Space Marine Legion

"Alone, a Legionary is a formidable foe as far beyond a man as the wolf is beyond the sheep. Together, bound by ties of unshakeable loyalty, a Legion is a force that can extinguish the stars and shake the very heavens.""Attributed to the Primarch Lazari"

The Space Marine Legions (also known as the Legiones Astartes in High Gothic) were the original unit formations of the Space Marines created during the First Founding by the Emperor of Mankind on Terra in the late 30th Millennium.

This initial Founding happened before the start of the Great Crusade that reunited the scattered worlds of humanity beneath the banner of the Imperium of Man, while the Unification Wars were still raging on Terra. At the start of the Crusade, as the Legions were placed at the forefront of the Imperial Expeditionary Fleets that left Terra to reunite the human-settled galaxy, the Astartes were renamed Space Marines and their formations the Space Marine Legions, the primary military arm of the fledgling Imperium of Mankind.

Legiones Astartes
A Space Marine Legion was a frontline force of shock-infantry comprising tens of thousands of Astartes warriors armed and equipped with the finest wargear the Imperium could supply. A Space Marine Legion could number anywhere from 5,000 to more than 250,000 Space Marines, as well as the Legion's associated Imperial Army, logistical support forces and fleet elements.

A force of a hundred of these genetically and biochemically-enhanced transhuman warriors could quell a rebellious city in solar hours. Thousands could conquer a world in only solar days, and tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands wielded at once were the doom of entire species, capable of reducing alien civilisations to mere dust and memory in a span no greater than the single course of Terra's orbit around the Sun.

Founded amid the bloodshed of the Unification Wars of Terra that swept the Emperor of Mankind to dominion over the cradle of humanity, the original military formation of the Legions was the division of twenty numbered units of enhanced warriors, organised very much along the lines of the Thunder Regiments that proceeded them in the Emperor's service and who they would eventually replace.

Much of the discipline and organisation of the early Astartes Legions owed greatly to the ancient and proven Terran patterns of military strategy, hierarchy and functions as laid down in the revered texts of the Principia Belicosa of Roma and Krom's (Oliver Cromwell) fragmentary "New Model" that had survived in the hands of the tyrants of Old Earth down the blood-stained generations of the Age of Strife.

To these venerable treatises the Emperor and His commanders had added their own genius and created a sturdy but adaptable strategic framework that spoke to the fundamental strengths and superhuman abilities of the Astartes themselves. At the outset of the Great Crusade in circa 798.M30, many of these early Legions were raised along the so-called "Terran Pattern" of organisation as formulated by the Imperium's Officio Militaris.

The Legions were aided by the ground and naval forces of the Imperial Army, but these forces more often served in support and garrison duties while the heaviest combat and the most important and difficult missions were always carried out by the Astartes Legions.

As the Great Crusade continued the expansion of the nascent Imperium into the galaxy, the discovery of the Primarchs and their newly adopted homeworlds helped to stem an impending crisis that was not widely known at the time outside of the exalted ranks of the Imperium's ruling War Council: namely, the diminishing stability of the Astartes gene-seed itself through over-use and the increasing need for more Space Marines in the field.

This was a matter that only worsened as the Great Crusade pushed ever wider afield into the galaxy. Imperial forces could no longer be concentrated as easily as before, and attrition was taking its toll as standard years of near-constant battle became solar decades.

To slow the relentless pace of the Great Crusade's progress was for the Emperor simply not an option. As such, the simple truth was that more Space Marines were needed and they needed to be created faster than before.

A secret conclave of gene-wrights under the Emperor's direct supervision posited the solution that became known as Grabiya's Theorem, which demonstrated that a Primarch's genetic code could be used to stabilise and expand Astartes gene-seed stocks with what was hoped to be "minimal deviation."

Alongside this accelerated gene-culturing technique, other previously unavailable genetic technologies were put into effect, reducing the processing time required to create a battle-worthy Space Marine to a single Terran year in some cases. Such accelerated gene-seed techniques, along with absent, inadequate or over-forceful psycho-doctrination techniques, were later found to have unseen fundamental flaws.

Many Imperial savants since have come to believe that the drive to create larger Space Marine Legions at an accelerated speed played a prime role in the degradation of the sanity and psychological make-up of certain Legions and paved the way for the horror that was to come.

Legion Size
The Legions were massive armies, and the size of each could vary tremendously. A precise, pre-set formation was never truly achieved or maintained. Even during the Great Crusade some Legions were very large, while others were not. The size of each Legion was fluid, with the numbers of combat-ready Astartes dependent on the number of new recruits, the inevitable battle-losses, the availability of potential recruits, and the administrative skills of the Primarch and his officers.

The largest of all the Space Marine Legions at the time of the Rangdan War was the Paragon Order, who's numbers are reported to have reached close to a quarter of a million warriors, speaking volumes to their Primarch's extreme logistical skill, maintaining such a number while maintaining the extremely demanding wargear levels of a Space Marine Legion, a feat many once believed would be impossible, the next closest legion, the Theta Warriors, never managing to supass 200,000.

At the other end of the scale, legions such as the Imperial Wardens or Angelis Noctem, both legions failing to breach even 50,000 warriors, either due to an extremely degraded gene-seed or an extremely taxing and deadly initiation process. The Imperial Wardens were the former, their geneseed stocks almost entierly destroyed in an accident at the onset of the Great Crusade, while the little that had already been implanted into the warriors of the legion began to wither and die, unsuitable for extraction and re-implantation in all but the rarest of cases.

The approximate manpower of the Space Marine Legions is recorded as follows, from largest Legion to smallest:

Legion Organisation
The smallest formation within the "Logos Terra Militia" and therefore within the early Space Marine Legions was the squad. This consisted of a group of Astartes under the command of a non-commissioned officer with the rank of Sergeant.

Squads varied widely in both size and specialisation, with the majority of the units ranging between 10 to 20 Space Marines. Conversely, very specialised squads such as reconnaissance units or those that had suffered heavy casualties might only consist of a handful of Space Marines in active service.

The chain-of-command was simple and direct, and the Legions' officers, themselves mighty warriors, would lead their Astartes into battle personally as had long been the wont of the techno-barbarian tribes of Old Earth. The battle would always be taken to the enemy because to defeat a foe was never enough for the Legiones Astartes, only the utter destruction of an enemy of the Emperor counted as a victory.

This cold logic, coupled with their inhuman strength and bearing, and the sheer dread they inflicted on friend and enemy alike, was to give the Space Marines one of their earliest appellations, and perhaps their most appropriate -- "the Angels of Death." It would be a name they would earn time and time again.

Legion Integration and Development
The Legions of the Great Crusade were a fusion of dual natures. They were the product of the Emperor's conquest of Terra and the Sol System. Selected from Terran stock and moulded by the wars of the nascent Imperium, these Legions held a certain commonality of character.

A sense of unity and an almost familial bond pervaded their ranks. Given that they were all of the first generation of Astartes, born of Terra, they shared the imprint of their genetic forging and warlike history, and it is no surprise that members of the early Legions regarded each other as siblings, as brothers-in-arms.

Training, indoctrination and the shared experience of battle reinforced this belief within the Legiones Astartes, encouraging the idea that they were a family born in the cradle of war. This bond of brotherhood would survive as the Imperium grew, but perhaps it was never as strong as it was when the Legions first conquered the techno-barbarians under the Terran sun.

The second face of each Legion was that of the people and cultures which had flourished under different stars. As the war to unify Terra became a crusade to conquer the galaxy, the Legions grew. Casualties had to be replaced, and as the wars grew in scale so too did the number of losses and the number of recruits that were needed to take the places of the fallen.

Initially intakes were drawn from Luna, Saturn's orbital stations, the Proximal worlds, and dozens of other worlds of the near Segmentum Solar fed the Legions' needs for warrior stock. As this occurred, the Terran foundations of each Legion became diluted but was never overwhelmed, for the warrior tribes and cultures of Old Earth were many and their commitment to the Great Crusade resolute.

With the re-discovery of the Primarchs and in many cases newly adopted homeworlds used as Legion fiefs (most commonly the worlds upon which a Legion's new master had been found), this was to change the character of the Legions profoundly. Some alterations were superficial: a habit of speech, a change in close-quarter tactics, martial traditions and warranted additions to iconography and even language. But for others the change would prove dramatic, with entire paradigms of culture, tradition and even ideology overwriting what had come before.

In many cases the stamp of the Legions and the will of the Primarchs on their recruits came to largely outweigh differences of birth or blood, but in other Legions such as the War Bears, Light Bringers and Wisps of Acheron, a divide would grow between those veterans who had been recruited into the ranks of the Astartes by the Emperor from Terra and those who had come into the Legion from their Primarch's homeworld.

By the middle years of the Great Crusade the ongoing effects of these shifts within the Legions had resulted in a wide disparity in culture and organisation between them. The outward sign of this was the development of a distinct character which meant the original Terran military patterns they had adhered to at the outset of the Great Crusade had been largely abandoned or become so modified and diluted as to be in some cases unrecognisable.

There were, of course, exceptions in whole or in part, such as could be found within the Paragon Order and Titans of Vayrd'un Legions, who built upon rather than abandoned what had gone before, as well as those such as the Angelis Noctem to who the strictures and precepts laid out by the Officio Militaris were no longer even notionally applied.

There are those that have cited this increasing idiosyncrasy in hindsight as the seeds of division, of a sense of insularity and "otherness" growing between one Legion and another. This itself only fuelled rivalries and feuds that had begun to simmer beneath the surface of the Great Crusade, both between the Primarchs and their Legions.

Generic Space Marine Legion Order of Battle
By the time of the middle years of the Great Crusade, there was great variation in each Space Marine Legion's order of battle and size. However, in the most generalised sense, a Space Marine Legion was a force comprised of approximately 10 or more smaller sub-units known as Chapters, each subsequently further divided into a deep hierarchy of smaller sub-units led by officers whose rank terminology often differed from Legion to Legion.

The order of battle presented here should be considered generic and to be superseded by the more specific structure and rank terminology of a given Legion, if such information is available within current Imperial records. Some legions were known to deviate heavily from this structure, while others stuck to the rigidly to the Principia Belicosa as set out by the Emperor.


 * Legion Command: Primarch or Legion Master (if the Legion's Primarch had not been rediscovered)
 * Praetorate or Ancients of the Legion (Senior Staff Officer Cadre)
 * Consular Representatives [Senior representatives of the Armourium, Astropathic Chamber, Navigators-Plenipotentiary, Librarus (if present in Legion), Apothecarion, Masters of the Fleet, Castrum of Ordnance, Castellans of Domain, et al]
 * Vexillarius (Legion Standard Bearers, Subalterns and Equerries)
 * Honour Guard (Praetorian Bodyguard Formations for Primarch -- number and structure varied by Legion)
 * Legion Assets:
 * Planetary Domains
 * Capital Class Warships
 * Secondary Escort Squadrons
 * Legion Armourium
 * Legion Apothecarion
 * Legion Librarus (if present in Legion)
 * Auxiliary Forces (Non-Space Marine, usually Imperial Army)
 * Legion Support Corps (Victuallers, Commissary, Legion Serfs, Indentures, Servitors, etc.)
 * Chapter I (Chapters were alternatively designated as Great Companies, Harrows, Millennials, etc.)
 * Originally each Chapter was composed of roughly 1,000 line Astartes, but as the Legions grew, this number began to vary substantially by Legion, and also through the vicissitudes of war and the availability of replacement recruits
 * Chapter II
 * Chapter III
 * Chapter IV
 * Battalion I (Battalions were alternatively designated as Cohorts, Regiments, Battle Groups, etc.)
 * Battalion Command (Example): Lieutenant Commander (alternatively designated as Commander, First Captain, Shadow Captain, Marshal, Legate, etc.)
 * Battalion Consuls (Senior Specialists and Advisors)
 * Battalion Vexillarius (Standard Bearers, Subalterns and Equerries)
 * Battalion Command Bodyguard
 * Battalion Assets:
 * Strike Cruisers
 * Navigators Ordinary
 * Drop Pods and Rams
 * Light Gunship Squadrons
 * Super-heavy Detachments
 * Skimmer Strike Detachments
 * Support Artillery Detachments
 * Techmarine Covenants
 * Apothecarion Sections
 * Dreadnought Talons
 * Reconnaissance Sections
 * Company I (Companies were alternatively designated as Maniples, Bands, Brotherhoods, etc.)
 * Nominally Battalions numbered five companies, each of a hundred Legionaries -- Company I was composed of Veterans and other elite units, II, III and IV were line companies and the V Company was comprised entirely of specialist troops such as dedicated Assault, Outrider or Destroyer units. However, in practice many larger Legions regularly exceeded this number of companies, maintaining battalions with seven or ten companies each folded under a particular command, while individual companies also varied in strength
 * Company II
 * Company III
 * Company IV
 * Company V
 * Company Command (Example): Company Captain (alternatively Centurion, Prime, Blooded, etc.)
 * Company Standard Bearer
 * Company Command Bodyguard Squad
 * Company Assets:
 * Heavy Support Squads (5-10 Space Marine Legionaries)
 * Assigned Veteran or Specialist Squads (Various)
 * Gunships
 * Rhino Armoured Transports
 * Tank Detachments
 * Support Weapons Batteries
 * Dreadnoughts
 * Techmarines
 * Apothecaries
 * 1st Lieutenant
 * Lieutenants were the most junior officers of the Legion. They also differed in designations such as Dominar, Decurion, Pack Leader or Chieftain, and in some Legions the numerical positioning of the officer within the Company indicated seniority or ceremonial role and had further titles in rank
 * Legion Tactical Squad (10-20 Space Marine Legionaries)
 * Legion Tactical Squad (10-20 Space Marine Legionaries)
 * Support Squad (5-10 Space Marine Legionaries)
 * 2nd Lieutenant
 * Legion Tactical Squad
 * Legion Tactical Squad
 * Legion Tactical Support Squad
 * 3rd Lieutenant
 * Tactical Squad
 * Tactical Squad
 * Legion Tactical Support Squad
 * Company VI
 * Company VII (etc.)
 * Battalion II
 * Chapter V
 * Chapter VI
 * Chapter VII
 * Chapter VIII
 * Chapter Command (Example): Lord Commander (Alternatively Chapter Master, Khan, Warsmith, Magister, etc.)
 * Chapter Consuls (Senior Specialists and Advisors to the Lord Commander)
 * Chapter Vexillarius (Chapter Standard Bearers, Subalterns and Equerries)
 * Chapter Command Bodyguard
 * Chapter Assets:
 * Chapter Flagship Battle-Barge/Capital Ship
 * Planetary Assault Craft and Drop Ships
 * Escort Squadrons
 * Gunship Squadrons
 * Chapter Armourium
 * Legion Armoured Divisions
 * Battalion I
 * Battalion II
 * Nominally each battalion was composed of five hundred line Legionaries each, as well as various specialists and support staff
 * Chapter IX
 * Chapter X
 * Chapter XI (etc.)

Personal Arms
As befitted the cutting edge of the Great Crusade, the Astartes Legiones were armed and armoured with the greatest technologies avaliable to the Imperium of Man. Even when they crusaded on Terra alongside the Thunder Warriors, the Legiones were kept well supplied with the ancient Mk1 Power Armour, bearing mighty volkite weapons into battle alongside the ferocious chainweapons favoured by the stronger and more brutish Thunder Warriors. When the Great Crusade began in earnest after the unification with Mars, the level of equipment avaliable to the legions only increased.

The most singular and perhaps iconic piece of wargear utilised by the legions, no matter which genetic line they hailed from, was their suits of Power Armour. These suits took many forms, from the venerable and outdated Mk2 suits, to the brutish and up-armoured Mk3 suits, through to the advanced Mk4 and Mk6, but at their heart they all shared comonalities. Save the initial Mk1, each mark of armour was a completely enclosed suit composed of shaped Adamantium and Plasteel plates, encased in a Ceramite ablative layer. Each suit also possessed a full suite of life-support functions for operation in hostile environments, an automated medicae system to provide some level of first aid to a wounded wearer and a highly advanced and fully integrated tactical targeting and threat analysis system known as Auto-senses. The suit would be heavy and cumbersome to wear but for the electrically-motivated fibre bundles within the armour that replicates the wearer's movement and enhances his strength beyond its already considerable superhuman baseline.

Initially, the legions were also armed with energy weapons, Volkite Calivers seeing use across the early legions as they left Terra to conduct the Great Crusade. Hellishly powerful, each weapon fired blasts of searing energy were even known to be able to penetrate the thick ceramite plates of Space Marine Power Armour with one concentrated shot. Volkite Weapons produced a deflagrating attack, in which subsonic combustion caused by a beam of thermal energy propagated through a target material by thermodynamic heat transfer so that hot burning material heated the next layer of cold material and ignited it. A Volkite Weapon's heat ray had a devastating effect on organic matter, explosively burning flesh into ash and jetting fire.

Unfortunately, Volkite Weapons of the various types were difficult to manufacture, even for the most able of the Mechanicum's forges, and the demands of the expanding Great Crusade in the late 30th Millennium swiftly overwhelmed the supply of these relic-weapons. Soon, the Volkite Caliver superseded by the far more flexible and utilitarian Terran Bolter, Volkites transitioning from standard armaments to support and specialist weapons, often carried by veterans of the legion who still remembered the day when thousands of warriors would take to the field to burn away those who stood before them.

Since that time, the Bolter has risen to prominence, and though it sees use in every arm of the Imperium's armed forces, it has become synonymous with the Space Marines, the two going together in most peoples minds just as they do with their power armour. The Bolter is a mid-range anti-personnel ballistic weapon that lies between the lighter and more compact Bolt Pistol sidearm, and the more effective but more cumbersome Heavy Bolter, all of which are in use within the legions.

A brutally efficient weapon, the Bolter fires mass-reactive bolts at its targets, each one a self-propelled missile which explodes with devastating effectiveness after penetrating its target. The fear and awe that Bolter fire creates makes it a perfect weapon for shock troops, the hammering thunder of the guns mixing terrifyingly with the dull, wet explosions as flesh is blown apart.

To the Space Marines, the Boltgun is far more than just a weapon; it is a symbol of his position as a chosen warrior of the Emperor and a physical representation of Mankind's supremacy. A Boltgun is a treasured weapon, but in the hands of a Space Marine it is a divine instrument of his wrath, a bringer of swift death whose howling blast is a prayer to the gods of battle.

Both the bolter and the Volkite Caliver that came before it are exceptional weapons, superior to the vast majority of firearms used across the galaxy. However, the Legiones were often called upon to fight xenos creatures and horrors of Old Night that defied explanation, and as such they required far more specialised weapons. Heavier bolt and volkite weapons were used alongside deadly plasma guns, ranging from the size of a pistal through to man portable cannons and beyond. Mighty lascannons were also wielded, working alongside shoulder mounted ]missile launchers and Melta weaponry to provide anti-armour support to a Space Marine assault. Yet more weapons were devised for anti-infantry work, the larger Volkite Culverin being used alongside heavy bolters, flamers, autocannons, rotorcannons and the newly developed assault cannon. All of these were devised to be man, or at least Astartes, portable, allowing the angels of death to engage any foe even when on foot.

Vehicular Support
See also: Vehicles of the Legiones Astartes

Voidcraft
As befits the leading forces of the Great Crusade, the Legiones Astartes each possessed a mighty warfleet, even the smallest of which could destroy entire civilisations in short order, and could wage war across the cosmos with little difficulty. Possessing all the ship types that the Imperialis Armada had access to, from light frigates all the way up to mighty Battleships, the Legiones Astartes also possessed two near-unique designations of ships, avaliable almost exclusivly to their kind; the Strike Cruiser, and the Battle Barge.

The Strike Cruiser, initially called an Assault Cruiser, does not represent a single class of Imperial starship or a specific, standardised configuration of weapons systems and other capabilities, but actually represent a large range of different Space Marine starships in the Cruiser tonnage class that are used for the same basic tasks. Unlike standard Space Marine cruisers, an Assault Cruiser had a single primary goal, all other systems designed to suplement this; reach a hostile planet with enough power left to launch a successful invasion force. While the size and scope of Strike Cruisers varied, even the smallest of their number were able to carry hundreds of Astartes and deploy them in short order, with the largest of their kind able to carry close to one thousand battle ready warriors.

The second of these two unique ship types is the Battle Barge. Like Strike Cruisers, a Battle Barge was not a single designation or class as such, but rather a term given to any variant or refit of battleship class hull modified and optimised for use by the Legiones Astartes specifically for Space Marine planetary assault and ship-to-ship boarding actions, although purpose-built ships of this role had also been constructed, particularly in the Great Crusade's later years. In common parlance, however, any capital vessel used by the Legiones Astartes exclusively was often referred to as a "Battle Barge" regardless of the technical truth of the matter.

Of all the Legion fleets, the Void Watchers were known to have by far the largest, their prefered method of void warfare making this a neccessity, and also menaing they often captured enemy vessels intact, retro-fitting them with the aid of their Mechanicum attendant vessels or sending them back to dedicated shipyards to be pressed back into the legions service.

Known Legiones Astartes Ship Types

 * Basileus-class Battle Barge
 * Gloriana-class Battleship
 * Ironclad-class Battle Barge
 * Legate-class Battle Barge
 * Warspite-class Battle Barge
 * Crusade-class Strike Cruiser
 * Dodona-class Strike Cruiser
 * Olympia-class Strike Cruiser
 * Undying-class Strike Cruiser
 * Vanguard-class Strike Cruiser