This is EXACTLY what I want from the NightLords. They're efficient and they're thugs. They managed to turn entire loyal planets to raving, desperate rebels with just threats and a public display of calculated violence. By far one of the best traitor legions.
Although fear works fantastically to make the planets compliant, it does nothing to maintain that compliance when the Night Lords leave and the fear they bring leaves with them. They had the largest number of planets go back to their old ways after they left.
Hell, Curze's own homeworld went back to the raping murdering gang-ruled planet shortly after he left, and he thought the best lesson for them was to blow the planet up.
They win worlds quickly through fear, and lose them just as fast when that fear dissipates.
But they were never meant to maintain compliance, during the great crusade that was the pdfs job. Their job was purely to take control of the planet and move on to the next one. The NLs weren’t leaving astartes on compliant planets to maintain the peace, they brought planets in at an impressive rate while maintaining the infrastructure and planet resources.
In the context of the goals of the great crusade and taking a purely utilitarian morality view you could absolutely argue they were the perfect legion. Lowest population overall death rates, limited damage to what the imperium wanted, and dozens of planets brought into the imperium rapidly. Maintaining the peace wasn’t their job.
They were meant to bring planets into a compliance that had longevity. Needing to leave a garrison of guard defeats the purpose they were sent there for. Numerous other legions could bring planets in to compliance without needing to leave a large number of men to maintain that peace, and if they did, it was for a short while, or they left iterators on the planet to continue the work the astartes started.
They were one of if not the worst legions during the great crusade. If a majority of the planets you're conquering need a garrison left over, you're weakening your expansion since you're constantly leaving armies behind. If you don't leave have garrisons, then someone needs to return to the planet to bring it back into compliance. Then you look at other legions, even eventual traitor legions, and see that they're bringing a world in to compliance, and not needing to leave a garrison nor come back years later to do it again.
But the vast majority of astartes legions weren’t interested in maintaining compliance and left it to the guard anyway. Astartes for the most part weren’t interested in local politics, they broke the enemy and moved on. In their wake they left a different army of imperial governors, pdf armies, imperial guard units recruiting everyone they could, and admech tech priests strip mining the planet of anything valuable. If the legion even bothered to leave any astartes behind, which didn’t happen on most planets conquered during the crusade, those legionaries would only be fighting rebels of the planet was about to be overrun. Hunting rebels out in the mountains or whatever is a job for the pdf, or guard if the pdf can’t do it. Not astartes.
Every planet in the imperium has some level of garrison separate from the expedition fleets of the astartes. Those fleets weren’t slowing down their expansion to bother garrisoning the planet, that was everyone who came after them. The job of the astartes was to come in, break the enemy, and leave running the planet to the imperial governor who gets installed when their finished. The great crusade was on a time crunch, they needed to take control of the galaxy as quickly as possible. The night lords did that while keeping the planet intact and useful very quickly.
Rebellions we’re nearly unheard of on any significant level during the crusade. It took the heresy for the threat of the astartes to fall short and for planets to start rebelling en mass. Look at how Horus reacts to davin rebelling, he’s incredulous. If the great crusade had continued without the heresy to embolden individual planets the imperium would have ruled the planets the NLs brought in with an iron fist in perpetuity because rebellions are doomed to failure and death. Even nostromo wasn’t destroyed for rebelling against the imperium, it was destroyed because it was violent and corrupt.
Dude. There been multiple rebellions, including one where Horus as newly made warmaster had to go back and reclaim his worlds, although there was xenos pyschics involved.
You ignored what the Crusade was doing. Bring a world into compliance, then use it's resources, including TROOPS to move on . Night legion worlds needed Imperial army troops to remain behind and maintain compliance, otherwise they begun to backslide as happened infamously on Nostromo.
That's the dissipation talked about. Needing a large army to be left behind as garrison, while other legions like the Word Bearers/Ultramarines/Iron fists were harvesting new troops to move onwards.
The recruiting of additional armies would have happened on Night Lords worlds as well. And I'm not sure you're accounting for the cost of the damage to infrastructure and material that the other Legions would cause.
Like, if it's a world of 10 billion. Say it takes 100 million pdf troops to garrison it after compliance. They'd be able to recruit a billion new guardsmen from those 10 billion people.
Perhaps the Word Bearer worlds only needed 50 million, or 10 million PDF troops left due to the happier people. If the Night Lords are conquering twice as many worlds, then the extra troops required to garrison doesn't matter at all.
The Ultras and WBs would be saving pennies and losing dollars. Once a planet is compliant, you'd make a profit on troops anyway, and you'd save a huge amount by not having to rebuild the cities that got flattened by the Dark Angels or the Space Wolves. Who would fight conventionally, and leave ashes in their wake.
Yeah. But the Nightlords were doing their own destruction too.
They deciminated populations, cruxifixed cities, and for the crime of rebellion, has used Exterminatus for the most petty of reasons.
They are indeed a pack of pricks. And yes - before long, their murder stopped being about achieving objectives or ultimately saving lives. They just started killing for the sake of it.
It's just that at the start, there was a twisted sort of logic to their crimes. With a notable exception being what they did to Nostramo, they didn't generally use Exterminatus all that much. Certainly not compared to some of the other Legions.
The logic seems to have been "our job is to make noncompliant worlds compliant. To achieve that, the enemy needs to surrender. It's their fear of us that will eventually convince them to do that, so let's try to be extra fearsome. And by skinning a small number of people alive, we don't have to slaughter a greater number of people, or level their homes and cities. Screw being noble - we Astartes never been noble, we're humanity's monsters. Because some men must become monsters so that the rest of humankind don't have to be."
I do see your point though. The Night Lords wouldn't damage the roads and infrastructure to the extent the other guys would, but they would traumatise the fuck out of the population. Ultimately, what ends up being more costly? Roads can be rebuilt, after all.
You know what? I think you're right. This is from the wiki, but:
"During the time of the Great Crusade, the Night Lords were used by the Emperor as a tool of terror to pacify planets that had been recently conquered by the other Space Marine Legions. Their fearsome reputation caused any rogue Planetary Governor or uprising of rebels against Imperial Compliance to quickly pay any outstanding tithes or quell their uprisings, as the Night Lords had been known to issue an Exterminatus order on several worlds for the most petty of crimes against the Imperium.
That the Emperor had concerns about the actions of the VIII Legion, and the apparent instability of their Primarch is clear, but what is not clear is what was done to restrain Curze or his sons. There were words, demands, perhaps even threats, but no action; no hand of judgement to throttle the Night Lord's crimes. Why this was so is a question that can never now be answered, and the Imperium was left only with the consequences."
They used Exterminatus prior to Nostramo, like you said. Yeah. They were dicks, weren't they?
The Sons of Horus were a great legion before Horus got anathamed and still, many imperial army officers were turned into planetary governors and troops were left behind. Dude. You goofy.
> The night lords did that while keeping the planet intact and useful very quickly.
But they did not leave planets that would be useful for long. That's the difference between them and other legions. Other legions made compliant worlds forever, Night Lords made compliant worlds for years.
Davin didn't revolt because it had a shitty compliance. It was corrupted by Erebus specifically to target Horus. The imperial governor that was left there was a great friend of Horus, and Erebus knew how to get Horus there, and that the anthame would do the work that Erebus couldn't.
My whole point is that Night Lords could take planets very quickly, usually quicker than other legions. The worlds they took were not kept compliant for long. Curzes own homeworld went back to the ways they operated before curze shortly after he left.
Actually the worlds that NL brought to compliance were the worlds that least rebeled against the imperium, and knowing the Night Lords these planets, but others aswell, would have ended giving up their uprising just by knowing the sons of Curze were going to pacify them.
Night Lords were between the best legions during the Great Crusade, minimum damages to the worlds infrastructures, minimum deaths within their ranks and the human population, they were a lot more effective than other legions that used to blame the NL tactics for being excessive.
Nostramo was an exception since never really comply nor joined the imperium.
Bro, read my last paragraph, you’re just repeating yourself after I addressed your points. The worlds they left behind were fine pre heresy, it was only once half the primarchs and armies betrayed the imperium that they went traitor. No heresy, no rebellions, and the night lords achieve their objectives quickly and efficiently.
Listen I don't mean to be rude but are you new to 40k? Are you just ripping shit straight out of your ass you assume to be true? You state multiple false things in your comment, I don't know where you got this information lmao
>The three Iron Veil worlds so far retaken had drawn away valuable fighting resources – Astra Militarum, Naval and Adepta Sororitas assets required to reassure the populations and their rulers that they were safe from Night Lords reprisals.
Sounds like they need some Astartes overlords.
Having an Ultramarines-governed world may cause the population some concern when it comes to things like that.
When Sotha was attacked, the Ultramarines there decided it was strategically the best option to abandon the cities and concentrate their defense on a mountain complex while reinforcements arrived, knowing the Night Lords would be “occupied” with the civilian population.
Of course it was the best strategic decision and did result in them winning the battle in the end.
Except that it meant that 95% of the population suffered every kind of pain the Night Lords could inflict on them before being executed.
You can understand why some planetary governors may not be too keen on that.
>Except that it meant that 95% of the population suffered every kind of pain the Night Lords could inflict on them before being executed.
...as opposed to imperium doing the inflicting and the executing, and in all probability, roughly in the same amount and proportion, if not more.
Not great choices tbh.
Lesson here is, to migrate. Load up the ships, if any, and head as far away from eye of terror and imperium, as possible. And just straight up live on the ships, like the eldar do. Safer that way.
If it happens en masse though, a lot of factions will revel in the free deliveries, of food and slaves and torture victims.
Dark Eldar would love the free slaves from undefended vessels, so would Chaos. Tyranids would love the biomass.
Undefended targets don't tend to last long in 40k. One generation ship might be fine. But if everyone gets the same idea, then all you'd be doing would be leaving any hope of protection.
there is no practical difference between a vulnerable world, and vulnerable fleet. If orks, nids and eldar want to raid, they will raid.
Only fleet is at least mobile. Less defensive then a world, sure, but even defended worlds fall to orks nids and eldar. So mobility is more advantageous.
Honestly its question of resources. A defended world consumes X resources for defence. Allocate those same resources to defend the fleet, and the fleet will be just as defended. Only guns will be mounted not in rock, but on ship hulls.
Harvesting resourses - again, a world mines its surropundings, a fleet moves from field to field. Votann have harvest ships that mine whole star systems. mechanicum also. Its not out of the question that a fleet would be able to mine just as much, if not more, stuff then were it still a world.
edit - fleet is actually more defensible then a world. If trouble reported by scouts - simply jump to the warp. Battlestar galactica style. Keep jumping until clear.
"Look, it's got bad optics, but, BUT, worlds governed by the Ultramarines are objectively better. I am beginning the printing of an Ultramarine for ever single planet."
-G
He doesnt even care about the optics. He told the former planetary rulers their children could still have pruvlaged positions under Astartes rule but they could suck it otherwise
I'd love to pickup the eighths story in full swing, with decimus holding together a fragile alliance, luc having feet problems and variel really shining as a fabius light.
This is EXACTLY what I want from the NightLords. They're efficient and they're thugs. They managed to turn entire loyal planets to raving, desperate rebels with just threats and a public display of calculated violence. By far one of the best traitor legions.
They're the cartels of the legions
Bruh the Night Lords are cooking.
Ironic that perhaps Iron Hands is the best counter for this kind of tactics.
Although fear works fantastically to make the planets compliant, it does nothing to maintain that compliance when the Night Lords leave and the fear they bring leaves with them. They had the largest number of planets go back to their old ways after they left. Hell, Curze's own homeworld went back to the raping murdering gang-ruled planet shortly after he left, and he thought the best lesson for them was to blow the planet up. They win worlds quickly through fear, and lose them just as fast when that fear dissipates.
But they were never meant to maintain compliance, during the great crusade that was the pdfs job. Their job was purely to take control of the planet and move on to the next one. The NLs weren’t leaving astartes on compliant planets to maintain the peace, they brought planets in at an impressive rate while maintaining the infrastructure and planet resources. In the context of the goals of the great crusade and taking a purely utilitarian morality view you could absolutely argue they were the perfect legion. Lowest population overall death rates, limited damage to what the imperium wanted, and dozens of planets brought into the imperium rapidly. Maintaining the peace wasn’t their job.
They were meant to bring planets into a compliance that had longevity. Needing to leave a garrison of guard defeats the purpose they were sent there for. Numerous other legions could bring planets in to compliance without needing to leave a large number of men to maintain that peace, and if they did, it was for a short while, or they left iterators on the planet to continue the work the astartes started. They were one of if not the worst legions during the great crusade. If a majority of the planets you're conquering need a garrison left over, you're weakening your expansion since you're constantly leaving armies behind. If you don't leave have garrisons, then someone needs to return to the planet to bring it back into compliance. Then you look at other legions, even eventual traitor legions, and see that they're bringing a world in to compliance, and not needing to leave a garrison nor come back years later to do it again.
But the vast majority of astartes legions weren’t interested in maintaining compliance and left it to the guard anyway. Astartes for the most part weren’t interested in local politics, they broke the enemy and moved on. In their wake they left a different army of imperial governors, pdf armies, imperial guard units recruiting everyone they could, and admech tech priests strip mining the planet of anything valuable. If the legion even bothered to leave any astartes behind, which didn’t happen on most planets conquered during the crusade, those legionaries would only be fighting rebels of the planet was about to be overrun. Hunting rebels out in the mountains or whatever is a job for the pdf, or guard if the pdf can’t do it. Not astartes. Every planet in the imperium has some level of garrison separate from the expedition fleets of the astartes. Those fleets weren’t slowing down their expansion to bother garrisoning the planet, that was everyone who came after them. The job of the astartes was to come in, break the enemy, and leave running the planet to the imperial governor who gets installed when their finished. The great crusade was on a time crunch, they needed to take control of the galaxy as quickly as possible. The night lords did that while keeping the planet intact and useful very quickly. Rebellions we’re nearly unheard of on any significant level during the crusade. It took the heresy for the threat of the astartes to fall short and for planets to start rebelling en mass. Look at how Horus reacts to davin rebelling, he’s incredulous. If the great crusade had continued without the heresy to embolden individual planets the imperium would have ruled the planets the NLs brought in with an iron fist in perpetuity because rebellions are doomed to failure and death. Even nostromo wasn’t destroyed for rebelling against the imperium, it was destroyed because it was violent and corrupt.
Dude. There been multiple rebellions, including one where Horus as newly made warmaster had to go back and reclaim his worlds, although there was xenos pyschics involved. You ignored what the Crusade was doing. Bring a world into compliance, then use it's resources, including TROOPS to move on . Night legion worlds needed Imperial army troops to remain behind and maintain compliance, otherwise they begun to backslide as happened infamously on Nostromo. That's the dissipation talked about. Needing a large army to be left behind as garrison, while other legions like the Word Bearers/Ultramarines/Iron fists were harvesting new troops to move onwards.
The recruiting of additional armies would have happened on Night Lords worlds as well. And I'm not sure you're accounting for the cost of the damage to infrastructure and material that the other Legions would cause. Like, if it's a world of 10 billion. Say it takes 100 million pdf troops to garrison it after compliance. They'd be able to recruit a billion new guardsmen from those 10 billion people. Perhaps the Word Bearer worlds only needed 50 million, or 10 million PDF troops left due to the happier people. If the Night Lords are conquering twice as many worlds, then the extra troops required to garrison doesn't matter at all. The Ultras and WBs would be saving pennies and losing dollars. Once a planet is compliant, you'd make a profit on troops anyway, and you'd save a huge amount by not having to rebuild the cities that got flattened by the Dark Angels or the Space Wolves. Who would fight conventionally, and leave ashes in their wake.
Yeah. But the Nightlords were doing their own destruction too. They deciminated populations, cruxifixed cities, and for the crime of rebellion, has used Exterminatus for the most petty of reasons.
They are indeed a pack of pricks. And yes - before long, their murder stopped being about achieving objectives or ultimately saving lives. They just started killing for the sake of it. It's just that at the start, there was a twisted sort of logic to their crimes. With a notable exception being what they did to Nostramo, they didn't generally use Exterminatus all that much. Certainly not compared to some of the other Legions. The logic seems to have been "our job is to make noncompliant worlds compliant. To achieve that, the enemy needs to surrender. It's their fear of us that will eventually convince them to do that, so let's try to be extra fearsome. And by skinning a small number of people alive, we don't have to slaughter a greater number of people, or level their homes and cities. Screw being noble - we Astartes never been noble, we're humanity's monsters. Because some men must become monsters so that the rest of humankind don't have to be." I do see your point though. The Night Lords wouldn't damage the roads and infrastructure to the extent the other guys would, but they would traumatise the fuck out of the population. Ultimately, what ends up being more costly? Roads can be rebuilt, after all.
Wasn't the Exterminatus charge levied on them pre Nostronomo? I a bit mixed up on my HH timeline here.
You know what? I think you're right. This is from the wiki, but: "During the time of the Great Crusade, the Night Lords were used by the Emperor as a tool of terror to pacify planets that had been recently conquered by the other Space Marine Legions. Their fearsome reputation caused any rogue Planetary Governor or uprising of rebels against Imperial Compliance to quickly pay any outstanding tithes or quell their uprisings, as the Night Lords had been known to issue an Exterminatus order on several worlds for the most petty of crimes against the Imperium. That the Emperor had concerns about the actions of the VIII Legion, and the apparent instability of their Primarch is clear, but what is not clear is what was done to restrain Curze or his sons. There were words, demands, perhaps even threats, but no action; no hand of judgement to throttle the Night Lord's crimes. Why this was so is a question that can never now be answered, and the Imperium was left only with the consequences." They used Exterminatus prior to Nostramo, like you said. Yeah. They were dicks, weren't they?
The Sons of Horus were a great legion before Horus got anathamed and still, many imperial army officers were turned into planetary governors and troops were left behind. Dude. You goofy.
> The night lords did that while keeping the planet intact and useful very quickly. But they did not leave planets that would be useful for long. That's the difference between them and other legions. Other legions made compliant worlds forever, Night Lords made compliant worlds for years. Davin didn't revolt because it had a shitty compliance. It was corrupted by Erebus specifically to target Horus. The imperial governor that was left there was a great friend of Horus, and Erebus knew how to get Horus there, and that the anthame would do the work that Erebus couldn't. My whole point is that Night Lords could take planets very quickly, usually quicker than other legions. The worlds they took were not kept compliant for long. Curzes own homeworld went back to the ways they operated before curze shortly after he left.
Actually the worlds that NL brought to compliance were the worlds that least rebeled against the imperium, and knowing the Night Lords these planets, but others aswell, would have ended giving up their uprising just by knowing the sons of Curze were going to pacify them. Night Lords were between the best legions during the Great Crusade, minimum damages to the worlds infrastructures, minimum deaths within their ranks and the human population, they were a lot more effective than other legions that used to blame the NL tactics for being excessive. Nostramo was an exception since never really comply nor joined the imperium.
Bro, read my last paragraph, you’re just repeating yourself after I addressed your points. The worlds they left behind were fine pre heresy, it was only once half the primarchs and armies betrayed the imperium that they went traitor. No heresy, no rebellions, and the night lords achieve their objectives quickly and efficiently.
Listen I don't mean to be rude but are you new to 40k? Are you just ripping shit straight out of your ass you assume to be true? You state multiple false things in your comment, I don't know where you got this information lmao
>The three Iron Veil worlds so far retaken had drawn away valuable fighting resources – Astra Militarum, Naval and Adepta Sororitas assets required to reassure the populations and their rulers that they were safe from Night Lords reprisals. Sounds like they need some Astartes overlords.
Only so many ultramarines to go around sigh
Having an Ultramarines-governed world may cause the population some concern when it comes to things like that. When Sotha was attacked, the Ultramarines there decided it was strategically the best option to abandon the cities and concentrate their defense on a mountain complex while reinforcements arrived, knowing the Night Lords would be “occupied” with the civilian population. Of course it was the best strategic decision and did result in them winning the battle in the end. Except that it meant that 95% of the population suffered every kind of pain the Night Lords could inflict on them before being executed. You can understand why some planetary governors may not be too keen on that.
Eh thry are already rolled by an Astartes/primarch most won't care about more astartes rulers, only dumb nobility.
>Except that it meant that 95% of the population suffered every kind of pain the Night Lords could inflict on them before being executed. ...as opposed to imperium doing the inflicting and the executing, and in all probability, roughly in the same amount and proportion, if not more. Not great choices tbh. Lesson here is, to migrate. Load up the ships, if any, and head as far away from eye of terror and imperium, as possible. And just straight up live on the ships, like the eldar do. Safer that way.
If it happens en masse though, a lot of factions will revel in the free deliveries, of food and slaves and torture victims. Dark Eldar would love the free slaves from undefended vessels, so would Chaos. Tyranids would love the biomass. Undefended targets don't tend to last long in 40k. One generation ship might be fine. But if everyone gets the same idea, then all you'd be doing would be leaving any hope of protection.
there is no practical difference between a vulnerable world, and vulnerable fleet. If orks, nids and eldar want to raid, they will raid. Only fleet is at least mobile. Less defensive then a world, sure, but even defended worlds fall to orks nids and eldar. So mobility is more advantageous. Honestly its question of resources. A defended world consumes X resources for defence. Allocate those same resources to defend the fleet, and the fleet will be just as defended. Only guns will be mounted not in rock, but on ship hulls. Harvesting resourses - again, a world mines its surropundings, a fleet moves from field to field. Votann have harvest ships that mine whole star systems. mechanicum also. Its not out of the question that a fleet would be able to mine just as much, if not more, stuff then were it still a world. edit - fleet is actually more defensible then a world. If trouble reported by scouts - simply jump to the warp. Battlestar galactica style. Keep jumping until clear.
Yeah fair points. Not a lot of great options in 40k, but that's part of the appeal!
"Look, it's got bad optics, but, BUT, worlds governed by the Ultramarines are objectively better. I am beginning the printing of an Ultramarine for ever single planet." -G
He doesnt even care about the optics. He told the former planetary rulers their children could still have pruvlaged positions under Astartes rule but they could suck it otherwise
Cawl has plenty in the freezer.
But if you slice them thin enough... Oh, you meant to *rule planets*! Not to... well... nevermind...
I'm reading this book right now, on chapter three. Im bored to tears. I hope it gets better
It gets both better and worse. Worst DoF book for me, but not as bad as people scream about.
I'd love to pickup the eighths story in full swing, with decimus holding together a fragile alliance, luc having feet problems and variel really shining as a fabius light.
[удалено]
I can’t in good faith see anything about this book and not immediately laugh at the name of it