Disconnect in terminology and representation of units

[TheArtilleryman]

Just been thinking about this randomly (as you do). There is an odd disconnect in terminology between Horus Heresy novels and the army lists. In the books, Astartes officers are almost always called “captains” or “chapter masters” and the usual chaplains, librarians etc. but in the list we have “centurions,” “praetors” and various “consuls.” Why? It doesn’t make sense to have different names in different publications.
 

On top of that, there are so many units that are not mentioned in the books (or at least not in the 15 or so that I’ve read), such as all the unusual tanks like the Kratos, Sicaran, Mastodon, all the different dreadnought variants etc. yet there are all these different models available. Are they featured in some of the later novels perhaps?

[Trokair]

One thing to keep in mind is that the Horus Hersey series of books started in 2006, while the Forge World Black books started in 2012, so the first 6 years of books (18 to 24 books depending on how you count) all happened before a lot of the unique names, units and so on where introduced by Forgeworld and the Horus Hersey game, and even then it would have only been a few per big Black Book.    

[TheArtilleryman]

2 minutes ago, Trokair said:

One thing to keep in mind is that the Horus Hersey series of books started in 2006, while the Forge World Black books started in 2012, so the first 6 years of books (18 to 24 books depending on how you count) all happened before a lot of the unique names, units and so on where introduced by Forgeworld and the Horus Hersey game, and even then it would have only been a few per big Black Book.    

Sure, but why, after printing a few dozen novels using one set of terms, would they go and change all the names?

[Trokair]

At its simplest, because GW is not one big company, it is several smaller ones under one umbrella. The ones that plotted out the Novel series and got the various authors to contribute will have had minimal connectivity to the Alan Bligh and the folk at Forgeworld when they got together and started the Black Books.

 

On top of that, the Forgeworld Campaign books (and the black books started as such) often spent a lot of time to expand the details of the world and such. So when expanding on the 30k era lore at the time taking the more generic things such as the universal ‘captain’ title and adding history inspired to make it their own then they did so. Also my understanding is that Forgeworld and the HH black books started much more with a Historical Wargaming mindset which would have contributed to this.

 

Later once HH was an established game the bean counters probably bushed for it to be more different from 40k marines so as to sell more.

 

I haven’t read the most recent HH books and such, but I suspect they are much more likely to use the newer nomenclature, both because it has been established, and because GW has pushed Black Library works to be more attuned to the names of units/products actually sold.    

[Noserenda]

Yeah most of the fw new tanks for the era came in the latter half of the black books series, many of them completely original creations rather than old references even.

Trokair covers the differences fairly well, but bear in mind its not like GW is even 3 companies in a big coat, its 3 companies in a big coat and they are all vying to be the head, and the structure/scope behind the setting has varied wildly over the time theyve been publishing Horus Heresy stuff, even the specific authors and editors involved the whole way have evolved significantly! 

Essentially dont expect any consistency and be pleasantly surprised when it crops up.

[terminator ultra]

1 hour ago, Noserenda said:

Essentially dont expect any consistency and be pleasantly surprised when it crops up.

with low standard you will never be disappointed...

[Valkyrion]

The FW books were generic + dash of flavouring, so they created Praetor, Centurion and Consul because it meant the same in every legion, even if those legions didn't use those words.

Also, because of how GW tends to work these days and you get a page per unit, the consul pages would take up tons of room if Chaplains, Librarians, Heralds et al had their own pages, despite being virtually identical in every way except for the paragraph that differentiates them. 

 

But the vehicles thing is right. I distinctly remember contemptors, stormbirds, thunderhawks and land raiders getting pretty consistent (and often important) pages in the early books, but can't immediately recall any mention of Kratos, Leviathan, Deredeo and the rest. 

 

[EverythingIsGreat]

Maybe the difference can be accounted by considering that BL exists to sell the setting while FW sells the models. The minutiae and components of units/army lists work in the Black Books, but I doubt the details would work well in a novel. On the other hand, BL novels add details to the setting that could be unnecessary, or bloat, in a FW Black Book.

[Lautrec the Embraced]

In my opinion there is a certain difference between vehicles / officers terminology and its issues.

 

For vehicles, in many cases I believe the authors are simply unaware of the apparent full range of legion vehicles, maybe because some of these were not yet sold or maybe even designed at the time. Though it can also showcase that some things are rare, even in the legions. Predators, Raiders, Rhinos, Contemptor Dreadnoughts to a lesser extent - these are ubiquitous. Other thing are very rare, they only appear in a book or two, like Mastodon, Fire Raptor or Leviathan, Sometimes a vehicle is mentioned that does not even exist on the tabletop.

 

In newer books there are naturally more references to newer miniatures as the authors are more aware of them by now. In some of the Siege of Terra books I've recently read you can find mentions of Xiphons, Leviathans, Sicarans...

 

 

Officers terminology is imo meant to be somewhat vague. If you called it Chapter Master and Captain instead it'd be somewhat confusing - I believe most legions use the term captain but Chapter Master - not necessarily... and these captain vary greatly in their prowess. Is Ezekyle or Khârn a mere captain, same as err... captain Nobodius from 1124th Reserve Garrison Company?

Praetor and Centurion/Consuls are just (really dumb if you like ancient Rome) placeholder names for Senior and Junior officers. I think in some old Imperial Guard codices such distinction was maintained, maybe it would be more clear.

[TheArtilleryman]

One particular reason I don’t like the term “Praetor” especially is because it is used for so many other units. A quick webstore search brings up:

Custodes Vertus Praetor Jetbikes

Custodes Vexillus Praetor

Ultramarines Praetorians

Triarch Praetorians

Praetor Armoured Assault Launcher

Stormcast Praetors

When you search Captain, there are also a lot of results, but a Captain always denotes a leader as you’d expect, whereas the Praetor term is used for a range of different things from different factions.
 

Even more odd is that if Praetor is being used to replace Captain/Chapter Master in the game, why are there still so many HH models sold with the words captain and chapter master in their names?

 

On 4/10/2024 at 8:26 PM, Lautrec the Embraced said:

If you called it Chapter Master and Captain instead it'd be somewhat confusing

I don’t feel this is confusing at all. A Captain commands a company whereas a Chapter Master commands a much larger force, more like the chapters we know in 40K. It’s like a colonel in real life. This is seen in the Word Bearers and Dark Angel novels for example. These are terms we’ve used for space marine formations forever so I’d argue they’re the least confusing possible. Some legions don’t use chapter masters in the books; Sons of Horus are the most obvious example that springs to mind. They instead have the Mournival comprised of their senior captains. However I think having nuance in the organisation of the different legions is good as it helps to differentiate them.

If they had decided to go down the Roman naming convention route, starting with the Emperor, then having consuls, praetors and centurions would start to make some sense, but it’s extremely inconsistent in the different titles.

 

I sincerely hope that copyright isn’t the reason for this oddness in naming like it seems to be in so many other places. I can’t see how it can be though - surely you can’t copyright titles that are already 2,000 years old or more?

 

I dunno, I guess for me it’s just a bit jarring. I like to get inspiration from the books to come up with ideas for armies and it’s a bit annoying to go to the army list and not find the same names for things there.

Edited April 12 by TheArtilleryman

[Valkyrion]

It's exactly like colonel in real life. Only a few countries call them colonels, otherwise its Oberst, Taisa, Polkovnik etc.

In single language military parlance then you'd use Colonel even when referring to german, turkish, chinese military ranks because the rank is the same, but the name is different. Just like Praetor - it conveys meaning of high level commander, without the unit entry reading 'Chapter Master/Wolf Lord/First Captain/Lord Commander/Tetrarch/Noyan-Khan/Iron Father/Warsmith' etc. 

[TheArtilleryman]

1 hour ago, Valkyrion said:

It's exactly like colonel in real life. Only a few countries call them colonels, otherwise its Oberst, Taisa, Polkovnik etc.

In single language military parlance then you'd use Colonel even when referring to german, turkish, chinese military ranks because the rank is the same, but the name is different. Just like Praetor - it conveys meaning of high level commander, without the unit entry reading 'Chapter Master/Wolf Lord/First Captain/Lord Commander/Tetrarch/Noyan-Khan/Iron Father/Warsmith' etc. 

 

I think I’ve found the answer to my own question now, although this quote gave me the inspiration for where to look it up. I was just going to suggest that the writers could have made some link in the army list to clarify this, when I thought I’d better check they haven’t already and avoid looking more stupid! 

This is from the red book army list in HH 1st edition:

 

“Praetors are the mightiest warriors and battle- leaders of the Space Marine Legions, second only to the god-like Primarchs in martial skill and generalship. These lords of the Imperium hold the power of life and death over whole worlds, with the direct control of entire war fleets and armies in their hands. Each is a vastly experienced warrior and warlord, unique in character, who has writ a legend in blood for themselves, and carries into battle the finest wargear and weapons known to humanity. In their ranks can be found Chapter Masters and Lord Commanders, First Captains, Khans and Tribunes as the traditions of their Legions dictate. They are the masters of war and have commanded the hosts of the Great Crusade that have conquered worlds unnumbered.” 

And for the Centurion:

“The ranks of each Space Marine Legion are tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands strong and as such require a substantial core of battle commanders and officers to control and co-ordinate, as well as more specialised ranks and roles which help give a Legion its operational depth and strategic flexibility. The Centurion represents such leaders, champions and line officers, and whether a Company Captain in command of a thousand or more Legionaries on campaign, or a Shield- Lieutenant given charge of a boarding party in a savage space battle, to have risen in the ranks means they have already demonstrated their worth in the bloody fires of conflict.”

 

So a Praetor would be someone like Abbadon while a Centurion would be your “Captain Nobodius” like @Lautrec the Embraced asked.

 

When building an army list then I think I will name the character first as per the ranks in the novel or whatever lore and then indicate their army list rank next to it. For example:

 

Chapter Master Somebody (Praetor) - x points 

 

Captain Nobody (Centurion) - x points

 

Phew!

 

 

Edited April 12 by TheArtilleryman

[Petitioner's City]

I think an issue is that centurions have almost always been overlooked within the game - either for praetors or consuls - and have no real representation of their "line officer-ness" in their rules. It would be cool if they had a positive impact on their army - a leadership bonus, for example, or an extra reaction, or some bonus to certain activities. I guess like how hqs in 40k all have an "effect", be it an aura or something else. The other thing would be a series of "centurion rites of war" as an alternative to (or a selection from) master of the legion rites.

 

We now have optaes who kinda fulfill everything a centurion does, but cheaper - and the company command squad works with either, so I imagine it will be an optae people go for more often, if ever considering them?

[StrangerOrders]

To echo the others, there is actually an entire spread in Black Book I: Betrayal that explains how the titles are used and why they vary so wildly. Obviously out of universe its that BL writers can be a microcosm of GW as a whole, they each have their own ideas of what the setting should be and tend to only begrudgingly compromise.

 

So one book has a captain leading a weirdly small force of like 20 guys and another book has a captain with a thousand men.

 

So the BBs try to ultimately assign responsibility to the only beings with the hubris to match an unchecked author, the Primarchs.

 

The SoH section for example details that Horus, being something of a control-freak, actively tried to dissolve ranks above captain and just retain the control over which captain go to do what. A lunatic approach for anyone else but also kind of fitting his whole 'Alaric' thing which essentially made his approval and proven success the only valid status indicators in the legion. Its an interesting approach actually as the book positions the Luna Wolves slip from strict regimentation to barbarism as the result of a long-standing but previously subtle degradation.

 

There is even a nifty chart actually that specifies what ranks might be reasonably assigned to a Praetor versus a Centurian. And each legion had a section in their BB giving you a rough idea of how they fit into that framework (UM labeling a unit of 10,000 a Chapter, for example).

Edited April 18 by StrangerOrders

[StratoKhan]

The Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy are supposed to evoke the feeling of a golden age (from a 41st Millennium perspective), and its tragic conclusion. The Emperor of Mankind’s armies were organised in Legions, which is of course a Roman military term. and the terms Praetor, Consul, Centurion, etc are thematically consistent with that, and as people have pointed out, they are also good umbrella terms that define a category of officer/leader within the huge diversity of the Legion ranks and structure. When you flip through the army lists and rule books and see Praetors mentioned, you instantly know what games system you’re in. I think it’s an effective way of reinforcing the theme.

[Gorgoff]

In Betrayal they write that Consul, Praetor etc are just generic terms which got replaced in the different legions with Captain, Khan etc pp. So they have that in line in the books. 

And I saw some of the special units in some of the books but most of he ime it is just the generic stuff. 

Edited April 28 by Gorgoff

[Lord_Caerolion]

The start of the Heresy novels were very different, they also had the reduced Legion sizes where most were around 10,000 Astartes, before Forge World changed it so that 100,000 was the midpoint, with the smallest being 80,000. 

[Noserenda]

Im pretty sure it was Laurie Golding who spearheaded the numbers increase? There may have been more discussion behind the scenes but it was definitely a Black Library initiative in public, and i think before FW had announced Betrayal? 

[2PlusEasy]

The legion retcon was definitely Black Library driven: Horus Rising was released roughly when Forge World were publishing the Siege of Vraks and releasing the original death Korps range.

 

The release of the Black Books in 2012 for heresy was largely inspired by Forge World's success with Imperial Armour: The Badab War before it. It also helped that Alan Bligh was close mates with AD-B and John French and had worked with him previously on other projects.

[TheArtilleryman]

13 hours ago, Lord_Caerolion said:

The start of the Heresy novels were very different, they also had the reduced Legion sizes where most were around 10,000 Astartes, before Forge World changed it so that 100,000 was the midpoint, with the smallest being 80,000. 

Glad they did this. Even 100,000 is far too few really to have a meaningful impact on a world, let alone star systems and a whole galaxy. 10k would just be silly.

[StrangerOrders]

On 4/30/2024 at 8:07 AM, TheArtilleryman said:

Glad they did this. Even 100,000 is far too few really to have a meaningful impact on a world, let alone star systems and a whole galaxy. 10k would just be silly.

Thats also a symptom of BL, GW, FW and so on wanting their cake and eating it too with Space Marines.

 

They literally want to redefine what a Space Marine is capable of every two minutes and don't rein their authors in.

 

So, for example, Josh Reynolds Astartes are more or less pure superhuman, enough that they are mostly only a threat to each other and are generally capable enough and inhuman enough that 100k could easily participate in dozens of campaigns by decapitating and consolidating planets pretty easily. Or at least deploying to pressure points or massing for critical engagements. 

 

Then you have other authors that want to do a 'last man standing' Guard story but were told to write Astartes and stuck to their guns. So you end up with a company of marines that is both barely more capable than a modern infantry company and considerably less intelligent.

 

For what its worth, I think the BBs skew more towards the former than the latter. I can see 100k making alot of sense, especially as the more set-piece legions have much more. 

 

It also just makes for a more interesting setting than feeling like I am watching chubby Helldivers for the billionth time in fiction. The fact that alot of scifi authors in general seem to want to write the extremely expensive to produce, well-educated and enhanced forces of their scifi as kind of idiotic by any standard is also a problem.

 

And that standard includes the warrior castes of most irl ancient societies. I am tempted to think of the truism that confusing fanatics for idiots being a classical mistake in human history which results in said fanatics getting the upper hand, but thats another subject.

Edited May 1 by StrangerOrders

[Noserenda]

The numbers work because they are backed by billions of other troops and always have been, its just the camera is super tightly focused on the space marines, i thought there were at least 2000 expeditionary fleets but lexicanum puts it closer to 4000, which spreads the Astartes incredibly thinly given that several of these fleets contained the majority of a given legion. Even the ones that did have huge numbers of marines contained significant numbers of other troops, (i dont want to say humans because the Mechanicum and Imperial army both contained all sorts of other transhumans and assorted weirdness) some of which would be split off to form garrisons, another enormous pool of troops that are both not marines and not even counted in the tally of the expeditionary forces.

The Legions are some combination of the vanguard and the PR wing of the great crusade really :D Brought to bear on the particularly difficult bumps in the road likely but still overall just a very showy part of a greater whole. 

[StrangerOrders]

46 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

The numbers work because they are backed by billions of other troops and always have been, its just the camera is super tightly focused on the space marines, i thought there were at least 2000 expeditionary fleets but lexicanum puts it closer to 4000, which spreads the Astartes incredibly thinly given that several of these fleets contained the majority of a given legion. Even the ones that did have huge numbers of marines contained significant numbers of other troops, (i dont want to say humans because the Mechanicum and Imperial army both contained all sorts of other transhumans and assorted weirdness) some of which would be split off to form garrisons, another enormous pool of troops that are both not marines and not even counted in the tally of the expeditionary forces.

The Legions are some combination of the vanguard and the PR wing of the great crusade really :D Brought to bear on the particularly difficult bumps in the road likely but still overall just a very showy part of a greater whole. 

Which is to say that Astartes are, unsurprisingly shock troops.

 

Even Solar Auxilia are relatively rare with being a quarter of the overall 'mortal' Crusade forces at their peak. And thats a loose term given that their veterans are uniformly rejuvinated, so their elites are physically thirty but could be well past a hundred in terms of experience. To me its even scarier than 40k because these are immortals that have been fighting nonstop for centuries willingly, and they are your above average veterans.

 

Most Expeditionary Fleets in practice were a whole lot of baseline humans with a fairly minimal fleet that would call for reinforcement as needed and otherwise just run around off of vague instructions and send reports before moving on. Their reinforcements usually coming from the people they just conquered.

 

A somewhat fun plot device in alot of Great Crusade novels is the gradual realization opposing Civs have when they hold off a normal Expeditionary Fleet enough for the fleet to call for aid. Then Astartes, Knights and Titans start showing up and the civ has about 5 minutes to realize they made a mistake.

 

The Primary Fleets, which held the Primarchs and sizable Legion forces, were generally either chasing the biggest holdups or wandering around erasing things while they waited to be called to deal with a proper warfront.

 

It is super fluffy because it does show why the 40k Imperium is such a decentralized authoritarian wreck, its a essentially a war time civilization that never had time to stabilize or properly consolidate before it started falling apart. 

Edited May 1 by StrangerOrders

[jaxom]

On 4/12/2024 at 5:38 AM, TheArtilleryman said:

So a Praetor would be someone like Abbadon while a Centurion would be your “Captain Nobodius” like @Lautrec the Embraced asked.

 

When building an army list then I think I will name the character first as per the ranks in the novel or whatever lore and then indicate their army list rank next to it. For example:

 

Excellent idea, because there can be differences even within the same rank. Abaddon stands out as Captain of the First Company and Master of the Justarian, but the other members of Mournival are Captains of otherwise random companies. They'd definitely be Praetors, while the Sons of Horus Captains that Sigisimund was cutting down by the dozen at the Siege were definitely Centurions.

 

On 5/1/2024 at 3:13 PM, Noserenda said:

The numbers work because they are backed by billions of other troops and always have been, its just the camera is super tightly focused on the space marines, i thought there were at least 2000 expeditionary fleets but lexicanum puts it closer to 4000, which spreads the Astartes incredibly thinly given that several of these fleets contained the majority of a given legion.

 

Another possibility is the nature of post-Old Night worlds gives us an 80/20 situation (80% of the time or effort is spent on 20% of the problems). The majority probably had either little in the way of major resistance or it was very centralized or both; so a few hundred to a thousand marines come down, wreck the one, major centralized threat and call it a day. For example, Mortarion and 10,000 Death Guard pulled off a massive decapitation strike against a system that the general crusade staff expected a decade to take. Or Dorn taking over the life support hub for an asteroid colony and offering the choice of surrender or he hits the off switch. 

[Lord_Caerolion]

The larger Legion sizes weren’t present at the start of the Black Library series, though, it was only part-way through, roughly when Betrayal was being worked on, that the sizes increased.