First Legion size

[Azorius]

 

 

And most of "upper-quarter/large-size Legions" are Traitors. FW has to bring numerical balance between the Loyalists and the Traitors. The Dark and Blood Angels(and possibly the White Scars) would be perfect adjustment. And so far, each and every source is consistently ascertain the First is one of the largest and most powerful Legion, and their honour and conquest roll is almost peerless, even after the Xenocides. 

 

Why? Ignoring for a moment the arguable Traitor bias FW has, why do both sides need 'numerical balance'? Both sides take horrific casualties early in the Heresy anyway, so why insist on an arbitrary numerical balance in pre-war numbers, when none of those numbers would still be relevant by Heresy year 2?

 

 

Also, quarter doesn't always mean a 1/4th division of something. The Upper quarter may be the bracket for Legions over 150, with Legions rising into and falling out on a cyclical basis. Saudi Arabia's empty quarter isn't 1/4th of Saudi Arabia, urban centers with immigrant quarters aren't segregated into 4 sections, military housing is called quarters and can anything from a room, to a duplex, to a decent sized home. Reading quarter is uneccsarily reductive if you attach to it five specific Legions.

And I'd say the rest of the language used in the FW books is clearly numeric, and so it's entirely appropriate to apply the specific mathematical meaning of quarter, rather than derived geographic uses of the word. If you're right, and that's what FW meant, they did a very poor job of putting that across. They were talking numbers, so taking 'quarter' to meant an actual quarter, ie 1/4 is the only reasonable supposition.

 

 

Wrong. You misunderstand completely. What I mean is, 'numerical balance' before and after onset of the Heresy. During the Heresy, Loyalists almost always suffer extreme casualties and their overall loss is much more severe compared to the Traitors. So if numeral gap is already present, that would be only widen and already unfair numerical superiority of the Traitors would only be exacerbated with passage of time for sure. 

 

In fact, the Conquest is explicitly stating Traitors possess more than a quarter more Astartes due to heavy loss sustained by the Loyalist Legions on the Isstvan and other war zones, and if indeed the Loyalists number is *overly* smaller than Traitors from the beginning, then without doubt more than two thirds of Astartes will turn out as Traitors and Traitor elements will earn swift and decisive victory over Loyalist elements. 

 

Then, why you are illogically and unreasonably insisting the Loyalist Legions somehow have to be smaller than the Traitor ones? 

[Azorius]

And the Blood Angels...originally BL portrayed all of the Ninth rush to the Signus and Baal is empty, devoid of Astartes. So Malcador seriously considered to dismantle the Legion and distribute its supply to the other loyal Legions. 

 

However Forge World overhauled it, and now the Baal System boasts 8,000+ Astartes defenders, most of them are Blood Angel garrisons. Furthermore, many Legionaries never manage to arrive on the Signus due to turbulent Warp and other various factors and equally, if not more, numerous Legionaries are widely dispersed across the Galaxy as flotillas, garrison duties, Expeditionary fleets, and 'Lamentii guards', etc.

 

Well, let's say that is inspiring. 

[rendingon1+]

<Offtop>

What is Lamentii Guards?

[Azorius]

Well...frankly, almost nothing is known about them. 

 

FW Retribution's Legion summary section mentions them. And AFAIF, currently it is only known information about them. 

 

"Several thousand Legionaries never arrived there however, some serving as Lamentii honour guardians watching over silent battlefields wherever the Legion had shed its blood..."

 

Sadly, that is all, at least for now. 

[rendingon1+]

Thanks for the info Azorius.

[Col.hertford]

The dark angles are the favoured first Legion. They had better war material than other legions so it would stand to reason, better recruitment rights and the best equipment for administering the implantation process. there is nothing stated about inadequacies of their gene seed (as is stated for Thousand Sons, Space Wolves and Blood Angels) so implantation failure rate would not seem to be high.

 

I like the rough approach of FW, it fits with the setting. The warp is used for travel. The warp is unpredictable so forces could just disappear for large periods of time.

[Azorius]

Oh, Dark Angels gene seed is nigh-unrivaled, brother; it is free from any inadequacies and easy to implant, but also top meridian in itself. Only the First Legion's core sample could boast comparable quality of gene-seed against that of Ultramarines. 

 

So yeah, it has everything to rebuild its original strength and become a huge Legion again. Literally every factor indicates that route. Cleary, FW is arranging the background for it.

[Col.hertford]

That's good to know, but is that AoD or 40K data? Reading book v, I was left with the distinct impression that the ultramarines geneseed was very average.

[Azorius]

Wrong. Ultramarines gene seed quality - stability, purity, resilience etc. - is unquestionably superb. What 'average' is its implantation compatibility/success rate and that particular 'mediocrity' is more than compensated by sheer quality. 

 

Tempest is explicitly stating like the below; 

 

 

"The second was a latterly revealed aspect of their gene-seed. While the rates of gene-seed implantation success for the XIIIth Legion's zygote type were very close to the median level, it had proved to be in the highest resistance band during extensive replication - a meridian matched only by the 1st Legion's own core sample - suffering relatively little mutation or deviation in subsequent generations of harvested organs. This allowed the Legion to steadily expand its numbers, even without the stabilisation brought by a Primarch's own mature gene-code."

[Legatus]

In the Index Astartes articles the Emperor's Children gene-seed had also been described as "perhaps the most pure and stable of all the Legions", but that may not have made it into the Forgeworld book.

[depthcharge12]

In the Index Astartes articles the Emperor's Children gene-seed had also been described as "perhaps the most pure and stable of all the Legions", but that may not have made it into the Forgeworld book.

Lol stable only after Fulgrim came around I believe. They had terrible luck and mutations leading to them being so small they had to tag along with the Sons of Horus as they were not a large enough force themselves to be independent really.

[Legatus]

They were stable before, but they had lost all of their stock in some horrible accident, and only had the progenoids from the then currently active Marines left to create new ones, which made maintaining their already low numbers very difficult. Mutation was not the issue.

[helterskelter]

They were stable before, but they had lost all of their stock in some horrible accident, and only had the progenoids from the then currently active Marines left to create new ones, which made maintaining their already low numbers very difficult. Mutation was not the issue.

Apart from every reference in novels about fabius doing things to control the mutation, incuding within himself

[Legatus]

That comes from their own tampering with the gene-seed. They sought to enhance their capabilities beyond what the Emperor had bestowed upon them. But eventually in their desire to enhance themsleves they became more and more corrupted.

[Col.hertford]

Ok, I have the answer from book five. ultramarine seed is indeed average. However, it is, like the dark angle seed, very stable and not prone to mutation. Therefore, it can be used for longer, rather than is good seed with a low failure rate.

[Col.hertford]

Hi helterskelter, the reason the 3rd was nearly destroyed was the ship carrying there geneseed supply to the new lunar base was destroyed/went missing. The reserve held on terra was then infected with a xeno virus that took the personal intervention of the emperor to cure. This left gene stock at critical levels. only the discovery of fulgrim saved the Legion. there is no mention of mutation in the current Legion fluff from forgeworld.

 

Ref. Betrayal, page 104

 

It is clear the emperors children are clearly smaller than the dark angles during this period.

[Legatus]

Ok, I have the answer from book five. ultramarine seed is indeed average. However, it is, like the dark angle seed, very stable and not prone to mutation. Therefore, it can be used for longer, rather than is good seed with a low failure rate.

 

If you deem the implantation success rate to be an important criterion, then the Ultramarines gene-seed may be "average". But that has not generally been described as an important factor in the past. The quality of a Legion's/Chapter's gene-seed is usually described more in terms of its purity and stability.

[helterskelter]

Hi helterskelter, the reason the 3rd was nearly destroyed was the ship carrying there geneseed supply to the new lunar base was destroyed/went missing. The reserve held on terra was then infected with a xeno virus that took the personal intervention of the emperor to cure. This left gene stock at critical levels. only the discovery of fulgrim saved the Legion. there is no mention of mutation in the current Legion fluff from forgeworld.

 

Ref. Betrayal, page 104

 

It is clear the emperors children are clearly smaller than the dark angles during this period.

In the short story Chirurgeon (my version is in blades of the traitor):

 

it details fabius' fight against the blight, including the conclusion post fulgrim/and i assume post dedication to horus, that fabius himself has the blight, and that he has access to a draught of something unpleasant that restores some measure of vitality. But the blight still remains

 

 

However I do believe the EC are smaller.

[Legatus]

The blight had nothing to do with the Emperor's Children gene-seed stability. It was avirus that had befallen and would destroy many of the gene-seed reserves on Terra. Many Legions lost some genetic resererves in this incident, but the Emperor's Children in particular lost all of their remaining stock. In the GW/FW sources the blight was extinguished and that was that. But apparently according to BL this virus then later befell the active Emperor's Children?

 

"To ensure that there were always organs ready to implant into new recruits a reserve of gene-seed was kept safe on Terra. From this emergency reserve it should have been possible to keep the IIIrd Legion supplied with new warriors, even with the loss of the gene-seed sent to Luna the Legion would have endured and in time grown; survival should have been certain. But in a single night that hope was obliterated.

It was discovered that a fast acting viral blight had suddenly infected several of the gene-seed vaults on Terra, its cause and origin unknown. Feverishly the Bio-Magos sought to hold it in check as its progress threatened to wipe out in a matter of hours what had taken a century to build, but the doubtlessly artificial - and many surmised xenos - infection defied treatment, and it was only the intervention of the Emperor's own peerless genius that was to purge the taint. While many Legions suffered losses from this attack from an unknown quarter, the blight was found to have destroyed the gene-seed of the IIIrd Legion in its entirety. From that moment the IIIrd Legion began to die."

- HH1: Betrayal, p. 104

 

"Unlike the other Legions fighting in the Crusade, the Emperor's Children were few in number - an accident had destroyed nearly all of the precious gene-seed and, with the Primarchs himself lost, the rebuilding had been a slow process.

(...)

After the near destruction of the Legion in the gene-seeding process, surviving fragments of the Codex Apothecarion Terra indicate that absolute excellence was demanded of the Apothecaries who handled and worked on the precious genetic material. This ethos quickly merged with the Legion's general belief in perfection, so that the Emperor's Children gene-seed was perhaps the most pure and stable of all the Legions."

- Index Astartes Emperor's Children