FW Book 9 "Crusade": Fluff Discussion

[StrangerOrders]

They did perhaps go a bit far on it, but they had already set that this was how they operated, that they could do just about everything from being the 1st Legion. The reason perhaps they could go a bit farther is the same reason they could make Sanguinius much better than his brethren, we know Sanguinius dies. Similarly, we know the first legion goes down in flames but a few years after the end of the heresy.

Do they though?

 

They become more paranoid, but now they were always team killers that were immensely aloof and secretive (and willing to kill for it) as well as being willing to completely trip up their allies. Heck, the fallen is more reasonable a reason to do it than pulling that stunt with Guilliman.

 

They still have the biggest fleet, they are the most cohesive with their successors, still boast the most archaeotech and now they have a fortress which is basically the Phalanx but not crippled. Heck we even see them get to show up during the Siege of Fenris to help kick the wolves teeth in during a remarkable lapse of a sense of irony.

 

Their biggest problem has always been their internal fall, but now we see that this was always their pattern and the only real change in 40k is even less accountability and that the council at least isnt on the edge of killing each other.

 

The Sangi line doesnt even add up here. Sangi's entire character is him scrambling left and right to create the perfect image you are mentioning, and this is the same team that gave him a really good reason to work so hard for vanity despite being a very humble man himself. He needed to do it because his Legion was such a mess that they make SW PR look like a masterwork of skill and talent.

 

Heck, if anyone needs a bone tossed their way its arguably Sangi.

 

I think they just oversold how awesome they remained. They were the trailblazers, so had to specialize in everything, so ended up good at everything. However, it made them hidebound and inflexible, they eventually got outclassed by the "specialist" Legions, and they would have ended up destroying themselves if things had continued as they did.

Thats the tragedy here I think.

 

Show the Rangda thing almost killing them and then have the Lion work hard to use Caliban to rebuild them, have the process stretch like we saw with Magnus and Fulgrim (with the twist of having it work out).

 

Let them have a big fleet sure and even say they originally had alot of fancy stuff and sure even a ton of the literally most titular ship class. Have them lose nearly all of it to pride. Heck, that even gives room for the Invincible Reason to even have a section as to why it is so awesome and survived.

 

Want to have their resentment of the others make more sense? Even play up the usual callous practicallity of the Emp, have him punish them by giving some away to the other Legions as they find their Primarchs. 

 

They say decline alot but dont even have the nuts to make their battles stick, heck before Rangda their two big failures are not even that bad compared to other Legions, saying that it is an 'emotional' hurt is pretty silly. Go tell the EC, TS and IW that the DA losses are just as valid because 'it just hits different you know?'

 

Idk, it feels like a really unforced error to let them literally be immune to consequence.

 

I could be talking out my rear though.

 

How do folks that see something of a problem here think that they could have been toned down a bit?

Edited September 30, 2020 by StrangerOrders

[Lord_Caerolion]

The other thing that just hit me is that we need to keep in mind that this is an in-universe source. We're complaining that this source isn't showing enough of the flaws of the Dark Angels Legion, and the setbacks that it must have had. Well, it's not like it'd be the first time that we've known of the Dark Angels stonewalling to prevent any unfavourable information about their organization get out.

[bluntblade]

But the implication of previous texts was that the DA took a long time to come back from Rangda and it changed the way they were viewed. Without that sense of change, the narrative feels kinda flat compared to, say, the Wolves.

[Lord_Caerolion]

I think that's partly just because the FW writers are trying to toe Abnetts line of "omg the Wolves are just so super scary, you guys, they're the worst of all the Legions".

[bluntblade]

I think that's partly just because the FW writers are trying to toe Abnetts line of "omg the Wolves are just so super scary, you guys, they're the worst of all the Legions".

But Bligh was constructive about it. The Wolves under Russ start out fierce but honourable, but the Executioners role comes to define them with the Rangdan Xenocides. They emerge fundamentally changed in the eyes of the Imperium at large.

 

The DA lack that kind of arc.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Reading it again, did the Dark Angels come out truly unscathed? The “Operational Doctrine” section says the DA claim to have 180,000 Marines before the Heresy, but that other sources show they may have had as few as 50,000.

 

Reading between the lines, the Dark Angels made it incredibly hard for outsiders to know the truth about them, and have a known reputation of deliberate misdirection and obfuscation. I’m calling it now, the Dark Angels never recovered as much as they claim to, it’s all a front. The Lions biggest victory was making those 50,000 seem like 4 times their number.

[bluntblade]

It's the way it's kinda skimmed over. They just bounce back because of course they do. There isn't a point where the Lion is having to really work to rebuild and such, when you'd think it would allow room for major conflict re Caliban. Edited September 30, 2020 by bluntblade

[Lord_Caerolion]

It's the way it's kinda skimmed over. They just bounce back because of course they do. There isn't a point where the Lion is having to really work to rebuild and such, when you'd think it would allow room for major conflict re Caliban.

Because AK wasn’t able to find that information, as the Dark Angels hid it. AK can only say what they manage to uncover in records.

[jaxom]

 

It's the way it's kinda skimmed over. They just bounce back because of course they do. There isn't a point where the Lion is having to really work to rebuild and such, when you'd think it would allow room for major conflict re Caliban.

Because AK wasn’t able to find that information, as the Dark Angels hid it. AK can only say what they manage to uncover in records.

 

 

I think this is a good point, but we do have the Alpha Legion for comparison. There's a fuzzy line between indulging an unreliable narrator as your medium and not actually conveying coherent information. I went back and grabbed this from the original Lion model interview:

 

The Lion's primarch keywords are:

Resolve

Virtue

Ruthless

Efficient

Tactical & Strategic

Valorous

Monster Hunter (Knight Errant - his role in the Crusade)

 

The legion should, in some ways, reflect these as well. And I can't help but feel... meh on if that was achieved. I have some longer thoughts regarding that this book was specifically stated to focus on the Terran aspects of the legion and the larger issue of tragedy in defining legion arcs (the Blood Angels comments got me thinking about that), but I don't have time right now.

[MegaVolt87]

So, post Caliban I am assuming DA's managed to somehow pull a fast one over Bobby when he showed up and the Lion was missing to organize the second founding chapters from the Legions. Lion I guess was the first loyalist primarch to go missing, all the other primarchs seem to have overseen the transitions to the codex reforms.

 

High DA numbers must have been a thing still though regardless of their overall losses. I thought DA were only second to UM for successor chapters in the codex reforms/ second founding ?

[WrathOfTheLion]

And that was even after losing something like 1/3 of the Legion as Fallen.

 

In order to have their tens of thousands of Fallen in recent 40k lore, they had to bump the numbers up in the HH legion. Didn't they say Luther had something like 60,000 on Caliban in previous literature? 60,000 + 70,000 at Thramas is already over 130,000 legionnaires, without accounting for patrol fleets and other assets.

 

200,000 is quite a few, although it is what, 150 years of recovery after the Rangdan Wars. We know Luther had the training programs to quickly get Legionnaires up and ready, so being to quickly recover is something that is in existing lore. Given the numbers for Caliban and Jonson's forces, you really do have to go over 150,000 for anything to make sense.

Edited September 30, 2020 by WrathOfTheLion

[Dagoth Ur]

Hrm, I've had a completely different reaction and interpretation to the DA section - to me it read as a legion that started out as the paragon and primus inter pares amongst legions (i.e. the early Terran legion), that then slowly faded into not being considered excellent but merely performing to satisfaction. Hell, the book even says that at times other legions straight outperformed them. The Angels of Death did have their super special fleet in the beginning, but the 7th legion would amass a fleet that rivaled - if not even surpassed it - in size and firepower following the reunion with Dorn and gaining access to the shipyards of Inwit. They did have a massive legion, but at one point would be reduced to a tenth of its original size and then later also be far outclassed - even chided - by the XIIIth legion Ultramarines for the way they waged war.

 

To me, the 1st Legion reads as a legion that - prior to the discovery of the Lion - became so entrenched in its structure and pride that it became borderline inefficient, despite its vast armoury. Yes, they conquered and destroyed, but they were not the Paragons to the other legions that they had been early on. They seek to regain their glory, feed their pride but in turn only waste their lives and their material - even Guilliman comments that the legion may have "proven its strength, but not its wisdom" during one particular assault. This rigidity was so bad that when the original legion master - in a supremely arrogant direct assault against his enemies - died, the other hosts of the legion couldn't agree on a successor and Malcador himself had to step in and assign a host-unaligned veteran as Legion Master.

 

Only when the Lion arrives does this change and the legion experiences a second ascendance - but even then it is an ascendance at the sole whims of its father-progenitor. He curries no favour with particular sons, makes his equerry Corswain even hide his wing-related emblems just so that he can tame this rigid, pride-riven construct that the legion has become. They hunger for glory and to prove themselves - the Lion only seeks to destroy. He is no realm-builder like Guilliman or Dorn, he is not a man of the people such as Sanguinius or Lorgar - he is the Emperor's destroyer and in the wake of his passage only death may follow. Everything has to bend to that singular purpose and even his sons experience harsh censure when they disobey his orders - no matter if their decisions lead to failure or more efficient victories. A rigid social structure that is bent to the will of a rigid master.

 

Riven by pride is the perfect way to describe the 30k Dark Angels. They are competent. They are excellently armed. They labour under sanctions that would be beyond the remit of other legions. In many ways they do not have equals. Yes - but! It is precisely this "supremacy" that feeds an arrogance that - unless shackled - would see them ground down into dirt and absolutely ruined. They are as adamant as the hardest blade - but the hardest steel is brittle. The moment these structures crack, the moment they are overshadowed by others, they turn into snares and poison. The Legion Master dies because he thought defeat itself was impossible. The legion grinds to a halt as even the highest echelons of the legion fall to the poisons of partisanship and party-politics - the successor has to come out of MY host because we are the best of course! The legion continues to destroy, but is not seen as a legend amongst legends anymore, but as merely another cog in the machinery of the Legiones Astartes that performs to satisfaction. The Principia Bellicosa - their great text of war - finds itself amended and even in threat of replacement via Guilliman's writing. It does not excell - merely satisfy. In response, they throw themselves into grinder after grinder, needlessly wasting lives just to delude themselves with pyrrhic victories. They refuse to learn from others, because they are the First.

 

The Terrans want Glory. Luther wants Glory. The Calibanites want Glory. Everyone wants it - everyone except the Lion. He doesn't give two squats about it - hell, the whole galaxy suspects that he would be vyying for position of Warmaster and yet when the message of Horus' coronation reaches him, what does he do? He continues conquering and destroying without stoping for long enough to even send a message. Because it does not matter. Duty matters. Loyalty matters. The Crusade matters. That is what the Terran legion stood for and what the Lion stands for - but the legion lost itself along the way. Duty was tainted by pride. The Crusade turned into exploits to be hung atop bannerpoles. As long as the Lion lives, the strictures of Duty and Honour would be imposed again, but pride and arrogance would continue to simmer away in those cages of discipline.

 

It is no surprise that once the Lion fell, the Legion reverted back into the pride-riven mindset that was the essence of Post-Unification and Pre-Lion DA as well as the essence of the 40k DA. In many ways, this knightly legion and chapter follow the single most important narrative theme of one of the most important pieces of knightly medieval literature (The Lay of the Nibelungs) and it is Shame. The 1st Legion's story is a story of shame. They are the Angels of Death. The First. The Left Hand of the Emperor. A chapter and legion that - in a universe rife with symbolism - is defined and set apart by its singular nature. And despite that, despite the fleets and the numbers and their purpose, the First Legion feels shame because as time went on, they fell in line. They performed to satisfaction - not excellence. They went from being the legion to a legion. And how did they deal with this? Self-destructive delusion. They broke themselves upon enemy pallisades and blades, just so that they could clutch bloodied banners with skinned fists and broken fingers. They fail in their duty of extermination and conquest, because they cannot put aside their pride and party-politics for the higher purpose of the Crusade. Only the highest of Imperial Echelons and later their Father can put them in order- but even the Lion cannot close all rifts.

 

Luther roils with jealousy - Luther is shamed publicly and stews in his hurt pride which tears the legion apart in the most fundamental ways. His exile is professional in nature, but Luther takes it personal. Caliban - a world of knights, orders and pride - burns because of shame. The Dark Angels fracture, hunt, kill, sabotage and lie their way through 10k years - and the reason for that is not half the legion falling. The White Scars had that as well and it worked out fine. The Dark Angels became what they became because they feel ashamed. They were the first, the primus inter pares and they saw themselves threatened in that position.

 

I genuinely can't see the angle that they have somehow become the "Spiritual Lieges" of 30k. Their fluff is perfect to me - particularly considering how many mediocre short stories and novels they received in the HH Series. Strong and indomitable, even beyond the limit of certain other legions - yes - but oh how the fissures are growing beneath this veneer of primacy. How frail the legion truly is without its father. I guess they are the "Superman" Legion in a narrative sense - they are so powerful externally, that their struggle has to - by neccessity - come from the inside. The only fault for me would be the severe lack of focus put on the Calibanite aspect of the legion. We very much got the Destroyers from Terra, but we didn't really get the Monster Slayers from Caliban, did we.

[WrathOfTheLion]

The Guilliman part was quite funny I think, where he chastises them for adhering to dogma. No wonder he ends up ashamed at his own sons when he comes back to find they were doing the same thing in M41/M42.

[Scribe]

You make a great case Observer, but there remains a fatal flaw.

 

Even elevating them in the first place to this degree stretches the bounds of the setting.

 

It's the Executioners issue all over again, but to an even worse degree by far, because this time it's about everything, every operation type, equipment, fleet, whatever it is, the DA were the best, unquestionably.

 

Thats doesn't work to set up a fall, it just cheapens everyone else.

[Dagoth Ur]

You make a great case Observer, but there remains a fatal flaw.

 

Even elevating them in the first place to this degree stretches the bounds of the setting.

 

It's the Executioners issue all over again, but to an even worse degree by far, because this time it's about everything, every operation type, equipment, fleet, whatever it is, the DA were the best, unquestionably.

 

Thats doesn't work to set up a fall, it just cheapens everyone else.

Hard disagree due to three points:

 

1.) They start out as the Legion-Prime so to say, but they do not stay that way. Hell, I'd argue that even after reunion with the Lion they do not show a higher aptitude at the various ways of warfare that have established themselves amongst the legions. The Raven Guard and Alpha Legion are still the better stealth operatives, sieges and mechanized warfare are still the primary domain of the Imperial Fists, Iron Warriors and Iron Hands, brute force assaults and lightning strikes are still the specialty of the likes of Blood Angels, Sons of Horus and World Eaters. The Legion's specialty - and I find that shown well enough in Crusade - is the ability to blend these ways of Warfare to a degree that other legions just can't. They trade in excellency for flexibility as time goes on because A.) the Hexagrammaton and the Orders provide the infrastructure to do so and B.) the other legions specialize to such a degree that they naturally outpace the Dark Angels. It's not the Executioner's issue all over again because nobody makes the claim that they are the best and will always be the best and that all legions look to them as their spiritual lieges etc. - the only thing Crusade mentions is that they start out as the Legiones Astartes' progenitor in spirit, structure and supremacy - which is to be expected considering that they are both logistically and symbolically the first, but they lose that position of supremacy long before the Lion is found again - and even then they do not regain it. Partially because the legion simply cannot do that, partially because the Lion does not strive to do that. They aren't the best - they used to be the best.

 

2.) In a setting that contains literal Star Gods, planet devouring AIs, ships that manipulate time, Primarchs that defy logic and reason, sentient funghi that thrive on warfare, literal sorcery and many more ridiculous things, I can hardly see why this stretches the bounds of the setting to such unacceptable levels. I hear a lot of people saying "This is unbelieveable" and "That cheapens xyz" but I haven't thus far read or heard a single argumentative strain that actually shows why this would be the case. The Legion starts out with great numbers, a fantastic fleet and more. Okay, cool. I kinda expected that from the First Legion - the legion and chapter that has always occupied a rather special place in the setting. The book also clearly tells us that this does not remain the Status Quo for the Legion. Their numbers dwindle, their fleet shrinks and is being outsized and outgunned. The degradation of their assets and would-be supremacy is detailed within the span of two pages. They were unquestionably the best only in the early crusade - before the other legions got their teeth into the Principia Bellicosa and started developing it on their own. Again, they were not the Siegemasters that the Iron Warriors are, they were not the berzerkers that the Warhounds and World Eaters were, they were not the swift warriors of the White Scars or Blood Angels - the book makes no claim about that, it even goes to mention specifically that the Legion would find itself outpaced rather rapidly. They only held supremacy because they came first and laid down the pattern. Once the pattern started to develop independently, they lost that position.

 

3.) Setting up someone high and powerful is THE classical way of writing a great fall. Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Sîfrit and Rüdeger von Bechelaren in the Lay of the Nibelungs, Tûrin Tûrambar in the Legendarium, Superman in the Red Son, Satan in Paradise Lost - literature is full of examples of that trope. Again "cheapens" is being thrown around without anything to back it up - a Floskel we would say in German, an empty phrase. How does the Dark Angels starting out in a clearly superior position, only to degrade over time due to their pride and shame, as well as the aptitude shown by their cousins cheapen the other legions exactly? Are the Sons of Horus still not the best at decapitation strikes? Are the Imperial Fists still not the premier void-fighters? Are the Ultramarines still not the best empire builders? Are the Alpha Legion still not the -REDACTED-? AK in crusade certainly thinks that they are. If anything, it serves to elevate the other legions because they take the tools and knowledge given to them by the First and put them to greater use and effect in singular specializations.

[Scribe]

I appreciate the response. I'm not saying it stretches the bounds of the setting re: fantastical and wild. I mean, if they can run roughshod over everyone else, it invalidates those legions within their area's of expertise.

 

If that is specifically NOT the case, as you seem to point out in your 3rd point, then I am incorrect in my understanding, as I do not have the book myself.

[bluntblade]

I see your point, Observer, but I feel that the way this is all dramatised, for want of a better word, undermines what is stated about the Legion's flaws. The narrative of their story tends to just barrel forwards.

[Billy the Squid]

 

They did perhaps go a bit far on it, but they had already set that this was how they operated, that they could do just about everything from being the 1st Legion. The reason perhaps they could go a bit farther is the same reason they could make Sanguinius much better than his brethren, we know Sanguinius dies. Similarly, we know the first legion goes down in flames but a few years after the end of the heresy.

Do they though?

 

They become more paranoid, but now they were always team killers that were immensely aloof and secretive (and willing to kill for it) as well as being willing to completely trip up their allies. Heck, the fallen is more reasonable a reason to do it than pulling that stunt with Guilliman.

 

They still have the biggest fleet, they are the most cohesive with their successors, still boast the most archaeotech and now they have a fortress which is basically the Phalanx but not crippled. Heck we even see them get to show up during the Siege of Fenris to help kick the wolves teeth in during a remarkable lapse of a sense of irony.

 

Their biggest problem has always been their internal fall, but now we see that this was always their pattern and the only real change in 40k is even less accountability and that the council at least isnt on the edge of killing each other.

 

The Sangi line doesnt even add up here. Sangi's entire character is him scrambling left and right to create the perfect image you are mentioning, and this is the same team that gave him a really good reason to work so hard for vanity despite being a very humble man himself. He needed to do it because his Legion was such a mess that they make SW PR look like a masterwork of skill and talent.

 

Heck, if anyone needs a bone tossed their way its arguably Sangi.

 

I think they just oversold how awesome they remained. They were the trailblazers, so had to specialize in everything, so ended up good at everything. However, it made them hidebound and inflexible, they eventually got outclassed by the "specialist" Legions, and they would have ended up destroying themselves if things had continued as they did.

Thats the tragedy here I think.

 

Show the Rangda thing almost killing them and then have the Lion work hard to use Caliban to rebuild them, have the process stretch like we saw with Magnus and Fulgrim (with the twist of having it work out).

 

Let them have a big fleet sure and even say they originally had alot of fancy stuff and sure even a ton of the literally most titular ship class. Have them lose nearly all of it to pride. Heck, that even gives room for the Invincible Reason to even have a section as to why it is so awesome and survived.

 

Want to have their resentment of the others make more sense? Even play up the usual callous practicallity of the Emp, have him punish them by giving some away to the other Legions as they find their Primarchs. 

 

They say decline alot but dont even have the nuts to make their battles stick, heck before Rangda their two big failures are not even that bad compared to other Legions, saying that it is an 'emotional' hurt is pretty silly. Go tell the EC, TS and IW that the DA losses are just as valid because 'it just hits different you know?'

 

Idk, it feels like a really unforced error to let them literally be immune to consequence.

 

I could be talking out my rear though.

 

How do folks that see something of a problem here think that they could have been toned down a bit?

 

 

This is the kind of thing I was referencing when the book first came out and I was reading through the parts which referred to the Rangda and the Xenocides, it just feels meh, like it's been glossed over.

 

This was a massive apocalyptic conflict that, until Horus threw his little temper tantrum in the Heresy, was the Imperium's biggest single campaign, with entire expeditionary fleets being wiped out, destroying Titan Legions and crippled several Astartes Legions and almost brought the Imperium to it's knees, to the point big E himself had to unleash something even he didn't have full control over from the Noctis Labyrinthus. Yet, it's just skimmed over, the book commits the cardinal sin of telling, but not showing in it's writing.

 

It's like reading a history of the Punic Wars by Livy or Polybius and they just gloss over the second Punic war and the battle of Cannae, one of the biggest catastrophes in military history. 

 

This should have been the tragic culmination of the Dark Angles' fall from ascendancy. Both emphasising it was they that held the line against a truly malignant Xenos species who were, for once, fully capable of meeting the Imperium on it's own terms, where few other Legions could have done (Dark Age tech being unleashed with abandon is always fun); here it should have been plain to see through the writing why they were the first Angels of Death, but also through their own hide bound hubris they take immense casualties by throwing themselves into a conflict which they are actually losing, with only the Lion's intervention preventing them being completely wiped out.

 

It should have been a point of bitter pride for them, they saved the Imperium from it's worst threat until the Heresy, but also ensured they were eclipsed by other Legions as a result. Prior to this they were the First, the Left Hand of the Emperor, the Legion on which the Principia Bellicosa was based, the only ones trusted to wield the power of Dark Age of technology weaponry and equipment now they're just one of many, painstakingly rebuilding their strength under the the watchful gaze of the Lion on Caliban.

 

Which would go at least go someway to illustrate why the Dark Angles are such jack arses to everyone, they took on an utterly evil Xenos species and it cost them dearly, yet the through the Edict of Obliteration, Damnatio Memoriae, the truth will never be known, all Imperial ctizens know is the Dark Angles were exterminating entire planetary populations. We needed to have this illustrated and expounded upon so we could get the imagery of why the Dark Angels as a Legion developed the character they did, shunned, tainted by bitter pride, shrouded in secrecy and striving to return to the "glory" they once held as the First Legion while, maybe, thinking if other Legions were as strong as them then they wouldn't have had to bear the burden alone. It's a positive feedback loop. 

 

I think this is where the problem lies in Crusade, it's not a bad book by any means, but it's seems disjointed, I get the feeling that several authors had a hand in writing different sections and it wasn't reviewed as a single cohesive entity. Hence we get this constant repetition telling us that were best at .... or did it first, it comes across as if the authors are trying to emphasis the Dark Angels primacy by building them up, but doing it in such a clumsy way that it comes across as over compensation, before bringing them down, which they never really succeed in doing to a decent degree as they tend to gloss over the failures and set backs. 

Edited September 30, 2020 by Billy the Squid

[StrangerOrders]

 

You make a great case Observer, but there remains a fatal flaw.

 

Even elevating them in the first place to this degree stretches the bounds of the setting.

 

It's the Executioners issue all over again, but to an even worse degree by far, because this time it's about everything, every operation type, equipment, fleet, whatever it is, the DA were the best, unquestionably.

 

Thats doesn't work to set up a fall, it just cheapens everyone else.

Hard disagree due to three points:

 

1.) They start out as the Legion-Prime so to say, but they do not stay that way. Hell, I'd argue that even after reunion with the Lion they do not show a higher aptitude at the various ways of warfare that have established themselves amongst the legions. The Raven Guard and Alpha Legion are still the better stealth operatives, sieges and mechanized warfare are still the primary domain of the Imperial Fists, Iron Warriors and Iron Hands, brute force assaults and lightning strikes are still the specialty of the likes of Blood Angels, Sons of Horus and World Eaters. The Legion's specialty - and I find that shown well enough in Crusade - is the ability to blend these ways of Warfare to a degree that other legions just can't. They trade in excellency for flexibility as time goes on because A.) the Hexagrammaton and the Orders provide the infrastructure to do so and B.) the other legions specialize to such a degree that they naturally outpace the Dark Angels. It's not the Executioner's issue all over again because nobody makes the claim that they are the best and will always be the best and that all legions look to them as their spiritual lieges etc. - the only thing Crusade mentions is that they start out as the Legiones Astartes' progenitor in spirit, structure and supremacy - which is to be expected considering that they are both logistically and symbolically the first, but they lose that position of supremacy long before the Lion is found again - and even then they do not regain it. Partially because the legion simply cannot do that, partially because the Lion does not strive to do that. They aren't the best - they used to be the best.

 

2.) In a setting that contains literal Star Gods, planet devouring AIs, ships that manipulate time, Primarchs that defy logic and reason, sentient funghi that thrive on warfare, literal sorcery and many more ridiculous things, I can hardly see why this stretches the bounds of the setting to such unacceptable levels. I hear a lot of people saying "This is unbelieveable" and "That cheapens xyz" but I haven't thus far read or heard a single argumentative strain that actually shows why this would be the case. The Legion starts out with great numbers, a fantastic fleet and more. Okay, cool. I kinda expected that from the First Legion - the legion and chapter that has always occupied a rather special place in the setting. The book also clearly tells us that this does not remain the Status Quo for the Legion. Their numbers dwindle, their fleet shrinks and is being outsized and outgunned. The degradation of their assets and would-be supremacy is detailed within the span of two pages. They were unquestionably the best only in the early crusade - before the other legions got their teeth into the Principia Bellicosa and started developing it on their own. Again, they were not the Siegemasters that the Iron Warriors are, they were not the berzerkers that the Warhounds and World Eaters were, they were not the swift warriors of the White Scars or Blood Angels - the book makes no claim about that, it even goes to mention specifically that the Legion would find itself outpaced rather rapidly. They only held supremacy because they came first and laid down the pattern. Once the pattern started to develop independently, they lost that position.

 

3.) Setting up someone high and powerful is THE classical way of writing a great fall. Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Sîfrit and Rüdeger von Bechelaren in the Lay of the Nibelungs, Tûrin Tûrambar in the Legendarium, Superman in the Red Son, Satan in Paradise Lost - literature is full of examples of that trope. Again "cheapens" is being thrown around without anything to back it up - a Floskel we would say in German, an empty phrase. How does the Dark Angels starting out in a clearly superior position, only to degrade over time due to their pride and shame, as well as the aptitude shown by their cousins cheapen the other legions exactly? Are the Sons of Horus still not the best at decapitation strikes? Are the Imperial Fists still not the premier void-fighters? Are the Ultramarines still not the best empire builders? Are the Alpha Legion still not the -REDACTED-? AK in crusade certainly thinks that they are. If anything, it serves to elevate the other legions because they take the tools and knowledge given to them by the First and put them to greater use and effect in singular specializations.

 

Good writeups but I hard disagree respectfully, not dismissing your opinion as invalid or flanderizing it but I would like to point out the specific points as to why I disagree.

 

Its a long one and I do fervently respect those that don't want to put the time in to read it (and I admit I have a very limited gift with critique but I hope that what follows at least makes the opposing position understandable and that I do not mean to call the opposing view invalid.

1. Regarding Decay/Decline: This section does not work. You cannot say they began with an enormous fleet and then lost it or cite their gradually being overridden by other Legions or their losses. Because while that would be ideal and is frankly inline with the lore, it is not what we are told when you take the book as a whole.
   • Decline in quality does not work when you specify that the Firewing's archives are still the best among the Legions. Nor when a handful of terminators is capable of wiping out a company of the finest Legion's Terminator Elite. Thats a really hard line to swing particularly if you choose to minimize the Justaerian as just being overhyped by PR (because it feed into a point down below). You say that the other Legions are better than them but this is not actually shown beyond a single sentence and is actually heavily subverted by what is mentioned elsewhere in the volume, according to the above examples (I can provide more).
   • The loss of ships is an interesting one to argue, the line in the narrative section only specifies that they had nothing to match the Phalanx: "and the Imperial Fists, under Dorn, boasted the firepower of relics such as the Phalanx in their fleet". Saying they lost it also does not work because when we see their present material strength listed, its stated that they surpass the Fists in both tonnage and ship count. While specifying those ships you claim as lost are common enough to form the heart of each fleet, that same article then goes on to specify that there were alot of these fleets because the DA were elite enough to not really need as many marines in the same place to get the job done. Which runs counter to that line about other Legions surpassing them as said Legions most known for the higher-bracket pretty specifically rely on said numbers. 
   • The loss of men is... a bit difficult to argue as written. Compare the losses of the Iron Warriors, Emperor's Children or the Thousand Sons, these are not just toss away notes but repeated lines across their appendix with it being repeatedly hammered home precisely how much of an issue this was with the latter two cases going out of their way to note that it took the entire Crusade to achieve the grand prize of low to mid-tier figures. Comparatively, let us be honest about Rangda as addressed in the narrative shall we? It is followed two sentences later from the mention of that 90% you characterized as being a cumulative effect of their decline to be recovered from by the Caliban intake. That is not a sacrifice, that is perhaps the most remarkable intake ever achieved from a single feudal world. Especially since the book goes out of its way to mention that the DA specifically preferred a small recruiting pool and had the median Gene-Seed.
2. Ruined By Pride: Since this book is not the first book in the series, lets contrast and compare that whole ruined by Pride thing a bit.
   • So, we are told that their pride 'special flaw' (which, to begin with is a bit generous given that these are astartes) manifested in three principle fashions.
     1. Their organization system leading to alot of strain from interest groups during their elections between Lord Commanders (of which they only had two, which already puts them in a considerably better spot than alot of Legions). Which eventually lead to a breakdown in their command echelon. 
     2. Their Commanders were prone to Elite-Hunting and became increasingly wasteful to earn the most awesome laurels (nothing actually negates that they did win and accept said laurels which I will bring up further down). This included dick-measuring with Primarchs (which, its worth noting they succeeded at in the sorta but not really 'Night of the Wolf' style).
     3. A steady loss of men and wargear that bled them dry.
   • Now, lets see how well these idea execute in principle.
     1. This is definitely the most well-executed of the three flaws to my eye in that we did see that final fracturing. Its also a bit weird in that it shows Malcador having exceedingly bad judgement given how well his nominee worked out but I guess there was a need to show his errors in judgement? Which is odd since Malc has a bad track record a mile long but thems the breaks.
     2. This one is where it starts rubbing me wrong, losses in principle work as facets but its weird to still have them work essentially. Its an exceedingly common trope that Astartes commit to these exceedingly misjudged ego-trips but the issue is that we see alot of throw away 'gradually bled dry' lines but dont ever see a point of genuine defeat in it. They still won when the Sinestra died, it just cost them a small allocation of troops and his lifeward which to just about any other Legion would kind of suck but be inline with standard Crusade losses (I will back this up below), the second Lord Commander died but in a way that isnt even necessarily humiliating. Not unless we start counting the Massacre, the Galleries or other situations where there was no way of predicting a bloody doom-bomb as humiliating. 'But it was embarrassing for them' does not really work in a series that has been pretty brutal about dragging legions through the dirt as often as giving them headpats. These are all still celebrated fights and they still accept the laurels when it comes down to it.
     3. The loss of men and resources... here is the thing, kinda but not really? We see them lose ships, we are in fact old that they lose a whole ton. But the fact that they can still be riding around outclassing every other Legion's fleet in terms of tonnage, firepower and esoterica sort of gives lie to this. If you can have a Gloriana equivalent at the heart of search fleet of a few thousand men, then I am sort of left asking what you have really lost since we know each of those can more or less tank most fleets. They have a very widespread series of fortresses across the galaxy, showing a staggering degree of force-projection and even a world that can somehow fit them with a continuous supply of esoterica.
        • In terms of bouncing back, they can somehow recover from losses well-enough to lose 90% of their men, recover them from a small feudal world and some Terran enclaves and still number among the largest Legions comfortably. You can't really handwave that away in a series that has built its rep on its irregular quality in terms of worldbuilding and consistency within the franchise. We have seen how hard it is to make Legions that large, Robby G needed an incredibly vast empire and considerable resource-management to achieve a mere 25% over that. Pert needed one of the most resilient Gene-Seeds on record to achieve a Legion that could shrug off those losses. Dorn needed to cast a net so wide that he could likely catch world engines with it. Lorgar needed easy fights and to literally sell his soul to the devil. It sort of continues like this. 
        • Their archaeotech is also near infinite, since the problem here is that telling as that they took these losses and then flexing on how much of it they not only have but that Ars-Goetia-Reference can actively produce is nuts. Because then that sort of both waters down their losses, since you dont really feel much when they can just make more and seem quite capable of doing so.
   • And now the really big problem. We are told that they were widely admired and then gradually lost some of that prestige to others. The problem is that the book shoots itself in the foot with this. Because they do not just have these victories. We are explicitly told that they both obfuscated on their resources and deliberately hid many of their most awesome and grueling victories because they would shatter the minds of everyone who is quite capable of processing the achievements of other Legions. Then we are shown their resources and organizations and all of the secret things normals arent allowed to know. That sort of creates this pervasive sense of 'well if they really knew those guys would be wetting themselves before us'. So they can comfortably achieve a public second-third place in almost every sense and measure while also hiding all of these assets and awesome-doom-battles and we are also told that they are more or less just losing inside their heads.
     • I think its fairly clear here why some of us arent jazzed about this, especially in light of the history of this series which I will go into detail with below.
   • So... where is their fall? Really? By the End of the Crusade they are literally said to be comfortably second or equal to every Legion if we take the appendix at value while also being able to leverage a ton of things that are super special and its just that they dont care what others think about it.
3. Not Out-Legioning the Legions: You mention that their claim to fame is interlocking warfare. Thats sort of hard to spin here because we arent told that they blend better than the other Legions, we are given examples of them either engaging in circumstances other Legions have been utterly destroyed by or accel at except with the caveat of the DA being actually better at it with less consequence. 
   • The biggest offender here is the first exemplary battle and the breakdown of the wings. It was always known that they existed as unique doctrines and that they had bits they worked well with, that isn't an issue. The issue is that precise breakdown makes each Wing sound considerably better than each of the Legions that would go on to copy them, in part owed to how much previous books went out of their way to stick caveats and pressure points into even a Legion;s strength. I want to give some examples here actually:
     • The Brethren Moon battle (which lets face it is essentially what they were fighting) marks the big issue with their combat psykers who failed to reign in their minds completely after fighting off a planet-sized doom Daemon. Lets compare that to the TSons big problem battle pre-Magnus where they were fighting other human psykers, they won but at the cost of a cancer that literally shrunk them to a thousand men with the first to fall literally turning into a slow-mow prophecy splatter. So here we have their moment of tragedy as a cost for creating combat psykers, a victory that kills a few thousand and costs them one relic ship but sees the named characters not only survive but then has the master of the Pentacle go on to steal the thunder of the TSons in forming the Librarius.
     • The Firewing, aside from making the Heralds look incompetent, is noted to possess such a massive archive of lore that they needed to literally have Astartes whose only job was keeping track of it. Which again sort of messes with the Heralds and Tsons having among the most impressive archives of the Legions (since neither last I check is noted to actually need full-time literal librarians to keep track of it all).
       • Not to mention that their methods are specifically the sort of things that earned so much disgust for the Alphas and NLords and even RG. Assassins have traditionally been utterly hated by alot of Astartes. Yet the DAngels kept a literal host of them and it didnt draw any disdain?
     • The Dreadwing is noted to be free and handy with exterminatus, see such horrors that it bursts the mind, be descended from the berserk skandics and have a truly impressive armory. Which is apparently not that big an issue but then leaves you wandering why the VIth needed to be mind-wiped so often that they needed to develop sagas to try and make sense of their fragmented memory and how it was that the XIVth were so feared and disliked for employing the exact same weapons and tactics? Its the matter of consequence here, where are they? Because the book is still clear on this, the DAngels are admired and respected somehow as much as they are feared. Which is a bit hard to swallow given that the other Legions that did this basically lived in a PR hell.
   • Being secretive is a fairly common trope for Legiones, for all we hear about them being the face of the Crusade it sort of seems like every legion has a tombworld of skeletons these days. But we are told that the DA had the most of them in terms of having to do ugly jobs. So lets compare the consequences of having these ugly jobs with some other Legions who had the same:
     • Space Wolves: Mind-Wiped regularly to the point that they are drawing question marks on where pieces of their wargear even came from. Considered to literally be idiots by the iterators they ignored.
     • Blood Angels Pre-Sangi: Literally held to be animals by some and openly considered for extermination.
     • Dusk Raiders: Frequently sentenced for using dangerous tech on jobs they were specifically given.
     • Thousand Sons: Curse-aside, had their victories either censored and suffered from a horrible public image.
     • The Alpha Legion: No commendations, widely disdained and considered weak.

        

     • Comparatively the DAngels were not only highly idolized but were even admired by mortals as we are specifically told and commanders always saw them as tough but fair allies. This is despite them also being said by the same token to habitually kill allies that see the wrong thing and to have actually gone out of their way to scare mortals for no good reason. This is when most mortals are toppling over themselves to slander any Legion with even a fraction a bad reputation, its a very jarring disconnect.
   • Catastrophic loss recovery is another big issue here. The problem is that this usually goes into one of two streams, big Legions that are known for having remarkable soak due to some extenuating circumstance (big empire, really good gene-seed, etc) or small to middle sized Legions that took alot of effort to build up to where they got (the TSons, EC, Sallies, etc). In both cases, numbers are defining here and that is where the problem with the DA's remarkable recoveries come from. The book does not just note that they have an average gene-seed, engage in costly battles and dont actually keep that many domains, it actively notes that they derided other legions for those things. It creates a narrative of the DA being able to shrug of consequences really and it is deeply bothersome.
     • Speaking of consequences, its worth noting that the other Legion who has a remarkable bounce-back rate, the Iron Warriors have not just a fall like them but has an entirely different culmination. It drives home how expendable an Astartes becomes in that culture and mindset with having a tenth of the Legion not just killed but literally beaten to death at random. You can't just throw around 'gradual decline' and 'X percent died but its okay', its how you do it. The IW's resiliency is earned to me because of how much it costs them as individuals, when a superhuman is killed not in some accident but stripped naked and beaten to death by his friend due to a draw of the hat? Thats the brutallity where I can buy them being able to recover from calamity after calamity. Not when you say 'we lost 90%' one minute and 'they say they were big but my records show 200k is more plausible' and then go on to note how fabulous and large their veteran core continues to be. 
   • Even bitterness really does not really make sense compared to some of the others here.
     • We hear them say that their victories didnt satisfy them, but they still amassed so many that they were officially second-best among the legions to the Luna Wolves and maybe the UM. But that kind of pales to the bitterness of say the EC who were so obsessed with trying to make up for their perceived faults that they started turning down laurels that they didnt achieve to their standard. In a similar vein, its also made clear that even at their worst they did not end up like the early EC or the Wolves where their participation in official battles werent actively discounted by others. 
     • If we want to talk about bitterness over ill-use, that also does not add up. Because we are never told their victories werent important or that they werent victories. Even at their lowest their official and secret victories were still raking in the laurels and the Emp still favored them, unlike the IWs being broken due to being nut crackers in victories that were perfectly official but no one cared about or the Revenants and the WE whose victories were actively gagged at by everyone else.

This has sort of run on and I dont have the greatest talent as a wordsmith so I do hope that this all makes sense still, I can provide clarifications and citations if I didnt clarify my points well enough.

 

Again, if you think different I am not going to tell you that you are wrong, but I hope I at least effectively zeroed in on where I see the problems.

[Leif Bearclaw]

Reading it again, did the Dark Angels come out truly unscathed? The “Operational Doctrine” section says the DA claim to have 180,000 Marines before the Heresy, but that other sources show they may have had as few as 50,000.

 

Reading between the lines, the Dark Angels made it incredibly hard for outsiders to know the truth about them, and have a known reputation of deliberate misdirection and obfuscation. I’m calling it now, the Dark Angels never recovered as much as they claim to, it’s all a front. The Lions biggest victory was making those 50,000 seem like 4 times their number.

Yes they did. Either that or FW are even worse at editing than I've assumed. Because the 'War Disposition' section (usually the primary reference for 'correct' Legion numbers at Heresy outbreak) cites the Legion as 'slightly less than 200,000 warriors, no more than a third of which had been deployed alongside the Lion'. Now, fuzzy language can cover a multitude of sins but 'slightly less than 20k' sounds far more like 190k+ (bur most probably 199,XXX because that's just how these numbers seem to be read) than 180k. This is also broadly consistent with the earlier campaign section (page 38) where it notes that the first incursion of the I Legion into Thramas (can't recall right now if they get reinforced during the campaign) was the Lion leading 70,000 Marines. So no, the idea that there were only 50,000 Marines in the Legion doesn't hold water (and frankly, if it did, it would make a lot of the 'special snowflake/Marines +1' criticisms worse, not better).

 

 

Hrm, I've had a completely different reaction and interpretation to the DA section - to me it read as a legion that started out as the paragon and primus inter pares amongst legions (i.e. the early Terran legion), that then slowly faded into not being considered excellent but merely performing to satisfaction. Hell, the book even says that at times other legions straight outperformed them. The Angels of Death did have their super special fleet in the beginning, but the 7th legion would amass a fleet that rivaled - if not even surpassed it - in size and firepower following the reunion with Dorn and gaining access to the shipyards of Inwit. They did have a massive legion, but at one point would be reduced to a tenth of its original size and then later also be far outclassed - even chided - by the XIIIth legion Ultramarines for the way they waged war.

That chiding happens on Karkaskarn, before the Lion rejoined the Legion (and before the 90% KIA of the 2nd Rangdan War). The Lion sorts that out post haste. But this is the point of the complaints, that the DAs being 'outclassed' is not supported by the text.

 

 

Such actions are most often encountered among the more veteran formations of the Legion. Those forces whose tallies of victories and vanquished foes were so impressive that some among the newly-recruited regiments if the Imperium's armies thought them fabrications and even those who had served in the Great Crusade long enough to have heard of the valour of the First Legion rarely knew the full scope of their victories and sacrifices.

So they were at the same time so awesome that newbies didn't believe their feats, yet those 'in the know' weren't even able to grasp/permitted to know just how awesome they were. Does that really sound like a Legion that was being 'outperformed'? Because it doesn't to me. While of course, these IA style sections are meant to big up the Legion in question, not even the SoH (don't forget, the most glorious Legion of such impeccable character that their Primarch was named Warmaster and Dorn nearly killed Garro when he heard of the Heresy) or Ultras (who would if you were going down the 'in universe historian' defence, as Gulliman gets most of the credit for keeping the Imperium together during the Scouring) got such a fawning treatment in the Black Books.

 

 

The book also clearly tells us that this does not remain the Status Quo for the Legion. Their numbers dwindle, their fleet shrinks and is being outsized and outgunned.

 

Do you have a citation for this? Because this is what the book says directly about the First's fleet

 

 

The Dark Angels maintained perhaps the greatest fleet of all the Legiones Astartes, both in terms of sheer number of capital class vessels and in the impressive firepower of those craft.

Now you might claim that 'perhaps' provides enough of a fig leaf there, but every previous Legion with in impressive fleet has been directly compared to the VII, and noted how the Fists still had the overall biggest, meanest fleet.

 

There's also the fact that a minority of the Legion (about a third, the 70,000 men the Lion has in attendance at the outset of Thramas) deploy a hundred capital ships, which is as many as/more than some other Legions can muster in total (obligatory, 'earlier books seem to have used a different classification of 'capital ship' disclaimer). This doesn't sound like a depleted, diminished force to me.

 

Couple all this with statements like the Lion being "the one man Horus did not want to face", plus the whole 'humiliate the SoH' thing on Rangda. There's no really much evidence that they 'used' to be the best. The text is pretty clearly and explicitly telling us that they are the best. Which is a shame, because FW has previously gone out of their way to deflect 'this Legion was unambiguously the best' type claims.

Edited September 30, 2020 by Leif Bearclaw

[bluntblade]

Apart from the "obviously it should've been Sanguinius as Warmaster" thing.

[StrangerOrders]

Apart from the "obviously it should've been Sanguinius as Warmaster" thing.

(Out of likes atm, but agreed).

 

You know its funny, I have rarely really enjoyed Sangi in the novels but I actually came out of Malevolence positive that Sangi should not have been Warmaster.

 

The guy should have been put in charge of the Iterators and general Imperium PR, seriously the guy managed to turn a violently sinking ship around by pure grit and actually managed to make BAngels out of Revenants. He arguably has a better grasp on image making (and better judgement on when to go hard) than most Iterators as-written lol.

 

Heck, he managed to spin Destroyers into a tragic anti-hero role rather than pretending they don't exist, that takes talent. 

 

Actually I would say that one of my favorite bits about the Black Books as a body is that they do a fabulous job of really showing most Primarch's non-stabby aspects. Probably one of the reasons I dislike the DA's image-immunity-aegis is probably because previous Black Books have really gone out of their way to make Horus's PR skill this really terrifying thing to get on the wrong side of which I loved. Horus's shtick is partly charisma and PR mastery, getting on the nerves of someone with that skillset should be devastating.

Edited September 30, 2020 by StrangerOrders

[jaxom]

Lots of interesting perspectives to read since a almost 12 hours ago. Personally, I'm to fried to really get into the grit of it, but I would like to expand on what I meant earlier by tragedy.

 

The Heresy is an interconnected series of tragedies. Tragedy usually works for a few reasons. We know where a character (in this case a legion) has been, we know where a character is going (in an unavoidable way), or we know how a character has lost potential/opportunity.

 

The Blood Angels had been monsters, Sanguinius showed us how their potential was not allowed or empowered until he came along. We know they are going to lose him. We know the risk of what that gene-seed, without his specific guidance, can end up as. It's the opposite of the 12th Legion. We know what they were like before Angron, we know what they could have been if he had never been found and we know where they're going to end up. Even the Imperial Fists, who seem like they get off light, we know what's going to happen to Dorn post-Siege and the Iron Cage. 

 

The Dark Angels have the Fall. We know its coming. The question for me is, "why?" Is it tragic because it was unavoidable? Is it tragic because it destroys the potential of what could have been? Both? Is one a better editorial choice than the other? And I can't decide if the Crusade fluff really supports any sort of coherent answer to this, muddles the waters on purpose, or muddles the water due to a lack of commitment to an answer.

[b1soul]

Strongly disagree that the DA issue of being "The First" is equivalent to the SW issue of being Executioners.

 

The Executioners idea, as initially presented in Prospero Burns, suggests that the Wolves are some sort of innately terrifying superweapon even among the rarefied company of the Legiones Astartes. This idea is toned down in later works because, frankly, it is rather nonsensical.

 

In Crusade, there is no confusion. The DA have a reason for being number one early on...because they were literally the first legion, the prototype legion scaled up much earlier than the other legions. They are NOT innately superior or man-for-man more scary or powerful or competent. They were simply the largest, most-well equipped and experienced in different areas of combat, simply due to pure circumstance, i.e. being the only legion with significant numbers over several long decades.

 

It was all downhill after the legions left Sol. The Lion helped the DA to regain some stature as one of the more renowned legions, but they were overshadowed or closely rivaled by legions like the SoH, UM, BA, and IH (since Ferrus was apparently a serious Warmaster candidate).

Edited October 1, 2020 by b1soul

[Brother-Captain Gilead]

Where does this idea of the Dark Angels having the median geneseed come from? The way I remember it, there are three legions that have great geneseed when it comes to recruitment:

1. Iron warriors have been mentioned to have the lowest geneseed rejection rate, so any suitable aspirant can be expected to survive the implantation process
2. Ultramarines have been mentioned to have the most stable geneseed which means that the production of new Ultramarine geneseed is extremely reliable: each marine produces the geneseed for 2 more marines whereas with more unstable geneseed you might end up having to throw one or both of the progenoids out and thus limit the production of new geneseed
3. Dark Angels are spoken of as being about the same as the Ultramarines when it comes to stability and they supposedly also have high compatibility with aspirants which I assume means more or less the same as them having a low geneseed rejection rate. I guess you can read this to mean that they are the Mary Sue and combining the good from both of these legions but the way I read it is that their stability is not as great as the Ultramarines but up there with the more stable ones and their compatibility with aspirants is not the best but up there with the more compatible ones, two different positive attributes that combine to make their recruitment capability great (kind of like the Legion as a whole, not the best at anything specific, but if you manage to combine the pretty good attributes across the board appropriately, you can achieve greatness)

These traits combined with the knightly orders of Caliban acting as a natural recruitment pool + the Dark Angels mentioned as specifically being able to produce all of the required armaments for an Astartes on Caliban doesn't really mean it is all that surprising that they were able to recruit a ton of legionnaires really quickly, especially since they were also able to do the genetic therapy and hypno-conditioning on the older knights as well and they also got the benefit of access to the Lion as a source of whatever it was that the primarchs provided when it comes to geneseed.

 

As to what the actual number of Dark Angels was, I don't know if they were deliberately hiding it, it could also be that they were simply far too splintered to give an actual count. I think we can take the 70 000 with the Lion as a given, but that is the only reliable data point we have. Because in addition to the forces with the Lion we have Luther over on Caliban with all of the recruitment that was happening there remaining there, a process that started before the Heresy started so we are talking of potentially decades of recruits just remaining on Caliban + the initial force that was sent to Caliban from Sarosh. Then we have the about 5000 strong splintered fleets of Dark Angels that were spread out across the southern parts of the Imperium. If we assume that there were about 200 000 Dark Angels in total when Istvaan happened, we would have about 70 000 in the Shield Worlds with the Lion, probably somewhere around 40k on Caliban that would increase further during the years of Horus Heresy and then about 20 autonomous fleets of Dark Angels roaming around the borders of the Imperium on the southern fringe. First of all this doesn't sound that unplausible to me, but secondly and more crucially it would definitely be a situation where it would be really difficult for AK to get an accurate historical record.