter, so maybe the entire system isn't a progressively numbered 25 Chapters with 250 Companies after all?

 

But then the entire idea of the Ultramarines numbering the Companies progressively is a bit odd to begin with. In 'Betrayal' the generic Legion structure gives the example of a Legion's 4th Chapter containing Companies 1 though 10, so each Chapter's Companies are numbered as 1 through 10, and not numbered progressively throughout the entire Legion (similar to how each 40K Chapter's Company has the squads 1 through 10, instead of 3rd Company having the squads 21 through 30), so why would the Ultramarines Legion break with that tradition? But then the entire design concept behind the BL/FW description of the Ultramarines Legion is not based on "what would makes lore sense" but on "how can we make them different". If lore accuracy had been the main motivation, then the Ultramarines Legion would have 250 Chapters of 1,000, instead of 25 Chapters of 10,000. They would be organised very similar to modern day Chapters, and would have no special units (other than perhaps modern day tactical and devastator squads instead of the 30K variants).

[Lords of Preyspire]

Odd, yeah I took mine from one of the tempest pages. Hmmmm I was going to start painting company numbers on my models. I'll probably hold off

[Grim Dog Studios]

Thank you for the replies. It seems like 38th Company is free which is the one I was wanting to use as it is my football number!

 

I must agree on how odd it is how the company numbers relate to the chapters, I think it's down to a simple mistake somewhere with one person at GW not being able to count and not realising that companies 11 to 20 would make the first chapter in the way they have made it, and completely missing out where 1 to 10 would fit into the grand scheme of things!

[Legatus]

The 38th would belong to the 4th Chapter (or perhaps the 3rd, according to Forgeworld's predominant counting). In either case the Company was present at Calth.

 

If it belongs to the 4th Chapter, then it is part of the "Aurorans". That Chapter was known for its heavy use of armoured vehicles, with nearly five times the amount of armoured vehicles of other Chapters. Though the Chapter probably also had some regular "Battle Companies" as well.

 

Edit: If the designation of a Legion Chapter's Companies is similar to the Companies of the later founding Chapters, then the 38th Company would be specialised in assaults (comparable to the 8th Company of a contemporary Chapter). However, I don't think such a system of specialising companies is described anywhere in the Forgeworld material.

 

 

 

(The Aurorans are probably meant to hint at the later "Aurora Chapter" of the Second Founding. Of course the problem is that this 4th Chapter of the Legion consisted of 10,000 Marines, while the later Second Founding Chapter only consisted of 1,000 Marines, meaning that 9,000 Marines of the 4th "Aurorans" Chapter would not become part of the later "Aurora Chapter". How much confusion could have been avoided by retaining the 10,000 string Legions of the original lore, or just going with 250 Chapters of 1,000 instead of 25 Chapters of 10,000...)

[Lords of Preyspire]

I guess it depends if what number of aurorians get killed during the heresy.

[apologist]

 

 

But on the other hand on page 95 there is a Marine from the "2nd Destroyer Company" from 22nd Chapter, so maybe the entire system isn't a progressively numbered 25 Chapters with 250 Companies after all?

 

On the basis that this gives greatest freedom to the individual collector, I think assuming its not progressive is a sensible idea. It doesn't chime well for 'neatness', but I like the sense of scale it suggests – even the best-organised Legion and Primarch have to make some concessions to practicality while fighting an ongoing two-century Crusade.

 

As units are formed, lost, found, combined etc., with no genuine central command, it's inevitable that ad-hoc field organisation exists. I like to think that the Ultramarines have a (doubtless complex and byzantine) system, and we're just not grasping it. :)

 

To get an idea of why inconsistenices might happen and be allowed to continue, consider the following: 

 

 

Soldiers of [the Royal Welch Fusiliers] regiment were distinguishable by the unique feature of the "flash", consisting of five overlapping black silk ribbons (seven inches long for soldiers and nine inches long for officers) on the back of the uniform jacket at neck level.This is a legacy of the days when it was normal for soldiers to wear pigtails. In 1808, this practice was discontinued but when the order was issued the RWF were serving in Nova Scotia and had not received the instruction when the regiment departed to join an expedition to the West Indies. In 1834 the officers of the 23rd Foot were finally granted permission by William IV to wear this non-regulation item as a distinction on the full dress uniform as "a peculiarity whereby to mark the dress of that distinguished regiment". This was extended to all ranks in 1900.

 

Multiply this by a galaxy-wide war, and you'd quickly see why there might be multiple companies with the same (or similar) names. Even beyond that, we're told that certain Chapters were specialised in different ways, so it's entirely possible an 'orphan' or extra Company might be created (or duplicated) between Chapters.

 

(For a fun few minutes, Google 'unusual militray traditions')

[Blitzjager]

the 6th, the 19th and 199th are also in the HH novels.

[Vodunius]

Lemme find it for you when I get home tonight. 120's I believe. It's all thoroughly outdated, but it's just cool for history and reference.

 

White Dwarf 126. 

 

What's most interesting about it isn't actually the list itself, but rather that the concept sketches in WD346 show that the original MkVII Ultramarine scheme in WD129 was actually intended to be used with said Heresy era list.. which is why to this day a Codex Scout company doesn't have a colour: because GW filed the serial numbers off a marking system created for a 9-company TO&E. 

[Kennyjapan]

A bit late to the party here but for the number of chapters and companies i always just went with the presumption that the 1st Chapter was double the size of the others, so companies 1 through to 19 were 1st Chapter, then 20-29 were 2nd Chapter and so on, which could be allowed by the fact that typically the 1st Chapter (or other legion equivalent) are the veterans and so not always uniformly organised like the rest of the Legion, and also Marius Gage is a beast so can deal with another 10 companies under his command =D... Mainly cause Gage is a beast

 

And for the Chapters on Calth there is a little leeway in my opinion for making a company or two emerge relatively unscathed despite the horrific losses (unless you choose the 111th and 112th or other companies explicitly stated as getting brutalised), as records and deployment information for the Ultramarines literally goes to the void during the Calth engagement, companies isolated without means of contacting other forces and away from Word Bearer forces could find themselves in Arcologies with little to no enemy resistance and emerge basically peaches and gravy. According to Tempest the exact number of XIII Legion deployed comes to 185,923. Of that number 119,422 are killed and another 28,392 will never be fit for active service again leaving the number of Combat able Ultramarines from the Calth conflict as 38,109 which is a tiny number for a legion of 250,000 admittedly but there are still enough survivors to sneak in a couple of companies of 1000 surviving the combat relatively intact due to luck.

 

For example i chose to do the 168th company before Tempest came out putting the entirety of the 16th Chapter on Calth, so in the fluff for my company i'm writing them in as being one of the companies deployed on a system fringe picket line, receiving a distress call from one of the neighbouring systems and upon orders of the Primarch taking a picnic there before rushing back to Calth with a report (as everyone at the time had Ork Fever over the possibility of an Ork counterattack on the mustering forces) just hours before the opening treachery, meaning that their departure records are lost amongst the chaos that occurs which accounts for the fact that even Ultramarine level meticulous records still believe the entirety of the 16th Chapter to be on Calth. And shortly after the Calth conflict simmers down to the underground war the company is 'presumably' lost to the warp (or just KIA, haven't decided which). As there are no records of their departure orders and only vague eyewitness accounts of them fighting in other systems, they were presumed to have been on Calth and lost to a man amongst the many engagements across the Veridia system and added to the list of the dead

 

Thats just my opinion =)

Kenny

[Seahawk]

For what it's worth, as pointed out there were some more references in Roboute Guilliman Lord of Ultramar.

 

- Chapter 22 = Nemesis Chapter

 

- Scouts were in the 166th and 223rd companies, though whether or not they were simply attached is not referenced.

 

- Within the Nemesis Chapter were the 1st and 2nd Destroyer companies, the last of their kind within the Ultramarines entirely, as Guilliman sought to phase them out completely.