The Space Marine Legions and their Primarchs were the Emperor's primary military force and most important advisers, respectively, and were intended to be the political and military speartip of the Great Crusade. Nine of these Legions would continue to stay utterly loyal and faithful to the Emperor of Mankind during the Horus Heresy and thus they serve as the genetic forbears of all current Loyalist Space Marine Chapters of the present era. Of the twenty original Space Marine Legions, eighteen would survive to grow into vast forces by the end of the Great Crusade in the early 31 st Millennium as for those that did not (the II nd and XI th Legions), nothing can be said of their fate in current Imperial records. 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. 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. 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. 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.įounded 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. A Space Marine Legion, unlike the 1,000-man Chapters of the present-day Adeptus Astartes created after the Second Founding at the end of the Horus Heresy, could number anywhere from 10,000 to more than 250,000 Space Marines, as well as the Legion's associated Imperial Army, logistical support forces and Armada Imperialis fleet elements.Ī force of a hundred of these genetically and biochemically-enhanced transhuman warriors could quell a rebellious city in solar hours. The I Space Marine Legion, the Dark Angels, assembled and awaiting departure for the Great CrusadeĪ Space Marine Legion was a frontline force of shock-infantry comprising tens of thousands of transhuman Astartes warriors armed and equipped with the finest wargear the Imperium could supply. Warhammer 40K Darktide Review - Left To Shred This role changed after the Second Founding, when the Astra Militarum replaced the Legiones Astartes as the Imperium's frontline armed forces, relegating the much smaller Space Marine Chapters to a more specialised role as effectively special operations troops. Unlike the current Adeptus Astartes, who serve the Imperium of the 41st Millennium as a planetary assault and rapid strike force, the Space Marine Legions were the primary frontline military forces of the ancient Imperium of Man. 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.Īt the start of the crusade, as the Legions were placed at the forefront of the Imperial expeditionary fleets that left Terra, the Astartes were renamed Space Marines and their formations the Space Marine Legions. The Space Marine Legions, or 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 30 th Millennium.
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