Legion of the Damned units?

[Lord Kallozar]

So it is always presumed that the LotD consist of tactical marines - the rules and models for them only allow for tactical squad space marines. But really, in the fluff, do the LotD actually have dreadnoughts, commanders, captains, assault marines etc just like any other space marine chapter?

[N1SB]

There is a very strong reference for everything EXCEPT the Dreadnoughts part of your question in a recent 30k novel, Master of Mankind.

 

The only question is if you accept this slight retcon of what the Legion of the Damned is...but it's so intriguing that I'll share it and leave it for you to decide.

 

In the climax of this 30k novel, the Emperor is fighting a Daemonic horde and essentially summons "fire-born avatars" of Space Marines in "blackened armour".  That description sounds exactly like LotD.  They're referred to also as the fallen of Istvaan V, and even among them was a "giant among giants" described as "the Tenth Son", effectively Ferrus Manus.

 

And in that passage, they are described as "bearing axes and blades and swords", so it's not just standard Bolter Tacticals.

 

In effect, previous records suggested the mysterious LotD were remnants of just 1 Chapter, the Fire Hawks.  What this novel suggests is to expand that definition, that the LotD may have been around before that from the mass deaths at Istvaan V, and that the Fire Hawks later joined their ranks.  If you find that retcon palatable, then it happens to suggest they're are definitely Assault Marines based on how they're armed, and that they have leaders including a Primarch.

[Captain Idaho]

In 3rd edition GW produced a Legion of the Damned army. Dreadnought, Captain equivalent, Legionaires.

 

Not much to it but I guarantee that GW will release a Coded for them this edition. (Instead of hoping for new Classic Marines)

[Lord Lee]

That actually sound really cool.

[jeffersonian000]

In 3rd edition GW produced a Legion of the Damned army. Dreadnought, Captain equivalent, Legionaires.

 

Not much to it but I guarantee that GW will release a Coded for them this edition. (Instead of hoping for new Classic Marines)

Kind of. LotD had Tacticals, Rhinos, Dreadnoughts, but only a single Sergeant as an HQ. Fluff back then had it that no officers survived.

 

I’ve had a LotD army since 2nd ed.

 

SJ

[Captain Idaho]

Now they did have a Captain equivalent.

[Lord Kallozar]

Thanks guys. So the LotD even have access to vehicles? Interesting!

 

A google search shows people that have made LotD Imperial Knights also. Is there any reason that they couldn’t take Imperial Knights? It seems as if the LotD are ghosts of fallen imperial heroes so maybe fallen knights could join their ranks?

 

@ N1SB - you said in the novel that the Emperer summoned the LotD... how did he summon them? I would love to know more about what happened there (you can PM me that if you do not want to give away spoilers on this thread).

[Chaplain Killmer]

The Legion came a long way since WD 99 the legend of the Fire Hawks Chapter was retconned in the dataslate to only one of the possible origins of the LotD. So you have a broad selection of hooks where to fit your army. If I would finally pass my morale test and paint them I'd go for the original fluff and field with understrength units to have the feeling of the will of the Legion to go down fighting.

 

I can however say that characters or dreads can look really awesome in the Legions Colours and there were episodes in their history where they could field different units as well - but their isn't any rules set for this atm. If again I would try to build an entire army of them - I would use the Grey Knights Codex for the non legion units. Terminator and Attack Squads can teleport in - well they dont have the complete flavour but I guess they could come close. The difference would be that those Units have the spectre like attacks in close combat but not at shooting… also they have a few vehicles and dreads.

 

Oh well just my 2 Cents.

[Lord Kallozar]

Neat idea. Though perhaps even the Death Guard codex could fit well? I think the rules for Plague Marines would make good counts as LotD.

[Chaplain Killmer]

Might be possible too - but you have no matching Keywords so maybe its problematic to field them in one army. But it could be cool replace the plague weapons with burning weapons that work just the same.

[Lord Kallozar]

I kinda like the aspect of their being no matching keywords to an imperial army as the LotD are viewed with high suspicion and are essentially warp born (from what I gather anyway) so making them unwelcomed allies kinda fits! Plus I wouldn’t take them as an allied detachment I would want to build a pure LotD army in its own right lol

[Lucien Eilam]

In Rogue Trader, they were unequivocally the remnants of the Fire Hawks, and the “vast stocks of of weaponry available to [them] were destroyed along with the rest of the fleet”. The were equipped as what we would now recognise as Tactical Marines, with 1 in 10 allowed to take a missile launcher or plasma gun.
 
In 2nd ed. Codex Ultramarines, they were essentially a 0-1 Tactical Squad with upped stats, cause fear and ignore Leadership tests, that couldn’t be joined by characters.
 
In 3rd ed. Chapter Approved, they had trial rules, in the form of the Cursed Founding list – a cutdown version of Codex Space Marines, with very limited access to vehicles and Terminators, which had to represent everything from the Legion to the Lamenters.
 
There was nothing explicit in that version to say it would be thematic to take most of it as LotD, but you couldn’t field it without taking at least a character, there was a points cost for giving their trait to vehicles and Dreadnoughts, and there’s a photo of a Legion of the Damned army in the articles that includes a Techmarine and a Dreadnought.
 
That's pretty much the only source for them being more than bolter marines with sergeants and the odd heavy/special weapon.
 
In 6th ed., we got the dataslate that muddies the original Fire Hawks version in favour of psychic manifestations of Imperial heroes, and limits them to being a super Tactical squad again.
 
The Rob Sanders novel Legion of the Damned presents them as half-glimpsed bolter marines, but with a hint at the Fire Hawks origin and that they still have their Fortress-Monastery, the Raptorus Rex:
 

Squinting, Kersh thought he saw a vessel pass overhead. At first he thought it was falling to the cemetery world surface, growing larger as it descended. But from its movements and the twinkle of cannon fire he realised that it was in high orbit, mopping up fleeing members of the Chaos armada. The Scourge watched it for a few moments, entranced – the vessel appeared to him like an Imperial aquila, passing across the heavens. He blinked, reasoning that he must have imagined the spectacle in his concussed and skull-fractured state. The vessel would have had to have been colossal in size to appear to him as it did, at such a distance.

 
The Raptorus Rex was a pre-Imperial warp-capable star fort, so certainly “colossal in size”. It’s hard to reconcile retaining their Fortress-Monastery but losing all their equipment.

 

There are a few hints in other novels (Master of Mankind mentioned above, ghostly Custodians in Slaves to Darkness, and the following from The Talon of Horus) at essentially Imperial daemons, that could also provide an explanation for the Legion.

 

 

The Astronomican reaches even to our purgatorial exile, and to us it is no mere mystical radiance illuminating the warp. It is pain, it is fire, and it plunges entire Neverborn worlds into war. […] Most of the Radiant Worlds are uninhabitable, lost in the lethal crash of conflicting psychic energies. Armies of fire angels and flame-wrought projections wage war against everything in their path. We call this region the Firetide.

 

 

Finally, the Deathwatch RPG gave them rules, as an option to give a player whose character dies halfway through a mission something to do. They don't have any options a Tactical Marine or Sergeant couldn’t take.

 
So, they’ve only really had one version in 30 years with more options than Tactical Marines, and that wasn’t even official. But there are enough potential hooks there that you wouldn't really be contradicting anything official either.

 

Maybe they’re the Fire Hawks and still have their Fortress-Monastery, and all the equipment it must have contained. Maybe they’re psychic manifestations of Imperial desperation, or the Emperor’s will, and could appear as whatever the forces they’re aiding imagine them to be, from Tactical Marines to battle titans.

[Captain Idaho]

There was actually a Legion of the Damned battle report in 3rd edition where GW published rules for them, long before the Cursed Founding rules came out. This was fairly early 3rd edition. Still remember that Chaplain conversion into a LotD character.

 

***

 

It's looking less likely GW are keeping the "Fire Hawks turned into them" hook but you never know.

 

I'm certain we'll see them as the next "Imperial" faction release (after declared factions. So post SoB). I wouldn't be surprised if GW does another Custodes and jumps them up the queue.

[N1SB]

@ N1SB - you said in the novel that the Emperer summoned the LotD... how did he summon them? I would love to know more about what happened there (you can PM me that if you do not want to give away spoilers on this thread).

 

He was swinging his giant flaming sword and everything spontaneously combusted, the whole webway went on fire.  It's a little bit ambiguous, like the Emperor simply manifested his will/used his psychic power/same difference and the LotD plopped out, in a much more epic way than how I'm wording it but you get the idea.

 

But I'm with Brother Lucien, great post there with other examples, the Istvaan LotD really appeared there like the Emperor's own Daemons.  It's this idea that Daemons are just fragments of the Chaos Gods' essence, and in the case of the Emperor, his essence is through the Astartes geneseed or something.

 

I'm also with Brother Idaho that things like LotD will get one of those Supplement Codices, like those digital Dataslates we got at the end of 7th.  I don't know what form it'll take...a White Dwarf article, a free mini-dex like how we've been getting them on Warhammer Community, so keep your options open.

[Lord Kallozar]

Thanks for the info! The idea of them being imperial undead daemons is more appealing than warped fire hawks I must say. I like this new direction for them.

 

Would you guys think it’s feasible fluffwise to create a named LotD captain?

[jeffersonian000]

Thanks for the info! The idea of them being imperial undead daemons is more appealing than warped fire hawks I must say. I like this new direction for them.

 

Would you guys think it’s feasible fluffwise to create a named LotD captain?

The only named LotD character is Sgt Centurius, who was the original HQ unit for the LotD and the bearer of their sacred relic. He had a limited release model back in the day, mine is a conversion I made a couple decades ago.

 

SJ

[Ratherdashing]

In my spare time and with spare models I've been working on a "loyalist Fallen Angels" army, and when my search for Imperium units that would synergize with them turned up fruitless, the LotD stood out as an option because they, too, synergize with no one!

 

My idea with these Fallen is that, aside from Cypher, they are defenders of Caliban that got pulled into the Warp and came out instantly, 10,000 years later, only to find themselves wanted men. So they are loyal to the Emperor, but not the Imperium.

 

My reasoning with the Legion is that they are defenders of man, but not beholden to the Imperium as is it today or to the Ecclesiarchy. So they may be okay with popping in to help Space Marines who are helping Mankind even if the Imperium calls them criminals.

 

So, heresy, but maybe lore friendly heresy at least?

[Chaplain Killmer]

Basically the Legion just appears. There isn't any Batsignal to summon them. One of the defining features is, that even if there is some plan that drives the Legionaires - nobody has ever been able to decrypt it.  So why wouldn't that work?

[Grand Master Laertes]

In Rogue Trader, they were unequivocally the remnants of the Fire Hawks, and the “vast stocks of of weaponry available to [them] were destroyed along with the rest of the fleet”. The were equipped as what we would now recognise as Tactical Marines, with 1 in 10 allowed to take a missile launcher or plasma gun.

 

In 2nd ed. Codex Ultramarines, they were essentially a 0-1 Tactical Squad with upped stats, cause fear and ignore Leadership tests, that couldn’t be joined by characters.

 

In 3rd ed. Chapter Approved, they had trial rules, in the form of the Cursed Founding list – a cutdown version of Codex Space Marines, with very limited access to vehicles and Terminators, which had to represent everything from the Legion to the Lamenters.

 

There was nothing explicit in that version to say it would be thematic to take most of it as LotD, but you couldn’t field it without taking at least a character, there was a points cost for giving their trait to vehicles and Dreadnoughts, and there’s a photo of a Legion of the Damned army in the articles that includes a Techmarine and a Dreadnought.

 

That's pretty much the only source for them being more than bolter marines with sergeants and the odd heavy/special weapon.

There is also an Apocalypse formation from the 5th edition where they could have dreadnoughts, terminators... And also other units if I remember correctly

[SickSix]

Great thread. Can never have enough LotD in my life. I actually painted one of my 3rd Ed guys as a test.

 

Yes, they did have an Apoc formation in 5th with dreads and termies.

 

Not saying you couldn't do a named character, but how would anyone know his name? They don't speak or communicate verbally. Anonymity is part of thier thing.

 

The Legion also features in the Fall of Cadia. Pretty cool representation their. (Just bolter marines though)

[Lord Kallozar]

Not saying you couldn't do a named character, but how would anyone know his name? They don't speak or communicate verbally. Anonymity is part of thier thing.

 

We know there is Sgt Attica Centurius, he’s named.

[Wargamer]

I don't like the idea of Damned Captains and such, mostly because it'd give too much away about their structure. Instead, I'd prefer something akin to "Damned Champion".

[Knightsword]

There is a very strong reference for everything EXCEPT the Dreadnoughts part of your question in a recent 30k novel, Master of Mankind.

 

The only question is if you accept this slight retcon of what the Legion of the Damned is...but it's so intriguing that I'll share it and leave it for you to decide.

 

In the climax of this 30k novel, the Emperor is fighting a Daemonic horde and essentially summons "fire-born avatars" of Space Marines in "blackened armour".  That description sounds exactly like LotD.  They're referred to also as the fallen of Istvaan V, and even among them was a "giant among giants" described as "the Tenth Son", effectively Ferrus Manus.

 

And in that passage, they are described as "bearing axes and blades and swords", so it's not just standard Bolter Tacticals.

 

In effect, previous records suggested the mysterious LotD were remnants of just 1 Chapter, the Fire Hawks.  What this novel suggests is to expand that definition, that the LotD may have been around before that from the mass deaths at Istvaan V, and that the Fire Hawks later joined their ranks.  If you find that retcon palatable, then it happens to suggest they're are definitely Assault Marines based on how they're armed, and that they have leaders including a Primarch.

 

That part of Master of Mankind is amazing and nearly gave me chills. Has anyone ever done or seen a conversion of Ferrus Manus to represent his LotD form from MoM?

[Brother Lunkhead]

There is a very strong reference for everything EXCEPT the Dreadnoughts part of your question in a recent 30k novel, Master of Mankind.

 

The only question is if you accept this slight retcon of what the Legion of the Damned is...but it's so intriguing that I'll share it and leave it for you to decide.

 

In the climax of this 30k novel, the Emperor is fighting a Daemonic horde and essentially summons "fire-born avatars" of Space Marines in "blackened armour".  That description sounds exactly like LotD.  They're referred to also as the fallen of Istvaan V, and even among them was a "giant among giants" described as "the Tenth Son", effectively Ferrus Manus.

 

And in that passage, they are described as "bearing axes and blades and swords", so it's not just standard Bolter Tacticals.

 

In effect, previous records suggested the mysterious LotD were remnants of just 1 Chapter, the Fire Hawks.  What this novel suggests is to expand that definition, that the LotD may have been around before that from the mass deaths at Istvaan V, and that the Fire Hawks later joined their ranks.  If you find that retcon palatable, then it happens to suggest they're are definitely Assault Marines based on how they're armed, and that they have leaders including a Primarch.

 

This is a great alternative (and very plausible) explanation for the LotD. Heroic avatars of the Emperor's psychic will... I likeitalot!!!

[Lord Kallozar]

Thank you all so much for the input and replies, really helpful as ever!

 

So to sum up, is it plausible to assume that the LotD could be the daemonic undead souls of fallen Space Marines?

 

Also, one last thing... is it true that there is a Black Library story about a dying space marine who is offered the chance by a Legion of the Damned member to join them? If so which story is this? Cheers.