VIth Legion purge of Terran Marines

[Grimtooth]

I am not saying it was intentional, but have been reading book 7 over and over and it seems that once Russ was found on Fenris and rejoined his Legion, he decided that his Terran and Fenrisian kin needed to shed some blood together. After the grueling system wide Orc campaign, the book tells us that almost all Terran were gone.

 

We know from Prospero Burns that Longfang the Rune Priest was one of the very few remaining.

 

What I am wondering is if any other first founding Legions kinda lost all their Terran Marines to the extent that the VIth Legion did?

[Brother Pheidias]

The Word Bearers likely got rid of all non-Colchisians.

[Reyner]

The Raven Guard lost a very large proportion of their Terran marines, Gate 42 was the battle I think? 

[Charlo]

Depends on the time frame I suppose.

 

The Crusade was about 200 years long and then the Heresy happened. At it's start, all marines were Terran, the legions then slowly rediscovered their primarchs and started recruiting from their home systems. Not to mention the point where the IF then started having sole recruitment rights of Terra (though I am unsure if this is in 30k).

 

I'd imagine that most Terran contingents were in the minority across the legions by the outbreak of the heresy and that would have purged a lot of them per course!

[bluntblade]

The Wolves are noted as regularly opting for the most lethal campaigns. That's undoubtedly going to winnow the old guard, especially if they're less stable

[Leif Bearclaw]

That isn't actually what the book says though. While losses at the Wheel of Fire were heavy, they by no means represented the majority of the VI's Terran blood. The first crop of Fenrisian recruits (pre Wheel) is stating as merely being hundreds (page 79), while the Legion was 15,000 strong post-Wheel (losses being approximately 7.5k for the campaign) (page 80). So the majority of the Legion at that point must have still been Terran/non-Fenrisaian.

 

What that campaign did was unify the two components of the Legion culturally into one entity, by it's end the Terrans had assimilated the Fenrisian culture Russ was infusing the Legion with.

 

The relative lack of Terrans can be explained quite simply, the early finding of Russ, attrition and Fenris centred recruitment. There would've been precious few non-Fenrisan recruits once Russ took over, and because he took over early, there was a naturally smaller 'old guard' than you'd find in with later Primarchs, like Mortarion and Corax. Coupled with losses not actually being all that high (certainly not DG, IW or WE levels, as they're stated to have the worst attrition rates), Fenris was most likely enough, with no need to dip into other manpower pools to sustain operations (which the DG did, despite Mortarions preferring to use Barbarus stock).

 

Terrans certainly remained somewhat extant in the Legion for the entire crusade, with a presence even at the highest command levels (Jarl Torm Guadric, apparently commander of the 11th, GC he may have been the last, but he was still there). So, purge doesn't seem a fitting term for what happened to the Terrans of the VIth.

 

As for other Legions I'd expect to have relatively few Terrans (because they'd be a minority in any Legion) by the Heresy? Iron Warriors (because horrific attrition), Thousand Sons (because Flesh Change losses), RG (Corax's distaste, and Deliverance recruitment bias), Salamanders (Nocturne recruitment bias, with most other recruits seemly from Proximal, not Terra), Ultramarines (because sheer volume of Ultramar recruits diluting the relative Terran presence), Iron Hands (similar to Wolves, with assimilation of old guard into Medusan Clan culture, and Medusa providing the recruits from that point). Plus potentially the I, V and IX, but we'll have to wait for the full FW picture to assess those Legions properly.

[Sandlemad]

Yeah, the pattern of the Terran presence diminishing in the VIth legion is actually surprisingly 'standard', based on shifting patterns of recruitment of non-Terrans that the wolves simply experienced about a century earlier than the other legions

 

The Wheel of Fire campaign was definitely brutal but it was not about winnowing the Terrans from the VIth. The Battle of Gate 42, where you get the rumours about Corax intentionally thinning the Terran ranks in frontal assaults, was very different from the usual Raven Guard way of war, and was pretty much the last time they'd fight that way under Corax by choice.

The battles in the Wheel of Fire, on the other hand, pretty much typified Russ's tactics/discipline and made it clear to the old VIth that this was how he wanted his legion run, as well as welding together the Terran and Fenrisian elements (and/or inculcating Fenrisian culture into the Terrans, depending on your POV). This was what war would be like for the VIth from now on. Fine, the old legion master died in the process but going out fighting an ork dreadnought is hardly something out of the ordinary for either a pre-Russ Terran warrior or a post-Russ space wolf.

 

Leif makes a good point about Russ taking the legion earlier than anyone bar Ferrus and Horus meaning there was a limited old guard; it's worth noting that the VIth were 'kept back' alongside the Salamanders and Alpha Legion and so didn't have the same Sol system experiences that other legions' Terran complements did. The Terran wolves couldn't be prideful and bolshie with their primarch over battles like the pacification of Luna in the same way that the XVIth legion Terrans were. Or to put it another way, you wouldn't have a smug character like Astelan clinging to a pre-Lion identity.

 

Based on instances like Ulvurul Heoroth Longfang and Torm Gudaric (those seem to be Fenrisian names, even if Gudaric is titled 'the Outlander Jarl'), the Terran assimilation into Fenrisian culture (or Fenrisian culture as moulded and re-presented by Russ to suit a force of galactic conquest) seems to have been pretty comprehensive, maybe moreso than any other legion.