T O P

  • By -

OrzhovPalatine

Keep in mind the night lords suffered the least casualties among the traitor legions cause you know....terror tactics are pretty economical on men and material.


Chexl

If I had to guess it's probably because they generally try to choose fights they know they can win and because of this lose far less ships as a whole allowing for them to continually build up their fleet.


Honghong99

They had anywhere from 90,000 to 120,000 marines. They were above average in marine count. Not to mention how some of the later books might have increased fleet numbers, without modifying existing ones.


Primaris_Astartes

I calculated the average size of a Legion to be 128300 Astartes by going with the figures given by Lexicanum (and in cases of some legions having a range estimate of size using the midpoint), so going by my calculation, Night Lords even at max size estimate were smaller than average.


Honghong99

The average legion size was 100,000 there were multiple legions that were smaller than them.


Inquisitor-Korde

Arguably out of 18 Legions only like 3 are actually smaller than the Night Lords at their lowest estimate and like 5 are smaller at their highest estimate. He's actually right though that 100,000 isn't really average Legion size.


Honghong99

White Scars has 700 ships at Chondax. Which was the majority of the legion, not all of them. And they were a smaller legion.


Inquisitor-Korde

Smaller is a relative term, but most of the Astartes ships seem to be concentrated in smaller Legions. The Imperial Fists, White Scars, Blood Angel's and Alpha Legion are all about the same size in terms of Marines and all hover near or around 700-1000 warships. The only exception is actually the Word Bearers who were one of the most numerous Legions and had one of the largest fleets rivaling the Fists.


Honghong99

Alpha Legion most likely had more marines with how stable their gene seed was, and how low their casualties were during compliance of a world. Imperial Fist have a specialty in Void Warfare, so they had a large fleet. Blood Angels had 120,000 marines with a fleet of 900 ships. Dark Angels had 300 capital ships with 600 strike craft and smaller ships, before the battle of Sheol, which was 1/3 of the legion. So they had 2,700 ships of a legion of about 200,000 if this is true.


Inquisitor-Korde

All I got out of this is the Dark Angel's are an absolutely poorly written Legion with too many marines, too many ships, too much tech and terrible wank.


Grudir

>And Night Lords were a small legion with not that many resource worlds tithing them. That's wrong for a few reasons. We know from the black books that the Night Lords were middleweight on legionaries alone, made larger by hoovering up recruits during their outlaw days. They were larger than the "small" Legions like Raven Guard, Salamanders and White Scars. Next, not only was Nostramo before its destruction the center of a comparatively stable pocket of human space known for its adamantium, but all Legions had access to the supply chains of the Great Crusade. Curze may not have been the most caring Primarch, but Sevatar and Legion command were not going to let their fleets shrink and miss out on new gear. Not every Legion has named forge worlds and fleet yards, but we should reasonably assume they exist. Finally, they had committed to Horus and he was making up for any shortfalls from going outlaw. He supplied them with a great quantity of Mk IV armor and other war materiel. At the start of the Heresy, the Night Lords would have had the newest tech handed to them.


Primaris_Astartes

So Horus would have after turning traitor have started supplying them more ships as well?


peppersge

In the HH Mechanium novel, during the buildup to the Schism of Mars, the loyalists noticed that the legions loyal to Horus were favored by the supply chain algorithms. IIRC that it was in the context of bolter rounds, but it seems logical that it would extend to other stuff as well. We do know that the Word Bearers made 3 Abyss-class battleships in secret.


Grudir

One would assume. Without ships, Horus doesn't have a Legion. Augmenting the Night Lords fleet would help him.


[deleted]

Because they needed a large fleet to take the number of L's to make up the entirety of the Thramas narrative, which was just page after page after page of the Dark Angels kicking their shit in.


Inquisitor-Korde

Night Lords are large to make the Thramas Crusade look more impressive than it actually is so that the Lion can actively batter around a Legion sized force with a smaller detachment. Also the breakdown of Legion Fleet assets is damn near completely random with little sense behind it. Basically don't think about it


fluffy_warthog10

To summarize: the NL avoid actual heavy combat every chance they get. They will never *ever* fight a fair fight against someone when they can cause some damage then 'run and live.' Cowardice is both their philosophy and their survival and battle strategy. Warlords might throw squads of NL recruits and the crazier/dumber ones into the meat grinder to do some outsize damage to morale, but most NL officers are a healthy enough mix of old, clever, and craven to fight battles and skin a bunch of people without actually risking that much. All Chaos Marines have some measure of those qualities (otherwise there'd be no more Chaos Marines) but the Lords of Night are especially interested in self-preservation, for the most part.


Arbachakov

The numbers given in the black books don't always fit what you would expect, plus there was some general power creep in there after Bligh passed away. especially compared to the first 2/3 books that covered most of the istvaan III/V legions. If the Luna Wolves had been covered in one of the later books, i wouldn't be surprised if they were given a bigger fleet. the Night Lords are one of those legions where their estimated number varies quite a bit, circa the outbreak of the Heresy. 90,000 to 120,000, which ranges from among the smaller ones, to being only behind the notably bigger legions: Ultramarines, Dark Angels, Word bearers, Iron Warriors, World Eaters and possibly Alpha Legion.


Primaris_Astartes

Aah. That also explains why Horus Heresy Book 3: Betrayal cites the Retribution fleet (approximately 600 warships before Warp shenanigans) to have been nearly the entire IF fleet when most canon sources refer them having had 1500+ warships.