Lore How do the different legions get along?

[Cpt.Danjou]

I am not that great when it comes to the lore of how the different Chaos legions like each other in the 40k universe. Sure some does not care much for each other and other hates others. I doubt that Angron and his legion works well with Magnus and Fulgrim as their respective gods are not on speaking terms. But what about the others? Does the Iron Warriors work well with Word bearers, my gut feeling says no, as Iron Warriors are not the zealot kind of legio, they probably look down on the Word Bearers. Do anyone work well with Night lords? I know that sometimes the legions and different warbands work together under the Black legion banner, but it feels like that is just under shorter periods. So in general terms how well does the legions get along?

 

Cpt.Danjou

[LSM]

My knowledge basis is a bit rusty (being rooted in the IA articles/3.5 codex from when I was a kid, which I frequently find has been changed), but:

• The Black Legion seems to be welcoming to all, so long as they all submit and become Black Legion. They seem like they'd work with others in the short term, but long term the expectation would be that allies should repaint their armour and integrate into the BL command structure.
• Word Bearers focus on building temples, converting the masses, and proselytising the Chaos Gods. As such, missions of Word Bearers seem a natural fit in other legions, though I can't imagine everyone's happy about them. ("No, I'm a Plague Marine, I don't want any literature on The Great Eagle. Crow Tribe for life!")
• Iron Warriors were in the past stated to be very insular. After centuries of seeing themselves as everyone's whipping boy they still carry a massive chip on their shoulder. (Fed by their extreme paranoia.) They seem to "hire out" though - if you have something they want, they'll come break down a wall for you.
• Night Lords are just gangsters, who (used to) explicitly not worship Chaos. (But would still use it.) Look down on the faithful, but would hang around with them. 
• Alpha Legion are all over the place. Overall timbre of the legion seems like they'd be positive to others, but as part of a scheme.
• All the Cult Legions used to be shattered, and most commonly found as individual units hanging out with other legions. Small groups of World Eater Berzerkers, a Thousand Sons Sorcerer commanding some Rubric Marines, a handful of Noise Marines, a gaggle of Death Guard. So it seems they work well with the five "Codex legions". Between themselves, I imagine that the traditional rivalries are no-gos (DG/TS, WE/EC).

Things like the Consortium (Fabius Bile - an anti-theist's - old pan-legion apothecary research hangout) shows how everybody, theoretically, could work with everybody, though.

Edited December 22, 2023 by LSM
Typo. ("Fabile Bile" -> Fabius Bile)

[Cpt.Danjou]

I believe that anything can happen in the 40k universe, the setting  spans a rather large area, and the time span is huge, the Horus Heresy happened 10.000 years before the setting, so I am sure that every legion have fought against each other at sometime, and also fought side by side at other times. Just to understand the time span. 10.000 years ago, in real history, humanity had barely started to build cities. 

 

Me and my group are starting a story driven Crusade, and we are trying to see who will ally with who. We have Thousand Sons. World Eaters, Iron Warriors, Alpha Legion and Daemons on one side. Black Templars, , Raptors, Space Wolves, Grey Knights, and Adeptus Mechanicum on the Imperial Side. Then we have the two wild cards Votanns, and Biel-Tan. I know my main objective having the Black Templar Marshalls head on a spike when the crusade is over, as Black Templars, as I am the Iron Warriors player.

 

So have anyone heard anything about Iron Warriors having a grudge against any of the other Chaos factions, so we can have some battles story wise, and I don't recall if Iron Warriors have any special hatred towards Space Wolves or any Raven Guard successor chapter.

 

Cpt.Danjou

[Karhedron]

In the old Real of Chaos source book, the gods were sometime depicted in a square like this.

 

Khorne   Slaanesh

 

 

Tzeentch  Nurgle

 

Each god is a rival to the gods on either side of them an neutral towards the god opposite them. Thus Khorne/Nurgle and Tzeetch/Slaanesh alliances are more fluffy than others. The more unaligned forces are happy to ally up whenever they have interests in common.

 

More specifically, we have some fluff from more recent books as follows:

 

Lorgar is on good terms with the Black Legion and publicly supports Abaddon as Warmaster of all Chaos forces.

Magnus dislikes Abaddon but has been forced to acknowledge him by Tzeentch

Angron doesn't really need anyone's encouragement to fight.

[spiros14]

While Raptors aren't as heavy into the Raven Guard culture as other successors (just the general creed of "play it stealthy") They are a second founding of the Raven Guard. They personally might not have served during the drop site massacre, but they would still hold the likes of the Iron Warriors and Alpha Legion (and Word Bearers, and Night Lords) with some contempt, and may wish to kill an enemy leader who was there for honour's sake.

 

An important thing to note is that while the legions themselves might not have much of a strong rivalry to each other, your characters are a different story. Feel encouraged to play your warsmith as a complete tool, believing themselves to be some brilliant tactician just because he was part of Pert's special circle during the Terran siege. Iron Warriors are infamously bitter, and it shouldn't take much for them to take potshots at their allies from the smallest of infractions. ("You didn't win your engagement against the Space Wolves, your cowardice is a blight upon the army"; "I'm running low on ammunition, so I'm taking yours as I'm a far better general)
It would even be to your benefit were you to just pick a character from the enemy team and write some rivalry your warsmith holds against them. Honsou is generally an Ultramarines antagonist despite the two legions not being long-term enemies, and marking the Space Wolf commander as and old adversary from campaigns past is a good way to add character.

Finally, I'd let the crusade fill in the blanks for you. To give an example, my friends and I played the Vigilus Campaign during eighth edition. During the campaign, I encouraged players to make a character and have them make an appearance in games. The most stand-out character in the campaign, a villain both Imperial and Chaos players loved to hate, was Magos Lucina Verstadt of the Genestealer Cult. It was she who blew up a void-port in Hyperia and evaded capture from the authorities. She who almost single-handily defended Dirkden from chaos invaders (to the point where to this day we joke that the hivesprawl doesn't have genestealers hidhing under the floor, the genestealers were the floor all along, and you've only just noticed). She stole a Baneblade from the Mechanicus Hoist and used it to mercilessly bully the Adeptus Custodes a couple times. My chosen character, Aphael of the Blood Angels, had a fierce rivalry, and no matter how many times the good captain "killed" her, she would always come back (though she ended the campaign more machine than alien).

[Kythnos]

I very much agree with spiros here. The legions have changed so much over the ten millenia since the Heresy and individual warbands have had so much time to build their own alliances and rivalries that it is more down to the personal experiences and beliefs of their leaders than their main legion allegiance whom they might fight with or against. A perfect premise to develop the background for your crusade force from. 

[SanguinaryGuardsman]

They all owe fealty to the Warmaster.

[MasterDeath]

10 hours ago, SanguinaryGuardsman said:

They all owe fealty to the Warmaster.

Well, abbadon still has to Play nice with the daemon primarchs. He Sold Tech (black Fortress?) to mortarion for death guard Support in 8th and 9th.

Same with powerful Lords Like the Red corsairs.

[Cpt.Danjou]

I doubt that Abbadon goes up to Angron and gives orders what to do. That might be a bad bad decision, a terminal one. I always thought that the other legions/warbands worked together under the warmasters banner, and only during the crusade, but keeping the legions with bad animosity a bit apart. He might be on comfy terms with the chaos gods, but if he put Khorne and Slaanesh worshipers close, they might loose control and start to slaughter each other. When the Abbadons has one of his fits and starts a Black crusade I do think he is smart enough and let the legions fight on at least different continents or even keeping them light years apart, the Black Crusades usually are in at least a whole sector, not a ruined little village. 

 

 

Cpt.Danjou

[Iron Father Ferrum]

Also bear in mind that most of the non-Cult Legions are not unified, monolithic structures anymore.  Even the Black Legion is more of a loose conglomeration of warbands who mostly do their own thing, they just flock to Abby's side when he calls.  The one Legion that is really still a Legion is the Word Bearers.  Everyone else is either scattered under different warlords or constantly fighting themselves (i.e., Iron Warriors).

 

As for the Cult Legions -- meaning those who follow the Big Four -- I'm not up to snuff on the new novels so Mortarion's return to the Long War might have gathered the Death Guard back together to an extent, and Angron seems to collect Berzerkers in his wake everywhere he goes. . . though calling that rabble an organized Legion is probably a stretch.

[Rain]

Death Guard are mostly united. There is a splinter that follows Typhus, but most follow Mortarion, especially now that he is more active.

 

Ditto for Thousand Sons having a splinter that follows Ahriman, but mostly following Magnus.

 

Iron Warriors are mostly united under Perturabo.

 

Sure there are individual warlords and warbands for each, but there are (for example) separate crusade fleets of Black Templars each doing their own thing with their own Marshal, and they are still a united chapter.

 

The really fragmented Chaos Legions are Night Lords, World Eaters, Emperor’s Children, and Alpha Legion. They each either have no agreed upon leader, or their “leader” doesn’t really care to lead them (Angron and Fulgrim) though the EC do have the Pheonix Conclave, and the World Eaters have Kossolax the Foresworn and warbands like Gladiator Group 331 that try/tried to reunite the Legion.

[Dark_Vengeant]

On 12/29/2023 at 6:18 AM, Iron Father Ferrum said:

Also bear in mind that most of the non-Cult Legions are not unified, monolithic structures anymore.  Even the Black Legion is more of a loose conglomeration of warbands who mostly do their own thing, they just flock to Abby's side when he calls.  The one Legion that is really still a Legion is the Word Bearers.  Everyone else is either scattered under different warlords or constantly fighting themselves (i.e., Iron Warriors).

 

As for the Cult Legions -- meaning those who follow the Big Four -- I'm not up to snuff on the new novels so Mortarion's return to the Long War might have gathered the Death Guard back together to an extent, and Angron seems to collect Berzerkers in his wake everywhere he goes. . . though calling that rabble an organized Legion is probably a stretch.

I agree that the Black Legion began as a conglomerate of warbands but I feel like they are a much larger entity now.

 

In fact the latest Arks of Omen the Black Legion was overrunning the Dark Angels on the Rock itself which is not something a rabble of warbands could do easily…. Several Black Crusades later and Abaddon is no longer just some former first captain - most of the legions have sworn fealty to him at some point or another.  In that time I would imagine the Black Legion too has grown both in reknown, assets and membership. 
 

 

But to carry on the discussion of the OPs question, traditionally the death guard and the emperors children were not fans of Black Legion although nowadays they can all be bought for a price, that is how old uncle Ab gets them to crusade with him. 
 

Iron Warriors pretty much dislike everything chaos-warp related so as such I think relations with anyone are frosty at best, Night Lords have a history of working for the war master.

 

As was mentioned earlier, ten thousand years has caused much ebb and flow to alliances.  
 

 

Edited January 4 by Dark_Vengeant

[Dark_Vengeant]

On 12/25/2023 at 2:54 AM, Cpt.Danjou said:

I doubt that Abbadon goes up to Angron and gives orders what to do. That might be a bad bad decision, a terminal one. I always thought that the other legions/warbands worked together under the warmasters banner, and only during the crusade, but keeping the legions with bad animosity a bit apart. He might be on comfy terms with the chaos gods, but if he put Khorne and Slaanesh worshipers close, they might loose control and start to slaughter each other. When the Abbadons has one of his fits and starts a Black crusade I do think he is smart enough and let the legions fight on at least different continents or even keeping them light years apart, the Black Crusades usually are in at least a whole sector, not a ruined little village. 

 

 

Cpt.Danjou

I think Abaddon and Angron may not be on the same footing but you might be overblowing the matchup :) he has after all killed his cloned primarch father and that was ten thousand years ago. I think since that time he may have gained a few chaos gifts and a tad more martial prowess! :p

 

but your are right he is not a primarch, or at least we think he isn’t….. I mean, he couldn’t be? Right?

Edited January 4 by Dark_Vengeant

[MegaVolt87]

CSM diplomacy would be largely transactional. Say you are a BL chaos lord. You are buddies with Dark Apostle John, from the GC + HH days, warrior lodge etc. That would earn you a neutral reception by most WB's, they heard of John, so you are technically vetted. However, John is in Erebus's faction. So, you are in a tight spot and Apostle Matt shows up, never met the guy. But he is in the same faction as John, John talked about you, so you made another potential ally. Years later, out of nowhere, you get attacked by Apostle Jack, he is in Kor Pheron's faction. WB's are gearing up for another internal feud, you are an outlier they don't want involved, again you never met Jack either before. Remember, the BL guy is a nobody and this is pretty normal. Diplomacy is very much still a thing for CSM.