Size of Traitor Legions in the 42nd Millenium

[Moonreaper666]

It is implied or stated that the Traitor Legions are back and better than ever. Either back to Heresy numbers or even outgrown them. Which means there are more TS Sorcerers than Sons of Russ, even with Primaris and the Wolfspear

 

I was wondering just how numerous each Traitor Legion and compare them to their prime during the Great Crusade/Horus Heresy?

 

How much grox :cuss would the Imperium suffer if each Legion were to unite under its Traitor Primarch, if alive, and attack the Imperium?

[Dosjetka]

Where is this implied and/or stated?

[Marshal Loss]

All of them are but gnats when compared to the might of the Blood Gorgons

[Iron Father Ferrum]

The Word Bearers are the only Legion shown as anything approaching a united front, at least as far as I've seen.

[apologist]

Codex: Death Guard makes it explicit that the DG for one are now operating as a cohesive Legion:

 

 

However, with Mortarion's return to active leadership of the Death Guard following the opening of the Great Rift in 999.M41, a more formal Legion organisation reemerged. Now, in the Era Indomitus, the Death Guard are amongst the most ordered and coherent of all the surviving Traitor Legions.

 

The 40k rulebook also states:

 

 

However this [The Thousand Sons operating as individual warbands]  all changed around the time of the Thirteenth Black Crusade when Magnus reasserted his rule over the Legion, reconciling and reforming it.

 

I agree with the OP that a lot of the modern colour text is hinting at the Primarchs returning and gathering their Legions back together (one way or another). Much of this is intentionally vague hinting – notes about 'golden ones' and 'serpentine creatures', for example – that can certainly be read with a more sceptical eye, but I would expect as the other Legion-specific Codices roll out, you'll have very similar statements.

 

To my mind, it's a way for GW to have their cake and eat it – they can keep individualistic roving warbands, but also have scary Legion-strength forces to carry big storylines.

 

The numbers in the books are certainly fairly large, but also pretty vague:

 

 

 

 The primary force of the Death Guard consists of seven Plague Companies, each with its own mountain fortress on the Plague Planet. These Companies consist of thousands of warriors and their own fleets, aircraft, tanks, daemonic cohorts, and super-heavy vehicles, dwarfing modern Space Marine Chapters. Each Plague Company consists of Sepsis Cohorts of roughly seven hundred Plague Marines. A Sepsis Cohort is divided among two Maladictums, each with seven Colonies which in turn are broken up into seven squads.

 

My emphases – the 'primary force' reference is what I mean by GW being able to have these huge Legions as well as keeping the individual separate warbands. 

 

I'm not sure you'll be able to put firm numbers on things.

[Moonreaper666]

Where is this implied and/or stated?

The Black Legion now has over 550k Marines. Thought it would be higher based on a quote from the Dark Creed Novels, Ten BL for every Word Bearer

 

In another WB novel, after the Great Rift, the Word Bearer states that the Black Legion, Death Guard and Emperor's Children are on the ascendancy and questions the role of the WB in the current present

 

Mortarion did not have the full might of the Death Guard Legion with him when he invaded Ultramar

 

There is a source that states that there are more Thousand Sons appearing that ever before. A prelude to the Siege of Fenris where the TS decimated the Space Wolves

[Lucerne]

The Word Bearers are the only Legion shown as anything approaching a united front, at least as far as I've seen.

Anyone remotely familiar with current lore should know about the Death Guard.

 

As for the Word Bearers, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the trilogy in which Kor Phaeron and Erebus have each other's forces butchered en-masse.

 

On the actual subject of the thread, here's one Death Guard warband's understanding of Legion musterings under the Black Legion's banner:

 

 

There have been musters before, countless times, though it is hard to remember one of such dark magnificence. Some of the ships here gathered likewise at Beta Garmon, a god’s lifetime ago. Some were constructed barely a century earlier, and their keels are still slick and free of the worst deep-stained void patina.

The numbers are mind-bending. Ships have come out from every cranny and vault of Eyespace, dragging themselves from daemon-haunted void docks and up from the lightless gaols of asteroid-delved fortresses. There are sleek corvettes of the Emperor’s Children, shunned by all but their own kind, burnished in gold and chalcedony, and reeking of ­sadism. They go as proudly as they have ever done, though the old claim to primacy has been long lost amid their unique indulgences.

 

Then come the renegade warbands, the motley barques looted from Imperial stations, each one bearing a different sigil in blood-red or ink-black. More have been spawned over the last millennium than ever before, and even the archivists of the Eye’s sorcery-infested scriptoriums have long ago given up trying to catalogue them. They are hunted creatures, those renegades, always liable to be devoured by larger predators, and so they hang back within the less-crowded void volumes, their weapons kept hot and their engines fully primed.

More stately craft arrive as the weeks go by, surging up from the warp-broiled depths in ancient and storied warships. The Thousand Sons answer the call, bringing with them pyramid-crested battlecruisers that still retain a certain aesthetic restraint. They are graceful things, those vessels, clean as jewels, pushing softly on blue-white plasma burners. There was once a time when the commitment of Magnus’ sons might have been doubted, as well as their capability, but no longer. Prospero is not a word that haunts them any longer. Nor, for that matter, is Fenris.

 

The gracefulness ends with them. Next to arrive are the flotillas from Perturabo’s industrial soul-forges, each one as grey as his heart and thick with venting filth. His Dreadnoughts slide out of the warp, occluded in smog and wallowing heavily amid promethium discharges. Many of those craft are steeped in the daemonic, having been fused and augmented over painful centuries within hammering hell foundries. Their blunt prows, blackened with the scorchmarks of battle and never cleaned, jut aggressively in a pitiless display of military uniformity.

 

Then come the lesser Legions, in terms of numbers and coherence at least. The dusk-black kill-ships of the Night Lords, drenched in projected terror, skulking like thieves on the margins. The ophidian warcraft of the Alpha Legion, spreading out in variegated clusters, distrusted more than most even among themselves, victims of a reputation they spun a long time ago and can now never escape. The World Eaters, stragglers amid the coordination of the cohesive Legions, their destroyers bearing the wounds of continual conflict, spattered arterial red.

...

And then comes the greatest collection of all, the most varied and the most powerful by a distance – the hunt packs of the Black Legion, numerous beyond counting, drawn from every strain of Chaotic allegiance and every vessel marque imaginable. Here are corruption-steeped battlecruisers from the very dawn of the Imperial Age, ravaged by millennia of constant warfare, strutting proudly as pre-eminent slayers of the Corpse-spawn’s dreams. Here are new-founded designs, birthed from the shackled minds of savant shipwrights, freed from the strictures of standard templates and allowed free rein to create monstrosities of innovation. Here are gun-barques that strain with barely controlled energies. Here are personnel carriers with holds crammed full of Black Legionnaires. Here are transports that chain up Titans and Traitor Knights, gifted by forge worlds of the Dark Mechanicum and sent to war under the Black Legion’s ubiquitous standard.

 

Just as the Luna Wolves were in the Age of Wonder, this Legion is now the first among equals, its mongrel bloodline the healthiest and its clarity of loathing the purest. It has made no pacts, it has retained its soul, and now it swaggers through the Eye in an earned exhibition of dominance.

 

The Death Guard are the very last to arrive in numbers. Just as it was so long ago, they turn up to bolster an already galaxy-ending display of power. Their living ships burst from the warp’s grip like ejected spittle from a throat, straggling long lines of grimy matter, their grey-green marker lights filmy and weak. These are some of the very oldest ships in the muster, eroded by the decay that blights all things under Mortarion’s rule, but also engorged by it. The ships are paradoxes within a Legion of endless paradoxes – the strongest and sickest, the most archaic and yet the most constantly renewed, the most uniform in their allegiance and yet the most variable in their outward aspect.

 

While there's obvious character perspective bias there, it's a good look at the organization of a major Black Legion fleet mustering and perceived strength (No one told Decimus the Night Lords weren't coherent enough to tackle Ulthwé, the Emperor's Children definitely have fleet elements larger than corvettes that aren't going to show up, the idea of an external viewpoint having an accurate assessment of the Alpha Legion's strengths and status is a bit of a joke, and we know for a fact from the Dominion of Fire that the World Eaters/Khornates can muster a lot more strength than seen here).

 

So this, while not conclusive, is a good snapshot of what a Black Legion associated Legion muster (read: who gives Abby the time of day rather than doing their own thing) would look like, and perceived relative strength/size.

Edited February 19, 2020 by Lucerne

[Gederas]

All of them are but gnats when compared to the might of the Blood Gorgons

Do those guys even exist anymore? I could have sworn they were just written out of canon because the author who created them was found to have plagiarized a lot of his work for Black Library.....

 

Despite... You know. The fact that they're still using the artwork of a Blood Gorgon on the Chaos Space Marines Codex :lol:

[Lucerne]

 

All of them are but gnats when compared to the might of the Blood Gorgons

Do those guys even exist anymore? I could have sworn they were just written out of canon because the author who created them was found to have plagiarized a lot of his work for Black Library.....

 

Despite... You know. The fact that they're still using the artwork of a Blood Gorgon on the Chaos Space Marines Codex

 

I mean, they're essentially "the who again?" warband, so I think GW just let them be forgotten about while still technically being canon. :p

[infyrana]

Codex: Death Guard makes it explicit that the DG for one are now operating as a cohesive Legion:

 The primary force of the Death Guard consists of seven Plague Companies, each with its own mountain fortress on the Plague Planet. These Companies consist of thousands of warriors and their own fleets, aircraft, tanks, daemonic cohorts, and super-heavy vehicles, dwarfing modern Space Marine Chapters. Each Plague Company consists of Sepsis Cohorts of roughly seven hundred Plague Marines. A Sepsis Cohort is divided among two Maladictums, each with seven Colonies which in turn are broken up into seven squads.

 

My emphases – the 'primary force' reference is what I mean by GW being able to have these huge Legions as well as keeping the individual separate warbands. 

 

I'm not sure you'll be able to put firm numbers on things.

Aye yeah this is quite open and confusing if read without more context etc, definitely open to more should fluff or an author need it.  It's suggestive of having 'thousands' of 'warriors' per company, yet states only 700 marines per each of 7 companies.  But that those 700 marines are the Sepsis Cohort, is that just the marines that stay at their mountain fortresses or something else, and what exactly are the 'warriors' made up from?  There's suggestions of numerous warbands, are these part of the 7 companies?  Can their Nurgle infestation infect other marines to create more? (I wasn't sure about this last bit as I don't read a lot of the novels etc)

 

Oh, if there are answers to all that, please direct me to what I need to go read :D

[MegaVolt87]

Perty has marshaled and co-coordinating 1,000 separate armies, attacking only the strongest bulwark/ fortress sectors in the Imperium. You would need old legion strength to even attempt this. Its no BL modern numbers probably, more likely old HH legion strength of IW, along with attendant rebel guard, muties, demons etc. 

Edited February 19, 2020 by MegaVolt87

[apologist]

Aye yeah this is quite open and confusing if read without more context etc, definitely open to more should fluff or an author need it. It's suggestive of having 'thousands' of 'warriors' per company, yet states only 700 marines per each of 7 companies. But that those 700 marines are the Sepsis Cohort, is that just the marines that stay at their mountain fortresses or something else, and what exactly are the 'warriors' made up from? There's suggestions of numerous warbands, are these part of the 7 companies? Can their Nurgle infestation infect other marines to create more? (I wasn't sure about this last bit as I don't read a lot of the novels etc)

 

Oh, if there are answers to all that, please direct me to what I need to go read :D

The missing info is the number of Sepsis Cohorts, which are only mentioned as varying between the Seven Companies. The implication is that each of the Companies could have several - perhaps dozens or scores (hundreds?) - of Sepsis Cohorts, each of which is seven hundred marines.

 

So if the First Company have two dozen Sepsis Cohorts (for example), that’s already roughly 17,000 marines – and lots more Companies after that!

[infyrana]

@apologist you're right, I totally missed the plural of "consists" - meaning I thought they meant only 1 each oops!  So yep, totally possible to have scores (score was 20 last I remembered?) of cohorts.  Oh my, it's no wonder I have three budding DG armies filling my shelves...

[Leif Bearclaw]

 

Aye yeah this is quite open and confusing if read without more context etc, definitely open to more should fluff or an author need it. It's suggestive of having 'thousands' of 'warriors' per company, yet states only 700 marines per each of 7 companies. But that those 700 marines are the Sepsis Cohort, is that just the marines that stay at their mountain fortresses or something else, and what exactly are the 'warriors' made up from? There's suggestions of numerous warbands, are these part of the 7 companies? Can their Nurgle infestation infect other marines to create more? (I wasn't sure about this last bit as I don't read a lot of the novels etc)

 

Oh, if there are answers to all that, please direct me to what I need to go read

The missing info is the number of Sepsis Cohorts, which are only mentioned as varying between the Seven Companies. The implication is that each of the Companies could have several - perhaps dozens or scores (hundreds?) - of Sepsis Cohorts, each of which is seven hundred marines.

 

So if the First Company have two dozen Sepsis Cohorts (for example), that’s already roughly 17,000 marines – and lots more Companies after that!

 

24 Cohorts seems a bit on the large side (also, it's not a factor of 7 ). It could just as easily (and imo be more plausible) be 2 or 3.

 

Something to also bear in mind with official numbers like that, is that they'll be too large. Just as we know a loyalist Chapter is 1000 Marines split into 10 Companies, but very few Companies actually contain the full 100 men. Likewise most Sepsis Cohorts will be operating understrength most of the time.

 

Also, does someone other than moonreaper have any substantiation for the BL being that stupidly huge? Because if those numbers are accurate (the BL alone having more that 50% of the Imperium's entire, galaxy-wide Astartes strength), sorry to say but the BL are incompetent. Having that level of Marine numbers, plus all their other stuff, and they haven't roflstomped anything that dares to oppose them? What's more likely, the BL are so   at fighting grossly outnumbered Guard Regiments and Marine Chapters actually stand a chance, or they aren't actually more than twice the size of the pre-Calth Ultramarines?

[Marshal Loss]

 

Also, does someone other than moonreaper have any substantiation for the BL being that stupidly huge?

 

As usual he's just making it up. There have never been any concrete figures for the size of the Black Legion, ever, beyond the BL being roughly 10x the size of the WB in the Reynolds' WB trilogy, and that is an old source providing old figures. Even ADB doesn't give any concrete numbers and just says they are "really big". They're almost assuredly in the hundreds of thousands (e.g. Legion size) but the simple reality is, of course, that they have as many marines as the plot demands and I doubt even Abaddon in-universe knows how many Black Legionnaires there are

 

 

 

All of them are but gnats when compared to the might of the Blood Gorgons

Do those guys even exist anymore? I could have sworn they were just written out of canon because the author who created them was found to have plagiarized a lot of his work for Black Library.....

 

Despite... You know. The fact that they're still using the artwork of a Blood Gorgon on the Chaos Space Marines Codex

 

 

No idea, it's just a joke about Moonreaper's old habit of posting threads in the BL subforum asking how (x) event (e.g. Siege of Terra) would have gone if the Blood Gorgons, whom he views as super-super-mega-marines, were present

[Gree]

 

All of them are but gnats when compared to the might of the Blood Gorgons

Do those guys even exist anymore? I could have sworn they were just written out of canon because the author who created them was found to have plagiarized a lot of his work for Black Library.....

 

Despite... You know. The fact that they're still using the artwork of a Blood Gorgon on the Chaos Space Marines Codex

 

They're canon. As about as canon as any of those Renegade Warbands features in the Codex.

 

Zou is certainly blacklisted and GW seems content to let his work fade into obscurity, but nothing has been explicitly written out of canon.

[Canadian_F_H]

Yeah... The only thing i remember about them was in an ADB book about the BL mentioned they had "hundreds of thousands" at the launch of the 1st black crusade. And well, definitions of words, that means they had a minimum of 200,000 marinea at the time.

[RapatoR]

I think I remeber Rob MacNiven mentioning they are the biggest Astartes faction in the universe.

[Goreshed]

GW giving concrete numbers out now plays against their overall goal which is to keep the universe going. If they put hard numbers to forces then they have to keep changing fluff around or have to explain more as to why X force has more or less numbers than what it did.

 

The OCD in me of course really wants to know what the IVth has for numbers going on, but I let it slide because it simply is what it is.

[Lucerne]

GW giving concrete numbers out now plays against their overall goal which is to keep the universe going. If they put hard numbers to forces then they have to keep changing fluff around or have to explain more as to why X force has more or less numbers than what it did.

 

The OCD in me of course really wants to know what the IVth has for numbers going on, but I let it slide because it simply is what it is.

GW should at least give traitor legion supplements with lore.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Supplements, yes. I just wouldn't expect anything organizational in any more depth than what we see for the Death Guard.

[Lucerne]

I mean, the thing about Chaos is that it's entirely possible to give the "main" formation under the Primarchs and have room for a lot of random warbands of various sizes that don't fall under that umbrella.

[Goreshed]

Lucerne there is a big difference between getting actual GW support in the form of supplements and what the numbers actually are within the fluff. Would I love to have a supplement for each of the major gods plus undivided? Of course, what chaos lover wouldn't? But I am convinced we will get a supplement as much as they would nail down numbers in a fluff piece about how many traitors there are.

 

Plus all GW has to say is "It'S tHe WaRp" and that is enough justification there. Time is backwards, forwards and everywhere in between. Which means that countless numbers of chaos marines and everything else under the sun can be in different parts of the warp and not counted.

[Veteran Sergeant]

 

All of them are but gnats when compared to the might of the Blood Gorgons

Do those guys even exist anymore? I could have sworn they were just written out of canon because the author who created them was found to have plagiarized a lot of his work for Black Library.....

 

 

That whole story was so bizarre. I mean, it's one thing to make your work homages, or lift wholesale your ideas from other places.  I mean, Dan Abnett's made an entire career out of it.  But Zou didn't even try to conceal what he was lifting, keeping exact names and almost structurally identical sentences.

[Lord_Caerolion]

 

 

All of them are but gnats when compared to the might of the Blood Gorgons

Do those guys even exist anymore? I could have sworn they were just written out of canon because the author who created them was found to have plagiarized a lot of his work for Black Library.....

 

 

That whole story was so bizarre. I mean, it's one thing to make your work homages, or lift wholesale your ideas from other places.  I mean, Dan Abnett's made an entire career out of it.  But Zou didn't even try to conceal what he was lifting, keeping exact names and almost structurally identical sentences.

 

 

Hell, GW as a whole does it.

 

I'd heard he had plagiarized, but where was he taking his stuff from?