Legion recruiting during the great crusade

[Biscuittzz]

With regards the Raven Guard and recruiting in the GC/HH era, the campaigning RG forces received their first batch of new reinforcements (not gene accelerated/primarch material) 4/5 years or so after the Ravendelve incident. Saying 4 years as the Battle of Ravendelve is listed as 006.M31 while the Battle of Yarant which they arrived before is listed between 011-014.M31, so I went with the shorter estimate.

 

There is no mention of Kiavahr's population or any degradation of the geneseed to suggest why it is so slow compared to others. ( RG geneseed is said only to have started degrading after Corax went into exile.) There is also no mention of gene-seed stock levels, though I'm guessing a legion of 100,000 will obviously have more material than a legion of what, 4000? Weren't the World Eaters on Bodt all coming from stolen Salamander/ Iron Hand/ Raven Guard gene-seed too?

 

So in numbers, 1000 or so legionnaires in 4/5 years. Which seems incredibly low, but the RG have always been noted as one of the smallest legions along with poor gene-seed acceptance due to the toxicity/desolation of Kiavahr's surface and as such, the inherited genetic mutations.

 

Edit: I believe the Raven Guard only recruited from Kiavahr/ Deliverance once the Terran legionnaires were sent packing. Due to all of the population understanding what it was like to be slaves and to fit into Corax's mantra of being liberators rather than conquerors. I'd say he was also against the idea of stripping a planet of it's youth seeing what happened to his own homeworld. 

Edited January 11, 2018 by Biscuittzz

[Kasper_Hawser]

With regards the Raven Guard and recruiting in the GC/HH era, the campaigning RG forces received their first batch of new reinforcements (not gene accelerated/primarch material) 4/5 years or so after the Ravendelve incident. Saying 4 years as the Battle of Ravendelve is listed as 006.M31 while the Battle of Yarant which they arrived before is listed between 011-014.M31, so I went with the shorter estimate.

 

There is no mention of Kiavahr's population or any degradation of the geneseed to suggest why it is so slow compared to others. ( RG geneseed is said only to have started degrading after Corax went into exile.) There is also no mention of gene-seed stock levels, though I'm guessing a legion of 100,000 will obviously have more material than a legion of what, 4000? Weren't the World Eaters on Bodt all coming from stolen Salamander/ Iron Hand/ Raven Guard gene-seed too?

 

So in numbers, 1000 or so legionnaires in 4/5 years. Which seems incredibly low, but the RG have always been noted as one of the smallest legions along with poor gene-seed acceptance due to the toxicity/desolation of Kiavahr's surface and as such, the inherited genetic mutations.

 

Edit: I believe the Raven Guard only recruited from Kiavahr/ Deliverance once the Terran legionnaires were sent packing. Due to all of the population understanding what it was like to be slaves and to fit into Corax's mantra of being liberators rather than conquerors. I'd say he was also against the idea of stripping a planet of it's youth seeing what happened to his own homeworld. 

 

Raven Guard may have been one of the few legions who don't really keep their numbers up or replenish frequently, since their specialty is asymetrical warfare which should have less casualty than the grinding warfare of the Iron Warriors, Luna wolves or Death Guard. Until Istvaan massacre, there was probably no real need in Corax case to get huge numbers of marines created and trained in a hurry. 

 

Same with Space Wolves. For those legions who HAVE that massive grinding warfare MO yet still recruit from one world like Barbarus, Cthonia, Chemos etc. I can only imagine that either those worlds have huge populations, or they reproduce like rabbits fast enough to keep up with or exceed those legions casualties.

 

Bear in mind though, most legions were already huge and made of Terrans. Unless they ended up like thousand sons or Emperor's children who had to start nearly from scratch, it's not like the ENTIRE generation of a planet's population would have been recruited as soon as the Primarchs were discovered. Although it seemed by the end of the Great Crusade, most of the Legions had their Terrans reduced to a minority. 

 

In the end, massive grinding warfare MO or not, the Legions were still marines, and still can't exactly outlast or outnumber their enemies, so would have had to fight smart and avoid the casualties like the Imperial Army.

[bluntblade]

Emperor's Children went out of their way to avoid "grinding" Wars Fuentes to their low numbers. The Wolves on the other hand often elected for the hardest war fronts.

 

Cthonia produced plenty, based on the fact that Horus used Solar Auxilia recruited from that world.

[Leif Bearclaw]

The Wolves on the other hand often elected for the hardest war fronts.

 

 

And yet weren't particularity small, or noted as suffering particularly high attrition rates. Possibly because they actually fought smart, and would do left field things like the space station orbital drop, which would keep unnecessary losses to minimum.

 

We actually know the three Legions that most often drowned the enemy in bodies. Betrayal lists the WE, DG and IW as the Legions that took the most casualties proportionate to overall strength. Two of those are the poster children for mass, rapid recruitment and taking recruits from anywhere and everywhere. Whereas the DG were both one of the smallest Legions, and the only one with a Legion homeworld preference for recruitment that is specifically noted as having to dip into other manpower pools to maintain its strength.

 

Remember, if we're being 'realistic' (as opposed to GW's usual chronic underestimation of numbers) planets, and their populations, are huge. Estimates of global population circa 1000AD (towards the end of the 'Viking era') run to 250-350 million. Granted, deathworld and all, but does it seem sensible that Fenris could only support around 1% of that, a population the size of medieval England? I would say no. These Legion homeworlds should all be supporting populations of tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people. In that context, a couple of hundred thousand young men taken to the Legions isn't actually that big of a dent, and even with the larger Legion scale, they can still afford to be plenty selective with aspirant quality.

[bluntblade]

Considering that their Primarch was the second found, their growth was substantially hindered. Inferno notes that their strength at the time of Prospero was significantly reduced by recent campaigns. Compare and contrast with the Sons of Horus and Iron Hands.

[Calas Typhon]

I Just remembered that the Death Guard did recruit from worlds in some cases after heavy losses were taken, such as with the filthy psyker that is Crysos Morturg after a pretty bad loss of manpower after a campaign against a Xenos species. 

 

However Its clear the non Barbaran DG were overall disliked within the Legion and ended up in terrible ZM lines or the Destroyer Corps. Morturg being a filthy Psyker did not help either. 

[mactire]

AFAIK the SW's in 40K recruit from late teens/very early 20s. Thats what the whole WP/watcher of the slain thing is about. They then train and implant for about 2/3 years before been taken into the Great Companies. That's why we don't have scouts, as per codex compliant chapters, due to the fact that they are young warriors with combat experience already by the time training is finished.

[Jareddm]

I was always of the mindset that with very few exceptions ie. just the Space Wolves, all legions had small numbers of emergency reinforcements that were recruited from various protectorate worlds or conquests.  That with most legions, these auxiliary recruits had whatever little culture they brought with them stripped away and replaced with the dominant cultural views of the legion, to the point where, once integrated, you wouldn't even know they weren't Caliban/Nocturne/Chemos/Medusa/whatever natives.  Sure, some might still maintain a unique cultural element from their original homeworld, a slightly different view of a legion's beliefs or values, but if you broke it down proportionally, these reserve recruits were only a tiny fraction of many legions, but still large enough that one could make a unique TT army out of them.

[Calas Typhon]

Fully agree

 

However I think most Legions reserve reinforcements were a sink for the deranked or disgraced, insane, bloodthirsty and unstable but not too far gone to be put down I would presume, like the Destroyers and Zone Mortalis sections. That is with exceptions of one or two Legions who either put their unstable elements down or were large enough to have sections devoted to reserve actions. Or either simply did not care to a point like the World Eaters and Night Lords. The only Legion I think that were different were the Iron Warriors, who's disgraced warriors were put back in the Line and never made it out again.

 

The majority of Legionaries would adopt their Primarchs mindsets, culture and way of warfare as they would be selected because of they already carry over those mindsets or are too good to pass up. But even if they are far different from the mindset but just strong of character, every Legionary would take up the same recruitment process and so evolve around that. Like the Space Wolves having to overcome the literal beast inside of them, The Death Guard having to overcome absolute chemical, toxic and venomous hell, Imperial Fists having to break through the boundaries of Pain to become stone. In the end, after the Terran sections are gone, every Legionary would have faced the same trials and would be on the same level as their brothers so they would not be very different. Its probably one of the reasons why Horus killed off the Terrans, its what I would do If I wanted my Legion on the same path with no strife.

 

Legions like the World Eaters were very diverse in language and looks, although they took on the Mongrel tongue the vast amount of accents, They would probably be as different as the Ultramarines if it was not for the Nails.

[bluntblade]

Well the World Eaters have their own language to get around that issue

[Huggtand]

Great discussion!

 

As for Fenris having a population big enough to support a legion of over 100k, recruiting from a single world, the following passage in Inferno gives one explanation.

 

"There are even unconfirmed reports that matters were in fact deliberately inflamed, the better to to test future candidates for the legion, and rumors have persisted that a program existed early on to expand the planet´s native population base, and that men and woman of suitable feral and primitive words were brought to Fenris against their knowledge and will, their minds and memories tampered with, re-programmed and set lose to fend themselves so that the the strongest would survive and swell the population pool for potential Legion recruits. There is no extant proof of this, but there are few who would claim such a thing as impossible and so the stories persist." 

 

Inferno also tells that Fenris and the Fang is set up as a self sufficient base for the Legion regarding all of their needs. So already from the start Russ sees Fenris as the only recruting pool they need. So the population have to be quite substantial to support this long term. As Laughingman says 40k lore has never really made sense regarding these things so I usually takes them with a barrel of salt        

[Laughingman]

Maybe they recruited from midgardia or Frostheim? Same system, similar kinship?  Would make sense...

[Laughingman]

Did some offhand math based on the description archamus/Dorn gives in praetorian of dorn of Imperial fist recruiting, Out of "thousands" of aspirants recruited (it was more like kidnapping) roughly 20 survived to become space marine. So anywhere from 1% to 2% of recruits survived to actually become legionaries. Meaning to produce the requested number of legionaries he commanded of the former legion master (30,000) Dorn had 1,500,000 to 3,000,000  children killed. Imperial fist may be a more extreme example though.... 

 

I've once saw a  set of data for population distribution of a German town in the middle ages based on skeletal remains, which put the distribution of population between 13-17 at around 7% assuming the people of Fenris have similar population distribution and are not sex selective, that means roughly 3.5% of the population was male and around the age of recruitment (they supposedly recruited older). If Fenris's population was constant at around 3.5 million (as it is in m41) then the recruitable base is roughly 119000 males at any one time. Which means they could only produce roughly 2500 legionaries at a time assuming the trials kill a similar number of aspirants. 

 

Could not find the actual textbook with the medieval population distribution but a reference exists on the blog (for RPG playing ironically) 

 

http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2011/07/medieval-population-pyramid.html

Edited March 7, 2018 by Laughingman

[Hesh Kadesh]

Did some offhand math based on the description archamus/Dorn gives in praetorian of dorn of Imperial fist recruiting, Out of "thousands" of aspirants recruited (it was more like kidnapping) roughly 20 survived to become space marine. So anywhere from 1% to 2% of recruits survived to actually become legionaries. Meaning to produce the requested number of legionaries he commanded of the former legion master (30,000) Dorn had 1,500,000 to 3,000,000  children killed. Imperial fist may be a more extreme example though.... 

 

I've once saw a  set of data for population distribution of a German town in the middle ages based on skeletal remains, which put the distribution of population between 13-17 at around 7% assuming the people of Fenris have similar population distribution and are not sex selective, that means roughly 3.5% of the population was male and around the age of recruitment (they supposedly recruited older). If Fenris's population was constant at around 3.5 million (as it is in m41) then the recruitable base is roughly 119000 males at any one time. Which means they could only produce roughly 2500 legionaries at a time assuming the trials kill a similar number of aspirants. 

 

Could not find the actual textbook with the medieval population distribution but a reference exists on the blog (for RPG playing ironically) 

 

http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2011/07/medieval-population-pyramid.html

This is the kind of stuff I love about our hobby. I mean you get the other downside of "logically the Thunderhawk can't fly", but this investigative aspect to work with throwaway comments from the novels to give us this information is amazing. Thanks for doing this.

 

Were the children specifically killed? It seems wasteful for the 30K mentality (the 40K aspect can be seen to be dogmatic adherence to measures imparted following the Heresy); and could have been more use as legion auxilia troops.

 

My Brother in law is UKSF; I can't imagine how wasteful of a soldier he would have been had he simply failed the training program, and rather than RTU'ing him (as they did on his first attempt, he passed on the second), they took him round the outhouse and put a bullet in the back of his head. 

[rendingon1+]

Does IF transformation process was intentionally more painfull/brutal than other Legion's?  Or is Dorn geneseed at the bottom when it comes to success in implantation?

[Leif Bearclaw]

 

This is the kind of stuff I love about our hobby. I mean you get the other downside of "logically the Thunderhawk can't fly", but this investigative aspect to work with throwaway comments from the novels to give us this information is amazing. Thanks for doing this.

 

Were the children specifically killed? It seems wasteful for the 30K mentality (the 40K aspect can be seen to be dogmatic adherence to measures imparted following the Heresy); and could have been more use as legion auxilia troops.

 

My Brother in law is UKSF; I can't imagine how wasteful of a soldier he would have been had he simply failed the training program, and rather than RTU'ing him (as they did on his first attempt, he passed on the second), they took him round the outhouse and put a bullet in the back of his head. 

 

Weird, I feel the opposite, as it's this sort of thing that shows the 'cracks' in the setting more, because GW just sucks at numbers. It just shows that the fans spend far more time thinking about this sort of thing than the writers seem to.

 

If we take those numbers as accurate, and the Wolves can only recruit 2500 men every 4 years that's less than 120000 new recruits across the entire Great Crusade (approx 190 years, as the Crusade lasted around 200, but Russ wasn't found until at least 12 years in, according to Inferno). Plus the 15,000 or so men who survived the Wheel of Fire (Terrans and initial Fenrisian intake, including the older guys), this would mean that the Wolves could only lose about 4000 men across the majority of the Crusade (Rangdan Xenocides and all), in order to reach the peak 130k Strength attributed to them in Inferno. It's nonsense.

 

It's far better when at least some numbers are left deliberately vague, then there's room for actual explanations rather than 'the writers suck at scale , just roll with it'.

[Laughingman]

Examples since people are asking (regarding praetorian of dorn):

 

They have a scene  in which a aspirants are chained together in groups of three (unarmed) in a training environment and have murder servitors (or analogous creatures) released on them. 

 

A bunch of aspirants died to mass hypno-indoctrination, probably due to brain hemorrhages and the like..

 

Most of Kei's (archamus he changed his name upon being inducted into the legion) surgical procedures were done with minimal anasethitic and awake. The Apothecary doing the procedures (hands deep inside kei's ribcage)  straight up tells him if he fails he gets turned into a servitor.... 

 

In universe wise, Dorn intention was to produce legionaries fast, probably less then three years start to finish. The actual gene-seed rejection rate was low, but fatality high simply by the speed of changes. I suspect later recruits may of suffered less, when the apothecaries/recruiting cadres figured  out that slowing down the process dramatically decreased mortality...

Edited March 7, 2018 by Laughingman

[Marshal Rohr]

Book three specifically mentions the geneseed itself cause painful physical changes. There is probably a reason they perform the surgeries without anasthetic.

[Laughingman]

My theory is GW/Forgeworld/Black library don't have internal cannon police, and let blantentally mathematically impossible lore through the cracks ( moving bodt's moon, Sun snuffers, Port Maw, Demographics, Space ship crew size, etc  ) it takes away from the setting and suspension of disbelief...

[Hesh Kadesh]

 

 

This is the kind of stuff I love about our hobby. I mean you get the other downside of "logically the Thunderhawk can't fly", but this investigative aspect to work with throwaway comments from the novels to give us this information is amazing. Thanks for doing this.

 

Were the children specifically killed? It seems wasteful for the 30K mentality (the 40K aspect can be seen to be dogmatic adherence to measures imparted following the Heresy); and could have been more use as legion auxilia troops.

 

My Brother in law is UKSF; I can't imagine how wasteful of a soldier he would have been had he simply failed the training program, and rather than RTU'ing him (as they did on his first attempt, he passed on the second), they took him round the outhouse and put a bullet in the back of his head. 

 

Weird, I feel the opposite, as it's this sort of thing that shows the 'cracks' in the setting more, because GW just sucks at numbers. It just shows that the fans spend far more time thinking about this sort of thing than the writers seem to.

 

If we take those numbers as accurate, and the Wolves can only recruit 2500 men every 4 years that's less than 120000 new recruits across the entire Great Crusade (approx 190 years, as the Crusade lasted around 200, but Russ wasn't found until at least 12 years in, according to Inferno). Plus the 15,000 or so men who survived the Wheel of Fire (Terrans and initial Fenrisian intake, including the older guys), this would mean that the Wolves could only lose about 4000 men across the majority of the Crusade (Rangdan Xenocides and all), in order to reach the peak 130k Strength attributed to them in Inferno. It's nonsense.

 

It's far better when at least some numbers are left deliberately vague, then there's room for actual explanations rather than 'the writers suck at scale , just roll with it'.

 

Oh, the numbers suck balls, what I meant was the hobby and people going to lengths to research it.

[Nova_Dew]

IIRC Blood Angels aspirant's have everything implanted in one go and then change in 3 years due to the sarcophagi being used and Sang's blood being used as a catalyst, so theoretically the blood angels can be as young as 13 to 17 years old when inducted into the Auxiliary companies. no wonder it's said that the process leaves them borderline fanatics.  

[bluntblade]

Does IF transformation process was intentionally more painfull/brutal than other Legion's? Or is Dorn geneseed at the bottom when it comes to success in implantation?

Crimson Fist seems to imply Inwit's trials are especially harsh.

 

I assume the Scars' aren't so vicious given that they mostly recruit from a single world. Also Torghun's narrative doesn't include the vast majority of his fellows dying.

Edited March 7, 2018 by bluntblade

[carlisimo]

I’m phoneposting so please forgive the brevity…

 

The failure rates in Praetorian of Dorn are alarming - by my estimate, you’d use (ie mostly kill) 45 million little boys to get 100,000 marines. Assuming the took casualties during the Great Crudade, they’d have gone through many more.

 

It’s something like 1% surviving the first phase, a minority surviving the second (I assumed a third), and then I assumed that 2/3 survived training.

 

Dorn was there but it was early on, so it could have gotten better. And they were supposedly one of the worst legions in that regard.

[bluntblade]

Is it specified whether that first phase is trials or the first round of implants?

[carlisimo]

The first two phases I mentioned are implants.

 

The protagonist in the book didn’t seem to undergo trials like the ones in The Crimson Fist, iirc.